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We make significant mistakes when we’re protecting ourselves.

Defensiveness, self-aggrandizement, bragging, deflecting, perfectionism; whatever you want to label it, we sometimes suck at maintaining our relationships. When stuck in fight or flight, the innate system that helps us avert or challenge danger, we cultivate responses that might benefit us in the short-term but, once crystalized, insidiously corrode our connections. Consider the malignant narcissist, who desperately needs approval. He attempts to win you over by gloating about his professional and interpersonal conquests, fostering the sensed certainty stemming from admiration. The belief behind the patterned behavior is, ‘If she admires me, she’ll stay.” And at its core hides the absolute terror of abandonment, which itself cloaks a deep sense of shame. Narcissism, then, becomes a way to sustain some perverted form of intimacy, where you may not know me, but neither do I.

And narcissism is just one defense. Defensiveness (the pattern…

I’ve been so focused on getting through my book reviews lately that other cultural experiences have been temporarily shelved, so it’s time to get back on track and catch up. This blog was, after all, set up to showcase international culture and in an attempt to experience and document examples the full gamut of culture – books, art, film and TV, music and food – from every country of the world.

Earlier this year I went to see a screening of the prize-winning 2021 Swiss film Olga, which stars 20-year-old Ukrainian gymnast Anastasia Budiashkina (a previous member of the Ukrainian national team), and was directed by female director Elie Grappe (my blog tries to shine a spotlight on female directors in what remains a male-dominated industry).

Olga is a successful gymnast who, owing to her late father’s Swiss nationality, has the chance to leave Ukraine to train in Switzerland…

Latgalian Girls Listening

Latgalian Girls belongs to a series of paintings depicting the children of the territory of eastern Latvia which provided great inspiration for the artist following his permanent move to Riga in 1921. These sun-suffused canvases which captured the local peasant children in their native countryside were exhibited to great acclaim at the Riga Art museum in 1925.

Here, the two young sitters are turned away from the viewer, as if listening intently to Bogdanov-Belsky, who would entertain his models as he worked with captivating tales of the artists whom he admired.

Source: Sotheby’s

Click for Enlarged Detail

Slideshow best viewed At Sunnyside

Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky, (1868-1945), LATGALIAN GIRLS, signed in Latinl.l., oil on canvas, 67.7 by 78cm, 26 1/2 by 30 3/4 in…

Happy Friday! 😎

~Sunnyside

I sketched this from the outside tables at 88 Wood Street. A small coffee shop run by Dartbrooke Coffee has opened in this office block. The coffee was superb, the welcome warm, and they had a selection of food. Also they had tables both indoors and out. Here’s the view from an outdoor table overlooking London Wall.

I liked all the angles.

That’s rain you see in the sky. I had to pack up quickly as the rain came down.

This picture took 1hour 10 minutes up to the point in the photo above when it started raining. Then another 20 minutes at my desk to finish off.

Here’s a map. The building on the left of my drawing is 200 Aldersgate, a huge office block.