This song is way intense but on some days I totally get it. (And on the days I don't, I still do.)
Which reminds me... Have you seen Before Midnight yet? Hal and I just finished watching Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight back to back and I woke up this morning feeling like someone just kicked me in the teeth. Because I watched the first one in High School and the second one in my early twenties and now, watching all three together is like being in on the secret you really didn't want to be in on actually at all...
For starters, in the very first scene in the first film there is a couple and they're fighting and the couple is them. I mean, it isn't them but is is.. In the future that couple fighting on the train will be them. And I didn't get that when I was young because I was young.
Meanwhile, back on the train, two strangers roll their eyes at the people they will never become.
"Can you believe these assholes?"
"Can you believe these assholes?"
I used to do that, too. Now I just want to hug the fighting couple and be, like, I hear you.
"Can you believe us assholes?"
Sometimes I can't.
Sometimes I can.
Sometimes I don't know what I believe so I post a photo in my brainstagram of Hal and me in those early months together, before I got pregnant and had to quit smoking, when we were both young and beautiful and tan from a sun we could bathe beneath for days at a time. When our story was in its (very brief) first act.
Don't ever look back.
Fuck that. Sometimes it's the only way to look forward.
I realize Before Midnight was the last film in this trilogy but I would love to see an "After Midnight" about the same (still married?) couple at the end of their lives except instead of these long-winded conversations about how complicated the universe is and whether or not love is something that should be debated, they just... exist together. I feel like there might be a beautiful light at the end of the marital tunnel and it's gray and wrinkled and patient in a way we don't yet understand. I might be wrong, of course, but whenever I feel frustrated in my marriage, I picture Hal and me so old we're almost dead, pale from lack of sunlight, heavy with memories and forgiveness, surrounded by children and grandchildren (and great children?) and pills we have to remind each other to take so we don't die, and it always makes me smile. I have no idea what's coming in the years ahead but in a perfect/imperfect world, THAT is how I want my story to end.
Don't ever look back.
Fuck that. Sometimes it's the only way to look forward.
***
I realize Before Midnight was the last film in this trilogy but I would love to see an "After Midnight" about the same (still married?) couple at the end of their lives except instead of these long-winded conversations about how complicated the universe is and whether or not love is something that should be debated, they just... exist together. I feel like there might be a beautiful light at the end of the marital tunnel and it's gray and wrinkled and patient in a way we don't yet understand. I might be wrong, of course, but whenever I feel frustrated in my marriage, I picture Hal and me so old we're almost dead, pale from lack of sunlight, heavy with memories and forgiveness, surrounded by children and grandchildren (and great children?) and pills we have to remind each other to take so we don't die, and it always makes me smile. I have no idea what's coming in the years ahead but in a perfect/imperfect world, THAT is how I want my story to end.
***
Song for Zula by: Phosphorescent
GGC
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