M&M: Pan's Labyrinth

Dear reader,

children are often a symbol of innocence. But even though the children may fight to be good and do their best to help, that's by far not what their parents may be like at all. That's certainly and especially true for Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) in Guillermo del Toro's “Pan's Labyrinth” from the year 2006. Ofelia and her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) are on their way to Ofelia's stepfather, the fascist captain Vidal (Sergi López).

The captain strives against the partisans and also shows no heart for Ofelia either. She realises that in their first meeting right away. In the night she can't sleep. An insect, which she has met on her way to the captain, comes up again. It's not a normal insect. Not just because it's so big. When Ofelia shows her fairy tale book to the insect, it turns into a fairy, like one out of that book. The fairy guides Ofelia to the near by labyrinth. In the middle of the labyrinth is a statue of a girl with a baby and Pan sleeping there is waking up. He tells Ofelia that she's a princess turned human and now that she's human, she lost all her memory of being a princess. Her father, the king, is waiting for her. She has to succeed with three tasks, to break the curse.

Doug Jones, who's playing Pan, is in full costume and mask, as in other Guillermo del Toro movies, like Abe Sapien in Hellboy. His character is a rather strange one. On the one hand he helps Ofelia, on the other hand the tasks he sets for her, lead her to be in trouble a lot. The tasks and troubles of the fairy tale world are certainly correlating with the dangers and brutality of the adult world. That's especially true for the stepfather. When he finds out that the housemaid Mercedes and the doctor Ferreiro are actually helping the partisans, the stepfather doesn't hold back at all.

Is Pan on Ofelia's side after all? Or did he use her for his own purposes all along? Does captain Videl have a heart for his stepdaughter in the end? Or did the war turn his heart to stone? See for your self and make your own decision.

I'm mostly impressed how the movie combines true history in a very intriguing way with elements of fairy tales. You can trust Guillermo del Toro with horror and fantasy anyway. The total love and care put into the movie comes through to me. Especially how the creation of the characters and portrayal of creatures of the fairy tales world. Even though the movie clearly uses elements of fairy tales, it's far from being a children's movie. At best it's an adult version of a fairy tale movie. A very intriguing movie, but nothing for the sentimental, squeamish minded.

Until next blog,

sarah

Showing feelings

Dear reader,

German readers are probably still remembering Arno Funke, who under the name “Dagobert” (the German name for Scrooge McDuck) extorted big stores between 1988 and 1994. He worked as a painter of motorcycles and sport cars. To finance a start as self-employer, he extorted money from the stores. Later he said that the fumes from the workplace damaged his brain and lead to depression. In his autobiography (only available in German as “Mein Leben als Dagobert” (My life as Dagobert)), he writes that he wasn't aware of the slow process to depression and the numbness at that time. His arrest and therapy lead him to gain access to his feelings again. Only then was he able to paint again and be creative.

Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft are portrayed as rather cold. In the BBC series “Sherlock” there is a scene in “A Scandal in Belgravia” (Season 2, episode 1) in which Sherlock and Mycroft stand together at the morgue of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Sherlock just identified a corpse as Irene Adler. In the hallway he hears crying people pass by. “They all care so much. Do you ever wonder if there's something wrong with us?”, Sherlock asks his brother. Because although Sherlock has met Irene Adler earlier and was somewhat fascinated by her, her death at Christmas Eve doesn't seem to move him or Mycroft at all. “All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage. Sherlock”, is Mycroft's reply. He does show some feelings for his little brother though, because he gives him a cigarette, although Sherlock endeavours to quit smoking.

Sherlock Holmes is certainly a fictional character. So it's questionable how realistic such a cold person actually is. Although sociopaths indeed have no empathy for others, are in a way cut off from their feelings, especially feelings for others.

Hard and annoying as it may be sometimes, to be overwhelmed by our own feelings. In the end it's probably better still and more human, to have feelings and to show them. There is a German saying literally “An Indian knows no pain.” Meaning that one must be brave and not be over-sensitive to pain. It's totally absurd. Girls and women are probably more emotional generally. They, after all, are mainly responsible to take care of the children. So it makes sense that they can show feelings easily and read them in others, in the children and react accordingly. That doesn't mean that consequently the boys and men have to be “tough” and mustn't show any feelings at all. Feelings are part of life. Feelings are part of being human. Whether we like it or not. In the long run, it's not good to hide feelings or swallow them. As shown in the case of Arno Funke, something like that is likely to lead to something negative and we lose something. Even though feelings sometimes keep us from doing things and overwhelm us and we can't think straight, although we wish we could. Feelings are like a river, they change. A situation totally wears us out at one point, but in time we'll get over it and we move on.

In case you do want to feel down or depressed once, follow Charlie Brown's lead:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqTeUoxESw_oxFbTBn55jRstKMrG9z1PsQrZJHeEmF3ZYEKHJK_Z6Dvjj_FBOZa_1tyN6cXTs7Og5lGMGnefUDTPlww5proAa6qdQjXpXshGu7khPNcKq90i1eWMtBMXWWbBOk-vpKNLM/s400/snoopy.gif

Until next blog,

sarah

My wonder garden (or Sleeping fast part 2)

Dear reader,

I already wrote about what may help to go to sleep faster once (Sleeping fast... if you want it and remember...). Today I want to share with you a method, which has helped me some years ago. I don't use it much these days, because I can go to sleep fast and easy and the methods I described in my earlier post help me sufficiently enough. Nevertheless the one I like to tell you about today is also very effective. When I started using it, I didn't know it is actually a hypnosis method. Only later on when I read about hypnosis, did I recognise this method again. What I am going to describe now, is purely my own imagination. Of course you're totally free to change elements of it as you please and envision them.

I'd have my eyes closed and would imagine a staircase out of bricks in a building of bricks. Something like a hallway in a castle. The staircase were clearly visible, although the hallway wasn't lit as such. I never counted the steps and didn't walk them very consciously. Sometimes I would sit on the top step for a while and wait a moment, before standing up and starting to go down. Sometimes, after a few steps down, I'd just “be” at the bottom. At the end of the stairs there'd be a closed round wooden door with a door knob.

Behind the door is a garden with a path with a bend. The garden is blooming with lots of colourful flowers. The reader might enjoy bending down and take a sniff at some of the flowers. Are there butterflies in your garden, too? Let's go further down the path. First a bit more straight on. Then there's the bend. A bit further straight ahead. The path leads to a sitting area with a couple of chairs and a bench.

It's always a pleasure and surprise for me to see who's sitting there at the table waiting for me. Sometimes the two chairs that I have there are taken and also the bench has one or two persons sitting there. Sometimes there's just one person there. In any case never a person I really know, but always people I'd assume to be enjoying their presence or people I'd like to have conversations with or that might inspire me. Magicians like the “psychological illusionist” (as he calls himself) Derren Brown, who himself uses a lot of hypnosis and could “hypnotise” me to sleep. Although so far nobody spoke a word in my garden. Or Teller of the magic duo Penn & Teller. During performances he never speaks. If he does speak, it's always with his back to the audience or with his mouth covered. But on YouTube you'll find videos in which he does talk. So I do know his voice. In the garden he wouldn't speak though. Most of the time I'd find him there with a coin in his hand and he'd roll a coin across his knuckles. His decades of practise and experience make tricks like that look much easier than they are for me. With him it's a flowing movement and he could do it en passant. Charming. Bewitching.

After sitting there for a bit and watching Teller with the coin or just enjoying the presence of people there, I'd fall asleep. If the bench is free, I might lay down there and go to sleep in the garden and for real.

Like I already wrote above, you are free to create your own garden and take from mine what you like. Still I'd like to give you a couple of things to consider to get the best effect from this: 

• If you want an exact number of steps to the door, I'd recommend 20.
• Also I'd suggest to take a sniff in your garden and sense smells at least once, even if you don't specifically bend down to a flower. Far too often there's talk and suggestions only about visual aspects in exercises and methods like this. It's a fact however that we find it easier to get into a situation, the more senses are activated. Smell and taste usually are ignored. By smelling a flower, you'd have at least have smell in a bit once.
• Of course a sitting area is no must have, neither is having one or more persons sitting there. Create your own surprises for yourself, like I keep surprising myself about who'd be sitting there.
• For sort of “security reasons” I'd recommend to you, if you have persons, to make it people you don't know and are rather very unlikely to ever meet. Known persons may hurt or disappoint you some day. Those persons are not very likely to be in your garden anymore. Generally it's still better to not have people you know in places like that garden from the start. That way the garden is forever a safe place full of joy. 

My hypnosis friends (you know who you are) might have other suggestions to consider. Maybe I'll add more in my text depending on your comments or if I think of additional important aspects. For now that's it for me. I wish you much fun and joy in your garden and sweet dreams. If you like, you can share your experiences here.

Until next blog,

sarah

We're all humans

Dear reader,

on july, 1^st this year Barbara Frost wrote in the Guardian an article entitled Two girls died looking for a toilet. This should make us angry, not embarrassed, in which she told about the sad destiny of two cousins, 14 and 16 years of age in india. They two of them were raped and later killed looking for a toilet. Everybody should safely have access to water and a toilet.

It was only a couple of days later when it took me almost two hours to get to my dad. Usually it takes me about 30 to 40 minutes, unless it's sunday with longer times between to trams arriving. It was a week day that day. At first the time when the tram would be arriving was wrong. The next should be arriving in 1 minute. I waited 20 minutes in the end. There was no sign or announcement, as there usually would be. If I had know this, I'd have walked to the next station. Would have taken me 10 minutes and I'd have to change trams there anyway. I waited for the connecting tram for another 10 minutes then. Four stops before my final stop, the tram came to a hold. I can hardly believe that I'm hesitating now and that I'm desperate for words here, to write this. I hope and think that readers of my blog know how I mean this though. A group of students had been on the tram, too, and one girl had made fun of a black man, who ended up pushing her. The tram got stopped and the police was called. I was annoyed from all the delay my travel had cost me already and got out to walk the final bit to the train station down the shopping street. The last thing I noticed was that the black man apparently only spoke english. Which seemed to made it bit more difficult to communicate with him.

Last year I was in france with my dad and sister for what would have been my mom's birthday. As I got out of the train in paris, a police man stopped me at the platform. I didn't understand what he said to me in french. He asked me in english, if I spoke english. I didn't get to answer him. My dad had come back and my sister, too. As the police man saw the two, he just let me go. Only much later it occurred to my dad that maybe my shawl, which I have had around my shoulders, could have been the reason for the police to stop me. The shawl is grey with black squares connected with black lines the squares. You could think it had an arabic or muslim pattern. I got stopped for a shawl I had? I don't know if this actually was the reason, but it's indeed the only one I can think of. Thinking back I resent that I didn't ask them about it. I would have liked to know. What does it matter what someone is wearing for the character of a person or what that person thinks or what they might do?

Some time ago I heard on the telly a story about a french woman, if I remember it correctly. She studied islamic culture or arabic language or something like that and wanted to go to america once. They wouldn't let her in. I don't remember if the reason was mentioned or not. Probably they feared she might be a potential terrorist, what with her studies.

Many years ago I had contact with someone using a chat program and he was living in an area where they practised voodoo. I don't remember where he lived exactly. I had deactivated the profile pictures on my program. He had put up a picture of himself. He was black. He really liked me and he wanted me to be his girlfriend. Sadly his english was rather poor. So I had difficulty explaining to him that with me living in germany, it would be impossible for me to be his proper girlfriend. He got angry. He said it was his skin colour. I would despise him now, because he was black. I tried to make it clear to him that until just now I didn't know he was black, because I had the pictures deactivated. He didn't understand me, no matter what simple words I used to explain it to him. He insisted that his skin colour was the reason for my rejection. He was certain. He said, he'd go to a voodoo priest to curse me. So I'd be forever unhappy and something bad would happen to me. You'll see, he wrote.

And then there's this song Prejudices by Tim Minchin. As far as I know it came from an incident after he performed an older version of a song in which he sings about black people. Actually it's precisely that very point, that there is no “the black” and they “all” do this one thing, because they're black and all black people do it. After a concert some black people came up to him and told him to not sing those lines anymore, or else... Sad really, because it seems they didn't get the point of the song. The song is called “If you really love me” and the lines went, “We go together like a cracker and brie, like racism and ignorance, like niggers and R&B.” He makes a similar, to me equally important point, in the first part of his song Confessions. Women should not be afraid to walk the streets at night and fear for their life.

Penn Jillette of the magic duo Penn & Teller published short videos, vlogs, years ago. I don't remember the title and can't find a certain one online anymore. In it he talked about the fact that he doesn't judge people by their skin colour. In the end we're all equal. We're all humans. The skin colour says nothing about my behaviour. Our behaviour reflects our character. The character of a person has nothing to do with skin colour. I wish more people would think like that. The skin colour of a person should never be an issue.

Until next blog,

sarah