The ten winning images of Wiki Loves Earth Biosphere Reserves photography competition 2016 have been announced. There is only one Spanish entry, and (in case there were any doubts as to who is the best photographer in Spain) that is Tamara’s fantastic Barranco de los Enamorados taken in 2013. Congratulations!
I hesitate to call this book a “must read”. And no, not all experiences in this life are necessary. You wouldn’t wish this one on your worst enemy.
The book is based on interviews of 50 suicide survivors conducted by the author, a suicide survivor herself. It’s not your typical “self-help” book. Nor is it an easy reading but, ultimately, a very gratifying one. You’ve got to get used to Ms Wertheimer’s dry, almost academic writing style. As Colin Murray Parkes points out,
she is very self-effacing and she avoids pontificating, theorising, and offering simple answers to complex problems. In much of the book she allows the survivors to speak for themselves, elsewhere she quotes the opinions of others, but they are always opinions offered for our consideration rather than holy writ. And because she shows us bereavement through the eyes of the bereaved, what we see is often direct and painful, but not without hope.
A hope — for those who tries to make sense of what happened, who is looking for clues which cannot change anything, who feels guilty, who feels alone, orphaned and abandoned, who feels angry and betrayed, who feels robbed of their past, present and future, who feels diminished, cut in half, who wants to talk and cannot talk, who strives both to forget it all and remember everything, who listens to the door opening with a familiar sound (could it be? ... but no), who wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks, thinks, thinks, who asks oneself, for the nth time, all these “why him?” or “why her?” or “why me?” or “what if?”, who wants to move away, to never wake up, to disappear, who needs to carry on as before — a hope is not a small thing.
Timur had been working on this picture for quite a few weeks (all these Celtic swirly things!) and finished it when we were in Finland this August. This is what he wrote about it:
I thought of a web-comic a while ago. The main character lives on a barren wasteland and searches for a mythical “Happy-Land” because he hates his current life. He travels through a deceptively dark journey with a particularly stupid dog.
I am looking forward to the first installment of the comic.
