1987-1991. Navy memories: The USS Luce DDG-38
Somehow, Jon Klongerbo, Rick Saltzman and I got separated from the ship, maybe it was some training we all took and couldn’t get back in time for the ship’s movement. Anyway we had to go out to Jacksonville Naval Air Station and catch a MAC flight to meet the ship in GITMO. We arrived a couple days early and decided to “take in the sights.” Somehow or other we decided to check out some equipment and go snorkeling off the coast.
It was my first time, but I took to it like a fish in water. I wandered off and discovered an underground cave at the shoreline. I decided to check it out, but upon entering the cave the water temperature dropped precipitously. So I backed out. On the way out, I discovered a big turtle crawling along the bottom and decided to watch him from the surface.
I lost track of the passage of time and apparently, simultaneously, the tide was headed out. At some point, I stopped to look up and see my distance from the shoreline. Not only was I way, way out, but I could see Jon and Rick jumping up and down and yelling and screaming at me.
So I put my head down and stroked for what seemed like forever. When I stopped to see how close I was back in, it seemed I was even further out. The tide was heading out and I could not overcome it. Now shit was getting serious!
I faced down and started swimming back in the direction of where we started. I swam and swam as hard as I could and at some point, totally exhausted, I lost consciousness. I think that’s when the angels took over propulsion. When I “came to” I was back in the harbor, the water was still, and I could hear Rick and Jon’s voices. Pretty much exhausted, I dog-pedaled my way back to the beach.
USS Luce Wardroom, 1990
Some memoirs “leave out” sections that may not contribute to a predetermined narrative. I’m not going to do that. You get it all, warts and all. Here is a case in point. In my final semester at FAMU, Evette, a business student, and I started dating. By the time of graduation the following May we were discussing marriage plans. It was a mistake, in retrospect, to allow things to move so fast, but I can’t just leave it out.
I had orders to an aged tin can, a destroyer out of Mayport. Evette got a job in Jacksonville, nearby, working in the trust department of a major bank. We got married in January after I finished my training in Newport and found an apartment together in a Jacksonville suburb. It, the various causes of a failed marriage created in too much haste, would turn out to be a cloud that overshadowed everything that happened over the next four years.
Here I have a confession to make. Throughout this whole period I was writing sonnets that I occasionally shared by snail mail with Marie, who by this time had moved to the west coast for graduate school. Marie had previously introduced me to the poetic works of Henry Dumas, whose out of print works I was able to locate at the public library in Jacksonville. I sought to emulate his writing style at the time, but that is neither here nor there. To be totally honest, it was Marie, during this same period, who stirred my interest in Baudelaire and Rilke, but I’ll not take that detour here.
Meanwhile, daily work on the USS Luce, and all the accompanying stress continued to affect all our lives. We deployed six months to the Mediterranean. Some of the guys in my division got in a bit of trouble in a French port, Marseille, and I met the foreign service officers at the US Consulate in my efforts to get them set free by the local authorities. It was my very first exposure to the foreign service. I asked them, “How do you get into this career path?” They told me about the foreign service exam. I filed it away and forgot about it. We made several port visits in France (Cavalaire, Sainte Maxime, Saint-Tropez, Cannes), Turkey (Antalya, Izmir), Spain (Benidorm), and Israel (Haifa). For a week we did a joint operation with the Israelis, with Israeli officers on board. I swear those guys didn’t slept for a solid week!
We spent several months in the shipyard in Pascagoula, MS, a seven-hour drive from homeport in Jacksonville. Most weekends I drove back to Jacksonville, which meant I began every week exhausted from the long ride back. The absences were enough to severely weaken a strong marriage, much less a frail one. Pascagoula had its bright lights, however. During the week we all went to Ma Farmer’s everyday for lunch. For $12, it was all you could eat of good home cooking, served family style. But shipyard work was brutal.
As the first Gulf War came into being, Operation Desert Storm, many ships got orders to deploy. But not the Luce. We were too old and burned too much fuel. So Squadron basically rented us out to the Coast Guard, who would pay our high fuel bills, and we got assigned law enforcement ops in the Caribbean, stopping the flow of cocaine into the country.
Not that we weren’t still an effective shooting platform. We proved that conclusively in an exercise where we not only destroyed an incoming unmanned drone with our first shot, but effectively obliterated the space where it might have been had the first one missed with our second shot. I take some level of pride in our success in this exercise as I was the missiles officer and put a lot of time into the training that resulted in my eventual “pushing of the button” to fire.
Domestically, Evette and I were clearly headed in two different directions. Eventually, we grew to a point where we couldn’t stand the sight of each other, and I moved out and got an apartment in a trendy section of town near the city’s art museum. In fact, it was on Art Museum Way. At this point, my shared writings with Marie were like a reactor suddenly going critical, even supercritical. Delayed from four years prior, we fell deeply, perhaps madly in love via the postal system and via messages on telephone answering machines. In every beginning, there is always the Word.
Evette moved to Madison, Wisconsin for law school and we closed out the apartment we had shared. Shortly thereafter, I enrolled in a linear algebra course at night at Jacksonville Community College to beef up (a friend told me I needed a course in linear algebra for graduate school economics) and on a lark had filled out one of those bulletin board postcards to take the Foreign Service Exam (FSE). But when the package came to our former address at Belle Rive, it wasn’t forwarded to Art Museum Drive, where I was, but to Evette’s new address in Madison. Luckily, without even knowing what it was, she forwarded the package back to me. I filled in all the forms and met the submission deadline to take the exam.
And there were dark non-linearities, I can call them now in retrospect, even though I was fully aware of what I was doing at the time. In my loneliness, and in rapid succession, there was the fling with the mutual friend of a neighbor, the one night stand after a series of hours long phone calls with a friend just up the road in Kings Bay, Georgia, the crazy woman in Orlando with bizarre tastes and preferences, and the hospital administrator in Jacksonville who came to her senses and appropriately dumped me. I was slipping into darkness and none of this was part of my original plan.
The work on the ship kept getting more intense, more demanding, more extracting of whatever human spirit I had retained after all these extracurricular episodes previously mentioned. At the end of that year I momentarily made up with Evette and helped her with the drive and move to Wisconsin for graduate school, returned and completed a do-it-yourself divorce, took the foreign service exam, prepared my divisions for the ship’s decommissioning, and applied for graduate school in St. Louis. All these things were swirling around me like a drain vortex and I was desperately trying to cling to something fixed, anything, in an attempt to anchor, to save my soul. The only constant, the only continuity through it all was the poetry shared in letters, on the answering machine and exchanged in phone calls with Marie. I needed a west coast trip.
The LUCE was scheduled to do a two-month law enforcement ops with a Coast Guard detachment in the Caribbean during the period when the Foreign Service Exam (FSE) was scheduled. I talked with my Executive Officer and together worked it out with the ship’s education officer to receive the test and administer it to me underway. At least that was what they promised me. They lied. So when I checked with the XO a week before deploying, he offered me the following deal: I could stay in port and TDY to the civil engineering detachment for the six weeks deployment period, freeing up a spot on the watchbill for one of the newer officers. Sounded like a good idea to me, since I had already completed all my quals. Knowing the XO, it was probably a trick. He was a tricky guy. But it served my needs, so I took him up on it.
I spent a month working up a database of Mayport Naval Base contracts and warranties on emergency sprinkler fire suppression systems (a bit boring, but it saved the government a ton of money to get systems repaired on existing warranties, vice re-contracting and paying each time something broke. It would be excellent training for my GSO contracting future). Then, the second month, I inventoried each emergency hurricane kit (and there were hundreds of them on base), all of which were missing key pieces of equipment).
And I had a study program for the foreign service exam (FSE). At night, I read Economist, cover to cover. I read Scientific American. I read the Atlantic Monthly. And I took sample GRE exams under time, all in preparation for the FSE. On the appointed Saturday, I went to Jacksonville Community College and took the written exam. It seemed easy. I actually left early.
The LUCE returned. The crew had had a lot of fun in the Caribbean. I missed out. Life and work returned to normal. A few months later, I heard from State that I had passed the written exam and should make an appointment for the oral assessment. I chose to take it in Atlanta, a four hour drive from Jacksonville. My ship only allowed me one day off as we were working up for some type of inspection. I got off at 6pm, headed home, showered, packed a small bag, and hit the road. I stopped outside Savannah en route, to say hello to old ROTC buddies at Fort Gordon, then, around 10 pm, hit the road for Atlanta.
I ran into a heavy thunderstorm en route, and of all times, my windshield wipers broke, so I had to pull over to the side of the highway to wait out the storm. I resumed the trip around midnight, arriving at the hotel, way out on one of the Atlanta beltways, around 2:30 am, totally exhausted. I set the alarm for 5 am, and left at 5:45 to find the assessment site in downtown Atlanta.
I made it through the oral assessment. The interviewers called me in and told me they had one more question for me. I had a sense that everything would be riding on the response. They told me that I had a critical piece of information in the group discussion that I failed to reveal. Why had I not revealed it?
I told them the whole story, the truth. My windshield wiper broke. I got to the hotel at 2:30 am. I was operating on 2.5 hours of sleep. Sorry if I screwed it up.
I passed. One of seven. They told me they really liked my biographic statement. It was much more than the resume that others provided, they told me. I’ve always enjoyed biographies, since Governor’s School. Why not make mine special and authentic? I still have that statement buried in a blog somewhere. That’ll be grist for another mill, as they say.
USS Luce, DDG-38, at decommissioning in Mayport, Fl, 1991
The LUCE decommissioned, I got into the graduate program of my choice, I passed the foreign service written and oral exams, and I scheduled a flight to San Francisco. New choices gave rise to a new chapter in my life following a season of darkness.
Poems from the period
Prelude
Every decision, it seems,
is a trade-off, and each choice,
a rejection of all other options.
We oversimplify to mask our true feelings.
We generalize to avert the difficult question.
Our friendship, our love is a complex being,
a life all its own with wants and needs
that test our resolve.
Is it a mistake, a crime to feed it,
to allow it to blossom and grow?
Addendum
The things that I’ve always wanted,
I’ll always want:
tea for two at bookstore cafes;
chess games and poetry in city parks;
tender kisses at midnight
under summer moonlight;
white wine with honey-roasted almonds…
The things that I’ve laboriously earned,
I’ll laboriously keep:
enduring friendships and trusts;
memories of special moments
when love was sweet;
the deep-seated satisfaction of success;
lessons learned from failure.
November 1987
The Mayport Sonnets
Sonnet #1
Dear friend, the sonnet seemed to be the best of forms
To test and gauge the status of our friendship born
Those years ago, amid the various interludes of summer’s nights;
Failure to give life to such a sweet creation would be quite
Disarming, and alarming, and a waste of all those precious
Talents, borrowed from the Muse of song and word and deed;
And if by chance our meeting and our wanting were unfounded,
We owe it to ourselves to search and find the function of that need.
Dear friend, though each has walked his separate path
To glory and to honor, let not the fleeting summer’s wrath
Blot out the blessings of the Sun to feed and nourish all we gained
And earned through work and play and love and joy and pain.
If reading sonnets opens up your vision,
Send me one to reveal your heart’s position
Sonnet #2
You try to steer me, gently, on a course
avoiding you, then call my love a butterfly’s,
point it to something new. “Take your deep desires
elsewhere” is the song you sing for me.
“Let’s always hold fond memories of the
love that used to be.” Well I’ve been around,
I know this town, I hear all that you say.
You’d rather not get serious, just be
best friends at play.
But my soul’s a mighty hunter
that has locked in on its prey. I will track
it, like the lion, in a very patient way.
And just when you least expect it, I
will be there for your needs.
Sonnet #3
A wounded beast, I stalk the corridors,
the passageways of my hidden, broken soul –
hungering for freedom from the wretched pain
that hems in, that locks up, and that ties in knots
my twisted thoughts, and renders everything
I touch an ill-begotten, uninspired blotch.
The memories of our June embrace
I struggle to preserve. The touch, the taste
of love was sweet and tender, not the salt
and rust my present occupation yields to me.
Yet as we speak, I pace the halls, the
closets of our mind, and searching, I uncover
the one I came to know and grew to love
Yet lives, and writes, inspired from above.
Sonnet #4
Your sonnets reached my mailbox today.
I plunged into them like a dog in heat.
Absorbing them, my hardened soul was moved
to tears of passion, blinding, bittersweet.
The symphony of words you now compose,
Resulting from deep inspirations, pure,
You weave, majestically, as from an ancient source,
And share with me and cause me to conjure
New images. Lines that bear the current and
The voltage of the engine of my soul,
Your whispers loosen knots that bind me,
Your words unwind me, make me whole.
And work I must to now retain
These prayers I send up in your name.
Sonnet #5
Dear friend my evening well was spent
Engaged in thoughts’ exchange, review,
Revealing my ill soul’s intent
To heal itself, be born anew.
I love your rhythms, rhymes and notes,
They lift my spirits, higher, ever.
You are the perfect antidote
For poisoned darts and hearts that sever.
Tonight I need a stronger brew,
Poured in a mug, steeped with emotion,
Some blend of herbs my fathers knew,
a wine of sleep, a witches’ potion.
My thirst is far from being quenched.
My heart and soul in pain are drenched.
Sonnet #6
I’m torn between two sinking ships,
Two jealous mistresses who hate.
To choose one is to choose them both:
The choice is clear; I hesitate
Deciding and the moment slips away.
New ships are landing at my pier
From places strange, from shores untold.
They beckon me to come aboard,
I hesitate. Once more events unfold
Revealing feelings that are blue.
My pilot bids me change my course,
Steer clear of danger, shallow shoals.
I navigate the ship through storms
To reach the resting place of souls.
Sonnet #7
Dear faithful friend, the spirit
Of the verses that we write,
Excites us and invites us
To relive that summer’s night.
There are those who do not put stock
In resurrection’s power;
They hem and haw at warnings
Of the coming of the hour.
I too had doubts about beliefs
That dead could come to life,
Then my forgotten love for you
Was resurrected, born anew . . .
A stronger and far deeper love
Is one twice born, sent from above.
Sonnet #8
Unclothed we come into this world, possession-less, alone,
The odyssey to reach each goal acquaints us with new pain,
Each stumbling block, despite the odds, becomes a stepping stone,
And every loss, a predecessor to a greater gain.
Our meeting was revealed to me when I was but a child:
A revelation of a form, a loveliness, pristine,
Yet planted in my heart was that pure vision, undefiled,
Someday to manifest itself just as it was foreseen.
I found you when I lacked the wherewithal to make you mine,
Distressed, perplexed, I felt compelled to spell my love that June.
That summer’s love was but a glimpse into a world divine,
A harbinger of better days, of times more opportune.
We’ll meet again and then we must decide upon the hour -
When we’ll allow our destinies to intertwine and flower.
Sonnet #9
We’ve been delayed from getting underway.
This pause affords me time to write to you
Some thoughtful verse, to contemplate, to pray,
To call my father’s gods, subdue
The passion, pain, excitement of the day.
I read your sonnets, gifts of Spring,
About our love one June.
I miss our chats when I’m away at sea.
Communion with you makes me know I’m blessed.
The poet in me prays you’ll always be
My friend, my lover, object of my quest,
And sonneteer of magic poetry.
March love outlives the summer’s fling,
‘Cause summer ends too soon.
Sonnet #10
When overburdened with the cares and woes
Of everyday travail, I take a pause
To recollect, arrange my thoughts, compose
Some verse for you, attempting to disclose
A word, a clause, the laws that bind our hearts
Together in a total work of art.
Our love cannot be bound by words and notes,
Though flawed, confined to secrecy, and mute.
We can’t stand on a mountaintop, promote
Abroad this feeling, though it keeps our boat
Afloat amid the sunken wrecks, unmarked,
Unseen by those who fail to read the charts . . .
I love you, yes, I can’t ignore the force
That steers me steady on life’s stormy course.
Sonnet #11
Before I fall asleep each night I read
The poems you’ve sent: they are my prayers, my hope,
My joy, prescription for my timeless need.
I read them twice, I measure every slope
And curve, defining and deriving their
Delights, despite the doom you recommend
Our end would be if we should ever touch
Our lips to lips, our flesh to flesh again.
My compass true, my anchor sound, I’ll find
The key to treasures long forgotten, long
Unrecognized, preserved within the mind
Of poets who still sing the sonnet’s song.
And you, my friend, write on your sullen dirge.
I wager we’ll survive its sterile purge.
Sonnet #12
One April day the crew got underway,
With Captain’s-gig and hopes and spirits high,
Embarking on a lark to old St. Augustine,
To seek for LUCE the blessing of the fleet.
We passed shacks, mansions, rich and poor that lined
The shore. Along the beach the sand was brown
Like mud; ebb tide exposed the rotted posts
Where fishing boats and captain’s gigs could land.
LUCE led the slow procession past the stands
Where stood the Bishop, color guard, and friends,
He sprinkled us with water from his hands,
And smiled and spoke his blessing for the fleet:
God bless the fleet that shields our shores from harm.
Protect the ships that silence war’s alarm.
Sonnet #13
A young man’s life expired on my ship
Today. He walked aboard at dawn, intent
(One must assume) to start his day, his life
Anew. Then suddenly, without consent,
Without the chance to bargain, beg, or plead,
The messenger of death unsheathed his sword,
Cut off the breath, suppressed the beating heart
Of life once vibrant, cocksure, confident.
A young man died, was his the first, the last
To reach the end of dreams, the final breath
To take? When all the storms of life have passed,
And evil’s jurisdiction over souls
Is brought to naught, the truth, once crucified,
Will rise to save the souls of hopes that died.
Sonnet #14
Dear friend, I listen to your poems of late,
And contemplate the dreaded thought of life
Without the prospect of your fond embrace;
I reminisce about that kiss one June:
Too soon, too late to consummate; too true
To be denied, too pure to not be sure
That God intended for our souls to dwell
As one, exclusive, all-embracing love—
No matter what the future holds in store,
I did, I do I’ll always love you more
And more; though distance separate us far,
I’ll search the constellations for that star
That shines in you. And should I die, too soon,
Apart from you, we’ll meet again one June.
Sonnet #15
Dear friend, with pen in hand and feelings true
I sing for you this song. Despite my voice,
Too base in places to be understood,
You’ll sense the message: soothing, moving, light,
Disarming, satisfying. Rendezvous
Tonight with me, take flight, delight, rejoice
In that we share this love, exchange this word
That lives past sunsets, through the darkest night.
I can’t contain the energy this thought
Now generates: it makes me want to dance,
Sing, shout, tell all the worlds, turn somersaults;
It makes me grateful, thankful for romance.
When passing passions blue bid me adieu,
I seek safe harbors, true, kind friend, near you.
Sonnet #16
Today I watched the shuttle launched towards space.
A tail of fire plowed the southern morning sky
Until it disappeared. I thought about
The people there, behind the scenes, who made,
It all occur. There’s someone there whose life
Is less than free from care, a lonely heart,
Dis-eased, distressed, beset by worries, woes,
Who, overcoming all, finds sweet the reaching
Of the goal. There’re happy ones who feel the tinge
Of sadness at the thought of those who’ve missed
By fate the thrill of launch complete, the charm,
The pure romance of making dreams come true.
The shuttle jets toward heaven, far away
From troubles, closer still to hopes ideal.
Sonnet #17
Dear friend I left our poems ashore to gain
A clear and fresh perspective on romance
So new, unfolding through these notes exchanged
By mail. In some respects I’m at a loss
For words that rhyme: these thoughts, sublime, contain
The elements of hope divine, the chance
That you might share, with me, again, unchanged
Thrills sought and found that star-crossed night in June.
It can’t be as it was. It must be less
Or more. Our lust for life has aged, matured,
We’ve wined and dined on bittersweets, endured
The loss and gain of joy’s and pain’s excess.
And yet I can’t forget that night in June,
When we read Shelley, kissed, and touched the moon.
Sonnet #18
The spirit’s come and gone. And yet remains
The hull, the shell wherein no true love thrives
Today. The salvaged traces laugh at me,
At us for make-believing fairy-tales
And happy endings where romance is sweet,
Where love runs deep, where passions overflow,
Eclipsing sun and moon and night and day.
The spirit waves good-bye and with a sigh
I lift my eyes, my chin, my sinking heart
To God, to plead for strength to understand
This plan, this life so fraught with strife, so full
Of chance and happenstance and foiled romance.
The deed is done, its end is near. Revere
The strength that overcomes a darkened year.
Sonnet #19
Two months have passed since last I read from you
A poem, wherein you bid your heart awake,
Return again, transcend that hellish gore
Where life and love are but the vapid glow
Which covers, hides and smothers innocence.
I beg to understand, to know the truth
About that grave whereof you speak, where fools
Like me are brought, at last, to dismal ends.
My love of life is greater than my hope
That we might share again the joy we knew
That June. Another spring is come, and June
Will visit soon enough to cast its spell.
My love for poems and poets knows no end—
I can’t be just the object of your pen.
Sonnet #20
Dear friend, take up your pen again, compose
Those works of art that live and breathe and sing
The rhapsody of love and hope. Revive
Anew in you the spirit of the Muse
To guide, to entertain, and to enthuse.
Restore the democratic art, the urge
To write, embraceable, attainable
By all. Take up your pen, today, obey
God’s highest call: express the good, the true,
The beautiful. Articulate in verse
Life’s purest, deepest, noblest sentiments;
Preserve in rhyme and rhythm secrets sent.
Take up your pen again, the times demand
Your words be heard, your dreams rise up and stand.
Sonnet #21
Remember years ago when we first met?
You selling books, me browsing, reading books
At Brandon’s store? We were so young, and life
So unrevealed, so full of promises
And boundless hopes and dreams, and guarantees
And opportunities. You went away.
I stayed and made mistakes. We met again,
You east, me west, you school, me ships and seas.
Confused, we erred and severed friendship’s bond,
And all seemed lost between us save a thread,
A laser beam of hope that, over time,
Compressed, distilled and purified, survived
Until today. We meet again. What fate
Awaits is ours to plan, to recommend.
Sonnet #22
I look back to the time we shared and smile,
And smile and grin and laugh with joy untapped
Before that smile. Our spirits span the miles
That separate our hearts, that keep us trapped
Apart, detached, disjointed from that source
of strength, of love the gods bequeathed to gods
At birth. We rendezvous beyond, outside
The force of chance and fate. Our senses fuse,
United endlessly in time and space;
The spark of life ignites and multiplies,
Acknowledging a power all its own.
Dear friend I can’t ignore the call of June:
In just a few short weeks we’ll meet, we’ll taste
The chilled sweet wine, fermented, aged and pure.
Sonnet #23
Dear faithful friend I count each passing day,
I pray for time to instantly elapse,
Events to fill the gaps that separate
And isolate my life from thine. Oh fate,
Do draw me nearer, nearer to the heart
That beats in sync, in step with mine– to thee,
To thee, sweet angel of my childhood dreams!
I’ll smile to see you, touch you, taste your smile,
And all the while my soul has longed to lodge
Near yours will seem like but a brief delay,
A short, short stay away from heaven’s bliss.
I fantasize that when we meet we’ll kiss,
And cry, and tears will rinse away, dissolve
The walls we’ve built to hold in check our love.
Sonnet #24
Dear friend, perhaps our paths may cross again:
Perchance, we’ll meet together at the top,
Or down below, beneath the crowds, inside
The underground. Perhaps we’ll be united
By a cause, a hope, a dream, a fantasy . . .
Perhaps we’ll join together out of fear
Or love for something we perceive to be.
It matters not my love, the force, the source
That consecrates the ground on which we’ll meet:
It matters not the season of the year
(Though June is sweet!), nor the place that destiny
Prescribes, we’ll meet! The Muses tell us so!
Though circumstance as yet precludes the fate
The gods have planned, I wait, I wait, I wait…
Let’s plan a picnic
Let’s plan a picnic, dear, for Saturday,
walk hand in hand through woods
until we find our secret place again.
Then spread the lunch
we packed upon the ground and have a feast:
Ummmmm! Barbecued chicken, coleslaw, string beans
And potatoes, deviled eggs, candied yams;
Two hearts that share a secret sentiment
of June romance;
please pass the deviled eggs,
and let me hold your hand.
I must confess I love you;
yes, my heart and soul have found
their match, their mate in you:
I cannot rest from hoping
that this dream will soon come true.
Thank you note
Thank you for letting me spend the night.
I was very tired and I went quickly
into a rather deep sleep.
I don’t even remember
when you turned off the TV
and came to bed:
went to bed, I should say.
The singing of the birds
woke me up shortly after dawn.
I listened to their music
for almost an hour.
It was soothing and exhilarating.
I discovered the coffee in the grinder;
thank you for your thoughtfulness.
I peeked in on you
a couple of times.
You look so peaceful
when you sleep,
so innocent and childlike.
I wanted to bend over and kiss your face,
but I didn’t want to startle you
or break your peace.
So I had a cup of coffee instead.
Being here with you is
like a dream come true.
Exactly. Precisely.
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