Monday, April 10, 2006
LAudamus
It’s been a busy few days here at the ‘hut, and I wish I had more to show for it than eye-bags and a grim determination to survive. Of course, there’s that fabulous underground supperclub I need to fill you in on, and you don’t need much of an update about housekeeping and Z’s sleep schedule. I’ve been sinking vast amounts of time lately into stuff that makes for very boring reportage. But I did want to share a few words about Simon and Julia’s wedding.
I met Simon thirty-five years ago when I got back from a six-month trip abroad; he was a student in the second-grade class in which I was placed. He wore a black armband because Jimmy Hendrix had died just a few days prior. He knew big words, could draw and sing, and had a quick sense of humor. Simon and I got along great - a pattern that continued right through the rest of elementary school and into junior high and high school. We did a lot of extracurricular activities together too - debating and theater, mostly, but we also got together with any spare time we had, between classes or on weekends. We went to summer camp together. We read each other’s writing and commiserated with each other’s woes. We were very close friends.
Then we went to colleges on opposite coasts, and now we live in cities 400 miles apart. Simon and I barely see each other anymore, but that is apparently not cause for despair, as it can be for some friendships that need constant refreshment to survive. On those rare occasions when Simon and I are in communication, the communication is instantaneous and profound. We still get along great - just like always. And now he’s doing so fabulously well - he and his beautiful, brilliant, charming and witty wife, in their gorgeous canyon-edge home full of music and art, and their fascinating, glamorous, mysterious life together. I wish them a wonderful honeymoon and a very long future together full of shared revelation and bales of laughter. Good going, guys.
Their ceremony was beautiful, brief, and very touching. The longest segment by far, and the only reading by anyone other than the JP who ran the show, was Julia’s sister’s poised and hilarious recitation of the story of the first serious flirtation between Simon and Julia - the official beginning of their relationship, a night exactly fifteen years to the day from their wedding date. Which was why they got married on a Thursday, but that’s no nevermind. I was so glad to be there whatever day it was, finally to be able to enjoy their company for a few minutes (even if they were stretched thin with all the guests and family). Simon is still a very dear friend and I couldn’t let him celebrate this event without contributing my goodwill on the auspicious occasion.
At one point after the ceremony Simon stepped over to speak with me on the patio by a large decanter of Lemon Drops. We instantly picked up again with a conversation we’ve been having since about 1975; it felt good to talk again. He mentioned that he was just realizing there would be no “toast,” in the traditional sense - their free-form low-profile wedding plans had not really allowed for some of the familiar components of what a wedding has become. There was no wedding cake - just endless boxes of fabulous tiny cupcakes (red velvet being my personal favorite). There was no procession of the bride and groom. And there was no best man - so, likely, no toast. “Nobody’s doing toasts,” Simon summed up succinctly.
I pulled a wrinkled sheet of paper out of my breast pocket, torn from my notebook and covered front and back with scrawls and crossouts. “Here, I wrote this for you. I’ll try to read it. It’s pretty sloppy.”
I did read it and it was sloppy in any number of ways but he seemed to appreciate it, and asked for a copy. And since then I’ve felt like sharing it more widely. Anyway, that’s how I feel about it this morning, so here’s the
Poem On An Old Friend’s Marriage:
It started with propinquity -
a fair coincidence, the luck
of finding someone like ourselves
amidst the elemental muck.
The hornrim glasses clued me in:
this fellow had an active mind;
a band of black around his arm
for Hendrix showed he was inclined
to listen widely to the world,
express his youthful, yearning soul -
together, we two targets braved
a world that seemed more path than goal.
Together we endured and grew
and moved from school to school to school
we wrestled with our heads and hearts
and learned the sages from the fools.
Then, as we teetered at the cusp
of being who we really are,
we separated, each to test
peculiar waters from afar.
New victories, and new mistakes,
new friends and old, they came and went
our lives evolved on separate paths
in brilliant dissolution spent
until I could not help but see
that he and I had come undone -
my world and his, two separate spheres
yet sharing something still as one:
resiliant deep within us both
the I in him, the he in me
it lingers, percolates, pervades -
it supercedes propinquity.
The friendships that were forged by chance
have long since faltered and decayed;
but what we shared we share anon
despite the distance or the day.
And so I gladly reconfirm
this friendship that so long we shared
in gratitude that I am here
to see how far you’ve come from there.
Simon and Julia - Long may they wave. Back soon with some cool stories and stuff.
