Friday, April 25, 2008

Summer

What a summer, what a summer!
This is magic indeed.
And how, I ask you, did it come to us
Unsought and undeserved?

- Fyodor Tyutchev

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Love, love

Watched The Savages last night.

Wendy (Laura Linney) suddenly kisses Jimmy (Gbenga Akkinagbe) but he moves away. She apologizes in horror but he gently explains: "It's just that I'm in love with my girlfriend."

Damn.

How many guys would actually do that?

****

For some reason, I'd never read Dr. Zhivago (or watched the movie for that matter). A few weeks back, I saw a copy in Fully Booked and the cover said that it was one of the greatest love stories ever told. And so I bought it.

Russian literature is always hard to read. But I doggedly waded my way through confusing historical references and slogged through the dreary landscape and basically dismal picture the author painted, eagerly awaiting to reach the climax and find out what made this one of the greatest love stories ever told.

I read on and on and waited. Waited to fall in love, as I usually do when reading love stories. Alas, I kept waiting. To make things worse, I started to get seriously depressed about three-quarters into the book. By the time I finished, I was cross, really, really depressed, and feeling cheated.

A man cheating on his wife is not my idea of the greatest love story ever told. I couldn't care less if Lara was supposed to be Zhivago's one great, incredible love. I know we all wish for that kind of love. But he was cheating on Tonya -- dear, devoted, simple Tonya, whose one and only mistake was to love Zhivago blindly and purely. Ugh.

I would absolutely die if this ever became the situation between me and the man I love:

[Zhivago] worshipped Tonya. Her peace of mind meant more to him than anything in the world. He was ready to defend her honour and was more sensitive to anything touching it than her father or herself. In defence of her pride he would have torn anyone apart with his own hands.

And yet now he was offending against it himself.

Men.

What a heartache that would be indeed.

I would imagine that if Zhivago had not been taken by the Reds, he would have gone back to Tonya and stayed with her and their children, bound to them not by love, but by duty and obligation -- his sense of honor. But his heart would always be somewhere else.

Wouldn't any girl's heart break if she found out she was in this position?

And has chance would have it, Tonya did find out.

Her goodbye letter to Zhivago was heartbreaking. Sap that I am, I cried upon reading it. Ack! Horrible, horrible thought. Ugh.

I was excited to watch movie. I thought I'd watch it after reading the book. But now, I don't want to anymore. Why go through that misery again?

****

I can't end on such heavy thoughts. I thought I'd post this. It's so cute. (Just FYI, these belong to Ronnie, Fiore and baby love Alfonso, on his first trip to the U.S.)

Tee hee. I can't wait to have my own, uh, version. :)