C-130

I'm at a loss for what to say because I can't think of a better, more eloquent way to phrase my impression: that wedding was cool.

The ceremony was held as the sun was setting, chairs arrayed in even blocks flanking the central walk to the steps of the Decorative Arts Museum. Resting on the seat of each chair was a paper fan with the inscription "The first time I saw you I knew I loved you
and you smiled because you knew," and on the obverse "Matt and Crystal, June 4, 2004." Seeing as Crystal's mother had taught at our junior high school, I noted that a solid row of guests a bit in front of me were former teachers of mine. Prior to Crystal's walking down the aisle, one of the couple's friends in charge of the music played Frank Sinatra's "The Best is Yet to Come." The weather was cooperative, allowing a soft breeze and a few gauzy violet clouds to offset the humidity. A few tiny drops of rain fell on us in the audience just before the ceremony began.

Crystal walked to the steps, ushered by her uncle Steve, from the lawn's streetside gate, allowing everyone plenty of time to snap pictures and sigh and moan in awe of the bridal look (and there's no debating it, Crystal looked amazing).

Taking to the altar (if it can be called that), Crystal and Matt were led in a series of prayers by an official in modest pale purple robes. I later found out that he had been Crystal's tai chi instructor at the university, and that he practiced a variety of spiritual devotions (among them Apache and Cherokee). After leading the two in an exchange of vows and rings, he turned off the microphone and exchanged a few hushed words and blessings with them in private, a gesture I find fortifying in it's forsaking of the public spectacle of the traditional American wedding. Turning the microphone on again, the minister placed a blue ceramic bowl in between them and had both of them place their hands upon it. After offering a devotional blessing over the pot, he instructed the two of them to raise it in the air and then smash the fuck out of it on the cobbles (not a direct quote, I should add), the symbolic intention being that happiness would prevail lest all of the fragments of the bowl were to be mended.

Then the two of them, the married couple, husband and wife, walked back to the front gate under a storm of camera flashes and thunderous applause. Bellisima.

There ended the wedding and there began the reception. The hardcore reception. The coolest reception ever. The reception of receptions. The reception. Held within the Museum itself, there was room for everyone to fit comfortably, milling about was encouraged (by having stations of refreshments and food in essentially every room), and, as it is a museum, there was art partout and excellent lighting for every photograph. Walking in through the front foyer, I was confronted by a strong smell, something I couldn't quite define: it was chocolate-like but much more brusque, like coffee beans. At some point I was admiring a glistening tower-like chocolate cake when I realized what the smell had been; another guest poked a strawberry into the side of the cake, revealing that it was actually a multi-tiered fountain of hot, thick chocolate. Oh my god, what a beautiful contraption. I almost passed out on the spot, but I kept myself conscious by rushing the table and dipping at least one of every available snack (berries, marshmallows, Oreos, pretzels, danish shortbread, etc) and filling my belly with sinfully good chocolate. Every time I would run in to Crystal around the chocolate fountain table I'd get nervous that we destroy her pristine dress, as we all had red wine and were eating staining fruit and liquid chocolate. After all that chocolate, I moved to the patio and grabbed some more wine, hopping from group to group of people I'd not seen in years. Carol and Catherine drove all the way from Chapel Hill, NC to come to the wedding, there were plenty of folks from AGS '97, and, of course, Crystal's family and the Fuller Junior High teacher gang. Hey, even April and Brian, the couple from Conway I'd met at a Runaway Planet show, were there too.

It was comforting to see everyone from Crystal's family again. Steve and Robert are still out in D.C., Susan's looking peppy, and her little cousin Vincent, formerly the irritating kid who always harshed our buzz on nights out at the movies, is now a 21 year old eager drinker with biceps. Every once in a while Crystal would get to steal herself away from family matters to come chat and I'd just start giggling watching her talking while in full bridal costume. There were easily-forced vogue-ings, side-by-side comparisons of her wedding ring and that of her great-grandmother (her something old), and frequent requests to see the shoes. Later I got husband Matt to do much the same (I wanted to see if his hands were shaking). I was duly impressed with the thoughtful quality of the gift that Crystal gave to each of her bridesmaids.

Tonight, Crystal abandons the Ames clan and becomes a Scheaffer.

So it looks like Tenet is actually resigning from his directorship of the CIA. I wonder what sort of secret suspicions of mine this confirms; I hope Tenet does some open-ended broadcast or print interviews in the wake of all of this change, as I'm sure he can now offer information that he could never have previously while on the record as a federal executive. The press reports all mention that Tenet's resignation (which has already been accepted by the president) was an independent act that was taken without the president's foreknowledge nor that of his cabinet. As admirable as it is to think of this as an independent change, I highly doubt it (how often are executives truly surprised by any activities of those below them in the hierarchy?) and would like to know a little bit more about the true subtleties of White House attitudes surrounding (pre- and post-) the event. Time will tell.

I got a warm fuzzy feeling at work today--twice. This morning a student (afflicted with an advanced stage of Crohn's) who I'd helped find last-minute placement in distance education courses called to let me know that his colon removal surgery will be taking place in the coming weeks and as such he'd like to do take more online courses. I helped him suffle his schedule around for a while, pleaded with a couple of instructors, and before hanging up the phone, both the student and his mom told me how much of a help I had been last term. I have to admit that I got a little choked up listening to them (it's embarrassing to be complimented so openly). A few minutes ago another person I'd been working with over the phone, a mid-forties black woman, finally came in to pick up some materials. On her way out (and within earshot of several co-workers), she shrieked that I had been "such a sweetheart." Blushing commenced immediately, I tried to cover it up with laughter and assurances that I'm only sweet to those who behave sweetly toward me. The instant the office door closed behind her, coos andkissy sounds started coming from doorway lining our interior hallway.

Everything's okay, though, I've got tons Of Montreal, my new favorite band. Holy shit, people, listen to this band. Here's "Disconnect the Dots" (in the form of a windows media file). Love it. Love it. From "Lysergic Bliss:"

Wearing an olive drab
but feeling somehow inside opalescent
Wonder how I'm managing to smile oh
when I can't even pay my rent
...
If we were a pair of jigsaw puzzle pieces
we would connect so perfectly
Creating a still photo of a scene
from 'The Phantom of Liberty.'

...and mice.

The weekend, as all things do, has ended and I am unceremoniously working again.

Sunday found me nursing my fresh sunburn with liberal trips to the blender for frosty pina coladas. I had intended to go back to Riverfest for the closing fireworks show, but some serious storms precipitously arrived around sundown and scared the organizing committee away with a brilliant lightening display. It rained hard enough to float my sandals around on the patio.

Yesterday I drove up to visit my parents in Batesville for the first time since my dad's birthday in March. The garden is tall and the beans are already as long as my hand. We went into the city to get a good seat at the riverfront restaurant (Josies?), but we'd forgotten that holidays mean that normal things are closed up tight. We spent a couple of hours by the river anyway on account of it's amazingly swollen size after the torrential weekend rains. The city is still small enough that there aren't any civic measures taken to obstruct the view of the riverbank "for safety's sake." I appreciate the hands-off attitude--it suggests that people should simply act responsibly rather than depend on the construction of an expensive, ugly safety railing system. We got right down by the rushing water at the dam's edge, even my tense mom (whose sister had drowned at a similar upstream dam just a few days after my birth). It was hypnotically beautiful, what with the thunderous bass of all that mass cascading over the dam's smooth downstream slope.

Driving home after midnight I listened to Erik Satie and a few tracks of dot-matrix-printer-generated material from the guy behind Tree Wave. It was unseasonably cool and absolutely cloudless. I fell asleep so quickly after getting home that I don't even remember coming into the house.