They're Mettenbaumed!

Pat and Katie. Katie and P. Met. Kat and Patie.

They That Are Now Baumrinked moved me with the words they choose for their wedding ceremony:

I take you to be no other than yourself…

…
loving what I know of you, trusting what I do not yet know…

…
with respect for your integrity and with faith in your love for me…

…
through all of our years and in all that life may bring us…

…
I offer this ring as a symbol of my love and devotion…

…
Let it always be a reminder of my vows to you.

And then there were the poems:

“Nearing Magdalena”
by Jane Candia Coleman
read by Marisol

We are moving through the open spaces now,
great, gaunt plains scarred by raven’s wings,
mountains, naked as hearts.
We are no one here,
nowhere,
yet we touch carefully
knowing freedom is deceptive as sunlight.

Like shadows we lean towards one another
then away, learning our hungers,
keeping them still
until touch is bearable.
Until you can put out your hand
and I can fold round you
like a glove.

“The Journey”
by David Whyte
read by Tre C

Above the mountains
The geese turn into
the light again

painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving
you are arriving.

“Prayer For A Marriage”
by Steve Scafidi
read by Stoddard

When we are old one night and the moon
arcs over the house like an antique
China saucer and the teacup sun

follows somewhere far behind
I hope the stars deepen to a shine
so bright you could read by it

if you liked and the sadnesses
we will have known go away
for a while—in this hour or two

before sleep—and that we kiss
standing in the kitchen not fighting
gravity so much as embodying

its sweet force, and I hope we kiss
like we do today knowing so much
good is said in this primitive tongue

from the wild first surprising ones
to the lower dizzy ten thousand
infinitely slower ones—and I hope

while we stand there in the kitchen
making tea and kissing, the whistle
of the teapot wakes the neighbors.

It was an honor to bear witness to such beauty.

While we're on the subject, let's all bear witness to this marvel from Pascal's bachelor party:

Dang, but they look fine!

I Miss The Ocean

The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.

- James Joyce

Our shells clacked on the plates, my tongue was a filling estuary. My palate hung with starlight as I tasted the salty Pleiades. Orion dipped his foot into the water. Alive and violated they lay on their beds of ice: bivalves-- the split bulb and philandering sigh of the ocean. Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered. We had driven to that coast through flowers and limestone. And there we were, toasting friendship, laying down a perfect memory in the cool of thatch and crockery. Over the alps, packed deep in hay and snow, the Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome. I saw deep panniers disgorge the frond-lipped, brine-stung glut of privilege, and was angry that my trust could not repose in the clear light, like poetry or freedom leaning in from the sea. I ate the day deliberately, that its tang might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.

- Seamus Heaney

I arrived at the capital, vaguely saturated by fog and rain.

- Pablo Neruda

Matt Burke Is My Friend

Meet Matt Burke. He gives high caliber hugs and his blue eyes crinkle nicely when he smiles. He flies helicopters. He has great taste in women. He was raised as a spy in Warsaw and Berlin. That means, when we are casually hanging out as BFFs, he can do things like figure out if we are getting tailed and then drive offensively to the safety of a well-appointed cave on the Amalfi Coast. That's useful. He also knows how to throw loved ones to the curb and shield them with his body in the event of an explosion. No joke! If he ever saves my life, I plan on saying, "WOW! Strong work, my friend. Strong work."

Chevrolet And The Words, "I Do."

I wish, I wish, I wish I was cool enough to have taken photos of Willy Cunningham's 1991 Chevy 4X4 one-ton crew cab crammed full of sofas (yes, that's plural), countertops, windows, light fixtures, and all manner of other accoutrement as we swayed down I-80... but I wasn't. To give you a sense, it looked a bit like this:


That truck is a champion-- she was doing 70mph with a monstrous load like it weren't no thing. Suffice it to say that Curtis and I took Salt Lake City by storm (so much so that my credit card company suspected foul play).

So now El Coucho resides comfortably in the dining room, Evan's gear resides comfortably in the living room, and I reside comfortably in the seventeen dollar dress I scored at Target for wedding season. Retail therapy is JUST. SO. GOOD.

But back to wedding season...

Chris and Heather's was a moving example of a community coming together to celebrate, love, and support a lifetime commitment. Some of my favorite moments:

1) Carolina looking stunning in a dress. Fact. Carolina wore a dress. And looked stunning. Ximena did a bang up job on production.

2) Mei was in town to take pictures. That alone was enough to make my heart explode with happiness. And she wields a camera like a pair of titanium nunchucks.


(That's Evan doing traffic control in his grandfather's tux pants.)

3) Heather's father. Period. The toasts slayed me.


4) Brad and Katie's slideshow commemorating Chris and Heather's fourteen? sixteen? years together. Holy history!

5) Getting to see Keena again after so many years.

6) The sheer concentration of wonderful people was epic.


On a side note...

Have you gotten a wedding gift yet?

If not, you are cordially invited to join me in buying them a chain saw. Stoddard will be selecting said item of arboreal destruction as I know nothing about the species. Any and all donations are welcome.

The Genius Of Creativity

Giving Bluegrass A Second Chance

I've been living in bluegrass-obsessed communities for awhile now, all up and down the Rocky Mountain corridor. My response to this mania over the past decade has been to dismiss bluegrass out of hand.

This despite the fact that:

1. I love an old man playing a fiddle as much as the next gal.
2. I fancy the moonshine.
3. I have a soft spot for music best played on a porch or stoop.
4. Those are some fine-looking instruments.
5. Bluegrass covers of songs like Gin and Juice make me smile.

Even so, even so. A boycott was clearly in order (ever the reactionary, this one).

Then what happens? I fall in love with a guy who majored in bluegrass in college. MAJORED in the stuff, for heaven's sake! A hairline crack appeared in my defensive fortifications (which Fort Scott has done nothing but exploit, let me add). Life's funny that way.

So it's a Sunday afternoon and I am painting the house and I'M LISTENING TO BLUEGRASS. By myself. And it's hitting the spot.

OK, these songs may not be straight-up bluegrass per se. Maybe they're bluegrass-lite, but I've made it this far and that bolsters my hope that tigers can change their stripes.

1. Catherine McCellan / Take A Break
2. The Avett Brothers / Kick Drum Heart
3. Bearfoot / Time Is No Medicine
4. Carolina Chocolate Drops / Hit 'Em Up Style

Not that I'm saying I'm a tiger. Students on my last course said I was more of a hare.

The Advent Of Fall

IT'S DECORATIVE GOURD SEASON, MOTHERFUCKERS. BY COLIN NISSAN

I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I'm about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it's gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is — fucking fall. There's a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.

I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I'm going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, "Aren't those gourds straining your neck?" And I'm just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, "It's fall, fuckfaces. You're either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you're not."

Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff'rent Strokes — specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this shit just got real, didn't it? Felonies and gourds have one very important commonality: they're both extremely fucking real. Sorry if that's upsetting, but I'm not doing you any favors by shielding you from this anymore.

The next thing I'm going to do is carve one of the longer gourds into a perfect replica of the Mayflower as a shout-out to our Pilgrim forefathers. Then I'm going to do lines of blow off its hull with a hooker. Why? Because it's not summer, it's not winter, and it's not spring. Grab a calendar and pull your fucking heads out of your asses; it's fall, fuckers.

Have you ever been in an Italian deli with salamis hanging from their ceiling? Well then you're going to fucking love my house. Just look where you're walking or you'll get KO'd by the gauntlet of misshapen, zucchini-descendant bastards swinging from above. And when you do, you're going to hear a very loud, very stereotypical Italian laugh coming from me. Consider yourself warned.

For now, all I plan to do is to throw on a flannel shirt, some tattered overalls, and a floppy fucking hat and stand in the middle of a cornfield for a few days. The first crow that tries to land on me is going to get his avian ass bitch-slapped all the way back to summer.

Welcome to autumn, fuckheads!