The last game

When I was a young man, I lived and worked in Amsterdam for three years as an art teacher before leaving Holland to try to freelance in Paris. (Another story).

One late night on the outskirts of Amsterdam, not sure of the way home, driving slowly in my old Standard Eight I had just imported from England, someone drove at full speed from the right and hit my car (right hand drive) bowling it over, missing me by maybe a few centimetres and pushing the right side back door almost against the interior of the left side back door. The steering column ended up in the middle of the car.

I remember feeling embarrassed because someone was dabbing my head with maybe a handkerchief. I wanted to drive off but couldn’t find the ignition. Then I passed out.

I woke up in hospital where I had to stay for several weeks. I had very severe concussion. 

Days went by. A friend bought me my guitar, and in a bed opposite me there was a young musician about my age who helped me improve my playing, by citing chords, etc. to accompany chosen melodies.

On my right there was a boy who had been hit by a lorry. His face was in a terrible mess, but incredibly, in about two weeks, his face was almost normal again. I marvelled at the wonder of natural, healing powers.

I was young and stupid then. I flirted with one of the nurses, and even persuaded myself that I had some success.

The most moving, unforgettable experience in that ‘ziekenhuis’ was that opposite me further to the left was a young man who was paralysed, perhaps also the results of an accident. He lay in a special, basculating bed.

When I could move a little, I went over towards him. We must have talked. Maybe he invited me to play chess, so we did. He told me the moves he wanted to make in function with mine.

He played very well. He kept winning. But as days went by it became noticeably more difficult for him to win. I tried to make up for it by making moves that were not the best. He was immediately aware of this and angrily scolded me. So I did as he preferred and started winning.

He was tired. He never complained. He died peacefully. This was so many years ago, yet I’ll never forget this good looking, young man with whom I had the honour of playing chess.

The nurses were heart broken although they knew it was inevitable. Never in my life have I seen such an openly emotional reaction of nurses following the passing away of a patient. But this man was very special. No doubt it’s why I still clearly remember him today.

Maybe because he also gave me a precious gift of exemplariness. Strength, dignity, humility and peaceful acceptance. A memory that still gives me sacred, spinal signals, so many years later.

                                                       ❤

                              

                          Text and image © Mirino. September, 2025

Cayden

We came back to our house in the mountain village after a sad day.

I was the first to open the front door, and Cayden, from where he likes to patiently wait for us on the landing, made his joyful bark as usual. It wasn’t my imagination. It was Cayden. He was cheerfully saying goodbye.

Because we took him to Nice. It was hot, and the drive exhausted him. When we arrived at our destination. He needed to rest. I found a shady corner and my companion went to get the car, and we drove back home. It was when we stopped in the shaded car park when I was buying a few things in a supermarket that he died peacefully. His heart just gave up the fight.

My companion tearfully phoned me and I got back as soon as I could, took him out of the car and did all I could to revive him, but he had given us his last sigh. True to his beautiful character he tried his best to stay with us and bear the discomfort without ever complaining. How we shall miss him, dear old Cayden. I shall so miss his little morning licks when he knows I’m awake, to remind me to take him out for his morning walk before breakfast. How he waits for us to return without ever sulking, then he finds a toy to squeak in celebration of our return.  

What a wonderful dog Cayden was, and what an example of courage, trust, loyalty and love. He gave us everything he had, and finally even his life out of love and such good will. 

God bless you dear old Cayden. Thank you for everything, including your last, sweet goodbye bark of adieu.

                   19 August 2014 - 9 July, 2025

 

Seasons

After the storms, the sky is clear. The sun increasingly lower at its zenith. Gradually, sublimely, we drift into the autumn season. The season of change, of colour. The season of pressing the grapes for this year’s wine, which may not be as good as usual in this region, for various reasons.

Soon walking old Cayden in the morning, we’ll surprise proudly newly feathered, beautifully coloured pheasants squawking as they noisily flap off. We may vaguely see deer and wild boar through the morning haze. The temperatures will be chilly, but the air exhilarating. 

The seasons, each one assured by the gradual, increasing, then decreasing tilt of the Earth as it revolves around the sun.
A universal phenomenon naturally beyond humanity’s control. The creator of Earth’s seasons so necessary for the cycle of life, of vegetation, forestry, and of everything vital
The magical season that reassures, and always evokes nostalgia. The season I love the most.

                                           Text and image © Mirino. September, 2024
 

Convenient Myths

During the Barbarossa invasion beginning in 1941, the armoured vehicles and tanks of the third Reich are only 200 kms from Moscow. There seems to be little chance of stopping them. The only hope for the High Command of the Red Army is to send 3,500 officer students from the military school of Podolsk to defend the Ilyinsky line. This at all costs, until reinforcements arrive. The cadets have small, moveable field artillery to counter the German tanks. They are accurate but not always powerful enough. One has to aim at the tank turrets to put the tanks out of action. 

The film (on Prime Video) is based on historic facts authenticated by the Russian ministry of Culture. The cadets are ordered to hold the front line for an estimated four day period to prevent the German and Axis troops from breaking through to Moscow. They held out for 12 days before the Red Army reinforcements and tanks finally arrived. 

The only language available for this Russian film banally called ‘Ligne de feu’ (Line of Fire) is French. I refer to this film simply because one notes that there is very little difference between the characters, their emotions, fear, courage, loyalty to their brothers in arms, the realistic scenes, often atrocious but how it then was, and the more serious American WWII films produced by good film directors. In other words the film showed that the cadets spoke and joked just as American soldiers would under the same circumstances. Naturally there were no stupid, Western, caricatures of Russian underdogs brutally ordered to commit suicide by callous, oldschool, Commanding Officers. Obviously the officers in the film had to obey High Command orders, but they cared for their men and did their best to protect them. 

There’s a scene where a soldier volunteers to mend a broken fuse cable to blow up a bridge. He gets shot but finishes the job and sacrifices his life when the bridge is successfully destroyed. These are the same scenes, the same acts of personal sacrifice and courage that one sees in serious, Anglo-Saxon, WWII films. The film highlights the reality of what took place, the considerable initial success of the advance of German and Axis troops at the start of the invasion. 

 It’s not a film of propaganda. It wasn’t made to portray an indomitable hero like ‘Rocky’, who won the war single-handedly, or other Western war film heroes played by Audie Murphy or Robert Mitchum, etc., those one sometimes admired in the 60’s and 70’s US war films. 

The film ends with the survivors, the young heroes, many of whom are wounded, stoically marching by the large convoy of reinforcements which has at last arrived. The reinforcements are well armed and have brand new tanks, etc. The soldiers and officers salute the cadets with great respect and admiration. Once more one is reminded of similar Western film scenes of such honour, respect, duty and sacrifice. 

This was the USSR, the West’s precious ally, as from 1941, remember? The nation without which there could never have been a Normandy invasion. The Russian Federation, no longer communist, now treated like dirt by stupid, ignorant Western leaders. But that’s another tragic story. 

The history referred to above, a moving story of human courage, is not only factual history; it clearly, discreetly and inadvertently shows that there’s no essential difference of character between Russians and Anglo-Saxons, of normal humanity trying to make the best of things in nightmarish situations. 

No nation has the monopoly of ‘goodness', of ‘exemplary righteousness'. Similarly, no fake religion, or dogma, can claim to have the monopoly of God, certainly without being blasphemous. Evil exists, but one must be able to recognise it, rather than try to project it where it doesn’t exist, for the sake of absurd, impossible ideology, or irresponsible and dangerous illusions. 

                    Text © Mirino. (Photo from film title page, with thanks) August, 2024

 

Stones

I have always been fascinated by stones. I had beautiful stones I picked up from Essex, UK, from the banks of Loch Lomond, from Arisaig, the Isle of Eigg, Scotland, from Zandvoort, and other beaches of Holland, from Yosemite, from the Grande Canyon, from Savannah, Georgia, USA.

Everywhere I go, I look at the stones. They have their own identity and reflect their environment. Often they are formed by intense pressure through eons of time from different minerals. Or they are sometimes embellished with mica, or imprinted with fossils.

They reassure by their existence, a history which covers perhaps several millions of years. They may have been cast aside or partly formed from earthquakes, or indented, even patiently ‘drilled’ through, by many hundreds of years of dripping water, or spat out from the bowels of the earth by volcanoes. Their age makes our own life-span seem so insignificant.

They have endured all the tribulations of thousands, if not millions of years of natural phenomena, of climate evolution, of the elements, to be finally formed, sculpted, moulded as they are when discovered. This is why they are fascinating, and why one sees them and picks them up. 

Nothing more than stones. 

© Mirino, Text and image. September, 2023

 

 

Soviet Nemesis

Below are two pages from Winston Churchill’s memoirs. They consist of Churchill’s speech broadcast by the BBC at 21h on June 22nd, 1941. It was made after his being informed that Operation Barbarossa had begun.
It's interesting because everything negative about Stalin and the past criminal activities of Soviet communism were shelved, for obviously there was a much greater priority.
Today Soviet communism no longer exists. Despite feverish, Western efforts to tarnish the Russian Federation, and now support Ukraine, whatever the cost, instead of making the minimum effort to understand the necessity of negotiations in order to prevent a needless war, the West is allowing history to repeat itself on another, much more dangerous level.
The West has failed to learn from history, what Nazi Germany failed to appreciate. WWII was won by the allies because of this fatal lack of appreciation.

To the West’s discredit, and to the discredit of Turkey and Azerbaijan, as soon as the Soviet Union was dissolved and its former republics regained their independence, it seems to have become a free for all. Turkey and Azerbaijan are trying to swallow up Armenia (Armenia and Azerbaijan were former Soviet republics) and the West is trying to swallow up Ukraine, by trying to expand East militarily, economically, socially and ideologically. This obviously to the detriment of the Russian Federation who is understandably preoccupied, not only regarding its own security, but by that of the Southeastern Ukrainians who naturally, culturally identify with Russia, and have been treated as rebels and ‘separatists’ since 2014. This even to the extent of Donbas, Donetsk and other Southeastern regions of Ukraine being continually bombarded by the Ukrainian military causing thousands of deaths of their own civilians, whom apparently Zelensky considers as ‘expendable’.

The most massive invasion in the history of civilisation, and its defeat by Russia at the cost of many millions of lives, Russian POWs, military and civilians, was the most important military accomplishment of WWII. There is no doubt about this, yet on V.E. Day there were no Russian flags. There were no notable praise and acknowledgments from Western allies of the Russian achievement which broke the spine of the Third Reich, and freed Europe. What’s more, from 1945 onwards mutual East/West distrust reigned.

What’s interesting about Churchill’s speech, is that he was perfectly honest about his total disapproval of Soviet communism. He mentions that this was the case for the preceding twenty-five years. But understandably he also greatly valued the Soviet Union as an ally as from 1941, because he was perfectly aware that without Russia, the UK could never withstand such a massive onslaught that he knew Russia was going to be subjected to.

Today the idea that Ukraine can defeat the Russian Federation in a conventional war is absurd. This no matter how much it is armed and financed by the West. Had the Western powers revised history, they would have reached the conclusion that the crucially necessary negotiations should have been given absolute priority in order that Ukraine preserve its territorial integrity.

 🔥

Above text © Mirino, Below, two pages from Churchill's Memoirs. March, 2023