Opening Chapters

Sometimes a song just takes you back, way back. Especially when the song is from a movie you recently realized was shot in a place you used to visit every summer as a child. The song’s really old, as old as my sister who can finally get a license this year. She’s quite excited, I’m apprehensive. Not because of her. Because of the concept of driving in itself. It terrifies me, having to control the movement of an entity so much bigger and heavier than me. It’s a good thing I didn’t aspire to be a pilot I think sometimes. This time though, the song reminded me of a particular summer, eleven years ago. This place that the movie was shot in, I had a love-hate relationship with it. My mother’s ancestral home was there, so we used to go every year during our summer vacation to see our grandmother and our aunts and uncles and cousins (of which we had many, some being nice while some were unbearable). There were cousins who would relentlessly tease us, they were incredibly mean and...

You're walking in the park, and suddenly, you see this beautiful yellow flower, almost golden. It’s unlike any other flower you have ever seen. What would you do? You pluck it, because it is extraordinarily beautiful and you want to keep it for yourself. It’s a thing of beauty and you do not want to share it. You like sharing your food, your clothes. But when you see something so beautiful that it takes you closer to God every time you look at it, you want to take it and keep it for yourself. Hidden from others, hidden from sunlight. The flower withers away and you know it will die soon. But you keep it hidden. You still don’t keep it in the open so it gets some air and light for fear that someone else will come along and take it from you. You would not know what you would do if something like that happens. You will break and cry all day, longing for the flower that was yours back. But the flower was never yours. And it does not belong to the person who stole it from ...