I watched A SINGLE MAN in bed with my pregnant partner, in our studio apartment the other night. She's 18 weeks in the making, and feeling her feelings. Sometimes when I lay next to her, or spend the day with her, my senses are heightened too. As if I have a closer relationship to nature vis-a-vis her energy. Late in the film, when the protagonist, (Colin Firth's character), quotes Aldous Huxley on experience, ("experience is not what happens to a man, it's what he does with what happens to him)," I get the feeling I never understood the meaning of experience. Like I'm starting over, and learning things for the first time.
Feeling and seeing everything differently—relationships, beauty, existence, etc.
I was moved by Tom Ford's movie. Albeit superficial, glamorous and homo-erotic, but most of all, a powerful love story. I was intrigued by how it conveyed a love relation from a romantic man's perspective, one who is battling with his notion of what life should be vs. what is actually presenting itself. Among other messages, a theme of acceptance and appreciation for the little moments in life. Like gaining awareness while laying next to your lover watching a movie.
Recently a friend who's wife is 7 months into a pregnancy, said they were mourning their relationship together, because it will never be the same once the baby arrives.
Another friend, an older man and a father of three, sent me "a thought for today," in an email. It was a quote from Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine.
"When we stop trying to force pleasant feelings,
They are freer to emerge on their own.
When we stop trying to resist unpleasant feelings,
We may find that they can drift away by themselves.
When we stop trying to make something happen,
A whole world of fresh and unanticipated
Experiences may become accessible to us."
