“Pride of Baghdad”

Pride of Baghdad is a graphic novel amazingly written by Brian K. Vaughan and marvelous illustrated by the pencils of Niko Henrichon. This is a true story about 4 lions that lived at the zoo in Baghdad and after the U.S. air force blasted the city in 2003 they manage to escape.  As I perceive the novel, I think that the main issue of the novel is the discernment of the meaning of freedom throughout the life experience.

The story is developed around this pride of 4 lions: Zill the head of the pride, Safa the old lioness, Noor the youngest lioness and Ali who is Noor’s cub. Among these characters we can distinguish different perceptions of freedom according to the age, experiences, expectations, knowledge and awareness of our surroundings.

For example in Zill we can see the nostalgic point f view about freedom, as he says that he misses watching the horizons in the wild life. In Safa we can see the experience and the consciousness, because she live terrible issues in the wild life, especially with a lion called Bukk and even got blind from one eye, so she is aware of the dangers in the wild life (represent the experience) and even at the beginning when the animals in the zoo got free her first decision is to stay but finally she change her mind. Noor is the youngest lioness, an all she wants to get of the zoo and be free, but as the story goes forward we can see that, even this desire has been accomplished one way or another, she is scared and shocked by the brutal change of life and the hostile environment. Ali represents the innocence and inexperience, he is astonished by everything that he sees and sometimes he is bump into diverse feelings  from amazement to panic.

Also, one thing that got my attention is the wordplay of the author in the main title; Pride of Baghdad might have lots of meanings. The first is very simple, is the group of lions (pride).

The second is referring to the Iraqi version of a Russian tank; these tanks were called “Lions of Babylon”, and had been a special, unique and representative Iraqi force since the cold war and they we used during in the invasion in 2003. And the third could be referring to the city and the Iraq people to preserve their pride despite the invasion.

About the different meanings of “Pride o f Baghdad”, there exists a statue in Iraq, called the Lion of Babylon (which is in below the heading); this is a statue of a man struggling against a lion to avoid being devoured.  The symbolism is represented in the story of the people; the story says that as the statue remains in place, no foreign government will rule.

Finally, I think that this is a great novel although it is short; the author portrays really well the perception of freedom in a state o f war. To some people freedom is the will of doing whatever you want and sometime it is impeded by the society and our regulations, even the way to accomplish freedom is important as the author say with Safa “Freedom can’t be given, only earned”.

The Bard.

 

Daedalus Hyperboreus

“Daedalus hyperboreus”

On Sunday night I had a great experience; I remember that at midnight I was trying to get asleep, and I was lying down on my right side but I felt a something odd, like some kind of energy or a presence right in front of me, despite feeling this presence I felt very calmed and peaceful.

Later that night I remember dreaming myself inside a mall, I visited several stores and suddenly my movements started to slow down that is when I realized entirely that I was dreaming, but next to that the best part started, I tried to wake me but I wasn’t able to move or speak for short moment and then I realized that it was also a dream. At the beginning I did not know what to think, but I remembered that I had a similar experience time ago so I started searching; and I found that I had a lucid dream.

A lucid dream is a dream in which you know you are dreaming. Typically this happens when the dreamer experiences something strange, and when they stop to question their reality, they realize they are in a dream. Lucid dreams happen naturally on occasion, although some people may have them naturally more often than others. The definition of lucid dreaming may be simple, but there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding it.

A lucid dream can begin in one of two ways. A dream-initiated lucid dream (DILD) starts as a normal dream, and the dreamer eventually concludes it is a dream, while a wake-initiated lucid dream (WILD) occurs when the dreamer goes from a normal waking state directly into a dream state, with no apparent lapse in consciousness.

The REM (Rapid Eye Movement) is when a person is dreaming, the eyes move rapidly up and down and vibrate. Scientific research has found that these eye movements may correspond to the direction the dreamer "looks" at in the dreamscape. This has enabled trained lucid dreamers to communicate with researchers while dreaming by using eye movement signals

The first book to recognize the scientific potential of lucid dreams was Celia Green's 1968 study Lucid Dreams. Green analyzed the main characteristics of such dreams, reviewing previously published literature on the subject and incorporating new data from subjects of her own. She concluded they were a category of experience quite distinct from ordinary dreams, and predicted that they would turn out to be associated with rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep). Green was also the first to link lucid dreams to the phenomenon of false awakenings.

Another reference is the Swedish called Emanuel Swedenborg; he had a great reputation in the science field, and at the age of 56 had a revelation in which he said that Jesus Christ came to his house and he drank a cup of tea with him, Jesus Christ told him that he was worried about the path of the church and he needed him to get the religion back on track so the people could really understand the gospels. So Jesus allowed him to visit heaven and hell through his dreams and share it with the humanity. Through his dream he visited heaven and hell and he wrote several books, his most famous book maybe is “Heaven and Hell” also “Daedalus Hyperboreus”.

The Bard.