biutiful

the pulse of this movie is so much slower than what is shown in the trailer… it’s a death pulse, fading and returning, fading, every moment in between growing longer… a heart beating just fast enough to be alive.

i watched the movie biutiful and since then, i have been asking people if they’ve seen it, gauging, i think, how well they still relate to me. biutiful strikes me as One Important Movie and because of it, i’ve come to feel that if a person is to continue being considered close to me, if they actually claim to know me, and feel me at all, but they didn’t like the movie, were not moved by it, or, horror of all horrors/nail on the cross, if they say they saw it and hated it, then, shit, they might as well be dead to me.

and i guess i don’t mean it literally, but on some level, even if we’ve always agreed on everything in the past, or pleasantly disagreed but remained friends, that was then, this is now. this is different. it’s true–movies can separate people¹. watching javier bardem move through that world–a sick man, compassionate soul, devoted father, human–helping ease spirits and calm the living… watching the way he felt and handled the spirit of the dead for the living, i thought constantly of my father, while i sat alone, in a near empty dark monday matinee.

i didn’t see my father how uxbal saw them, but i wondered what he would tell me if i could. what i’d hear, and feel, and know, without doubt. what if that day i arrived down south, when i viewed his body, walking slowly around the gurney, what if i saw him sitting to the side of his body, looking at me, tired, breathing his last breaths… swollen with heart troubles (mainly a broken heart), exhausted from carrying all that weight…what if, in that state, he barely uttered a sound, and i was able to hear him loud and clear/his final/eternal thoughts. what if…my father, my father, my father…

what would he say to me, what is he telling me from the other side? why do i keep looking to hear? though my curiosity has expanded recently, i’ve always been curious about communication with ancestors and non-ancestors, somehow, never fully ruling out the possibilities and complications of their existence. perhaps i’ve been touched just lightly enough to know…

now, finally, this happens: i loved and lost. i thought i was an adult prior to all this, but in the moment i learned of my father’s transition, i aged years in metaphors and understanding… something quickened, and deepened, and i became a different level of me.

i cannot fathom losing someone violently or traumatically–this was intensity enough for a whole lifetime. and yet, miraculously (and sometimes, tragically) people go on, the loved ones of victims… the survivors being those who permanently carry the pain and never forget the moments that created and led up to such untimely ends. fates. too hard for me to swallow…

but i digress.

i think my father, like many others before him, chose jesus just to be on the safe side… i imagine him striking some kind of spiritual deal–just in case you can protect my soul, i will claim you as my savior. am i mistaken? is this wrong to suggest? how can i know his heart? well, i’m only speculating. but i watched him all my life. his pragmatism and hard-earned complicity in doling out dismal facts of our shared history and reality settle the question of faith for me. for he taught me about faith with his words, but he educated me on belief with his actions. just as my dear friend maxime wrote me last night², life is about choosing. life is dictated by choices we make. there is always…a choice. he chose jesus. regardless of what i believe, i do hope, that while he laid dying, on the floor of that hospital room, jesus was by his side³.

regardless of jesus, and his ability to provide salvation if heaven or something like it exists, i choose to believe in the possibility that some people are gifted, endowed, or cursed with the ability to communicate with those who are no longer physically with us (if ever they really were).

i believe there are people who both aid us in getting safely to the other side, and those who also have an ability to bring back reports of what is being said and thought over yonder, in the beyond. in biutiful, uxbal did both. wikipedia called him “a spiritual sensitive,” a term i’ve never heard before, but can wholly appreciate. it makes it so simple. he was sensitive enough to be receptive.

there are those of us who can hear and see much easier than others. and there are those who help us look into the future while still remembering our pasts. do i want to be one of them? maybe i already am. i don’t know. the one thing that’s certain is if my father has something to say, i want to hear it. and yet, i wonder if my spirit hunger is just a heavy coat cloaked over my literalism. maybe he speaks now, as we, the living, translate all the lessons and anecdotes and instances of my father imparting wisdom and being memorable. now, i can speak to so many, freely, about what he did, and who he was, and what he meant to whomever is willing to share. we all freely say what he would have wanted, how he must have felt, what has been made clear about his intentions, but while he was living, we never spoke openly on his behalf beyond my immediate family⁴.

my reality continues to be constructed my own mysticism. and that’s a biutiful thing…