Beyond these Words Hashim Todd Pease

Copyright © 2022 by Todd Pease All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author or publisher. hooh Press [email protected] Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pease, Todd Beyond these Words / Todd Pease ISBN: 978-0-989-3434-2-8 Printed in the US on Recycled Paper First Edition Audio versions by the author available by contacting [email protected]

Edited by Katharina Eggers and Nancy Wilkinson

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book is dedicated to the spirit of the wonderful couple who brought me here for this wild ride, my loving parents, Tom and Dorothy Pease

I also wish to thank all of the wonderful people who donated money so this book could be published… all 66 of them… I have a very humble attitude that thanks you dearly for your loving contribution and personal support. Special thanks to the late great Khatarina Eggers who did the editing and layout of this publication. Also to Robert Wieselman and Akbar Christopher Miller, without whom this could not have happened.

HooH Press invites all readers to hear Hashim read Beyond these Words at www.beyond-these-words.com Because it is one thing to read Beyond these Words but another to hear him speak these words out loud to you. That’s where you might hear more of what is being said (and felt)... Beyond these Words.

Table of Contents Foreword

12

Third Dangerous Truth

17

The Self You Thought You Knew

18

Two Verses from My Heart

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10 to 1

20

Rhyming Death Meditation

22

A Fine Thing for Spiritual Folk to Occasionally Consider

24

The Strangest Human Dude

25

A Good Bit Higher

26

The One and Only

27

Even More Advanced Pants

28

The Space Within

30

Maybe

31

Seven Nations

32

Is Is

33

The Shadow’s Passage

34

How to Be Immortal (in exactly fifty words)

35

The Vigorous Massage

36

Comprehensively

37

Where It Is

38

Where It Goes

39

Another Thousand

40

Much More to It

41

So Dense I Touch the Ground

42

Munch Repertoire

44

Wonder

46

Big Circle

47

The Cow Poem, or The Cosmic Bovine Urge

49

Rise

52

Yeah Baby

53

Little Tiny Eggs from Way Out in Space

54

A Finer Pair

60

The Call to Sweeten

66

Poem for My Dear Mother

58

In A Vast Windswept Field of Bright Yellow Flowers

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Foreword

H

ow do you know when you’ve met a genuine poet? It’s not just from their words, nor the rhythms in their lines, not even by the depth of their sincerity or wisdom. You know you’ve met a real poet when you feel the light of their soul touching you. When I first met Todd, there was a unique lightness that sprang from his eyes, and a poignant joy went directly from his heart to mine. I knew instantly that he was a very unusual person, and I wondered what was going on inside him. I also noticed that the way he looked at things was not the way most people look at things. He found humor and depth in the most ordinary objects. I began to realize that it wasn’t so much that he has the soul of a poet, but rather that he embodies a soul whose expression is revealed through the most delightful poetry. There are many beautiful books of poetry, and many of these beautiful poems are never read by any great numbers of people. In my lifetime, I’ve seen more people on Planet Earth reading poems by the great Turkish Sufi poet Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi than almost any other published poet in the world. Again, it wasn’t that Rumi was the most perfect mover and shaper of words. Rather it was his natural capacity of seeing the world through the eyes of the heart, or the soul, or any word you wish to use to suggest unimaginable depth, while at the 12

same time expressing the wisdom and joy found in the most common objects and events. I remember when Todd first read me his poem, “Advanced Pants.” Here was this beautiful representation of the human journey with all its interwoven joys and difficulties, coming across in such a simple metaphoric way that it made me tingle. He was reading his poems to a group of us, and even years later, people would ask him, “Say a bit about the poem about the pants again!” There is one continuous thread in his poetry. Somehow he has created a window that the reader naturally wants to look through to see what’s on the other side. In the most gentle and humorous ways, he writes about life and the passing of life, about joy and sadness, and reverence and irreverence, and he reminds us of the great secret. If you read his poetry with an open mind and an open heart, you’ll discover the secret for yourself.

Shahabuddin Less

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Beyond these Words

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Third Dangerous Truth Your soul is the exact same age as the universe it is also the same size

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The Self You Thought You Knew Percolating fluids deep beneath the skin releasing every remnant of everything you’ve been Fermented bits of knowledge still stewing in your head reacting to the residue of everything you’ve said Create a new condition where you are more than you annihilating falsehood and the self you thought you knew

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Two Verses from My Heart The contemplation of the thing the thought of beauty that impels will cause the human soul to sing and make a sound where silence dwells Consideration of the place asleep within the human breast invokes the fundamental grace until the self itself is blessed

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10 to 1 a thousand million shooting stars who don’t know what they are or when divide themselves by homes and cars and tell their kids be back at ten a hundred thousand million more are knocking at this earthly door subtracted from this dense design they multiply our selves by nine and when you add with patient mind the force of their collective weight it’s very likely you will find a ride that gets you home by eight and if you follow those who dared to travel through the gates of heaven your desire might get squared then multiply itself by seven and with your multiplied desire you’ll develop special tricks you’ll algebraically acquire the stuff that gets you home by six

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then with the newfound knowledge known you’ll be so very much alive you won’t believe how much you’ve grown your heart will multiply by five gloriously, you’ll be inflamed divinely juiced forever more your wildness cannot be tamed and may not make it home by four when Father, Son and Holy Ghost are added to the sights you see your vision will improve the most and multiply your eyes by three toward the end beginning now there’s only one thing left to do realize somewhere somehow you will not make it home as two remember with a knowing breath the rising and the setting sun there is no life, there is no death and we will all go home as one

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Rhyming Death Meditation Consider your very own demise let it open up your heart and eyes let it give you time to feel and see the consequence of not to be Contemplate your final breath and who you are at time of death remember your eternal flow allow the thought of self to go Dissolve into the realm of space lose yourself in its embrace drift amidst a cosmic sea remember what is really me Without a body, spirit yields electric and magnetic fields imagine dancing in a place that does not know the human race Allow the energy you are to spread itself around a star immerse your lack of self in waves don’t worry how the star behaves

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Release your energetic hold allow the unknown to unfold disperse into a cloud of gas hold it in, then let it pass It will not do, containing laughter so funny is the everafter so let your lack of self unload you can’t traverse an endless road Consider again your own demise how too much travel is unwise how very soon you’ll leave this form won’t need a blanket to keep warm What have you done? What have you learned? How many bridges have you burned? Do you know what’s really in you? How long forever will continue? You don’t need more advice than this: relax into eternal bliss become the thing you really are the reborn remnants of a star

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A Fine Thing for Spiritual Folk to Occasionally Consider A well developed ritual becomes, itself, habitual one day it may not fitual and disappear no shitual

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The Strangest Human Dude A contemplative sloping curve has occupied my central nerve and unseen things from who knows when are crawling just beneath my skin I am metamorphically inclined to dwell within three states of mind and cosmologically construed to be the strangest human dude

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A Good Bit Higher Interstellar travels of the most peculiar kind occur within the borders of a calm and peaceful mind Deep rhapsodic structures of ephemeral design are built inside the body on a strangely curving line The symphonic reconstruction of the fundamental grace makes the heart a whole lot lighter and puts a smile upon your face Transcendent exaltation at the center of desire improves the concentration and makes the head a good bit higher

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The One and Only When your painful resurrection gets auspiciously supreme you’ll remember the direction toward the one and only dream you’ll surrender to the beauty and the glory of your soul then you’ll move your little booty toward the one and only goal

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Even More Advanced Pants Get out of bed put on my pants I notice they have been advanced these are not the pants I wore last night or any night before Oh, no -they’ve changed, they’ve been enhanced the fibers and the weave --- advanced they have a subtle inner groove that makes me want to dance and move And when the magic pants are dancing one intention is advancing The fabric of intent is pure intoxication, to be sure it’s like my soul has been romanced by that which made my pants advanced My heart’s on fire, my head ablaze for forty nights and forty days I’ll wear these pants, I’ll be entranced I’ll go to where they were advanced I’ll go to where these pants were made I’ll find a tree with lots of shade I’ll meditate and wear these pants I’ll occupy a different stance

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It’s like my heart has opened wide swallowed up my ego’s pride a boundless love has filled my pants and now they’re even more advanced They’re like a sea without a shore that stretches out forever more how deeply into them I’ve glanced how thankful they are so advanced They elevate, they fly above on wings they indicate with love they open up a new expanse they are the greatest pair of pants

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The Space Within A hundred thousand rays of light have found their way to me tonight another hundred thousand more are emanating at my door They pass directly through my skin illuminate the space within they show me what I could not see before they found their way to me Remind me what I must get done while I am living with their sun remind me it is not too late to open up and radiate

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Maybe Maybe you can feel it in a somewhere deep within maybe you remember everything that comes again Maybe you have nurtured every single seed you’ve sown maybe you’ll reoccupy the thrill of the unknown Maybe you are thinking and your head begins to hurt maybe you’ll awaken before your body turns to dirt

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Seven Nations Legions and legions of surging Norwegians delivered a sermon in well-rehearsed German then gave me a version in Sanskrit and Persian and after persuasion most everything Asian with antediluvian postures Peruvian until a conniption in cryptic Egyptian began to diminish the sermon in Finnish

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Is Is It is and is is all there is So take some notes there’ll be a quiz

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The Shadow’s Passage The shadow’s passage through this night more like crawling, less like flight with terrors from the great beyond more like ocean, less like pond is wearing on my central nerve more like jagged, less like curve but holy motions deep inside, more like glory, less like pride with inconceivable intent more like broken, less like bent eventually fulfill the need more like flower, less like seed what greater lesson to endure? more like clueless, less like sure

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How to Be Immortal (in exactly fifty words) To be or endeavor to never say never to lift up your heart use your soul as a lever or your brain if it’s clever then build your self scissors to puncture or sever the ties to your past then continue Forever

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The Vigorous Massage My heart was broken recently so I sat down on my couch to see if I could put it back together as soon as I got close enough to fully inspect the wound I realized my heart wasn’t broken at all It had just been opened up wide and given a vigorous massage it just hurt because all that unused muscle suddenly got some serious exercise But I regenerate quickly I found through pain and sorrow the source of the love within me And that is worth any price certainly more than the going rate for a vigorous massage

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Comprehensively Don’t count your blessings Find a way to acknowledge them comprehensively If you actually counted each one of them you wouldn’t have time to do anything else

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Where It Is I know where it is It’s in a real quiet place beyond these words

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Where It Goes The thing you are seeking is endlessly leaking away on the words you produce when you’re speaking

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Another Thousand If you wish to know the mass and truly understand the size of your heart, your soul, your ass use another thousand eyes If you wish to hear the sound of beauty, in her crying tears release your self, become unbound and use another thousand ears If you wish to smell the fragrance of several hundred million roses assist a couple homeless vagrants and use another thousand noses If you wish to touch the center of life, while it’s awareness lingers resolve to be yourself, then enter and use another thousand fingers If you wish to taste this flavor and breathe more life into your lungs remember what you truly savor and use another thousand tongues

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Much More to It When I was a child I grew up in a two-story house with a laundry chute I opened a door on the wall put in my dirty clothes and the next day they were folded in a drawer or hanging in my closet Then one day I volunteered to help Mom do the laundry There was much more to it than I had realized

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So Dense I Touch the Ground Of all the planets I have known the earth creates the sweetest sound her music cuts me to the bone I grow so dense I touch the ground I’ve wandered far throughout the skies and left ideas all around I never would have thought it wise to grow so dense I’d touch the ground But once upon a distant sun a creature who had never frowned said – “go to earth, it’s much more fun you’ll grow so dense you’ll touch the ground If you want to know the fire or touch the thing your dreams surround there is a mass you must acquire and grow so dense you touch the ground Just think of how much love you’ll share and all the people you’ll astound you know, it isn’t everywhere you grow so dense you touch the ground It’s heavy, and you’ll get the blues you’ll gain dimension pound by pound your wings will be replaced by shoes you’ll be so dense you’ll touch the ground 42

The danger is too great for speech your soul could simply come unwound but there’s no telling what you’ll reach when you’re so dense you touch the ground So, actually, it’s not that bad you’ll live it up, you’ll get around go pack your things and don’t be sad you’ll be so dense you’ll touch the ground You’ll journey through the Milky Way with thoughts a little less profound than those encountered every day when you’re so dense you touch the ground” And here I am, upon the earth in flesh to which my soul is bound I’ll try to tell you what it’s worth when I’m so dense I touch the ground The joy I feel can’t be expressed it seems as if my head is crowned I’m like a king who got undressed and grew so dense he touched the ground

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Munch Repertoire Many years ago my girlfriend and I used to pinch the dictionary with thumb and forefinger producing a two word phrase Three of my favorites were therapeutic whiplash fondue deficit and hot-blooded jumbo It was a fun game to play especially when she pinched backdoor frankfurter and I followed with endless piston rod Yesterday a voice in my head said go get the dictionary and pinch it ten times I did so and four of them are worth repeating: psychotic spider lecherous plantation and perilous spotted cucumber beetle

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I am glad I did not have any dreams last night about any of those three but I did have a dream about the fourth one: Munch Repertoire I was in London at a huge nightclub and Munch Repertoire was onstage performing There were thirteen of them all from France and their instruments were kitchen utensils It was purely instrumental and in fact an ultra high tech cooking show Their percussion was superior beyond belief The brain is such a beautiful and mysterious thing inducing me to pinch the dictionary causing the random formation of Munch Repertoire and then, that night in a dream I see them performing onstage in London 45

Wonder Wonder, in its early stages makes from beauty quiet cages to surround the soul that rages with the endless dream of ages Wonder, when the heart aspires connects the soul with unseen wires to forces that control the fires that burn within when flesh desires Wonder, when the mind is clear and all intentions are sincere creates a thought that might appear like when is now and now is here

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Big Circle The rivers of pain grow wider with rain the waters run through the valleys of you the rivers of doubt flow inward and out and the teardrops you cry go back to the sky so you see, it’s just a big circle one day you’ll shut up, quit complaining and get over it

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The Cow Poem or

The Cosmic Bovine Urge Through Which is Revealed an Alternate View on The True Nature of Bovinity, The Reason for Alien Visitation, The Millennium, Armageddon, and The Cocoa Bean

The time has come to do the deal to stand and shout upon the verge to render and with words reveal the nature of the bovine urge To understand the bovine road the endless fence, the pasture fine the bovine hand that has bestowed the bovine sense of it’s design Creates the space, fulfills the curve surrounding thoughts that you should think inside your brain, along the nerve to best ensure the bovine link And always when the hour nears they talk like this, in metered rhyme intending to allay the fears of humans at the end of time

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Armageddon’s silent drumming stirs the one collective soul and Christ! you’d think someone was coming maybe even someone whole Whole or not, their bags are packed they’re in the skies, they’re on the way before you think we’ve been attacked consider what they have to say: Milk chocolate is the time that nears supplies again are running low and every twenty hundred years this is the place we like to go Our people saw, in days gone by a million years of need emerge no longer do we question why we have a cosmic bovine urge We traveled far through outer space in search of what your kind call beef there is no doubt this is the place for temporal and rare relief The cows of earth are smooth as silk (the head of every spaceman nods) it takes the blood, the cream, the milk to make a chocolate fit for gods 50

We cultivate the cocoa bean but common history will tell we can’t produce a cow machine and so we bring to you our hell The angle of our view may seem a bit eccentric and obtuse but it is every spaceman’s dream to live for chocolate bovine juice

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Rise We are more like we’s than I’s your separation’s no disguise if it lives, it dies and dies the wind is like a voice that cries Return! and in returning, rise ask anything that crawls or flies we are more like we’s than I’s

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Yeah Baby The beings within us can see through our eyes witness our sorrows our pains and our sighs Their love and their spirit can soften our glance open our hearts and enlighten our pants

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Little Tiny Eggs From Way Out in Space A Rhyming Sequence for Human Types or The Only Solution is Our Evolution

The wonders of the planet Earth are witnessed in its features and some were here to see the birth of humanoid creatures Amazing little things they were creations of a different kind but time revealed one thing for sure to all this beauty they were blind The wonders of the Earth convened they chose to let the creatures dwell the soul of man would not be weaned from sin and guilt and death and hell And so the centuries go by the human race just chugs along it never stops to question why or wonder where it all went wrong It’s obvious that we need help and not from exercise or kelp we need a thing a little stranger a kind of cosmic rearranger don’t worry that it might divide us we’ll be o.k. ‘cause it’s inside us 54

It’s not the earth beneath your feet that puts ideas in your head it is the rhythm and the beat of every single word I’ve said Transcribing words from outer space is more involved than first it seems they often hit me in the face and put their flavor in my dreams And every other time I hear the distant voice I used to fear it’s so abstract, it’s just a symbol so I just sit, and laugh, and tremble All I really wish to do is share the love that always grows and tell you all the things I knew before I walked on feet with toes All I really wish to say is move along, don’t be attached for there will surely come a day when all the eggs we’ve laid are hatched And when they are, you'll be infected to larger things you'll be connected the thousand inward suns that raged will otherwise become engaged Historically, this type of junction will cause a human brain to function 55

One day when the sun is red and words are screaming in your head you’ll hurry home to get in bed and ponder every word I’ve said One day when the sky is brown and cosmic shit is coming down you’ll see the smile within the frown and move your ass from every town One day, or perhaps at night precisely when the time is right you’ll close your eyes and see the light consuming everything in sight That’s when the eggs from outer space infect your brain and take your place and when the dream of ages past awakens in your heart at last It’s when the little tiny eggs reduce the weight upon your legs and when your lightened form is found infected by this wave of sound Admittedly, this minor song I sing won’t be for very long ‘cause sure as shit is just our feces someday we’ll be another species

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Poem for My Dear Mother my dear mother Dorothy Pease passed away this morning last thursday night I had my last conversation with her while she was in hospice in Indianapolis my niece called on her way to see her and told me she had two days to live and I would not likely be able to speak with her as she was out of it far more than she was in she was awake when Cassie got there and we talked for ten minutes her speech was labored and difficult what I said was almost entirely I love you bless your heart, bless your soul and thank you for everything you have done for me then I had a selfish desire to hear her laugh one more time so I told her a joke about seeing my father in the next world she chuckled twice and I broke down

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When I was able to speak again I told her I had no more words and that I love you bless your heart and bless your soul are the only important things now there was a pause and then, in the strong, powerful voice she used when I was a child she said “See ya later, alligator!” I broke down again, this time completely but my grief and pain were accompanied by a supreme light-hearted joy what an incredibly fortunate man I have been to be her son to be raised by her

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A Finer Pair Incontrovertible, the clues washed upon my inward shore I cannot wear these kind of shoes I cannot wear them anymore The inner sense of greater beauty my lack of mindfulness dilutes reminds me it’s my holy duty to never wear these kind of boots I’ve seen the glory, touched a star paid with flesh and blood my dues it cannot wait, it’s gone too far I need a finer pair of shoes

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In A Vast Windswept Field of Bright Yellow Flowers Had a dream last night about myself and the terrifying angel who dwells within me it was Christmastime and the angel is the one who brought me back to life July 9th, 1976 after the traumatic brain injury coma and short-lived death she was not nearly as attractive as I thought she would be she was more like the weather outside frightful she wore multiple strands of red and green Christmas ornaments with tiny smiling skulls glowing inside them

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it was difficult to imagine her breaking into dance and singing let it snow, let it snow, let it snow she appeared before me in a vast windswept field of bright yellow flowers then punched me in the face with an electric balloon and I knew I was dreaming I knew there was a wolf sleeping under my bed I knew my cell phone was not lying when it said three thirty three and I knew I was going back to sleep to awaken again amidst the bright yellow flowers and my terrifying angel she stared into my eyes then began to slowly inhale

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she continued to inhale for a really long time until there was hardly any air left to breathe I could barely stand let alone speak when she said “Who among you knows enough about love to know that love and light are redundant? Where, in the depths of your innermost beauty shines the one long sun that never dies? What will you do with the unfathomable gifts that have been created for and given to you? How will you use them in an ever-changing world to benefit the lives of others and allow yourself to become like God? 64

Why do you endeavor for a thing already here a thing you will not ever know until your mind is clear? When will you consider your deep abiding soul when you do a load of laundry and you’re closer to your goal?” Dang, I thought before I woke up my angel’s a freaking journalist and she can rhyme Holy moley

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The Call to Sweeten The ants the inwaardvark surmised were not concerned they’d been advised that if their actions did not sweeten all of life, they would be eaten The ants, like us, continued on until the inwaardvark was gone they soon forgot the call to sweeten so he returned, and they were eaten

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