I have spoken

Experimenting with a Father Christmas look, gorgeous flowers, yummy fajitas

“I don’t know if you heard but the Empire is gone.”

Thus says Mando….

“When one chooses to walk the Way of the Mandalore, you are both hunter and prey….” (Hunter, prey; Yin, yang; Chicken, egg; Jedi, Sith; Innocence, experience.) This week I have mostly been watching The Mandalorian with asides for Pan’s Labyrinth (whilst ironing) and Independence Day (with the Harry Potter Film Club.) In other words, I have spent very little time on Planet Earth as it is, and when not escaping to fantastic Other Worlds (which, let’s face it, are all about Planet Earth’s deepest darkest What Ifs) I have been writing about the history of My Own Invented Other World, Rhenium. Creative writing and fictional fantasies can be powerful distractions but inevitably crash into reality when the parallels with Here and Now lurch into view:

family, fascism, identity, gender, loyalty, love, fear, courage, oppression, freedom, hatred, migration, the “outsider,” prejudice….

Are these the themes for Pan’s Labyrinth or The Mandalorian or Independence Day or Rhenium Tales….? Or do they exist in them all? Old history, repeated history; old tales, freshly-minted tales; Yin, yang; the same thing can be both comforting and depressing. As William Blake would have it, the struggle between contrary forces is necessary to human existence. The prose and the passion. Only connect. "I have spoken."

Pan's Labyrinth, The Mandalorian, Independence Day  - Fantasy or (Subconscious) Reality?