Enchanted (2008)

When Giselle, lost in where there are no happily ever afters, seemed to Robert a girl too naive and ignorant, almost stupid and hopeless, those were the moments that touched me deeply.

That is what I am searching and seeking for. The impeccable, indestructible, unquestionable belief in hopes and possibilities. Don't ever say no. Life and world is just too vast, too beautiful to be hurt by such unbelieving thoughts.


Never be unbelieving.
Never, ever, say no.

Prime (2005)

The last time I saw this film, I didn't quite like it. I thought it was kind of clueless and nonsense, delivering no specific message. Yet after accidentally watching it again on HBO today, it changed my mind.

The last scene was really touching. For one moment, when Rafi noticed Dave peeking on her through the restaurant window, and gave back that slight smile, I felt like weeping. It was a matter of seconds in the film, but a total condensed, strong, and powerful scene. It was then that I learned that this was the concluding gesture of the whole movie.

I cannot imagine how unendurable it is for that long period of separation to really take place and become an accepted truth. Movies are always about the protagonists. The major parts. The central event. Things and people that really count at last. That is why I felt so unendurable to witness the fading away of what should have, or might have, become the major part of life. When we so wanted for something to become what would last or where we would end up, it makes it exceptionally cruel to not only lose it, but to retrace it from the "main" point of view.

What's worse in the film is the forced confrontation of a face-to-face reunion with that loss. When looking back to the past, it is merely history, something that is settled and cannot be changed thus requiring no further investigations. But looking to it in the very present is like a evoking that time when different decisions were made, as if it were a reproduction of those happy and heartbreaking recollections. It might just as well kill us with the pain.

The best thing about that scene in the film is that neither Rafi nor Dave had another story going on in the present, which means you cannot avoid the pain of facing this moment by trying to convince yourself that "it's nothing but something beautiful from the past, and now I have moved on, to someone where with someone else, so let's focus on this main part of life." Well, maybe she has, maybe he didn't. But all these interlaced and complicated feelings and memories from the past are condensed into that very single moment, when he peeked on her through that window, and she noticed, and she looked at him, and almost like hesitating for one second, and then?

And then she gave the slightest smile. Probably with some connotation.

Arriving at Chinese New Year's Dawn

I arrived at Taipei on the dawn of Chinese New Year's Eve. It was only 5:50am, and outside temperature was around 10C.

It is always nostalgically unfamiliar to return to the city of current residency. Recollecting the pieces of images through the windows of a bus returning home seems like a process of reassurance and recovery of one's acquaintance to the city.

In less than a few hours, I may return to my previous daily schedule and style of life. I will be surrounded by daily errands and familiar people, as well as what should be considered as a home, sweet home. Everything shall stat as -- or return to -- its most versant status. Versant. Familiar. Conversant.

I could also assume that everything shall be different. Because as one always learns and experiences through a journey leaving town, I might as well return with new, exotic thoughts and values. It is very likely that this city might possess new meanings, even new inspirations, as I return from faraway to this resting land and examine it with new eyes. But somehow, there are certain journeys that does not shade such positiveness on a returning traveller.

The fact that my arrival falls on the dawn on of the Chinese New Year's Eve probably sheds some effect on my feelings, too. All the agreed concepts of Chinese New Year being a time of reunion and family bonds is contradictory to my arrival. I left my own family -- that is, my parents and my siblings -- to fly back to a city I reside merely due to temporary studies here. While the rest of the nation is busy with transporting themselves back to their family on this annual holiday, I am arriving to nothing, to nobody, to a dorm of four that is currently empty, to a city where I have no relatives at all, to a ghostly campus where all schoolmates have gone home, to a chaffy refrigerator holding old food with conservation concerns, to dusted stoves and vans, to a bed filled with nothing but all my loyal stuffed friends.

As the day breaks, many people will be on their way home, by train, by bus, by car, by plane, by all means of transportation. They will begin their journey, looking to arrive in warm, lighted houses crowded with family, with hot food serving and freshly done laundry drying outdoors in the air of this light winter sun.

While their journey is just beginning, mine has just already ended.

Anxiety before Dawn

LSAT is only 2 days ahead. All of a sudden I'm overwhelmed with anxiety. Waiting for the dawn to weigh on me, and the consequent future it may lead to.

This process of school application seems like a Very Long Engagement. What may have been just another day now seems to be too long to endure and it's as if I've lost my patience and can't wait on any longer.

Not long ago, it was Summer. I decided to apply for law school. Not long ago, it was September, and then December, and now it is the last day of January; but a mere February seems so distant and unreachable.

I suddenly wish that this whole process may end sooner than it seemed to be.