Each
day, a quote, an image, several questions and a writing prompt are
offered to you
to use for Your Writing & Creative Inspiration in order to
increase your creative thinking as well as your personal and soulful
development.
The most helpful strategy is to read the quote,
questions, prompt and list and not to "take them on" all at once, but to
allow them to simmer in the back of your mind throughout the day. Sure,
you may "write" one immediately, but don't call it "done" until you
have allowed your powerful subconscious mind to bring up some unexpected
responses for your conscious mind to create within.
“When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder.”
Maya Angelou
Questions:
What in your life is a metaphor for a “great tree”?
What in your life is a metaphor for “distant hills”?
Prompt:
I know this one may seem tricky at first glance, but please follow
me here – and I have written an example for you just so you may feel more
comfortable trying it out. As always, you may write or create to your own
prompt. My suggestions are simply possibilities and you may find yourself on
the just right for you tangent, anyway.
When my (“insert your metaphor for great tree”) rocks
on (change to the what happens) (insert your metaphor for distant
hills)…. and then, just freely write without conscious thought…. What
happens?
Example:
When my business idea falls (instead of great tree –
and falls is synonymous with ‘is created’)gold dust rains on the hearts and minds of my future clients, a call, a
beckoning, a silent poem inviting them in….
List:
Make a list of at least ten ways your “great tree” may
impact your corner of the world and beyond….
>> -- <<
This Blog Series was
created to increase your creative thinking process as well as
inspire writing
and ideas to take form that may not have taken form without these specific
quotes, questions and prompts. If you find them helpful, I hope you will pass
them along to friends as well.
This photo was taken at Sequoia National Monument: A Sacred, Holy, Passionate Place
Have you ever walked along a tree lined path and suddenly
the rays of sun become three dimensional? Have you noticed how that third
dimension feeling of light is almost like a divine affirmation to continue
walking, creating, moving, loving – whatever it is that brought you there that
day?
Have you also noticed that in order to see that light in
such breathtaking beauty, there needs to be at least a millisecond heart beat
echo, exhale of silence?
Silence gives space for your truth to slowly be filtered
through all the muck of the everything else, the stuff that may seem essential
to day-to-day life, but squelches the expression of pure passion.
I know there are times when many of us, myself included,
crave noise.
Sometimes in the noisiest places I have found the greatest
experiences of silence.
The kind of noise I request you allow to fade into stillness
are the scratchy old school in between radio station sounds, when you add noise
to “keep you company” because you are concerned that if you allowed yourself
the luxury of silence you either might not like what you hear OR you might not
be able to follow through with what the divine, three dimensional light invites
you to do.
You figure, “Why bother?”
Silence and I gather you up now in our arms to say the
ubiquitous mother sounds, “husssshhhhhhh, ssssshhhhhhh, there… you’re ok…
shhhhhhh… husssshhhhh” replicating womb sounds, comfort sounds, “I am safe”
sounds which usher us all into a sanctuary of silence when you can really hear
what is being spoken to your heart.
Are you brave enough to try it for today or for ten minutes
today or tomorrow?
I invite you to stretch your noisy safety net into the
silent sacred sanctuary that lives wherever you are, ever ready for service to
you and to your passion.
I know you will find it heavenly.
Let me know what happens: after all,
you have everything to gain – especially a more passionate life.
This post was inspired by the #31Days challenge on TheNester.com
So far
it has been a wonderful experience of creativity and community. I hope
you will continue to follow along on my adventure AND the adventures of
others.
= = = = = =
Julie
Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her
word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown
Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different
social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus
particularly enticing.
This is me, three days after melanoma surgery last September. My tactic in 2012, after my melanoma surgery, was to shut off yearning.
I read the prompt from Meredith today for AugustMoon13 – all about yearnings: what did I yearn for
last January, what do I yearn for now, what has changed? Or something sort of like
that. I actually read it and closed it, read it and closed it, read it and
closed it, which started my repetitive phrasing here and the search for quotes
from women writers I respect.
This is actually what Meredith wrote:
Have you
developed new yearnings so far this year? Let go of old ones?
Yearning.
“Where you used to
be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around
in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay
Yearning.
“Why is love intensified by absence?”
― Audrey Niffenegger
Yearning.
“How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep
us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I
need someone to pour myself into.”
― Sylvia Plath
Such a word.
“I didn't know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was
palpable.”
― Sue Monk Kidd
Such a word.
“I am tired, Beloved,
of chafing my heart against
the want of you;
of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.”
― Amy Lowell
Such a word.
“Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there’s no way in
or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It’s
loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its
twisted road.”
― Margaret Atwood
Yearning is one of those words that is so deep – it is one
of those words that makes a slow, careful incision in my chest, intentionally
scoops out my innards and then leaves me hollow inside but all stitched up,
almost like new again.
I found a quote from a writer who is not a woman and it was
as if a hole was punched into that hollow shell.
“Unopened gifts contain hope.”
― Jarod Kintz
Maybe this is why I have pushed my yearnings away or haven’t
chosen to recognize them as such. If I open the gifts of my yearning, the hope,
my warped belief taunts, will vaporize.
It is so interesting that AugustMoon13 arrives right on the
year anniversary of my melanoma and very close to the two year anniversary of
the darkest day of my life, September 30, 2011. On that same day, a giant
sequoia fell along the trail of 100 Giants at the Sequoia National Monument.
My hypothesis is my heart was squeezed flat by my
circumstance at that same moment that giant tree fell.
Because of my melanoma, I stepped aside from a lot of my
usual activities and cocooned with myself and my children. I stopped my
involvement in theater, I stopped working with coaching clients, I stopped
teaching almost all of my classes.
Here I am, writing at Workhouse Arts Center. This was once a notorious prison where suffragists were force fed and held illegally. Now, it is a space for artists to thrive.
This choice allowed me the space to if not examine my
choices with a searchlight and a magnifying glass, it did allow me to gently
watch the unopened boxes accumulate.
That’s where I am now. Sitting here, surrounded by unopened
gifts of hope which I now know will not vaporize, just like hope will not
vaporize for you, either.
The quotes from all these glorious women writers appear to
be written with the yearnings aimed at another human being to complete her in
some way. My yearnings are not for another, my yearnings are for me to come
even more deeply into myself and to continue to examine, gently, what I offer the
world in me simply being me using the gifts of my unique circumstances and my
one-of-a-kind way of looking at the world.
I look at the last quarter of 2013 with a completely
different perspective I looked at the last quarter of 2012.
In 2012 I yearned to surrender and retreat, to not be
compelled to be responsible to anyone or anything beyond myself and my
children.
In the last quarter of 2013, I am looking toward the “What can I do with
what I have in the circumstances I find myself in?”
I am facing at least one more surgery. I don’t want to retreat
this time nor do I want to surrender nor do I want to fight. I want to stand,
strong, with gifts opened and unopened, knowing each gift of yearning offers me
and my world more light and love and hope and authenticity than I can put into
words right now.
Its been a while since I have visited Jana's Thinking Space to answer the Stream of Consciousness Five Minute Prompt. I popped over there after resting most of the morning and discovered this was what I was to write about today:
Today’s (totally optional) prompt: What would you do with only 24 hours left to live?
This is always a question that stumps me, especially the
thought of finishing it in five minutes. At this point that doesn’t feel much
more than five seconds!
Ironically, the first thing I thought was I would apologize
for not living up to my potential. I would apologize to people with whom I
still have hanging, niggling upsets about our relationship. I want to die with
as few tangles left in my bloodstream. I want my spirit to be tangle-free.
I would gather my closest loves and drive to Sequoia
National Monument. I would completely enjoy the drive through my beloved Kern
County. We would read poetry along the way, tell stories, take lots of photos
to document the day. Destination: campfire and storytelling and then actually
sleeping inside a sequoia tree. I might pop my head out to see the stars, but
it just feels right, my last sleep being in the womb of such a breath takingly beautiful
– and to me, very connected – tree.
I would say “I love you!” to every person I see.
I would remind them there is a purpose for them being here,
that they have the privilege of stepping into that purpose and if they are ever
doubtful remember the words of a dying woman when she tells you, “You are going
to be ok. Truly. You are going to be ok, no matter how dark things seem, keep
taking your next step. Keep
24 Hours MUST include a campfire, storytelling and sleeping inside a Sequoia.
beginning again.”
Did I mention I would fit as many beloveds into the womb of
the tree as possible? Others may sleep close, outside the tree.
I would want us to finish with the campfire and storytelling
and then prepare to sleep with lots of singing. Pure, clear, unaccompanied
voices. Laughter. Love.
It’s funny, isn’t it? That I thought I couldn’t do it and
yet, in five minutes I created the perfect plan if I had twenty-four hours to
live.
I think I will create this scenario this
Summer, actually. Wouldn’t that be perfect?
**********************
This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s
five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the
rules…
Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post (in the sidebar). .
School is back in session so who knows where you might find
me now!
I know, I know – these are silly photos and true photos as
well. Granted, I more than likely will not be riding any motorcycles in the
near future, but I will be feeling the delight of freedom, the joy of
connecting along my journey that I sometimes miss when I have my perpetual
entourage of kidlets with me.
Please don’t get me wrong: I adore each and all of my three
children AND when the time comes for them to return to school and me to return
to my life work, we are all content in a different way than when we are
together.
I will be continuing to offer teleclasses, e-courses and in
October I plan another “Big, Bad-Ass” program in the tradition of my wildly successful
42 Days of Passionate Prosperity and 42 Days of Writing with Passion from the
old days at 5passions.com.
Are you ready to stretch your wings and soar beyond where you've been until now?
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity
Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since
1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director,
Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the
StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield.
Did
you enjoy this essay? Receive emails directly to your
inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion
Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost)
every week day. Subscribe here now -
I visited John Muir’s home in 2009. It was awe-opening. I could literally feel his presence there. I stood across from the desk where he wrote all his books. It buzzed.
He had such a passion for wilderness. I do, too.
When I was on vacation recently, I got an annual pass to any and all US National Parks. What does this mean? I will be visiting as many as possible. On Vacation I visited Zion, The Arches, and Mesa Verde. I live relatively close to Sequoia and Yosemite. Once kids are back in school I will go to both of them and in October there is a cool program at Zion I want to attend.
It is so cool how the National Parks weave eco-friendly practices into the park culture.
They made ME think and helped me change my practice with water bottles. No more bottled water, on with reusable bottles I can add filtered water to instead. Over and over and over again.
It seems the generation beneath me has so much gusto for all things eco-friendly. Grateful to move beyond consumerism to environmental awareness.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
I talked about it last week with Chrissi, actually.
Chrissi was one of my recent couchsurfing guests and we were hiking together at Trail of 100 Giants at the Sequoia National Forest. I said something about how Americans always seem to insist on big goofy grins in their photos. “One of my French exchange students back, oh, fifteen years ago, commented on this. She was right. But I think now, it has changed. With digital photography, people seem to have calmed down the need for the whole “chhheeeeeeze!” pose constantly.”
My Mother had a favorite photo of me when I was a little girl. I haven’t seen it in years, but I can still see myself in it. I am sitting on a bench at Turtleback Zoo. I sat with my hair in braids, as always, a blue gingham sleeveless shirt, my hands on either side of my frame. I was probably waiting as I sat on the bench. I was eight years old, looking straight ahead of my view but you can only see my profile in the photo. I had no idea my photo was being taken or I would have hidden the question living in my face, my heart, my spirit.
This morning I was inspired by my friend Paula D’Andrea to focus on a song today. Well, Paula is always focused on Rockin' Life! but when my breakfast was accompanied by Jackson Browne on the Muzak, I laughed quietly at first and then thought, “This is not a song you hear often.”
By the time I got home, I felt the song was an assignment of sorts.
The first two stanzas:
Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer I was taken by a photograph of you There were one or two I know that you would have liked a little more But they didn't show your spirit quite as true
You were turning 'round to see who was behind you And I took your childish laughter by surprise And at the moment that my camera happened to find you There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes
I feel a call today to study images of my own authenticity, to put those on display, to not concern myself with conventional norms like ugly or pretty or middle aged or out of shape or embarrassed, but instead focus on showing you my true spirit: unmasked, unafraid and non judgemental.
Cameron has told me my face is one of the most changeable he has encountered. I can look so different on any given day. Sometimes I think that is from being an actor but then, upon thinking, I think it is from being true. My face shows my emotions in that precise moment.
My emotions are worn differently on my face. I think they are authentic. Some of these photos I look prettier or more “conventionally acceptable” than others. What I love about them all is they are all perfectly 1,000% me.
This Spring I sat on a hill overlooking Bakersfield, one of my favorite spots in the world. My friend mentioned me and the words “deliriously happy” in the same sentence.
“I wouldn’t describe myself as happy.”
This photo was taken of me on that day
I wasn’t sure what prompted me to say this, but it is true.
I love and hate this photo. He used to capture fantastic photos of me, true photos of me. I am praying in this photo, perhaps trying to block out the lack of the love I used to feel and an attempt at being content with the love that remains.
It is truly me, even with the spot on my cheek waiting to be checked out by my doctor, the eyebrows that need reshaping, and my hair that was way too blonde for a while.
I am beyond happy. I don’t see happy as better than sad or maudlin as worse than blissful.
Authentic emotions, in the moment. That’s what I want to wear on my face.
This is me in the beginning of October, 2011. It is a very clear portrayal of precisely how I was feeling in that moment. I was in Westwood with my friend, Cameron. I asked him to take the shot and he just clicked away as I stood and "felt" - it is significant as a model (even if the only audience is you) to just be with what you are feeling instead of playing fashion model with the photographer choreographing the whole thing. If your intent is for a specific purpose other than catching your own authenticity, that is a whole different experience.
This photo was taken in September 2008, by my friend, Todd Powers with
Foxglove Photography. We did a session that night with these wonders of nature I had collected on a walk while I was working on a collection of poetry and essays called “Last Years Leaves.” I wish this photo shoot had an element of smell. It was soooooo heavenly with overripe and weathered, hungry leaves.
What I love is Todd gives me space to just experience and he just clicks. See how intent I am on the berries? I am not even thinking Todd is taking photos me me, I am clearly in the moment, a little sad, a little curious, a little hopeful, a little grounded, a little wishing I could float up and out of where I was.
This is Emma in Alice in Wonderland this November at her first High School play. She is an extension of me, always will be, and in this photo she reminds me so much of myself I decided to include it. She had a pretty miserable time during this process. This shot has the quality it does because I had to crop her out of a group but I love what her face says. “I am trying, I am here, I am successful because in my trying, I am doing, no matter how awkward or sad or lonely I am, I am here, on stage and in life, I am giving my all.”
My final photo for today is a self portrait I took. It was a part of my Soul Grief series. There was a time when I cried for 142 days in a row. I consciously created this because when I cried, I remembered, "I have no crying photos. Shoot this, now."
I wasn't faking these tears, I was feeling them.
I laugh now when I see women whose faces have been frozen in place by a variety of procedures so they can keep their skin smooth no matter what they are feeling. I would rather look conventionally ugly than falsely, conventionally beautiful.
Ironically, the second photo here - the one with my eyes open - is one of my favorite photos of myself looking, in my opinion, beautiful.
Don't you love photos like Emma's that say, "“I am trying, I am here, I am successful because in my trying, I am doing, no matter how awkward or sad or lonely I am, I am here, on stage and in life, I am giving my all.”
What more could life ask?
In the old days, I would plaster on my happy mask and move through my day, smiling no matter what. My mother even noted in my baby book, “Julie even smiles through her tears.” As a baby I had this life skill. As a baby I had this life skill.
It is a skill I no longer use. I am grateful for that.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
Are you ready to write from a prompt unlike any you have ever written from in the past? It is different because it is a sight of nature unseen by so many until now.
Your prompt is twofold: a still photo and a video.
Set your timer for either five, ten or 15 minutes.
Look at the photo.
Watch the Video.
Write from your senses using one or all of these prompts:
I see
I hear
I smell
I taste
I touch
I feel (as in emotion)
Just move your fingers on the keyboard, stream of consciousness style, across the keyboard. Don't think, just type. Repeat the prompt again. I see... I smell... and choose to mix them up if you would like.
There are no rules to writing from this image and this video, just write.
Honor this memory and this experience we now share.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
I hear dust from the days before the Vikings falling through the forest. I hear branches, creaking – born before the printing press – being torn from the body that had supported them for so long.
I see confusion.
I see stained glass.
I see awe on the faces of those who look upon her now.
I step into your veins and feel like I am stepping into every cavern I have ever visited. I become one with every nightmare and every pipedream I have ever breathed not into existence.
I feel my breasts fill with milk even though I have not had a baby in eleven years. I feel the urge to feed the babies, the ones who cannot speak or walk for whom there is only hope.
I see Moses’ mother and sister, waiting for safety for their little boy.
I see my mother and sister, giggling as I struggle to slide my feet into my short sheeted bed when I couldn’t translate their giggles and my complete confusion and heart pounding fear to be responding to the same thing.
I touch your protective coating – splintered and your inner coating, smooth. I notice the hands, the others, reaching out, and another other, speaking as if expert but knowing nothing, after all.
I touch inside you with my camera.
I feel miniscule.
I feel incapable to communicate who, what, how you are.
I want to bring people here, to sit with you, to engage with you, to come to know you intimately instead of sitting back and looking at photos or watching videos or thinking they know when they don’t know what it is like to touch the inside of a Sequoia’s bloodstream and suddenly understand how similar you are, only the tree is infinitely wiser and infinitely more capable to communicate even without the benefit of translatable language.
“All afternoon it rained, then
such a power came down from the clouds
on a yellow thread,
as authoritative as God is supposed to be.
When it hit the tree, her body
opened forever.”
In the spring it rained and the stream, as always, moved alongside these twin trees, standing tall like the twin towers had before they fell.
Somehow, they surmise, the life blood of the trees brought death to these two. Like all grief, it isn’t completely understandable yet how it happened. Scientists are in wonder, still now – and don’t logically try to explain it all away.
What I know is the tree and her innards touched me, my mind, my heart, my chest, my fingers, my awe has now opened forever.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
Because I constantly talked about Word Love in my original A to Z Challenge posts, I figured I would start the A to Z Roadtrip with a Word-love post. I am so glad I discovered the roadtrip! I have missed all of you!
I have refilled my coffee. I have grabbed an extra oreo. I have taken my butt and seated myself squarely in my chair to be sure I write, write, write without stopping as I share with you straight off the top of my head why my mission, to spread word love throughout the world is so important.
I am also going to offer to you the option of catching word-love fever.
I sat in a café in the unlikely location of Pierpoint Springs last week with a new friend from Austria. She was a couchsurfer and my family and home were the couchsurfees.
I have a compulsion to make each visit from each couchsurfer as memorable as possible. This is why we found ourselves at such a locale: we were on our way to Sequoia National Monument taking a different road than usual. I wanted to visit Miss Julie’s Bar which is back behind this gem of a diner in Pierpoint Springs, right on the edge of Camp Nelson, right on the edge of Sequoia National Monument’s Trail of 100 Giants.
The trail was our (supposed) destination after all.
We nibbled and chatted and I knew Chrissi, like myself, wasn’t one for idle chatter, so I pulled out my phone and started taking notes. Mostly I was transposing the words of a guy seated in the booth behind me. He was a sheriff’s officer, who was calling in a report on not his phone, but the diner’s phone. Once I heard “357 Magnum” I knew I needed to write this down.
No one would believe this was actually happening. It all seems too cliché and too “America has the craziest and most lovable wacky cast of characters imagineable.”
Chrissi asked me when I looked up, “Have you always known you were going to be a writer?” she asked.
I smiled and said, “I wrote before I knew how to write. I would dictate to my mother what I wanted to write, she would write my words on paper and I would then copy my words she had written.”
Before I was literate, I was in love with words.
I understood their power to create. I didn’t yet understand their power to destroy.
That would come later.
These days, though, I not only write, I teach writing to some and inspire the writing of others. Sometimes the “teaching” and “inspiring” are synonymous. I do this because I know lives are changed when we express what is inside us, begging for us to communicate it.
Even if the only reader is ourselves as we write in a journal which we may later burn, the words are given space outside our overfilled head. This is a huge blessing and this is where the word-romance begins.
Two words come together. They meet. They grow into more words, perhaps with a question mark attached.
I promised myself not to stretch these words out beyond my timer’s song. It just went off.
I love words.
I hope you love words OR if your romance is idle or dull or hasn’t begun yet, take a moment to write a sentence. “Writing and words serve me when they……” and just write a sentence. Be aware of how words show their love to you and you show your love to them.
And then spread the word-love, starting now.
I always have been a matchmaker, after all, a romantic seeking a world of surprising relationships.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
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