Some of you have had problems viewing the video of Luise and her pet bird Käptn. I think it must have been due to the German “HD”-movie format I chose. Here’s the film in a different format. I hope it works! Have fun!
A fairy tale! The children’s eyes lit up. The tale explainer began: “Once upon a time, there was a mother goat. She had seven little kids. As this prototypical introduction shows, this is obviously a fairy tale. In this kind of literature the number seven is the number of completion. Later on it will become important that not all of the little kids are eaten, but instead that all will be saved. We do not know why the father of the goats is not mentioned. The subsequent eating of the little kids can be understood as a violent or sexual act. When you later divide the story into five main paragraphs, you will confirm that the tale follows a graded pattern…” And the lights in the children’s eyes went out.
Here’s a video which I would like to share with you. I find it quite funny… It’s a story without words about the friendship between my niece Luise and her musical bird Käpt’n – and alsoabout the love of music which they share – even if they may have a slightly different style of listening.
The video can also be used for therapeutic storytelling, for example for illustrating tou couples or family members that conflicting interests can go well together with loving each other. Some little quarrels here and there don’t need to hinder harmony in a relationship…
httpv://youtu.be/?feature=player_videoeditor
“Shame about the dandelion”, said Mr Gundolf, who was weeding in his garden. “Good for the rose”, I said.
“I had to remove quite a bit of your tooth. I had to drill almost down to the nerve. You seem to be brave. How could you stand all this without an injection?” “I was sitting at a lake near my holiday resort. I listened to the wind in the leaves. A car or a motorbike went by. I felt the cool air on my skin. I was sitting in the sun on a big white stone – but no, if I looked closely at it, that really was my tooth!”
It was raining. No school today. Like every Saturday morning, she stood behind the counter where the bread rolls and cakes and other pastries were displayed for sale. Through the shop window she saw the leaves swept from the trees by the wind swirling through the street. In front of the shop, a woman was struggling with her umbrella. Above the lady she could read the inscription “Miller’s Bakery””, in mirror writing, of course, for anyone looking at the pane from the inside.
When she was alone and did not need to attend to any customers, she liked to imagine that this shop window was a cinema screen and that what she could see behind it was a film. In her imagination, she would alter the scene. The cars would become stage coaches, the leaves would become birds, and the lady with the umbrella could become her mother fighting a wild dragon. Now this image amused her especially. Her mother, who habitually misunderstood her, who could misinterpret any word she said in a splitsecond, who could turn good into bad and bad into good – she would probably win a dragon fight, or at least go for a draw. Until the next fight.
The lady with the umbrella was long gone. Now she imagined what she would write on the shop window, replacing the boring sign “Miller’s Bakery”. How about “You mean a lot to me” or “I like you anyway”? Or “I tease you ‘cause I love you”?
She grinned at the thought. She imagined what these inscriptions would look like on the large shop windowpane. Anyone passing it would be able to read it, including her mother, of course. In her imagination, she saw the inscription “You mean a lot to me”. Would her mother finally understand her if she read those words?” She saw her mother standing in front of the windowpane with a furrowed brow, slowly shaking her head. Then the thought came to her mind: “You need to put your words in mirror writing.”
Often I have asked myself why some people seem restlessly occupied, have a densely filled agenda and desk, and talk about their stressful work, but at the end of the day have no better results than others who still have spare time for finding rest and recreation.
It might seem that excessive labour offers good security. First of all it creates an impression of this person as being utterly important. Whoever works unceasingly must be indispensable. A person who has done so much and complains of the burden of his work will more easily be forgiven if he commits some error. He may hope to be envied or even pitied. If it is noticed that his work is never finished, some of his tasks may be delegated to somebody else. He can at least avoid receiving further tasks too early. In the course of time, his spectrum of work will be defined more narrowly but at least there should not be too many new challenges awaiting him. On the other hand, he will not want too many jobs to be taken away from him, lest he lose the great advantages of his work overload. When other colleagues are made redundant, the sheer amount of work he has to do is seen at first glance, and he will be considered indispensable. Even those who are self-employed or work as civil servants can enjoy the good conscience of having done all that they could by having filled the available time completely with industrious activity.
How disadvantageous would it be, indeed, if he succeeded in being finished with all his tasks in shorter time! Or, if he even took a break or thought about some concept in which he could work in a far more relaxed yet more effective manner! This would surely cause him to suffer the envy and animosity of others. But worse would be the struggle with that inner voice of conscience with its remark: “The man who takes a rest is lazy.” I am convinced: Whoever wants to achieve much while being relaxed and be successful with little effort will need to have a strong personality.
I do not know whether you have ever seen an eagle. In the zoo, of course, but I do not mean that. If you see an eagle in the zoo, most of the time it looks tired, bored and sleepy. For what shall he do? An eagle is meant to fly, and this he cannot do in a cage, at least not really well. What impresses me about eagles is their strength, and how they use their strength. You might think that such a large bird would move its wings in powerful beats. But the eagle does not need this. It circles in the sky, and even though it rarely moves its wings, it goes higher and higher till you lose sight of it. How does the eagle know that it can fly? If such an animal could speak, I suppose it would not discuss the existence of the air before spreading its wings. Eagles do not ask for proof. They are content with the experience that they are carried by the air. The outcome is their proof.
They both heard it. A quiet coughing and then a snapping for air. The owner of the kiosk had just placed the illustrated magazine on the table while the woman searched her purse for change. She looked down. “Tommy, what’s the matter?” she called, startled. Her Yorkshire terrier lay, lifelessly, on the ground. “That can happen so fast”, murmured the shopkeeper. “Probably a heart attack”, he thought, “too well fed”. The dog was dead, no doubt about it. But what to do now?
The lifeless body could certainly not remain in the shop. But neither did the woman want to carry her dead dog through the village in front of everyone and get caught up in a conversation on every street corner. “Have you perhaps got a box?” she asked. The shopkeeper went into the back and returned. “This is all I’ve got.” He handed her a printed box which had contained a small portable television set a few days earlier. After the dog was packed away in it, the woman left the electronics shop. In front of the shop she met a young man who, loudly and with a distinct foreign accent, shouted: “They all racist, hate foreigners! No one will change!” Angrily he waved his fifty Euro note back and forth in front of the old woman’s face. “But that must be possible!” said the woman. “Come, I’ll change it for you in the electronics shop. Just hold the box for me please while you wait.” The young man nodded contentedly. When the woman returned with the money, he was gone. To her shock, there was also no sign of the box.
“I would like to hand in fifty euros here”, said the old woman later at the police station. “Where did you find it?” asked the police officers and listened to what had happened. “Keep the money”, they said. “It will be difficult to find the right owner.”
A man stood at the glass door of a department store early in the morning, with the intention of entering. The door wouldn’t even open an inch. He tried to push against it, but nothing happened. He could have knocked or called. He could have tried to open the door by force. The man did none of these. He looked at the sign with the opening times, looked at his watch, and then went for a walk for about ten minutes. Then he came back and stepped in front of the door. The door now opened all by itself, automatically and as if from the hand of a ghost.