Pearl Harbor

I don't know how the thought of writing about this never occurred to me. Despite the million times I've watched it, the zillion tears I've shed for it, the many more times that I've craved for a love like this.

Everything about this movie gives me goose-flesh. The plot, the music, the wonderful visuals, but most of all, the love-story. The entwined lives of Danny, Evelyn and Rafe. I couldn't perhaps ever believe in love like Rafe again because I grew to believe things like that don't exist. I don't know a soul today who could tell his love all in the midst of feeling betrayed and cheated, " When I was lying half-dead, I made a deal with God. If I could just see you one more time, I would never ask for anything again. And you know what I'll keep my word." Rafe's love is something that would remain in my memory as the perfect example of true love. Selfless, Giving, yet so content with just the feeling of loving someone so much.

Evelyn's love for Rafe, half the world away, is something else which is so beautiful. The amount of solace she finds in his letters. Images of her sitting by the sunset, while she writes to Rafe " Every night I watch the sunset and soak up the last ounce of heat from its long tired day and send it from my heart to yours." Such a patient kind of love. Distant, yet constantly bound by thoughts. Being alone, yet never truly in the sense of the word, because Rafe's love was constantly with her. Something I still look at and smile, admiring the love she bears for him.

Evelyn and Danny's love-story is reminiscent of two teenagers falling in love. Torn by grief with the news of Rafe's death, finding complete solitude in the pathos within each other's hearts. Willingly letting each other pick up the broken pieces of their lives, trying to put it all back together, but silently worrying that war doesn't crush their lives again. So much of togetherness, in common pain, so much of love in the pangs of loneliness.

And finally, as death did do apart Rafe and Evelyn, it did bring them back together. Danny's death while trying to save Rafe seems like fate wanting Rafe to be with the woman he loved and reason he lived, for the rest of his life. It seems ironic when Evelyn tells Rafe before he and Danny leave for war, " I'll never stop loving you, but I'm going to give my heart to Danny. But I also can never look at another sunset without thinking of you.", Because the last scene of the movie, shows Rafe and Evelyn walk into the sunset together, as two lovers, as a family, as two people in whose hearts Danny will live forever.

Pearl Harbor, the movie, for me, will remain this ode to love, though it may for many others, simply remain as a recreation of what made America join the war. Every piece of music by Hans Zimmer's soundtrack for the movie leaves me with the image of the warm sunset. Of the love these three characters bore for each other. Of the kind of love, I wish I ever get to experience someday. Simple, Innocent, True, COMPLETE!

Can Friends Make the Best Lovers?

If you can share a pizza with a friend and talk about your life does that mean you can share your life with the same person?

Friendship and Love according to me work on almost the same principles. Trust, comfort, togetherness. Then what makes love so special? I feel that love brings with itself a soulful connection that just takes friendship to another level. In most cases I feel that friends have proved to be the best lovers and companions but sometimes friendship gets mistaken for love and that’s where the whole problem arises.

Your friend knows you in and out. Knows what makes you smile, what makes you cry, is there for you when you do cry and knows how to calm you down. A friend can care for you in ways the whole world can’t even think of. That’s what makes him so special. But what if that’s as far as it goes? Is it fair of you to expect him to love you?

When two friends do hook up, one of the three things is bound to happen. It’ll either work out, or it won’t or it won’t work out but the friendship will remain.

Sometimes people get lucky and there is a mutual connection between the friends. That’s when things are bound to work out. When you share every fragment of your life with a person, there isn’t much else left to share with anyone else. And when that person reciprocates and loves you back with same intensity that’s when this relationship will definitely work out.

On the other hand, sometimes two people are better off being friends. When they do hook up with an attempt to take this friendship to another level when its absolutely not required then it won’t even take-off. The whole feeling of being with a friend who ‘loves’ you is great in the beginning. But most of the times you’re just taking a chance. Love is surely a gamble but why should the stakes be so high? With friendship comes honesty and with love comes intimacy. Your friend knows exactly how you feel about him or about another person romantically and if you are indeed playing the fool, he’d for sure realize. And if this relationship doesn’t work out then who do you have to blame? No one but yourself for losing a friend who genuinely did care for you. And that’s something that will haunt you forever.

Sometimes, you do get lucky and despite the goof-up the friend remains in your life and if you get luckier the friendship becomes a lot thicker. Picture this, you love a certain flavor of ice-cream, say chocolate. For kicks, you try out vanilla. Its plain, not least bit what you thought it would be and you realize you’re better off with chocolate. That’s what might happen if you hook up with a friend. Sometimes you realize that the person is better off in your life as a friend not as your lover. Here the friendship is so strong that it pulls the two of you together like a magnet and keeps the friendship alive. That’s the best possible scenario because frankly you lost nothing. You gave your emotions a chance and at the end of it you didn’t lose that friend.

There is a thin-line that separates love and friendship and it’s up to you to see that line or not. You can be blind to it and take the next step with your friend. Or you can be aware of the consequences of such a decision and make an informed choice. Incase you do choose to ask out a friend, ask yourself what’s more important, your inexplicable rush of emotions or your friend.

Who I was and Who I am..

Two smiles I wear in quiet denial,

Two lives I lead in silent oblivion.

Each blow of time lands me in fresh pain,

obvious to the world, yet to myself a mystery I remain.

Crushed embers burn my path, as I walk past the rubble of yesterday,

The sun shines on brighter, but time seems to have frozen today.

I've cried over my wounds, as I saw them bleed me dry,

A part of me drowned each time, at a moment that person did die.

The seeds of time sowed a new existence, a new life,

I live with the hope of a happier tomorrow, I will break free from the strife.

Each breath is calmer, this is a living, not a quest for survival,

This is what they are, the pain and the hope are these smiles of denial.