caleb's wedding/why i take pictures and write
so now i have to say a few words about the wedding i went to yesterday.
my friend caleb got married. honest and for real, he's way way way at the top of my all-time favorite people in the world. i find it hard to express how happy it made me to see him so happy yesterday, surrounded by friends and love, starting a new part of his life. the five or ten minutes i actually got to talk to him alone were worth the seven hours i spent in the car and huge sleep deprivation and hail storm on the way home.
i don't know how the ceremony could possibly have been better. it fit diane (from what i know of her) and caleb perfectly. it was very focused on God always coming first (best wedding music i've ever heard, as far as that goes. one song was called "only God could love you more"). the message was given by dan, the main program guy at camp, and it was laugh out loud funny and right on target content. he said a mistruth people get a lot at weddings is that it's a 50-50 deal. no, he said. it's 100-100. he said people tell you you have to remember, it's give and take. no, dan told them. it's give and give. good stuff.
lots of camp people there. about four pews worth. now that i'm two years out, it's interesting to see how the dust of those relationships is settling. at camp, everyone is your best friend, everyone is excited to see you, makes a big deal over you, makes you feel like the coolest person ever. at least to some extent. it's hard but good for me now to come back to earth and see that not everyone is out of their mind excited to see me. i definetly have too much of a tendency to feel like i want everyone to love me best. i got away from that in high school when it was so evident that that was impossible, but that was an easy thought-pattern to fall into at camp. anyway, caleb looked genuinely thrilled that i was there, which was what mattered most. and jack, surprisingly, seemed thrilled to see me and we talked for quite a while (i'm really glad he was there--and he was a groomsman, of course).
by the time the dance came around, i was feeling exceptionally mellow, which really highlighted my sense of alienation from my old friends. i'm usually one of the ones out there busting a move during every song. that night, i just felt like watching. i felt old and changed, but very happy still. i sat in the back, in the dark, for a while, scribbling notes into my notebook i carry around with me. i sat, wondering about how china would change me, and how much i should let it change me, how much i should let go of when i go there. when sarah and dana went to tanzania, they came back changed physically. they each got malaria once or twice, and that never leaves your system. also, when they climbed mt. kilimanjaro, it was so tough that still on cold days, sarah's lungs feel bad, and they never did before. will i come back physically different? or will the change be more internal, but just as lasting? how much of my life right now could i let myself let go of?
i felt bad not dancing, cause keith was doing the music, turntables and all.
he was really amazingly good, i thought. i loved all the music he played. he asked me before i left what i thought. "great," i said. "really. great." i think i got him to say he'd make me a cd for china, but he's sad, cause he'd rather make a tape so he can do actual mixing instead of just picking a playlist. he's doing his stuff again this weekend for a three-day-long party jack's having. i told jack i'd come saturday morning for a while, before leaving for sarah's.
life is so insane. friendships are always changing when i'm not looking--growing or shrinking. i really value my friends who seem the same, even if i haven't seen them in a few years. maybe that's why i'm so obsessed with writing about events in my life, and taking pictures to document things. then, no matter what someone's like next time, whether they snub me or hug me like they've never hugged me bofore, i still have the consistency of my memories. when i don't write things down, they shift and change on me. i don't remember being quite that into that one guy, or not liking that one girl. but when i write it down, it's there, and there's a ground under my feet. i remember wearing that that day, standing next to him. i remember the joke he told and where we went next. i remember feeling that angry, thinking she meant this, when it turned out she meant that. even if we're not friends now, we were always friends then. i have proof. i've written down how loved i felt, so it can't evaporate.
my friend caleb got married. honest and for real, he's way way way at the top of my all-time favorite people in the world. i find it hard to express how happy it made me to see him so happy yesterday, surrounded by friends and love, starting a new part of his life. the five or ten minutes i actually got to talk to him alone were worth the seven hours i spent in the car and huge sleep deprivation and hail storm on the way home.
i don't know how the ceremony could possibly have been better. it fit diane (from what i know of her) and caleb perfectly. it was very focused on God always coming first (best wedding music i've ever heard, as far as that goes. one song was called "only God could love you more"). the message was given by dan, the main program guy at camp, and it was laugh out loud funny and right on target content. he said a mistruth people get a lot at weddings is that it's a 50-50 deal. no, he said. it's 100-100. he said people tell you you have to remember, it's give and take. no, dan told them. it's give and give. good stuff.
lots of camp people there. about four pews worth. now that i'm two years out, it's interesting to see how the dust of those relationships is settling. at camp, everyone is your best friend, everyone is excited to see you, makes a big deal over you, makes you feel like the coolest person ever. at least to some extent. it's hard but good for me now to come back to earth and see that not everyone is out of their mind excited to see me. i definetly have too much of a tendency to feel like i want everyone to love me best. i got away from that in high school when it was so evident that that was impossible, but that was an easy thought-pattern to fall into at camp. anyway, caleb looked genuinely thrilled that i was there, which was what mattered most. and jack, surprisingly, seemed thrilled to see me and we talked for quite a while (i'm really glad he was there--and he was a groomsman, of course).
by the time the dance came around, i was feeling exceptionally mellow, which really highlighted my sense of alienation from my old friends. i'm usually one of the ones out there busting a move during every song. that night, i just felt like watching. i felt old and changed, but very happy still. i sat in the back, in the dark, for a while, scribbling notes into my notebook i carry around with me. i sat, wondering about how china would change me, and how much i should let it change me, how much i should let go of when i go there. when sarah and dana went to tanzania, they came back changed physically. they each got malaria once or twice, and that never leaves your system. also, when they climbed mt. kilimanjaro, it was so tough that still on cold days, sarah's lungs feel bad, and they never did before. will i come back physically different? or will the change be more internal, but just as lasting? how much of my life right now could i let myself let go of?
i felt bad not dancing, cause keith was doing the music, turntables and all.
he was really amazingly good, i thought. i loved all the music he played. he asked me before i left what i thought. "great," i said. "really. great." i think i got him to say he'd make me a cd for china, but he's sad, cause he'd rather make a tape so he can do actual mixing instead of just picking a playlist. he's doing his stuff again this weekend for a three-day-long party jack's having. i told jack i'd come saturday morning for a while, before leaving for sarah's.
life is so insane. friendships are always changing when i'm not looking--growing or shrinking. i really value my friends who seem the same, even if i haven't seen them in a few years. maybe that's why i'm so obsessed with writing about events in my life, and taking pictures to document things. then, no matter what someone's like next time, whether they snub me or hug me like they've never hugged me bofore, i still have the consistency of my memories. when i don't write things down, they shift and change on me. i don't remember being quite that into that one guy, or not liking that one girl. but when i write it down, it's there, and there's a ground under my feet. i remember wearing that that day, standing next to him. i remember the joke he told and where we went next. i remember feeling that angry, thinking she meant this, when it turned out she meant that. even if we're not friends now, we were always friends then. i have proof. i've written down how loved i felt, so it can't evaporate.