It is the end of another Julian calendar year... it was the ending of the year for my own personal calendar year back in September. My decade also started earlier. I will explain more on this later, if I don't forget, or if I still feel inclined.
Hey! The year is ending! It's an exciting time, always has been for me. Mostly because symbolically the first of the year, any year has always suggested a clean slate, and a starting over. It's a hopeful time.
Still.
This is the first of many years where I feel and wish a continuation of things from previous days. I know I am going to look back on this time years from now and know beyond any doubt that, indeed, these next years are going to cement and guide my future years like nothing else in my life. A keystone is metaphorical in so many ways, and perfectly suited for what I am feeling.
Life is interesting. 2009, 2010, has been a tremendous time for me. I think life is interesting because for so many of us, when someone says that they are happy, giddy with excitement, bursting with love with light, and with good humor for their own lives and the world around them, people tend to either think that these people are deluded, misguided, or just brazenly lucky in life.
I am here to suggest that none of these things are true. I am here to suggest that YOU, and ONLY you can make the argument, (it is not an argument in any case), for your own happiness, your joy, your well being, your general mental homeostatis. You and no one else.
The corollary is just as true. Only YOU, yourself, by your own unwillingness and ignorance can make yourself miserable, cowardly, insecure, unconfident, unhappy... It is not in your cards that you were handed, nor in some silly astrological chart, not in the way your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, mother, father, brother, sister, neighbor, teacher, boss, other human outside of your self treats you...
Your happiness or unhappiness has nothing to do with what is found in your back pocket, your bank account, your job, your lack of job, your love life, your lack of love life, how fat you are, how thin you are...
Your happiness/unhappiness have only to do with YOU and how you respond to life's monkey wrenches and curve balls. Only YOU.
"You are the author of your own health, of your disease."
If you don't like where your year has gone, your decade has gone, your entire life has gone, act NOW AND CHANGE YOUR OWN COURSE.
We are blessed with a wit of a clean slate, and this can happen, anytime! It doesn't have to be at the end of the Julian calendar.
My clean slate began in May 2008, and I haven't looked back since. It has been a heady whirlwind of a journey. I closed so many doors and brutally excavated memories buried deep within the crevases. I cleaned my house and cleared out. It was a heady time. Scary, but heady. And what ultimately started as a painful process quickly turned into something unbelievably exciting and then, every door, every window opened and continues to open...
Amazing!
People think I am lucky. People think I am happy because I have things come easily my way. But it has nothing to do at all with luck! When you start flowing with what your nature intended, you find yourself easily in tune with Nature with the capital 'n' and this is when things start to happen... Good things find you just as the "bad" once found you and followed you like a bad debt. It is such a simple and straightforward equation; and not at all complicated or esoteric.
Things do start to happen, believe me! Of course, not all things, are necessarily good, in the conventional sense. But you also start to notice the yucky things happen less and less, and when they do happen, your responses are also different. I met with a pretty serious accident earlier this year and totaled my brand new car. An industrial ladder was left in the highway, taking up two lanes, it was dark, rainy and the snow was just starting to clear, I saw it too late... Nothing bad happened to either me or the person driving the truck that I crashed into head on, and I now drive another new car, but still, yucky business nevertheless. I escaped unscathed and did not shed a single tear. I have only to thank my vipassana and peaceful disposition for that serenity during that crazy car episode.
I am only using this example to illustrate that even when you start living a life connected to your inner chi and effortlessness, "bad" things can still happen. Nothing in life is guaranteed. The deer can still get eaten by the lion, but it still goes on, alert and active, not in the least bit sad, depressed, or angry, in the forests of the world...
Yet, still:
Life is so beautiful. In its entire capacity. If you want a good year, you have to make it happen! If you want love, you have to be that love! If you want whatever it is that you want, you have to make the effort, and also make it effortlessly! Ha! This is the koan of my life. Effortlessness...
I wish all of you much peace, love, joy, and happiness for this coming year. May you work hard, be ever mindful, always practice compassion, and share as much love that you can muster with the rest of the world.
A very happy New Year and Metta to all. May all beings be happy!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Refeeding...
“The lion is most handsome when looking for food”
- Jalal ad-Din Rumi
Where to begin. I can't even begin, I don't know how. It's been so long. It's better to start in the middle, then. So I shall. I wanted to change this blog, I never write here anyway, but I don't have the luxury of time or even the necessity to do so right now. I only wrote one other entry, and so far, I still dig the name of the blog. We are all waiting for Kalki, in one way or another... even if we don't know whom that quite is, yet.
What a year. A decade. What a life. So much has happened.
- Jalal ad-Din Rumi
Where to begin. I can't even begin, I don't know how. It's been so long. It's better to start in the middle, then. So I shall. I wanted to change this blog, I never write here anyway, but I don't have the luxury of time or even the necessity to do so right now. I only wrote one other entry, and so far, I still dig the name of the blog. We are all waiting for Kalki, in one way or another... even if we don't know whom that quite is, yet.
What a year. A decade. What a life. So much has happened.
I am so filled with gratitude these days and usually so moved with awe by the most minutiae of things. I sat in awe this summer watching an earthworm painstakingly crawl from one side of the hot blazing pavement to the safety of the cool grass and earth waiting on the other side. I picked him up, placed him along on the cool grass and thanked him for his gift of cephalization to evolution. Without him, where would we be?
It was also the FIRST time in my life I handled a worm on my own volition. It's interesting, my old fears keep falling by the wayside. When I go for my blood tests and check ups, I stare right at the needle going up my vein. I was never able to look at blood or anything related to blood directly. These days, nothing the human body produces bothers me; nothing the animal kingdom produces disturbs me. I have an enormous sense of respect for how we operate biologically. When I am meditating, I breathe as much oxygen as I can into every cell I have in my body. I breath into them as much love and gratitude as I can, for each cell, because every cell in our body works so hard for our well being, for a stable and unencumbered homeostasis. They are so brilliant!
It's no surprise then, after each intensive viapassana sit that I veer away from foods and substances that run contrary to the maintenance of my homeostasis. This last time, however, I had an even more overwhelming urge to fast and rid my body of all the toxins from my years of bad choices. I wanted to do a total water only fast for forty days, but I have decided to do half of the forty days with water and the other half with fresh juices.
It has been very, very, very intense. And it continues to be... I probably will not feel the full effects when all is said and done until mid 2011. And I know it will be so brilliant. Today, I am so happy to be drinking juice and soups.
It was also the FIRST time in my life I handled a worm on my own volition. It's interesting, my old fears keep falling by the wayside. When I go for my blood tests and check ups, I stare right at the needle going up my vein. I was never able to look at blood or anything related to blood directly. These days, nothing the human body produces bothers me; nothing the animal kingdom produces disturbs me. I have an enormous sense of respect for how we operate biologically. When I am meditating, I breathe as much oxygen as I can into every cell I have in my body. I breath into them as much love and gratitude as I can, for each cell, because every cell in our body works so hard for our well being, for a stable and unencumbered homeostasis. They are so brilliant!
It's no surprise then, after each intensive viapassana sit that I veer away from foods and substances that run contrary to the maintenance of my homeostasis. This last time, however, I had an even more overwhelming urge to fast and rid my body of all the toxins from my years of bad choices. I wanted to do a total water only fast for forty days, but I have decided to do half of the forty days with water and the other half with fresh juices.
It has been very, very, very intense. And it continues to be... I probably will not feel the full effects when all is said and done until mid 2011. And I know it will be so brilliant. Today, I am so happy to be drinking juice and soups.
My water fast of 21 days was pretty brutal. Initially, I felt great and swam about a mile for the first week I was fasting. I can normally swim two miles with ease while eating, but of course I started to notice that I could hardly do ten laps by the seventh day. After the eighth day, I was just plum tuckered and didn't want to do anything but take catnaps in the sun. And well, the tenth day on, I had my detox. And it was pretty severe. My cells must have cannibalizing on all the fats and toxicity from my past lives that were left over in my body, and it caused me a great amount of discomfort, to put it mildly.
But I meditated often and focused on my work and school, which made it a bit more bearable. My thoughts on food, I found, were so interesting. Initially I craved vegan tortilla soup, I was not hungry, I just craved it, and so I bookmarked a million recipes for it. Good grief the amount of food porn! And then my cravings filtered down to the foods I ate as a child. My ultimate comfort food. My parents always used to tell me that I was such a healthy kid and would only want the good food and would reject anything processed or unnatural outright. Which meant candies that most kids love. I never used to like them, and opted always for fruits. Which is so interesting to me. I think it was the way I was as a child that has saved me from disease and illness as an adult, because believe me, I have made so many rotten and unhealthy choices on my own after my teen years.
In many ways, vipassana has healed any wounds I have had and removed layer upon layer to bring me closer to my self. Before I self- damaged, either with my choice of foods, friends, work, or relationships. Somewhere along the way I had lost faith in my cells and in my own self-regulating homeostasis... or maybe it was that I was too overconfident? Could be either and or both. Who knows. All I know now is that the further I move from what is good for me, the further I move from being happy. The closer I am, the happier I am, the stronger I am, the more fearless I am...
So not only has vipassana reintroduced me back to my self before I self sullied and self sabotaged but it has also refed me my mental and spiritual nourishment. And now fasting has brought in the food component. I feel like a naked canvas. Paint me so many colors that are vibrant and beautiful, feed me, nourish me. I constantly feel reborn.
I think food has a very real connection to emotions. I also think that the fats in the food are what keeps old emotions adhered to your system. Which is why temporary solutions always fail. It's proabbly a giant leap, but I'd posit that you can grow tumors and cancers from the emotions you keep locked up inside, even if you pretend to yourself and to the world how wonderful everything is, disease, illness, digestive irritation, imbalance, etc., seem to be all the proof one needs to know that there is something else buried deep within, where it is only a matter of time before it surfaces, leaks out, in many myriad neuroses. Anyway, it is just an intuitive theory of mine. It could be completely baseless. For me, in my own experience, I have noticed, the more my body has rid itself of toxins while fasting, the lighter I have felt, and it hasn't only been the physical lightness. It has been emotional as well. It has been amazing. Old emotional wounds that I have carried with me like a pack rat, are long gone. And my mind empty. My heart full once more.
I feel so clean inside. Like my body is a temple. I have been given a second chance in life to fill it with only the fresh, the delicious, the beautiful, the fearless, the kind, the intelligent, the generous, and the loving. I can't even begin to imagine filling myself up with junk. There was a time I used to write that I always felt so "suspended" from everything. I used to even "play" being in a relationship with an ex, even while we were in a relationship, (surely it confused him to no end, poor guy). I could just never connect with everything that I had one hundred percent, either with anyone or anything. Always hanging suspended, looking in.
And today, I connect. Oh, how I connect with me. Connecting with my refeeding... I taste everything. It is delicious, brilliant! It has been an incredible journey. I am so happy and feel so clean and so alive. I feel truly fearless and tears are always welling up inside because I feel so grateful to be alive and vital and vibrant and of the world.
But I meditated often and focused on my work and school, which made it a bit more bearable. My thoughts on food, I found, were so interesting. Initially I craved vegan tortilla soup, I was not hungry, I just craved it, and so I bookmarked a million recipes for it. Good grief the amount of food porn! And then my cravings filtered down to the foods I ate as a child. My ultimate comfort food. My parents always used to tell me that I was such a healthy kid and would only want the good food and would reject anything processed or unnatural outright. Which meant candies that most kids love. I never used to like them, and opted always for fruits. Which is so interesting to me. I think it was the way I was as a child that has saved me from disease and illness as an adult, because believe me, I have made so many rotten and unhealthy choices on my own after my teen years.
In many ways, vipassana has healed any wounds I have had and removed layer upon layer to bring me closer to my self. Before I self- damaged, either with my choice of foods, friends, work, or relationships. Somewhere along the way I had lost faith in my cells and in my own self-regulating homeostasis... or maybe it was that I was too overconfident? Could be either and or both. Who knows. All I know now is that the further I move from what is good for me, the further I move from being happy. The closer I am, the happier I am, the stronger I am, the more fearless I am...
So not only has vipassana reintroduced me back to my self before I self sullied and self sabotaged but it has also refed me my mental and spiritual nourishment. And now fasting has brought in the food component. I feel like a naked canvas. Paint me so many colors that are vibrant and beautiful, feed me, nourish me. I constantly feel reborn.
I think food has a very real connection to emotions. I also think that the fats in the food are what keeps old emotions adhered to your system. Which is why temporary solutions always fail. It's proabbly a giant leap, but I'd posit that you can grow tumors and cancers from the emotions you keep locked up inside, even if you pretend to yourself and to the world how wonderful everything is, disease, illness, digestive irritation, imbalance, etc., seem to be all the proof one needs to know that there is something else buried deep within, where it is only a matter of time before it surfaces, leaks out, in many myriad neuroses. Anyway, it is just an intuitive theory of mine. It could be completely baseless. For me, in my own experience, I have noticed, the more my body has rid itself of toxins while fasting, the lighter I have felt, and it hasn't only been the physical lightness. It has been emotional as well. It has been amazing. Old emotional wounds that I have carried with me like a pack rat, are long gone. And my mind empty. My heart full once more.
I feel so clean inside. Like my body is a temple. I have been given a second chance in life to fill it with only the fresh, the delicious, the beautiful, the fearless, the kind, the intelligent, the generous, and the loving. I can't even begin to imagine filling myself up with junk. There was a time I used to write that I always felt so "suspended" from everything. I used to even "play" being in a relationship with an ex, even while we were in a relationship, (surely it confused him to no end, poor guy). I could just never connect with everything that I had one hundred percent, either with anyone or anything. Always hanging suspended, looking in.
And today, I connect. Oh, how I connect with me. Connecting with my refeeding... I taste everything. It is delicious, brilliant! It has been an incredible journey. I am so happy and feel so clean and so alive. I feel truly fearless and tears are always welling up inside because I feel so grateful to be alive and vital and vibrant and of the world.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Homesick
Kurt Vonnegut writes in Mother Night, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." Game face on!
Game face? What is my game face exactly? In particular. And indeed, it is a game, is it not? We are all playing the game. I only wish it were a fun game. And I also wish I knew how to play. Whatever happened to the rules I had been given? Why have I forgotten them? They're so different from the rules that others seem to follow. I cannot relate to this. Maybe this is what our sociological conditioning has done for us. All I know is this- I went on an amazing voyage and then I came back and now I am so very tired. I am tired. My spirit is tired. I feel like taking a very long rest. What is it about this place that saps my energy constantly?
I don't know where to start. I could start in the middle. Somewhere. All I know is that right now, I feel the malaise of malcontent stirring deep within. Maybe I will always have this running its course through me. But I know this to not be entirely true. For I'm, when at rest, a very peaceful and happy go lucky free spirit. I think I'm just feeling sad today. I feel blessed and cursed to have encountered the people in my life, my doppelgangers, my twins, and have had the profound pleasure of making their acquaintance, but as with anything that has ever meant anything to me, it was fleeting and always with a wide expanse of mountains and oceans in between, separating us. Why are my fellow kindred spirits so far away! Why can't I find the same here, locally? Why is it here locally, I find instead, water throwers, nay sayers, energy exploiters, and sycophants?
I am tired. Today I will just look at the lemons I've been handed and let them be. I am too tired today to make lemonade. Today there will not be any lemonade to be had. I've run out of sugar. The ice melts as soon as I come near. And the water I make in turn evaporates instantly as the fire in me burns so fiercely for passionate and authentic contact. I burn and I singe. It is dangerous when it gets out of control. How I need to reign in my energy. But WHY dammit! Why! Why do I have to reign anything in? So people around me can handle me, deal with me, accept me? I want to say FUCK THEM but sadly, I have things to work on before I can safely and peacefully slip off the radar of what the "other" says or thinks about me. Right now, I have to work things out in society. I have to confront certain aspects of myself that are making me intolerant of others' intolerance and inane judgments. How I wish I was born during the time of Buddha. I could just go to Amarpali's and hang out peacefully with like minded people forever. But there are no mango orchards to run to here. Anyway, I am not a quitter.
I fear that I may have just accustomed myself too much to cutting away pieces of myself to fit in. But then this strange thing happens; I cut myself to fit the bed and then immediately feel anger at myself for doing so and try to furiously re member my self... and thus begins the cycle of overcompensation. What a nasty battle. If I could only stay one way... Ahhh... here I am asking myself to make even more changes for the "society" here, and I don't even LIKE it here. It's silly. In any case I know I haven't gone through every hell that I've gone through to come back to this. Jesus. No. I LOVE me. ALL OF ME. I will change what I have to change to suit ME and keep my core intact. It has remained the same core my whole life. Eventually I will stop the temporary measures of cutting that I've been in the nasty habit of doing to myself. Of course I speak metaphorically, because, if it's not related to anything intimate, I am a big baby when it comes to any kind of physical pain.
At least for two months this year, I had the luxury of allowing myself the freedom of wholeness. But maybe it was not me that allowed it, but the environment I was in. If it were just the environment, then I'm in trouble. Boy am I in trouble. Am I just a piece of driftwood floating along the ocean... my moods shifting uncontrollably with every pull of the vast lunar energy?
All right. I'll admit something to you now. I know exactly what it is that is troubling me. Here it is. And it's not even a big deal. I am homesick. Really and truly homesick. I am sick of my current home and homesick for my home home. I am tired of being here. I am tired of playing this silly superficial game. I am tired of encountering jerks and bullies who want to steal my fire, put out my fire, hide behind my fire, exploit my fire.
The displacement I feel here is made all the more evident when I know there are people in my life that love me, cherish me, treasure me, value me, and accept me for who I am, ALL OF ME, and I, them. And these are the same people who give as much as they take. They are not energy vampires. They lead their own lives as intensely and as passionately as I do. And that is what we have in common. Passion. Life. Victor Hugo, whom I have been quoting quiet often lately, has written, "It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live." These people live. And live as authentically as possible. The phrase, "Well, anything in moderation..." never touches these peoples' lips. They do not ever live "moderately." They live FULLY, insanely beautifully, romantically, tragically, authentically.
Tragically these very kindred spirits, they live SO FAR from me, miles and miles from me, that it hit me like a ton of bricks today that I just nearly collapsed from the weight. Sometimes I wonder how it would be, if the world were kinder to me and humored my every wish, if I had these spirits around nearby all the time... But, yet I speak in haste, for I know the world IS kind, and I am being a big brat... For again, as Victor Hugo eloquently writes, "Because one doesn't like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God."
Still, there is no better feeling for me in the world than to be in the company of someone else and to not have to explain or define my self in any way. It is like going back home. Home is where the heart is, and the heart says nothing. She just feels everything. My heart just wants to talk to your heart, unfettered, uncensored, unafraid. Heart to heart talks... they take on such significance when done in this environment. It has been such a rare treat. My heart is so hungry, there is not much to eat here, and she continues to starve.
I have been blessed and lucky to know these beautiful spirits that understand me, get me, see me, really SEE me, and see their own reflections smiling back... yet, I cannot complain too much, for my life here is taking shape and I am making it as full as I can make it considering everything else. It is in my nature to do so. I will just have to bide my time and continue to learn from what this environment has left in store to teach me. For I have some more learning to do, methinks, before I can fly safely and happily away. Before I can fly back home. And my home... anywhere and everywhere there are others on the same path as me, on that groovy bus with me...
Game face? What is my game face exactly? In particular. And indeed, it is a game, is it not? We are all playing the game. I only wish it were a fun game. And I also wish I knew how to play. Whatever happened to the rules I had been given? Why have I forgotten them? They're so different from the rules that others seem to follow. I cannot relate to this. Maybe this is what our sociological conditioning has done for us. All I know is this- I went on an amazing voyage and then I came back and now I am so very tired. I am tired. My spirit is tired. I feel like taking a very long rest. What is it about this place that saps my energy constantly?
I don't know where to start. I could start in the middle. Somewhere. All I know is that right now, I feel the malaise of malcontent stirring deep within. Maybe I will always have this running its course through me. But I know this to not be entirely true. For I'm, when at rest, a very peaceful and happy go lucky free spirit. I think I'm just feeling sad today. I feel blessed and cursed to have encountered the people in my life, my doppelgangers, my twins, and have had the profound pleasure of making their acquaintance, but as with anything that has ever meant anything to me, it was fleeting and always with a wide expanse of mountains and oceans in between, separating us. Why are my fellow kindred spirits so far away! Why can't I find the same here, locally? Why is it here locally, I find instead, water throwers, nay sayers, energy exploiters, and sycophants?
I am tired. Today I will just look at the lemons I've been handed and let them be. I am too tired today to make lemonade. Today there will not be any lemonade to be had. I've run out of sugar. The ice melts as soon as I come near. And the water I make in turn evaporates instantly as the fire in me burns so fiercely for passionate and authentic contact. I burn and I singe. It is dangerous when it gets out of control. How I need to reign in my energy. But WHY dammit! Why! Why do I have to reign anything in? So people around me can handle me, deal with me, accept me? I want to say FUCK THEM but sadly, I have things to work on before I can safely and peacefully slip off the radar of what the "other" says or thinks about me. Right now, I have to work things out in society. I have to confront certain aspects of myself that are making me intolerant of others' intolerance and inane judgments. How I wish I was born during the time of Buddha. I could just go to Amarpali's and hang out peacefully with like minded people forever. But there are no mango orchards to run to here. Anyway, I am not a quitter.
I fear that I may have just accustomed myself too much to cutting away pieces of myself to fit in. But then this strange thing happens; I cut myself to fit the bed and then immediately feel anger at myself for doing so and try to furiously re member my self... and thus begins the cycle of overcompensation. What a nasty battle. If I could only stay one way... Ahhh... here I am asking myself to make even more changes for the "society" here, and I don't even LIKE it here. It's silly. In any case I know I haven't gone through every hell that I've gone through to come back to this. Jesus. No. I LOVE me. ALL OF ME. I will change what I have to change to suit ME and keep my core intact. It has remained the same core my whole life. Eventually I will stop the temporary measures of cutting that I've been in the nasty habit of doing to myself. Of course I speak metaphorically, because, if it's not related to anything intimate, I am a big baby when it comes to any kind of physical pain.
At least for two months this year, I had the luxury of allowing myself the freedom of wholeness. But maybe it was not me that allowed it, but the environment I was in. If it were just the environment, then I'm in trouble. Boy am I in trouble. Am I just a piece of driftwood floating along the ocean... my moods shifting uncontrollably with every pull of the vast lunar energy?
All right. I'll admit something to you now. I know exactly what it is that is troubling me. Here it is. And it's not even a big deal. I am homesick. Really and truly homesick. I am sick of my current home and homesick for my home home. I am tired of being here. I am tired of playing this silly superficial game. I am tired of encountering jerks and bullies who want to steal my fire, put out my fire, hide behind my fire, exploit my fire.
The displacement I feel here is made all the more evident when I know there are people in my life that love me, cherish me, treasure me, value me, and accept me for who I am, ALL OF ME, and I, them. And these are the same people who give as much as they take. They are not energy vampires. They lead their own lives as intensely and as passionately as I do. And that is what we have in common. Passion. Life. Victor Hugo, whom I have been quoting quiet often lately, has written, "It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live." These people live. And live as authentically as possible. The phrase, "Well, anything in moderation..." never touches these peoples' lips. They do not ever live "moderately." They live FULLY, insanely beautifully, romantically, tragically, authentically.
Tragically these very kindred spirits, they live SO FAR from me, miles and miles from me, that it hit me like a ton of bricks today that I just nearly collapsed from the weight. Sometimes I wonder how it would be, if the world were kinder to me and humored my every wish, if I had these spirits around nearby all the time... But, yet I speak in haste, for I know the world IS kind, and I am being a big brat... For again, as Victor Hugo eloquently writes, "Because one doesn't like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God."
Still, there is no better feeling for me in the world than to be in the company of someone else and to not have to explain or define my self in any way. It is like going back home. Home is where the heart is, and the heart says nothing. She just feels everything. My heart just wants to talk to your heart, unfettered, uncensored, unafraid. Heart to heart talks... they take on such significance when done in this environment. It has been such a rare treat. My heart is so hungry, there is not much to eat here, and she continues to starve.
I have been blessed and lucky to know these beautiful spirits that understand me, get me, see me, really SEE me, and see their own reflections smiling back... yet, I cannot complain too much, for my life here is taking shape and I am making it as full as I can make it considering everything else. It is in my nature to do so. I will just have to bide my time and continue to learn from what this environment has left in store to teach me. For I have some more learning to do, methinks, before I can fly safely and happily away. Before I can fly back home. And my home... anywhere and everywhere there are others on the same path as me, on that groovy bus with me...
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