undaunted courage

Blake Lively Survives Vicious Bee Assault

Photo: Timothy A. Clary/Getty Images

Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind Blake Lively has written a dispatch from the other side of agony. She was attacked by a cavalcade of winged beasts (bees). She suffered, she swelled, she screamed, and she survived. But the trials were many and the emotions were innumerable. Blessedly for us, she was able to recount, fully and faithfully, her journey along the brutal landscape of stinging pain and the ultimate resilience of the human spirit, all in her web-blog, which exists for this purpose. She writes:

Just yesterday, the final day of the shoot, I felt an electric shock of energy — was it excitement that I was about to turn another year older? Was it nerves? Why did it feel like agony? I like getting older … I think.

But this felt terrible. Does your butt quite suddenly (and painfully) deflate when you turn 27? Because mine hurt like hell … then my neck, back, legs and forehead. And oh my hands! They were shriveling. It felt like I was being shot by dozens of tiny invisible darts. I felt like the Wicked Witch, melting, melting, burning, melting.

As it happens, I wasn’t being greeted by the onset of spontaneous aging, but rather a full-fledged bee day. Attacked. All over. Everywhere.

Amazingly, Lively rid herself of the insects and was not stung forever until the end of time. She was even able to create a metaphor of an ice-cream sundae and to consider the take-away message that the bees had intended for her:

It took a swarm of bees to remind me that a b-day is nothing but a number. Each day I choose my age.

Today it’s 27, going on 2.

How old will you bee today?

We bee old enough, Blake, old enough.

Blake Lively Survives Vicious Bee Assault