MEET THE ARTIST (BLOGGER)!

 Meet the artist (blogger)

Sandra Elena Dermark Bufi 

Half Spanish 🇪🇸 half Swedish 🇸🇪

33 years old

ENFP / 7w6

Ace/Aro ♠️

Autism (verbal) 🧩, ADHD

Sun in Aquarius (31/01/1992), Ascendant in Virgo, Moon in Leo 🌞♒/ASC♍/🌝♌

She (female) ♀️

❤️ Loves

Baroque and Aestheticism/Decadentism

Sweets🍨🧁🍫🍪

Fantasy fiction🧙🧛🧝🐲

Steampunk

Progressive Rock

Helping others

Caffeine ☕ and Lithium

🖤 Hates

Onions🧅, Bell peppers, tuna🐟

Caquetage (when many people speak at the same time)

Waiting and getting bored

Algebra

Cold Water (on my skin, not drinking it)

Landfowl 🦃🦚 (serious phobia)

Injustices (Wars, genocide, child abuse, grooming)

🌈Favourite Colours: Orange and Violet 🧡💜

Favourite Food: fiocchi di pera 🫔🍐 

Favourite Bands: Genesis, Mägo de Oz

Favourite Authors: Victor Hugo, J. K. Rowling 

MAGICAL ANGELS OF CULLA CASTLE

Juliet Capulet, cat lover and party girl and Guardian of Earth. Taurus. Phlegmatic. Raven hair and hazel eyes. In black and gold when she transforms. With ADHD. Left at boarding school by her scheming stepmother.

Ophelia Brahe, music and plant lover and Guardian of Water. Scorpio. Melancholic. Ginger hair and green eyes. In mint green and turquoise when she transforms. Bipolar. Left at boarding school by parents who only have time for her brother.

Desdemona de' Brabanzi, literature and fine art lover and Guardian of Air. Sanguine. Golden hair and honey eyes. Aquarius. In lilac and white when she transforms. Autistic. Left at boarding school by a father who seems to only care for politics.

And Viola de' Montecuccoli, lover of the performing arts and martial arts and Guardian of Fire. Choleric. Nutbrown hair and violet eyes. In orange and red when she transforms. Leo. Antisocial. Left at boarding school by guardians who are raising her twin Sebastian to be the next heir (the twins are obviously orphans).

The four schoolgirls, all of them intelligent yet regarded as outsiders, spend days full of routine in a Catholic finishing school in Culla Castle in Castellón Province, away from royal courts' intrigues and from the carnage of war.

But at night, when no Muggles are watching and only the hoot of owls can be heard, the quartet of friends are elemental magical girl warriors, mentored by Mephisto, a talking black cat who is actually a Matagot and the Guardian of Quintessence. Armed with wands topped with precious gemstones (that also serve as their transformation trinkets), they confront threats each time more complicated. However, if a Muggle should find out that they are magical girl warriors, they will turn into frogs!!!

Visits from parents and from fiancés, the banishment of Ophelia's parents to the Finmark, trips to Castellón and to Valencia, a prisoner King Francis I, a visit from Caterina de' Medici to leave Viola's cupbearer twin Sebastian in Culla (after fleeing from his execution, a decoy shikigami was quartered in his stead), San Juan with Elf King Oberon and Fairy Queen Titania, the heroics of Literature professor Alonso Quijano and the flirts of Andalusian heartthrob Don Juan Tenorio, ever accompanied by his trusty servant Leporello who is sweet on him; mysterious messages on the walls, written in blood, every now and then; Deep Ones on the streets of Benicassim and Oropesa... And the awakening of ancient Lovecraftian Gods, something far more dangerous than the rise of Gustavus Vasa, the Protestant Reformation, or the Habsburg-Valois Wars of that era (the doomsday prophets were more right than it seemed). Not to mention all four of our Guardians discovering that they are bisexual.

How can we get bored if we live in interesting times?

CARTA DE AMOR DE TU GATO

 

**"Si tan solo supieras – Una carta de amor de tu gato"**

Nunca me escuchaste hablar, pero te conté mil historias, con cada parpadeo lento, cada roce suave de mi cuerpo contra tus piernas, cada ronroneo escondido entre silencios.

Yo estaba allí cuando el mundo se sentía pesado, acurrucándome a tu lado como un hechizo silencioso: *"No estás solo."* Memoricé el ritmo de tu respiración, la melodía de tu risa, cómo cambiaban tus pasos cuando tu alma se aligeraba. Y cuando el dolor te pesaba, me tendí contigo, dejando que el calor de mi cuerpo dijera lo que las palabras no podían: *"Estoy aquí."*

Tú y yo teníamos nuestro propio idioma. Mi cola enrollada a tu brazo decía: *"Confío en ti."* El leve maullido al verte volver susurraba: *"Te extrañé."* Y por las noches, cuando mis patas temblaban en sueños, recorría mundos infinitos contigo a mi lado.

El tiempo es un enigma. Me dio lo justo para enseñarte sobre un amor silencioso, paciente, el que no pide nada y permanece. Pero si pudiera detenerlo, elegiría cada maullido viejo, cada salto que me cuesta, solo por quedarme contigo un día más.

Así que cuando mi pelaje se torne plateado y mis pasos se vuelvan más lentos que tu tristeza, recuerda esto: el amor no se va. Se esconde en el rincón donde dormía, en la manta que aún guarda mi olor, en el sonido suave de las patas que ya no pisan el suelo, pero aún caminan por tu corazón.

¿Y si alguna vez dudas? Cierra los ojos. Siente la caricia invisible de mi cabeza buscando tu mano, el ronroneo que aún vibra en el aire. Te amé profundamente. No porque fueras perfecto, sino porque eras mío.

P.D. Si algún día otro par de ojos felinos te observa desde una esquina, no apartes la mirada. No te sientas culpable. El amor verdadero no compite, se multiplica. Y yo te enseñé a recibirlo con el alma abierta.

*"Los gatos dejan huellas suaves en nuestras vidas. Pero los humanos… ustedes dejan constelaciones enteras en las nuestras."*

(Anda, abre esa lata de atún. Prometo no decírselo a nadie.)

THE DRAGON, THE RATS, THE HONEY

 Here we have an allegory or parable that has been told since the dawn of times. It appeared first in the Hindu Mahabharata and in the sayings of the Buddha, and made its way westward with the Silk Road. Through the ages, it has been told by grandmothers, Brahmin, Jesuits, Buddhist monks, jesters, teachers, you name it: Here is a Dutch Baroque illustration!

Emblem XLVI, Doot-Kiste voor de Levendige of Sinne-Beelden (Coffin Before the Living, of Emblems).

A traveller lost in the jungle (of life) is pursued by a ferocious beast (here a bear, a fierce bear: no cuddly Winnie the Pooh). The traveller finds themself suspended from a thin branch (or root) high above a pit, where a dragon waits with an open maw, ready to swallow them up. To make things even more complicated, an even number of rats, half of them black half of them white, are cutting the root or branch from which the human character is hanging. Ever tantalizing the human's mouth, there are apples (or honey) within and yet without reach, always on the treetop.

In the Mahabharata, the enemy at surface level (replacing the bear here) is an ogress, or rakshasi in Sanskrit (a common villainess in Eastern tales) but the gist is the same: dragon in the pit, rats (an even number, half black half white) eating away at the branch, honey in the traveller's mouth (in this Sanskrit version, the human hangs upside down, like the Hanged Man in Tarot, "like a ripe jackfruit hanging from its stalk"). The Balavariani version (told by the mentor sage Balavar to the young prince Jehosaphat, ie Latinized Boddhisattva, or Future Buddha) the story is exactly the same but with a wild unicorn (a fierce beast, as much to do with our unicorn piñatas and plushies as the bear in the Dutch version has to do with Winnie the Pooh). The story also appears in the Gesta Romanorum, the collection that supplies the sources for Shakespeare's King Lear, Pericles, and Merchant of Venice, also with a fierce unicorn in the Gesta. Another version, closer to the Mahabharata, is told in the Sanskrit Panchatantra and in its Andalusi version, Calila e Dimna. In nineteenth-century Russia, Tolstoy retold the same story, dragon in the pit and rats and all, even with the drops of honey, in A Confession. Most recently, a Bollywood film in Tamil has revisited the age-old allegory.

The ogress (or beast) at the top and the dragon at the bottom are heavily inspired by Scylla and Charybdis, while the rats and the honey (or fruit) are self explanatory:

The jungle, as we have said before, is life. The monster at surface level, whether ogress, bear, or unicorn, is Death, always on the prowl, and the dragon at the bottom is also Death (compare the Hellmouth of the Passion Play), ready to swallow us all with an open maw. The traveller is trapped between two aspects of Death, ie between Scylla and Charybdis. The branch to which we cling is also life, and that even number of rats (either two, for night and day in general or the Sun and the Moon, four, for the seasons, or 24, for the hours) represent time, the daylight and nighttime moments eating away at our precarious existence. The tantalizing honey or apples are the pleasures or positive emotions, and though the Baroque was a cynical period (Marvell: "the cramp of Hope does tear," "the pestilence of Love does heat," and "Joy's cheerful madness does perplex"), it also supplies a chipper counterpoint of carpe diem, of enjoying these pleasures and positive emotions (the same applies to this very century, but saying YOLO instead of carpe diem), a counterpoint to the allegory of the dragon in the pit and to other broadsides exploring the same themes (the Dance of Death, Death and the Maiden, the Three Quick and Three Dead, etc.)

PS. Western versions, starting with the Balavariani, also say the traveller's feet are resting on four snakes (nagas in Sanskrit, echidnae in Greek) of different colours, these reptiles symbolize the four elements of Nature and the four fluids of the human system (air/blood, fire/choler, earth/melancholy, and water/phlegm). These elemental snakes, however, do not appear in all versions of the allegory.

CROSSDRESSING IN "BARLAAM AND JOSAPHAT"

 Sometimes they (maidens, "beautiful and comely girls") would exhibit themselves in male disguise, 

sometimes put on armour and parade in front of him (prince), or else they would take on the guise of hunters or of musicians, with harps and trumpets and cymbals, and besiege his ears with all kinds of melodies. At other times they would invade his room stark naked and lure him on with lascivious talk, urging him to sally forth a-hunting or go for a walk in the gardens of delight. 

Whenever the prince went out, the girls also mounted their steeds and scampered round about him.

(Balavariani, Georgian Barlaam and Josaphat. The "beautiful and comely girls" symbolize joys or pleasures.)

TODOS A LA SAUNA

 TODOS A LA SAUNA (BARA BADA BASTU)

Traducción de la entrada de Suecia en Eurovisión 2025

Canción original por el trío cómico KAJ (pronunciado "kai"): Kevin, Axel y Jakob

Traducción de Sandra Dermark, 16 de mayo 2025

NOTAS:

Arja Saijonmaa: cantautora finosueca. En este blog hay traducción de su canción más famosa

Perkele: la palabrota más finlandesa, puede traducirse como ¡rayos!, ¡demonios! o ¡maldita sea! Esta palabrota viene de Perkún, dios eslavo del trueno

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::.

¡Oh sí!

Es la hora, sin dilación

¡Fuera toda preocupación!

Lo mejor para el corazón,

cuatro paredes de abedul

(Oh eh oh eh oh)

Nuestra leña calienta igual

(Oh eh oh eh oh)

que un tango con Arja Saijonmaa

(Oh eh oh eh oh)

¡Un, dos, tres, sauna!

------------------------***

Todos a la sauna, sauna

Fuera estrés y a todo vapor

Somos hermanos, todos de las manos,

a cien grados, ¡oh eh oh!

Todos a la sauna, sauna

sube el mercurio y fluye el sudor

Oh oh oh oh

a la sauna, ¡oh!

************************

Sauna, sauna

Así es

****************

Vierte agua y suelta vapor

Tic tic tac, ¿cuánto aguantarás?

90 grados, casi estamos ya

¡Perkele! ¡Esto sí que es calor!

(Oh eh oh eh oh)

El sudor fluye, oh sí,

(Oh eh oh eh oh)

¡Un, dos, tres, sauna!

*******************

Todos a la sauna, todos a la sauna

todos a la, todos a la, todos a la sauna,

Todos a la sauna, todos a la sauna

todos a la, todos a la, todos a la sauna,

*****************************************

Todos a la sauna, sauna

Fuera estrés y a todo vapor

Somos hermanos, todos de las manos,

a cien grados, ¡oh eh oh!

Todos a la sauna, sauna

sube el mercurio y fluye el sudor

Oh oh oh oh

a la sauna, ¡oh!

*****************

Todos a la sauna, todos a la sauna

todos a la, todos a la, todos a la sauna,

Todos a la sauna, todos a la sauna

todos a la, todos a la, todos a la sauna,

Todos a la sauna, todos a la sauna

todos a la, todos a la, todos a la sauna,

Todos a la sauna, todos a la sauna

todos a la, todos a la, todos a la sauna

****************************

¡Sauna!

¡QUE GANEN LOS MEJORES!

Apoyamos a KAJ en este blog

MY BLACKBERRY IS NOT WORKING

 My BlackBerry is not working... LMAO. There are also Apples and an EggsBox in this sketch. Imagine if a shop for technology gadgets is actually a fruit shop.