Life is fragile. One moment you are up in the sky, hopping from cloud to cloud. Everything looks bright. You love the caress of the wind on your face. Another moment, everything you stand onto crumble into pieces. What you believe in, what you live for … and you ask yourself: Who am I? What am I? Are we the projection of what the people see and think about us? Are we the shadow of our past and who we are not? Or we are what we identify with? The curse of empathy. We humankind promotes love but yet we have conflicts everywhere, every single moment. At this very moment, millions are displaced in the war-torn eastern African nation of Somalia, the Saudi rape victim is sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison (what does human right means as a female in an Arab country?!), whales are being brutally killed as the source of protein … but no, how I feel now is nothing to do with civilizations that I have yet to encounter or yet another species we are driving to extinction. How I feel, what I feel is the very conflicts or hostility I experience somewhere not thousands of miles away. Then I ponder, is the ability of being able to empathize a curse? What if no one cares about how I feel, who I am, or what I am? Why do I care so much to people around me? I remember those FHM girls lined up in front of a car so that photographers could take a good picture with them, and the car. Someone shouted: which number, which number, how much? That was disrespectful, totally disgusting. We don’t spend time dressing up to work just to be emotionally abused. I don’t spend time dressing up to …
So, our identity can falter. Our will power can falter. And our body follows, feeling weak and all.
I am coughing today. My nose has been running mildly. It’s been one of those days when I don’t feel as though I am hopping from cloud to cloud. And through this process of crumble, through the serendipity of you are not alone, my good buddy – the name cannot be exposed for reason you will find later – met me up for lunch, and then dinner, and then a movie that I was dying to watch but no one seems interested.
I have no idea why The Straits Times rated the movie “Sugar and Spice” so bad. Then again, I have been consistently disagreeing with them. The acting is solid, especially hands down to Yuya Yagira, the award winner of Cannes in 2004. The scenery shots are beautiful. The presentation with the actors narrate throughout the movie is poetic. “Sugar and Spice” is about the passion of first love, and the passion of love. Being the king of “dumpee”, I can so totally relate to every single moment of the intensity of falling in love and to face the eventuality of … love is a journey, an experience, and feeling the pain at times make us feel alive. “Sugar and Spice” bears it all and it reminded me of what I have been through. Then I thought, perhaps the reviewers at The Straits Times just not having the opportunity to experience love at all. I asked my good buddy who has yet to experience love if the show is enjoyable. The answer is yes. I was surprised. And my good buddy was surprised at The Straits Times’s review too. Too bad, today is the last day “Sugar and Spice” being shown in Singapore.
I wish this blog entry is just another movie review but it is not. All this world needs or what we need is empathy, the ability to love someone or something (such as whales), and the ability to love oneself. And for God’s sake, stop hurting each other with the words we say, the things we do, the words we didn’t say, and the things we didn’t do.
2 replies on “Sugar And Spice – My Heart Bled A Hundred Times”
Is it true, what you wrote about the rape victim? WTF? Well, make it WTFF? I’m always annoyed by mistreating of women: at workplace, social setting, education, etc. Should not write more – this can be controversial and I rather keep my detailed views offline.
Cynthia – What I wrote about the rape victim is true. You can check out CNN.com. Basically, according to the Arab law, women have to be accompanied by a “guardian” (obviously male) going places before they are married. On the day, she was abducted together with another man without a guardian … and hence against the law.