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Luckily there are tons of people that are good with numbers.

17.03.15
5 min
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  • Sup
  • Just listening to “hopeless romantic” songs. You?
  • Eating some pizza
  • Good.
  • What was going on with you yesterday?
  • I was sad because of a guy who didn’t love me and, I don’t know, I missed him and I was mad at me for missing someone who didn’t love me. You know, girls stuff.
  • And boys.
  • Yeah, as well.
  • What does the guy do?
  • What does he do with what?
  • With his life.
  • He moved far away. Luckily, I guess. One gets worked up anyway but at least you don’t see him around, that helps, I guess.
  • I think we’ve talked about this guy before.
  • Yes. I don’t change guys.
  • Uf
  • We can not talk about that if you want.
  • Hahaha. Whatever you want.
  • I don’t know. Whether I speak or not, it doesn’t stop being sad. I take a lot o time to get over someone. I suppose that’s why I don’t like people often. And that’s it. Good luck with your pizza.
  • Yeah. It took me a decade to get overa n ex. I really regret having lost that thinking time.
  • Yeah, I know. I choose not to think, but every once in a while It comes back.
  • Hahaha. If it comes back throw it away.
  • I don’t know, it’s hard when you still consider the other person as a good person and smart and a thousand things that make you not want to throw him away.
  • The other person doesn’t know how to love you.
  • I think he chose not to. At times he knew how to.
  • Right. He didn’t want to. Worse, right?
  • I don’t know, maybe at times he knew how to and at times he didn’t? Or sometimes you don’t want to because you come from a situation where you loved and it didn’t feel good. I’m at that moment right now.
  • It’s respectable.
  • Yeah, I also wander if it was me, if it was the moment, probably both. I would like to sleep for a week and wake up not feeling anything at all.
  • Yeah. Better to wake up and feel again.
  • No.
  • Being in love is a sensation in life, not a name.
  • It happened just once to me and I don’t want it to happen again.
  • OK.
  • Eventually if it has to happen it will. I just hope to be the one who gets tired of it before. You still feel bad, but it doesn’t torture you afterwards. You? Work? Girls?
  • I’m doing OK. Trying to have a year with a bit of luck.
  • With lots of luck.
  • I don’t ask for that much.
  • You have to ask for everything and then if you don’t get it, oh well.
  • Or ask for little and then they give you a lot.
  • To the universe you must ask for everything, because it has everything to give us. That’s what I’m talking about, the universe’s infinite abundance. You don’t have to ask for anything to people, they’ll give you everything if they want to, obviously I’m not talking about material things. Regarding the universe, I am talking about material things as well.
  • I’m not talking about the universe.
  • Right, I am.
  • I am talking about here.
  • Haha. And where do you think we are?
  • The people, the supermarket, the cyber cafe, the university.
  • That’s universe.
  • The universe is outer space.
  • If one day you are exhibiting your work at the MoMA, it’s because you and the universe worked together for that to happen.
  • It’s super far.
  • No, you’re on the Earth, which is a planet that’s in outer space. You are part of said outer space.
  • Hmmmm. I have no idea what you are talking about. I’ve never touched a star.
  • You became super anti-stars and your world shrank.
  • It got closer.
  • No, if that was the case you woud get that you’re part of the universe.
  • It doesn’t change a thing.
  • Yeah, if you think you deserve just a little luck, that’s all you’ll get. If you think you deserve lots of luck, you’ll get that.
  • If you want we can talk about astronomy. Or physics.
  • That’s a different thing.
  • But don’t mix love in this.
  • There’s lots of love in astronomy and physics.
  • Not at all. There’s lots of numbers.
  • So?
  • So what?
  • They are not necessarily separated. To me, an astronomer puts lots of love in what he studies.
  • Yes.
  • Same as a physician.
  • Yes. Become an astronomer.
  • I’m not really good with numbers but I’ve thought about it.
  • Ha. Same as me.
  • I’m not good with love either for that matter.
  • Nobody is good with love.
  • No, that’s true. Luckily there are tons of people that are good with numbers.
  • Yeah.

Meditative Rebirth

10.02.15
8 min
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I was brought-up Catholic. I still once in a while go to mass because it feels like meditating, I believe it truly is a form of meditation, since you don’t need to be in a yoga position saying: “Ommmm” to call it meditation. I got baptized at the age of 9, just before my first and only communion because my parents wanted me to decide whether I wanted to be a Catholic or not. I get pretty along with this religion since I shape it up as I want to. The protestants did, the Calvinists did, Henry VIII did.

I’ve been feeling really anxious and sad and tired and with a constant headache and a terrible neck pain so I thought, why not trying meditation and yoga again? I sorta mastered the scorpion position by now, and I’ve found a bit harder to meditate than in the past, so I thought of looking for some YouTube videos to help me on that, you know, guided meditation, soothing music, creation of a noble ambient.

Looking for that I remembered reading a Brian Weiss book regarding past lives regression. A lot of people call him a charlatan, but I don’t know, he’s a psychiatrist, he didn’t believe in all that himself, although he might be lying about all that to convince skeptic people, I don’t know why, but I believe him.

So I found a hypnosis exercise on YouTube that said to be the one that Brian Weiss uses with his patients. It was a woman talking. She first made you relax and visualize something then takes you to a past life through more visualizations. I did it. I didn’t have a vivid experience, maybe because my mind won’t stop for even a second, but I did feel being in a castle, at first I thought it might have been a church but it was my home. They ask you to look at your feet and the floor. It was white marble, shiny beautiful white marble and I was wearing blue or purple shoes with a jewel on them. I walked in the vast space which had really nice really antic furniture and I remember talking to an old lady that lived there about not wanting to get married to the man I was going to, but I was forced. I think I loved someone else. It kinda seems like a soap opera, but I vividly remember crying feeling so much angst. I was happy before that, and due to that marriage was never happy again in my life even though I had it all.

It is very common to think these are images you might have seen in a movie or a story you have read or maybe your own imagination. So I repeated the exercise today. This time I found a longer one guided by Brian Weiss himself. It was a bit difficult to fully relax since in the middle a storm started and the noises distracted me a bit since I was so relaxed I felt I might be in some sort of danger even though I wasn’t because I felt so vulnerable even thought Brian Weiss all the time tells you that you are safe.

At first he tells you to go through a childhood memory. He tells you a few times you can choose a happy one because the brain tends to lead you to the darkest ones. I started playing like a series of moments in my childhood and thought there was something wrong with me not being able to stick to one and remember it in fully detail, but then Weiss went on saying that it was ok if you found yourself in a series of childhood memories and I just let it happen. Remembered being in the pool with my sister on a really hot summer afternoon in February, the phone ringing and my mum telling me we had to go to the hospital really quick because my grandpa Alfonso had died. I started crying, my sister asked what was going on, I had to say I hit my knee in the pool and that was why I was crying. Then my head took me to Montevideo, Uruguay, to my other grandpa’s home, remember playing and celebrating his birthday, then I went to other memories in pools with my sister, this time they weren’t sad ones but I was sad that they were long gone. Then pools with my childhood friends.

After that Brian stops you and tells you to go further back, to the womb. I remember it being dark, I did not have the sensation of water. Weiss from time to time asks you stuff about what you are experiencing. He has this strong belief about one choosing our parents, so he asks you why did you choose your parents. Shortly before having him asking that, I felt myself as a little human being in fetal position, really worried. A voice from somewhere told me: “Don’t worry, there are going to be problems but it’s going to be alright.” I then felt somewhat relieved and Brian took me to the time of my birth. I didn’t feel myself being popped out of my mum’s vagina really, it felt like going into somewhere where there was light, yes, after being in the dark. I remember seeing something like my mum’s face from below but it was my own current face, so that was confusing. Then I felt my mum touching my little long fingers. Then I saw everything like a movie, my mum super happy to hold me, I was wearing a white wool baby thingy because it was winter, with a matching white wool hat on my head. I don’t know if that’s the way it was, but it seemed real.

He then makes you go further back, to a past life. The two times I’ve done it first thing I did was to look at my feet. This time they were a man’s feet. I was barefoot, they were big, wide, hairy man feet. I was in bed with my beautiful wife, it was like a cabin in an ancient village. She was delicate as a flower and I felt big and ugly like a troll. The first memory was me grabbing her in bed and having sweet but rough sex. I thought: “Is this supposed to be part of my past life memory or am I masturbating too much these days?” I thought that I should let it be no matter what. She seemed to be enjoying it, we had real chemistry but something felt off. Then I saw her in bed, pregnant. Then we were at home, we had three beautiful boys. Then I saw it like a movie, the image of my wife kissing another man, his features were more delicate than mine, even though he still looked masculine. One of my boys had his hair like him. I thought about probably none of my children being mine of maybe some of them were but then thought my wife had that same hair colour as well, and that I shouldn’t think of that, they were my boys no matter what. I was a pacific man, so I just let her leave me and go with that man. I felt so heartbroken ever since and tried to keep on living but I was always sad. My village was really small, few houses surrounding a round square in the middle, no grass, straw roofs, mud houses. I was a redhead but a lot of people had fair hair, my wife had olive skin. I’ve never fell in love nor was with anyone ever again. Then Brian Weiss tells you to go the death experience in that life, and I saw myself in bed, and my ex-wife crying, realizing she never stopped loving me, she was just fed up with our life. My kids were there as well, now grown-ups. I died from a heartbreak, it took long, but I never recovered my wife leaving me and I was sad all the time. I wasn’t sick, I could tell, I was heartbroken. It was nice to see me she loved me, it was hard to know that in my deathbed. After that, Brian Weiss leads you slowly and nicely to awaken, feeling your muscles again, opening your eyes, stretching if needed.

I don’t know if this was imagination, things I’ve seen in a movie, or what, I don’t really know how to feel afterwards, you are supposed to feel somewhat healed, that maybe you carried something from that life into this one, some lesson you haven’t properly learnt. I’m not sure what that is in these cases, I don’t know if I truly feel better, but Dr. Weiss says practice make the master and maybe with time I get more vivid and deeper experiences that sweep me off my little skepticism and teaches me the lessons I’ve still haven’t mastered after all this time.

The Beach and the Bar, the Bar and the Beach

27.01.15
11 min
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There are two great places where you can lose yourself and think about everything and nothing with a thousand miles look on. I’ve been to both this week. I went with some friends to the beach this weekend. It was amazing, I’ve been missing the beach badly after returning to Buenos Aires from Mar del Plata, which was more like winter due to the weather so not so much of lying down feeling the warm sand under your skin after swimming in the Atlantic Ocean’s cool water. My friend’s house is a block away from the beach in Villa Gesell, where I haven’t been since I’m 1-year-old, literally. We were at the south of the city, the beaches are wider than in Mar del Plata where both the sea and the tents you can rent to avoid the windy weather slowly minimized the public, free, dispossessed coast to almost nothing, being unbearably crowded during the amazing month of January. The last day at Villa Gesell, a friend decided he wasn’t going to sleep after going to a club. We went to the beach to see the sunrise. The castle I built that warm afternoon was surprisingly still there, only to be almost destroyed by two waves shortly after I arrived. The tunnel I made was also there, which was even more surprising. Nobody had stepped on it, I could put my hands through both sides of the tunnel and still make them touch in the middle. The waves turned the tunnel into two pools for the castle a little afterwards. We had a smoke and looked at the violet, pink and oranges of the sky at dawn. Two guys were trying to get into some small boats every time a wave came so they didn’t have to step into the water to start paddling. They fell a few times, it was funny to watch. I decided to sleep for at least 3 hours and my friend had the keys so he came back to the house with me. I couldn’t sleep well because as he was awake like a hamster in a cage not exactly knowing what to do with himself, he kept making lots of noises, and I was feeling too lazy to go and say anything to him. Three hours later I was having breakfast, my friend’s mum gave me the news that Alberto Nisman had “committed suicide”. I’ve been reading a sci-fi short story called “Escape from Spiderhead” by George Saunders while sitting on the branch of an old pine in the garden of the house and it seemed like I was being part of a sci-fi short story myself. After breakfast I went to the beach. I started walking towards the pier which was 20 blocks away. It reminded me being under the Coney Island pier, which is larger, but being under the pier, watching the waves breaking there, made me feel the exact same. I tried to walk over the pier but there was a fee: if you had any kind of fishing gear it was $25, if you wanted to just walk around, $15, if you were a senior citizen, $5. The day was windy and cloudy and cold, it looked like it was about to rain all the time, so the pier was pretty full and the beach pretty empty except for people walking just like me.  I wasn’t willing to pay for that so I kept walking a bit past the pier. Then I started going back to my beach. Apparently the mist didn’t allow me to see clearly, or I entered some kind of time and space vortex because I could not remember any visual sign that made me notice I was getting near my beach. I saw one of the beaches, that I remembered was a few beaches before mine that was called “Sun of the South” (Sol del Sur) so I kept walking, happy to know that I was near. And walking some more. And walking. And all I could see were things I’ve never seen before during my walk. And the beaches got wider and the people fewer and the architecture of the place got more like the style of La Barra in Punta del Este, typical white wooden houses with blue roofs or low rectangular modern buildings with a sea view. I blamed myself for not taking the camera. I didn’t because I thought at some point I would go into the sea and swim for a while. I wanted to but I didn’t want to leave my stuff alone and the sea was wilder and braver that day. There was a long row of beach plastic chairs at some hotel’s beach. I sat there for a while, saw a fisherman in the distance. Didn’t know where I was, didn’t want to ask. Not that there was a lot of people who would knew around. I stared at the sea from that big plastic chair for a while and decided to keep on walking because we were returning to Buenos Aires at 2PM and didn’t want to be late. I kept on walking. Past the fisherman. Thought about asking him where I was, but didn’t want to bother him, he was enjoying his fishing. I looked back at the pier, now a black long line in the horizon surrounded by mist. I never remembered seeing it from our beach, so I thought I had to keep going yet. I didn’t remember walking that much to the pier before, but now I had the wind against me, so I assumed that made me feel like I had been walking a lot more. I started to get tired, which was rather weird to me. I’ve been walking with my feet in the water, the wet sand making it harder, maybe it was that. I kept walking. After a while I saw some kids sandboarding from a dune. Their dad waiting at the beach on a quadrycylcle. I decided to ask him. He told me he did not know exactly, but that we probably were near 160 St. My beach was back at 141 St. I had no idea how I got lost that much, I felt like a group of fairies had convinced me to dance with them and entered another dimension. I think it felt more like mermaids did it although that is not exactly what mermaids do. They don’t trick you to dance and swim with them so you enter another dimension and then you come back not knowing where you are and what you thought was 20 minutes was 80 years in the real world, they usually sing and make ships sink, but it did feel like some mermaids had tricked me into walking by the sea for like forever. I didn’t struggle, though, just went along with it. After watching one of the man’s daughter sandboarding down the dune and after that, him going for her on the quadrycycle and taking her all the way back up, which I thought was fun and practical, not for the man, though, I started to go back. A few blocks later I asked a lifeguard who told me I was on 175 Street, (so the man on the quadrycycle didn’t really know where he was either) “You must be walking since morning!”, he said and I didn’t dare to ask what time it was because I didn’t want to think that my friends were probably already really mad at me. I couldn’t believe I was that far, yet I could. I couldn’t see the pier any longer nor any building that might look like the landscape near my beach. I continued walking, afraid to not find Sunset beach once again. But after a long walk, where I thought my legs wouldn’t take it then going past that sensation regaining that strength that appears after a long time exercising when you think you can’t take it any longer and you have no idea where it comes from but you are oh so glad it did (especially now that I had to return and there was no other way), seeing lifeguards trucks going my way passing me, not giving me the chance to run and scream for a ride, I saw the sign. It read “Sunset”. I didn’t get how I could’ve missed it before. I lied down on the sand, resting my legs, with a thousand miles look staring at the sea, embracing what was left of my stay at the beach, thinking about everything and nothing all at once. I went back to the house and as I got in my friend’s mum said: “Here she is! They were about to leave you!” I looked at the clock on the house’s alarm system and it read 14:47. I thought it was around 1PM, I really lose track of time at the beach. Back in the city, I had to get together with a friend to give him back his camping gear which he lent me back in October. We met at a bar. I sat at the bar because I knew the bartender, the place was full and I prefer to sit at the bar. I gave my friend his stuff back. It was somewhat refreshing being at a bar even though the landscape was far from a beach. The next night, after a meeting that intensified the mild hangover and the lack of sleep, I called a friend as I got off the train to see if she fancied going to the bar and grab a cold one before heading back home and die on my bed. She was tired so she passed and told me to go by myself to unwind. It had been a while since I’ve been to a bar by myself, but being really hungry and really wanting a drink, I decided to go after all. As I sat at the bar, I felt relief, I felt like there was nothing I could do but just relax and put my best thousand miles look on. So I asked for half a pizza and a Fernet & Coke for myself and enjoyed the feeling of time passing by without doing anything about it, same as at the beach. I chat a bit with the bartenders, some old guy then started chatting to me nonstop, which gave me a headache and I didn’t want to be rude and he was playing smartypants and I wasn’t really up for that kind of pseudo intellectual conversation, I just wanted to be a female, classier version of Barney Gumble and enjoy what was left of my drink. So after a while I started to put my thousand miles look on straight to the bar, paying less and less attention to him little by little. I’ve told him not to ask me intellectual questions, not that night, not at a bar, not while I was enjoying a drink by myself after a long day. He, little by little, after half an hour of nonstop talking, got the message and said something like: “OK, I’ll say this and I leave you alone…” I smiled politely and said: “OK, I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m really tired and don’t want to think of these kind of stuff right now…”. He got it, he said it was fine. I don’t remember what he said, but by the time his sentence was over, I turned my head to the right (he was on my left) and there he was, a friend that have gotten back from living in Berlin for a year or so. I was glad to meet him by chance there, at the bar, such a nice place for casual encounters with people whom you haven’t seen in a long while. We had a nice chat and a drink and then he walked me to my bus stop, which passes till the early hour of 11PM. Enjoying sips of his Cynar & Tonic under the starry, summer sky on the corner, we waited for my bus for like 10 minutes enjoying a nice conversation till it arrived, both noticeably glad the bar spontaneously brought us together while I was thinking and relaxing with my thousand miles look on; same as when I sit on the sand staring at the sea, thinking, with that same look on, and a friend I haven’t seen in a long time (because he lives by the beach and I don’t) passes by and calls my name with a surprise look on his face and we have a nice small talk before he runs into the sea to catch some waves.

Beny Wagner
by
Wojciech Kosma
People

I met Beny in the wildness of Poland. Once during our trip, we were out playing, throwing shit around, walking and running in circles. Also talking. I listened to a conversation Beny was having with someone. They were asserting the importance of being humbled, reclaiming the verb—to humble—for a positive use. There was something dissonant about the moment—heavy, heady language conveying an alluring meaning. It remained it my memory. Perhaps it also did enchant how I saw him since, as someone who embodies a contradiction—of being verbose and humble. Beny does it beautifully, with a slightly rough kind of grace.

Groin Gazing

26.01.15
7 min
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As an aside, I wonder how the silent ‘war’ with the gazer ended. I will come back to my deliberate use of the word war. The unfortunate constellation you talked about certainly involves power and harassment. A man who openly stares, whistles or calls out sexual innuendos at a woman is not realistically trying to seduce. He is simply trying to intimidate by openly proclaiming to her that she is a sex object, and at the same time affirm and thrill himself with his masculinity. It isn’t about desire per se. To further invoke Berger, it is correct to say this arises from how a man’s presence in the world is constructed – as a potent force, powerful and able to act; a woman’s presence, on the other hand, is always about itself, about what can or cannot be done to her, never by her. So, yes, harassment involves power. It’s about taking pleasure in feeling superior over another human being.
Note that I use the word construct with reference to masculinity and femininity. It’s why I hesitate to include resentment in our constellation. To begin with my use of the word war. My refusal of the term resentment is predicated on its implication of a war of the sexes. Who are these men who resent women for the reasons you outlined? Are men all the same then? In any case, what do men want from women? Just to be desired? It seem to me that implicit in what you wrote is that violence and aggression towards women is inherent to men, with rape being a weapon used by men to oppress women. Picture them: helpless prisoners of their testosterone – insatiable and sexually aggressive towards their object of desire. This outlook necessarily boil down to the notion that all men are bastards who benefit from women’s oppression. I’ve always opposed this biological determinism that presumed men aggressive and violent by nature, while women are naturally caring.
What you say about the possibility of overturning gender hierarchy, of men being at the receiving end of the [female] gaze, as tantalising as it may seem, overlooks the fact that objectification of women is (no longer directly) male-driven. This concept takes as its starting point the notion that the objectification of women necessarily benefits the majority of men – whose own lives are actually blighted by the distortions of male and female sexuality. Men and women are shaped by society, with gender roles implanted from a very early age. The thing is that men have the legitimacy of examining women – while women examine themselves being examined (for instance, you observing yourself being observed during the train ride and being trapped by the man’s gaze). But, it is correct to say that women has internalized the objectification of themselves and now do to themselves what men are usually accused of doing to women.
So, who has the power – the one who desires or the one being desired? The thing is to refuse the question. I am for non-belligerent relationship between the sexes. I do agree that women’s desire should exist on an equal basis with men’s without them being seen as “sluts.” The paradox is that the same world where women are seen as sexual objects still traps them in a denial of their own sexual needs. A question comes to mind. When you talk of wanting to go topless in summer and a man admires your breasts, has he objectified you? Where do we draw the line between a gaze that objectifies and a look that admires? In spite of the generalized randiness exhibited by a culture of fetishism of sexuality, there’s no escaping the feeling that underneath it all is a pervasive sexual dissatisfaction; there’s no escaping the strong feeling that there’s less of a real desire for sexual liberation, as of a need to destroy men by a provocative exhibitionism that further objectifies women. My fear is that to want to walk around topless may tend unconsciously towards this fetishism of sexuality – the legitimization, by women, of themselves as sex objects under the superficial guise of affirming female sexuality.
I recognize the necessity of creating a space in which women’s sexuality could be seriously discussed by both women and men, however, the trend is to present the human person not as a sexual being but as a commodity – the sexuality is stripped from its humanity and becomes a commodity. This is the fetishism of commodities about which Marx wrote. I’m reminded of a brief polemic with a Latina concerning Beyonce’s feminism as empowering and a triumph for female sexual liberation. The irony inherent in this noisy celebration is that rather than overcoming sexism, Beyonce actually surrenders to it. On the other hand, compare how shocking and provocative Jane Birkin was in the song Je T’Aime (Moi Non Plus) where Birkin seem to be in the throes of orgasm. Whereas there’s real erotic power in Birkin, Beyonce comes across as sexism made sexy. In place of genuine eroticism you have packaged exhibitionism.
This surrender is all the more insidious because it feeds on women’s struggles for the right to assert their sexual needs and desires, to be more than mere objects for the enjoyment of others – and because it is sold as a liberated way for women to express their sexuality it perpetuates the very process of objectification it claims to negate. The mainstreaming of porn, viz., the rise of what Ariel Levy refers to as “Raunch Culture” – strip bars, pole/ lap-dancing and so on – all show the extent to which human sexuality has become fetishised. This is a most graphic expression of alienation and fetishism in decaying bourgeois society. Attention is drawn, not to the humanity but to the sexuality. And so, what we’ve ended up with is a dialectical paradox: this expression of sexuality that was supposed to reflect the final liberation of female sexuality, that was supposed to challenge objectification and the repression of women’s sexuality – this very expression of female sexuality ends up objectifying and commodifying women as mere sexual objects in more crude and vulgar ways. The attention is not in the person as a sexual being. Rather, the sexuality has become more important than the person. It is an expression, not of liberation, but of submission to a sexed-up stereotype.
We are also in agreement with some of what you say about sex-work – decriminalisation, unionisation etc. Just that, for me, prostitution is not a job like any other. The commodification and alienation of sexuality finds its sharpest expression in prostitution. A part of our humanity, our sexuality is dehumanized and transformed into something alien to us, to be bought and sold. How can genuine sexual needs be satisfied this way? You correctly pointed out that the condition under which this transaction takes place precludes an acknowledgment of the other as a person, an equal, someone who also has needs. Bourgeois society is incapable of offering satisfying (sexual) relationships. A society in which this most intimate relationship will not involve monetary transaction is one in which genuine sexual liberation, increased openness about sex and sexuality will exist. It will be one in which (even regulated) sex-work will not exist.
How do Nigerian women look at men? Among an emerging generation it is at once inviting, challenging, provocative, assessing, and it could be nothing – just holding a male look. It is mostly the second. I will tell you though that even among this layer, for all their brazenness, it is not uncommon to hear a woman say, “Before you brag about sleeping with a woman, make sure you satisfied her.” Thus, she still thinks of sex as something that’s done to her, not, to use your word, a play she actively participates in. Which brings me to the use of the term play. Why is sex not a comingling of passion, a shared intimacy? Why do you call it play?

On Love

26.01.15
8 min
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Love as loss, because the way children love seems to be the truest love I have seen. Since this will inevitably be lost all I can do is to try to re-create this once I outgrow childhood. Maybe that is how I use Love and Memory in my novel. Re-creating a world where love made everything around us loveable just the way it is because it was distinctively ours (I remember how I once I went for a walk and passed by a really obese and rather unattractive father – he had his kid jump up and down on him, laughing at him, then kissing him, caressing him – loving him and no other father). We don´t chose as long as we are kids, somehow we just love the world surrounding us no matter how dysfunctional it seems from outside…  In my novel I use memory as the sculptor of that loss, giving shape to that hole, that we were born to love and that we later leave behind….  That abandoned hole works like a prism for our lives, every experience is reflected through it… Later in life we chose deliberately, we create consciously, though we like to use the rethorics of „You don´t chose who you love“ many of us do chose (same class, same education, same age – or at least something that favours our image of who we want to be as an adult)…. Are we to blame us therefore? Chosing – the freedom of choice – is part of our dignity as human beings, and yet it is almost humiliating to see how what we chose often seems designed by a certain zeitgeist (which is in an almost satirical way displayed when we are travelling today´s megacities and observering the same sort of coffee-nerds popping up all over the world, they even pick a similar interior design for their coffeshops). We tell ourselves all kinds of stories, all kinds of stories are being told and we believe them – but our belief gives us no hint about the truth contained in these stories… Joan Didion tried to tell herself the story of her beloved coming back even after he died… We can believe all kinds of stories which is what makes life so difficult; now that there seem to be more options for who we are (and love) available, it seems even more difficult to truly be (and love)…
Last week I strolled through Vienna, and after two days I felt part of a world that didn´t exist anymore (like in Woody Allen´s movie where he meets up with Hemingway, Fitzgerald etc in Paris), I sort of met up with Thomas Bernhard, Gustav Klimt and Mahler, Alma Mahler-Werfel, boy, have they all loved and unloved… What stories they told, and people told about them, museums and history books telling their lives and stories… (Here again: This obsessive remembering seems like some kind of love…) Interestingly, Freud, whose house I visited, the man who tried to heal neurosis by finding a coherent story for the often displaced experience that caused it, had a sort of very stable life, an oldfashioned marriage, six kids! (Though he said marriage is not the best place to live out sexuality…) In this psychoanalytical phantasizing about who we are, the cathartic experience through storytelling is considered the truth about us and our life… It seems a very interesting approach: The the fiction about who we were should provide us with information about who we are… It actually doesn´t seem to matter if the fiction is true or if it just fits into the shattered hole. (Or is healing only taking place when we find the story exactly fitting into that fraction?) The times I live in has found and lost itself in this thinking… Everybody seems to need a professional sounding board to know who he is by the very constructed narrative of who we supposedly were. How does that affect who we are and what we are? And who we love? Why was psychoanalysis so much about the past? Maybe because the intensity of our loving as children is so immense that it almost feels like in the first years of our lives rails are being laid in the lovelandscapes of our lives… And later on, all our loving is like a journey on the railways, on these paths. It´s a hell of work to create others, some encounters carry that magical gift to in iteself be able to create others…. More often adult love remains overshadowed… Like the writer Nicole Krauss once said she had always been observing her life, it was only when she gave birth to her first child, she said, that she found back to being in a moment instead of observing it (which also means that the love towards that kid´s father was not able to create that inside her)… There is a chance that parental and childhood love is the only kind of love that silences the observer inside us… Unmittelbarkeit. Maybe physical love is, too.
That book you read, the story it tells: I find these kind of narratives games of thought that I find hard believe… There is in such a plausible manner so much construction, narration, storytelling, which is fine but it´s a man´s game to own the world that in itself does not provide this kind of sedation… Life is disruptive, incoherent. Love is, since it is life. I get a little anxious when logical storytelling starts claiming real explanations about what the world is or – even worse – was like …  As long as we treat that kind of knowledge as stories in order to survive what we don´t understand, tools to master experiences, I am interested – but as academic and plausible as it seems, it is in its own way fictional… I don´t believe that we created this kind of suffering by setting up morals to our sexual desires (why was there a need to do so in the first place)… I believe that fight between desire and destruction is much older than our morals…
The „story about lost love“ to a certain extent replace that „lost love“. That is maybe why we so love therapy nowadays: it allows us to come back and back to our childhood, pretending it is only in order to become better adults… Which we in the end might well become… Memory here works as a way to keep love alive and wipe out the experience of time passing. And at the same time, by creating a coherent story, makes past out of a memory that was incoherently present inside us….
I was rarely in love while in love. I was ecstatic when people were able to move me, it rather felt like what Poe (?)  called an overalterness of senses. I fell in love – afterwards. When I felt what it was like not to be around a certain person. Not to be the person I was around that person. As selfish as it may sound, I didn´t only miss the beloved, I just as much missed the person the beloved would let me be… The adult creation of love happens in the longing, in the remembering, in the re-creation of the moments you fell in love with by placing them into the narrative of your life. The child´s creation of love happens in the arriving, being. Can you own a story by telling it? Do we really own our lives, and our psyches, do we heal them by creating coherent stories of what we think what once happened? And when we tell other people´s stories better then they could, who then owns these stories? Ownership, not in the sense of owning the story of a person but a memory of that person. Expressing love by showing that their personality was the texture of the stories you tell… The ones I love(d). I think of them. I (re)create them while I think of them. I love them this way. It might sound like a lot. But maybe, at the same time, it shows that it is not. That they are not. My phantasy needs to add to them, my love for them will only be complete if I try to express it. Will reality ever be enough?
That´s how I employed „love“ and „memory“ in my novel. My Love for people who never told their stories somehow asked of me to claim the right to remember their stories… Is that love or abuse of it? Love is also despair, cause you long to be understood. And sometimes you even dare to expect to maintain that feeling of being understood. Though tides and inreliablities are part of life and every human being. How can we be one person, when we are hardly ever the same. How can we love one person when she/he is hardly ever the same. And  if she/he ist he same, it might just as well kill someting vital inside us and them. When life (and who we are) changes in an instant, as Joan Didion put it in her Year of Magical Thinking – then how can we really love?

Fishing cane my parents bought me first time I were in San Pedro in 1997
First fish I caught fishing with my uncles in La Coronilla, Rocha, Uruguay, summer 2014

Travel Logbook: San Pedro

30.12.14
19 min
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What I already knew about San Pedro: The first time I went to San Pedro was the weekend before starting 1st grade in 1997. My mum was pregnant with my sister, it was our last trip as a three-membered family. My dad bought me a fishing rod made of cane with no mechanism whatsoever. I didn’t catch a thing. Nobody did except for a boy who caught a tiny fish that day.

Since I was a little girl I’ve wanted to learn how to fish. Now I can do it with a little help. In Uruguay, with my uncles in Rocha’s beaches by the breakwater and here in Argentina I always ask my dad to teach me but it’s something he does with his friends.

About San Pedro I know there’s really tasty oranges (gotta buy some) and it’s located by the Parana river (I would love to just sun bath and swim during the whole stay). The guys in my shooting group reminded me the existence of the honky-tonk festival in San Pedro where they get together and dance to country songs. It was like a month ago, but we’ll research about it. Sometimes with my dad, his girlfriend and my sister we go to the movies at a shopping mall and when we come out of the movie we see all the honkies with their cowboy suits and we go to their free honky-tonk lesson. It’s really fun. A classmate told me about some guy’s yard full of sculptures. Apparently, he’s well-known in San Pedro. Later that day I went to my dressmaker’s house to try on my belly dance dress and she told me about Monica & Cesar’s farm. They are a famous news anchor couple who several years ago bought a farm in San Pedro which you can visit as a tourist attraction. My dressmaker lives two blocks from my house and her daughter used to be a dance classmate of mine. She also told me that in San Pedro was the battle of Vuelta de Obligado, where Argentinian creoles put chains in the river so the English and French navy couldn’t pass. They succeded, so now there’s a museum and a monument.The brand new November 24th national holiday is to commemorate this battle. Preparation: On Monday at university they told us we had to have edited audiovisual material by next Monday. The final project consisted in going two or more times to a small town in Buenos Aires. First time would be to have the first impressions of the place, second (and third if necessary) would be to go with a shooting plan. We had to go ASAP and apart from shooting and taking photographs and having them revealed over the weekend, which is impossible. I’m burnt out from nearly not sleeping during the past three weeks and I’ve learnt to live with a constant, never-ending headache. Partial exam. Proofread a whole 400 pages magazine and its translations in a week. Shooting. Edition. Handing over previous project. Dissolution of previous project’s  group. Get a new group and organize a trip in an afternoon. Luckily, we agreed on timing and we leave on Thursday. I leave in a charter from Panamericana y Marquez, 15 blocks from my house in the northern outskirts of Buenos Aires, they go by bus from Retiro’s terminal, near downtown. We’ll stay at the Federal Shooting Campsite because they rent tents. These days I’ve been all around the city asking for lent camping gear to friend’s who said yes, then no, then asking another one, finding solutions. Exhaustion. The hours are way too short and Buenos Aires is too damn big. – Rent a tent (call the campsite) ✓ – Get an analog camera ✓ – Get 35mm film – Go to the office ✓ – Buy water ✓ – Go to my dance class (got there awfully late) ✓ – Call a cab for tomorrow ✓ – Laundry ✓ – Pack ✓ – Ask for a sleeping bag (Dani, Leo, D ✓) – Meet T for camera – Buy a disposable camera ✓ –  Go to D’s for sleeping bag ✓ I found an analog Kodak Brownie Fiesta camera at home. I took it to Pluscolor (photography store) and they told me the 127 Kodak film hasn’t been made for years now. This broke my heart a little bit because it’s a beautiful camera and really wanted to try it. 9:40 AM Cab arrives to take me to the charter stop. 10 AM Charter that leaves me at the campsite arrives to Panamericana and Marquez. I’m going to take a shower and try to pack and sleep. I’m taking Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” because I thought it was suitable because I was going on a kind of improvised trip as well and because I’m having a hard time getting hooked with this book except for some sporadic parts that make me laugh or some really good parts or quotes but they are pretty isolated in the whole book. I’ve been reading it for a year now, forcing myself to read it right now, really. Sorta boring. I’m about to finish it by now. I really love Kerouac but maybe that thing Truman Capote said about “On the Road” not being writing but mere typing makes a little bit of sense. The lack of sleep made me to not enjoy Seinfeld during breakfast. Panamericana and Marquez. Charter half an hour late. I hop on and one of the only two other passengers was a familiar face. What are the odds of that happening on a Thursday morning of a busy month? He is an artist I met in some exhibitions that lived for a year in 2013 in San Pedro. He told me some stuff about San Pedro and places to go like bars and the night club’s monopoly and their owners. He used to look after one of those guy’s houses while he was gone. The charter left me at the Federal Shooting campsite. I told the woman at the check-in counter that I would pay when my classmates arrived. I sat down and waited for them. The pool exploded with a large group of fifteen-year-olds that were all over the place. A group of them almost get into a ramble, another group was shaking a tree. My classmates arrived and we went to pay, the check-in counter lady got mad at me because I didn’t tell her I had a tent reserved, which was already put up at the campsite. I thought it was amazing that it had been already put up and didn’t have to take care of that myself. We left our stuff in the tent. Martin didn’t have a camera but at the campsite’s grocery store they were selling a Kodak analog camera from Brazil, 35mm film and batteries included for $70 Argentinian pesos. The film wouldn’t get hooked up to the camera mechanism. Half an hour trying to make it work. The two women at the grocery store, which I figured were mother and daughter, didn’t like us because not only we didn’t buy the camera, but we also ruined the film.

Federal Shooting campsite entrance

33 Celsius degrees going up a rift. The rustic stairs they made to go up the rift didn’t make it easier.

The view paid off, which was necessary to recover energy and air after going up. After 15 minutes of walking, some photographs and the first impressions of the town, we got to the Old Shipyard, a place the visual artist Juan De Stefano recovered and turned into a place where he permanently exhibits his iron sculptures, a place where the history of the humble neighborhood Las Canaletas is preserved and passed on, where the children learn how to make clay sculptures and a place with a 100% public access to the river (San Pedro used to have a municipal beach but now every safe, beach access to the river has a price). When we got there, Juan was at his house, in front of the Old Shipyard, working, but the place was full of kids swimming and playing in the water and jumping from the pier.

Boys swimming and playing at the Old Shipyard

Boy swimming at the Old Shipyard

Juan De Stefano’s iron sculpture by the river at the Old Shipyard

I asked a girl who was previously slacklining and was now sitting by the river with a man and a guy where was Vuelta de Obligado, how to get there and where could we get something to eat. They told me where to eat by the river and that Vuelta de Obligado was 20 Km. away and we could take a bus from the terminal. I told my classmates, we thanked them and as we left, they told us they were going to Vuelta de Obligado and they could take us in their car. After a long pause, telepathic conversation, doubt and mistrust, Majo, the woman, said to us: “So, guys, do you dare?”

I thought we might either end up starring in a B Class horror movie or that it could be really good. Paranoia made me, just in case, text my mum the Chevrolet’s plate and took a picture of it with my disposable analog camera. If everything resulted in a B class horror movie, it would be like Blair Witch Project but more vintage.

We went to the Vuelta de Obligado Battle museum. The monument is like a fountain that is a semi-circular wall of water gushing giant chains. 30 Celsius degrees. The monument’s waterjets were off.

Me, all touristy with the Vuelta de Obligado Battle monument

We smoked a bit of weed in the museum’s woods and by its pier but I didn’t smoke much because I wanted to be alert… I didn’t want us to get robbed and left in the middle of nowhere just for being the stupid stoner of the movie. We left the museum around 4 PM and we went to “A lo Cacho”, a typical town bar. We had a beer that returned me to life. After a while of interacting with the locals, Majo, who was waiting in the car, demanded that we left to “The Broken Bridge”. Ruben, “A lo Cacho”‘s manager, told us while serving a glass of Tacon (herbal beverage) to the gaucho Mario, that his bar had served as location of a film that won awards in a Berlin festival.

Colo’s Chevrolet parked at A lo Cacho

El Colo having a beer, me by the bar inside.

A lo Cacho. Inside, Nico and I having a beer at the bar.

Mario, the gaucho

We went on “El Colo”‘s (one of the guys we met with Majo, whose nickname translates as “The Redhead”) white Chevrolet listening to Colombian cumbia, salsa, reggae, looking for Majo’s ex-band in that playlist. Every once in a while “el Colo” would say that there was nobody around nor any kind of signal, something that I usually think as great, now made me think we were going to die there.”El Colo” insisted that it wasn’t like in Buenos Aires (where he is originally from), though, that you could trust people in small towns. The Broken Bridge was baptized that way last year when the stream went up so much that the water broke it leaving hanging wooden beams and enormous rocks coming out of the water. We went into a private land, past the wire fence and there, surrounded by cows and horses, we went into the water. It was something beautiful after such heat. Majo was scared and thought there might be either fishes or snakes. “El Colo” said there might be Cucumelo there and we looked for it in the cows’ shit for a while with no success.

Majo, Martin, El Colo and I

El Colo by the Broken Bridge

From left to right: Nico, me, Martin, the crew.

Majo, El Colo, me sun bathing at the Broken Bridge

We went back to “A lo Cacho”. I was wrecked. We haven’t eaten anything all day. Majo and “El Colo” played pool. Ruben told me the ravioli with stew was $95 Argentinian pesos. “El Colo” had recently told me that San Pedro’s restaurants were expensive as if we were in Las Cañitas (posh Buenos Aires neighborhood) even if it was just a small lousy canteen. When I heard that price my eyebrows spontaneously went up in awe and said: “What?!”. Ruben then answered: I can make it $90 for you, with that face, you can do whatever you want…” I felt flattered till I realized my beauty was worth $5 pesos. “El Colo” asked for a Pappo’s song, another one asked later for a Rolling Stone’s song and afterwards was Amy Winehouse’s turn. I decided to pay that much for the ravioli because I needed to regain strength and if I needed to run or escape I was going to need it (I wasn’t really trusting yet… especially after hearing one of the locals say: “The guys keep on shooting?” and some stuff that were unintelligible and “El Colo” said: “Yeah… The perfect crime.”).

El Colo and Majo playing pool at A lo Cacho

Nico, Pedro, Ruben and I

The stars in the road looked amazingly beautiful and bright. Either lying by the water stream with my face all covered in mud (great clay facial mask for free) or sunbathing in the field or on the car looking at the stars, I was so relaxed that I thought that it didn’t matter if “El Colo” grabbed an axe and cut me in two or some kind of exaggerated, dramatic, bloody death like that because in that moment, I was happy. “El Colo” and Majo talked about stopping by the road at night to have Mate (Argentinian infusion). I wanted to take a shower (and live) so I said no. They took us to the campsite and we agreed on going to a bar called Viento Sur at night. The shower had an amazing water pressure so it felt like a massage session. Martin forgot the adaptor to charge the camera’s battery. I went to the check-in counter, a bungalow next to the campsite, the restaurant int front of the campsite called “Riviera”, and to the Howard Johnson hotel next to the restaurant. Nobody had an adaptor. We called “El Colo” At Viento Sur we were able to charge the battery for a while. It was 11 PM of a Thursday night so there were a few groups of young people and a group of thirty-somethings with a baby. My classmates ate fries. Majo came by and we had a beer. I wanted to sleep, we had to wake up early to return the tent at 9 AM. Day 2 We arranged with Juan De Stefano that we would meet at the Old Shipyard at 12:30 because it was closed the day before. We took a different way, Martin bought his disposable camera at last and we arrived, followed by three beautiful dogs that came along with us in our adventure to a ship that was at the Malvinas (Falklands for English speakers) war, now a museum. One of the dogs got to the ship with a hurt leg because getting there, a big dog came out of a house and bit it. It broke my heart to watch everything not being able of doing anything because I’m super scared of big dogs, especially when they are barking and biting, and everybody in San Pedro leave their dogs out, so this things happen. I was scared of some dog every two blocks. The other two dogs jumped into the river when we got to the ship, the hurt one couldn’t. We went to take a look at the ship. I love ships so I really enjoyed it. When we came out, only one dog remained waiting for us.

One of the dogs about to go into the water.

The ship, once at the Malvinas war, now a museum.

I’m on a boat

Cartography and window reflex

After the ship we finally went to the Old Shipyard to talk to Juan. He told us about his neighborhood, Las Canaletas, the Old Shipyard, the river, the gutters that give the name to the neighborhood (Las Canaletas means “The Gutters” in English…It’s a bit funny that this is an under-priviledged neighborhood and it’s named like that, but it doesn’t sound as bad in Spanish), the children and drugs, he also talked to us about the sculptor Fernando García Curten and another artist, Yayo Altoaguirre that was born just hours away from Juan and he thinks it’s curious that both of them are artists.There were kids making clay sculptures: a pipe, a parrot, etc.

Juan De Stefano

One of Juan’s sculpture

Juan De Stefano’s sculpture

Iron sculptures outside of the Old Shipyard

Typical house of Las Canaletas neighborhood

Typical house of the humble neighborhood Las Canaletas

Then Juan left and we went to swim in the river. There were many families with kids by the river, I covered myself in clay from the bottom of the river once again and the guys rested by the river for a while. I couldn’t sit because of the clay. A group of boys asked us to take a picture of them jumping from the pier.

Boy jumping off the pier

We decided to go to García Curten’s. His house works as a museum as well. We arrived 10 minutes early so I sat on the threshold and waited.

Above: “Arts Workshop” Below: “Museum House Fernando García Curten”

A few minutes later I heard the door and see a bare-chested old man putting his shirt on and surprised to see me sitting there. He told me to wait and he left to put his t-shirt on.

Fernando García Curten, going inside to put his shirt on.

He then made us come in.

Fernando García Curten, still surprised after finding me by chance sitting on his threshold and inviting us in after putting his shirt on.

In the garden, under the shade of the trees, his 3-year-old grand daughter, newly arrived with her mum from Buenos Aires, was cooling herself off in a pink-plastic-baby bathtub. We walked past the garden towards the workshop where the sculptures and collages were exhibited.

Fernando García Curten’s grand daughter

Flyer

García Curten’s sculptures exhibited permanently at his workshop.

Later, we talked to him for a while. He had a black tee-shirt which sleeves he had cut off, black sunglasses and he was smoking his pipe. He told us his daughter and grand daughter had arrived earlier that day and they put the girl in the bathtub because it was too hot. While I was taking a look at his art in the workshop, I heard in the background, as I was writting in the guestbook:

– Dad! – No, grandpa… He then told us that he stopped making sculptures ten years ago because he doesn´t have enough energy for that anymore, so now he just draws and makes collages, that he doesn’t sell his work because nobody goes to San Pedro to buy art, that a lot of people doesn’t give him a good feedback about his work because he says they don’t like the obscurity and dramatism of it: “They don’t want to take a look in the mirror”. That the problem is old age as he discovered five years ago when the doctor found something serious that, as he repeated it several times I wanted to ask but I didn’t dare. He also told us that small towns are cruel to artists, personages, freaks, that he had only sold at a good price when he’s lives in Belgium and in Europe in general, that Ernesto Sábato told him: “They are going to kill you here (San Pedro)” and that he now feels it’s true. Last but not least, he said that to the young people that visit him he tells them to persist, and that more than bravery, they must have courage. That art is something that is not done for pleasure but for necessity and that he is really tired.

Fernando García Curten smoking his pipe with his sunglasses on. What not to love about this man?

Old Geezah

After we left García Curten’s house, we had an ensaimada, a pasty from Mallorca, now typical from San Pedro as well due to a large colony from there in San Pedro, filled with party cream (the original) or dulce de leche.

World’s biggest ensaimada, June 22nd, 2003.

I walked the guys to the bus terminal and then walked by the shore to the campsite. I’ve got 40 minutes left till the charter came to pick me up. I enjoyed for the first time the so well advertised pool of the campsite. Five lengths of the 10 Mt. poolthat costed me a lot of effort and air as ever before. I talked a little bit to the manager and the lifeguard. I took a shower and 15 minutes later the charter arrived. Never such better timing. I always love to look out the window during a roadtrip but it was so hard not to fall asleep. A really attractive woman hopped on the charter that, due to her looks, I supposed she wasn’t from here. Later someone called her on the phone and I confirmed she was, in fact, Colombian and I enjoyed the accent coming from the seat behind mine while looking at the road and falling asleep from time to time. The charter left me on Thames street by the highway and I walked three blocks towards the Subway that’s near my house for the first time and ordered the 30 Cm. sandwich. I have hardly eaten during the trip. I walked with my huge backpack on my shoulders the six blocks that separated me from home, I was happy to be back. At last, I lied down in front of the telly to die and enjoy an unsavory meatball Subway with tomato, lettuce, onion, jalapeño pepper, green bell pepper, sweet onion sauce, spicy sauce, and yet, still unsavory.

Katti Jisuk Seo
People

One day Katti asked me if I did grow up in a strawberry cake, describing an obviously chuffed tone of felicity in my voice (and maybe in my daydream influenced face). What just was a playful saying, come and gone, is in fact one of a billion ways in which she can make sense of the world. According to Katti life itself is not only a bakery ready to take over, where you can bake and eat chocolate cookies, apple pies, and fancy cakes all by yourself. You also can – and should – be a conquistadora of your own state of mind, meaning: bake and sugarcoat yourself to be what you want to be. Finding that recipe of change is the most great endeavour she wants to undertake. So if you ever launch your spirit starship heading to ‘Destination: Honeypot’ best take Katti with you on the ride. She will explore all the oceans of space offside your skillfully calculated bearing to find the candy wonders of life, that wait for you left and right.

Mark Wachholz
People

I met Mark nine years ago at filmArche, a place where they call him God or nerd or both. He paints the insides of your sunglasses with colours you never saw before. He replaces your headphones by a deaf-aid, he cuts your brain open, puts three cogwheels and a cuckoo clock in and then closes it gently. From then on you can turn your marital crisis into the thrill of a burning helicopter, your postnatal depression into the joy of a jumping jackhammer and your lovesickness into the excitement of stealing silver spoons from your neighbors. You start living inside the fantastic trailer of your own life that you are not living. And you never want to get rid of that feeling again.

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