Tuesday, May 3rd 2022
It’s already 10:30 and I haven’t done anything. I’m exhausted. I understand that I tried to avoid struggles with my ex partner. I have issues with relationships that require power going to one side or another. I really do not want to lead or be led. I like democracy and I dislike relationships based on exploitation.
This being said, as my ex partner was here on Sunday and Monday literally helping at the most opportune moment and truthfully doing the Lion’s share of actual planting, I am happy to take her advice that today is a rest day.
I didn’t sit around and do nothing. I did quite a bit and probably ended up doing more than I would have if she had not been here. I don’t know if this makes her a motivation or if it’s just that I had energy freed up. But what is important is that we were very successful in this phase of the planting. We have another big day coming up in a couple of weeks. Until that time, I have to enrich the lower gardens a bit more and figure out a way to do something about making a pickle Garden that makes sense. But as for today, I do not see doing a lot.
When I was in Oregon, I learned about the concept of energy vampires. I guess there are a lot of different types of vampires in the world. If I were to put the word vampire next to the word economic, this would make amazing sense to anyone who has a boss or even lives under an exploitative government. Anyone who lives in Oklahoma understands the vampirish nature of Texas and anybody who lives here or certainly in Ukraine understands who Moscow is. But energy vampires are something different.
Energy vampires, I think, are people that use your time and attention without actually giving any energy back. You get this a lot from glad-handers and obsequious smilers and people looking to get economic advantage by being friendly. I guess we could check for the common understanding because this is not my concept.
A psychic vampire is a creature in folklore said to feed off the “life force” of other living creatures. The term can also be used to describe a person who gets increased energy around other people, but leaves those other people exhausted or “drained” of energy.
I guess the terminology is a little different but this is what I’m talking about.
When I first met my ex-girlfriends, they were unbelievably giving as people. They were attractive physically, no one could possibly argue with this but the thing that actually attracted me was that they were super intelligent and very hard workers. One was a bit more creative and artistic than the other but both of them were a force of nature. They wanted to be good. Possibly, they wanted to be the best.
Possibly, they both still have this drive inside them but both of them turned into party girls at the first opportunity to be a party girl. Both started playing with drugs and their personalities altered according to how you imagine these things would go. Both of them went from giving to taking, both of them went from trying to be good friends to exploitation and as you can imagine, spending time with them went from one of the great pleasures of my life to basically a nightmare from the association.
There has been a lot of residual nonsense because of these relationships. I’ve had various reputations from other vampires and party people. Maybe it was specifically from this or maybe it’s because the world became much, much more vampirish with the Russian influence on this society since 2014. That would be my definitive choice about this. You could also talk about driving coffin nails in the Soviet Union and Soviet culture, which completely wished for people to be participatory as much as possible in life. People were expected to give and make their own world rather than sitting back and exploiting resources, natural or otherwise.
It’s a difficult call thinking about the last couple of days. On both days, I did a great deal of physical work before my ex partner showed up. On the first day, I raked all of the boxes and set up the water system so that we could wet down the boxes for planting. And yesterday I dug all the holes for the ivy. I’m not saying that this was some Herculean physical effort but what I am saying is that when my ex partner showed up, something happened in my brain and suddenly I was obligated to allow her movements to take center stage. I stopped looking around and saying what should I do next and started thinking about what she would do and how I could support her, even if that meant staying away and letting her have her movements.
This was not the only way we worked all day. I had my moments of inspiration. Fixing the water system was part of this. Maybe fixing is a bad word but rebuilding or experimenting with the water system was my main contribution to the day’s efforts.
I’m just saying that it’s interesting what happens in these situations. It’s definitely a different way of thinking. It’s definitely more of a struggle. Certainly, there’s great reward because work that needed to get done, got done. And it got done much faster than it would have if I had been doing all of this myself. I am pleased and grateful and I am very happy that we figured out how to get along with each other again.
I’m just saying it’s very strange what happens to your energy in these situations. I don’t really associate with my neighbors anymore but I do not feel the social pressure they wish to put on me. I get that I am shunned for keeping my door locked but I see the situation as more like an alcoholic expressing hatred for a store that is locked and does not have any vodka available to them. I’m sorry if the tap is closed. Y’all are going to have to find your energy somewhere else.
This brings us to the war in Ukraine.
Zelinsky has managed to make great ties to Europe and has garnered quite a bit of support, or at least a lend/lease agreement from The Americans. In a time of peace, most probably this would have been the positive choice of the Ukrainian people. Despite what you hear in Russian propaganda, the ukrainians have not been interested in retaining a relationship with Moscow generally. They have embraced modernity despite the economic vampirism that comes along with having outside enterprises sucking profits from the regions. But during the time of War, my guess is that whatever positive comes from this new group of sanctions, it’s going to end up costing much more in the end.
At the heart of this is the LIE that Russia will be cut off. The number that gets bandied around is that Russia makes a billion dollars a day sending oil to Europe. The Europeans are not about to quit their cars anytime soon and a little thing like genocide is not going to dissuade them from going to work. We live in a class society, we live in an economic slave state, the entire culture of the planet is to get busy and start fighting your way up the economic ladder and the Europeans are the creators of this game. Sanctions or no sanctions, Europe is not about to slow down.
There is a potential positive to this. If by some amazing miracle, Europe and America actually tells the Russians to go fuck themselves and simply refuses the oil in perpetuity, this might be one of the greatest moves towards creating a sustainable society we’ve ever had. It would certainly cut down on the air pollution.
We are talking about electric cars. We would be talking about a massive shift towards wind and solar energy. I sincerely doubt the human intelligence that would be involved in generally slowing the world down and pushing for quality of life over access of money. The greed involved in both the economic sector and their patsies in the political sector would never allow for this. Nobody is going to give up their drugs anytime soon.
But if we did just say no to Russia, it might just have a genuinely positive impact globally. The truth is, we need to say no to the oil funded conservative parties of the world. This is exactly the illiterati, the stupid greedy assholes that push the buttons. This is exactly the evil empire who make their money from human suffering. To push away from the table is too much to ask for from a completely brainwashed society. But telling the Russians to fuck off might be a giant step in the right direction.
As far as the country of Belarus, I don’t see anything good coming. I know that I am here investing in my tiny little world. Building my garden and making friends with insects is all well and good for literature and perhaps my own physical and mental well-being, but it does not dissuade my psychotic neighbors from continuing their blood poisoning campaign. It’s not going to stop them from diving back into economic slavery and keeping the party going. And it’s certainly not going to inspire my ex-girlfriends to look back nostalgically and decide that home is where the heart is.
One final note in this comes from the fact that quite a few people think that marijuana is a major narcotic. Most people understand that I am a sincere advocate. I think slowing down is an excellent idea and I think heightened sensitivity far, far exceeds the numbing and physical abuse that comes along with drinking yourself stupid. And of course, they believe that this kind of extensive gardening project is a result of them putting pressure on me to cut me off. I’ve even heard that the chicken woman feels that she owns me because of calling the police on me and telling them I was a drug dealer.
The truth of the matter is, I don’t want any part of their lives. I don’t find them interesting as people. I am certainly not interested in being screamed at or having anyone believe even for a moment in their lives that they have the right to be hysterical on me. Even if we take out the Hysteria, I don’t want anyone feeling that they are above me in any way or have any rights to decision about my life without my permission. This I want less than cancer delivered directly into my bloodstream by syringe.
And in a darkly ironic sense, my lack of interest in their lives does have everything to do with getting cancer delivered through the rear of their car into my kitchen every time they are driven by economic need and Hysteria to drive these ecologically horrific machines. Literally, they create death from life. Literally they are poisonous.
The issue these days is what is to become of the region now that we’ve had this remarkable shake up. Rather than keep the restaurant going, they grabbed the tablecloth and ripped it from the table sending all of the dishes flying everywhere. The idea is to create chaos because in chaos comes many economic possibilities. Literally, you throw the food all over the floor and the rats scurry in to pick up the crumbs.
What is going to end up happening in the region could be best described as an infestation. If Belarus has done anything different, it is simply that it has no particular natural resources to exploit other than its people and so we have obsequiously allowed Russia to dominate all the marketplaces and demand that all the people start running around like crazed rats making them money. Literally, they just put all their bitches out on the street and demand that they earn their money.
In Ukraine, we are going to have kind of the same thing except that there’s going to be even more European businesses coming to drain money. It will be exactly the same as if it was a Russian dominated economy, but perhaps people will feel better because it will have a European brand. Euro style has been very popular here for a couple of decades. Everybody took pleasure in borrowing money from the banks to restyle their homes. Everybody loves the fresh new corporate businesses popping up everywhere. People don’t mind the diabetes laced fast food. People don’t mind the carcinogenic factory products. And nobody seems to mind breathing the lead-based atmosphere. Everybody is so happy to finally be a part of the modern world.
Hey, far be it for me to rain on your parade. I’m no energy vampire. I’m not going to spoil your party. I’ll just stay out here where with the exception of the chicken people and the hunchback, I get fresh air and a chance to go slow. I know that I am completely crazy and I know that my love of a plant that brings a little more sensitivity and a little more life to my life and a little less pain from my legs is completely wrong and worthy of this much punishment as a punishment based system can find. I am oh so very guilty.
All the same, thanks for the invitation but I think I’ll play the cards I have. I don’t really understand where I get anything from this party. I don’t get that there is anything I want on the table. And really, if I don’t enjoy it, why do you need me there?
I just have one more thing to add here. It is from an article from The New Yorker talking about how the pride and resilience of the Ukrainian people pulling together to deal with this rather egregious and horrific situation is worthy of admiration. Ironically, the magazine seems to feel networking as a team is an admirable situation. If you can’t see the irony in this, that’s okay. It probably doesn’t make any difference to you anyway.
***
It’s about 2:00 and a small amount of ambition has crept into me. I’ve been moving around a little bit. Maybe it was my big breakfast wanting to get spread around. Or maybe it’s the “things to do” list that I put together. It’s funny how many things need to be done. I don’t see how anybody would consider it boring to live in the country. It’s daunting actually. Maybe in the future, all of this will become old. But the amount of physical effort needed and time to be invested is no small matter. It is a genuine effort keeping track of things.
I have two things worth discussing. One was that my other next door neighbor showed up for a short visit. This house is mostly abandoned and they do not pay much attention to anything here anymore. Last year, they showed up on a Saturday and I got into a fight with the hunchback because they wanted him to use a weed wacker to pretend that they still lived on the property. Again and again, I don’t know why people waste their time killing off what is growing just to create some visual aesthetic to please God only knows who.
I hobbled over to the fence between our properties and said hello. It was a pleasant enough conversation and there was not a lot of information passed between us. She agreed that nobody really wants to live up here anymore but they are keeping it because the grandmother doesn’t want to let it go. The grandmother absolutely hates me, by the way. I don’t have a problem with this but it was notable in the conversation. We also discussed the neighbors on the other side of me and she tried to say some nice words about them being good people. I said some good words about how they are not nice. And though she had already heard about the parking, she had heard this story with the spin that it was impossible to do otherwise. Apparently the argument about backing on to their property instead of backing out of their property had never crossed her mind. I can’t say for sure that any of this gossip means anything but you could see on her face that the mathematics made sense.
When she asked about me, she asked if I was a scientist. Cool.
I also found out that the grandchild and the daughter no longer live here. I never noticed the change because I don’t really have any dealings with them. But I imagine the house has become a bit more boring for the chicken lady. Good. Less noise pollution for me.
Towards the end of the conversation I asked if they were interested in selling the property. They’re parcel is much bigger than mine and goes back a very long ways. The forest has already overtaken more than half of it. That’s exactly what I like about it but to them it’s a bit of a failure. I also got an explanation about how the house works and what one strange looking structure is.
I don’t believe anything is going to come of this. I don’t think anybody really wants to live here anymore. Unless you are on a pension and ambitious enough to fight how bad the soil is and how far away from reality or at least civilization this place is, nobody really wants to be here. It has, as they say, gone to seed.
But in a perfect world and with mildly better financial possibilities, I would be happy to take over the neighboring property. I don’t think I could handle any more room. But I like the idea of the spaciousness and I like how much Forest is a part of the world there. Perhaps in a perfect world, my ex partner or maybe someone else who I’m close to would like to take over and we could partner up and take care of life together. I like it here. I like the quiet. I like that it’s been forgotten by ambitious people.
As far as my own ambitions, I’m just leaning towards some kind of self-sufficiency. And the more I dive into this year, the more my ideas of what I can or should grow around here come into focus.
Being vegan means that in order to live off this land, I need to really focus on the sorts of starches and proteins that I need to get by. Specifically, this means growing beans extensively. It also probably means I should grow quite a bit of squash. I’m not embarrassed by zucchinis and I eat them all the time. I also like a lot of greens so that our boxes are mostly about cabbages and salads are nice. I like beet greens as well and truthfully, I do not mind cutting horseradish leaves when I cook with oil.
Last year I grew a lot of potatoes. For a while, I ignored them and lived mostly on store-bought starches. But a little while ago, I started bringing up the tubers and including them in my meals. The difference was really noticeable. It’s a different type of thing to eat potatoes than rice. It’s really a different thing when eating your own hand grown potatoes versus the stuff you buy in the market. I guess there is also some sense of pride in that. This would be pride in self-sufficiency. But it also is a positive influence on my diet. I generally feel better when I include potatoes into my cooking.
The last time I was in town, I went to a supermarket near my ex-partner’s house to get some noodles. There is a particular brand of imported Chinese cellophane noodles that work really well as a soup edition. I like them a lot better than eating macaroni and probably they are mildly more healthy for you. The noodles are made from bean starch rather than wheat and they break down fast enough where you can treat them like instant noodles but without a flavor packet.
Passing by the small produce section though, I spotted three unimpressive sweet potatoes. I like sweet potatoes a lot. I know for a fact that they are healthier for you than white potatoes. I considered taking them with me but then let it go. There were only three of them and it was just too uninspiring to bother with.
A bit later that day though, my ex partner stopped into the same supermarket on her way home after work and as if I had left some magic behind, she picked up those very same three sweet potatoes. When she came up on Sunday, she brought them with her and gave them to me. She said we could plant them or I could just eat them if I wanted to.
Suddenly it was just too much fate to ignore and I have been watching videos and reading about cultivating sweet potatoes ever since.
Like all plant propagations, there is a technical way to maximize growth and a simple way. My preference is to keep things simple and not worry about them too much.
The technical way is to identify which is the top and which is the bottom on a sweet potato. The top is pointy and the bottom is round. You can suspend the bottoms in a glass of water using toothpicks and you’ll start getting morning Glory shoots coming out of the top. Sweet potatoes are not actually potatoes, they are more of a vine that happens to grow tubers in the root system.
Probably the best video I have seen as far as what I want to do is from Self Sufficient Me, I believe his name is Mark Valencia, a rather Hardy Australian bloke who has invested heavily in raised bed farming. He is not vegan by a long stretch but I do admire how he goes about working with his plant agriculture. He is a straight shooter and pragmatic. Here is his video about propagating sweet potatoes the simple way:
So keeping things simple, I found a plastic trough that was unused and simply cut up the three sweet potatoes we have and dropped them into some water. We will see if we get some shoots from them within a couple of days. And if they start, I think I’m going to dedicate one of the lower gardens to sweet potatoes. The next time I go to town, I’m going to buy a couple of kilos and follow along in this same way.
I have seen other people that believe they should be trellised and allowed to climb. I’m not sure about this yet. Maybe it’s a better idea to let them just take over a box. But in the end, if the yield is a bunch of sweet potatoes, I definitely have some good food to eat that doesn’t need to come from the supermarket.
Growing sweet potatoes was not in my original plan. I don’t feel like I’m extremely late coming to this idea. I didn’t hurt myself by starting now. Well, I cannot say that with any sense of knowledge because I’ve never done this before. But this idea is something I like quite a bit.
Just one other note about this. I like sweet potatoes but I don’t go crazy for them when I go shopping. Here, they are mostly supermarket food and you don’t find too much of them at the local markets. People here grow white potatoes and it is so deeply ingrained in the culture that people will dedicate entire land parcels just to make sure that they have enough potatoes to live off of.
But a long time ago I read the Tom Robbins book “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” an epic story about people dissatisfied with the status quo who tried to find some sense of happiness by living alternative lives. In this story was a hermit of Japanese descent known in the book as The Chink, forgive me if he was actually Chinese, who basically lived off of sweet potatoes.
I believe this character and his diet came to Mr Robbins because of his knowledge of what is called the Okinawa diet.
The Okinawa diet describes the eating habits of the indigenous people of the Ryukyu Islands, which is believed to contribute to their exceptional longevity. It is also the name of a weight-loss diet based on this.
Basically, as I’m sure you already understand, the vast majority of their diet was starches, they ate very little meat and worked very hard keeping their mostly vegetarian agricultural culture going by hand.
I’m not saying that this character was the blueprint for my life, I’m just saying that I understood his point of view when I read the book. And the longer I live on this planet, the more his shoes seem to fit me just fine.
So catch me at the end of the year for some sweet potato and pumpkin stew. It should be on the menu regularly and frankly, I’m looking forward to it.
Oh, and sweet potato leaves are quite edible which makes them pretty cool wild salad greens.
I mean, I don’t feel bad for all of the salad, spinach and cabbages that we are growing. I live off of cabbages and I have no problem including a lot of it in my meal planning. But during the summer, there are quite a few nutrients in edible leaves from various different types of vines as well as from zucchini and squash. Just saying.
The Chink by the way was well known for his quotes. Last year, I made a big deal about putting quotes on my essays and web pages. Quotes from the Chink often hit the nail right on the head as far as I’m concerned.
“There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.”
“Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.”
“Growing up is a trap. When they tell you to shut up, they mean stop talking. When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing. Reach a nice level plateau and settle there, predictable and unchanging, no longer a threat.”
“…disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business….”
And my all-time favorite:
“If it’s messy, eat it over the sink.”
***
Well, we will see if there is a difference but I have finally at least done something about an idea I had at the very beginning about this place.
Last year was mostly an observational year. Did I have a choice? Well, let’s not get into all of that politics. But one thing I did notice was that I had some very successful fruit trees and some miserable fruit trees. The one obvious thing that I noticed between the two was the amount of water that they would get naturally.
The most successful fruit producing trees were actually my neighbor’s. These are the same neighbors that I spoke to this morning. They have several Berry trees, I forget what they call these, that bore fruit all summer and made every single trip to the backside of the property a delight. I didn’t need to worry about saving them or doing anything with them, just a casual stroll would net me dozens of delicious little orange fruits, very similar to plums. Maybe they are plums. Just a second…
In English, these are called Mirabelle plums I think and when they are fully ripe, they are absolutely delicious. I made a steady diet of these things when they were in season and they were a definite plus to my life.
But the trick was that the trees that grew just on the other side of my woodshed produced wonderful fruit in great abundance and the ones that grew on their own in the middle of the field, came up rather dry.
You don’t really have to be such a great scientist to understand what’s going on here. The roof of the woodshed was simply dropping a lot of water at the base of One tree and the one without any help was enjoying the drought and agreeing that global warming was real. Perhaps suffering the effects of global warming would be a better way to say this.
So I had an idea to build a roofing structure all the way along the side of my property and plant trees just underneath it. The idea would be to create a natural drip irrigation that would feed the trees and help with their success. This was one of the first and most major ideas for trying to get something out of this property.
Up until now however, nothing has happened. The politics of living here seem much more important to my neighbors than any agronomic ideas I might have. Getting people to agree to help build such a structure or bring out materials for it never wanted to appear. It was an odd thing really. You would meet someone and talk about what you wanted and they would be very agreeable. But then when it actually came time to do anything, suddenly it was as if no conversation or agreement ever happened. Strange? Very strange.
As I said, I have been having a rush of creativity over the last few days. The idea of how to construct a drainage system to collect roof water came to me and the actual production didn’t take very long nor did it cost a single penny. I just built it out of junk I had, it works and that’s good enough for me. No, it might not be pretty but I’m not really interested in being pretty. I’m interested in function.
With this ambition that I got this afternoon, I went for a walk out into my meadow and pulled the trigger on an incredibly stupid idea that I had while my ex partner was planting in the boxes. I have, or had, several roofing shingles that were left over or broken from re-roofing the barn. This was the barn that mysteriously burned down. It was either stupidity by the owners, very possible, or maybe it was a bit of espionage from my chicken neighbors. This is also extremely possible. Once you find out that someone is a Nazi, it’s not hard to imagine naziism being practiced.
Nevertheless my solution today was as stupid and simple as anything. I picked up the largest roofing panels and walked them out next to my line of trees. Then I picked up some broken junk cinder block that was left over from the foundation of the barn rebuild and placed one under the backside of the roofing panel. These panels are pretty heavy and even though today is very windy, once I put them in place, I never saw even one of them quiver or move in any way.
One, two, three electric car piston, we have a cheap hillbilly drip watering system.
I’m sorry for that poem. I actually feel terrible for having said it.
As to whether this works or not, right near the cherry plum trees is a purple plum tree that last year showed no interest in producing fruit. There were a few plums growing on it but they never seemed to ripen well and I tasted awful when I actually tried them. This year, there has been a roofing panel about 1 m from its trunk and it already looks better and is covered with leaf shoots starting to open up. It seems that even one roofing panel catching and delivering a little bit of extra water to its root base is enough to fill it with hope.
Truthfully, it’s not just that I’m American that I wanted to build something or that I was prepared to hand over several hundred dollars to a couple of workers. It’s not that my plans are so grandiose. I just want things to live here. I want this to be a hospitable habitat. I’d like the things that come here to feel at home. I like life. I like life a lot more than I like skinhead aesthetics or Nazi sensibilities. I don’t really need or want to torture this property into submission. I just want it to grow a little food for me and be a healthy habitat for many living things.
So kind of job done. There’s only one tree left but I don’t really have the panels for it just now. I’m going to have to use something else to make sure that we have some water going to it. But as of the moment, it kind of looks like almost everything I wanted when I arrived here is now in place. Not exactly as I wanted it. But effectively here and if you think it’s a plus, I did most of it without spending any money at all. Cheers.
***
It’s 8:30 in the evening and I guess it’s time to close up shop and say goodbye to yet another day. Today was restful. I did not work extremely hard but I did get a lot of light work done. I can’t say that I’m working at some genuinely industrious level. I am not. I am not genuinely industrious as a human. I am not looking to make monuments for my greatness. I’m just making a garden to retire in. I’m just trying to make something beautiful.
I haven’t spoken to my ex partner today. I sent her a couple of pictures that I thought she’d be interested in but she didn’t write back. Today is Tuesday and it is a religious holiday for christians. It is a day where people remember their dead.
My ex partner is not going to be around next week because she’s going to travel to her hometown which just happens to be on the polar opposite side of the country. She hasn’t seen her people in a year and she tries to stay in touch with family. I also saw Elena, the lady who came by to clean up last year. She was wearing a white platok and returning from the cemetery. I asked her about her mother and she said that she’s not doing well. I guessed that she was visiting her father.
Most probably the real reason my neighbor showed up today was because their people are in the local cemetery. When she was talking to me about my roots, she asked me if I was specifically from this village. It was an interesting question because most probably, the village that I truly come from was wiped out completely and all the inhabitants shipped off to the new world. I know I am related to the town of Pinsk and I know that my father’s family were builders. Probably they were Town people or at least from the Jewish part of town.
I guess it was ironic but I got an email from the relative who stuck his fingers in the cookie jar and tried or is trying to steal the money from my father’s estate. I was surprised to get a letter saying that he’s ready to settle up the estate. I guess they must have caught him for taxes.
Considering how this little man has done everything so far, it wasn’t surprising that he lied to the court about the value of the estate. For the life of me, I don’t understand him. I don’t understand his miserable little game. I don’t understand his miserable little life. I don’t understand how people can just crawl through the shit like a bottom feeder day after day after day and expect someone to… what? Love him? Respect him?
It’s a joke and he’s a horrible little con man. From my point of view, he probably brought so much misery to the last years of my father’s life. I cannot lionize my father or believe that he is more than he was. He was also kind of a con man in his own way. He just had a lot of money and attracted this little parasite into his life. I’m sorry if my language is gauche but I don’t know how else to speak of this misery. The little bastard ruined my grieving time. He openly disrespected my father. He disrespected me and disrespected himself, though I don’t believe that sort of thing whatever even occurred to him.
I don’t know what else to say about this but I’m sure in his mind, he’s executing some kind of a business deal. In my mind he’s human garbage. In my mind, he is cancer. He is a cancer. He is human cancer and he is one of these people that I try to avoid like the plague.
I don’t know how this thing is going to end. Not well I’m sure. I need some legal help of course. I don’t know if I’ll get any. I guess this is what the Day of the Dead is like here.
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