JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

This weekend, I was feeling all sorts of emotions about a painful situation. Sometimes it’s even hard to untangle the reasons behind the feelings. Maybe, it’s just deep grief. As Lisa Williams writes today in her blog : “So grief seems to light up the same parts of the brain that light up when a baby is taken away from its mother, for example.” I certainly do feel at times as if I’ve been torn, as if there is a valley within me of aching.

Here’s what I wrote a couple days ago while trying to figure out my feelings:

When watching Matrix Revisited , one of the behind-the-scenes revelations interested me most came from the filming of Morpheus’s rescue from the building. I was surprised to learn that the view of the city, the towers and skyscrapers, was just a photograph. It was a digitally-altered photograph of the city of Sydney, with the recognizable landmarks removed to make it generic, and then the picture was placed around the set, to make it look like a true city view. I had thought it was real but it was really fake. What I thought was genuine was only a movie set .

Tonight I’m wrestling with major emotions. And I’m reminded of what I learned in Matrix Revolutions. I had thought something in my life was real and true. Like the city scene,, towers to touch, built of concrete and glass. But then it turned out to be fake. Paper-thin, like a photograph, so fragile that a touch became a punch through it all. Just a picture, trying to be pretty, painted over. What I thought was reality was only a facade. What I thought was genuine was only a movie set.

I’m mad at the movie set. And I’m mourning the movie set.