You Owe it to Yourself

I'm watching that movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix.

It's one of the better, more truthful films I've seen with that much production behind it in awhile. I don't watch TV anymore, and I find myself far less frequently even watching films, regardless of how Indie or not they may be. In a strange way, my attention span for media has dropped off significantly. I couldn't even make it through the Avengers the other night. It just feels trivial and bland and vanilla as fuck.

But, I have digressed. I'm watching it and there is truth in each scene. In the divorce, in the neighbor's failed relationship/marriage, in the awkward date fiasco....all of it. It's raw in a viscerally emotional way and I'm reminded of Tennessee Williams in the ability of raw emotion to feel so much more pornographic than literal nudity.

If you're really living...I mean pursuing meaningful content in your actual life....TV and film so often falls dismally short.

I feel the weight of the divorce. Of the arrests. Of the looming consequences. Of the reality that though I've met an amazing girl, my time here must draw to a close. I wonder how many  more of these I have left in my life.

I know there is some significant pain and transition and hopefully thus growth coming my way in the coming months. I know that I will pass through the eye of the needle and I will be changed. It will be a formative time and fearing it proves futile because it cannot be avoided. I feel anxiety to be sure, and the uncertainty claws at my peace of mind. I've had a good 6 months of relative peace and thus I know what is coming will be a time of real trial and tribulation.

I remember laying in bed with her one night.
She was stressed out about something or the other.
"You seem so unmoved by everything going around you. How do you stay so strong?"
"Practice. Experience is a tough teacher. You learn or you don't. I could freak the fuck out about it, but that would change nothing. Sometimes you can only sit calmly, accept your fate, and be still."
She nuzzled her head somehow deeper into my chest/shoulder, sighed deeply, and pulled herself tighter to me with her little hands and we slept.
--
"Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there yet the lingering images of thousand- fold perils he had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds."