Film Journal 2023: Five Nights at Freddy’s Directed by Emma Tammi
My entire frame of reference for Five Nights at Freddy’s was: 1. It is based on a video game 2..it stars Peeta from the Hunger Games
From what I knew it was a single concept idea given a feature length story. What I know now is that there is in fact a whole universe of existing lore out there for this film to pull from. Having zero familiarity with any of that lore I confess I was a bit lost. Its not exactly a simple story to follow going in relatively blind.
The elements of the film that do speak for themselves- the relationship between brother and sister, the jobless young man struggling to find his way amidst his responsibilities. Grief and guilt- work well enough. It’s the worldbuiilding that gets complicated. Feels like a film made for the fans, and from what I can tell the fans in my crowd seemed to dig it. For myself, while I had a decent enough time, all I could think was, this film is missing Nic Cage.
It’s worth pointing out that this is solidly in PG13 territory, which means the horror elements are relatively subdued. On this front, I think, and hope, it’s a good stepping stone into the genre for its younger fans.
Film Journal 2023: Priscilla Directed by Sofia Coppola
One of the things that Sofia Coppola’s films tend to ask of viewers is to expect to have a complicated relationship with an iinitial viewing, but to also trust that subsequent viewings will ultimately bring the pieces together in a coherent fashion. She is not prone to catering to easy tricks of the trade or telling simple stories. Often her films will create a dance between certain genre placements and narrative approaches (biopic/character study) while using metaphor and allegory to become something else entirely. This has a tendency to create certain illusions within the experience, while simultaneously allowing those illusions to challenge ones perspective on both the subject matter and its aims.
One of the tools Coppola uses to achieve this is a willingness, or tendency, to play around with a scattered narrative. In Priscilla, part of the ebb and flow of the film is its abrupt editing, alluding to things and then never showing or addressing them, randomly jumping forward for unknown reasons at different times. And yet this scattered sense is part of what allows those identifiable arcs and themes to take root in far more subtle ways, emphasizing certain scenes and shots and moments as a means of redirecting our attention towards what the Director really wants us to see.
Priscilla of course comes on the heels of the extremely successful release of Elvis last year. The two films couldn’t be more different in style and approach, but this actually sets them up to be a perfect compliment to their different points of perspective. Elvis sees the story of Priscilla from Elvis’ perspective, and what’s super interesting to note is the positive light he places Priscilla in and the weight of the blame he places on his own shoulders for their eventual decline. In Priscilla, Coppola identifies Priscilla as the one with a rise and fall arc, bringing into the mix questions about her own self blame for the situation she finds herself in. One big difference as well, is that while Elvis uses its arc of the famed singer to evoke a degree of empathy for his downfall, in Priscilla there is no other surrounding characters on which to place culpability and blame, such as the agent who is manipulating things in Elvis. The figure of Elvis is presented in an even worse light in Priscilla, identifying again the differences in perspective. Two people telling the same story from different vantage points, and it results in partial pictures that gain their fullness when brought together.
The frenetic, mile a minute depiction of his dramatic rise and fall in Elvis is contrasted directly with Priscilla, who sees Elvis primarily in the context of Graceland, out of sight of the craziness of his public life. What she knows of that side comes from the media and newspaper clippings and magazine articles. Thus when Elvis leaves, her life essentially submits itself to the slow, mundane realities of a life now confined to the gated premise of an empty Graceland. What this results in is a film where the action takes place largely within the internal transformation of its lead. One might be tempted to say this is ultimately a transformation from innocence towards its loss, and from idealistic young woman with the world seemingly at her doorstep to enslaved housewife with all sense ot agency effectively stripped away. But I actually think it’s not quite that straightforward. She’s not presented as innocent as it might first seem, and the things driving her towards this singular obsession feel largely undefined and complex in nature. The film raises interesting questions regarding her manipulation of her parents and Elvis’ manipulation of her parents, quietly attaching this to these moments in the film where the power dynamics between themselves ultimately shift back and forth within the dynamics of their relationship.
One of the great things about Coppola’s choice here is that this is a larger than life story about larger than life characters that seems to tell a story that anyone could find themselves in. Coppola does some really interesting things with the way she crafts this film, using the absence of Elvis’ music and the absence of his performances, save for a momentary television segment and a brief backside shot (the way the film captured the quiet and subtle interactions between the two of them in this moment was cinematic perfection) to play this as a relationship drama. And one of the things I latched on to, and it’s one of the more subtle and sub-textual elements to be sure, is the way it depicts the relationship between Priscilla and her parents. Anyone who has ever had the experience of wanting to protect their child from the potential consequence of certain decisions, but where they also know that child is going to make the decisions they have settled on no matter what, I think can find something in this part of the story to connect to. The parents know somethings not right, even outside of the 10 year age difference between Elvis and a young woman in grade 9, and yet they also know that that she has made up her mind and they have lost all point of influence on their daughters decision. They are up against a much more powerful force. And while the film leaves no doubt that this force at least in part lies in the powerful enterprise that surrounds Elvis, Coppola smartly writes in these subsequent observations about how it is that we understand liberty to begin with. Part of what Priscilla is clearly chasing after is an illusion of liberty, and what becomes unmasked is the power of those worldly draws- sex and power being at the forefront, to frame this illusion within an inescapable draw. This blurs the line between liberty as “the right to be and do what I want”, and the ensuing question that emerges from the idea that we are all always shaped by some external force over our lives. And certainly this adds to the complexities of what it is that drives her into this relationship to begin with. We never do see any sort of reconciliation with the parents, so that is left in the air for us to consider, but it is a part of what makes Priscillas innocence or lack of it difficult to define.
It might sound odd to say this too, but even with all that, somehow Coppola manages to evoke this sense of the evil forces that hold this relationship in its grip, imploding it bit by bit, without ever completely condemning the relationship itself or the persons themselves. We will no doubt make our judgments, as the film invites us to do, but it steers clear of making them on it’s own. It’s a fascinating way to hold the two things in tension, making for a film that is filled with the Directors sensibilities while possibly being her most mature effort to date.
Reading Journal 2023: Rethinking the Atonement: New Perspectives On Jesus’ Death, Resurrection, and Ascension Author: David M. Moffitt
Right off the top, one of things I most appreciate about this book is Moffitt’s extremely graceful and careful presentation of this theories. He makes clear distinctions between where he is dealing with theory and where he is dealiing with the facts and information informing his theory. He also does a really good job at tracking the flow of his argument, clarifying as he goes along which subsequent arguments depend on prior established statements. He offers a lot of “if this true, then…”, and that goes a long ways in allowing room for engagement with the ideas he is tabling.
The general thrust of Moffitts argument rests on where we locate the concept of atonement, how we unerstand its relationship to reconciliation, and how we undersstand atonement as a progression from one place to another. He begins by noting how Tyndale’s decision to translate atonement and reconciliation began a long and problematic history of tying the two languages, words that imply reconciliation in the Greek and words that imply atonement, or sacrifice, in the Hebrew, together. This ultimately led to connnecting the reconicling act to the blood, which subsequently resulted in reading the blood as a necessary death rather than what it represents in the Hebrew, which is life.
To put this more simply- atonement became Jesus’ death on the cross which then reconciles us to God as the necessary payment for our sins.
The problem with this is that it makes no sense of the actual language of atonement that we find in the text. This is not to say that the death has no significance. Its also not to say that reconciliation isn’t a necessary part of the story. It is to say that if we are to understand atonement in the text, we need to understand the world behind the text and where it locates atonement. If it is true that Jesus saves from sin, how Jesus does this becomes deeply relevant to the story we tell about both the death and reconciliation. An important step in this endeavor is for us to recognize how the Hebrew language, be it the figure of Moses, the messianic expectations, and the language of atonement, defined as it is in relationship to sacrifice in the Hebrew scriptures, gets applied to Jesus as a way of understanding what He did, not the other way around. It was the available language of their day, and it has become muddled by translating that into the language of our day in a way that loses its force of meaning.
Part of the earlier chapters tackle some of the issues that flow from a tendency to reduce the Hebrew scriptures and its language in light of Jesus. This has made us, as Christians, resistant to the language of the Hebrew scriptures, believing it has been superseded, underwritten, or proved wanting, and thus leaves us ignorant to the ways we have imported wrong ideas into our present understandings of atonement. Thus it becomes important to do the work first of establishing why the language of sacrifce in the Hebrew scriptures matters to our understaning of Jesus. This is true and necessary because two of the primary languages used to describe the person and work of Jesus- the Passover and The Day of Atonement- actively depend on these languages to say what they want to say about atonement.
Some key ideas that he touches on: 1. The blood is not associated with Jesus’ death but his life, and death is never ritualized in the Hebrew rites of sacrifice. It does in fact occur away from the tabernacle/temple space, and is seen as incidental to the wilderness space where sin and death holds reign, or incidental to taking on the flesh. Death in this sense is not the necessary act, but rather is the thing the necessary act is responding to. In covenantal terms, death becomes the thing that inaugerates the covenant and makes it active.
2. Jesus is clearly presented as performing a priestly duty with His own blood. In the ritual act of sacrfice, atonement is brought about by way of a progression from outside the temple to inside the temple where God resides. This is where the lifeblood, which is where the life is contained, enters the presence of God both as a gift and in its effectiveness to cleanse the space where God dwells from the pollution of sin and death, the result of the tabernacle existing in the wilderness space.
3. Righeousness is not tied to moral works, as in Jesus ultimately becomes the perfect sacrifice because He followed the laws perfectly and never sinned, righteousness is actually tied to the perfected covenant, or Jesus being perfected in His resurrection and ascension. This is why death no longer has power. Prior to his resurrection (or death) death has that power, and thus righteousness cannot be claimed. Its also true to say that atonement belongs to the larger story of this movement from the wildenress space into the garden space, then, as Jesus says, bringing heaven down to earth as He establishes His reign over the new creation space.
4. Given that reconciliation operates in a different category of thought (how it is that we move into the new space or new reality that atonement brings about in and for the world), it becomes necessary to note that Jesus’ work as a high priest doesn’t end with the resurrection or ascension, it is depicted as an ongoing work. That is why Jesus’ depiction as the eternal priest is deemed to be effective. The sacrifice doesn’t need to be repeated, but the work that the blood does in relationship with and to the world is something that is always acting.
5. The blood is closely related to the idea of space. Its about a movement from one space into another, and in Jesus’ person and work this new space is the whole of creation. When we move into the space where God dwells “in Christ” we occupy a new and different reality or space- a new creation space. And as such we witness to this new reality in an already-not yet world still awaiting the fullness of time. This is what the ancients understood as the eschatological resurrection, which for the NT writers is bound to the conviction about Jesus being a singular resurrection in the middle of history.
6. Jesus is not a moral example, or a chief model of suffering, He is the righteous one, the proclomation that God has at long last did what He promised to do. The two spaces then are defined by the finite and the eternal, one according to death and decay, the other according to life and transformation.
7. Ritual and moral purity, intentional and unintentional sin, are all given the same category of atonement and follow the same process, defined as all the rites are by the singular unifying dynamic- the burning. The burning is the moment of rising up into God’s presence. And it always carries a directional force. Thus the blood from the cross enters the tabernacle space where the blood of life is given to God so as to go up and reside with God apart from Sin and Death. In so doing, a new space is created where this blood then removes the pollution that results from living in proximity to sin and death.
Its worth pointing out here a dominating facet of this book- Moffitts work in the letter to the Hebrews, which is what he specializes in. Hebrews functions as his pirmary point of reference, moving from Hebrews outwards towards these ideas about atonement and sacrirfice and reconciliation. It adds a compelling and fascinating layer to the overall arguments in the book, as he is similtaneously tackling misconceptions about Hebrews at the same time. Namely the long standing assumption that Hebrews is not concerned with the idea of Resurrection. He makes a powerful case for how resurrrection informs and drives the entire letter, reshaping how we read much of it in relationship to sacrfice.
Definitely a must read for anyone interersted in the current body of work challenging some long held assumptions about Old Testament Jewish sacrifice. He cites and references some of the primary books in this field of study. He brings his own unique slant to the discussion though, exploring some big ideas along the way.
Film Journal 2023: Fingernails Directed by Christos Nikos
A brilliant premise undercut by an unsatisfying ending. For me, the overall experience still held up though, finding ways to take a particular concept/idea with a particular focus and applying it to some lofty and important cultural and societal realities.
The premise is simple. Our main character, a youngish woman trying to figure out her life, exists in a world where a controversial procedure involving the scientific analysis of fingernails has become a culturally accepted means of determining relational compatibility. The young woman’s current point of crisis revolves around her search for employment, but as the film goes on another crisis takes center stage- she starts to question her relationship to her partner, throwing her entire worldview into disarray. What if her entire conception of love as something we can tangibly study and analyze and understand and control is not trustworthy? What if the science has been left wanting? What if our confidence in humanity and each other is undercut? What if we can longer trust ourselves?
This is where the personal commentary bleeds into a broader commentary, echoing some of the touchpoints of what has been largely coined as the great meaning crisis of our modern times. At the heart of the film sits these poignant questions about what happens when the systems that inform our pursuit of knowledge and give it reason and purpose begin to fail us. What happens when our need to understand and know the nature of human and social function confronts us with a conception of humanity and social constructions that crumble under the weight of such reductions to simple facts and data points. All of this forms a solid playing field for the kind of existential crisis the film wants to confront, especially where it pertains to the question of authenticity.
There is no mistaking the heavy parallels to our present fascination with things like the enneagram, or even the gradual push into genetics. Taking the fingernail test to determine whether a relationship is compatible and to assess the likelihood of its success is akin to taking a personality test that allows us to locate how given we are to specific character traits. Both are anchored in physiology/biology. Both offer the same appeal to some level of promise and trustworthiness in the science. They invite us to place our trust in a certain kind of knowledge of our biological selves and the material world we occupy. However when the world that surrounds this knowledge begins to show cracks in terms of its ability to afford us meaning, it leaves such knowledge inevitably appealing to illusions rather than to reality. In these moments, what do we trust? How do we trust? Who do we trust? This is one of the big dilemmas that the present meaning crisis is concerned about. Where does the social construction give way to something true? Where do we reconcile the failure of these systems and worldviews to satisfy our need to know something such as love as a reality that exists beyond such reductions? When such forms of knowledge appear to have failed us and have been left wanting, how do we in turn give ourselves to the experiences of reality itself?
Big ideas. As I mentioned above, the ending takes these ideas and ultimately narrows it to a social construction in response- individualism. Or perhaps its better known form- individual liberty. It seems to suggest that the answer, even if its not clearly stated, can be found in slipping between the notion that we are products of our environment and creations of these socially constructed realities, and somehow exist apart from these things as an individual entity free to become our own selves. Perhaps most apparent is that this effectively underides the moral truths and values the film wants to bring to the table as necessary universals and given foundations for thinking about the crisis. The ending ends up feeling every bit the illusion and question as the thing it is battling against.
As momentary experiences go though, I was drawn in by the premise, fascinated by the characters and performances, and genuinely invested in the dance that leads up to the ending. Whatever reframing the ending does, or at least tries to do, this aspect held up for me as worthwhile and effective.
Reading Journal 2023: The Lost Year Author: Katherine Marsh
The folks over at the Currently Reading podcast often talk about the dreams and hopes of finding that book that is “un-put-downable”. We are free to create words where it matters, and such a word helps to capture that magicable moment when you do come across one of those books. For me, The Lost Year was one of those books.
The writing here is simple, but it is also perfectly constructed, allowing the sum of its parts to be firing on all cyylinders. The characters are all easy to care for and richly accessible, the flow of the book utilizes its mix of drama and mystery and history and everyday huumanness to generate a genuine page turning experience. Perhaps most important is that this same authenticity leads to a genuine emotional resonance balanced with just the right amount of larger themes. The book is not so much profound as it is smartly rendered and intuitively felt, and even for that matter timely.
The book’s central character is Matthew, a young boy living in the middle of Covid lockdowns, seperated from his father, a reporter now stranded overseas with the shutdown of flights, and struggling with what he sees as his overbearing mother at home. After he gets his game system taken away, his only solace in a time of isolation, he turns his attention to the other person stuck in their house- his great granmother, a 100 year old woman named Nadiya who also exists under the watchful eye of the young boys mother.
As the young boy connects with his GG, secrets from her, and his, past begin to emerge. It is here that we are introduced to the main figures whom will frame the book’s jumping back and forth in time. Helen lives in the 1930’s in Brookyln, New York, having immigrated there from Ukraine. Mila lives at the same time in Kiev during what we now know as Holodomor. A younger Nadiya enters both of their lives as a witness to the very realities the Soviet governement was covering up. What the young boy living in 2020 ends up encountering is Nadiya’s story, a story that up until this moment had yet to be told. This requires Matthew to learn about history he had never been taught, to learn about his heritage that he knew very little about, and to have to dig for answers to his questions given Nadiya’s resistance to telling the story. What sparks it all is the discovery of a picture. This is where the deteective work comes in, allowing Marsh to make some nice narrative connections between Matthew and his reporter dad. Marsh also makes some nice connections between the nature of disinformation, using the international reporting to shed light on how we often we become captive to narratives that gain power in their isolation and in their blinding effects.
If you see the image on the cover of the book, this image becomes a thematic touch point that emerges right in the middle of the book, holding both sides of the inevitable arc of this story within some larger thematic interests. One of those is the contasting pictures of faith (in God, or in something) and the suffering realities that shape our world. Closely tied to this is the relationship between hope and cynicism. How do we make sense of the stuff of this world, and how do we tell our stories, and tell eachothers stories, in ways that find its meaning? For each of these characters we find an element of a world they once thought being drastically overturned by a different reality they must now confront. This seeds uncertainty, to be sure, but it also becomes the driving force for seeking some form of necessary grounding. And it is that grounding that becomes the seedbed for the interconnecteddness of these stories,
Marsh writes with such clarity and precision, and one of the areas this rewards is the book’s real sense of place and culture. Having spent a small bit of time in Kyiv myself, I found her description of the streets and the setting to bring back all sorts of memories. I knew them visually in my minds eye, and Marsh brought all of that vividness and beauty straight back to the surface, captured with a real sense of reverance and care. This is of course contrasted with the backdrop of the soviet era coloring this beauty with equal notes of tragedy, and that brought to mind my own traversing of this space right after the war broke out in Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Equal parts beauty and tragedy coexisting.
Definitley a book of the year for me. A prefect read to bridge that gap between Halloween and rememberance day, timely given everything going on in Ukraine today, and a timeless read that is as entertaining as it is important and meaningful simply on the level of its human concerns.
Film Journal 2023: The Marvels Directed by Nia DaCosta
You’d have to be a legitimate grinch to hate this film. Or for that matter, to want to hate this film as it seems some are predispositioned to do. I get it, superhero fatigue is real. But if you can set that aside, even if for a moment, I think you’ll find a film that is charming, chalk full of fresh energy, a good deal of fun, and utilizes a tight script to keep the tension focused on the interpersonal dynamics and the stakes right in the sweet spot. Throw in a breezy hour and a half run time that forgoes the typical third act Marvel formula, and everything about this preaches worthy successor to Danvers’ splashy introduction.
Let’s not forget too, we aren’t that far removed from Captain Marvel bringing genuine and welcome change to the superhero universe. She gave plenty of young girls and young women someone to emulate and look up to, and this sequel gives time to exploring that relevance too, tying it nicely into the films thematic interests.
The real star of the show, aside from a banger scene with the iconic cat, is the dynamic trio. When it wasn’t going for the heartstrings, I had a grin on my face the whole time. The Director utilizes every moment of their on screen chemistry and antics. Based on my audience, it’s a genuine crowd pleaser.
In N.T. Wright’s new book, Into The Heart of Romans, he locates the fundamental force of Paul’s letter within Paul’s understanding of the Genesis story. As he notes,
“… God called Abraham to undo the sin of Adam.”
How do we understand this sin and solution? “God called Abraham to be fruitful and multiply and look after Gods garden (creation).”
In contrast, “Abraham and Sarah are promised that God will make them fruitful (despite their old age) and give them a land (despite their presently being wandering nomads).”
What informs the gap inbetween the original vocation and Gods covenental purposes for a vocation gone wrong? We see this in the exile from the garden into the wilderness, the very thing that marks the wandering nomad. This becomes a movement back into a renewed garden space. Subsequently, we encounter the parallel story in Genesis 6 that finds the “be fruitful and multiply” command playing off of the progression of Cains murder and Lamechs successive murders, setting in play a pattern of retribution that then fills the earth. When we get to Genesis 6, this is joined with the outcome of the spiritual beings being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth with evil, resulting in a decreation account and the emergence of Noah as a new Adam set within a covenant- as Wright puts it, “God so loved his world that HE determined to put it right.”
In covenantal terms, “God always intended to work through human beings” according to the Jewish expectation of a promise that “included the whole world” and which “extended to include all the nations.”
“Paul believed… that all these promises had come true in Israel’s Messiah… the very heart of the Gospel. Jesus is thus the rightful kyrios, “lord”, of the whole world… It didn’t need translating into non-Jewish terms to be relevant- uncomfortably relevant of course!- to the world which already had other “lords”, Caesar in particular.”
Reading Journal 2023: Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age Author: Tom Holland
No one does narrative history quite like Tom Holland. The third in his sweeping treatment of ancient and imperial Rome, War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age picks up with the death of Nero and examines the Flavian Emperors up until Hadrian’s death.
One of the great things about Holland is his willngness to explore the gaps between the facts that we know and the world behind the facts without reservation. He is not afraid to submit his wealth of historical awareness and knowledge to a necessary imagination, using the power of story to evoke questions and intrigue as he goes.
And what a story it is, traversing world shaping moments such as the fall of Jerusalem and Pompei. For as familiar as these stories are, its the inner workings of the world these events occupy that remains most intriguing. Its fascinating to consider, as a people looking back on an all too familiar legacy to us today regarding history’s greatest empire, just how uncertain and fearful the people and leaders of Rome actually were in the present. Even more striking to consider that the thing that caused this uncertainty was fear over Rome’s increasing diversity amidst the rise of immigration. Things feel far too real when considering our own present context as Holland navigates the construction of Hadrian’s wall. A striking shift from Rome’s once open borders.
Anyone with an interest in the Jewish revolt and the fall of Jerusalem I think will find plenty to stoke their imagination of this historical conquest. And if anyone has read Dominion, the focus he gives to the subsequent rise of Chrisitanity within the same soil that sees Rome’s eventual fall should not be surprising. I really loved the perspective he brings to these parallel events operating as part of the same story. There is some rich commentary to be found, and perhaps some important convictions and contextualization for constrasting two different portraits of the notion of kingdom. As the title of the book suggests, this age is considered Rome’s zenith, or golden age, but this zenith is shaped by the ever present tension of war and peace, the very things that continue to throw the promise of Empire, or the kingdoms of this world, into question today.
Film Journal 2023: Landscape With Invisible Hand Directed by Cory Finley
A quirky, ambitious sci-fi that works to defy both conventions and expectations. How willing you are to sink yourself into the oddities of this world will likely determine how well this works for you.
It’s also a bit of a slow build. Not in the pacing, but in the time it gives to building its world. This applies equally to the character development. The film’s interest in using its premise- benevolent aliens turned overlords whose introduction of technology has gradually eroded the human economy- to say something about larger social realities. The clear commentary on capitalism, disparity, gender and family dynamics, internet culture, all gets played through the lives of these two teens and their respective families. The way the script draws this out affords them layers, moving the plot in some unexpected directions as we watch the relationship between the two develop.
It all acts as a reminder that we live in a world shaped by these invisible hands. Our awareness and understanding of the persons existing within these systems involves awareness of the systems themselves.
As with anything unconventional, there is a definite level of experimentation, some that works more than others, and the further this goes along the deeper it sinks itself into it’s own imagination. This is, however, where the film is also at its most interesting and inventive, and goes a long ways in establishing this as worthwhile viewing.
Film Journal 2023: The Holdovers Directed by Alexander Payne
Plays like a warm blanket with a hot drink. Cosy, pared back, simple, heartfelt. It’s also smart, or Aasmartly written character study that gives its two central characters, a cynical aging professor and a castoff delinquent student, plenty of room to develop.
One of the potential dangers of a film that leans this heavily into its character drama is that it stands to isolate viewers who won’t necessarily connect to these performances whole sale. If you don’t, there is a decent chance you will find the film a bit underwhelming. If you do though, this thing should work like a charm. The investment of the cast and the filmmakers in winning you over to its holiday themed premise, a clear ambition of the script, is evident either way. For my money, it’s a resounding success. I bought into the chemistry hook line and sinker. I loved the mix of dark humor, emotional concern, and relationship building. The concept of two seemingly polarizing figures coming to discover that they have more in common than they thought never gets old.
It’s the kind of film that I think stakes a firm claim in potentially becoming a future holiday classic down the road.
The Stories of my Life 