The all-encompassing fear that has been at the back of my mind since the early morning hours of November 9th howled down. I wanted to kneel on the museum steps and sob. Sob for myself, for my country, for the women who had given me the magazine, for the children riding wooden horses with bridles painted gold. I am terrified of the beast that revealed itself that day and in the days since. The parade of hatred from people all too visibly going “at last." Those who savor every hurled epithet and hate crime like a bon bon they’ve been deprived of for too long. I stood on the steps shivering and wanted to hold all the people we’d passed in my arms, keep them safe, and hide them from what’s coming. And then I remembered a movie, one with lessons that I hoped to never apply so literally in dealing with the gathering shadow of fascism. “Pan’s Labyrinth” had saved my life several years before so I could only be grateful it had the power to do so again.

I was not in a good way when I first saw “Pan’s Labyrinth,” in the early spring of 2007. My bi-polar mood swings had left me with scattered piles of paper that did not materialize into finished projects. I had a string of failures in attempts at college and employment at dead-end retail spots which would last until my self-sabotaging behavior would finally have its way and I’d start missing shifts for the hell of it. I remembered a young woman who looked like me who had wanted to see the world and write and make movies. The colors around me had faded and I’d only had what came in the mail from Netflix or a trip to the movies with my dad to look forward to. I don’t remember why exactly I went to see “Pan’s Labyrinth” by myself that afternoon. I knew its director, Guillermo del Toro, had done “Cronos” and “The Devil’s Backbone,” but those were movies the young me had watched, the one who devoured books and magazines and kept running lists of movies to track down at the library and video stores.

I settled in to watch "Pan's Labyrinth." When the end credits finished rolling, I walked into the lobby, bought a ticket for the next showing, and walked back in. I would have seen it a third time but that was the last showing of the day. On my way home, I stopped by a drugstore and picked up a notebook and spent most of the night writing in it. I wanted to get it all down, everything the movie made me feel. I wanted to remember the colors. I was drunk on them. The ripe reds of blood and royal robes. The blue chill of death and the gloaming that connects the worlds of mortals with the magical underground. The mineral greens that kept popping up in places like a dress, the tree trunk-like torso of a creature, and insect-like fairies, tying them together as emissaries of the natural world and its ancient magic. How green drew a circle around the heroine, protecting her from the industrialized violence of warfare and fascism represented by her monstrous stepfather. I had woken up and I wanted to cry for what my life had become, but I didn’t want waste tears on self-pity. I had a lot of books and writing to catch up on.