M&M: Stay

Dear reader,

in 2005 the movie “Stay” came out, one of my favourite movies. The story is somewhat dark and the ending is frustratingly open. What I like most though are the visual elements: the use of colours and transitions from one scene to another. Also I like Ewan McGregor and Ryan Gosling, who are both playing the lead roles in this movie.

Ryan Gosling is playing Henry Letham, a young man, who we see driving a car at the beginning. Then a tire blows and an accident happens. Cut. He's sitting on the street and as the camera moves away from him allowing us a wider view of the scene, we see the car burning behind him. He stands up and just walks along the street.

The psychiatrist Dr. Sam Foster (Ewan McGregor) had a bad night and overslept. But this should only be the beginning of a couple of very strange days for him. On the university campus he meets his friend and teacher Lila (Naomi Watts), who asks him what's wrong. The neighbours baby kept him awake. Lila is confused. The neighbours are 80 years old. Sam takes over for a sick colleague, among her patients is also Henry. He doesn't like the fact that suddenly someone else is his therapist. Is his therapist unable to cope with him and let that other one take over? But eventually Henry opens up and tells about his plan: “Saturday. Midnight.” That's when he's going to kill himself. On his 21^st birthday.

Over the course of this movie, we see Henry and others driving in a car. Those scenes in the car are from a different time or indeed a different world(?) than the rest and in fact most part of the movie. I think I don't anticipate too much, when I write, that Henry in fact was badly injured during the car accident and is about to die. The psychiatrist “story” is all in his head and is his way of thinking whether he wants to live or die. He wants to live really. Otherwise he wouldn't have gone to Sam for help, who is in reality the driver of another car and now is giving first aid. Another woman, who Henry in his mind makes to be Sam's girlfriend, checks the car and tells him that the others are dead. Many things and people in the movie are twisted in Henry's head and used for the reality in his mind. Finding those things, what is used and how and finding what's reality, makes the movie fun and interesting for me. Henry's full name is Henry Letham. Letham being an anagram for Hamlet. A young woman, who served Henry a couple of times in a diner and could maybe help Henry is also actually rehearsing for a Hamlet play.

Some wonder about the ending and what Henry's choice was in the end. Because we never actually see whether he is dead or alive. Many are certain that his decision is obvious however. Watch the movie and make your own decision about that. For those of you who like rather calm soundtracks “Stay” might be one for you. It was written and played by Asche & Spencer.

Until next blog,

sarah

Multitasking is bulls-hit

Dear reader,

it's often said that we women are more capable of doing several things at once more than men can do it. Women are capable of multitasking, men aren't. Or are we all in the end incapable of multitasking really? Maybe I can write this here and at the same time have the music on and I do have a chat window open on top of that. I could certainly also do some exercises that can be done sitting, while I'm writing here. Mentally my attention is definitely divided though and not truly totally with either of these things. Without actually researching for studies on this, I think that the concentration and productivity decreases, if you do several times “at the same time” so to speak. Because you'd not give your full attention to either of them. Not to mention the question of for how long you can keep up doing several things at once, dividing your attantion between them and staying mentally and physically healthy. 

Penn Jillette of the magic duo Penn & Teller read about this once that you should not listen to music while riding your bike. Because it would limit your attention of what's going on on the street. Strictly speaking you should have your radio or music off in your car. Penn actually did that for a while. What he found out is not really surprising: he found that he was paying more attention to the road traffic and would notice more things.

There are different versions of this story of a zen master. He was asked what his secret to enlightenment was. “When I sleep, I just sleep. When I walk, I just walk. When I eat, I just eat”, the zen master said. The student was confused. He was very certain he did that, too. “No”, the zen master said. “When you wake up, you're thinking about what to eat. When you eat, you think about where to go next.”

For those knowing this story, there's a sort of follow-up story to that. The zen master is sitting at the table one morning eating his breakfast and reading the newspaper. “Master”, the student says. “Didn't you say when you eat, you just eat. When you walk, you just walk? Now you're sitting here, eating your breakfast and reading the newspaper. Doesn't that contradict your teachings?” To which the zen master said, “When I read the newspaper and eat breakfast, I just read the newspaper and eat breakfast.”

Until next blog,

sarah

Remember to just breathe

Dear reader,

there are all sorts of relaxing techniques, courses, therapies and what not, to get relaxed again, thinking more straight and/or to just calm down again. The simplest and most obvious is often overlooked: just breathe. In a stressful situation or when we're nervous, we react far too often with shallow breathing or even holding our breath all together, instead of taking a deep breath or at least keep on breathing normally.

Many starting with ventriloquism will probably notice that the way of breathing they use for that makes them aware of their belly muscles suddenly. Especially those we don't use that often usually. Often you can read about neglected diaphragmatic breathing. As if we ever really could breathe without our diaphragm. It's true that we do breathe rather shallow and not consciously deep in and out of the belly. The intestines are often called the second brain. So just like we yawn sometimes to air our brains in our head out, it feels just as well good to relax the belly by breathing consciously. It's free!

In busy times like this, we could all do with calming down more. You don't even have to meditate as such. Many in fact have difficulties not thinking for a while. I know people, who say that they work better time pressure. Some suddenly feel bored when they don't have another five things to do at least on their “to-do list”. Some day they'll have a burnout. For those who don't want to stop thinking completely in a time of quiet, they might, as an alternative, for example count from 1 to 10 and when they reached 10 start again at 1. Repeat a few times, without taking note how many times you reached 10.

Might be a good thing to “think first, then speak” in any case. Especially in conflict situations. In Noel Coward's “Privat Lives” two couples are on their honeymoon in a hotel. As luck would have it, the husband of one was once with the wife of the other. They meet now again with rooms next to each other and bicker again, too. But they don't want to bicker. They make an agreement: when one notices they start bickering again, that person is to say a catchphrase. After that they're both not to speak for two minutes. Two minutes with the option of renewal. I like that idea a lot.

Until next blog,

sarah

Sensational senses

Dear reader,

often we wish negative feelings to be gone. I already described possibilities of pain control in another post. But pain isn't the only perception we can influence in ourselves or others. We could just as well enforce positive feelings.

It's believed in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) that we've got a sort of program running for every feeling. Certain programs are running and we are sad. Certain other programs are running and then we're happy. The trigger, of course, isn't always the same. Also the program for a certain feeling isn't the same with every person. For one certain person though, say, the program “laughing” is always the same. Meaning that the processes that are running, until that person laughs, are the same. In many demonstrations, Richard Bandler, one of the founders of NLP, can be seen deliberately making a person laugh. Not with jokes, but by setting what's called an “anchor” in NLP, a trigger. When used again, that person immediately has that feeling again. This may be funny in a demonstration, if you, for example, you just tap someone on the right shoulder and they are rolling with laughter.

It's more interesting though to use that knowledge and this sort of control over feelings and sense of perception deliberately in real life. Some years ago I must have set an anchor for myself to feel warm, without noticing it. Sadly this happens way too often with more negative anchors. Moments of shock lead to phobias or someone touched you in a certain rough way or maybe just tap you on the shoulder in a certain way. When someone else touches youor taps you on the shoulder in a similar way, (often) unconscious memories come up again and you tense up and you feel bad. Even touches that were meant friendly can go down very badly for that other person. I'd suggest for people, especially those working in the social field, to pay attention to those kinds of reactions and avoid the kind of touch in the future, when it's met with tension or something similar. Back to my anchor for warm feeling. I was able to touch my left shoulder with my right hand and I would feel considerably warmer. On a study trip I used that. They had a terrace outside on a floor that was several floors down from our rooms. I didn't want to get up, get a jacket or pullover and leave the interesting discussions. So once in a while I'd touch my left shoulder.

A few years ago I had an infection on my right hand, but for a week it got treated in a wrong way, my left hand got infected, too. Some nights I'd wake up deliberately to scratch. Only when I was awake, was I able to control this unbelievably strong urge to scratch most of the time. Similarily to what I described in my pain control post already, I imagined to be in a forest and my hands would be bathed in cold stream water. The colour blue helped me a lot and also the thought of cool from a flowing river. It would be like a soft massage or something and blue is a contrast to the hands red from the infection. One night I couldn't sleep for some time and my hands were itching a lot. Scratching wouldn't help, of course. So I imagined that my hands would be in a blue cast. Even if I reached over with one hand to the other, I wouldn't be able to scratch. The cast would be there to block the touch. So I just lay there with immobile hands and fell asleep eventually.

One night I came home first with the underground and had to go the rest on my bike, as usual. I only had a thin jacket. On the underground I had listened to music. But for the bike ride I turned the player off. I got on my bike and started riding. I was humming some sort of melody to myself. For no particular reason I stopped at one point and suddenly I felt distinctly cold. Strange, I thought to myself. I started humming again and got warm again. Humming made me warm? Only once I shortly stopped humming, until I decided to hum all the rest of the way home.

On cold winter nights, the yellow street lights help me to feel a bit warmer again. I won't go into detail about it now and write about it in another separate post. But music can change my way of perception of time under certain circumstances, so that it seems to go faster or slower to me than in objective reality.

We all can influence our own perception and those of others. For that we only have to know which way to influence what senses. Spiders aren't scary as such, but are made scary, when we think of them as huge with long, thin legs and probably strangely furry creatures with many eyes, ideally in colour and crawling towards us. I'm usually not afraid of spiders, although I don't necessarily want to touch them. If I imagine a spider in the described way, it does get scary and uncomfortable to me though.

A so called NLP Fast Phobia Cure, a short and fast treatment for phobias, takes an experienced person under some circumstances probably about 5 to 10 minutes only. To describe it short and simple, the representation in the head is checked, mainly the images, visual aspects and sounds. That means more senses can be change, too. The more senses are changed, the more intense the experience gets. A distinct change can also happen when things are changed in just one sense. By changing many aspects to the opposite, the thing that was so scary at first, will turn into the harmless opposite. Cold gets warm and warm gets cold. Fast gets slow and slow gets fast. And many more. I can only welcome you all to experiment with that for yourself, find what factors influence you and change them just for the fun of testing what happens then. In unlucky circumstances, you'll have just a bit of fun, at best, it'll really help. Just like I used that to not scratch or to feel less cold.

Until next blog

sarah

M&M: Prestige

Dear reader,

today I want to introduce you to a movie with magicians and about magic. No, of course not Harry Potter! Probably everyone knows that magician already, even those among you, who didn't read the books or watched the movies know enough for me not to write about him in my blog.

The movie “Prestige” is from 2006 with Christian Bale as Alfred Borden and Hugh Jackman as Robert Angier. Borden and Angier work together at first. Although Borden is the younger magician and more a helper or stooge playing an audience member. One day an escapology act goes terribly wrong though and Angier's wife, who is bound underwater in a watertank dies. Since Borden as an audience member tied the important knot, Angier makes him responsible for the death of his wife. Needless to say that they go their separate ways after that. Although not quite, because both spend a lot of time to bust the other and being the better, if not the best magician.

Both develop a number: they go into one cabinet and seconds later, the step out from a second cabinet. That's the main principle of the big number they both have. Is Borden using a double? But Angier, in one of his bustings hurts Borden that he actually lost fingers on one hand and Borden stepping into the cabinet as well as the one stepping out are missing those fingers. Angier on the other hand (no pun intended) is travelling from great britain to america to meet the physicist Nikola Tesla (David Bowie). Tesla really existed and was famous for unusual inventions. To this day it's not known how some of his inventions he presented actually worked. In “Prestige” we see that he hands Angier a light-bulb which then lights up in his hand like that. But are feats and inventions like that enough to give Angier a second man?

Angier wants to destroy Borden desperately and definitely. That means that he has to set him up. During a performance Borden gets to enter the backstage area and sees Angier seemingly trapped in the watertank. The top lid can't be opened anymore. Angier drowns. This leads to a trial. Borden, meanwhile with a wife and a daughter, faces a possible death sentence. His life up to that point is the main part of the movie. In prison, waiting for his execution, Borden gets a visitor. Only when that man tells Borden that he'll take care of his daughter from now on and is about to leave, does Borden recognise that man. It's Angier! So Borden is no murderer!

At the end both magicians paid a high price for their big number and they know the secret of the other ones trick and what that trick has cost him.

For me “Prestige” is something special, because I'm interested in magic and do a bit of magic myself. I guarantee you that almost all tricks are real and possible, the way they are presented. The tricks are actually learnt and performed in front of the camera by the actors, quite unlike “The Illusionist”. “The Illusionist” is very disappointing in that regard, because many things would be real, but were quite visibly, at least for me, done with “film tricks”. “Prestige” is as real in the magic it shows as it can be with a movie like that.

My top favourite scene of all in the movie is when Borden is in prison and gives the warden a wipe. He does that with a combination of two main principles. He shows the warden a ball and throws him in the air. Once. That's supposed to be a magic trick? A second time. Okay, we get it now. On the third throw we look up and often the magician doesn't throw the ball really at that time. The human eye is used to the routine of the ball in the air, it looks like the ball vanishes in thin air. The second principle is to seemingly let the trick go wrong. The magician looks like an idiot. When Borden throws the ball a third time, he doesn't catch it and the ball drops off the table. The great magician is in prison for murder and can't even escape like Houdini, and then he can't even catch a ball properly.The warden likes that, of course, up until...

A couple of magic notes and anecdotes for those interested:
- Teslar isn't the only real person in "Prestige". In a performance Borden sees a chinese, Chung Ling Soo, who deceived the world (including Harry Houdini!) In reality he was an american by the name of William Ellsworth Robinson. But the first and only english words he ever spoke on stage would be shortly before his death, "My God, I've been shot."
- He was shot performing the so called "Bullet Catch", a classic magic trick, which Borden will perform in the movie, too. Robinson is one of the 11 magicians, who didn't take enough precautions, which cost them their lives.
- Other classic magic tricks performed in the movie are: the water tank (made famous by Harry Houdini especially), the "chinese linking rings", coin magic, the bullet catch. I don't know what the trick is called, but Angier tries to do one once where different objects are revealed from the long coat of the magician, usually ending with the revelation of a huge bowl filled with water and a gold fish in it.

I admit I haven't seen the movie in a long time. So I can't think of any more notes and anecdotes just now. Probably I missed some. If I should think of more, I'll add them here later. Anyway, the movie is a real pleasure for me to watch as someone interested in magic and sort of performer in magic myself, I love it for the relation to reality and because almost all of the tricks can be done that way, as you see them.

Also I like the soundtrack by David Julyan a lot.

The movie was made on the basis of the book by Christopher Priest with the same title. Like so often the case, the book is different from the movie. Angier and Boden never worked together. Angier's wife never died, but was pregnant and lost her baby because of Borden. The book is separated in different parts as diary entries which one reads and the rivalry goes on for several generations. The history of magic is more fleshed out. The background story of what life was like for the two magicians before they were on stage performing can be read. The book is different. Film and book are just two different media with their individual ways of story telling and creating suspense.

Until next blog,
sarah

Two in one

Dear reader,

the dandelions were blooming in the garden so vast that I only needed about a quarter of the flowers for the receipt doubled of the dandelion marmalade, which I made in april. But then came the gardener and mowed the lawn and then the dandelion blooming period was over. It seems like I won't be able to make any more dandelion marmalade this year. Not many people know that dandelion isn't weed, but can be used. The flowers can also be used for tea. I would like to taste dandelion tea. My first one definitely brewed for too long and was bitter tasting. Now I don't have the flowers. At least the leaves are still growing and I can use them for my guinea pigs.

In China the government permitted that the sparrows be shot. They eat up the crops for the people there. With the sparrows gone, the crops are infested by bugs. So pesticides are used to kill them off. The pesticides however don't just kill the bugs, they also kill the bees. As a result of that people have to pollinate the plants in China. Anyone care to guess who's better pollinating plants: bees or people?

So many could be used with a little bit more information and knowledge. Instead everything that's not wanted is destroyed. But, hey, maybe Mars will be habitable in a couple of decades! Since the Earth is not nice enough anymore, maybe we could move there instead. Wouldn't that be nice?

Until next blog,
sarah

Two and a half cultures

Dear reader,

there are two big human cultures. One is that of the indigenous people, especially earlier often called "primitive" or "wild". They lived and live ever since they can remember basically the same way without huge changes and above all they live in accordance with the part of the world that's around them. The others call themselves civilised, spread throughout the whole planet and destroy not only the planet. Their lifestyle is so demanding that many of them are sick and probably destroy themselves that way, too. Many are so desperate that in fact they kill themselves. Mind you, not every death can be traced back to that unusual lifestyle.

In his book „Ishmael“ Daniel Quinn uses a different pair of words for those two cultures. Even though he describes one culture as destructive, he still wants to move away from the generally loaded with prejudices words of civiliced and primitive or even wild. Based on the saying „take it or leave it“, he chose “Takers” for the civilised and “Leavers” for the indigenous people. One can argue about whether or not it makes much sense to use a new pair of words. Like so many other things that are simply renamed because of the bad image. Daniel Quinn himself has since gone back to writing about civilised and indigenous people. His books, not just Ishmael, are quite well known. Maybe he moved away from his pair again, because in the end it doesn't matter what you call those two cultures.

I want to call your attention to one other aspect regardless of that. Daniel Quinn stresses the point that there is no one right way to live for humanity. Although the civilised spread out and with that also spread the very thought of just that. Namely that their lifestyle is the right way and desirable for all people. On the other hand it's obvious that the lifestyle of the indigenous people is by far calmer and less demanding for the immediate environment of the people living that lifestyle. If the civilised are so destructive with their lifestyle, wouldn't it be better to destroy this culture and lifestyle. Particularly since the destruction of the Earth by man will stop with that, too. (Whether with the climate change will stop, too and the Earth will be more “stable” all together, is another doubtful subject.) I assume that indigenous people would most certainly rather fight to defend themselves, but not to actually attack the civilised. They are, as history has shown, far more powerful anyway. A dismantling of the civilisation to save the Earth would more likely happen from within. By people, who are unhappy with that lifestyle and want to put it to an end. But if civilisation is most likely to be dismantled by civilised people, would those fighters not in the end fight themselves? Maybe they'd be something in between those two cultures. Half a culture?

Besides, what if civilisation with all its flaws is just a intermediate stage for humanity to the next stage? Much like a toddler clumsily learning how to walk, very uncertain at first, before they actually walk and run like the grown-ups. How would we know whether civilisation is more like a virus that should better be destroyed to protect all the others or whether it's a clumsy intermediate stage towards something far better?

In any case: more and more young native americans show more interest in their own culture again and overall there is a greater interest in self supplying, how to make fire and other related subjects. I don't know how much those things will actually be useful in the end. At least the knowledge about those kind of things doesn't get lost with interested people like that. Does that really help the Earth in some way? Could the civilised, who showed interest in such things so far actually live like that when civilisation is broken down? No idea. Maybe time will tell when it actually happens.

Until next blog,
sara