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Creativity, resistance and what it means to be human  (two short films)

‘To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting’ e e cummings

1) In July 2017 a G20 Summit was held in Hamburg in Germany, which provoked protests. The 1000 GESTALTEN was one initiative which combined art, politics and resistance.  The project involved 1000 volunteers from all over Europe who slowly walked through the city of Hamburg. They were covered in a clay substance, which gave them a uniform appearance. They moved like an army of alienated, disconnected and expressionless people who had no colour. They moved as if in a trance. Eventually, they broke free from this outer crust or shell and they saw again. Colour, expression and emotions all returned as they came alive and reconnected. You can watch at: https://vimeo.com/224458051

2) The short film 30,000 Days created by Tiffany Shlain briefly explores the 3,000 year history of humans wrestling with the question of how to live life with meaning and purpose. The film premiered on Character Day 2017, which had over 133,000 events in 150 countries. You can watch at: http://www.letitripple.org/films/30000days/

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Something a little different today… a Sunday lunch recipe

‘Give me spearmint to smell; Berberan and basil; Marina my green star; Marina morning sunlight; Marina wild pigeon and summer lily’ (Marina by poet Odysseas Elytis)

Different versions of meat and vegetarian burgers and patties are prepared and eaten by many people in many countries. I myself have been a big fan since childhood and over the years I have made all sorts of meat, including fish, and vegetarian patties and burgers. My first fond memories of burgers go way back to childhood in the late sixties. My father used to often take us out for lunch to a diner’s on the Saturdays my mother was at work.  We invariably had a burger and a huge milkshake served in a tin ‘glass’ with a striped paper straw. Well, at least that’s how I remember it. Memories of tastes and smells travel through time and take us back to past events, both the ones that are dormant and those we can readily recall, like the memory of my mother rubbing basil leaves between her fingers or the smell of the peppermint leaves floating in jugs of fresh lemonade or the cool mint smell of dark After Eight chocolates that arrived in Christmas parcels. The smell of tea served with cakes almost always transfers me to Marcel Proust’s tea and Madeleine cake scene. More recently, I have taken up a sugar and gluten-free diet, and so, I have replaced the grain ingredients in meat balls and patties with vegetables. So, I use different kinds of minced meat or a combination, for instance, chicken and beef, preferably lean. I grate or I finely chop onions, carrots, courgettes, peppers, parsley and sometimes a little cabbage, and I squeeze the juice out of the carrots and the courgettes. Then I mix all the ingredients in a bowl and add a little olive oil and lemon, salt, pepper and paprika, thyme and oregano and mustard powder (optional). Once I have made the patties I might fry, but more often cook them in the oven in a baking pan with oil, a little garlic and slices of peppers, which is healthier, and also, requires less effort and cleaning up afterwards. Finally, I serve with fresh salad/s and a parsley dip made of chopped parsley, olive oil, vinegar, salt and a little boiled potato as a thickener.

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Art journaling on an old canvas

Freedom lies in learning to embrace what happened. Freedom means we muster the courage to dismantle the prison, brick by brick (Edith Eva Eger)

I have just finished reading Edith Eva Eger’s book The Choice: Embrace the Possible (2017). Dr. Edith Eva Eger was just a young teenager when she and her family were sent to Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp, in 1944. Her parents lost their lives there. Today, at age ninety, Dr. Eger maintains a clinical psychology practice, holds a faculty appointment at the University of California, and regularly gives lectures around the country and abroad, also serving as a consultant in resiliency training and the treatment of PTSD in soldiers and war veterans. She has appeared on numerous television programs, and was the primary subject of a Holocaust documentary that appeared on Dutch National Television. She received a California State Senate Humanitarian Award in 1992 and gave the International Conference of Logotherapy keynote address at Viktor Frankl’s ninetieth birthday celebration.

The foreward to the book is written by Phil Zimbardo, the creator of the famed Stanford prison experiment (1971). He writes ‘her goal is nothing less than to help each of us to escape the prisons of our own minds. Each of us is in some way mentally imprisoned, and it is Edie’s mission to help us realize that just as we can act as our own jailors, we can also be our own liberators. When Edie is introduced to young audiences, she is often called “the Anne Frank who didn’t die,” because Edie and Anne were of a similar age and upbringing when they were deported to the camps’. He mentions that in his own work he has studied the psychological foundations of negative social influence and has tried to understand the mechanisms by which we conform and obey or simply stand by in situations where peace and justice can be served only if we act heroically. He writes ‘Edie has helped me to discover that heroism is not the province only of those who perform extraordinary deeds or take impulsive risks to protect themselves or others— though Edie has done both of these things. Heroism is rather a mind-set or an accumulation of our personal and social habits. It is a way of being. And it is a special way of viewing ourselves. To be a hero requires taking effective action at crucial junctures in our lives, to make an active attempt to address’. Read more