La La Land

I know that this one is a book blog, but yesterday night I watched La La Land and I would want to write down some considerations.

I hadn't never seen this musical, I had just read a wonderful review in the Boston Globe many years ago but I had completely forgotten this movie.

Let's start to saying that if more musicals would be made it would be wonderful. I am a fan of the genre.

The movie with Emma Stone And Ryan Gosling won 6 Academy Awards. 

Written and directed by Damiene Chazelle, this one is the story of Sebastian and Mia. Mia would want to become an actress; Sebastian would want to open a jazz local and he  would want to realize his inner dream of becoming someone unusual, writing, playing songs he loves to playing; also when people don't love what he does. The two soon become a couple and they are simply perfect, sharing same feelings, ideas and life's vision. Something change when Sebastian signs a contract with a friend of him in need of a piano singer; the band and music are completely different from the genre Sebastian does but he can earns money and Mia can goes proud of him.

Mia at the same time tries and tries a lot of auctions but without any success. Tired of this situation and frustrated because of the lack of success of his show in theather, she decides of moving on, leaving Sebastian, the city where she has invested her time and passion for six years, returning home.

Sebastian knows Mia and he loves her profoundly also if things are not matching anymore greatly between the two; there is respect, knowledge for the other, a real tender approach and when Sebastian receives the call from an important studio, it's a call for Mia, he run at the house of Mia, convincing her of giving a try at this new chance. Altruistically and in love, he did not hide this crucial information. Mia, in case taken in the production will live to Paris at long. Sebastian can't follow her. What to do? What will happen at their relationship? 

It happens that Mia will change and will take other decisions. This movie is substantially the metaphor of life: what would have happened if?

Five years later we meet Mia again, completely changed (that story it's up to people if they want to change if they change their social status, if they make money: let's remark it) with a husband and a son, a beautiful house and a successful career. With the husband they decide to go out, and they will end in the Jazz local open by Sebastian. After all he realized his dream. When she saw him and when Sebastian saw her, there was in the protagonists, in particular in Emma that regret and big melancholy that the if bring with it. And she imagines another story and another end. With Sebastian. What if....What if she would have had more success in theater; what if Sebastian would have supported her much more when she needed him? Substantially they would have ended, as it happened with Mia and her new partner, together; they would have built a family and they would have been happy forever and together. With that informality, with that love, kidness that they knew very well and that with the new husband can't exist. 

But it didn't happen, because life can't be written, it's not perfect, situations can't be changed, a work can't be given up because a partner feels the exigency of having close to her the other one; and sometimes being extremely busy Sebastian missed of proving to Mia his love for her. 

So, Paris returned to be a city of Love, changing the destiny of Mia forever.

When she leaves, Mia will look back another time at Sebastian and Sebastian will meet her eyes, smiling approving, and still loving her and trying to follow, after all what Mia had always said him: staying the old guy she knew.

In this case I felt that Mia was profoundly changed; Sebastian after his experience with his friend's band returned to be the boy he was, following his feelings, music, ideals.

The movie put in connection problematic as the realizations of the self. Many broken dreams, many unrealized desires, and a lot of traumatic experiences; a lot of no's; as in the sing song by Sebastian, City of Stars he will say, "City of Stars, are you shining just for me?" remarking the unicity of every man and at the same fragility, uncertainty.

The movie reads the melancholy and solitude of the moment. Although surrounded by many people, there is an elevated solitude, and at the same time the desire of brighting like a star. But...Is it possible?

I Iove the scene, portrayed wonderfully well of Mia and Sebastian, flying in the sky, touching the clouds. In love, the couple feels the perception of moving away from the ordinary life; touching sky and stars, reaching their dreams and existential perfection.

I don't know if that Planet that obscured for some second the couple can be read as the sign of an approaching storm. Maybe the biggest lesson learned through this movie, - pretty hard, after all, the end will leave you sad if you loved the couple Sebastian-Mia as I did, but is absolutely realistic, - is this one: life can't be re-written or imagined in its perfection but just accepted in its reality.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Worst Witch Strikes Again by Jill Murphy

The Worst Witch  Strikes Again

by Jill Murphy is a book by Candlewick and a funny one. Set at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches, this children's book tells the adventures experienced by Mildred, a young witch pretty....troublemaker (but most of the time not for her fault). The new term is arrived and a new scholar Enid is assigned to Mildred. She must introduces her the new school. Mildred's got a great friend in Maud, but Maud will be soon disappointed by the lack of attention of her friend, becoming upset with her.

Mildred does have real terror for Miss Hardbroom, after all the last name says all; she is nasty and she is hard and she can't understand if not through disciplines, her scholars. Not only: she had predjudices regarding Mildred and she doesn't consider her a good person.

Although Mildred will experience a lot of seriously funny adventures, at the end, as you will read, she will be in grade of avoiding expulsion.

Beautiful!

Highly recommended, in theme with this month.

Anna Maria Polidori 

My Portable Paradise Transform your Life Through House Sitting by Abdiel Leroy

My Portable Paradise Transform your Life Through House Sitting

by Abdiel Leroy is absolutely a fascinating, spectacular book.

I am a sagittarius and the idea of travelling is a constant in my life. 

Can you imagine? There is an association called TrustedHousesitters.com providing this possibility. Leroy will write abundantly about the possibility of becoming an efficient house sitter.

Taking care of a house for a person who, for a reason or another can't do will be electrifying. The reasons why this eprson can't does it are the msot diversified: he/she/ is leaving for work for a week or two; he/she took a vacation; sometimes one of your obligation will be to feeding and taking good care of their beloved pets, dogs in particulars.

At the same time the house sitter will be in grade of explore another corner of the world, staying in a place that maybe in opposite case wouldn't never had the chance of visiting.

Leroy offers tips, tricks for avoiding common errors, for offering to you the best chance if you want to give a try this a try. I checked the website and I admit that it is absolutely attracting.

So: what are you still waiting? Be a house sitter, and you'll enjoy a quiet perennial vacation, in the most wonderful corners of the world and in most cases in stunning houses and locations.

Beautiful book. Highly recommended.

I thank Abdiel Leroy for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Blankets and a new boiler for the Gubbio Project

Blankets and a new boiler at the Gubbio Project! main necessities these days.

It's this one the new appeal launched by the new executive director of the Gubbio Project Shannon Eizenga. 

It's a touching e-mail this one received where the new director explains her worries for the Californian's fires, the heavy situation still lived, the poor situation of an air not completely healthy thanks to the closest fires, keeping in prayers all the people affected by the heavist part of the story. burning houses, burning animals, a complete different existence for most people. 

As we were writing, the boiler at the Church of Saint Boniface is broken and so there is a lack of heat. Worries of Eizenga is that maybe weeks or months will pass without to return at the normality. Let's hope that some donation will restore the heating system with a new boiler for the joy of all the guests at the St.Boniface.

Fall is more than approached and so new, or used, but in very good state blankets are necessary for the guests of the structure.

So, please, Californian friends (but you can live also in another part of the world buying blankets directly via Amazon and sending the donation at the Gubbio Project) donate, donate, donate blankets. Eizenga doesn't specify the number of blankets needed, but the guests of the Gubbio Project are pretty numerous, so please be generous.

A story Eizenga shared in her e-mail the one experienced at the church of St.John where everyday is served a good, robust, warm breakfast to all the guests.

At the end of the breakfast, one of the homeless confessed at the director all his gratitude for their work. "At the Gubbio I am feeling safe and respected." As adds the director: "The Heart of the Gubbio Project is compassion, dignity."

Donate, donate, donate!

I want to remember that you can support the Gubbio Project also through Amazon Smiles. 

Anna Maria Polidori 

Ernst Junger A German Officer in Occupied Paris The War Journals, 1941-1945 Foreword by Elliott Neaman

Ernst Junger A German Officer in Occupied Paris The War J

ournals, 1941-1945  Foreword by Elliott Neaman will surprise you. The cover-picture of this book by Columbia University Press attracted my imagination: I can see worry, compassion, curiosity. And the story of Ernst Junger is peculiar.

He wasn't a great scholar, all the opposite; he was a constant worry for his parents. Army was his destiny although young Ernst was also a man attracted by reading and writing. The first book he will published will be released on 1920.

Although he joined movements of right, what Ernst wanted to do was to be a writer and for this reason with his wife and son they all went to Berlin at some point.

Ernst starts to be infatuated by Paris during that period.

Junger distanced himself from Nazis and their dangerous ideas. Hitler would have wanted to meet Junger, but Junger didn't never meet him because he didn't reciprocate respect.

Important men of letters joined the regime. Let's remember that also Thomas Mann did it.

When the war broke out Junger was conscripted as a lieutenant, reaching later the rank of captain. From 1941 to 1945 he lived in Paris although for some time he visited the Cucasus and the end of these journals will be written at home in Kirchhorst. His headquarter was the Hotel Majestic. He soon began to become part of the Resistance against Hitler. 

Junger will also take part at a complot for trying to kill Hitler, although it won't work and many people were captured, or tried to kill themselves for escape the nazi's revenge.

When in Paris, he found, being a writer as well, the best humus and was introduced in the best circles of men and women of culture: he was first of all a thinker. In an entry of one of his journals he will write "Subject for Study: the ways propaganda turns into terror. The beginnings in particular contained much that people are going to forget. That's when power walks on cats's paws, subtle and cunning."

In another entry he tells the story of an execution of a soldier who escaped away and found help and refugee in the house of a girl.

He is devastated by the idea of the end of a life that it is predictably driven by men. 

Junger described vividly how he proceeded with his journals: "...I don't usually update my notes until the following day, and I do not date them on the day of their writing but rather the day they occurred."

Once in Monte Carlo he won't forget of telling the exciting visit at the reptile musem. Junger loved nature and descriptions are accurate, long, exhaustive. He locked up all his journals and letters for security. 

Avid reader, he divorated wagons of french books although his visits could be also pretty particular. Ernst didn't forget to visiting  the little cemetery of the Trocadero:

 "Things glow in their after-image and often more beautifully in memory before they dissolve into the nameless void" he will write or the one of Montparnasse this time for searching

 for Baudelaire's grave, the one of Roussel. To him "Ordinary people in this seas of graves ...Like tracks in the sand, they are soon erased by the wind." Although no one is dead till is remembered on this Earth.  Visiting Pere Lachaise, he found a big diversification, richness of its variety. 

Reading last letters of people executed, Ernst writes that "Man seems to emerge from his blind will and realize that love is the most intimate of all connections."

Ernst felt that was at home when he visited antiquarian bookshops, book dealers, old workshops. 

"I feel so at home, it's as thought I had lived among them for five hundrad years."

Prudent in sharing sensitive information through the pages of his journals and letters, Ernst in strickt connection with people in Russia thinks that the hard condition of the place and the personal situation of a lot of soldiers, with frozen part of the bodies would be so terrifying that he writes: "Who would not prefer to be among the dead?"

Fascinated by One Thousand and one Nights, his dreams are sometimes articulated and often reported in journals.

Sharks, people who committed atrocities, Ernst Junger imagines a nihilistic world: "They have an inherently satanic will that takes cold pleasure in destroying human beings. perhaps even humanity."

French government is supporting all of it, adds in the entry of his journal, Junger.

In the while Ernst is introduced at Cocteau, Weimer and Poupet during a party.

But...What are books for Ernst Junger? "It is wonderful to find thoughts, words, and sentences in them that make the reader suspect that the narrative is leading him down a man-made trail through uncharted forests, deep and unfamiliar.  Thus, he is led through regions with unknowhn borders, and only occasionally do tidings of plenty reach him like a breath of fresh air."

Not only. in general he tended to read all books but he minimally touched the ones he thought were plenty of lurid description and where there wasn't any gentle touch in descriptions. His opinions of books, authors, are written down with clarity, and with a fertile mind attracted by a vision not just limited at a topic or two, but in perennial expansion in the most diversified fields of knowledge. He could read various books per times. Once he wrote that he completed more or less the same days  The Life of Jesus by Renan and The Bronte Family by Robert de Traz, rereading books he appreciated in the past. His reading was continuous and in a daily base, as also the one of answering and receiving letters or writing, intrigued also by books of authors with which he started to interact in Paris as Cocteau was. Conrad with An Outpost of Progress will let him think a lot. "A story that superbly describes the tranformation of civilized optimism into utter bestiality."

The biggest critic moved by Ernst regarding resistance and their opponent is the weakness of the most in particular middle class and aristocracy, but "They lack the authority and ability to oppose minds motivated only by violence."

There are important reflections about what Hitler was doing to sick people, Jewish, and also... in the future who will dominate Earth: humans or automatons?

I found fascinating the description of the day he spent with Picasso; his dissertations about life and death are truly fascinating. A trip in the Caucasus, and then his return to Paris on 1943 for leaving again in 1944. In one of his final entries Ernst wrote some verses written by Marcel Arland: "I love candied grapes / Because they have no taste, /I love camellias/ Because they have nof ragrance/ And I love rich men/ Because they have no heart./

I lost the count of books read by Ernst, mainly for trying to understand also what it was going on. He was also a voracious reader of The Bible. Trying to find rationality in an irrational moment is where possible indispensible for not become crazy, or hallucinated. Of course Junger didn't read a lot just for this reason. He was a writer and a man of culture, but he also searched to my point of view a sense, in history, religion, philosophy, sociology, art, a sense. Wherever it could be possible to finding some of it.

Remarkable book, stunning journals, informative, pretty stimulating, and in grade to add something more to our existence.

Highly recommended to everyone. A perect gift if you know someome in love for diaries, journals, history, Paris.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Il Corvo by Cord Riechelmann

I think I was 9-10 years when it happened. Ubaldo the owner of the ex bar of our area, Morena, found a nest of jays. There were and still there are, two suggestive tables, close to the bar located under a friendly and beautiful tree. We all adored spending time there, eating ice-creams, chatting, and enjoying the beautiful stars in the sky.

It was there that Ubaldo introduced to adults and children these little animals. We all fell in love for them and everyday we spent time with these intelligent birds all excited and happy for this novelty. Adults were excited as well, because jays are known for being wild animals and seeing how friendly and nice they were it was surprising.

When they became more adults, Ubaldo shared some of them with us: I was happy and thrilled with my Lucrezia, as I baptized her. No idea if it was a male or a female, I confess; it slept in the house during the night, the day she was set free and she enjoyed to staying most of the time in our lime tree;  she ate some meat everyday, and it was absolutely one of the most intelligent creatures I have every had. When she was outside, if I called her, promptly reached the balcony of the window-kitchen. She was adorable.

Then, I went to Rome for passing some days of vacation with my brother and family and once returned home, horror! my cat Camilla had killed her. To me it was a devastation. 

I understood that what we did was wonderful, because we tamed a wild animal, but at the same time we left it unprotected against the attacks  of other animals and with too much trust and innocence. 

In my late 20s I met some onlin

e friends fixated with The Crow, tv series, movie with Brandon Lee.

Crows, and also all the rest of this diversified world that involves this animal has always been part of my existence, living also in a countryside. 

I read so Il Corv

o by Cord Riechelmann with great pleasure. Foreword by Telmo Pievani, published by Marsilio, this one is the story of an intelligent animal, sometimes considered a God, for his intelligence, because sly, different from all the other animals, sometimes considered a symbol of death, an exaltation presented also in the cinema unfortunately, because crows eat also carcasses of dead animals; connection between an animal close to dying and a crow close to it waiting for the departure has always been seen as a sign of the power existing in this animal and the special connection that he has with death.

Inuit, Tiglit, celebrate the crow with fascinating legends, but also in the Bible the first animal Moses asked to going out for seeing if the situation was back to the normality was a crow.

Crows, studied confirmed, counts till 7; they are animals in grade of using their brain for deciding which is the best situation to adopt when there are various options and this one is a human attitude; someone noticed that in big cities for opening walnuts they put them in streets where there are semaphors; when it is red it's perfect; cars will pass on the walnuts, opening the fruits. Later they will eat it. Attracted by brilliant objects, it is true that sometimes they can steal them, but it is also true that if they are important, these objects are visibly displayed in their nest so that the owner, I want to think this, can discover them with simplicity. They're intelligent animals.

They are friendly with humans. I remember when once a magpie, was our alarm clock; she loved to knocking in the bedroom's windows for saying us ciao every morning but also in the afternoon.

This book, friendly, intelligent, will let you explore an animal sometimes misunderstood, and treated pretty bad by hunters and peopl, giving back him, all the dignity that deserves.

The last section is dedicated at the most common crows that can be found in the world. An animal this one strickly connected with men and that will always follow him wherever he will go.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Gertrude Stein Has Arrived The homecoming of a literary legend by Roy Morris Jr.

This new book Gertrude Stein Has Arrived The homecoming

of a literary legend by Roy Morris Jr. is not just the account of the trip spent in the USA by Stein and her long-term companioon Alice Toklas but a detailed biography of her and more in general of the couple.

Born in the USA, the fatal meeting with Alice Toklas thanks to a trip afforded to the USA by some Stein's relatives. The two met Alice in San Francisco and proposed her a trip to Paris. When Alice, heard the voice of Stein once in Paris fell in love for her.

An adventure, the one of these two ladies, populated by art and literature. Substantially Alice conquered Gertrude because she was a perfect housewife and constantly at her service. Alice was soon introduced at Pablo Picasso, Matisse, T.S. Eliot, Hemingway, the favorite of Stein.

The first World War saw the women travelling a lot and once back to Paris they noticed that the city was more silent and sad.

The idea of this trip in the USA was born when was released the Autobiography of Alice B.Toklas written by Gertrude Stein on 1933.

From decades absent from the USA this one was an official trip. They were thrilled and excited. It was a monumental travel: they visited dozens of cities from the East to the West Coast; they met Eleanor Roosevelt; they were introduced at the Raven Society created because of Edgar Allen Poe.

Gertrude Stein studied medicine in the USA, at the Johns Hopkins University. That university was opened also at girls without gender discrimination thanks to important donations of philantropists interested in giving chances (see at the voice Garrett) in the medical profession at women as well.

Why buying this book? Because it is a complete work. You will read of course of the trip spent in the USA by these two ladies, but you will also explore the existence and the universe of this writer, that as you will see was fascinating;  the early 1900s were years of big creativity. Plus Morris Jr. is specialized in biographies. He is clear, engaging, and you won't put down this book till you won't have finished to read it. 

Highly recommended.

I thank Johns Hopkins University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori