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feeling alive

The Story of Neil Gaiman’s Cousin Helen

By Books & Authors, InspirationNo Comments
neil-gaiman-author-image

Neil Gaiman, Image from The Byre Theatre.

The Writer Neil Gaiman used to think that making up stories for a living was trivial. That was until he learned the story of his cousin Helen. Here is Neil Gaiman sharing the story of his cousin Helen:

“Helen is 96 and now lives in Florida. At the end of World War II, Helen and her two sisters wound up in a refugee camp in Southern Europe having fled Poland. Homeless and displaced, they finally ended up in America.

In Poland, Helen had been smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto. There was a corpse run every morning, transferring the corpses out of the ghetto and she snuck back in on the returning transport. I think she snuck back out that way, amongst the corpses, too. Inside the ghetto, she started teaching the local girls arithmetic and grammar. At that point in time, books were illegal and there was a death sentence for anyone found possessing one. However, Helen had a Polish translation of Gone with the Wind and she kept it hidden behind a loose brick in the wall. She would stay up late every night reading so that when the girls came in the next day she could tell them what had happened in the chapters she had read the previous night and just for that hour these girls got out of the Warsaw Ghetto and they got to visit the American South.

Helen’s story – this story – made me realise that what I do is not trivial. If you make up stuff for a living, which is basically what I do, you can feel kind of trivial sometimes but this made me realise that fiction is not just escapism, it can actually be escape, and it’s worth dying for.” – Neil Gaiman

(From The UN Refugee Agency, Last accessed: Sunday 17th July 2016.)

People need stories, we always have. In ancient history, our ancestors sat around camp fires telling one another stories, illuminated by the glow of the fire. Then they began writing them down and having them printed and published in books. Today we still have printed books and ebooks are in their infancy.

In the future, people will still need stories. To understand why this statement is true, you need to understand why people read stories. We read stories to light up our imagination, for pleasure, for entertainment, to make us laugh, to make us cry, to be thrilled, to make us feel alive, to give us hope, to unwind, to escape and to learn.

Blog soon,

Antony



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A Special Robe

By Friends & Family, Paganism, Thinking2 Comments

Sometime after the death of my young brother Alex (see My Darling Baby Brother), all of his siblings got a small amount of money from his estate to buy something to remember him. I thought about what to buy for months, months and months. I thought about a tattoo, he liked tattoos but it isn’t really my sort of thing. I thought about a nice ring, but then I don’t really wear jewellery.

With Samhain (see Pagan Festivals to learn more about Samhain) a few months away, I pulled out my ritual robe to air it out. Simon & Chrys created it for me in what was once a stunning white, but ritual after ritual had left it covered in oil stains and looking rather drap. So I decided to have a look and see how much it would cost to buy a new one.

The more I thought about Alex and what to do with his remembrance money, I realised that since his death I only thought of him on that hospital trolly cold and blue. That’s not who Alex was; he was a live wire – full of life. So I thought to myself: When do I feel full of energy and life?

The answer instantly popped into my head like a lightbulb being switched on, when I do ritual. There’s something about feeling the energy of the group swirling around in a vortex (before it’s released into the Universe) and feeling interconnected to everyone and everything that makes me feel energised and so alive. So I decided to use the remembrance money to buy a new ritual robe. I found The Pointy Hat a pagan woman in the US who creates stunning robes. Here’s the new robe:



Navy mid-weight cotton ritual robe, hung up.
(Click on the photo for full size image.)



A closer look: The hemming around the lined hood and clasp.
(Click on the photo for full size image.)



Me in the ritual robe, cord tucked into a hidden side seam pocket to stop the cats from thinking it’s a toy.
(Click on the photo for full size image.)

It’s beautiful, comfy and warm. Now every time that I do ritual and feel truly alive, I think of Alex my younger brother who left us far too soon.

Take care,

Antony

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