Author: The Arts Are Life

I am a writer and musician. Lover of music, movies, books, art, and nature.

Episode Synopsis: Bridgerton, season 2, episode 3 (“A Bee in Your Bonnet”)

The episode opens with Anthony and his father hunting a deer in the woods. This is a flashback to Anthony when he was younger, and they aim to kill the deer. At first they fail to shoot it, but then they come out from hiding behind the rock and out in the open they see the deer. They finally kill it. They come back home and are talking, and Anthony’s dad sees a bee, and he swats the bee away but it stings him and he ends up getting an allergic reaction to the sting. Anthony tries to save him but his dad ends up dying. It is also really sad, too, because Violet, his mom, is pregnant and she has to see her husband die unexpectedly right before her eyes. Anthony immediately has to take his dad’s position as the new viscount and he is totally unprepared for this. She falls into a deep depression and his death takes a psychological toll on her. She goes into labor and the doctors tell Anthony that he has to decide for her whether the unborn baby gets to live or whether Violet gets to live. It is a scary decision, but Anthony tells the doctor to go with whatever Violet decided. Violet is deeply in pain during this time, and Anthony doesn’t know what to do so he leaves the room. Then in another flashback, he finds his mom sitting depressed on the couch and Anthony asks her if she could come to dinner with him and everyone else. Violet tells him she doesn’t have the energy to sit with everyone and is still grieving her husband’s death, and tells Anthony to give her some grace because she is truly trying her best to keep going in spite of everything going on.

When Anthony visits his father’s grave, he recalls these flashbacks and it affects how he moves on in life. But his mom sees him visiting his dad’s grave and she talks with him, that yes it is painful that he passed away but he still needs to become happy and find someone he is in love with. Anthony is torn because he is matched up with Edwina Sharma, but secretly he has mad passion for her sister, Kate. Edwina is unsuspecting of Anthony and Kate’s sexual tension, but she thinks that Anthony is a trusting guy who has Edwina’s good intentions in mind. But Kate is an excellent bullshit detector and she warns Edwina that Anthony doesn’t really have her good intentions in mind, and to steer clear of him. Earlier in one of the episodes, Anthony has high expectations for the woman he wants to marry, and he goes on dates and evaluates the women based on his own standards, and ends up crossing a lot of ladies off on the list because they don’t suit him. However, when he is riding his horse outside, he finds someone wearing a blue cloak riding too, and he runs to catch up. Kate takes her hood off and when Anthony sees her, he is absolutely smitten. But Kate disses him one night at a ball after hearing him talk to other men about how undesirable he finds most of the women he meets.

However, in this episode, Anthony is playing a competitive game of pall mall (a version of croquet) with his siblings and the Sharma sisters, and Edwina thinks it’s a fun game, but Kate and Anthony compete with one another to win, and Kate challenges Anthony by hitting the balls each time. Their balls end up being hit really far away, and so they both have to go into the woods to fetch them. Kate isn’t worried about getting her dress messed up, so she goes into the mud to retrieve the balls, but Anthony goes in, too, and they end up getting muddy together. Anthony realizes then that he isn’t in love with Edwina much at all, but instead is in love with Kate. He realizes this again when they are in the garden and they are talking about Anthony being committed to proposing to Edwina, but then he sees a bee land on Kate’s neck and that triggers a panic attack in him because his father died of a bee sting and he doesn’t want Kate to die of the bee sting, either, so he hyperventilates and Kate is trying to calm him down. The bee goes away, but Anthony and Kate realize they are in love with each other and try to kiss, but are interrupted by footsteps.

Eloise, in the meanwhile, is sick of everyone telling her to find someone. She is trying to find who Lady Whistledown is, and she approaches Madame Delacroix, but Madame Delacroix tells her to mind her own business. Penelope, Eloise’s friend, still will not tell Eloise that she is actually Lady Whistledown. Penelope is helping Madame Delacroix find clients for her dressmaking business, and she approaches Madame because she herself is a businesswoman as Lady Whistledown, and needs help. Penelope’s family, in the meanwhile, is dealing with the killing of their father and the financial hardships that have come with it. The new Lord Featherington isn’t helpful to them either, but Portia (Lady Featherington) hatches a plan for one of her daughters, Prudence, to win the approval of Lord Featherington and marry him. At first Prudence and Penelope are uncomfortable because Lord Featherington is their cousin, but Portia needs to get them out of this financial predicament, so she has Madame Delacroix make a dress that shows off Prudence’s bosom and has Prudence fan her face so that she can appear attractive to Lord Featherington, but he isn’t interested and instead continues to read his newspaper. It turns out that Lord Featherington is interested in Cressida Cowper, who, with her mom, is basically the Regina George of the show (if you haven’t seen the movie Mean Girls, Regina George is a mean girl who gossips about everyone at the school and gets a new girl named Cady to join her clique, the Plastics.) Prudence tries to win the Lord’s approval but Portia feels embarrassed and disappointed that Prudence can’t win his approval and tells her to let it go.

Benedict Bridgerton is an artist and is trying to go to art school, but is nervous about winning acceptance to a school he really wants to go to. His brother, Colin, gives him a substance to put in his tea to alleviate nerves around the school decision. It is kind of like their version of weed brownies in a way, because I just remember that scene in The Perks of Being a Wallflower where Charlie, who is socially awkward, is given weed brownies and is so high during the rest of the party. Benedict puts a bunch of the substance in his tea and ends up totally strung out at dinner, but he finds out he got accepted into the school and he, Eloise and Colin celebrate, but Eloise and Colin are also worried because he is so high.

Movie Review: Jojo Rabbit

A coworker at my job recommended this movie to me one time and like so many times I put off watching it because I got busy and was doing other stuff. But this time I decided to finally watch it and it was definitely a really good movie. It definitely was eye-opening just the way the plot turned out. And it teaches a good message about propaganda and stereotypes in children, that children are conditioned, taught and trained to be prejudiced and un-learning ingrained bias and prejudice isn’t an overnight thing, but rather a process involving empathy and vulnerability. Jojo’s mother, Rosie, is hiding a young Jewish girl named Elsa (played by Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic, and at first when Jojo finds Elsa is hiding in their attic, he freaks out and she has to silence him with a threat and his knife because if he screams on her, she will be found out and taken away. At first he calls her nasty names and says a lot of hurtful things about Jewish people because that is what he grew up believing. Elsa isn’t fooled and tries to tell Jojo the truth about his life, that he is not a Nazi and that what he has been taught about Jewish people is propaganda and stereotypes. Jojo keeps a book where he draws offensive caricatures of Jewish people and when he asks Elsa to tell him about what Jews are really like, she tries to say positive things about being Jewish but then he tells her to say negative things about Jewish people because again, he was taught growing up in the Hitler Youth to hate and discriminate against Jewish people. However, as he gets to know her he sees his own humanity and also her humanity as well, and starts to see more clearly how painful and scary living through this war was.

It was interesting because at the end when the Second World War is over, Germany is now fighting Russia, and Yorki, Jojo’s friend, shows they still haven’t overcome their prejudice about other groups, so instead of trashing the Jews he trashes the Russians and thinks of them as the enemy. However, even though Yorki becomes a young soldier and is proud to fight, Jojo starts to see around him the destruction of war and the cruelty of the people who he once followed as his mentor, like Captain Klenzendorf, the Hitler Youth leader (played by Sam Rockwell). Honestly this movie reminded me of the time I was studying about the Holocaust in middle school, and I saw this book in the library called Hitler Youth by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. I haven’t read it yet, but it got me wondering about young men who grew up being trained as future Nazis and following Hitler. It made me think of an episode from the British show The Crown, because Prince Philip flashes back to his childhood going to boarding school in Scotland, and how he endured tormenting, harsh living conditions and the death of his sister in a plane crash. His sister married a member of the Nazi party and Philip had a lot of resentment about that, but when she died he really suffered so much pain and grief. There is a scene when he is in her funeral procession, and throughout the city Nazi flags are draped from windows and Philip is looking around at this feeling disillusioned and pained, especially because the headmaster of his school is Jewish. His father blames him for his sister’s death and basically calls Philip worthless, and because Philip is already struggling with bullying and neglect at his boarding school, he is forced to grow up very quickly.

In Jojo Rabbit, Hitler puts a lot of pressure on Jojo, even though he is only ten years old and still doesn’t know much about the world. But the movie shows how quickly young people are taught to hate others just because they are different. When I was in my African-American Studies course on Afro-American history, we watched the movie 42, and there is a scene where Jackie Robinson is playing the game, and a white man and his son are sitting in the bleachers and the white man starts screaming the N-word at Jackie. The camera focuses on how the son reacts and he at first is figuring out whether to go along with his dad or not, but unsurprisingly he imitates his dad and starts calling Jackie the N-word, too. I remarked in class how shocking it was, but the professor threw up his hands and was like, “Well, of course, these kids weren’t born racist. They were taught to be racist.” As a sensitive person I didn’t know how to react, but as I thought about it more and saw Jojo Rabbit, I realized what the professor was trying to tell me. It’s not until Jojo actually sees Elsa’s humanity and gets to know her that he overcomes the bias he grew up with. It reminds me of Buddhism because it’s hard to see someone’s Buddha nature, or this respectworthy nature we all have regardless of our identity, because we have fundamental ignorance, or this inability to see people’s Buddha nature. But when we chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, we see people’s inherent dignity just as they are. This is not easy to do because many of us, myself included, grew up with preconceived ideas about others and who they are and how they are supposed to act, think and feel according to what we have been taught growing up. But it’s not until I educated myself, watched movies, listened to people’s stories and chanted to respect the inherent dignity of each person’s life, including my own, that I was able to see the inherent dignity of my life and the lives of people around me. Even if I don’t always get along with the other person or agree with them on everything, I chant to see their Buddha nature and through gradually transforming my life condition I transform my relationship with the other person. It’s still a process and I can’t totally say I am perfectly woke and free of bias, but I’m working on getting better.

I also really love the scene where toward the end Jojo is walking through the deserted fields after the war and he sees a beautiful blue butterfly flying around. He marvels at this beauty, and I thought it showed how Jojo transformed throughout the course of the movie. At the beginning Jojo during his training is forced to kill an innocent rabbit by wringing its neck. Jojo thinks the rabbit is sweet and doesn’t want to kill it, and the captains and other boys tease him about it. Jojo panics, then drops the rabbit on the ground, trying to free it, but then the captain, frustrated, kills the rabbit himself and flings its dead body across the forest. Jojo is taught during his training that he cannot be sensitive and that it is in his nature to hurt people and living things. But the few women in his life, Rosie and Elsa, encourage him to embrace his sensitive nature and be vulnerable. Rosie is sad because Jojo just wanted to live his life, but now that he has internalized a lot of this Nazi propaganda, he thinks he needs to develop a thick skin and hide his vulnerability to be a true man, even though he is only ten and still figuring life out. Elsa tells Jojo about her fiance, Nathan, and Jojo plays a mean prank on her at first by making up a letter by Nathan telling Elsa that he found someone else and wants nothing to do with her, but because deep down Jojo is sensitive, he realizes that his joke really hurt Elsa, so he writes another letter pretending to be Nathan and tells her that he was just joking and wants to still be with her. Elsa tells Jojo that he will fall in love one day, and Jojo thinks it’s silly but over time as he gets to know Elsa he really does fall in love with her. There is a really sweet moment when he is going to declare his love for Elsa and we see his stomach and that there are little cartoon butterflies flying around in his stomach because he is so nervous and so in love.

There is one powerful scene where Jojo once again realizes how traumatic this war has been and how it brought out so much cruelty within people. Earlier he sees five people hung from gallows at a public square. He tries to turn away from it, but Rosie forces him to reflect and just understand what happened. She wants him to face the painful reality of this time during the Nazi regime and the war, because it has brought out the cruelty in people. Unfortunately, it’s not until Rosie herself is hanged that Jojo realizes the inhumanity of the Nazi regime, and starts to feel deep pain for his mom and for all the people who lost their lives fighting against an inhumane regime.

Movie Review: Belfast

This Saturday I watched the movie Belfast, which came out in 2021. I saw during the Oscars it got a lot of praise and many people said it was a really good film, so I decided to finally watch it. Honestly I was a teary mess after watching it. Within the first five minutes I was blowing my nose and crying tears. It was just a really powerful movie. It was directed by Kenneth Branagh, who I just saw in the film Dunkirk. It is based on Branagh’s life growing up in the 1960s in Belfast, Ireland. The main character in the movie, Buddy, and his family live through political unrest on the streets and struggle with money, and his dad is always on business in England. The family doesn’t want to leave Belfast because they have such strong roots there, but due to the violence they witness each day they are faced with whether to go with their dad and move to England permanently or stay in Belfast.

It has a really powerful message about home and never forgetting your roots and memories of your life and childhood. When Buddy is talking with his grandfather about the family moving to England, Buddy says he wants his grandfather and grandmother to come with them to England, but the couple wants to stay in Ireland because they have such strong ties there even with the unrest going on. The beginning was super intense because Buddy is just out playing in the street like an everyday kid and enjoying playing with his friends, but then he turns around and sees across from him people shoving each other, yelling and throwing things. The way the camera does it is powerful because it seems time slows down and the fighting in the background is muffled, but as it turns around we see Buddy standing paralyzed, not knowing whether to run or stay because what he is witnessing is so terrifying and vivid. Then someone throws a dangerous object at him and the children and families on the other side, and his mom has to run out and shield him from the fighting. This movie showed me that war can really impact the lives of not just adults, but also children. Buddy watches television with his brother, but also can’t always just go outside and pretend like the unrest doesn’t exist because he and his family deal with it every day.

I’m glad I watched this film because it’s been a really long time since I have been to Ireland. When I was in middle school I took a trip to Ireland and I’m not sure if we went to Belfast, but I definitely remember going to Sneem and Dublin. I was probably too cranky and teenager-y to appreciate Ireland at the time and really didn’t know much about it other than what I had read about during orientation before going on the trip, but it was definitely a beautiful place to be. But I only visited there for a few days and of course, with any place, there is only so much you experience in a few days compared to living there your entire life. As I get older and have studied about world history and read more books, watched movies and listened to people’s stories, I have learned that everyone’s experience about growing up somewhere is a part of who they are. I also didn’t know Van Morrison was from Ireland; I grew up listening to “Brown-Eyed Girl” and so many other hits by him, and so I really loved the music for Belfast because a lot of the songs were by Van Morrison.

The acting was incredibly powerful. I saw Ciaran Hinds in There Will Be Blood and loved his acting in that one, and I loved his acting as the grandpa in Belfast. I also love Judi Dench and loved her role as the grandmother in this movie. The mom also played an amazing role; I cried because there was one scene where she has to run after Buddy because he and his friend are looting one of the stores, and the friend pressures Buddy to steal something from the shop, and when his mom finds out she freaks out and tells him to put the stuff he is stealing back even though it’s stuff they really want but cannot afford. She and her family are sitting in the living room and she cries because she has grown up in Belfast her whole life and has known the community for such a long time, but everything has changed due to the political unrest and no one can live daily life peacefully without the threat of war. But she knows that if they continue to stay in Belfast during this tumultuous time, they are constantly going to be living in fear of war. At the beginning when Buddy encounters the unrest, the family’s car is destroyed when people rioting light the car on fire and it explodes. This shows again how Buddy can’t just live a blissful childhood because he witnesses trauma and war outside his house nearly every day. However, he does get to experience some sweet moments, such as the cute girl he has a crush on in class and wants to marry someday. And the time he and his family are out dancing and his dad is singing and dancing with his mom to the popular song “Everlasting Love” by Love Affair (the first version and only version I heard growing up was the one by Gloria Estefan so it wasn’t until I saw this film that I heard this version of the song.)

Movie Review: Little Women

I had heard about the remake of Little Women for quite some time, but I had not gotten around to seeing it. It was made in 2019 and was directed by Greta Gerwig. I love some of Gerwig’s other films such as Lady Bird and Frances Ha. I found both of these films quite relatable because Lady Bird (played by Saoirse Ronan) is a fierce independent teenager who wants to leave her hometown of Sacramento, California. She wants to be taken seriously, and she has dreams of going to college on the East Coast, but her family cannot afford the tuition. She wants to have sex but her mother doesn’t want her to grow up too quickly. I cannot relate to the sex part but I definitely remember wanting to get out of my hometown when I was in my senior year of high school, so I ended up applying to colleges that were far away from my hometown. However, I got really homesick during my first year because I had this idea about college being this time to just be independent, and it was but it was challenging because it was a new environment and I was away from my family. I also kind of related to Frances, because even though I didn’t have a situation where I was living in New York City and struggling to pay rent (which is what Frances is struggling to do) I really am struggling to figure out my purpose in life. Frances is figuring out her purpose in life and it’s tough, but along the way she learns so much about herself.

I haven’t read Little Women before to be honest. I read many other books in high school but Little Women wasn’t one of the books on the curriculum. I do know it’s a must-read classic though, and so many people I know have read the book, so I found a copy at my local library. I was able to follow the movie though pretty well. I really related to Jo March, who is one of the sisters in the movie, because she is independent, opinionated and wants to be a writer. While her sisters are strong and independent like her, they also want to get married and have families, but Jo doesn’t really want to get married or have a family yet. She wants to focus on her writing career, but she struggles to feel as if her writing is good enough. There is one scene where she is with her friend, Friedrich, and he reads a draft for a novel she is writing and tells her that he doesn’t like her writing and doesn’t think it will sell. She ends their friendship because of what he said and from there on, she struggles to have confidence in her writing. Even when people tell her she is a good writer, she struggles to think so. There is one powerful scene where Jo and her sister, Beth, are sitting at the beach and Beth asks Jo about her writing. Jo dismisses it and says she isn’t working on anything and doesn’t want to write because she doesn’t think anyone will care. Beth tells her to write a story for her, and when Beth passes away, Jo is inspired to take up her writing again. I thought it was beautiful when she takes one of her journals and props it up on her desk and starts writing all of these pages for her novel. She stays up until the wee hours working on this novel and she finally submits it to a publisher. The publisher is reluctant at first when he reads about the character in the book because he thinks readers aren’t going to like that the character defies a lot of the societal expectations such as getting married and falling in love, and Jo also has to negotiate the royalties and how much of a cut she will receive for publishing the book.

It kind of reminds me of Begin Again, because Gretta produces her first album, but she doesn’t know much about how the music industry works. She works on the album with Dan, who is a record executive struggling in his career, and they visit the record label he works for, and Dan’s business partner Saul explains to her about record sales and how much musicians make from selling the records after they are distributed. Even though she makes negotiations with Saul about getting a share of the sales and getting Dan his job back, the reality is that the label wouldn’t give her a lot of freedom that she has being an independent artist. She saw how Dave, her ex-boyfriend, became commercially successful but he went on tour a lot and got lonely and success changed him, especially when he reveals to Gretta that he had an affair with his production assistant, Mim, while away for business. Instead of releasing the album, Gretta decides to distribute it online for $1, and it ends up being a huge hit with people.

After watching Jo spend a lot of time working on her writing, I feel encouraged to keep writing. I have struggled with writer’s block, perfectionism, feeling like my writing isn’t good enough unless it is in a certain voice or style, but seeing Jo triumph in her struggle to follow her own path in life encouraged me a lot. This movie showed me that it’s important to follow your own path and your own dreams, whatever happens or how much people around you change. Meg later on in life tells Jo she is getting married and wants to start a family, and Jo breaks down and cries because she thought Meg wanted to be a successful actress, so she tries to convince Meg that she doesn’t have to marry and can instead become the successful actress she always wanted to be. But Meg tells her that even though their dreams are different from each other, it doesn’t mean her dreams of starting a family and getting married are less important. I am at this stage in my life where I am figuring things out, like whether to get married, have kids, go to graduate school, live on my own, when to retire, what kind of career I should have. And I’ve learned you are going to hear a lot of different opinions about what you should do. Some people will support your career path, like Jo’s sisters and mom supported her writing ambitions. And others won’t. But seeing Jo navigate those ups and downs while remaining true to herself inspired me a lot. I realized I can’t be happy for others if I’m not happy for myself. I would see on social media photos of my friends’ weddings, their newborn babies and toddlers, their graduate school acceptance posts, and I would think, “I’m happy for you” but then I would wonder “Am I behind?” I would go to friends’ baby showers and weddings and at first I was happy with my dreams of playing at Carnegie Hall and moving to New York City, but a couple of years ago I started to feel lonely and wondered whether I should do these things, like getting married and having children, so that I wouldn’t feel far behind in life. I understand now that plenty of women have great careers and also manage to have families and get married, and they understand that love doesn’t need to overshadow all other things in life, but honestly it’s hard to feel happy for others when you are unhappy. I think that’s what I love about Buddhism, is because it encourages me to not limit myself to only a few dreams but to dream big. Dreams can be marrying, raising kids, having a successful career, retiring well, becoming happy. I often chant now to have a successful life because I want to think about the long term. Thinking in the short term only made me miserable because I was only focused on my own needs in the here and now without thinking about what I wanted in the future.

Timothee Chalamet’s character, Laurie, was interesting. He kept falling in love with Jo and then he also fell in love with Amy. Amy though was already happily engaged to a wealthy man, but Laurie, drunk at a party one time, digs on her for marrying into wealth, embarrassing Amy in front of her fiancée, Fred Vaughn. Amy is also an incredible artist, but like Jo, she struggles with rejection and feeling like her work is good enough. Laurie tells her to not marry Fred and Amy feels incredibly disrespected that he would tell her that, and to not speak to her again. However, they reunite and they get married and have a family together. I think this was a very difficult moment for Jo because earlier in the movie Jo and Laurie are dancing together and acting silly, and they are really great friends. But when it comes to having a more serious relationship, Jo turns him down and says that if they marry, neither of them will be happy in the marriage. Laurie tells Jo he has loved her all this time, but Jo tells him she can’t marry him. Laurie is hurt and tells her she is going to want to marry one day. Then, later, Jo is feeling lonely and confesses to her mom that while she is happy for her sisters moving out and getting married, she feels lonely and that she wants love but doesn’t want to do it out of a need to fulfill society’s expectations of women. Her mom asks her if she genuinely loves Laurie and Jo finds it hard to make up her mind about whether she loves him. She decides to mail Laurie a letter declaring her love for him and that she changed her mind, but when they meet he accidentally lets it slip that Amy is his wife now. Jo is pained because she thought Laurie would still be available for her and wait on her to change her mind, but by then it is too late because Laurie’s priority is finding a partner and because Jo wasn’t ready he moved on. Laurie asks if they can still be friends, and while Jo says yes, I felt so much pain for her. Someone had fallen in love with me in college and I wasn’t interested in being in any relationships but I missed the signs, but because my feelings for this person were so on-and-off I didn’t know how much I loved him until a couple of years ago when we reconnected. I thought he was still available, but by the time I did he informed me he was with someone else. I think I mainly did this out of loneliness and I also struggled with low self-worth at the time. I think I just had the idea of this person in my head and wanted to relive those sweet moments of attraction we shared even though I never really acted on it, but I learned that people change and I had also changed. I had come out of a relationship a few years ago and it was sad but I eventually moved on. Part of me wonders if I want to date because everyone else is, or because I genuinely want to find someone to be with. Although I was encouraged that Jo ended up reuniting with Friedrich, who she had an amazing relationship with, because Friedrich wanted to follow Jo in her dreams and respected her independence. I am hopeful that whether I end up with the guy of my dreams or not, I can still respect my life and continue following my own path in life.

It’s really cool that Timothee and Saoirse got to work on this movie together again because they got to work together in Lady Bird. In Lady Bird Timothee plays a guy named Kyle, who is rich and is the main attraction of Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan). Lady Bird experiences similar heartbreak to Jo because she and Kyle sleep together and when they are cuddling up, Lady Bird assumes he lost his virginity to her, but then he looks at her funny and admits he didn’t lose his virginity to her and has had sex with women many times in the past. Lady Bird is disappointed and crushed that this fact killed the magical moment of them having sex, especially because it’s her first time having sex, but Kyle tells her that she is going to have so much un-special sex in her life. Lady Bird cries and I felt for her because it seemed that Kyle didn’t actually want to get to know her or respect her as a person, and that he just only wanted her for sex.

I want to write more about the movie, but I am still figuring more of my thoughts out. But I definitely recommend you watch it because it’s a really beautiful film.

Movie Review: Dunkirk

A couple of weeks ago I watched the movie Dunkirk, which came out in 2017 from Warner Bros. I heard about it and had seen Christopher Nolan’s films Inception and Interstellar, but I hadn’t seen Dunkirk yet. It was actually a really good movie. It stars Fionn Whitehead, Harry Styles, Kenneth Branagh, Barry Keoghan, and other actors. I had seen Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies. I knew Harry Styles from his music, but I hadn’t seen him act before. He was really good in this movie. I also really love that Tom Hardy was in this film because I saw him in Inception and he was really good in it.

The film reminded me of this film by Sam Mendes called 1917. Even though Dunkirk took place during World War II and 1917 takes place during World War I, both of these films capture the horrors of war. 1917 I’m pretty sure gave me nightmares I think just because the way they shot the movie was so unique; it looked as if it was all just one shot, so I only saw what was going on from the perspective of the two soldiers (William Schofield and Tom Blake) who have to go on a mission to deliver an important message. In the film, there was one scene that stuck with me where William and Tom are walking alone through a field of flowers on their way to deliver the message on the other side, and they talk about earning medals of honor for their service. They talk about how the medal means nothing to them because of the disillusionment and trauma they have witnessed on the battlefield. It reminded me of this piece I played in high school called Cello Concerto in E Minor by English composer Edward Elgar. Elgar wrote this concerto in the aftermath of World War I and was disillusioned by the war’s destruction on society, and in this concerto he conveys a lot of this hopelessness and disillusionment. In particular, the first movement of the piece conveys these feelings, opening with a bold mournful peal of anger from the cello because so many men lost their lives in the war and everyone dealt with trauma and anxiety about the future. Every time I practice the first movement of the concerto or listen to recordings of it I get chills.

That scene in 1917 stuck with me because going off to war to protect the country was noble but it also brought with it a lot of shell shock and horrors that stayed with many people, and it was literally a life-or-death battle for many people. In Downton Abbey some of the staff fight in World War I and they hire someone new on the staff who deals with shell shock after fighting in the war. Because this was before extensive mental health counseling and few people had adequate language to talk about post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) they couldn’t really know how to support or encourage the staff member and he was soon let go. After the soldiers are evacuated from Dunkirk, there is a huge celebration and when Alex and Tommy are on the train heading back to England they read the paper and find a huge headline celebrating the soldiers being evacuated from Dunkirk. As they rid the train people hand them food and other nice things and they cannot believe their eyes. However, as heroic as the ending was I am sure that they couldn’t erase a lot of the suffering they endured while trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk from their memories. I am glad I saw the film Dunkirk because I watched the movie Darkest Hour and while it talks about Dunkirk, the focus is on Winston Churchill’s time in office and how he handled the evacuation from Dunkirk so I didn’t actually see what the war was like for those soldiers trapped at Dunkirk. There was a key scene towards the end of the film when Alex and the other soldiers are being evacuated from Dunkirk, and an older blind man expresses his appreciation to them for their service, and Alex says that all they did was survive, but the man responds by telling him that even just surviving is enough. This was powerful because it showed that because war was a serious battle between life and death, even just the fact that they made it out alive was enough. They didn’t have to do anything flashy or extravagant to seem like heroes; them making it out alive when so many other men were killed in battle was courageous in and of itself.

Seeing this film from the perspective of Buddhism helped, because the Buddhism I practice is based on the Mahayana teaching called the Lotus Sutra, which teaches respect for the dignity of each person’s life. Each person’s life has such precious immeasurable potential, and so I think watching Dunkirk from a Buddhist lens helped because I was thinking about what the blind man told Alex and thought about my own grapplings with life and death, and how Buddhism helped me appreciate my life through developing a more profound understanding of life and death. I haven’t fought in a war so I cannot imagine what the soldiers who were evacuated from Dunkirk went through, but there have been times when I was in a dark place in life and wondered whether my life had meaning, but after practicing Buddhism I have developed more appreciation for my life even when the day may not seem glamorous. Absolute happiness means that life itself is a joy. When I practice Buddhism I feel this what we call life condition deep from within me, and even when I am doing daily stuff like going to the grocery store, clocking in at work, or eating dinner, I can take time to appreciate each day of my life. I think dealing with depression was an experience in learning how to appreciate my life because in Buddhism we talk about the mutual possession of the Ten Worlds, which means that even though people have different conditions of life they operate in and react to different situations based on these life states, at the core of their lives is this life state of Buddhahood, which is the unlimited potential of each person’s life. Hell is the lowest life condition, and when I am in a life condition of Hell it feels that life itself is suffering. When I operate from that life condition and don’t transform it through my Buddhist practice I resort to complaining, blaming my environment and feeling powerless. In a life condition of Hell I resort to apathy, anger, resentment and hopelessness. War is a larger-scale manifestation of the world of Hell because it involves the taking of people’s lives and a lot of destruction. On a smaller scale when I am in the depths of my depression I experience the life condition of Hell but when I practice Buddhism, even though I may be in a life condition of suffering I can elevate that life condition so that even when I am suffering, I can still appreciate life itself and the little things in life I often take for granted. It is still a process to appreciate my life, but Buddhism has allowed me to transform my life condition each day. That was kind of a tangent that wasn’t totally related to Dunkirk but it was a thought that popped up while I watched the movie.

Movie Review: Summer of Soul

This past weekend I watched an incredible film by musician and producer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of music group The Roots called Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised.) It is a documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, which featured African-American musicians and celebrated Black culture. The festival featured musicians such as Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, The Fifth Dimension, Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples. People who went to the festival and who performed at the festival talked about how incredible it was, and especially during a time of upheaval and trauma. During this time, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X were assassinated and the Black Panther Party was being established. It was really sad to hear that this footage wasn’t shown for many years; I hadn’t seen the footage before and I wasn’t even born when they had the Harlem Cultural Festival. Honestly if I hadn’t seen this film I wouldn’t have known about the Harlem Cultural Festival. It went on one hundred miles from the Woodstock Festival, which many people know about either because they went to it or because we studied about it in U.S. history class, and yet the festival footage was left to collect dust until Questlove directed the documentary. I grew up seeing plenty of footage from Woodstock because it was so ubiquitous, but it’s a bummer I hadn’t seen the Harlem Cultural Festival before. But I am so grateful to Questlove for putting this movie out there so that I could appreciate the music and the festival footage.

There was no way I was sitting through this movie and not dancing. The music was so groovy, and especially when Stevie Wonder performed a song called “Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Ba-Day” and he was really getting into the music. During this time period music was therapy for Black communities because people didn’t have a whole bunch of access to therapy or mental health resources, so people sang to express pain and hope for a better future. Seeing Mahalia Jackson singing in the documentary gave me goosebumps because she is just such a powerhouse. I remember studying about musical traditions in the Black Church, but when you actually see performances of Black Church music it is a really incredible experience. I really loved Sly and the Family Stone because they brought so much energy to their performance, and I loved their outfits. It would have been such an incredible experience to attend this festival.

One part of the film that interested me was that they showed footage of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, and a white reporter visited the Harlem Cultural Festival and saw that most people weren’t sitting in front of the television watching Armstrong land on the moon, but instead attending the festival. When the reporter asked the people at the festival what they thought of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, many people said that there were bigger issues to worry about, namely poverty, crime and drugs in the Black community and how the government spent all this money on the moon mission that could have gone to helping people in the Black community gain access to resources. This was another perspective for me to think about, because growing up I would watch TV shows and read books and Neil Armstrong landing on the moon in 1969 was definitely a huge event, but I didn’t think about the disadvantage of the mission, which was the cost to go and how that money could have gone to address a lot of the class and racial inequalities in American society.

Nina Simone’s performance was especially incredible because I love Nina Simone. Her music has this raw power to it that runs through my body like electricity. When she performed she had her hair stacked in braids and wrapped up really high and this gorgeous daishiki-looking dress, and she just brought so much power to her playing the piano and singing. She recited a poem about being Black and proud and had the audience participate in a call and response as she was singing and reciting the poem over music. The film also talked about how the word “Black” was offensive at the time, but during the festival the songs encouraged people to have pride in being “Black.” Black people were called “Negro” before, but there were songs called “Say It Loud I’m Black and I’m Proud” and “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” that celebrated being Black. I love Nina’s music. I remember when I was either in high school or college I listened to one of her albums that I checked out from the library and I fell in love with her music, especially the song “Sinnerman.”

It was really interesting to learn about the history during the time of the festival, and how the festival was a chance to bring people together. There weren’t just Black people at the festival, but also white people and people of other races. They featured Puerto Rican musicians like Ray Barretto and I love how he and the other musicians jammed on the drums. I also loved seeing Gladys Knight and the Pips because I love “Midnight Train to Georgia” and hadn’t seen much early footage of her performances. Watching the footage of the festival gave me much more appreciation for the legacies of Motown and African-American culture and music. After watching the movie I couldn’t stop listening to “Shoo-Be-Doo-BeDoo-Da-Day” by Stevie Wonder because it is just such an amazing song.

Scenes from Bridgerton

I’m probably getting a lot of details wrong, but I didn’t take notes while watching the show so my thoughts here are pretty jumbled up:

-the scenes where the Duke (Simon) and Daphne are having fierce sex. Honestly this is the most intense sex I have seen in a while.

-Daphne and Simon are in town and there are three large pigs that people are betting on. Daphne decides to declare a tie so that no single pig wins. Later on a very pregnant woman in the village tells Daphne that no one wants to acknowledge her because she declared the tie for the pigs and that meant the farmers in the village lost money.

-Marina marries Colin and Penelope is jealous. She goes through Marina’s stuff to show that George (the guy who Marina fell in love with and the father of Marina’s child, who is abroad in Spain) misses Marina and doesn’t actually want to dump her, but Marina by this point is hellbent on marrying Colin. She soon finds out Penelope also loves Colin and she basically tells Penelope to deal with it. Unfortunately, Marina’s illegitimate pregnancy makes Lady Whistledown’s headlines and the Featherington family must carry their heads in shame. Eloise at first tries to help Penelope by distracting her one night. The night Eloise comes over is the night Marina admits her feelings for Colin and Penelope is secretly jealous. Eloise wants to tell Penelope she is figuring out who Lady Whistledown is but because Penelope is heartbroken she snaps at Eloise that she (Penelope) needs to go to sleep and now is not a good time to talk. Eloise is clearly heartbroken that Penelope yelled at her and won’t tell her what is going on.

-Eloise goes to Madame Delacroix because Mrs. Bridgerton (Violet) is getting her to try on dresses for when she gets married but Eloise doesn’t see marriage as a priority. Earlier, Madame Delacroix tries to ban Marina and Portia (Lady Featherington) from trying on a dress for Marina, but Marina starts talking to Madame Delacroix in rapid fluent French because Madame Delacroix’s French accent is fake. I found this out in one of the earlier episodes because her friend, Siena, comes over and Madame Delacroix drops her French accent and talks in her regular British accent.

-Queen Charlotte is married to a white man who probably has dementia. When she joins him for dinner, the King asks what happened to Amelia, their daughter, and Queen Charlotte reminds him that Amelia died of illness years ago and the King looks up at her and accuses her of killing Amelia and calls her a bitch and knocks his plate of dinner down on the floor, prompting her to leave the room in sheer fear.

-Daphne is excited to have kids but she is sad because she knows the Duke can’t give her kids. When they are having sex, Daphne suddenly positions herself on top of Simon to see if she can get pregnant and then she finds out that Simon isn’t impotent, he just doesn’t want kids. Anthony goes to Madame Delacroix’s looking for Siena, the opera singer soprano he often sleeps with, but she (Madame Delacroix) informs Anthony that Siena left town and doesn’t need to depend on Anthony’s money. Earlier, Anthony comes to Siena because he is still attracted to her, and they try to have passionate sex again but they end up breaking it off and Siena realizes she will never achieve the same status as Anthony and they can’t keep playing this game with each other when they are not meant for each other.

-After Marina’s pregnancy makes it to Lady Whistledown’s column, Portia and her daughters are banned from the party and kicked out. Earlier Marina meets with Colin and he is upset she didn’t tell him about her pregnancy. He thinks if she just told him earlier he would still love her. I wonder if Penelope is going to use this to seize her chance to tell Colin she loves him. The Duke and Anthony are about to have a duel before Simon leaves London, and they are about to position themselves for the duel, but Daphne finds out from Colin where they are and she intervenes, telling them to stop. Daphne insists on marrying the Duke but he tries to tell her he wouldn’t be good for her because he won’t be able to give her any children. When they move in together after getting married, Daphne often roams around the palace, which she and Simon try to make huge decorations and adjustments to. Simon, however, is managing the finances of the people in the village and always working in his office. Simon and Daphne have sex pretty much everywhere when they move into their new residence- they have it on the lawn, outside near the pond, pretty much anywhere because they know it’s their house. Even if there might be servants watching, they still talk about a lot of their personal lives and have sex outside.

Two of My Favorite SNL sketches

In junior year of college I was pretty depressed to be honest. I had moved into a new dormitory and thought I would be so happy to get my own single-occupancy room, but I didn’t realize I had depression until that year. It was a huge battle with myself and my inner darkness, and I didn’t understand how important it was to seek professional help when in crisis. During this time I chanted a lot to make it through, and one thing that helped me get through this painful time was watching a lot of Saturday Night Live sketches. I don’t remember the exact first time I watched SNL, but I definitely remember that and the web series Awkward Black Girl became my comedy go-to’s that year. During the holidays, when I felt lonely and depressed, I watched some of these sketches and they helped bring some light to me in my time of darkness:

  1. “White Christmas”: The sketch came out in 2013 and I don’t think I saw it until my junior year. Of course, the sketch didn’t come without its controversy, and frankly after finishing the sketch I don’t remember if I laughed or was just really confused. In summary, the sketch is a trailer about a white woman (played by Cecily Strong) who has all kinds of stress in her life, including her house being foreclosed on. The Black realtor (played by Jay Pharaoh, a former SNL cast member) tells her her house is being foreclosed on, and the woman is desperate. She packs up her car and goes with her white son, Rasheed (played by Kyle Mooney), to her Mama Ruth’s house for the holidays. The voiceover person says that the movie is a Black holiday movie for white audiences, featuring tropes such as women snapping peas at a table and laughing, a gun-toting grandma spun off of Madea (played by Paul Rudd) and a white guy wearing a necklace over a turtleneck. The scene cuts to a group of white women talking and one of them (Aidy Bryant) takes a line straight from a Black holiday movie that men will leave Black women for white women. The waiter at their table (Kenan Thomson) looks into the camera and gives a side-eye, like “You are white. This is laughable that you would even say such a line.” The trailer also features white people singing in a gospel choir, led by the hilarious Mike O’Brien (the guy wearing the sweater over the turtleneck) with Bobby Moynihan doing the most passionate singing out of all the other white gospel singers. And there is a scene where a group of white men in black clothes and Fedora hats dances to New Kids on the Block, and the white women watching them at home are screaming and one of them throws a red thong at one of the dancers (this is a parody of a dance scene from The Best Man Holiday where the men dance to “Can You Stand the Rain.” Up to that point I hadn’t seen The Best Man Holiday yet so I had to look up the trailer to understand the reference.) The voiceover person reads the critic reviews; one says “Finally, a holiday movie for white people.” Another says, “For the first time I talked to the screen and it felt great.” The third review is from Vibe magazine and it says “Can’t we have anything?” And the last review calls White Christmas, “the Macklemore of movies.” (if you don’t know the reference, Macklemore is a white rapper from Seattle.) The sketch ends with the voiceover person saying the actor’s names; they are all Paul Rudd, and the scene cuts to Jay Pharaoh looking in the camera with a deadpan expression as the person introduces him as Paul Rudd, when clearly he is not Paul Rudd. Jay Pharaoh throws his hands up to the ceiling and asks “Are we gonna get in trouble for this?”
  2. “Sump’n Claus”: the sketch opens up with Pete Davidson and Jay Pharaoh talking about their Christmas. Jay asks Pete if he is excited for Christmas, but Pete says he doesn’t think he will get anything from Santa since he hasn’t been on his nice list, but Jay says he can always expect something from Sump’n Claus. Sump’n Claus (Kenan Thompson) is Black Santa, and he is out to make sure every white person who does crazy shit gets what they want for Christmas. Along with the help of his lovely backup elf singers (Cecily Strong and Sasheer Zamata) he raps first about a woman named Sheila (Vanessa Bayer) who got in a fight with her husband (Kyle Mooney) and slashed his tires when he left her. Sump’n Claus hands her money even though she did something bad. He then sings about a man named Marcus who is dealing with so much stress at his job and then blows up at everyone, smashing his computer and then getting fired and arrested. When he leaves the elevator with his stuff packed in a box to leave the job, Sump’n Claus goes up to him, and gives him free cash. Sump’n Claus jokes that he can’t tell where he got the money from, and then tells a story about how he worked at the North Pole for Santa, and one day Mrs. Claus (Aidy Bryant) started flirting with him and Santa caught them in the act. Honestly this sketch was hilarious.

Moving In

Written on 1/23/21

It all started out with an email
I was missing you.
You were missing me.
We were missing each other
When I was around you
I felt so free
Like I was racing through the sky on Cloud 9
You live in the city of dreams
The concrete jungle
I remember my visit there in the summer of 2017
It felt like i had taken a fresh breath of air
The yellow taxis, the Times Square
The green lady statue standing alone in the middle of the sea
It was just so free to be me
In the big apple city
Months passed without word from each other
I wanted to give you time
But my heart ached and ached
With a pain worse than I have ever felt in my life
I imagined us having children, being your wife
It was a beautiful fantasy of life
In my future
And it gnawed on me like a 6,000 year old beast
Dripping black blood each time it bit into the flesh of my lonely heart
With its long ancient yellowed teeth
This fantasy savored the delicacy of my emotions
Smiled each time it took a savory bite
It salted them, sautéed them, enjoyed them in a sweet and sour sauce
But we're in a pandemic and i don't want you to get sick
Just in case i am asymptomatic
I also don't know where you rest on the social distancing rules
And yet when i wake up
The song of you
The paean of my passion for you
Plays perpetually in my mind
And all time
Is gone
As i think and think and think of you
Finally i can take it no longer
I book a ticket
To come to see you in the wilderness
Of skyscrapers and artist dreams
On the flight i call myself stupid
For being so in love with you
For feeling all these mushy feelings
And not being able to understand
Why i am just feeling them now
After so many years of keeping them buried under the surface
The pain of not being with you throbs at me
It shakes me
Until my head is spinning
My travel is a fuck you to new social norms
I know i am rebelling against what society wants me to do (e.g. not travel)
But my head is filled with you and that's all
I can think about
My animal instincts take over
I wondered whether I could still call myself an asexual
After my sexual attraction for you grew and grew until
It suddenly and unexpectedly blossomed right before my eyes
My love for you is a monster that haunts me in the night
It came running for me, snuck under my bed
And when i got up to get a midnight snack
Of leftover chocolate cake
The beast grabbed me
And begged me to see you
Or else risk becoming its prey forever.

6:00 pm I am leaving JFK airport
With my suitcase and cello in hand
I pass the brownstones
The busy streets
The passerby wearing PPE
The ambulances racing past with covid patients
And my mind races back again to
You are stupid
Why the fuck are you doing this
You could have waited 
You could have said no
You weren't ready for children yet
You were too young to know what love is
Besides you're asexual
You're not supposed to fall in love
My mind fights back
With all sorts of sassy responses
As i watch the riveting rain fall on the window panes
Of the taxi.
The rain falls like the tears falling from my heart
By feelings of homesickness for you
I walk up the brownstone 
Pay the driver
I knock on the door
You open
And i kiss you
Wide mouthed
Without any common sense or regard for social distancing
What the hell am i thinking? i ask myself.
I scream this question in my head
As you settle into the kiss
Lock your lips with mine
Your grizzly brown stubble grazes my smooth brown cheek
And your tongue plays mind games inside my mouth
You lace your right hand around the back of my head
And lace your life hand around my waist
Your arm settles on the seat of my derriere
And your hand navigates its way around the left and right of my ass
You sigh with pleasure
"This feels good"
I feel you tip toe back
Tip toe
tip
toe
tip
toe
Til the lighting gets darker
And we now wrestle
Like lovesick canines
With each other's hair
Each other's bodies
I feel a gentle tugging of my shirt  
My hands gently lift your woolen sweater 
We take turns being gracious to one another
Oxytocin breathes a sigh of relief 
And lets it all hang out like a brickhouse 
As we enjoy the release of the oxytocin
And cling our naked bodies to each other
Your body heat a blanket warmer than your woolen sweater 
Our eyes close 
Our lips stay locked
I feel a sudden painful lump in my throat
A lump i cannot swallow
It is a boulder lying in my esophagus 
That won’t budge unless i release all of the emotional pent-up pain i feel
At having been gone from you for so long 
A fresh stream of hot tears falls down my face
And my body heaves with the muscle spasms 
And rise and fall of my lungs 
As they struggle to breathe 
Suffocating under the raging river of tears 
Bitter pain 
I feel your callused thumb brush away the tears with a whisper
You slowly release your lips from mine 
“It’s ok”
I let myself continue to let it all out 
Eyes blocking out anything but memories of long distance love 
Thought to have been too little and too late
I cannot see you at the moment
Because i wrap myself, snuggle in the barbed wire blanket of 
My pain. 
The sound of my sobbing silences itself 
As we bask in the quiet intimacy of our chemistry 
With one another 
-I am sorry
-for what?
-for not getting the signs
-What signs
-that you loved me
-i didn’t want you to love me until you were ready 

I look away 
And sit in silence 
My head lolls 
My eyes close 
We fall asleep together 
Intertwined like two ivy vines 
On a college tower

Is It Love (written on 1/22/21)

Is this what I am feeling true love?
You looking at me up and down like I was a whole dessert
A slice of black forest cake
You wanted to eat out
Me looking at you
With flutterflies in my stomach
As I played my cello
My heart sang a song of you
And danced that night in the bliss of the intimate concert hall

Not knowing why I couldn't finish
My breakfast in the morning
My fork gliding through the archipelagos
Of fresh scrambled tofu in a sea of ketchup
The tongs unable to make their way to my mouth
Love was a 36-week-old fetus
Taking up space in my belly that morning
Breathing all the air out of my lungs
Heartbeat beating faster than my own
The second I walk in the room
You give me a smile, look me up and down
"Hot damn" races through your mind.
These feelings make me so light headed
That I feel dizzy, love-sick to my stomach
I vomit all the feelings of love that remain
Jumbled in my heart
Wound up like a 1,000 year old screw.
All night i think about your last letter
You life in another city
Love took reign
And reigned Bey-Supreme
Over my heart
I practically wrote a novel
In response to you
And as my pen raced across the pages
Shitting trails of black ink on the way to the finish line
My heart sang, "O happy day"
Louder than any angels ever sang.
My heart raced at presto speed
A galloping horse
And I found myself drowning in the 
Quicksand of love
As i lay in my bed sleeping
My eyes open
Pondering
I wonder: is this love or a mere fantasy

I conjured from our past interactions
You stole my heart
Then mentioned your love
My heart sighed in relief 
Feeling happiness for you and your love
I later got my own
during a hot night of chai and chatter in
The land of saris and samosas.
I am cool.
You are cool.
We are friends
But can we ever rekindle that magic spark
That night
When your eyes caressed my breast, hips, thighs, dark brown eyes?
When i sat alone in my dorm in the beautiful April
Self-harm scars faded from a fall semester
Of self-hate and suicidal ideations
I wrote of fantasies, dreams, imaginations
Of you kissing my taut dark-skinned belly
Caressing it every time our unborn child
Communicated his existence with kicks and punches
You coo softly to my stomach, whispering words of love and hope
To a biracial child
Soon to awaken in a world
Where the first Indian-Black-Female VP runs the
White House with a leader who also 
Fights for justice and respect for the dignity of life.
We lock lips and have a beautiful conversation
A conversation that transforms so delicately
Into a nonverbal dialogue
Of intimacy
Physical attraction
Sensual pleasures.
You get a handful of my chocolate cakes
And you're in heaven
You taste dark-milk-honey-caramel chocolate
As you nibble my lips
You wipe away my salted caramel tears
And nibble on my Duncan Hines ears
"Mmmmmmmm," you whisper as if you were 
Speaking into an ASMR microphone.

Then I imagine everything that might go wrong

Stillborn, umbilical cord wrapped around the neck
A new mother and father's lived nightmare
Fights in the kitchen end up with bruises and black eyes
Broken dishes strewn around the room
Our son standing there, watching, observing
Wondering why his parents
Yell words filled with acid at each other instead of words filled with love
A chance encounter with the pretty
Brunette standing behind you in the grocery
Store line
Becomes a one-night stand
Back at her studio apartment
And a white, fair-skinned, straight-haired baby that got achance at life
That our son did not.
A flirtation with another guy I just met
At a company party
Becomes a one night stand with me
You watching the clock to no avail
waiting for me to come home
So we can put the kiddo to bed.
Or both of us simply get tired of each other.
Those memories of being infatuated are thin air.
You get back with your ex
Get married, have kids, retire
Nice life 
While I'm nursing the memories of my unbridled passion
Swaddling the crying, pooping, smelly, ga-ga-ing
Mess of love
The burden of betrayal
Is this love permanent?
Or just a thing of the past?