Persepolis

An engaging journey through events in pre- and post-revolutionary Iran, seen through the eyes of Marji, a young girl growing up in a westernised Teheran family under both the Shah and Khomeini’s regime. Marji’s development from lively infant to rebellious teenager leads to clashes with the religious authorities, prompting her family to send her into exile in Vienna, rather than risk imprisonment, rape and execution. Life in Vienna, though less risky proves just as difficult and ultimately unfulfilling, and in time Marji rejoins her family in Iran where she finds herself a stranger in her homeland. She attends university, falls in love, gets married, falls out of love, and finally returns to exile in Paris.

Revolving around Marji is a cast of characters whose individual lives are equally disrupted by the world-changing events going on around them - the fall of the Shah, the Iranian revolution, Khomeini’s return, and the Iran-Iraq war. Relatives return from exile, are imprisoned, tortured, executed. Neighbours are killed in Iraqi missile attacks. Marji’s family and friends conduct a westernised social life behind closed doors when they can, consisting of parties, pop music, and home-brewed alcohol, always under threat of discovery and punishment.

Throughout it all, one constant figure is Marji’s beloved grandmother, who dispenses wisdom, comfort, reassurance, and who also has an interesting line in beauty tips.

Persepolis exposes some of the characteristics of individual human stories behind the headlines that have documented life in Iran over the past 30 years. Complex, humorous and poignant, you’ll laugh and cry in equal measure.

Essential viewing.

doing what I want

Ages ago A White Bear posted (brilliantly as always) about her tendency to resist encouragement and while it resonated with me to certain extent, I was struck by something someone posted in the comments.  Emir suggested this might be something called ‘demand resistance’.  While I suspect this isn’t what AWB was posting about, I looked it up and found myself looking at a page which, rather uncomfortably, described me pretty well.  Now I don’t have this to the extreme, but it is definitely a strong tendency to many of the characteristics.  I prevaricate, I hate it when someone tells me to do something or nudges me to do something I may have forgotten.  I can feel an immediate oppositional block in my throat.  Obviously I’ve learned to ignore or deal with it fairly well or I wouldn’t be able to hold down a job, but I don’t think I ever had the kind of awareness of it as I do now.

What was also of note was the fact that this page was part of a website called Squalor Survivors.  It’s basically a website for people who have messy and dirty homes.  Now, I am nowhere near anything described on this site, but I used to veer pretty close in my 20s and I still find housework a real struggle.  Now, many people have a fairly lax take on tidying and cleaning and seem quite happy that way, but the irony is that I would dearly love my home to be really tidy and clean the majority of the time.  I love going to people’s houses that are clean and tidy although they still have to be homely and I dislike homes that look like IKEA catalogue pictures.  Not only that but I’m an occupational therapist!  I teach people how to manage their homes, routines etc.  It’s not a lack of skill or knowledge that stops me.  The most heartening on the site was the statement that ‘it’s not because you are lazy’.  Apparently, if you consider it in tandem with the notion of ‘demand resistance’ then what is going on is an internalised resistance to the feeling of having to do something.  So I am paralysed by my own feeling that I should, ought or must get on with the housework.

The site also offers the solution!  Deceptively simple, all you have to do is stop yourself every time you find yourself telling yourself you ought, should or must do something and instead, say what you want and give yourself reasons.  Thus, instead of saying ‘I must get that room tidied’ you say ‘I want to tidy this room because I like living in a tidy house and I deserve better than this’.  Too simple?  Well, I decided to do an experiment as Rebecca likes to do so for the last month I have been turning my oughts into wants.  At first it was quite hard, but as the month has gone on I have found it working more and more and miraculously my house is becoming tidier and cleaner and I am not angry when I do the housework any more.  I’ve also been using the technique at work and have become more able to get on with work without procrastinating.

I was definitely experiencing demand resistance and with the mother I have it’s not hard to see how this might have developed.  What is fantastic is finding a way out of this self-sabotage - it’s positively liberating!  Thanks Emir whoever you are!

Goodbye Humph

How sad - Humphrey Lyttelton has died.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t a clue’ was easily the funniest, most clever and silliest comedy radio show ever invented.  Part of its charm was Humph’s hilarious double entendres delivered in his laconic voice.  My children always refer to it as ‘that really funny quiz you listen to on the radio’.  I saw him playing with his jazz band about 5 years ago down at the Folkestone open air amphitheatre.  It was a great night and I shall treasure the experience.

my day

M comes into my bedroom complaining of a very sore ear.  She is never normally ill so I know it’s real.  I’m teaching all day and I can’t take her to the doctor till the evening so I have to leave her at home, alone.  She’s in good spirits so I’m not too worried.  N comes in a short while later complaining of stomach ache and headache.  This has been going on for a while and she also has a strange puffiness around her neck which suggests a thyroid problem.  Last time I took her to the doctor he was less than helpful.  He thinks her stomach aches are one of those irritated bowel disorders for which there is little cure.

I go to work.  I get to the student residence where I park and find there is nowhere to park as students are parked there illegally since the keychain was broken.  A student rushes out and offers to move her ‘friend’s’ car (to which she mysteriously has the keys - ok it could be a boyfriend who stayed the night I guess).  I am grateful and reverse and hear the telltale sound of my bumper grating against the step I have misjudged …  Grrr a nice big scratch on my car and no one to blame but myself.

Yesterday, when I got to work, various things went wrong including, for the first time ever, I turned up late for a seminar having got the time wrong (NO teaching sessions start on the half hour!!)  Today, when I got in and told Ian, my colleague and partner in mind crime, he suggested I probably needed to sacrifice a goat or preferably a young virgin to ward of my bad luck.  I seriously consider this option.

A student comes to see me and promptly bursts into tears.  She has an unbelievably difficult life and is apologising for having to ask me for help.  It’s what I’m paid to do!  I don’t know how these students manage to do any work at all.  I have enormous respect for them.  She is a single parent, non-English-speaking and a refugee.  I have her laughing in a few minutes and when she leaves I give her a big hug.  But the whole tutorial took longer than I had planned and now I’m behind on my paperwork and I have to teach in 2 hours.

I have to remember to phone the surgery to book M in to see the doctor at the late session.  I am informed that I have to ring at 3.30.  I explain I will be teaching then and the appointment is for a sick child.  Miraculously the receptionist takes pity on me and gives me an appointment for 5pm.   I ring M and she is no worse - has taken some painkillers, eaten her lunch and is watching TV.  I feel terrible guilt but am relieved she’s ok.

I teach and it’s a brilliant session!  The students interact and engage really well.  We are discussing ‘identity’ and its effect on participation.  They begin to see that identity might be less fixed and determined than psychologists would have us believe.  They realise that identity might be fluid and formed within social interactions and participating in activities.  They say things that indicate they are beginning to see why this is important to occupational therapists - why it might be the key to hope and the possibility of change.  They leave buzzing.  I think sacrificing a goat might be unnecessary just yet.

I rush home to pick up M and find N walking up the road so decide to take her along to the doctor too.  He sees both of them - prescribes some ear drops for M, and does a request for a variety of blood tests for N.  He promises me he’ll refer her to a specialist if necessary.  I feel I’m a little further along the way to getting her sorted.

I get home and make dinner - beef and butternut squash stew with lemon Thyme and a dash of white wine.  While it simmers I tidy my bedroom a bit.  When the dinner is ready I serve it up to the girls but decide to go for a run before I eat mine.  I am training for Race for Life and am now able to run a reasonable distance.  I get to the football pitch and run round it 15 times non-stop accompanied to the friendly abuse, then encouragement and then admiration of the teenagers playing football.  I’ve known them all since they were at pre-school - cheeky buggers!

When I get home I eat and then pour myself a well-earned glass of wine and settle into a hot bath to read Gravity’s Rainbow.  I only have about 20 pages to go but I still only manage another 10.  It has taken me since December to get this far.  I am loving it, but looking forward to finishing it as I have promised myself I won’t read anything else till I finish it.  There is a stack of books on my shelf pleading with me to hurry up.

And now I’m here, ready to go to bed and hoping that tomorrow will be a little less stressful.

Oh and if you want to donate to my Race for Life, click here.

disconcerting

Now and then one comes across a truly brilliant idea.  Like this one.  It was posted on a mailing list to which I belong and I thought it was so interesting.  I found the reactions and ‘explanations’ particularly interesting.  It must have been quite disconcerting for the people who didn’t know what was going on and then found themselves in the situation.  I guess with science fiction/fantasy movies in the cultural reference book, it might have been tempting to imagine some sort of alien possession or influence might have taken hold!

Do take a look and tell me what you think.

Every Which Way But Loose

Once again Clint Eastwood throws caution to the wind, directing himself in a supporting part in this drama examining the pressing social issues confronting immigrants in mid-western USA. The lead role is played by Clyde, a tree-dwelling native of the forests of Borneo and Sumatra, who is finding it difficult to adjust to the mores of rural Nebraska. Whilst lodging with Eastwood’s character (Philo Beddoe), Clyde seeks excitement as a spectator at barbaric bare-knuckle fights - a sport from which Beddoe ekes out a precarious existence. In the course of his travels with Beddoe, Clyde is subjected to the twin horrors of bikers and country music. Unsurprisingly his tenuous grasp on reality finally snaps, leading to alcohol dependency and increasingly coarse mannerisms.

A disturbing glimpse of modern-day USA. Not for the squeamish.

the snowqueen surveys her domain

from her bedroom window:

the next small step

I mentioned the next small step to my solution focused buddy, Paul Avard who commented on a previous post and said that I thought it was the most important aspect of taking a solution focused approach.  I know I’ve mentioned SF before, but probably not really explained the process.

It’s really very simple.  First of all one pictures the ‘future perfect’ - the way you imagine life to be if you could have what you wanted.  Classically, one asks, ‘imagine you go to sleep tonight, and while you are sleeping, a miracle happens and life is the way you would like it to be (without your current problems/difficulties etc) but because you are asleep you are unaware this miracle has happened.  When you wake up in the morning, what would you notice that tells you the miracle has happened?’  You ask, ‘what difference would that make?’ and wonder what others would notice about you now that the miracle has happened.

Then you ask, what is already happening now, that is part of the miracle?  And finally, what is the next small step you can take towards the miracle?  No big goals, no list of objectives, just one small step.

Now, when people are learning how to do solution focus, they spend a long time perfecting the questions - there are lots of different ways to ask people about three stages (future perfect, present partial and next small step) - they wonder about how to know what to ask next, if they have got the ‘right’ miracle, and so on.  And those are good and valid questions.  But I’ve also noticed that people tend to see the next small step as rather dull or even unnecessary whereas I have come to think of it as the powerhouse, the engine for change and the source of hope.  You see setting longer term goals always seems very important, but the trouble with longer term goals is that circumstances, situations and people change along the way to the goal, and can throw you off track, or render the goal impossible.  The beauty of the next small step is that it is flexible and can respond to anything that life throws at you.  Of course the future perfect is important to establish but it is a compass, rather than a map.  While the world is changing around you, the next small step can always be set by the compass of the future perfect - and everyone, regardless of their circumstances can always set one small, achievable step.

Since I discovered the power of the next small step, life does not seem so desperate, neither do I succumb to the despair I used to feel on a regular basis in my youth.  I still get angry, upset and miserable but I can get out my compass and set the next small step and there, in that instant, hope is reborn, again and again.

I have a saying stuck above my desk.  It says ‘Don’t let what you cannot do stop you from doing what you can do’.  So while my lovelife plummets to new depths, rather than try to change it, I look at what else I can do and at the moment, it is running.  I am training to do the Race for Life in July and I started training in January.  This morning I got up and ran, while the snow fell, but did not lay.  I ran 13 times round the football pitch and wasn’t even out of breath.  That’s a miracle.

Local elections

Local elections are in the offing, so it’s that time of year when the political parties stuff pamphlets through the door, lauding themselves and excoriating their opponents.
Yesterday it was the turn of the Labour party. After a decade of Labour government and the accompanying disappointments, it’s naturally going to be tricky pitching a slew of Labour councillors as the solution to all problems in Cambridge.

A first glance through the material suggests they’ve decided to adopt the approach of distancing themselves from the national Labour party, in the hope we won’t think these two organsations are in any way related. For example, Cambridge Labour “says NO to unfair congestion charge”.
Irrespective of the pros and cons of congestion charging, this will be the congestion charge which the council is required by the Labour government to investigate (translation: implement) in order to receive grant funding for upgrading the local transport infrastructure. So it wouldn’t be entirely accurate to imagine that this is some scheme the LibDem-controlled council has dreamed up entirely on its own.

We also read that “Residents are entitled to better than the whopping 4.5% extra Council tax the Lib Dems are demanding.” One might suppose that a Labour council would be able to secure more generous central government funding (which makes up the larger share of local govt funding), but it does seem disingenuous to present council tax rises as being in some way wholly independent of central govt policy.

Labour will “…invest in citywide facilities for young people and also remove anti-social teenage booze and drug parties from city parks.“
Have those degenerate LibDems been spending our council tax on booze and drug parties in order to gain the youth vote? Why weren’t my children invited?

The back page however takes an alternative approach, piggy-backing on the Labour govt’s many impressive achievements (just kidding!), where we learn that “No country has done more than Britain’s Labour Government [sic] on Climate Change…“
Presumably we are to discount Sweden’s rather more impressive plans to become essentially oil-free by 2020. (OK, the Swedes have a lower population and greater supplies of renewable energy per capita, but it is nevertheless the kind of bold strategy that hasn’t exactly characterised NuLab’s stewardship of GB Ltd.)

For some reason I always vote, but each time it gets harder to overcome the cynicism.

The Orphanage

A thoughtful horror movie, depicting a mother’s desperate search for her missing child and the lengths to which she will go in order to seek closure. A chilling menace runs through the film as the viewer is invited to confront the fear of death that haunts our waking hours.
Essential viewing.