Alexander Stuart

Zerkalo/Mirror , director Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975. And so back to Andrei Tarkovsky’s magnificent Zerkalo (Mirror) , perhaps the most haunting film of my life.  Moments from it are vivid to me in a way that has nothing to do with entertainment. It is the closest I have ever seen film come to poetry, and of course it features the beautiful rhythms in Russian of Tarkovsky’s father’s poems ( Arseny Tarkovsky , an important poet). A film to be watched repeatedly, to remind you of the richness, beauty, decay and mystery of life.  Right now it makes me think of glorious summer nights, and of bacteria and fungi, our intertwined neighbors on this planet. And, of course, of plaster falling from a ceiling. Or a bottle rolling across a table. My single favorite moment comes when a great wind blows across a field of tall grass or wheat, as a woman,  Maria ( Margarita Terekhova , who in effect plays Tarkovsky's mother, since the film is autobiogra

A taste of natural perfection... Majahuitas Eco Resort near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. This extract from the Preggie app's blog, Women On The Verge , is - allowing for un poquito de artistic license - the tale of how Charong and I found out we were having a baby. I am the husband, reluctant to remove the monstrous spider-crab! EMBARAZADA I found out I was pregnant at my best friend’s Mexican wedding. We were in the middle of nowhere, at Majahuitas, an eco-hotel on a cove in a Mexican rainforest that you could only reach by a 45-minute boat trip from Puerto Vallarta. There was no power, no phones, no wifi, no glass in the cabana windows, just crashing waves, rustling palm fronds, the warmth of the ocean breeze – and some sort of freakish, mud-colored spider-crab snapping its monstrous claws on the mosquito netting above our four-poster bed, a creature my husband insisted the hotel staff should be instructed to remove. I’d felt strange on the flight from Los A

From Andrei Tarkovsky's extraordinary film, Zerkalo (Mirror) . A deep wish this morning that I could not so much freeze as indefinitely stretch time and enjoy this moment forever. I love my family so much, and the early morning is filled with that soft promise of summer: birds singing, gentle ambient sounds, waves breaking on the beach, a feeling in my life that there have been other moments like this, full of promise, and that the promise itself is the beauty of the moment, not the actuality of anything promised. Our time here is so sp ecial. It feels limitless sometimes, but at others one senses a connecting web, the fact that particular moments resonate differently and perhaps are a clue to something greater. I remember a particular moment on a summer's afternoon at Shepperton Studios long ago so distinctly. I was alone, and nothing of any particular significance was happening. I was just aware of summer and of fields nearby and a sense of promise

Charong with Michelle, Faris and Tim.  P hotograph Copyright  ©  2015 A lexander Chow-Stuart. My wife, Charong Chow, with our friends, Michelle First, Faris Badwan of The Horrors, and Tim Burgess of The Charlatans, in Hollywood.