As a kid, yoga brought me healing from the “toxic stress” of an abusive childhood home. As a dancer I had already found tremendous joy in my art but something about the rabid competition in the entertainment world led me to seek solace in yoga, not as a replacement for dance, but as a companion for life as an artist in the 21st-century. Yoga also accompanied me on many NYC subway rides and it was a land-based version of surfing my beloved oceans, whenever I am too far away from water. I am a water creature and yoga helps me cope with land based behaviors.
Ironically it seems that yoga has now become a competitive space in some social media and live places. LOL the joke will always be on us if we choose to worship disposable culture we will continue to be treated as disposable humans. There is so much more value in honoring timeless eternal values, we ignore our own inherent non-commercial value at our own peril.
As soon as I saw the “asanas” (yoga poses) from photos in hatha yoga books I knew this ancient body architecture was for me, especially when I found myself too far from the sea. Whenever I’d practice the meditative technique of dropping my mind into my heart space, I’d visit my voice box and I’d discover sadness but still, I was happy for no reason. Eventually I discovered my speaking and singing voice too.
Some people told me that I was being “phony “ if I was just generally a cheerful person. Those types of negative haters would tell me I was just “acting” because I’m an actress (fyi good acting is not lying ). Now that I’m sort of a grown up it’s easier to spot the negative types even from a distance. These are the people who will immediately criticize the lifestyles of others, even if those lifestyles don’t impact their own lives. They are the people who will immediately put down ideas they don’t understand, instead of asking questions, or opening up a moment of curiosity. Those who drive by something unique like a unique house, built in an unusual style, and they will immediately begin petitioning against it in order to destroy it. I’ve encountered these people often because there are several areas of my life where I don’t conform to norms whether it’s clothing or speech or lifestyle. Gentrification in Venice Beach, Los Angeles brought us into proximity with such ugly haters who actually attempted to take people’s homes away from them in order to suit both the empty-handed bullies and the billionaires who fund the bullying. In some cases, they succeeded but not when people united and stood up to them.
While it’s quite possible to learn how to fend off such rude, loud haters, and refuse to allow them to deter us, they can potentially waste our valuable time and affect our health, both of which are our most valuable resources. The bully’s intention is to throw a wrench into our peace and into our family’s sacred spaces.
That’s why fending off bullies should not be left to individuals alone. This kind of thing is mutating as the virus it always was, now encouraged by craven bestial whistles from public servants who mirror and goad outrageous, psychotic, sociopathic, behavior in places like school board meetings, and other places that are meant as civilized constructive public spaces. Their intentions are corrosive to healthy cultural societies.
We need public service announcements incorporating history lessons, showing the very simple trajectory from the loosed arrow of normalized public malevolence into its ultimate target bulls eye destination : authoritarianism, which, is abuse.
Abuse of power is the same as any other abuse : child abuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, animal abuse, environmental abuse etc … In a democracy with rule of law, all abuse requires intervention.
Doing Nothing is not an option because the law requires protection of the vulnerable among us. These days that group is growing but we can turn this toward our mutual advantage by uniting against the bullies.
During my yoga practice, as a kid, I worked through the sadness in my heart, placed there by abuse until recently, I was able to practice the meditation technique of dropping my mind into my heart space, as taught by my first Thai Buddhist teacher and suddenly a new journey began.
As a result of so much chaos in the world I reclaimed my meditation practice and recently I dropped my mind into my heart and a very funny thing happened – I felt so ticklish that I literally burst out giggling then, laughing as in “laugh out loud” until I realized that ticklish feeling is just plain bliss! That same feeling I get when I’m in the ocean! Pure bliss! From within. I was familiar with this feeling, but it never occurred to me to try to call it up consciously. Now it felt like a superpower.
The spiritual practice of meditation, whether it be in yoga or other disciplines, is a healing practice that re-aligns us to our internal compass and reconnects us to our natural born joy.
It doesn’t matter anymore if anyone thinks of this meditation joy or any other joy – female joy, black joy, multi-cultural joy, lgbtq joy, intellectual joy etc … You know, the joy that always seems to get on the authoritarian abusers’ nerves, is “phony “ or “acting “ (again, the art of a good actor is working from a sense of truth not a bunch of lying).
The lesson I discovered in meditative “bliss” is equivalent to the lesson we must all learn as we grow up. Remaining unperturbed or at least undeterred as result of abuse or criticisms & unreasonable cruel negativity expressed by others.
Unfortunately we live in a time when some of us condone, even encourage the kinds of abusive, even violent behaviors that would previously have caused most communities to unite and fight back together, in spite of political differences.
It’s time to unite.
As I’ve written elsewhere :
The 21st Century is “A Time of Useful Consciousness”
In my Oscars Contender “eVe N’ god this female is not yet rated” many images and concepts explore these themes, posing questions and positing hopes for healing.
I hope you will check it out and give us a good rating / review on any and all platforms including IMDB, Youtube Movies, Apple TV, iTunes Store Movies, Google Play Movies and Vimeo.
Lyrics to my debut album / original soundtrack “Cali Lili This Female Is Not Yet Rated” also explore these themes and can be heard everywhere music streams including Youtube, Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal Music, Pandora music, iHeart Radio etc…
And snippets of the songs can be found on social media sites like instagram, tik tok, tumblr etc …
As we work on the NEXT movie and album we so appreciate your positive likes and shares!
Please help us share my sustainable, empowering projects
We are “HandMade To Make A Difference” ™️
And we invite you to join us, share the love, join us already underway surfing the waves in Currents Leaps N’ LandingZ️ ™️ onward toward our next release.
“ We raised and released 42 monarch butterflies last season and during this year’s cycle from the returning mommy monarch fluttering all around our faces, entrusting us with her eggs, to the fat caterpillar crawling into chrysalis then magic emerging newborn into flight, I marvel that every moment is a “time of useful consciousness.”
“Time of Useful Consciousness is an aviation term defined in Wikipedia:
“the amount of time an individual is able to function effectively (e.g. perform flying duties) in an environment of inadequate oxygen supply.[1] It is the period of time from the interruption of the oxygen supply or exposure to an oxygen-poor environment to the time when useful function is lost, and the individual is no longer capable of taking proper corrective and protective action. At the higher altitudes, the TUC becomes very short; considering this danger, the emphasis is on prevention rather than cure.”
Like many young Americans aware of gaps in my education I know enough to understand these midterm elections 2022 are indeed a “time of useful consciousness” for the ideas we cherish, for humans being, wildlife, sea-life, America, global democracy, the survival of our mothership, this blue planet and the multiverse in which we float, hurtling toward our future past in a time-space continuum which barely recognizes us.
“Losing consciousness” would mean losing democracy and sinking into the warm bath before the ice cold fascism shuts down humanity by legally assassinating the constitution from within, using our own petard as hoist.
We’ve managed to avoid asteroids and now, we know how to billiard them away from impact with our cool-AF NASA pool cue. Now we must build ourselves a different kind of pool cue to tip away impending “asteroids” hurled at us by the 21st century American iteration of that smelly old cult of authoritarians, that deadliest plague on humanity, fascism.
Break down the word “fascism” for demystification in the word “fascia” a thin casing of connective tissue binding together the internal structure of a body.
Our choices in life, including a girls’ right to make her own decisions, will be subject to the will of the state, which will always usurp the will of every individual.
Not just HER choice.
YOUR choice too.
Every individual would serve the state. Not just the unfortunate 10-year-old rape victim in some news story.
You.
You will serve the fascist state.
You down to clown?
The “us and them” mentality serves fascism. Are you REALLY “US” ? Or are you really THEM?
Are you a member of the LGBTQ community?
A feminist?
Are you Jewish?
Muslim?
Non-supremacist Christian?
Are you a person of color?
An “environmentalist”?
A vegan ?
“Are you … or have you ever been … ”
It’s been said that antisemitism is the oldest hatred and while those old tropes live on in conservative ideologies,
I’ve posited in my movie “Eve N’ God This Female Is Not Yet Rated “ with original soundtrack album “this female is not yet rated“ that the “independent female” characters known as “Eve” and “Lillith” from the Bible story, who represented “female freedom,” were the original “scapegoats” illustrating that older hatred against : the independent female.
Anyone feminine, including those in the LGBTQ community, any femme creature who is vulnerable, wild – and free, including wildlife, sea life and nature was and is demonized and targeted for control.
The power of the independent female, which I suggest, thrives in the souls of all living beings thinking freely, yearning for an independent free existence on this beautiful blue planet, was and is – so scary to the patriarchal “state” of mind, SHE in all her wildness, beauty and freedom, needed to be “tamed, “held back, lest she “learn” too much from that “tree of knowledge” and choose to leave Eden for a new kind of paradise.
In my movie, I’m suggesting that the “original sin” was and is, in fact, the sin against our sisters. “eVe” tells about the added disgrace of Nazi Germany, along with the dehumanizing of Jewish persons labeled by “yellow triangles” and that of homosexuals by “pink triangles,” women with “choice” who opted for birth control and lesbians were labeled with “black triangles.”
“they were called workshy”
My movie posits that the supremacist societal ideals expressed by the psychotic Nazi slogan “work makes free” be countered by a 21st Century humanist ideal :
“Play Makes Free”
The hatreds function like a roaming virus seeking entry points at weakened gateways of the body politic. As if some cosmic surgeon left behind a scalpel for an opportune infection moment. That moment when a culture sleeps through her “time of useful consciousness,” relaxes into the simmering bath, if only just to rest from the incessant drone of propaganda garbage pails spilling over into the street, courts, congress, the connective tissue.
You know that moment when your dentist, doctor, veterinarian, or lawyer delegates the bill for their services because this highly paid “professional” needs to look away from you and your dog or cat, like so many look away from a homeless person?
High paid “professionals” benefit from American “Liberal Arts” education, yet some denigrate the word “liberal.” American culture has been poisoned. Some of us chose to defend our liberal arts, while others just cashed in at the ATM. We need these professionals to stand up with us, the people, if only at the ballot box.
I could quote Emerson, Thoreau, Billie Holiday, Langston Hughes, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson, Studs Terkel, Leonard Cohen, Tupac – many “liberal” cultural icons warning us against cultural poison.
I’ll just sample Thomas Paine:
“ ‘Had we a place to stand upon, we might raise the world ‘ The revolution of America presented in politics what was only a theory and mechanics. So deeply rooted for all of us, governments of the old world,and so effectually had the tyranny, and the antiquity of habit established itself over the mind that no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa, or Europe , to reform the political condition of man, freedom has been hunted around the globe, reason was considered as rebellion and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.”
We never dealt with what happened during that other “time of useful consciousness” : the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. So now, let’s use it wisely.
Let’s bind together our connective tissue : all decent Americans, all women , persons of color, LGBTQIA, anyone who cares about wildlife, sealife, nature, climate change, natural disasters, clean air , clean water, ocean life … Mother Earth – let’s all of us , together, finally use this “time of useful consciousness” to form “the more perfect union. “
Let’s beat the fascists at their own game, “binding” together, so we don’t fall for anything, and everything, anymore. “
Actress-Director & Singer-Songwriter Cali Lili was skipped several grades (having been tested as reading at college level in grade school) took her first college course in the entire works of Shakespeare, at age 13, never graduated high-school, never even went to a prom, was swooped up, by NYU, then earned her Masters’ Degree on full scholarship with awards / stellar reviews for early works.
The Cali Lili ™ Band recorded Cali’s original Debut Album: “ this female is not yet rated ™️“which forms the core of the soundtrack for her debut Oscars 2020 Contender feature film 🎬 eVe N’god this female is not yet rated ™️“ 🎬 available on iTunes movies 🍎 Apple TV, Google Play Movies, YouTube movies & Vimeo worldwide. Album available on Apple Music 🍎 etc
Most Recently Cali was hired by award-winning producers to sing one of her songs on camera as the title track for an upcoming documentary .
That on camera recording session was filmed at the legendary “Nightbird Studios” housed in the equally legendary Rock N’ Roll hotel the “Sunset Marquis” in Hollywood. There was thunder and lightning in Hollywood that night. ‘Nuff said.
Stay tuned for the release of that new single, lyrics uploads and more upcoming movies & music by Cali Lili from her sustainable upcycled SustainableStudio™️ a SurfShackLoFt™️ green space in Venice Beach Los Angeles where Cali composes and releases sustainable movies & music.
You can read an edited version of this essay published as a guest piece at Will Pollock’s Cranky Yank
I raised my hand a lot in grade school. Didn’t always know the answer but so pumped engaging on the questions. One day, I found myself in the hallway with the teacher explaining that my class-mates were bullying me because they were jealous. Jealous? Of me? “WHY would ANYONE be jealous of me?”
Raising my hand was a symptom of raising myself, surviving an abusive home, so my self esteem wasn’t always strong. I guess my hand raised in class was a plea to the multiverse, a signal for some lifeguard somewhere that I wanted to learn. To swim, not drown.
“Never stop raising your hand” my teacher said in a fervent, personal way. Even at that young age I understood someone must have laughed at her, tried to thwart her. She was warning me never to give in to the bullies as I would only betray myself. Her kindness and humanity, her warning about never limiting my own “possibility,” her willingness to be vulnerable yet strong were the underlying lessons.
CUT TO :
A few years later, I’ve been skipped grades and I’m the youngest kid in high school. Now I’m summoned to the principals’ office. Never been in any principals’ office, like, EVER. He’s yelling at me. My offense? I got accepted into early enrollment for University. I’m skipping the last years of high school, the diploma and the prom because University is offering me full scholarship. This principal guy is yelling at me because his school is “losing money” due to my leaving early. WTF.
CUT TO :
A few years later, I’m still raising my hand.
Dear 117th Congress ,
Beloved President Biden & Vice President Kamala Harris
And
Everyone who cares about Art, Democracy, Civilization and Beef.
SUBJECT :
Earth Day
Rescuing Independent Artists,
An Endangered Species,
(like Democracy)
from the
Gentrification Of Culture
President Biden described America in one word : POSSIBILITY. I’m addressing you because I believe we have succumbed to a dominance/superiority based bully culture thwarting our possibility.
DISTRIBUTION of Movies is Like BEEF
It may seem odd, but I’m referencing Senator Jon Testers’ Montana bill, protecting small meat producers from the monopoly of mega-distributors here. Obstruction & lack of fairness in distribution opportunities for independent artists is oddly similar to that of beef/food. This also reeks from our nations’ dependence on oil and victimization at the hands of conservative obstructionism including the supremacist misogyny, racism & homophobia on display in the current state of the so-called Supreme Court.
Like Ben Franklin, influenced by the “Enlightenment,” we can push back the Dark Ages by unlocking that forbidden door embracing the heart of our resistance, choosing disobedience over dogma, lest we become willing victims of so many contemporary “blue-beards.”
The parallels to distribution of film, music, arts, humanities & other cultural “products” (among our greatest “exports” like Democracy) could not be more pressing as we approach upcoming elections. Of course, the big-money-media dominance problem likely stems from an antitrust problem that maintains artificial hierarchies of false superiority, so deeply entrenched, for so long, in the highly influential cultural “media products” we all consume daily (and export too) which has infected our global cultural psyche, railroaded political discourse into a reality show circus and left us, the planet, where we are today.
I am trying to share what you may not know about the day to day details affecting the soul of an independent artists’ life, the vocation, the “calling” of culture-making. I’m trying to build a case for some possible solutions that might help us all.
I’m an independent artist who founded my own SustainableStudiO™️ where we make movies, music & publishing about social & climate justice themes with diverse crews. When a small independent filmmaker, like myself, used her meager savings along with some angel investments to make a tiny highly innovative movie & album with a diverse all female crew and then went “begging” to several film distributors, their response-echo was invariably :
“we (the distributors) do not accept unsolicited submissions
from producers we have not worked with in the past.”
So, these distributors are admitting, in writing, the insanity : that if a filmmaker like me, has not distributed a movie with them before, there is NO WAY to distribute my independently made, non-corporate film in any of the major American cinema or global marketplaces and get paid fairly in order to continue to do my own life’s work. The entertainment industry is arguably among our most lucrative ( for the few ) & exported sources of “American made product.” Or, is it ?
We Need a Thriving Artist Community Of Non-Billionaires
Distributor responses like these, were most devastating from so called (imposters) “indie” distributors who held out promise to those of us creating fresh projects unaware that status quo is already busy buying up all the possibilities while portraying themselves to the public as though they themselves are “indies,” thieving from actual independent artists like myself, as we scrape together pennies in spite of the “gentrification of culture.”
“Gentrification of Culture”
“ Independent Artists are ‘First Responders’ to the Soul of Culture
Early on I recognized that my culture valued me as a “baby-maker” far more than it valued what I consider my “babies” : my works of art. Authentic independent artists need breathing room and respect, in the same way parents with young kids, senior citizens or students, are understood and valued in this culture. Yes this may seem a radical idea but guys, people have paid millions for the progeny of Van Gogh, Picasso, et. al … How about affording some grace for living artists? How about a similar tax structure for artists, like the great director John Huston initiated in Ireland?
Why are Corporate Entities allowed to appropriate / impersonate the important role of artists in culture? We have quietly slipped into an Entertainment Oligarchy where manufactured superiority rules. This “Dominance / Supremacist Fiscal Model” also reflects our dependence on the oil industry and victimhood to Conservative Obstructionism. This is us, in the fun-house fascist mirror we seem to find so fascinating. Lordy I hope we don’t find out for real. Popular culture tends to deride the “starving artist.” I’m asking us to consider, who is getting the last laugh and at what expense to democracy, freedom, civilization, the planet ?
Recently 60 minutes did a story about Wall Street taking over housing and making it almost impossible for people to own homes or pay rent in the 21st Century. The story aired on March 20, 2022. I’ve personally experienced the horrors of gentrification, when my own tiny sustainable, hand-built studio located in a sleepy little beach neighborhood was targeted by developers. We fought back. I’m asking us all to do the same.
Corporate talking heads blithely spout false equivalencies and casually endorse products like books, movies and other entertainment products on the so-called “news.” Our culture has long been indoctrinated into worshiping money and dominance, so we no longer show respect for authentic artists not “so-called-curated” by corporate gate-keepers. To me, that means we have lost respect for ourselves, doomed to be groomed in the worship of the corporation.
A compromised culture incubated, birthed, indoctrinated into gentrification
and “worshiping at the altar of wealth” will logically elevate notions like “superiority” and “dominance” at the expense of the necessary humanities that celebrate non-transactional human behaviors and values necessary to healthy culture and democracy. I am advocating for non-corporate, authentic independent artists but also for the simple concept of “truth.”
Who writes the A-List?
We need to support “artists for artist’s sake” which is to say “liberty” “freedom” and the “pursuit of happiness” for their own sake too. We need to secure “UNCURATED” yet remunerative spaces, for the artist in society. Europe and Canada maintain a healthy respect for artists, why can’t we?
Please help us all stay independent from the Cultural Industrial Complex, let’s create a “farmers’ market” for indie films & music. Let’s have an online space where seasoned directors & producers can directly communicate with newcomers like me. Let’s not limit our own possibilities, betray ourselves. Let us “raise our hands” in the global classroom, ask questions, not settle for the candidate, or the movie or album with the biggest budget, the loudest voice, the most cruel derisionor worse, the indifference of apathy.
Big money media is so dominant over every screen, from big screens to cell-phones, that they are literally “authoring” – “dictating” not just our thoughts, but the very process of thinking. We need new common sense thinking and action addressing culture-making by independent artists – and also – the mechanics of why we need to vote for ourselves.
The independent artist, unowned, like a public servant who does not answer to big money, is never beholden to big money corporate conglomerates
and therefore represents the deep “infrastructure” of the soul of our nation,
without which, we collapse deeper into the transactional, corporate, oligarchical reality show culture that got us where we are today.
So Let’s make the possibility of a better tomorrow possible. “
Support My Work :
Cali Lili Oscars 2020 Contender ” Eve N’God This Female Is Not Yet Rated ”
Rule Of Law & Civilization suffer from malignant conservatives obstructing progress for this planet compounding the anemic lack of agility in courts & justice to meet global need for accountability in defense of 21st century Democracy Humanity & planet-earth
the very Simple Cause for Abusive Conditions under which so many innocent people , animals, wildlife, sea-life – living beings on our blue-planet Mother Earth – suffer and have suffered for generations.
The Pathological Psychology of a State Dictator is that of any other Common Bully, Emotional Abuser, Physical Abuser
Please let us apply the Same Common Sense Remedies for any other case of Abuse
The Same Remedies applied Upon receiving the Abused Family Members into a Safe House or Shelter can be applied globally
The Stakes are catastrophic if we neglect this Mental Wellness for Our Global Family
At the very simplest psychological level – the solutions are so clear
Like any Cultureor Group of People oppressed by The Dictator – the Family Members of an Abuser suffer unimaginably, the daily agonies of tortures – both physical and psychological
These agonies damage victims for generations
Unhealing Wounds paid forward into the future …
generation after generation …
from private hells
to genocide
scarring, savaging the humanities of us all as the wound becomes encoded genetically
In a never-ending cycle of misplaced tolerance for pathology.
Democracy’s genius lies partly in it’s foundation of “Balance Of Powers”
Whereas Absolute Power is a certain path to Abuse Of Power whether it be exacted on an individual, family, nation, economy, or planet.
The Survivors’ Wisdom teaches :
Survivors of Domestic Abuse, Child Abuse, Workplace Abuse, wildlife, sealife, environmental abuse know the Mechanics of Abuse of Power require enabling by those who amplify and ultimately enable the authoritarian to speak at their victims, stealing the Voice of The Victim by appropriation of the victim role – while alienating friends and family – to isolate and deny the victim from rescuers.
Jealous of unattainable excellence and of love they feel denied – the abusers’ self-soothing tool is abuse of any power in their capacity, whether it be the smallest or the greatest effect – they are so powerless to heal their own malady, they seek to exact revenge on any thing , any one willing to tolerate or enable the rampage.
The Abuser must completely control their environment in order to escape accountability and consequences and to that end they must recruit little armies of enablers forming a cult of weak followers who see themselves reflected in the dictator’s delusional superiorities.
The rampage might be an unconscious mechanism unknown to the Abusers themselves, can seem quite innocuous, even laughable at first.
But with time, enabling, tolerance of little pathologies by increments (Absolute Power is the goal of their dis-ease )
The disease rules.
The mechanics include fomenting chaos and faking victimhood – the abuser obfuscates and obstructs justice and healing.
The abuser dictator derives relief of their own pain, by causing suffering in others.
Their only destination is death and the ceasing of their own pain, but they are too sick in their ego’s narcissistic quest to prove their superiority, so they harm everything in their environment in a quest for personal glory.
Please let us End Our Tolerance for Pathology and Begin the Remedy with the very same Basic Common Sense used to protect an innocent child from the Pathology of her abuser.
If We Numb ourselves into delusive agreement with Toxic Apathies, lulling ourselves into the Oblivion of a Depressed World View that holds it impossible to end war, abuse, hate, torture
… – then what?
Then by abdication, we have accepted our own Demise through knowing and willful Sufferage of Pathology and Abuse
If we accept Such Sufferage for another, then by definition, we accept it for ourselves
To see this truth – is one step toward Global Mental Wellness and therefore – one step toward the remedy of a condition that literally plagues us like a global pandemic
Global Mental Wellness Assures Global Physical Survival by our admission and acceptance of the Larger, Kinder and Most Practical Truth
That Truth is of our Unlimited Potential to counteract the equally unlimited pathologies of the Abuser
Global Mental Wellness is vital to our survival and perhaps we ignore and discount it because most cultures do the same with individual Mental Wellness
Via Global Mental Wellness we will have access to these Remedies :
It is Possible to access our own Toxic Emotions as individuals and also as Cultures, Societies, States, Countries
It is Possible for us all to Detoxify, Remedy, Improve, Heal our own Behaviours when we know we have crossed a line
It is Possible to Recognize Early Warning Signs of Impending Events via Understanding the Mechanism of Abuse and the Psychology of The Abuser
and
It is Possible and Necessary
To Say “No” in the Very Earliest Stages of any impending Abusive Event,
It is Possible and Necessary,
To Say “No” most often with Non-Violence
It is Possible and Necessary
To Say “No”
Whenever a Dictatorial, Abusive presence rears its ugly head across our own boundaries whether they be personal physical boundaries at home, at work or national boundaries
It really is – Possible.
Now.
Right Now.
Then –
let us say “YES” to Urgent Care for Social Justice + Climate Action
Cali Lili Indies™🏝 PicturesWordsMusicInMotion™🎬🎧 femt0™studi0🏄🏽♀️🏄🏼♀️🏄🏿♀️ CuttingEdgeOfThePacific™🦀 ©CaliLili™AllRightsReserved. 
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