Rue

Tag: movies

  • Bird Wings

    Hello, Lavenders,

    How was your first week of 2025?

    Yesterday, I went to watch Flow (2024), a film I’ve been wanting to see for a long time. There’s no cinema near my college, so I haven’t been able to watch films as often as I used to. But now that I’m on break, I finally had the chance to go. I’ve been waiting to see Flow before it left theatres. The reviews were glowing, and I didn’t want to miss it. I found a small independent cinema, and the moment I walked in, it felt like home.

    I grew up on a little island where the animal population outnumbered the humans. We didn’t have big cinemas, only small independent ones. I used to take an hour-long bus ride every weekend with my friend to watch films. We were in our film buff phase back then, watching nearly every release that came out. Those bus rides were long, but we loved them. We’d talk about the films all the way home — what we liked, what we didn’t, what the director could have done differently. As we grew older, things changed. Life got busier. Exams, new responsibilities, different paths. The one of us moved to the other side of the island, making it harder to meet. Our trips became less frequent. But even now, whenever we meet, we always make time for a film. It’s our little ritual, a reminder of the days we shared popcorn, seeing who could fit more in their mouth at once and ending up choking from laughing too hard.

    Watching Flow reminded me of that.

    The film was beautiful. There was no dialogue, yet it spoke louder than words. And it stayed with me long after the screen faded to black. There were no humans in the film, but every wave, every crack in the earth, every storm felt profoundly human. It showed how we try to conquer nature without ever realising we’re part of it. How we take and take, blind to the damage, until everything stands on the edge of collapse. And how, in the end, it takes sacrifice to bring balance back to the world.

    For some reason, when I think of humanity’s habit of taking too much and leaving things broken, I’m reminded of Bird Wings by Valium Aggelein — a side project of Duster. The song carries a kind of sadness that lingers, mourning what’s already lost, while holding on, desperately, to what little remains.

    Thank you for stopping by my little lavender fields.

    God bless and goodbye!

    ~Rue

  • When the Sunshine Fades

    Hello, Lavenders!

    How was your day? Mine was calm. I finished a book I’d been reading. Then I tried picking up another, but nothing clicked. So, I gave up and watched a movie instead. What movie? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It was my first time seeing it. I’d heard about it before—how everyone seems to think it’s essential viewing—but it never really caught my interest. Probably because I’m not into romance. Or maybe it’s because I’ve never been in love (yet). For now, love is still a fuzzy idea, not a memory. But I decided to give it a chance. December 31st is the last day it’s on Netflix, and that was enough reason to press play.

    When it ended, what lingered in my mind wasn’t the love story; it was the idea of having control over your memory—of your mind becoming selective. Have you ever thought about that? If you could erase a person, a moment, a chapter of your life—would you? For me, I don’t think I could. Even the hard parts—the ones I’d rather forget—feel like they belong. They’ve shaped me in ways I didn’t see at the time. Without them, maybe I’d be a little lighter, a little less worried, but I wouldn’t be me. Some memories feel like an old sweater. Soft. Familiar. They hold you, remind you of who you are. But then there are the heavy ones. The ones that feel like a backpack you forgot to take off. People say, “Pain makes you stronger,” but sometimes it just stays. Like a ketchup stain on your favourite shirt—they may fade over time, but a trace of them always stays.

    I don’t know why, but during an hour and 48 minutes of watching, a line I found on the internet lingered in my mind:

    “We sit down
    in the smell of the past
    and rise in a light
    that is already leaving.
    We ache in secret.    “

    Clementine’s impulsivity, Joel’s desperation, the memories they erased only to find them again—it all circles back. We carry what we try to leave behind. We sit down in the smell of the past and rise in a light that is already leaving. We ache in secret because we are porous, because we are human, because we were built to carry it all—the sweaters, the backpacks, the ketchup stains.

    Thank you for visiting my little lavender fields.

    God bless and goodbye!

    ~Rue