Social Curettage

Marriage Relief?

Last Saturday, Sparky’s sister married her long-time beau…

The weather was warm and the sun was out and the only minor inconvenience was the wind.

There were a couple major inconveniences, though…  The big one being that ill-timed health issues kept the groom’s father from attending the wedding.  Happily, the venue had a web cam set up, so he could view and hopefully hear the service.  Score one for modern technology!

Though I thought about the lack of the man (who I haven’t met) a lot during the ceremony and reception.  Having already lost one parent and not being especially close to the remaining, I want everyone to have and do everything with their parents.  I might even push people into closer relationships with their family than they want because I don’t want anyone to have to endure what I do.  (Not that my familial life is completely miserable; I tend to be pretty close to my siblings, and the closer relationship with my godparents and their kids has been soul-saving.)

The other major inconvenience was not easily overcome by handy modern technology.  There was a distinct lack of an officiant during the rehearsal.  And no real wedding service other than the couples’ vows.  Amy, the coordinator at the Dove House, was more than kind to give the couple a quick walk through of an average wedding service.  Take into account that in Colorado, one may perform their own marriage as well as be married by proxy, so the law was on the side of the couple…  Who truly needs an officiant?

You can assume I offered the little help I could.  I’m that kind of girl.  And well…  When/If I get married, I suspect I’ll be a sobbing mess only able to focus on the ground in front of me.  (I’ll need an officiant.)  The bride, being the stoic and classy lady she is, held off on accepting my offer to perform (or more m.c.) the ceremony until I left the rehearsal dinner table to go pee.  Imagine coming into a room after emptying your bladder only to find it refilled from nervousness.

There are a few steps missing in here.  Namely, the frantic rush through the city to find an acceptable long dress that matched my shoes I purchased to match the cute mini-dress I’d planned on wearing and to recover my book of weddings.  In case you were wondering, the dress was found at File-n-Style; I’d had a manicure there earlier in the morning and remembered admiring their dresses while my nails were drying.

After dinner, Sparky and I retired to a mattress on the floor of his mother’s sewing room.  I passed out and was roused only at 5:30 a.m. when a nightmare drove me from sleep.  It was a great nightmare:  it was very early the morning of the wedding and I still had to write the service, but this was to be no regular service; I had to write a full length Broadway musical before the wedding at 11 a.m.  It took a minute to disentangle reality from that dream; I still had a wedding service to write when I woke.

If you know me, you know the series of vomiting noises and whining that came from being willingly forced to write about love.  And on top of that, I made sure that Sparky knew I wasn’t to reuse another wedding, so I couldn’t cheat.  Luckily, I had the bride and groom email me their vows, so I wouldn’t be caught flat-footed at their love-filled words.  Honestly, writing the ceremony was easy.  Granted, I didn’t write much, but I looked up my favorite Elizabeth Barrett Browning quote and went from there:

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.

I had/have no doubt of the depth of love between Rachael and Mike, the bride and groom.  And I believe this quote paralleled what their vows said.

There were a couple good giggles during the service because where’s the fun in a completely serious service?  One highlight being when Mike said, “I, Rachael, take you, Mike…. *groan*”  (He recovered well.)

My personal highlight is also my personal shame.  And please take into account that I was writing at 5:30 a.m.–an hour I like to think only comes once in a day.  After asking the audience to take their seats, I looked at my book and promptly read, “We are hear today…”  It took everything in my power not to stop the service there and then audibly lecture myself on the bad grammar I employed.  Because I would do that and then completely go off-track and leave the wedding in my dust while I ranted about how easy it is to shut off that part of my brain now that our cultural standards for grammar seem to have fallen to levels that barely make the English language look like a language and not a near vowel-less grunting and pointing.

I mean…  English is an amazing language.  Like our nation, it is made up of the words of other languages and words that never existed before.  It is a live and evolving thing.  Language is not cemented into a finite set of rules.  Look at how many times we’ve adapted “cool” and made verbs out of nouns…  Just think about “google”.  The word, not the armless bird Webkinz thing…

A Fish-eyed Manhattan

So… New York…

My last entry might have been a bit quick and vague and lacking any sort of story, but in my defense, I was only thinking about posting something and not about its quality…

I’ll admit that was a bad plan. So bad that I didn’t even post the link to Twitter or facebook; only those who read my blog with regularity will have known it was there… And for those who didn’t, I leave it up, so you can see what I’m talking about.

In all honesty, I never wanted to go to Los Angeles. That destination always existed pretty low on my Places to Visit list. My mother had carefully placed that fear in me as a child; and when we drove through California in 1990, she took a detour that cast us several leagues from the unnavigable L.A. A little over ten years later, my sister moved to L.A. and the city started to gain some allure for me. (Granted, my sister is about half my size and twice as adorable as me, so I’m sure her L.A. experience will always differ from mine.)

New York has always had that allure. I’ll blame The Muppets Take Manhattan for romanticizing the city for me. And also my godfather’s stories of sailing into the harbor and seeing the Statue of Liberty as an immigrant. New York was closer. New York was doable. New York was a place my nearly absent father had been. New York was undeniably magical. New York had more character than my Northern Michigan small town.

Since childhood, I’ve planned on growing old in a small town. But my parents impressed upon me the importance of travel and culture. They also gave me their itchy feet—the impairing madness that comes from not traveling every six months or so. Road trips are always good and there’s something rejuvenating about sleeping in one’s car (not that I have one anymore), but travel centers me. Like in a hospital, I feel at home in an airport or train station.

Though, I wouldn’t like to live in one; I’ve a penchant for beds.

So why after visiting both of America’s “Capitals on the Coasts”, do I prefer Los Angeles? Perhaps I had too many expectations of New York? New York was supposed to be approachable, but even though I made my own schedule (for the most part), I felt like I was walking the same paths a million and one tourists had walked the day before. At Rockefeller Center, I was shuffled along a predetermined path until I was pretty much exiting through the gift shop.

Los Angeles didn’t have the same predetermined feel. But I’m having a hard time nailing down the rest of the differences.

In both cases, I was lucky enough to travel with a local. And in both cases, I was enough of a mooch to weasel my way into a private residence to sleep. And the majority of the meals in both locations were awesome. (I say majority because I might’ve stopped for Taco Bell in L.A.)

New York just seemed more claustrophobic. Or like she was clinging onto an idea of what she once was in the light of 9/11 and the role she is supposed to play in our continuing war on terror while maintaining a liberated and open-minded tossed salad of cultures feel. New York didn’t stand up and yell, “I’m here! This is me!”, while I was there; she sort of whimpered at my feet and asked me not to point out the fissures in her facade.

Because children everywhere must continue to see New York as a fairytale locale. Eloise will always live at the Plaza, adjusting thermometers. Even adults have their New York fairytales to comfort them; think of An Affair to Remember and its revivals by Warren Beatty, Annette Benning, Tom Hanks, and Meg Ryan.

Edward Abbey wrote in Desert Solitaire that we need wilderness… Even if we never go to the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, to function as full human beings, we need to know that such a place exists. It provides the idea of escape, of a change of scenery; it reminds us that there is always some place else to be.

I might argue that cities provide the same sort of comfort. We don’t have to go there to know they exist and it might be best that we don’t, in order to keep our childish visions of such places whole and undamaged. But we, who love and live in the woods, need to know and appreciate the other places people choose to live in.

Every year for my birthday, I try to take a trip.  For no reason other than I like to get away from my birthday.  Bad things have consistently happened to me on my birthday to make me a bit wary of being where Santa can find me on that day.

For the last couple years, I traveled to Kalamazoo, Michigan.  And spent the weekend with a group of middle-aged computer nerds.  They were friends of my last serious boyfriend and even for the year after our break-up, I took an overnight train to Kalamazoo to hang with the boys.  They allowed me to enjoy my birthday for the first time in a long time.

This year, I splurged and flew out to New York to Teresa Jusino and Adam Hunault and Ruth Koelewyn and a couple other friends who don’t have fancy websites I can link…  And after breathing deeply once I saw water, the plane landed; I was overwhelmed by the city.  The vastness of it.  My inability to navigate more than a few blocks away from the house my friends live in.  The many layers of people packed on top of each other.  The lack of the parks I have come to see as “normal” in Denver.

I had never been to New York City before.  It was a place I dreamed about, thought maybe I could live there…  But any city that makes Denver look quaint isn’t for me.  Honestly, I found Los Angeles to be more my speed than New York.  I’ll blame a relaxed nature, a Midwestern small town upbringing, and the being that is Denver (and how, despite my distaste, she has come to lay on top of me).

I believe I can sum up the entire experience in one short story:  Saturday, we went to Central Park.  It was nice out and I was remarking on all the different movies I remembered having scenes in the infamous location.  And then I realised I had to go to the bathroom.  We wandered to the gift shop.  Closed.  Then we walked (me a little faster than the rest) by the baseball fields being showered in pollen and seeds in the late afternoon sunshine–a pretty picture if I wasn’t doing the pee-pee dance like a two year old.  When we made it to the bathroom, we were greeted with this: The people on the far side of the columns were waiting for the loos on the other side.  This was amazing.  My entire trip to Central Park was waiting in this line.

Other than that…  There was the food…  Oh…  God…  The food…  We waited 90 minutes for a table at Risotteria.  And it was totally worth it…  Until one of the waiters (not ours) rushed us to pay our bill while we were chatting over our dessert.  I must learn how to make risotto.  Banana pudding from Magnolia Bakery is the best thing I’ve put in my mouth in a long time while their cake was “Meh.”  I spent the entire weekend full.  And Buddha-belly happy.

I saw FAO Schwartz, Washington Square, the MoMA (for Tim Burton), the subway, the Natural History Museum (where I took a great nap), and Astoria.  One might say what I didn’t see what more important, but I have no problem leaving the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and Times Square for some next visit.  I sang karaoke ’til 3am at The Albatross Bar for Pete’s sake!  I wasn’t on the tourist’s itinerary this weekend.  I was on my own.

When I returned from the city, I was happy for this altitude, for this city, for the chance to curl up with Sparky.

What I wasn’t happy for was the complete and utter mess that was my friendship with my best friend, Alex Mehn.  I had to move out of our apartment on my birthday…  And there wasn’t even cake.  But that’s more story for another time…

The moral of this story:  New York City isn’t for me.  If life arranged for me to land there, I’d last six months…  Water view or not…  Carrie Bradshaw, I am not.  I like not having to wait 30 minutes for a loo.

Ohana means family...

My little brother is getting married in October to the mother of his children.

And I’m performing the ceremony.

Thing is…  When I do a wedding, I write the service for that particular couple.  No two weddings, in my world, are exactly alike because no two engaged couples are exactly alike.  So I disapprove of cookie-cutter weddings.

Write your own vows.  Find a quote you want used in your service and I can work the entire service around it.  Be involved in what might be the most important creative writing project in your adult life.

In regards to my little brother and his fiancée, they’ve given me free reign.

I suppose I should look to this as a gift, but I don’t.

Love makes me itchy.  Commitment causes nausea.  And the idea of marriage (not of a wedding) gives me a full on panic attack…  You can see evidence of this on my facebook page, which lacks a relationship status.

On April Fool’s Day, my roommate and I changed our facebook statuses from single to engaged.  Needless to say, my family flipped out; I received a lot of congratulations.  But it was my friend Tim that put it best:  “You’re the anti-commitment queen.  I don’t believe you.”

And Tim would be right.  Not that I have a problem with people committing to each other.  My problem is with my commitment to people/things/places.  This lack of commitment isn’t a phobia, really.  More a distaste and fear of committing (Aahahahahaha…) the same errors my parents did…  So I do what any relatively emotionally withdrawn person would do when things get involved, I put up a wall.

It’s a fairly sturdy and well-constructed beast.  It has beaten several men.  Bloodied their emotions on its bricks, y’know?  And it is unforgiving.  Doesn’t care who it blocks out as long as I’m kept relatively safe.  By relatively, I mean that it is like water beneath the earth—filtering slowly through…  Everything eventually gets to me.  It took me years to hate the man whose child I carried.  And it took me years (after our break-up) to realize how much I care(d) for a particular boyfriend.

That particular boyfriend laughed when he found out I was legally able to perform weddings.  “But you don’t believe in love,” he said.

Thing is…  I do believe in love.  I have every little girl desire to be swept off my feet.  To be wooed to the point of no return.  To be loved.  Beyond and for all of my shortcomings and faults and (the few) good things I have going.

So when it comes to writing wedding ceremonies, I have to gather up all those (few) gooey feelings I possess and write something gooier and more amazing.  That has continuity and covers the main points of a ceremony: vows, candles, homily, rings, kiss, and all that other lovey-dovey bull that forces me to make gagging noises throughout the entire writing process.

Ask anyone about the many drafts of the love poem my sister asked me to write for her wedding last July.

I died a little inside.  Though I gained inspiration from Meadowlands, a book of poems by Louise Gluck about a marriage going down the drain.

For my brother’s wedding?  I’m using Lilo & Stitch.  More specifically the repeated line about family…  “Ohana means family.  And family means no one gets left behind.”

Stay tuned for how exactly a little blue alien brings about a wedding.

Hmm.... Yuck, dog germs?

Olfactory Fun

There are many things I’d like not to face when I’m naked.  Mainly, the cellulite that seems to be firmly attached to my ass and thighs as well as my slightly expanding abdomen.  But the number of women I know who are comfortable being naked is small; and I’ve strange issues with my nudity ever since the fall of 2005 when I had a greater number of medical professionals poking and prodding my scantily clad body than those who (before and after) have Biblical knowledge of my lumpy bits.

Continuing on…

Another thing I’d like not to be accosted with while naked is the scent of an ex-boyfriend.

As odd as you might think I am, I have a penchant for remembering scents.  Of people.  And of places.  It is said (perhaps proven) that women remember scents more than men, and in my freshman psychology lecture, we demonstrated that.

An olfactory stimulus floods me with memories faster than sitting down and just thinking about stuff.  The scent of an electric stovetop reminds me of nearly every spring day of my childhood when my mother would make herself a fried bologna sandwich.  My sister has the same association, but my brother does not.

So when I walked into my bathroom and inhaled a familiar mixture of deodorant, shampoo, and freshly washed man flesh, my mind went to work on figuring the puzzle out.  I’m not proud, but it took days.  It wasn’t until I’d given up any level of décor and just started shoving the shower curtain at my nostrils that I was able to say (aloud, actually) “It’s Jeff*!  My bathroom smells like Jeff*!”

My roommate thinks I’m crazy.

A couple years ago, I tried describing Jeff’s particular aroma and after several attempts, I nailed it down as sugared laundry.  That phrase describes Jeff dressed, though.  Freshly showered Jeff smells like those formerly mentioned items as well as if he rubbed old books over his skin as a moisturizer.  If it’s not saying too much, I loved the way Jeff smelled:  just showered or not.

After discovering who my shower smelled like, I set to figure out how.  The shampoo and conditioner Jeff used aren’t in the shower nor are the ones I used while we dated.  Lex, my roommate, uses different deodorant while I don’t use any.  Even the toothpaste and cleaners are different.

What is the likelihood that our combined scents (both personal and toiletry) equal Jeff’s freshly washed library skin?  Or perhaps some aspect of Jeff is haunting me?

Not a bad thing.  I don’t have a single ill word for Jeff, and I wish that he would haunt me, if only to grant an explanation as to why I smell him several states and years after our last break-up.

Thing is…  This isn’t the first time I’ve smelled Jeff.  Last spring, his scent (the sugared laundry) took up residence in my sister’s stairway and didn’t dissipate until after my birthday.  Yesterday, on the bus, his aroma walked by me and took up the seat across the aisle.

At times, his scent pops up when I need to be pushed or motivated to do something more than wallow in whatever pit I’ve created for myself.  Other times, it’s like a celebratory whiff—like when I finish a new poem, an artistic endeavor neither of us is truly convinced of.  Sometimes it’s waiting on my pillows like the mornings I used to crawl into bed after working third shift at the Fleetwood diner:  my scent of bacon grease melting into his.

Why does this scent comfort me so much?

It’s been five years since we last tried to see if we could make it.  And his scent comes to me so much easier than my mother’s, who left me five years ago as well.  While I can remember my mother’s, it requires a lot of thought and then it comes trickling back like a ghost at a séance and is easily frightened away.  My mother also stopped smoking in the year before she died, so my mind can’t reconcile what she smelled like at the end with the years of cigarette stained perfume it had come to recognize.

My current boyfriend smells like muddy wintergreen.  It took me four months to write a poem expressing this scent—a simple poem, really; I’m kind of embarrassed by it.  But in recent weeks, his scent has become overbearing; it cancels out nearly everything in the room except for Lex’s cooking and the miasma of Jeff in the shower.  It’s not nearly medicinal, but like a strange cloaking device for the scent of biking mountain man that hides in his armpits…

Wow…  I think I took that too far.  Biking mountain man?

What part of the mind processes scents into memories?  This question leads to the larger question of the true nature and function of our memory.  It’s more than magical (to me) when I can sing every lyric to a song I’ve not heard in more than a decade.  Does anyone else get sidetracked by how amazing it is that we (theoretically) remember more than Pavlov’s dogs?  That we learn and drink in this world until we’re accosted with an ex’s scent in a room that doesn’t contain the ex and most likely never will?

Once I started calling myself a writer, I found that people meant that I had a large vocabulary and a gift for words.  Truth is I stumble as much as the next person while looking through my small vocabulary for the best word in a conversation.  While writing, there’s no need to be hasty and quick with the right word immediately—that’s what revision is for.

(Some might think that I set out with a goal in mind when I do a blog, but really, I just wanted to tell someone that my bathroom smells like them and my brief issues with my personal nudity.)

Recently, I’ve found myself playing with point of view and memory in my poems.  I blame all the historical fiction I’ve been reading and how it seamlessly rolls from character to character while trying to tell facts that cannot be loosely relayed.  If you know me, you know that most of my poems and blogs and whatnot are biographical.

I had a coworker ask me why I try to write fiction when my life has so much weird shit in it.

So I’m writing biographically and I’m trying not to feel bad about it.  The world is great and vast and I am only one sad example of a person trying to cast a glimpse at it.  It’s sort of like peek-a-boo with a toddler who has autism while coming to grips with your own dislike of eye contact.

Which is probably why I find smells so much more comforting than sights.  Why I hope that Jeff’s scent will stick around the bathtub for a few more weeks.  Or perhaps come to settle in the living room with Lex’s bad cooking…

Jeff*:  Name has been changed to protect the identity of who my bathroom really smells like per a promise made several years ago.

Better than Inhalants?