Riding the Light –

Category: Memory

  • Writing Exercise 1 – A Dozen Balloons for My Birthday

    Writing Exercise 1 – A Dozen Balloons for My Birthday

    Once upon a time, when I was not single, having opted for the dubious commitment of a relationship (which benefits we shall not elaborate upon here…), my husband du jour sent me balloons on my birthday – one dozen shiny silver Mylar balloons braided on long ribbons into a fist-sized knot.

    My daughter called these “blayloons.” She also called matches “magics,” which seemed quite correct to me at the time.

    I was working at 2500 Market Street in Nashville, across from Parthenon Park for CGFNS, an organization certifying foreign nurses to work in the USA. An enterprising co-worker tied the balloons to my chair & at 5:30, I untied them, wrapped the ribbon around my wrist & headed for the elevator. We had spent the day together. I had squelched my propensity to name all of them. We were heading home.

    Have you ever attempted getting twelve Mylar balloons into an elevator during rush hour? If you do, you will find it a study in the absurd & the initial smiles of co-workers did not last as I managed to somehow corral all of them for the downward trip.

    I found the lobby doors locked except for the revolving door in the center. Ah! Another challenge! I saw people on Market Street stop to watch. I saw money exchanging hands. But I was much younger then & braver by far, so, totally surrounded by silvery shine, we exited the building, the balloons exhaling out the open space forcefully only to be choked back by the ribbon I had wrapped around my wrist.

    It was about 6:30 by that time. On full exit, a round of applause & commentary awaited from the passers-by who obviously did not have to get home to prepare dinner. Or better yet, have the treat of eating out for their birthday!

    I marched bravely on towards my compact car in the parking lot nearby. Another hour passed by the time I got Fritz, Bessie, Blue, Jordan, Charles, Amber, Clarissa, Ant’ony, Ed, Buzz, Rocky & Bing into the car.

    We had learned much about each other in the interim: I learned how the longing to fly can continue far beyond restraint. They learned how to fit together in one place several times over. I’m not sure who came out tops on any of it at all, but the memory lasted far beyond the wedding vows!

  • Someday, My One Day Will Come

    Someday, My One Day Will Come

    Haven’t I affirmed & had it affirmed for me lifelong… One day you will … One day I know I’ll be able to …

    Well, hey, I’m past ready & one day has turned into 27,890 of them, give or take 50-60. Ok, Great Universe, I’m waiting! Yes, I have, too! I HAVE tried, I have declared… I claimed, I demanded, I surrendered, I laughed, I cried, I stamped my right foot & then my left one even harder. I swept the altar & scraped off the wax drippings, I’ve burned wagonloads of sage, palo santo, practically mainlined Rescue Remedy, I smoked sacred substances, I’ve entered the many mansions in my mind moving swiftly thru doorways, shouting “Clear” at every one as I rounded it with a lit candle & a crucifix.

    I’ve learned very little is sacred when it comes to humans & for all my fly-in-the-jar buzzing, I am so. And I’ll say it again, I’m ready!

    I know so few of those who believe they know me would even take a flying leap into what I’m about discussing this with the universe. I know this is because they are each on their own path, the drums repeating behind them.

    Each day it comes clearer. The world isn’t going to admit to anything. It will say, ‘Haven’t I made you happy? Haven’t I been clear & blue & scarlet & fragrant & flowered & butterflied enough for you yet?’

    No.

    You don’t understand either!

    And what will it accomplish to declare what I want now? Aren’t I doing some sweaty little dance off in the corner keeping time to my own heart?

    My life hides in the wrinkles now. I get a little desperate now & then. I’m watching down the road for the bus that isn’t coming, that may have changed routes a decade ago while I balanced on the curb. Did the announcement come the one time I took my eyes away?

    This world isn’t made to satisfy what I believe my desires to be. This world is a paean to dissatisfaction, to falling short in the moment. I no sooner say yes than someone nearby begins singing no no no no no. Those two letters trip over in eagerness to assert their negating power.

    When I was a child, my mother had to go to a meeting when a nor’easter was coming in. The sky was dark, the wind whipping itself into a real blow, the rain becoming a personal affront to whatever one wore. The Atlantic crossed the four blocks of our tiny peninsular neighborhood. The bay crested over the bulwark traveling one block to meet it. They formed a widow’s peak in the parking lot next door, gleeful & super-charged, a discovery of elements & forces against which few had any control & certainly not my 4’5″ Mom breasting the current to Come Home. My brother & I watched her out the window, cheering her on – “Come on , MOM!” We stripped up the bathroom towels & raced to the second floor porch door as she tiredly emerged from the flood, both hands on the wooden railing. “Mom! Where’s the car?” we stupidly asked – she’d have needed a motorboat at that point. She pulled the towels from us, wiping her hands, her face, wrapping one around her soaked hair.

    “How did you do at the meeting?” we chorused, “Mom! What happened?”

    “He said no,” she tiredly replied. So her mission to reclaim the Grail of my brother’s reputation had failed & he would not be allowed to return to school for the three months before graduation, but would always bear the diploma of the known-to-be-inferior public school. The entire senior class would graduate with him from there.

    Knowing what I know now, I would have known: The church existed to condemn, to pinch off mercy at any source, to draw a woman out into a force of nature to be admonished in person by a man in black, his Roman collar declaring his loyalty. Mom had no tithes to offer. no way to stay the storm.

    She went into her bedroom; we hung up the towels. The storm blasted us all night & left a shambled neighborhood in its wake.

    My life is only one of so many, all deadlocked in a “no.”

    But here it is, Universe, I’m going to keep singing yes until I die & quite probably for some time afterward. I WILL find my way to Some Day. It may be the one before they bury me, but I will have mine.

    I will sit in a shaft of winter sun, cozy & warmed clear through. I will write all my tomorrows & hide the book in the cedar chest in the attic where I will know them to be. I will watch for storms from the windows, a supernatural self in the fore, a preternatural force of the pen. I will write all day & my hand shall not grow tired. Food will appear nearby, & only my favorites & I’ll ignore it all to get what I have to say, said.

    That Some Day is this One Day I have now!

  • Google Memories

    Google Memories

    Divesting myself of memories, I delete the photographs.

    I will remember that scene, those chili peppers, that field

    And if I do not, Google, it seems, will present them as “memories.”

    (Why AI should care when I do not is yet to be determined)

    Except as in tracing a root to check present growth – who was I if these experiences

    Never took place?

    The self who took these photos was so different: with earlier dreams,

    More flexible ideas, quite a bit more ambition that I now possess.

    She knew less or more, I cannot tell. She thought ambition

    Was over there…always seeking something

    In a new vista or a different meal.

    I am mildly amazed at what returns:

    A yearning to be elastic in this body & capable of more…

    I have been sitting now for years when I used to stand & flex in my work.

    (But even those moves were choreographed & unchanging)

    My mind needs to be watched for choices about growing

    As it seems to have settled into a kind of intellectual hammock

    Relaxed & allowing where once it rubbed against disfavor, disinclination, dismissal.

    I am dormant, waiting for ideas to present themselves to me

    Rather than seeking them willy-nilly.

    But who’s to say? This also feels perfect

    As did the travel, the ambition, the constancy of change…

    What drops away sinks to the bottom

    Becoming bedrock I stand upon now.

    Becoming a belief I will only need to give way to later, I have found.

    Best not to believe, best to react in the immediate, stay open,

    Keep showing myself how to show up.

    1/5/25

  • To Hug or Not to Hug

    To Hug or Not to Hug

    To hug or not to hug: that is MY question.

    I come from Italian roots, prolific & notorious huggers. I stand aside from that crowd, kind of pushing my hand out to ward off a hug. Of course, there are some times, places, people, where a hug is organic. Those hugs I like. I distinctly remember this behavior as a child. I hung behind chairs, moving backwards out of reach or behind someone. I was a sylph of a girl, easily lost, a blade of grass. No hugs come to my mind from my Mother. Mothers teach us even when they are no longer here. What was I learning? Is the lesson even [ever] over? Nah. Not when it involves a Mom.

    Where did this culture of hugging come from? It is,
    as I say, not my era. Except when bicycling past the bus depot &
    occasionally under the boardwalk, I did not see hugging. A man with a sign
    & a smile saying, “Free Hugs!!*!” would likely have been hustled to the
    bony corners of Anglesea to rejoin the mainland. Or into the sea itself just
    beyond. Did I learn a kind of isolation from the island? From the gulls who seemed to have it down pat to openly be equal with every other beak in the flock at the exact same moment? To this day, I react viscerally to every gull cry I hear. Did I learn it from books? Yes, indeed. These were, after all, the only reality I had. My refuge & true Sanctuary is the library, still. My first Impression of a Store is not some Bamberger’s but the stationery store. I would open the door, dashed by the air conditioning & the door’s weight both at once, I would pause, once inside before turning to the paper, or trying one or two pens on those 1” square pads stuck into the display. I would wander the tablet aisle hungrily, study the felt-tip pens avidly. I am still of that appetite & tho I actively resist purchase now, I compulsively check the prices on any group of copybooks or journals. Certainly, there were no hugs there – just glancing eyes behind the glass counters.

    The entire wander & wanderlust offered cool respite to a sunburn & a legitimate reason to come in off the beach. It was also ’specially grand on days when the beach would dash up against the sky in windy gusts & the clouds crowd over.

    Always, then to the soda store for a Vanilla Coke & a bag of chips.

    Only if Teri was in town were there hugs for me.



     



  • Memory Aside

    Memory Aside

    A Little Night Music

    I emerged one last time into the night before going to sleep yesterday… going to bed for the first time, that is. I sat in my blue chair & finished some tobacco. One drop of water fell onto my upturned wrist; Youniverse choosing anonymous me for this gift: water in the desert. I offer thanks for this reminder of my being so beloved. I returned indoors, finished the e-mails & turned out the lights, turned off the radio & thought to go to sleep.

    (My dear friend, Becky, has gifted me with a satellite music subscription. I have been listening for days, reviewing my life by means of these musical touch-points at the push of a button. They call it a remote, but it fits my hand like the wand of a conductor orchestrating the world.)

    Since music enters the brain architecture in a textured sort of way, it seems to stick to the convolutions most lovingly, capable of not only instant recall, but instantaneous placement in my life-stream. As when my friend Kermit, who plays trumpet, played an old favorite one night, I heard everyone who had recorded it. When he played “Michelle”, I heard only the Beatles.

    When I worked atop the third-floor refurbished house in Haddonfield, New Jersey, I listened to classical music all day. On a busy street corner and with many deadlines, Mozart kept me organized & productive.

    At my last job in Nashville, Tennessee, I listened to “massage music” all day, Stephen Halpern, R. Carlos Nakai, Peter Kater. These kept me sane under insane conditions.

    I could ramble around the radio all night, but I resolutely turned it off & pulled the covers up.

    Outside, the New Mexico night tossed in gusty winds. The stars remained invisible, indicating a high thin cloud cover from which that single drop had emerged. Sleepless still at midnight, I rolled from the covers for a cup of chai & some chocolate, as restless as the low trees doing a hula outside. (The Sandman must have delayed his arrival, perhaps sitting on his haunches by the river, breathing.)

    For a breath, I opened the bathroom window, the wind being a constant off the Rio Grande at night. I breathed in moisture, a balm to sinuses, throat, lungs. Austin Street glistened in a thin sheen of water, inch-deep puddles in the ruts of a sun-melted roadway. The “walking rain” had hastened by, leaving mostly the perfume of her passing.

    I turned on the light, surrendering sleep to the pen rattling atop the notebook in its eagerness to be uncapped, fondled, held forth to leave its own darker gleam across the dry, bright paper. It’s 1:00 a.m. & I begin this blog.

    Somewhere along this later way I have turned on the radio again. I know on the inside I only got up to listen to this music some more.

    Forgive me if you have read me saying this before. When I was asked once where I hope to “go” when I die, I replied, “to the place of old song lyrics.” The surprised, “Why?!” didn’t catch me unaware. I answered “because then I’ll live forever.”

    I write in red ink, mildly annoyed for myself already that I’ll need to decipher this tomorrow, er , later today. If I get up for a black pen I might as well get the computer & I cannot look into that particular Ouija Board right now.

    All these words later …

    The rain has come & gone. My eyes want to close; Sandman has caught me up now. I still don’t want to turn the radio off.

    Good night.

  • Separations

    Separations

    Time has become a mercurial substance, balling itself up in clusters on the calendar…a series of lunches or volunteer commitments cluster together until they resolve one by one. Until the moment they separate & each takes an identity of its own. Usually just when I thought I had it all together…it comes apart discretely.

    I remember when my days were an unthought routine: up at 6, commuting by 7:30, leaving a bit early since traffic was always an unknown factor. Arrival, coffee, meetings, a lunch hour, emails, calls, an afternoon break for another coffee, gathering my life back into my purse to head for the garage park. Home to another routine of dinner, TV, conversation, chores & bedtime.

    It’s different now or is it really? I cannot get far from routine even when I think I’m doing so.

    I miss my little cat. I tell myself tiny stories, but I cannot keep the back door open or I will spend the day watching for her & her friends who came by for dinner & a shoulder rub. I cannot complain at 2 a.m. when she’d wake me for a night’s run & I’d bumble to the couch to curl into a different sleep, into strange-lit secondary dreams.

    When I named her Dream, I did not think she would so easily become one. I did not see her ever hurt or stressed or physically unable to alight upon any height like a butterfly rising. She barely made contact but would suddenly appear in the space. She had a rusty voice & never hesitated to tell me what she was thinking. “Time to get up & let me out.” “Time for me to eat, whatcha got?” “Time for us to get to sleep…” Tho this last was a rarer call than the others. Sleeping for four straight hours in the daylight does not lend itself to sound slumber all night.

    I cannot talk about her ending except the very last moments in the vet office when she rested her face into my cupped palm & breathed out her essence into my hand.

    Was I being cruel to expect her to travel across the country with me? I had great accommodations with a large kennel which would hold litter within. I had plans on shifting her to a roomy carrier which would perch atop my wheelie suitcase entering the motel. I even had a bungee set aside (a blue one) to tether that for security. I had a harness, a leash, a plan for her food & comfort. Literally, with a snap of jaws it ended. Though I think I have cried it out, I have not cried out enough about the awful event. I know how quickly things happen, especially tragedies. I avoid thinking the unthinkable until it drapes itself across my eyeballs, unavoidable.

    It comes enfilade, this watching of corners where she appeared, plumed tail tall & waving. It is never direct but by a corner & around a slant, I see her earnestly making her way. The baby next door squeals & I alert thinking Dream must want to come in now, must be at the door, must be slipping along the windowsill to let me know it’s time.

    Like so many blameless happenings, I want to assign a blame. I want to take away the sure & certain terror she felt & remove all pain & wobble from her flight. She always walked fast, fur electric around her: a voice, an appearance, a pass-by, a dream within a dream.

    A moment of horror & a life changes. Her brokenness becomes my memory when all I want to see is so completely different from that. A moment of sadness & my life is my own again, alone & awaiting, a-waiting.

    I miss you, my baby-girl. I miss our conversations, your slanted looks, your comic demands. We weren’t a cuddly couple; you never spent an afternoon on my lap & I was quite content were you even on the couch nearby. You knew if you stared hard enough, I’d rise to resolve your want. I knew if I called out the backdoor at the end of the day you would dash toward me, each footfall prodding a vocalization.

    My heart slips a notch, my eyes refill. Only recently after our year together did you stay near enough for me to stroke you, tho you loved being brushed. Only recently did a hope stutter-start that you might one night climb into bed with me & sleep by my side.

    We steadied each other; studied each other. Love is sometimes a nightlight or a match-flame, nothing like a bonfire of vanities, but lit nonetheless for in all darkness, one candle is enough to illuminate a world.

    Farewell, my kitty-kitty dream. I shall not forget your grace & gravitas. I am not diminished for having loved you well & a year is worth a thousand griefs. I know you have been lifted above all of it: but you were mine when you were you & I shall love that beyond time.

  • Off the cuff

    Off the cuff

    When I found that ‘fabric’ in a tall pile at the flea market this morning, I knew it to be the so-far elusive “tablecloth” (something with yellow & cheerful) I’d been searching for. In my hands!

    (My table has a large chip missing. I like to cover that up. A cloth is so much easier to deal with… but I have to live with it in my kitchen. I want something I can live with. What does that say about my life, that I need to have an in-house relationship with my tablecloth? Put that in your dishwasher & hit soak.)

    After scrubbing the table up, I put the pattern on it. I stood back & laughed, my mind flashing on my 9th Grade Home Economics Teacher, Helen Something & how she looked when I chose the most difficult pattern in the box to make for Homecoming. It had gathers in it, stitching across the back, oh my! I could not & if you want to be picky about it, still c a n n o t thread a needle. But the front of that dress was ready to display 4 months later.

    I have a karma with patterns. When I was out of teen-hood but barely, my sister decided to show me how to sew. She gave me a pattern & fabric to cut out on her king size bed. Which I did, also making a pattern of her deep green bedspread. And I had not even seen Gone With the Wind at that point.

    Well, I just wanted to share that little bit of my afternoon with you. I couldn’t resist the thought of putting a smile on that face!

    Love,

    Carol

  • Inner Child Stuff

    Inner Child Stuff

    No worries. Just a bit dug around in

    Like some dry earth garden

    Attacked with an unmerciful hoe.

    This happened when I realized

    That thing I used to say, that I didn’t like kids much

    (There was no understanding to be shared?)

    Well, an impossible little Jack popped from the box

              When I wound it up:

    It turns out the child I didn’t like is me. My inner, to be exacting.

    Now what?

    No wonder she hardly visits, but has that,

    “my chip’s right here. Where’s yours?”

    We once drew sabres but now poignards suffice

    Honed to lethal: set beyond Blood –

    I think that’s my liver hanging from hers.

    I don’t feel too good.

    Hey, listen, I’d a sworn it not to be me

    But all this Later, now I look away & wonder.

    It’s only that it’s never mattered;

    I was so obviously wrong about everything!

    First & foremost, about her.

    I chose to misinform myself first,

    I chose to trust the weight

    If I balanced. My sign, too,

    First nature to me, now.

    I only know the numbers

    Not the matters a-weigh

    But sudden-like it came off

    There stands little between the wound

    And continuing on.

    I’m seeing myself again, this unnatural self

    Who knows no meaning save the cerebral

    When she must ought be found waiting in

    The confessional of Spirit.

    For the first time in years, I’m genuinely frightened

    (she knows everything: she was there from the beginning)

    My heart tears its reins from the

    Tethering tree

    Stumbling off

    Carrying that unholy girl.

    Now what shall I do?

    Now where who do I call?

    Once everyone knows everything

    I’m kind of barnacle embarrassment

    Who, seeing this, even knows me?

    They would never know my face!

    Do I stop then? No, of course not.

    Beginnings are all ever given to me

    I know little of middles or endings

    Most certainly not this one.

    God help me.

    The child is on her own.

    SOME POEMS ARE GIVING BIRTH

    An idea gone material

    Reaches for a pen & white paper

    Closing not around the plastic

    But on the idea

    Clasping it in taut fingers

    Saying what to say

    Until it speaks on its own.

    Too soon for me,

    I like control…

    While Surrender is much more eloquent

    Her vocabulary faultless, flawless.

    I KNOW NO PERMANENCE

    At three years, I pack stuff up & go

    I hate the restraints I feel

    Like all this time I’ve picked up rocks

    Instead of poked at clouds or found feathers

    And time’s come to put all those big things down.

    Some flash jealous, some disregard, or vanity, or to mediocre flesh

    I took no time; but like I said,

    She knows everything –

    There from the start,

    She remembers being human, too

    I more remember what things were called.

    She’s the hum of the song I sing

    With a child’s grace to forgiveness

    Caught with you, I am move in the Presence,

    In the DNA I was cast,

    This you, this me, you wise, brown-eyed,

    Braided child

    With two sets of eyes since one never was enough.

    No wisdom for earthlings; she minded

    Herself like a science experiment, full of reactions

    Of bromides, quick trips to the interior

    When the exterior redlined.

    This, that we thought a landscape

    Instead a portrait

    Most likely, a mirror.

    We both don’t want to remember.

    We both can’t do much else.

    What happens when the

    Earth-senses fail?

    Like some , yeh, think about it,

    About stuff I never even

    Thought about; it was more omnipresent than that…

    This is harsh, tho. Two at once?

    Embellish it now: embroider it now

    A black jet-bead ribbon threading the frame

    The mourning of what I’ve left of my mortality.

    Two senses in the same day?

    Lost to some disease I never wanted to get involved in

    Especially my sense of smell”

    Which I mercilessly mocked my Mother over as she’d none.

    “Carol, what does this smell like?”

    A dread call from the opened refrigerator

    Mother waiting, eyes over her shoulder

    Would I come into the kitchen?

    Would I dare not?

    This is a truly Cosmic Upside!

    Knocked me silly: my teeth moved up in my jaws.

    My friend said there’s more flavors in New Mexico

    Than hot.

    Now I think he spoke too soon; seems where I’m goin’.

  • Ferals

    Ferals

    My Prayer for Ferals

    Is it forgiven if you pray it that? Even if you’re not always kind?

    We live now & then, like Ferals. It can be on any wavelength: emotional, spiritual, physical, pineal. (Pretty much you can count on physical to accompany any of them.) It’s all of the above getting through as best as can. After a point one forgets completely about, “’Scuse me,” after an unexpected burp. In fact, I welcome the burp so I can watch myself not react.

    Everywhere each of us has attuned to environment differently. In many cases, travel changes that. Reducing the ring to one key reduces it irrevocably. I, (who seemed so stunningly, daringly, original & intrepid …) such an Individual…

    I set out alone only to find I was one in a long line. I could choose how long I wanted that line to be.  (Not like now when choices are made for us), but in a time when a choice meant where you might spend years of your life.

    At times, we choose the longer line.

    As a years-younger woman, I wanted to believe I could live like a bird. I wanted my habitat to precede me. I wanted it waiting for me as part of my all-around landing. I was amazed others did not think thoughts like me!

    I grew up on the beach, as eternal & in-the-moment changeable as any element can be.

    I confess it now to be a knowing. I could live like a bird. I could sing for my supper. I had not tried to name it before, feeling it was enough. Once we got together, though, she’s cut miles off my route. All it took was an exchange of names. Then came the Winters of our Discontent, flowering in below-ground cellars. However we’ve had time to grow into each other & interesting years to do so,

    It gotten to be that whenever we come to a crossroads & check in, we both shrug & say “no matter.” (It never does if you’re plugged into at least the vista.)

    I have been so slow in my awakening, other worlds have invaded the one of my visions. I have gotten off here, at this particular timeline, this colossal universe named for food. I’ve stayed a long while. Maybe even over-stayed; up to you.

    In my campout days I woke to find the world around the tent had clarified – almost atomized – a face-full of Now. I made my marks on it, hot water & coffee, a poise upon the picnic bench all steam, aroma & a face-full of sunbeam.

    I learn late the lessons in of my “last hours of ancient sunlight.”* I am close to the Jump, but not saying yet, I don’t give a damn.

    I want someone laying a little Boddhisattva on me for a change.

    *–Thom Hartman: The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight

  • childhood, Part One

    childhood, Part One

    CHILDHOOD: Part One

    My mantra was, “I cannot remember the child I was” or all the years of now between then.

    She has taken to showing up, slipping postcards of our past under my door.

    Yet my memories of her are as foolish and small, hesitant & fearful.

    (How I wish I could take them back to uncreate! Urge “Be cool, suave, debonair! All answers lie beyond your patience.”)

    I wished to be in reality – as I seemed

    In other realms.

    If only my environment had prepared an ounce of the pound of me.

     

    I recall being tiny

    Braids so severe, my scalp stayed taut

    Hypervigilance in glasses – blinkered by nystagmus/

    Glasses impossible to keep on my nose.

     

    I lived an imitation life, so much safer than living my own which was hidden for the foolish moments, hazy on salt air, striped in shadows.

    I felt launched, like an episode of Quantum Leap into the Carol life,

    Choosing only the stars that spoke loudest save I be missed.

     

    I remember cartoons: sporadic family interactions: Reading!

    These all indoors, but outside of the house only five long blocks to the beach, where an entirely offset (offshoot?) of me crystallized. And although I knew the beach would be where it always was, I was always grateful to it for being there.

     

    Later in life I would remark, “the beach was my mother.”

    I remember the beach: coming upon it

    Digging into it for shelter; cool sand-silk just touched by sun,

    Walking to the water where all smoothed into invitation: sand: sea: sun coalescent, the chanced Kaleidoscope of my life fitting into synchrony: I was perfect right there.

    I must have memorized it with my breath.

    Here I laid down all weapons, prayed my heart to open;

     here it was clear I was here only to be here – a placeholder

    for divinity.

    As sure as the reminiscent moon feathering off above.

    I re-call the playing light & shadow, even rain, legendary whips of storm.

    What I don’t remember is the other 80%.

     

    End Part I: Placeholder for Divinity Series