Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
The Commitment Ceremony of Michael and Ernie was a thing of Joy and Beauty and Love.
The Wedding of Steven and Sandra was a thing of Joy and Beauty and Love.
It is difficult, even some days removed from the events, to process them separately, much less as two ceremonies of the same universal Love Concept. The sensation spread across all five avenues of personal perception and adhered to the outer shell of my memory, so close to my field of inner vision that it cannot be viewed in its entirety all at once.
It was like swimming in something warm and impossibly radiant; like floating in the rivers of impressionist painters. Songs were sung and poetry was read and hundreds of people looked fantastic. There was spirited and unapologetic celebration to classic wedding staples and there was a blissful absence of Chicken Dancing. The food was delicious. The grooms were about to go mirror nova, a reverse burst of light and energy that does not mean one is dying as stars do, but just being given new life. The bride was breathtaking. It was particularly charming, when the guests tapped their silverware against their glasses to make the newlyweds kiss, Steven would dip his bride back ever so slightly, summoning classic Paramount. One of Michael and Ernie's friends read a passage from The Velveteen Rabbit--in which the Skin Horse explains to the Rabbit what Real Love is--that was perhaps the most perfect wedding reading1, both in terms of content and delivery, that I have ever heard; better than anything from the Bible, better even than anything from Gibran's The Prophet, which I consider to be definitive in its prose poetry on the subject of Romantic Love. People I haven't seen in years, their hair and faces and bodies slightly different but the souls behind their eyes unmistakable. A cat walking through the crowd after Michael and Ernie's vows, as if the true manager of the establishment, as if making sure everybody was doing all right and perhaps hoping for a bite of one of those salmon h'ors doeuvres going around.
Happiness, unadulterated. For these moments, surely, were we created.
All Was, as Bjork might say, Full of Love.
1 It should be noted that both ceremonies featured a reading of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. I swear, if the man were alive today and his work were not public domain, he'd make more money than Grisham, King, and Anne Rice combined.
The Wedding of Steven and Sandra was a thing of Joy and Beauty and Love.
It is difficult, even some days removed from the events, to process them separately, much less as two ceremonies of the same universal Love Concept. The sensation spread across all five avenues of personal perception and adhered to the outer shell of my memory, so close to my field of inner vision that it cannot be viewed in its entirety all at once.
It was like swimming in something warm and impossibly radiant; like floating in the rivers of impressionist painters. Songs were sung and poetry was read and hundreds of people looked fantastic. There was spirited and unapologetic celebration to classic wedding staples and there was a blissful absence of Chicken Dancing. The food was delicious. The grooms were about to go mirror nova, a reverse burst of light and energy that does not mean one is dying as stars do, but just being given new life. The bride was breathtaking. It was particularly charming, when the guests tapped their silverware against their glasses to make the newlyweds kiss, Steven would dip his bride back ever so slightly, summoning classic Paramount. One of Michael and Ernie's friends read a passage from The Velveteen Rabbit--in which the Skin Horse explains to the Rabbit what Real Love is--that was perhaps the most perfect wedding reading1, both in terms of content and delivery, that I have ever heard; better than anything from the Bible, better even than anything from Gibran's The Prophet, which I consider to be definitive in its prose poetry on the subject of Romantic Love. People I haven't seen in years, their hair and faces and bodies slightly different but the souls behind their eyes unmistakable. A cat walking through the crowd after Michael and Ernie's vows, as if the true manager of the establishment, as if making sure everybody was doing all right and perhaps hoping for a bite of one of those salmon h'ors doeuvres going around.
Happiness, unadulterated. For these moments, surely, were we created.
All Was, as Bjork might say, Full of Love.
1 It should be noted that both ceremonies featured a reading of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. I swear, if the man were alive today and his work were not public domain, he'd make more money than Grisham, King, and Anne Rice combined.