may i introduce:

this is my elephant, named Baby; to his left, you see my bear, named Bär.

they are really nice guys :-)

my inner european... is Dutch!

Your Inner European is Dutch!

Open minded and tolerant.You're up for just about anything.

Who's" Your Inner European?

got this from genoveval...

Dante's Inferno ;-)

Thus I stepped down from the first circle, down
into the second, that includes less space
and yet all the more pain, to spur men's moans.

Yonder waits Minos, horribly, and roars;
he tries the guilt, as they pass through the gate,
and judges and assigns as he entwines... (Inferno V 1-6)

(Minos, the infernal judge, is supposed to be a kind of dragon with a long snakelike tail which he uses for sentencing the sinners. If he wraps it around you five times, off you go to the fifth circle of hell... and so on.)


The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante's" Inferno Hell Test

more masks... japanese this time

this guy changes not just his masks, but his costume - i didn't count how many times.
must be a hell of an act to prepare for. he couldn't possibly get dressed for it in less than an hour, if he's quick about it. but then they give him all those cute girl assistants in geisha costumes, as a motivation ;-)

letter to somebody

(since, as the King of Hearts remarked, it is very unusual to write a letter to nobody)

hi. first of all, a big hug and lots of kisses.

lets talk about emotions.

i guess you are the kind of girl who is in touch with her emotions. one says that about women in general, that they are "in touch" with their emotions, more so than men.
but what does that mean? i mean, i'm in touch with someone in china. i write her one or two e-mails a week, and a letter now and then. is that the kind of touch girls are in with their emotions, like they are with their aunt who lives in australia?

myself, i have no emotions in australia, or china either. emotions are never outside, where we could "touch" them. they aren't even inside, like, say, the alcohol of the glass of wine we drank an hour ago. emotions, if they are really there, are just US. the whole of us, and the whole of our world too.

you know that perfectly well, or maybe you don't, but i do from observing you. i've seen you play ping-pong, for instance. and riding your bike along a straight, free, open road with no one and nothing to hinder you. and these were moments when you were all there, and all your world, inside and outside of your body, was just that: a certain kind of emotion - enjoyment of your own skill, or of your absolute freedom of movement.

now a game of pink-pong or backgammon, or a bike ride, or even the most passionate sexual act doesn't last very long. any child could concentrate for that long, or even longer - because it means doing just one thing at a time, and the emotion is entirely connected with the action, so it is easy to maintain.

but it's possible to BE your emotion for days on end, even for months. take me as an example. ever since i fell in love with you, i am just that: in love with you, my love for you. like in a good drama, this is the main sentiment. it may take the shape of benevolence, or bouts of joking, or strong sexual interest, or angriness, jealousy, despair... but essentially, it remains the same, and all other things come in under-categories. and everything i do is related to it, from baking a cake to writing an article that has nothing to do with you (for me, of course, it has). i don't enter into another emotion - because to me, it would mean turning into an entirely different person.

maybe it's just my imagination, but i feel that you do turn into a different person every so often. of course, i won't stop you from playing ping-pong with a guy i don't like, or watching a tv-series i hate. but please, when you do, don't change into someone i don't know - as if there was no underlying emotional mainstay, but just something different every minute.
and don't ever try to appear unemotional. i know, you are modest and don't want to force your feelings upon people. but this is not the same as modesty - it's self-effacement, it's like you aren't there any more and leave me alone on this chaotic planet. always, always be there. please.
if you hate me, you have my full permission to beat and claw me, and shout at me. (yes, i will hit back.) you may even show me the could shoulder, as long as i feel it IS really cold. if, on the contrary, you like me at all, don't just show it - be THERE when you show it, and also when you do something else. if you are incessantly flying away to another planet, and coming back for just a few hours or minutes, and then take off again without saying goodbye, it's more than i can stand.

because i really, really love you.

one more guy with masks

here's one of the finest magicians in the western world, Jeff McBride, doing a few rather interesting stunts with masks, playing cards and stuff. (the only genuine Mask Change he does is... watch for the top hat ;-)

yes, Jeff played the part of Joran in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

the world's strongest bear :-)

the other day when i was sitting in the train, i had a swedish lesson for free. there was a little swedish girl sitting opposite me, and her mummy was reading Bamse the bear's latest adventure to her - to stop her from turning the train upside down, i suppose. and the little one looked at the comic book with intelligent blue eyes between lots of strands of blonde hair, laughing now and then, or gleaming with suspense.
it's very nice to hear someone reading to a child in a language one can only half understand - simple sentences, slow and distinct pronunciation. i really got what the story was about, even without seeing the pictures.
and i unearthed some of my own deeply buried swedish vocabulary, and we talked a bit (there was the father too, plus an elder sister).
before they got out of the train, the girl gave me a piece of candy. i felt i had really deserved that :-)

oh, i almost forgot: she was carrying a baby seal (stuffed and made of plush), and she always made him sit near the ventilation... because seals like it cool :-)

one more example of Mask Changing (变脸)

he does only four changes, but he does them very well. the shield is a great idea.

Fire on a Stick, and Faces from the Shadows

If you've seen one of the Peking Opera (jing ju) troupes that are touring the world nowadays, probably you got the impression it was only half opera, and half circus - colourful faces, acrobatic dances and varieties of juggling are nearly as important to the performance as singing and acting. Sichuan opera (chuan ju) is still more colourful and has some circensic disciplines that are unique to it.

Seeing an actor in the guise of a demon or dragon spitting fire may hardly surprise you, considering the amount of chili you find in the Sichuan cuisine.
But then there's this other guy of clown-like appearance doing the Rolling Light - difficult acrobatic feats and contortions (such as crawling under a small table, limbo-fashion) while carrying a biggish burning candle on his head. He, too, likes to play with fire, trying not to scorch his audience too much, or the props either.

During an interlude, shadows of birds, beasts or even humans may appear on a screen, created by contortions of the shadowgraphers hand. And sometimes the action is taken over by wonderfully crafted stick puppets: they, too, can dance, sing and act, and I have heard of some puppets that can even spit fire!

But the most closely guarded secret art of the Sichuan opera is Mask Changing (bian lian). No troupe is really complete without the Mask Changer, and nearly every play has a role for him written into it: maybe a cunning villain assuming different faces to shake off his pursuers, or a demoniacal magician whose face changes with his mood. There must be an opportunity for the artist to do a pantomime or dance, changing his face as often as he can - quick as lightning. Mr. He Hongqing, who has been calling himself the youngest and fastest Mask Changer in Chengdu (the capital of Sichuan Province) can change his face three times in 1,5 seconds; and Mr. Peng Denghuai, also from Chengdu (he's the four-eyed guy in the last picture), has established a world record by doing 14 changes in 24 seconds!

Exactly how Mask Changing is done is kept very, very secret... even today, with some Mask Changers taking on pupils for a fee, there aren't more than a few hundred people who can do it, nearly all of them in China. Some artists went so far as to propose it should be made a national secret!
Though looking Chinese enough, Alex Tan (see the video below) is something of an exception - he is from Singapore, and is that country's one and only Mask Changing Master, besides being a very good magician and illusionist. He can do something that even astonishes most other Mask Changers: at the end of his act, when he has shown his face without any mask and everyone thinks his repertoire is exhausted, suddenly he wears a mask again - one that wasn't seen before, of course.
However, Master Peng Denghuai wouldn't be astonished at that. When he did his world record act, after the 14th mask he showed his bare face - and quick as lightning he was masked again, only to change his mask four more times!

the first rain...

...after five weeks of heat.

and the first hug, after at least as many weeks' silence.

both have a very nice and cleansing effect on the atmosphere.