The Secret Life of Bees (L-R: Queen Latifah, Sophie Okonedo, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys, Dakota Fanning)

Based on the best-selling novel by Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lilly Owens (Dakota Fanning), age 14, living in the south with a father (Paul Bettany) who doesn’t feel anything even as he watches his daughter bleed her knees on the torture spot he makes the night before her birthday. Set at the time when the Civil Rights Act (1964) is just being implemented, the only ally Lilly had was her caregiver, a black woman named Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson). Together, they flee their town after Rosaleen was beaten by some white men; they were taken in by three sisters who live in a pink house – August (Queen Latifah) who grows bees for honey; June (Alicia Keys), a classical cellist and civil rights activist who for some reason cannot commit to the man she loves; and May (Sophie Okomo), the surviving half of a twin who, after her sister April’s death, became a perennially sad (literally wailing) person who writes notes on her “wailing wall” to release some of the feelings she later describes as “carrying the weight of the world.” 

If you hate sappy movies, then this one is not for you. As with many tales that speaks about the search for love, family, and identity,  the movie aims to touch the audience in a way that at some point makes you feel like someone’s tapping you on the shoulder and asking, “Are you feeling it now?” I would have said yes, if I was asked. But there’s a certain subtlety to it that keeps the film from going overboard with drama. I think perhaps the actors are to be thanked for that in a large part. Dakota Fanning carries the movie in her small deft hands. Since I saw her in the TV series Taken, I had always been a fan. She couldn’t make me cry now that she’s older and no longer playing her cuteness, but that is not to say she is a less effective actress. Dakota Fanning is a natural actress, if there ever is one. The other four women fill their parts very nicely; I couldn’t quite pick a favorite out of them.

In the end it’s about family – how they take care of each other and how, for some, you find your own family when your blood kin doesn’t treat you like one. It’s about hope and finding the strength within yourself to make room for forgiveness and moving on. It’s kinda sweet I can almost taste it.

But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.

-Pat Conroy (Beach Music)

Like my DVD burner now, which bums me no end because I need to transfer my hard disk contents. Like diet pills. Like trying to update three blogs everyday. Like forcing yourself to write about things you don’t give an ass about.

I recently got a web content writing gig and despite the fact that I felt that it pays too low for the amount of work I had to put in, I tried it anyway because, well, it’s extra work. I don’t really need the extra work, but I could use the extra cash. There is a promise of increase in pay proportionate to level of performance but so far I’ve been using up every grace credit, and I can imagine the administrators’ good humor, for sending late assignments and cancelling others. I’m giving myself a chance to try to make this work, though. I still think I just need to find the right flow. Besides, this sort of already taught me to appreciate hard-earned money more and sometimes having to do research on a wide range of topics is a good brain exercise. We’ll see how far I can stretch myself for this.

Oh, to be sucked into the world of fiction. I wonder who the first storytellers were. How, in the grand evolution of human consciousness, did the first weaver of fictional stories realize that he or she can breathe life into things – characters, events, and places - untrue. One has to wonder, did fiction come from man’s propensity to lie? Every good fictional story is rooted in something accessible, something outsiders (read: audience) can relate to in the most basic level, anyway. In essence, fiction is twisted reality. It requires the suspension of disbelief with the awareness that even if the things unfolding before your eyes somehow contain facets of your own life experiences, they cannot hurt you because you don’t live in that world. It’s fascinating, really. Which is exactly what stories are for – to fascinate.

I’m still halfway through Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore and yet I’ve already quoted the book three times. To be redundant, it’s a fascinating tale. Much like a TV series episode I rewatched today – some guy with a rare disease, something like Mesothelioma, concocted a plan to stay young and pretty forever: by asking a vampire to bite him and turn him. I felt his pain and his fear of mortality, and even if he resorted to a radical solution, only available to him being in an imagined world, I understood his motives and felt sorry when he got the same fate anyway, only sooner. There are lessons in every fantastic tale. Sometimes, they are not readily apparent; but it’s even more rewarding to extract substance from the metaphysical form. That way, you let fiction touch you. That way, you feel a little less alone.

The year is just starting but it’s running its course pretty fast doncha think? I keep on thinking, when will I get to have a break? A real, hopefully week-long break that requires travelling somewhere far and peaceful and beautiful. I’m pretty much thinking about the beach, yes. Maybe in the summer if I’ll get to convince some people to join me in a summer sojourn and look for a nice vacation rentals some place where the sun rises and sets without the sound of computer keyboards humming in my ears.

Quite timely that I watched the latest episode of 30 Rock, where Liz Lemon is supposed to have a vacation at the Caribbean. She’s been imagining how the trip would go, and it looked something like this in her head:

Fun, huh?!

Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it’s important to know what’s right and wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive.

- Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Now that’s a quote that carries some personal sting for me. I do have a problem with usurped ideals and inflexible systems and they have a problem with me. I escape the predicament by cocooning myself into impenetrable silence because that’s easier than being labeled a heretic. Oh, sure, labels are lame. Being labeled? I can live with that. Hurting people I care about? Not so much.

These are the things that make people crazy. To tell you the truth, I prefer being called complicated. And when such heavy atmosphere starts to envelope me, I turn to the simple things to release the tension – like badminton. I’m gonna have to end this now to prepare my stuff and let off some steam. Even helps to do away with Fenphedra so I say, let’s play!

Could be
Who knows?
There’s something due any day
I will know right away
Soon as it shows
It may come cannonballin’ down through the sky
Gleam in its eye
Bright as a rose!
Who knows?

- from Something’s Coming (West Side Story)

A change is gonna come and I am hoping it will be good. Not for everyone, no. Because sometimes there are things that you just cannot make someone else see the light of. Your best bet is to reach a point where you can agree to disagree and let each other make a choice and live with it. I choose to be positive. And outside looking in, for now. I wish I can be less cryptic but it is what it is. If things won’t work out, I’ll probably have enough worries to carry that I wouldn’t need to take something like Lipozene to shed of some pounds.

Here’s something I can say straight out, though: Free will doesn’t really come for free. It has consequences. And that’s what sucks.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Excerpt from The Wasteland, T.S. Elliot

I’ve been thinking about what people fear the most - isolation, desolation, death. I’ve seen it in books, in the movies, in TV. When they say “You are not alone,” I get it. When they say “Everyone is alone,” I get it, too. I think neither statement is wrong. The trick could be not to think about it. Or at least not to think about it too much and instead try to find the balance where you can exist with knowing that you’ll go through the full spectrum, in cycles even, as you continue on.

I remember when I was just starting to work, I can never eat at the cafeteria alone. Finding a group to go with is more of a survival measure than anything else. Of course that changed through time. I didn’t have a cellular phone then to keep tabs on my loved ones. Now, people even install cell phone amplifiers in their vehicles for fear of missing an important call. But this isn’t about technology. This is about fighting the fear of being cut off. Rilke once said that because solitude is heavy and difficult to bear, sometimes people “would gladly exchange it for any kind of sociability, however trivial or cheap, for the tiniest outward agreement with the first person who comes along, the most unworthy.” I guess that’s true. I am yet to meet someone who can keep me company in silence and be right about it.

Internet, meet my new TV (or should I say DVD?) crush – Dr.  Simon Tam.

He’s a highly intelligent and refined medical doctor who gave up a promising career to save his gifted but troubled sister in the TV series Firefly.

He does look dreamy; he’s prim and proper and has trouble with swearing. But he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty for the sake of those he care about.

he mumbles and fumbles when he likes a girl,  

and he’s actually saving that guy even if he looks funny doing it.

He’s the resident doctor on the spaceship Serenity, which is boarded by a bunch of crooks, errr I mean a crew involved in all sorts of “space business.” The captain of the ship, Mal Reynolds (who probably have no need for those Torgoen watches), accepted him and his sister, River, as part of his crew, which set upon an intruiging series of events in the show, which was later more dealt with in the movie version Serenity.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing

-Excerpt from Autumn Day
From The Book of Pictures
Rainer Maria Rilke

Why do I like reading your poetry so much? Dang.