Sunday, September 14, 2008

STRANGER THAN FICTION

"At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin. I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt the longing build in my chest. The way those bees flew, not even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of the wind, split my heart down its seam."
That is the gorgeous and mysterious opening to Sue Monk Kidd's "The Secret Life of Bees." Hollywood is finally doing right by releasing the film version of "Bees" October 17th. It was so odd to open the cover of this gem and re-read the opening paragraph because it seems that bees have been accompanying me for some time. First in the spring when I started preparing the yard for gardening, throughout the summer when they rolled in the pollen on our flowers, and even in my studio, where I made fiber bees. Strangely enough, just like the book begins, they have been buzzing around in my bedroom. Every morning and evening for weeks now there have been bees in the room. They are there when I wake up and there when I go to bed. They aren't swarming or angry, but rather lost. Sadly enough, they tend to meet their honey bee maker for they either die trying to get out, although I can't figure out how they even get in, or they are squished...their honey oozing out onto my finger tips, which are then quickly licked. Sorry...that's not even funny, is it?

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