Thursday, July 19, 2007
time out.
i just gave myself a time out. not because i was bad, or even stressed out--you could knock me over with a feather, but i'm really feeling happy-go-lucky this week, just . . . amazingly happy. no real anxiety, although i do sort of have a mental shopping list that never seems to go away. set up rain plan with the photographers. make those flower thingies. wrap the presents for the people.
i wanted, though, to take a minute to write down what seemed so clear this morning when i woke up, and that's that this is a big deal. i hadn't realized it, but i've been subtly downplaying both the wedding and the fact of the getting married. i don't know when it got so important to me to be too cool for school, but this is vaguely familiar, this tendency to belittle something once i'm the center of it. i'm getting married. meh. i mean, i've been excited and all, but always with this eye towards toning it down lest someone find me unacceptably enthusiastic. like i'm worried someone will pop my balloon if i let it get too big.
and the party and the foofery surrounding it is sort of easy to poo-poo. but this thing that is happening, even though it's been five years and we own a home together and have frequent arguments about the laundry, this is still big. it's big enough that we've been doing it for, what? at least a couple of hundred years? something is going to happen to me. i'm not religious, or even really the religious-lite that people call "spiritual," but i do believe in ritual, and i believe that liminal space is precious and (at risk of being mocked) magical, at least as much as anything is. i think changing your circle in the venn diagram is momentous, and the ceremonies and situations we devise to honor the middle part, the passage, the acts those are comprised of make you different. thanks, J.L. Austin. speech act theory is a reason to get married.
it may not be about anything the commercials say it is, but it is a big deal. i feel funny, floaty, like i'm outside my skin a little bit or growing a new one. it's such a tremendous privilege to get to do this, and to have the time to spend thinking it out (even if you had to lock yourself in the den with a tiny glass of wine to do so). the vantage point you have when you're betwixt is so rarely accessible. i'm soaking it up with a sponge.
i wanted, though, to take a minute to write down what seemed so clear this morning when i woke up, and that's that this is a big deal. i hadn't realized it, but i've been subtly downplaying both the wedding and the fact of the getting married. i don't know when it got so important to me to be too cool for school, but this is vaguely familiar, this tendency to belittle something once i'm the center of it. i'm getting married. meh. i mean, i've been excited and all, but always with this eye towards toning it down lest someone find me unacceptably enthusiastic. like i'm worried someone will pop my balloon if i let it get too big.
and the party and the foofery surrounding it is sort of easy to poo-poo. but this thing that is happening, even though it's been five years and we own a home together and have frequent arguments about the laundry, this is still big. it's big enough that we've been doing it for, what? at least a couple of hundred years? something is going to happen to me. i'm not religious, or even really the religious-lite that people call "spiritual," but i do believe in ritual, and i believe that liminal space is precious and (at risk of being mocked) magical, at least as much as anything is. i think changing your circle in the venn diagram is momentous, and the ceremonies and situations we devise to honor the middle part, the passage, the acts those are comprised of make you different. thanks, J.L. Austin. speech act theory is a reason to get married.
it may not be about anything the commercials say it is, but it is a big deal. i feel funny, floaty, like i'm outside my skin a little bit or growing a new one. it's such a tremendous privilege to get to do this, and to have the time to spend thinking it out (even if you had to lock yourself in the den with a tiny glass of wine to do so). the vantage point you have when you're betwixt is so rarely accessible. i'm soaking it up with a sponge.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
overwhelm.
there's a lot to do.
some of it fun, some of it not; times when fun is ascendant and excitement feels all fermenty on my insides, but also some stretches where i cannot believe i signed on for this. the Important Party Planning, not the lifetime union, not the legal tattoo. i was believing that someone who likes art projects and dinner parties and opening nights might completely grok on wedding planning; that was a little pollyanna. there have been tears. worse, there has been extraordinary apathy.
however, now that he's back and we're getting within view of the good stuff, happiness is starting to assert itself. something big is going down in a little while, something that cannot be confined within a human day is being crucibled into a sunday evening on a big boat. at a friend's wedding last weekend i realized sort of freshly that it's an impossible day, that for it to mean all the things we take it to mean, stuffing it inside a single evening makes a sort of ludicrous bursting puppet out of the event. and still, ludicrosity and all, it all slows down to calm and quiet (or seems to, even at this wedding last week where there was a fair amount of Jesus/God, misattributed shakespeare and singers from disney cruise ships) for the part when the promises get made. and then zips right up to champagne speed again while the disco roars and the shoes come off.
we're about to take off. i hope it's not too blurry a blur. i dreamed again that we forgot the rings, and also the little bells i bought for people to ring when we kiss. then last night i dreamed i belonged to a battlestar galactica-like band of fugitives who were being chased by some cylon-like oppressors. hmm.
some of it fun, some of it not; times when fun is ascendant and excitement feels all fermenty on my insides, but also some stretches where i cannot believe i signed on for this. the Important Party Planning, not the lifetime union, not the legal tattoo. i was believing that someone who likes art projects and dinner parties and opening nights might completely grok on wedding planning; that was a little pollyanna. there have been tears. worse, there has been extraordinary apathy.
however, now that he's back and we're getting within view of the good stuff, happiness is starting to assert itself. something big is going down in a little while, something that cannot be confined within a human day is being crucibled into a sunday evening on a big boat. at a friend's wedding last weekend i realized sort of freshly that it's an impossible day, that for it to mean all the things we take it to mean, stuffing it inside a single evening makes a sort of ludicrous bursting puppet out of the event. and still, ludicrosity and all, it all slows down to calm and quiet (or seems to, even at this wedding last week where there was a fair amount of Jesus/God, misattributed shakespeare and singers from disney cruise ships) for the part when the promises get made. and then zips right up to champagne speed again while the disco roars and the shoes come off.
we're about to take off. i hope it's not too blurry a blur. i dreamed again that we forgot the rings, and also the little bells i bought for people to ring when we kiss. then last night i dreamed i belonged to a battlestar galactica-like band of fugitives who were being chased by some cylon-like oppressors. hmm.
