ice swan feathers

a few weeks ago Mama and I went to see the show Bad Jews. The four actors were pretty good, and though the characters could be misread as caricaturish, I have met people exactly like each of those characters.
There is a Sabbath blessing that fathers do for their children; placing a hand on the head and saying a prayer. I've always liked that moment.
Mt. Washington with my father and his friend ended in a satisfied fatigue. We drove to New Hampshire and stayed the night in a motel, got up at 5, started climbing at 7. Near the top, the wind blew so hard I was afraid I would get blown off, and we couldn't see from one cairn to the next because of the fog. But it was beautiful; the wind had swept the moist air into ice formations, like frozen swan feathers. 

infinite party people

I have been told I look like Lorde, Kate Winslet, Elizabeth Taylor, Anne Hathaway and Miriam Sekhon. But by far the closest anyone has gotten was my boss this morning, when he said I look like a Vrubel demon.

Mikhail Vrubel - Head of Demon

***

dream -- It was daylight but this party was being set up in a field in a city. On the other side of the field I could see people running around, young people, and others from their group were in other places as well. You could tell they were one of the same because there was something mystical about them, and they were so fervently happy and sharp. One looked straight at me (through me) with dark eyes.

But I went indoors and there was this strange creature, like a bird or a dog. Some of these people were there, and everyone was standing around chatting. I came up to the creature and petted it. I felt like there was some chance that it would bite my arm off (it was very large) but it was impressed by me, and I felt like a shock though my system, all my hairs were on end, goosebumps. It's feathers were bristly and it pretended to eat me up whole, because for some reason I needed to appear like this other group of people, and they were already dead.

One boy with a beautiful face and dark eyes whom I had seen earlier in the field had an intestine from someone else. They were like patchwork people, except that they remained youthful and beautiful and intact. Not quite zombies, flitting in and out of here and now [8:05 alarm, back to sleep]

 
Then I woke up in my bed in a room I was sharing with two other people. I was parched from all the drinking of the night, and I took an appetite suppressant because it was cheaper to eat those than to buy food. I was very poor. But I went out and met this woman who was also from the other plain, but not quite, still too attached to this one. A witch. She was trying to find the middle room in this large doll house, but it kept disappearing - it existed when you looked at the roof of the house, but the space contracted when you looked inside. Finally she found it, and there was a chicken inside wired up. She created a path back to the field, and then, to put the (dead, cold, featherless, headless) chicken out of its misery, she snipped just one wire. [8:15 alarm, back to sleep]

I was at this crazy party, no longer in the park, no longer in this world. We had kept walking and walking until I was only surrounded by dead people. The scavenged soul of Zeus was a glow the size of an elephant. People on stilts and in fantastic dresses through all different time periods. A band was playing on the stage, and the party went out and out forever into the dark, but it wasn't the dark of night. But then the band starting singing a song attacking the dead boy who led me there (the one from the field, except now blond instead of a brunette, and with an entirely different facial structure, shorter too. I was also now viewing from third person, so it felt...less). The band said that he was foolish to think he could let me be here, that he shouldn't have brought me. I tried defending him but turned into a cartoon.

Then I woke up in a hospital, wired into life support. Making the connection with the chicken and the immortals, I snipped on wire and hoped that I wasn't going to disappear, but die like they had died, the infinite party people. I started to feel light headed and someone I love, who is familiar (but whom I can't specifically remember) came in and I said good bye and [8:30 alarm] woke up.

marriage

Soon after my twentieth birthday, my thoughts started turning towards what it means to get married.

It is traditional in the US (and probably other places) that little girls think about their weddings. They play brides and bridesmaids, are chosen to be flower girls, think color schemes and flower arrangements, and deliberate about whom to invite before a groom comes into view. It's entrenched enough in culture that 30 Rock had an episode where the main female character at first doesn't want a big wedding and then realizes that, damn it, she wants to be a princess for a day. She dresses up as princess Leia from Star Wars for and they re-do her wedding. And it was funny: that yes, even the women on T.V. that are successful, funny, clumsy, and not stereotypically feminine want to follow through on at least some aspects of having an opulent ceremony; the dress or the venue or something. 

Somehow that fantasy did not weasel its way into my head. The most thought I'd gotten to was "I hate large parties and being the center of attention" and "white doesn't suit me" and "shiny diamond rings are not my style, and why do women get branded twice". Only after watching Gilmore Girls did I even really find out what the hell people meant when they talked about planning a wedding. Centerpieces, food, venue, seating arrangements...

When I say"my thoughts started turning towards what it means to get married" I do not mean I started thinking about weddings. I did, however, feel myself staring at the reality that almost all the adults I know where married in their twenties, and most had a child or two before they hit their 30th birthday. Some had gotten married and stayed together from age 18. Others had decided to get married and stayed together on their first date. My mother had me at age 25. This is not early, but it seems very soon relative to my current age of 22. More recently, a couple of my friends have married, in two very different ceremonies, one involved a campfire, the other was more traditional. I did not grow up in the type of town where my peers from highschool are already married with kids, but some of my friends in college did. The world around me has followed tradition.

When the boy from Tula asked me when I thought the appropriate age to get married is, I said that there are things I have more control over: my education, my career, even having kids. But that marriage depends on when I meet this person, if he even wants the ceremony, if he's ready etc. and I have don't have enough control over all this to set a time frame. Of course, some people get married when they feel ready, and it has more to do with their place in life than whom they are with. Either way, the question stands: why do people get married? What is the purpose of the ceremony?

I'm not speaking about this on a historical scale. I know that the wedding ceremony across the globe has meant different things, and was by and large influenced by politics and reproduction. Even today, the upper class seems to breed themselves in a manner that reminds me more of dogs than humans (we want to stay poodles, down with the mutts!). However, what I am talking about is marriage for love and stability. For most people, this means monogamy and/or children.

Obligation: A couple of people I asked said simply: it's a social obligation. People expect you to get married. The government gives couples incentive to get married.
Stability: One said; helps you get through tougher patches in a relationship that otherwise would result in the end. You made your vows, you have to work harder at making the partnership work. It made me think about divorcées: they tend to get married again. They must believe in the power of it, even if it fell through once.
Flexibility: Another woman said that very few people are naturally monogamous. She added that if I ever meet such a couple of truly monogamous people, I will see that they are not the reason monogamy is so etched into our culture. And that generally, with good communication, this expectation can be worked around with my future partner.

photo by Brandon Stanton

Comfort: A woman in a Humans of New York photo said “I was engaged eight years ago, but my fiancee died in Iraq. After that, I promised myself that I'd never be that dependent on someone again. So after I met my husband, I fought marriage for the longest time. But we got married in September. And even though I was rebelling against it, and I always saw it as a meaningless formality, I've been surprised. There's a comfort in knowing that you're sworn to someone else."

Last Friday I went to Brookline to see Yulka and her new apartment. We had coffee and raspberry oatmeal bars over chess and hunted for a day planner. She had recently been at a wedding in Chicago, and she told me over sushi how she had asked about why people have the ceremony. The person she had asked said that some people are just so in love and want to share it, show it, announce it. In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.

***

Three Epithalamia
Georges Perec

On this beautiful Saturday in May
Sophie has married Michel
and Michel has married Sophie
They have married
and they are now together
like Aucassin and Nicolette
and like nut cake and honey
like hand and piano
      table and chair
      soup and ladle
      tench and hook
      science and doubt
      pen and drawing
      dove and millet
      hospital and silence
      candle and bed warmer
      camomile tea and madeleine
and even couscous and chick peas
It’s a delectable morning
the sun lights up the countryside
bees are gathering honey
a butterfly delicately alights by a mimosa
sheep are bleating
in the distance bells are ringing
everything is calm and peaceful
At the very end of the little wood the vast planet begins
its lakes its oceans its steppes
its hills its plains its oases
its sand dunes
its palaces its museums its islands its ports of call
its lovely automobiles glistening in the rain
its white-bonneted Salvationists singing carols on Christmas Eve
its bowlered worthies in conference at the tabac on Place Saint
    Sulpice
its mustachio’d sea captains exuding patchouli and lilac
its tennis champions hugging at the end of a match
its Indians with their calumet seated by a sandalwood totem pole
its mountain climbers attacking Popocatapetl
its eager canoeists paddling down the Mississippi
its Anabaptists mischievously nodding their heads as they discuss
    the Bible
its little Balinese women dancing on cocoa plantations
its philosophers in peaked caps arguing about Condillac’s ideas
    in outmoded tea rooms
its pin-up girls in bathing suits astride docile elephants
its impassive Londoners bidding a no-trump little slam
But here the sky is blue
Let’s forget the weight of the world
a bird is singing at the very top of the house
cats and dogs drowse by the fireplace
where a huge log is slowly burning up
You hear the ticking of the clock
This little poem
where only simple words have been used
      words like daisy and broomstick
      like lady-bird and cream sauce
      like croissant and nonchalance
and not words like palimpsest, pitchblende, cumulonimbus,
      decalcomania, stethoscope, machicolation, or
      anticonstitutionally
has been specially composed
on the occasion of these nuptials
Let us wish Sophie and Michel
years and years of rejoicing
like the thousand years gone by
      in which Philemon and Baucis
each May are born into the world
      she as linden, he as oak

voting in the flesh

The church where the vote is held in my town was pretty empty. The light in the tower was lit, the foggy moon hung over it. Inside, everyone looked grumpy. You would think having the "Green-Rainbow Party" on the ballot would cheer them up. Ah well. I filled out my sheet and let the machine gobble it up.

***

I drew for the first time in a while yesterday, finally executing a piece Sasha commissioned me to do when I was last in NYC. If you want a drawing by me, just ask (in the comments I guess?)

***

I had a dream in which people were shot and infected with this strange bug: their eyes would turn entirely blue and they would start attacking other humans. And somehow I figured out how to stop it, and the I started appearing in different places: space shuttles, huge rivers with candles and people floating around for some party. But then to save everyone, I turned into this octopus thing that filled up the sky and intercepted whatever was shooting people and turning them into blue eyed monsters. But there was a moral dilemma, because the shooters were The Fates, and the reason they were shooting was that humans were just living too long. I was up there in the sky, no longer human, and thinking that maybe The Fates were right, but I no longer had a way of communicating with humans.

I thought I'd share in light of this article about mice and reversing aging.

steam

I brought facepaint along to the first party and the next night the theme was steam-punk. I'm disappointed that my more youthful plans fell through (I spent both nights in the company of my parents) but hopefully next year I will spend Halloween in higher spirits (a couple of puns intended).

It is snowing and the snow is sticking. Some trees have trunks that turn into branches that turn into twigs, silhouetted against the white gray sky. Others stand in almost full green coats of leaves, surprised that such a warm autumn is so quickly turning to winter. Or at least I think they are; I am.