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~ Potato Point and beyond

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Monthly Archives: October 2017

Bingi rocks

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

aplite, basalt, Bingi Bingi Point, dacite, dykes, geology, wedding anniversary

Forty six years ago, about now, J and I were occupied with our wedding, a low key event with a small guest list and a reception at my parents’ home. He nipped out from work at lunchtime to buy a suit. On Monday when his workmates said “Hey J, what did you do at the weekend?” he said, “Well, as a matter of fact I got married.” 

What began that Friday night led, 46 years later, via four children, four grandchildren, a couple of other partners, and deep unassailable companionship, to a glorious summer day rock-hopping at Bingi Bingi Point, not far from our respective homes, to indulge a shared interest in geology. We’re off to visit younger rocks today, volcanic in origin: aplite, gabbro-diorite, tonalite, dacite and basalt. We’re armed with a couple of mappings of the area’s geology, and we’ve already visited under the guidance of a couple of local geologists so we’re feeling unusually confident.

But before we proceed to rocky analysis, we watch entranced as a couple of whales leap and slap and blow close inshore, just off Bingi Bingi Point, defying photography in the glaring path of the sun. Once they disappear heading south, we focus on rocks. I’m acquiring, at last, a nimbleness that allows me to step over mini-chasms and up and down layers of rock that would usually have me bumming it. Everywhere are rocks I recognise and scapes with wonderful aesthetics.


The place is crawling with dykes: the sombre black shine of basalt, the pinky-apricot of aplite, and the astonishing orange angularites of dacite.

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The dykes provide me with metaphors for our long relationship. It too was born out of molten passion and solidified into interweaving and intrusion. Who could have predicted that this …

… would lead to this?

Tentative postscript: A winding trail through the Penguin dictionary of geology suggests that we may actually have been standing on the earth’s mantle.

Hotchpotch 10

30 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

flowers, rockpools, shells, trees

With this post, I say a very happy birthday to Tish, writer on the edge, who has given me so many pleasures with her posts – historical, geological, horticultural, botanical, African, stylistic and photographic pleasures – since, somehow, I found her in the blogosphere.






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Wordless walk: Up the garden path

29 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in art, gardens, photos

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Eurobodalla regional botanical gardens, sculpture









Encounters with birds

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in birds, photos

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

brown pigeon, ducks, emu, lyre bird, magpie, New Holland honeyeater, pardalote, photo by Tahlia Rose, plover, rosella, scarlet honeyeater, sea eagle

 

EMU

According to Aboriginal legend the emu is flightless because of a trick played by the jealous brush turkey. Emu succumbed to her “be like me” pretence and cut off her own wings. In revenge she tricked Turkey into killing ten of her twelve children.

I’m sitting at the living room table in the middle of the day. I look out the window through the tangle of trees and spot an emu in the drive. Kangaroos and wallabies have been co-residents of the villagers for a long time, but emus have, until recently, kept to the bush. They are now slowly declaring ownership of the town. People foolishly feed them and, like the dingos on Fraser Island, they come to expect food and begin to harass people who don’t offer it. They are beginning to show the unlikeable streak that took such savage revenge on Brush Turkey. They have taken a particular dislike to dogs: the other day one attacked a neighbour’s dog tied up in his yard  and had to be hosed down to break up the attack. One (the same one?) chased an oblivious Cruz up the street, my son wondering about the propriety of donging it if it attacked. What has been a novelty is well on the way to becoming a liability.

SEA EAGLE

In poetry the eagle is noble, his wings sacred. He’s the symbol of empires and the companion of Zeus, king of the gods. In fiction he has names like Farsight.

But in Potato Point the white-bellied sea eagle is the surprising victim of ongoing bullying by smaller birds. I never see him aloft without a tail of harrying birds a tenth his size, chivvying him through the air to the far end of the beach. One day, three cranky seagulls. Another, a willy wagtail. A third a magpie. He has no time for the graceful wind-riding I love to watch, and he’s reduced from the grandeur of his wingspan to a target of harassment.

PLOVER

In a West African folk tale, when Crocodile has toothache, it’s Plover who hops into his mouth with medicine to cure it, in return for safety and bits of fish for her children.

In my village, far away from crocodiles, plovers also live dangerously, and yet they seem to survive and breed. As I walk back from the beach I see mum and dad standing guard over three chicks, who, of course, all want to head off in different directions. The parents are torn between swooping me to make sure I keep my distance and herding the infants. 

I see them twice more, once crossing the road out of the village, and once, much more safely, in the bed of the drying creek.  I go away for the weekend and when I come back two days later they seem to have grown to adolescence. My son informs me there are two or three families. They lay their eggs in shallow hollows in the grass, often in pedestrian-heavy places and yet they survive. How they escape cars and dogs and hawks is a mystery. 

PARDALOTE

The bird who comes down to walk upon the earth, the bird of rumour and voice, the enigmatic diamond bird who discards the cloak of invisibility to nest  from https://birdsaspoetry.com/2016/03/14/the-bird-who-comes-down-to-walk-upon-the-earth/ which also offers magnificent photos.

We sit on the steps at the north end of Spud to take our shoes off to paddle back home. J spots movement in the grass covering the sandy bank, and we sit silent and observant. A tiny bird with wisps of grass in its beak perches on a dead branch eying us suspiciously. J whispers “It’s a pardalote. Look over there. The mouth of its burrow.” You can barely see the opening, but there are clawprints in the sand when you know where to look. The perching bird becomes impatient and flies off, obviously wishing we’d disappear so it can deliver its building materials. So we oblige and back off to a discreet distance, still watching closely. Before long he (or she – they share domestic duties) darts into the opening and then emerges empty-beaked to collect more grass.

If you look closely at this photo, along the vertical line that marks the first third you’ll see the darkness of the hole that is the burrow entrance and the scrabble marks of tiny claws in the pile of sand that is its doorstep.

BROWN CUCKOO DOVE

The Dove / On silver pinions, winged her peaceful way. James Montgomery, “Pelican Island”

Two brown cuckoo doves are regular visitors to a branch above the water bowls J puts out for birds just outside his living room window. They don’t have “silver pinions” but they are peaceful. One day they sit for an hour, snuggling up and grooming themselves and each other, barely stirring as I open the door. A week later they return. The slow courtship becomes more display: his tail fans out and lifts above his head. When I comment on their substantial tails J says: “Of course. That’s why they’re called Macropygia phasianella : it means big bum.” They visit his water two or three times a day, sometimes a flying visit and sometimes to canoodle, safe under cover of the trees from marauding predators 

LYREBIRD

Over the west side of the mountain, /that’s lyrebird country. /I could go down there, they say, in the early morning, /and I’d see them, I’d hear them. /Ten years, and I have never gone. Judith Wright

I don’t have to go down anywhere to encounter lyrebirds. Often the first birdsong of the morning at J’s is that of the lyrebird. Up early after a night of deep sleep, I spot movement of something large and dark on the hillside outside the living room. When I creep to the window to investigate I see three young lyrebirds, scurrying over the edge into the bush below the house. J is pleased when I tell him. He hasn’t seen them round for a while, and the scent of fox has been strong.

Once, on the rocky hillside on the top side of the house, I watch a young male in his first bright lyre-feathers shimmer in dance, a dance just for himself, practising for the mating ritual of the future. 

WOOD DUCK

“Make way for ducklings” or is it “Seven little ducks went out one day”? Traces of picture books and rhymes from childhood

This clutch has been waddling round the Point for a few weeks now. My son swears there is a marauding duck who’s been kidnapping ducklings: when he first saw this lot there were 9, and a lone duck now has an unlikely one. My reward for Sunday morning shopping is an encounter with them beside the road. The little ones are picking energetically at the grass while the parents kept an eye open for danger. Unlike the plovers they let me get quite close, and when they hear  another car coming they cross the road in good order.



MAGPIE

One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret that’s never been told. Traditional rhyme
One evening my friend and I take our wine and nibbles onto the deck. A magpie arrives, and perches on the deck rail watching us curiously. It is bright clear black and white and its eyes are unnervingly intelligent. Annette lines up a bud of white chocolate, a nut and a goji berry on the table. With no coaxing at all, it makes its choice and retreats to deal with the unaccustomed texture, returning for a second helping, after scraping its beak of residue. I can’t believe this presages sorrow.

HONEYEATERS

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.

And, I suspect, for all sorts of other reasons. In the red callistemon near my deck birds congregate to collect nectar and to scatter their leftovers in piles on chair and table, and in drifts on the floor. There is plenty for everyone so there are rarely squabbles. They scatter song too, a melée of different notes. I shake the chair clear and settle to listen and watch.  The tiny scarlet honeyeater is hard to spot because its bright head is the same colour as the bottlebrush flowers and it’s visible only through its motion. The New Holland Honeyeater is bigger and easier to see with its golden wing panel and black and white streaks. It whizzes into the air, suspends, and then drops back to its chosen flower. One sits high on a leafless twig, turning slowly so I can note every detail. Eastern rosellas hang upside down swinging on the bright blossoms. I suspect something of a drunken orgy when birds begin crashing into the sliding doors. Briefly stunned, they lie on the deck or hang from the netting over the deck garden, and then fly off, following an erratic path, to sip some more. Sometimes the recovery isn’t immediate. One lies for ages unmoving until my son breathes on it. It stands up, still looking groggy. Another anxious wait for us. Finally it flies up and off. We return to dinner.

The song goes on.


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RegularRandom: 5 minutes with dogs and sunset

22 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in challenges, photos

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

Burrill Lake, Didthul/Didhol/Pigeonhouse, RegularRandom, sunset

It’s been a long time, probably two years, since I’ve seen my brother, although of course we’ve had contact. Mind you, it’s often because he’s accidentally pocket-dialled me! But here I am at last, at his coastal retreat on the shores of Burrill Lake, meeting Riley and Bundy for the first time: kelpies are a change from the usual wolfhounds.

We watch evening fall from deck and jetty, in the distance the tip of Pigeonhouse named by Captain Cook as he sailed up the coast of so-called terra nullius.  The Aboriginal name is Didthul (breast) or Didhol (big mountain).

Once upon a time long ago I walked to its summit with my teenagers, up giant stairs and through waist-high heathland. I didn’t brave the ladders to the very top. I found a rocky perch and played “Down in the valley” on my recorder, while they cavorted dangerously above me.

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In the morning, the light is of course entirely different.

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This post is in response to DesleyJane’s weekly challenge. She asks us to photograph something, changing the light. I let the evening do that for me, and I obviously broke the rigid 5minutesnomore rule: I can’t pretend I didn’t. This week she features a charming cat and a blue flowers.

Getting ready to dig at Pella

20 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in archaeology, Jordan, someone else's photos

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Pella, site history, Sydney University excavations

1

“There are four rules that can’t be broken” says Dr Stephen Bourke, briefing volunteers (including me) for the 2001 season of the Sydney University dig at Pella in Jordan.  I’m uncharacteristically willing to hand over $2000 – and my unskilled labour – in exchange for the excitement, boredom and hard work involved in peeling back the layers of an archaeological site.

“Don’t speak to the trench supervisor for half an hour after work starts,” he continues.  “If it’s clean, khaki, or flies a flag don’t photograph it.  No hairdryers: use one and you’ll put out the lights of the whole village. Most importantly, Abu Sami rules the kitchen. Oh, and by the way, don’t worry about the political situation. You’ll hear gunfire across the river and Israeli bombers screeching overhead, but you’ll be perfectly safe.”

2

People have lived in Pella without a break for 8000 years. Traces of this history are everywhere. Centuries reel by. Neolithic farmers grow crops, care for animals and build houses. Bronze Age workers construct a vast temple-fortress. Traders offer inlaid ivory boxes, imported pottery, alabaster perfume bottles, objects overlaid with gold. Egyptians are eager to buy timber from the forests to make chariot spokes. The city becomes part of the Decapolis, on the frontier of the Roman Empire. Under Byzantine rule businesses do a roaring trade, churches are built, the population swells. Then plague, the silting of the wadi, and an Ottoman victory that puts it in Muslim hands: it becomes a place to stop on the route to Mecca. The Ottomans lose interest in it, except as a source of taxes, and earthquakes wreak havoc. After World War 1 it becomes part of the Kingdom of Jordan. It is bombarded by the Israelis in the Six Days War. In 1979, Sydney University joins teams already excavating there, and in 2001 I volunteer for two weeks as more work is done uncovering the temple-fortress.

3

Over the years, the Sydney University team has unearthed Neolithic housing (ca. 6000 BCE); Chalcolithic storage complexes (ca. 4200 BCE); Early Bronze Age stone defensive platforms (ca. 3200 BCE); massive Middle Bronze Age mud-brick city walls (ca. 1800 BCE); Middle and Late Bronze Age temples and residences (ca. 1800-1200 BCE); clay tablets in a Late Bronze Age Egyptian Governors’ Residence (ca. 1350 BCE); large areas of a Hellenistic city destroyed by war in 80 BCE; the theatre, baths and fountain-house of the Roman Imperial city (ca. 150 CE); three Byzantine churches and a Bishop’s palace (ca. 550 CE); an Umayyad Islamic city destroyed by an earthquake (ca. 750 CE); an Abbasid caravanserai (ca. 950 CE); and a Mameluke mosque and administrative compound (ca. 1350 CE)

Some of the significant finds so far: column drums, a 10th century BC door; 5 million seeds in a storeroom; a life-sized basalt head; cylinder seals; gold hoop earrings; lapis lazuli; Mycenaean ceramics; tiny faience tiles; early basalt vessels; pottery pomegranates; a lion libation pourer; the earliest Aramaic inscription yet found; seven cult stands; and a cow box for burning incense.

This season the plan is to dig the temple “madly” in an attempt to find out how it was built.

4

Two months after the briefing, it’s pick up time in Amman. The driver of the bus taking us to Pella comes in and introduces himself cheerfully. “We’ll be out of here shortly” he says. “It’ll take a few minutes to check the undercarriage for bombs and then you can start loading your bags.”

 

Map showing Pella

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A view over Pella

 

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Pella dig site map from Wikipedia

 

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Pella_in_Jordan#/media/File%3ATemple_Precinct_2007.jpg: photo by Ben Churcher

If you want to know more about Pella and Sydney University’s involvement:.

Detailed history of Pella from Wikipedia

A brief history of the site, written by Ben Churcher who has been involved with the excavations for many years and is currently the field director at Pella

Conversation with a Pella archaeologist. The Pella part of this interview begins at about 9.58

Conversation with Dr Stephen Bourke, dig director in 2001 and for many years before and after

Daily life on the dig

A photo album of the dig 2011

Wikimedia commons gallery

 

 

This is background to the next series of Postcards from the past.

Eurobodalla beaches: 1080

17 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in Eurobodalla beaches, photos

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

geology, rocks

1080 is a poison, banned in many countries but still used in Australia in an attempt to eradicate foxes, rabbits and wild dogs. Edward Hoagland calls it “a drastic potion”. How come it is also the name of a beach in the Eurobodalla National Park, and a very beautiful beach at that? When we first moved to this part of the world, surfies J knew kept talking about this great beach called 1080. It was one of those nameless beaches around here that surfies identified using the name of the poison on warning signs. The name stuck.

We drive through bushland from Mystery Bay, the sign for 1080 invisible from the road, a familiar habit of National Parks and Wildlife NSW. The bushland opens out into a clearing on the headland, a scattering of picnic tables and short tracks leading to the edge of the cliff. There are long views south to Mumbulla Mountain and an emphatic sea empty of surfers. A wooden staircase leads down to the beach, and to the rocks that are of course the focus of our interest.

As with most of our weekend beaches we’re in sole possession as we move amongst the rocks, expecting to see something similar to rocks we’ve seen before. Not so. How to characterise these rocks? 

There are rocks in conjoined piles crowned by grass and sky; rocks displaying panels, parallel and differentiated in shades of brown and pumpkin and grey; and rocks sporting a blue line meandering past minute shelves where sand has settled.

There are clean-edged black basalt rocks stretching out into the turmoil of surf. They’re johnny-come-latelies on this coast, only 99 million years old and related in origin to the rocks of nearby Gulaga Mountain and the offshore island, Baranguba.

I’m delighted to spot a geological feature I recognise, a substantial dyke intruding into 470 million year old sandstone, if I’m to believe the results of a search. 

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of this rocky profusion are the wavy lines, unlike anything we’ve seen before.


Unfamiliar too are the frilled vertical layers, from some angles looking like old-fashioned bonnets.


I wander round contentedly as the tide begins to drop, relishing textures and patterns and colours; tiny pebbly coves gentled by crystomint wavelets; rocks vivid with orange lichen; and the view back to Mumbulla Mountain. A lowering sky does not, sadly, deliver on what looks like a promise of rain.




RegularRandom: 5 minutes with a magnolia

14 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos

≈ 14 Comments

As soon as I saw the magnolia at Blue Earth, my local cafe, I knew I was going to 5-minute it. It’s pink for a start, entirely appropriate for DJ whose life is styled in pink and whose brainchild “5 minutes with a …” is.

 

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To see a mistress at work with flowers, 5 minutes and a camera, have a look at DesleyJane’s post featuring sunflowers.

 

 

Mahomet and the golden camera

12 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in writing

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

faction, Serjilla, Syria

This is a piece I imagined based on my encounter with the family in Serjilla that I mentioned in my last Postcard from the past. I’m not much good at writing fiction, but I really enjoy taking a kernel of reality and playing with it. That’s what I’ve done here. It was written a while back in the days when I was semi-prolific. Next week, I’m having a writing retreat at Potato Point with a writing friend, and I’m hoping concentrated time and the presence of a critiquer will inspire a few changes of style and a flurry of writing. I’m also posting it as I procrastinate over a background piece for my time at Pella in Jordan.



Mahomet peered around the ruined stone wall. There she was again, an old woman, a foreigner, on her own. She was shabbily dressed. She didn’t look like most of the tourists who visited his home. They usually came in crowds on a bus and they didn’t stay long. She came in a battered yellow taxi and she’d been here wandering around for ages, ever since he came up after dinner to look at the motor bike the archaeologists always left parked near where they were digging.

She looked poor – for a tourist – but in her hand was a golden camera. It gleamed in the cold Dead City sun, against the green grass, the blue sky and the stone of the ruins. She had taken many photos, of strange things sometimes. She seemed to be photographing blades of grass and single stones. She seemed to like taking photos through windows or doors.

Mahomet was good at watching. It was one of the things he really liked doing, when he could get away from his younger brothers and sisters and his mother who always seemed to want him to do something. Sometimes he watched ants and scorpions, but they belonged here. What he really liked doing was watching strangers and trying to figure them out. Why were they here? What was their life like at home? How did they get the money they always seemed to have lots of?

Sometimes he talked to them. He didn’t know much English or French or German, but he was proud that he knew more than they knew Arabic. Suddenly he decided he would talk to the old woman with the golden camera.

She was staring at one of the old roofless buildings. He said “Madam …” and she jumped and looked startled.

“Oh. Hello.” she said in a flat voice.

“You want me to show you places?” he asked.

“How much?”

 It was his turn to look startled.

 “For free. No money.”

He moved off towards one of the buildings he knew she would like. It had plenty of window and door holes and enough grass to keep her happy forever. They didn’t talk much. She held the golden camera and used it often, as they rambled away from the centre of the buildings. She was happy to follow him. Sometimes he asked questions about the camera.

 “Why do you take so many photos?” “What do you do with them all?” and finally “Why is your camera golden?’

 She looked surprised again.

 “Golden? I suppose it is golden. It was just the one I bought, because it did the things I wanted to do. “

 “How strange foreigners are,” he thought. “She has a golden camera and she didn’t even know it.”

As they approached the last building he planned to show her he heard the sound of voices. Oh no. He recognized them. His mother and Saleh and Ahmed and all of them. And there they were coming up the hill their heads first and then the rest of them. His mother called him

“Mahomet. What are you doing? Are you annoying the lady?”

Suddenly he saw his opportunity. Tourists like having photos taken with the locals. His family were locals and there was even a baby. Babies seemed to be especially attractive. He couldn’t figure out why. This might be his chance to hold the golden camera and even use it. He’d never used a camera, never even held one.

 “Photo madam? You like photo with my family? I will take it.” He held his breath.

 “I’d love a photo” said the old lady. She handed him the camera, putting the strap around his neck.

“You look through here,” she said. “And when you can see the picture you want to take, you press this button.”

He peered through the viewfinder. There was his family. The baby’s nappy was sagging and his mother was squinting in the sun. His sisters preened and looked important and his brother, he knew, was about to whinge: “I want a turn to. Give me a turn.” Behind them was the familiar landscape, strangely carved off and boxed by the little viewing hole.

He pressed the button, holding the golden camera steady. And then he pressed it again, and again and again till there were ten photos of his family locked up inside. What a pity he would never see them, and how much he wanted a camera of his own.

The lady took back the camera and told him to stand with his family and she took two more photos. Then she said something astonishing: “Do you want to see?” They all crowded round and he noticed a tiny screen. In the sun you could see nothing, but in the shade there they were, caught on this sunny day with a chill in the air.

The lady said thank you and went back to her yellow taxi. Mahomet no longer wanted to buy a motor bike more than anything else in the world. He wanted a golden camera to catch all the things he saw and keep them forever.

Couplings: a photo essay 

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

maunderings, shells

Australia is in the middle of a totally ridiculous non-compulsory, non-binding plebiscite (or is it a survey?) which asks the question “Should the law be changed to allow same sex couples to marry?” And costs $AUD170 million. All to rescue timid parliamentarians from doing their job, which is to legislate in the spirit of Ireland and the 21st century.

I suspect this is why I use my non-geological beach walks to meditate on couples, using shells and occasional other findings to prompt my thinking. Shells have been paired at the whim of the sea, not unlike the nature of most pairings, brought about in strange configurations by the accident of proximity.

Take these two, for example. Totally different. You’d never expect them to see anything in each other.

For these two I see trouble ahead. They are very different from each other, both broken, marked by previous experience.

There could well be a different kind of trouble for these couplings. Look how they curl around and nestle up to each other. It’s pretty dangerous to seek completion in something else. And look how abrasion’s beginning already – grains of sand settling between them ready to niggle and damage.

Alarm bells ring here. See how one of them dominates. I foresee an overpowering matched to a diminishing.

Look around you at any cafe and you’ll see this couple, sitting silent, each in their own isolated niche.

Some couplings manage a nice balance of function and pleasure.

And some, like this man with his surfboard, offer pure unadulterated, undemanding delight.

Then there are the couples wrapped up in each other and excluding the rest of the world. These two are foraging companionably together, but when a third joins them they raise their wings and squawk it away.

A gutted crab and beached starfish are a final reminder that human pairings all end in separate couplings with death.

Despite all these negatives and nigglings, I hope my fellow Australians shape up and vote resoundingly “YES”, showing good sense that our politicians and many commentators and interest groups lack. No doubt same sex marriage will encounter the same mix of agony and ecstasy that seems to be inherent in most relationships, but that’s no reason for making it impossible.

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