[syslinux] newbie

[eli]

hi. sorry about this newbie post, but i'm lost. i have tried for
several days, looking at documentations, but failed. i am trying to
make a bootable usb drive. i would like to put everything into 1
directory on the usb drive (the kernel image, boot.msg, and the rest).
as of now (with everything in the root directory) my syslinux.cfg file
looks like this:
default vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 initrd=initrd.gz PMEDIA=usbflash
i have tried dumping everything (except the syslinux config file) into
a directory called linux and putting a /linux/ before everything (ex.
default linux/vmlinuz). the problem is that it returns an error "could
not find linux/v.mli". it seems that it is predisposed to seeing the
file as a 7 character name and thinks that my dir is part of the name.
is there anything i could do? perhaps change directories right away
and then begin the boot procedure? and how?