Tag Archives: culture

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The Song and Dance Application

I’d like to apply for a permit
for a protest march
on the Washington Mall.

Lovely idea.
But, we’re only issuing Mall permits
for Song and Dance Events.

I think this might be a violation of my Rights
to Free Speech.

I see it more as a patriotic protection of your health care rights
for Free Song and Dance Improvement
instead.

So we can sing ballads
to Adolf Hitler
and Royal Elitist Head MucketyMucks
of the Only White Lives MightMatter Makes RightWing KKK,
we just can’t say them.

That’s right.
And you get extra points for at least four-part harmony
and full orchestration,
and professional choreography,
and community participation
regardless of age, gender, race, religion, etc.

Well, that feels a little prejudiced
and elitist.

How so?

What if you can’t afford a choreographer,
much less an entire orchestra.

Then your budget narrative will note
your capacity to sing and dance is contingent
on receiving sufficient community volunteers
for your harmonic protest Event.

This Event
begins to resound
with echoes of a Happening.

Only if you are a TransMillennial.

No, I’m a RightWing reaction against anything Trans,
or Poly
or Multi.

Sorry, sir.
TransMillennials are those born prior to 2000
and who remain planning to die
in this current PostMillennial Event.
I’m merely saying
you appear to be older than 17,
which you would need to be
to apply to sponsor a Mall Song and Dance Event.

Well, is there an application fee?

No.
There is, however, a sliding-fee-scale permit fee,
should your application ever have a chance of being successful.
But I have to tell you,
these Washington Mall slots are very competitive,
especially if you want something more than an hour,
and not in the middle of the night.
Then your only real competition
are the other vampire and costume clubs
and the witches covens,
depending on the lunar cycle.
I mean,
you can forget about any FullMoon
or NewMoon
or Equinox
within the next decade.

Wow!
I was just trying to put together
a nice old fashioned good ol’ boys
AltRight
armed to the teeth
militia march
while chanting a few really offensive fascist slogans.

Well, funny thing,
it was just that kind of protest march
that led all these churches
and synagogues
and Eastern temples
and even the StoryTellers group from the mosques
sponsoring these FlashMob Events.

When I was checking out the Mall
to see where to put the stage,
suddenly all these people I thought were tourists
and just pedestrians
and all the people in the cars and buses going by,
and the frisbee players,
and even some of the dogs,
all froze in place for a moment,
then began dancing,
then singing that annoying We Shall Overcome gospel anthem,
like I had just walked onto a movie set.
Although no lights and big cameras.

Yes.
Today’s Event received extra points
for community participation.
The District of Columbia FlashMob Combined Gospel Choir
joined up with the local street dancers and choreographers,
and the drummers,
of various cultural backgrounds,
and usually books the Mall on weekends for full two day events.
Most of the time
they practice harmonies and choreography,
and encourage people gathering to watch
to join in,
whether they can stay until the final run through of the day,
or not,
when cameras are digitally ubiquitous.
In fact,
often cell phones are part of the dance,
for lights and multiple viewing perspectives on social media sites.

Then they do a final run through about four or five PM,
then everybody goes home
or maybe they’ll have a picnic
if the band or orchestra or drummers
can stay into the evening.
They might even have an open stage night
for singers and dancers
and those Creation StoryTellers
from the mosques.

I’m having trouble seeing our RightWing message
in this Song and Dance frame.

There are less competitive venues
but most state capitols
are seeing this same cooperative community response
to these all day multicultural NonFlash Mobbing Events.
It’s sort of like America’s Got Talent
went RealTime coast to coast
in a capitol, or even a County Seat, near you.

Well, I need a permit for a counter-protest.

You will need to include your song and dance plan
and budget with your application,
and your plan has to be coordinated with any group already issued a permit
for the Mall
on the day
and time
you propose to counter.

Would that look like some kind of large-set talent contest?

It could.
But, when the District Multicultural Choir
and Drummers
and Street Performers
and Orchestra
respond to your challenge,
just know they usually turn out
somewhere up toward two million singers and dancers,
and it would be more
if we had the space and toilets.

Last year they accepted a challenge
from a national supremacist group ironically named
the RightWing Goliaths.
That was a big national media Song and Dance Event
in which the Goliaths moved and sounded…
well…
not very cooperative
seemed to be the national patriotic consensus,
while the District MultiCultural Singers and Dancers
were totally awesome!
In fact,
by the end of the Goliath’s first song,
the MultiCulturals were adding in their four-part LaLaLa’s
and OoohOoohOooh’s,
then the African Drummers joined in
so the RightWing message was out-scaled
into an awkward hiccuping sound
very much in the background,
and I’m being generous.

Anyway, application forms are on-line.
You’ll find our cooperative community inclusion guidelines,
budget requirements,
and forms you can use to invite community volunteers to join in.
Family friendly plans also receive extra points
so you might want to leave your firearms
and reckless drivers at home.

This still feels like a violation of my Right
to be a White Supremacist
or even just a somewhat paranoid Hater
and shout about my embarrassingly personal issues in public.

As long as you can sing and dance your message
you are welcome to apply for a Permit.
I’m merely letting you know
we have far more applications
than space and time already.
So this revision in our postmillennial permitting process
protects my right not to hear your monocultural pedestrian chanting
and strutting of RightWing racist
and sexist bullshit,
because all I can ever hear
is that District MultiCultural Choir
and their Dancing and Drumming Allies
singing more ProAmerica
and ProEarth
GoodNews gospel Events.

It’s a tough job,
but somebody has to be the permit-issuer,
and decide which messages deserve extra points
for harmony
and choreography
and family friendly love
through each and every venue
of NonFlash Mobbing
with positive WinWin cooperative
song and dance intent.

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Dystopic Opiates

Paraphrasing Dickens
speaking of Great Expectations
through Pip’s distraining voice,
Our worst religious weaknesses
and political meannesses
and self and other deprivations
are usually committed
for the sake of avoiding elitist people
whom we most actively distrust.

On the other hand,
trust invites vulnerability
as distraining poverty embraces wealth,
honesty,
integrity,
expanding democracy
and cooperative co-investment.

Oppressive religious and cultural repressions and suppressions
are opiates of multiculturing people
When monoculturing elitists
offer religious opiate addictions to domesticating ritual
thereby over-ruling democratic spiritual experience
of daily natural and cooperative liturgies.

Polycultural non-elites,
like young organic gardeners of polyphonics
and ecofeminist transgendering designers,
thrive best within an alliance
of the gentle and broken,
vulnerable and open
to new cooperative intimacies,
gentrifying neighborhoods and families
and hearts
designed by rural-memory values
for nutrition that also nurtures,
health that also wealths,
climates embracing edible and richly colored landscapes,
mindshapes
of and for regenerating
future generations
of and for polycultural cooperative EliteNetworks,
neither opiated
nor nervously nirvanaed nellies
nor disappointed
that WinLose investment
didn’t turn out
as WinWin actively hoped for
through EcoPolitical Constitutions
reborn in and through each matriarchal ego/eco-doublebound
organic governing womb,
probably not so Dystopically Opiated,
at least in our moments of original cooperative conception.

Or, we could end less simply Dickens,
with Great Expectations for avoiding:
Our worst religious weaknesses
and political meannesses
and self and other deprivations,
usually committed
for the sake of avoiding elitist people
(and other divine personages,
distraining gods and goddesses)
whom we most actively,
LeftBrain dominantly,
distrust.

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Dorm Love

Ours was daily mysterious,
sometimes near mystical,
rapture;
a sensual yet platonic
dorm-mate love affair,
within the only male grad student corridor
at SFSU.

He was the presumably straight Vietnam veteran
southern white good ol’ boy,
athletically studying Japanese,
with a gentle passion for young Japanese women.

Did his all things Japanese culture love
precede his Vietnam War experience,
or was this a response to West-East violence,
inviting vulnerability and compassion?
Embracing romantic remorse
and male responsibility for technology’s aggressive habits,
but,
regardless,
knowing constant passion for peace.
I don’t recall ever asking which came first.

I do recall his first words.

“Hi. Delighted to meet you,”
in a Louisiana-slash-MilitaryOfficerSchool
creolic mashed-up engaging smile
up across and through his raised blond eyebrows,
guileless,
or ruthlessly contrived,
“Ensign Jake Ruford,
Eastern Language student.”

Hi.
just Jerry,
gay epistemology student,
wondering why we are roommates
when I specifically said
“Anyone not homophobic.”
You would think Student Residential Services
at San Francisco State
would know what the word means.
Including probably not a straight Louisiana
military officer
even if he is Navy.

As he turned back toward his desk,
where he had been reading something that looked like a textbook
in an encyclopedic hard-bound scale
of inscrutability,
“Do you agree human nature
must have evolved from a bottom moral line
of eat or become stew?”

It seems we have this old reptilian thing
about eating our young and vulnerable under duress,
overpopulation or starvation
of a struggling to hunt and gather species,
especially before we figured out the matriarchal gathering part.

“I want to come back to those matriarchal parts later.
But why, do you think,
do we continue to see Golden Rule cooperativity,
WinWin strategies,
as contrasted favorably to WinLose
sacred MightMakesRight Traditions
of
Always eat others before they eat you?”

I don’t think WinLose,
much less LoseLose,
Eat first and fast,
because we all fall prey to death
in our not quite foreseeable future,
is authoritatively sacred,
or exegetically scriptural,
or fundamentalistically spiritual,
nor even evangelically Christian,
which was supposed to be about Good News
of a God defined most ecologically,
and satisfyingly,
as love and beauty
and polycultural Eden’s Original Creator.

“So you would give divine grace credit
for why we beg for multicultural Golden Rule self-governance
through WinWin inter-relationships,
rather than continue eating our young?”

No,
I think premeditated organized violence
through conscripting young adults
is how we continue eating our young.
I give God credit for non-patriarchal Golden Rules,
which do not include mutual assured violence,
nor Better Ballistics Bureaus.

But, I give the Sacred Gaia Hypothesis
and matriarchal creation stories and parables and paradigms
credit for existing
and any future
and most, if not all, past WinWin abundant inter-relationships,
rather than Mother Earth
eating Her DNA regenerative
Left and Right BiLaterally Balanced CoIntelligence,
synonymous with EcoLogical,
and oxymoronic as Military WinWin Intelligence.

“Left and Right,
like Yang and Yin.
Which is kind of the opposite
of LeftBrain dominant ideas like
Maybe it’s OK for hungry single Moms
to sell their children into slavery
to invest in better dying
through chemistry.”

Yes, and other xenophobic behaviors,
paranoias like homophobia
and patriarchal “just war” theories.

“How do you feel about Japanese ladies?”

Hopefully about the same way you feel about radically dipolar gay gentlemen
at the beginning of an AIDS epidemic.

“That’s an interesting, but dark, analogy.
Are you coffee or tea?”

I don’t think I intended an analogy.
Perhaps more of a eulogy
for continuing relationship
with much of anyone ever in risky futures.

Coffee.
If I have any idea where this inquisition came from
or might be heading.

“Oh, that’s good.
See, we already have something in common.”

Something.
Yes.

And so we went on from that first moment,
as if resuming where we had just left off,
or last eaten,
with an Ensign I had never hoped to meet,
much less eat,
and would never wish to know a last farewell.

Two travelers
along love’s mysterious,
sometimes mystically ambiguous
journey,
soldiering on.

Better thriving together,
than surviving inscrutable textbooks
apart.

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One Home, Many Flags

We are one people,
with one home,
and one flag.”
D. J. Trump

Hmmm.
I was with him
right up to the last word,
where I so hoped,
without any realistic expectation,
he would say one “climate”

Waving many diversely colored
polyphonic and polycultural flags
on behalf of health for all species
and against pathology for any ecosystem.

Democrats support WinWin politics
for all polypathic flags
of Earth enhabiting cultures,
where nationalistic elitists,
Plutocrats and entitled patriarchs,
are blinded by their own short-sighted ego-centric flag waving
for secularized wealth,
dualistically devoid of double-boundaried sacred health.

National flags rise and fall,
and still Mother Earth expects an answer
to which one climate we would have become
the fairest of and for us all.

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Winning MultiCultural Health

Encultured vision sees things as they are
and were,
as they are not and were not.
Positive revision sees things as we could become,
together.

Culture is an extremely large word,
with ubiquitous cooperate v compete economic implications,
assumptions,
expectations,
means toward autonomous v interdependent discovery,
uncovery,
recovery,
spoken all the way from atomic
through universal systems,
root systems,
language and numeric systems,
as is climate,
as is beauty,
as is trust,
as is health huge
where wealth is not yet pathologically rabid,
feeding off the poor in nature-spirit dipolar equivalence.

Multicultures speak in diverse voices,
internal and external,
Left and Right,
dark and light,
and which we are able to see as us
an which are “them”
depends on not just who or what is speaking
but who and when we listen
and look at out and in,
sniff and lick and feel trusting drawn toward
and those who do not feel right to us,
not because they are not as good,
or even better,
but because we find resonant diversity across our cultures,
within shared subclimates of mutual solidarity
in healthy difference
and not so much overly competitive pathology.

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Slow Grown Sunrise

Some mornings I slow down.
If you saw me this morning,
you might reasonably conclude
I could not possibly reduce my productive pace,
a social disgrace,
slogging through my domestic place.

Days, or at least my light within each day,
grow shorter,
while everything remains to be done
to care for future generations
of children
and puppies
and cubs
and kittens
and kids
and calves.

Yet dawn silently screeches toward timelessness
as I realize
I was produced
in a moment of ecstasy,
but also nine-months prepared to thrive
on Earth,
while my unique,
yet resonantly symbiotic, DNA
is born of prehistoric generations,
back when time and light’s productive moments
were measured in full and empty,
ecstatic and aptic,
rising toward another regenerative morning,
and setting toward yet another sacred decomposing night.

It is this slow memory of near timelessness
that revolves through my bones and flesh
and is cooperatively shared
not just with my own Win-matriarchal
and Win-patriarchal lines,
but also our globally shared regeneration
through timeless ecstatic moments
of symbiotic great transitions,
commencing nine months for each preparation
to greet our brothers and sisters,
cousins and families
extending back through competing histories
and cooperative matriarchal nutrition and health mentoring,
fire and wind and water and safety education,
revolving through slow-growth wisdom
of timeless sunrise,
oceans of DNA an Elder RNA,
regenerative,
synchronic
places and times,
landscapes
and heathy creolizing climates.

I have bloomed and wilted
where I have been planted,
and where I have chosen to plant myself,
and our future
greeting past revolving sacred memories,
here with now.

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EcoTones

Ecotones
are ruled by prevailing polycultures,
unusually fertile margins between two bioregions,
like a continental-ocean shoreline
or a clear blue lakeshore
poised above green grassy plains
and below glaciered and alpine forested mountains.

Ecotones
are broader when horizontal,
or can be,
but always comparatively narrow
when delineated vertically,
the boundary between worm cultures
and above-ground human cultures
and above-head atmospheric waves,
ebbs and flows
of radiant light and misty clouds,
Full Moons and storied mysterious starlight.

Our bilateral intelligence
can also see an even sharper
culling
creolizing
prime temporal ecotone
riding the Great Transition divide
between impossible invisibility of predicting distant healthy generations
and lives, both healthy and pathological,
extending back from each eternal moment,
matriarchally integrative in reverse rememory
to yesterday,
last month,
last year,
former decades

Who was that person,
and how is s/he the same,
and different than this me now?

On back to each EgoIdentity’s
first interdependently autonomous awareness
of embryonic creolizing bicameral life,
Self inside matriarchal Sacred Other’s
paradise womb of MotherEarth
DNA memory,
hypostatic unions between lives stringing back
through gracefilling RNA
regenerate margins of unfolding fulfillment,
primally ergodic rhythms
and fractal 4Dimensioned patterns
through temporal margins
of reweaving
revolving
spiraling EcoTones,
culling integrative nurturing time.

This primal relationship,
within each 0-sum moment,
within MotherEarth’s sacred ecology
projects both back through Elder RightBrain interdependence
and LeftBrain’s secular-agnostic mistrust
of futures not yet hoped for,
of pasts now underground
with worms
in a cognitive-affective dissonant understoried world
where only above ground
and below growing pathological climates
of dualdark clouds
remains both secular Left
and Sacred Right
Prime PolyCulturing EcoTone,
anthro-salient as sacred bicameral Earth,
as above,
so below,
as past,
so shall we become
and notnot become future EcoHarmonic.

We would have better moments,
and better days,
to remember
both ecotones from which we came,
and ecotones toward which we return,
are each the same,
secular thicker and sacred cutting edge,
bilaterally divided
by each co-integrative moment,
like breathing in
and breathing out,
which is which,
depends on whether you are DNA you
or an RNA tree,
or somehow reforesting,
WinWin wu-wei both,
growing parallel above/below ground
deep listening nurturing learning
to cooperatively communicate
ego/ecotone root systems
are also fertile DNA/RNA creolizing boundaries.

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Scripts and Choreography

Sacred scripture, especially creation stories,
is to natural-spiritual (nondual) experience

As permaculture designs
are to polycultural outcomes

As cooperative economic intent and planning and investment
are to loving political incomes

As nutritional planning
is to health care giving and receiving
(also nondual).

As ecological wisdom
is to sacred polypathic scripture,
especially re-creation stories.

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The 2020 Coop

The People’s Coop
is a warm inviting place,
for some
a reading and meditation
and arts practice and performance space,
for others
a place to ride sleek bicycles
with self-and-other improvement book racks
while peddling energy into the cooperative Grid,
sheltered by solar panel roof
and natural wood graffiti walls
spun and sung
with Mohammad’s Sufi Wind Turbinators.

Original coop founders
had been mural painters
and finger and toenail designers,
hair braiders
and community garden canners
and preservers,
soup and smoothie makers
and child-care cooperative providers
and home school teachers,
as well as the original upstairs apartment residents,
and those living next door,
working in the kitchen,
serving organic soup and bread
in winter,
juice smoothies
and fair-trade mocha freezes
to readers and talkers with listeners
during warmer sun-drenched months
relaxing on teak chairs
surrounding umbrella tables
in our outdoor street cafe.

The guy with a hot dog and bagel cart
joined The Coop
and invested each lunch hour
outside
then went inside to offer yoga
and chi gong classes
in the reading and quiet arts room.

Meanwhile,
more robust and rhythmic,
the kitchen and juice bar
shares open space
with a performance stage
bearing diverse drums,
a grand piano,
an accordion,
rather strangely popular,
and a karaoke machine,
lights and sound,
open mic days and nights
for comedy
and poetry,
story-telling
and rapping,
tapping and beating
and full gospel choir singing,
depending on who shows cooperatively up
to turn out
rather than in
over on the quiet side
of the all bells, but no disdaining whistles, Coop.

Coop peak periods
include rainy and cold afternoons
when street performers
come inside,
finish their soup,
put out their hats
and share a set,
then join juice and coffee and tea bar tables
and sometimes even take a turn
on hooked-up bikes and rowing machines
to operate the lights and mics
and blenders,
but not the mud and straw pizza oven out back,
fired with cedar and mesquite
producing organic vege and goat cheese
on whole wheat crust
for a light supper,
or multigrain scones with herbal high tea,
depending on where you came from
before you found The Coop.

If you remember
the incense and hope of 1960s Head Shops,
the heady roar and multi-racing of 1920s historic stops,
then you may come to see
The Coop is a further evolution
co-founded with 2020 PolyCultural ReVision,
exclusively of and for
those who are gay and straight
and especially everyone in-between
dead and new-born friendly,
cooperatively owning and organizing allies
for renewable multigenerational futures.

The Coop coinvestors
of and for reforesting
each coop business and community
as organically WinWin county and province solidarity
for healthy game strategics
and nutritional performance
and cooperative outcome producing places
where poverty of spirit
and vulnerability of nature’s self-organizing politics
is The Coop’s greatest strength of faith,
gratitude for Earth’s multiculturally abundant
natural-spiritual nondual
healthy
grace
place
space,
faces of polypathic
Planet Earth Cooperative.

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Parting Instructions For My Oldest

You did not choose to be born,
much less Black Lives Really Should Equally Matter born
into this legacy,
your familial and civil Two-Connecticuts destiny.

I realize that,
And regret perhaps my own choices
in response to invitations for care-giving
and healthcare-receiving
were probably too egocentrically universalized
creolized so that whatever felt best to me at the time
would necessarily be best for you,
born into this diverse range of my health and pathology choices
for me,
now also for you.

No one asked, including me
Do you think a young African-American ADHD adult,
single,
poorly educated,
challenged as employable
with unresolved anger and fear issues
about whether he is care-giving enough
to deserve to become self care-receiving,
is left to care for
a gay virgin nerd younger adult
game-addicted brother
who believes he is actually allergic,
and perhaps alien,
to Mother Earth,
AND an oppositionally bipolar nymphomaniac youngest princess sister
with cerebral palsy and difficulty speaking,
civilly or usually otherwise,
and concomitant difficulties
not talking to herself while jumping
and slapping
and forgetting to go only on the toilet,
AND your youngest brother,
also with cerebral palsy and a wheelchair,
without capacity to speak or sign
yet with capacity to laugh and smile
with those he loves to know the best care-receiving,
and without capacity to chew and swallow well
so he eats through a tube
what he must not gnash with his grinding teeth,
and with midnight capacities for grande-mal seizures
requiring 24-7 same-room monitoring.

This is indeed
a great deal of operatic drama not to choose
to be born into
as the oldest,
raised by two gay dads,
old enough to have been your grandfathers,
one black, who seems afraid to be associated
with our polycultural reputation and self-presentation,
self-neglect, he might call us out,
and me white,
now apologizing for this mess
with which I leave you
as your birthright.

Attached are instructions
from your sister’s Behaviorist.
I suggest you adapt them,
first to take better care of yourself,
then her,
then your two brothers,
as best you can,
ecotherapeutic care-giving
is also egotherapeutic care-receiving.

When another life
reaches out to strike you down,
to damage your property and/or body,
and mind,
to touch you inappropriately
and without asking permission first,
before grabbing and damaging your thoughts and feelings:

First, remind your care-receiver,
as yourself,
to ask permission to become a care-giver
to you and/or your property,
because your life does matter equally
with each other’s;
not more,
but not less either.

Second,
teach your assailant
across permitted boundaries to violence and theft and behavioral restraints,
including use of civil voice,
to advocate for this assailant’s healthcare-receiving wants and needs
in an appropriate
mutual healthcare-giving way,
non-violently
and more domestically diplomatic,
following universal multicultural standards
for WinWin Solidarity
of All Lives Equally Matter,
Golden Rules
applied to people,
plants,
places,
and things,
especially technological co-investments
in Earth’s 7-Generation Future
of healthcare information systems
and their cooperative access
to growing Wealth Without Walls.

Finally,
mentor your siblings
with healthcare-giving greetings,
invitations,
listenings before speaking,
speaking back what care-receiving comes through
your All Lives Equally Matter channels
and challenges
about not choosing
to be left with these care receiving and giving
familial opportunities
to regenerate climates of health
and avoid landscapes of further behavioral pathology.

With apologies
for my Elder role
in your current ADHD challenged
ecopolitical and psychological karma,
but,
you know,
as a gay white-trash farmboy
who developed a thing for urban black strong men
in the 1960s and 70s
when my life wasn’t even legal,
much less of any socially therapeutic value,
I didn’t think past my own parenting needs
to give life more therapeutically back
than I had not-so-well received life
in my ecopolitical time on Earth.

If you do your best self care-receiving,
you will each day and night relearn
to teach yourself as others
asking and giving permission to respectfully approach
to advocate for universal care giving as receiving,
beginning with your mentoring history
of gratitude for Earth’s abundant grace
to place
and pace
you here and now
without having even to ask
to be born
into this space and time
of responsibilities for care-receiving
and concomitant authorities of care-giving
ego/eco bilaterally cooperative
WinWin healthcare systemic network building,
4D RealTime
unfolding and reweaving instructions
from and for the Oldest.

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