K-PAX or why i write names and places and such all in small letters alot

Dear reader,

this blog post is a special one today. Usually I post something on my german blog and then translate to post it here. Today I thought it's time to explain to my english reading readers about my way of writing and spelling things. As you may have noticed, I sign each post with "sarah", all in small letters. Also in this paragraph alone I wrote "english reading readers" and not "English reading readers". Today I'll explain why. I write differently in german, because the whole grammar and spelling words with a capital letter or not is different in german. In english, apart from "I" and names of places, people and such - and the beginning of a sentence, everything is spelled in small letters anyway. I thought it's time today to explain my writing style. Especially since some people already pointed out to me that it should read, for example "American", instead of "american". English is not my native language and although I may make some more or less obvious mistakes that are unnoticed and unwanted, "american", "english" and "german" are very deliberately written the way they are. Here is why:

Years ago a friend of my mom's suggested to me to watch the movie "K-PAX". So that's what I did.

"K-PAX" is about a man (played by Kevin Spacey and he should have won an oscar for that one!), who is found bending over a lady. She's been mugged seconds before. The police question him and his answers seem rather strange, so they take him away and he's eventually brought to a psychiatric hospital. One of the chief of staff there is Dr. Mark Powell (played by the great Jeff Bridges). We find out that prot, as the man calls himself, believes to come from the planet K-PAX. Of course the way prot would write or spell things and names and places isn't a topic in the movie. But it is in the book written by Gene Brewer, which was the model for the movie script. The book is written from the doctor's point of view and in his way to show his respect for prot, he adopts his way of writing. According to prot names of persons or places are not important in the big picture of the universe. So they don't deserve to be written with capital letters, thus: prot. Planets however do play an important part, so prot spells them everything in capital letters, thus: K-PAX. Or he'd also write: EARTH and WORLD. Some time ago, I would write "Earth" instead of "earth", which makes more sense to me than "EARTH". But I don't do that anymore now. No particular reason. I find "EARTH" a bit irritating, but I somewhat adopt prot's way of writing, as I imagine you already saw from my previous blogs. So I write "english" and "german" instead of "English" or "German" and also often I sign e-mails and this blog with all small letters reading: sarah.

So what is it with prot? Really from another planet or just delusional? Examinations show that he can see ultra violet light, which is impossible for humans to see. Also in one point in the story he seems to be just gone. Other patients tell the staff of the hospital not to worry, that prot is only away for a bit to see the few other places on Earth he didn't see yet. But in his research the psychiatrist also finds out about a man, who was believed to have drowned after loosing his wife and daughter over a murderous rapist. At the end of the movie or book that's for you to decide. Both the book and the movie give clues to both a very human, earthly tragedy and some unearthly, inexplicable things happening, too. I have my ideas, but I'm not going to discuss them here in my blog. If you like to share your thoughts with me or want to know what I think is going on, drop me a message.

Because of his work, my dad (he's a psychiatrist and psychotherapist) is always very critical about "psychiatry movies". And often he gets bored and says a movie could have been shorter. But he very much enjoyed "K-PAX". He said, he especially liked the two possibilities of the human tragedy as well as the possible alien explanation. So take it from him: this movie is well worth watching!

One last thing about the book: the author is a certain Gene Brewer, as I mentioned above. In the book the psychiatrist is also called Gene Brewer, but is purely fictional. The author doesn't have a degree in psychiatry, nor is the story in "K-PAX" in any way related to some real life case. Not that I'm aware of anyway. I just wanted to point that out to you here right away, since this is often talked about and people seem to believe that the author is or was in fact a psychiatrist actually writing about true events. As far as I know this is not the case.

Until next blog,

sarah

Ericksonian birthday or christmas presents

Dear reader,

Sidney Rosen has in his book "My Voice Will Go with You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson" one story ("Calluses"), which is about a construction worker, who had fallen and was left totally paralysed and in pain. He asked Erickson, what he could do. Erickson said, that there's not much he could do. Develop calluses on his pain nerves, so he wouldn't feel the pain so much. Erickson suggested to him to collect comics, jokes and funny sayings and make scrapbooks out of them, which he could give to fellow workmen when they were in the hospital. That's just what the man did.

That's just what I did last year for one of my aunts with a strenuously collected collection of comics with Snoopy from the Peanuts. My aunts had a dog for many decades. Not anymore, because it's a bit easier to travel without one. I asked my dad, if he believed she'd enjoy reading comics. He had doubts. After I told him what I had in mind, he believed she'd like it for sure. So I collected and glued a thin notebook full of those comics and wrote her a card saying basically, that my dad had told me she won't read comics. But this one here was a very special one. She called me later to say thank you and that she reads one or two pages every day.

Our daily newspaper has a quote on the front page, which relates to one of the bigger articles on the page. I collected some of them over the past months for another notebook, which I had stumbled upon in our flat some time ago. No one wanted that notebook anymore, but it was small and nice and read. My friend and colleague from work likes read and quotes. The notebook is just big enough for one quote on each page and the pages are perforated, so you could rip them out. So I spent the past days now sorting the quotes fitting in such a way that one on the front the one on the back of a page were in some way or another somewhat related to each other. Yesterday I went through them one final time and cut the quotes straight. I wrote down many of them for myself, so I'd have them, too. I was up until half past two in the morning yesterday. Time passed unnoticed. I had written in german and listened to Derren Brown in english reading his book. It must have been hypnosis. Apart from the fact that time had passed so quickly, I couldn't remember consciously either which quotes I had written down or what I had heard Derren Brown say even a short time later when I was in bed. Amnesia. Trance is a natural phenomena and I don't think about it much, that I hardly can remember consciously the quotes or the audio book. It had been fun and after all the book is finally ready before christmas. That's what's really important.

I want to give the reader a warning: such notebooks, even small thin ones, need time and if you don't already have a big collection of quotes, you should plan long ahead of time for such a present. I have taken my time with those two books for that reason. I had to. The newspaper only came once a day and I couldn't use every comic or quote in it. Planing period: at best months ahead.

Until next blog,

sarah