Nearly four hours, two bottles of wine and a half bottle of champagne (after countless glasses of the same from earlier), mountains of dishes, a dirty diaper, stinky mush-food, and some loud tipsy gospel singing...Cleaning up after the reception for the newly-weds was a true pleasure. What a fun, happy, wonderfully insane couple!
Afterword, back home, picking my way through the aftermath of the bachelor party to find my bed...up late, leftovers for breakfast/lunch, cleaning house while on the phone until mid-afternoon. 5:30 Mass lasted over an hour-and-a-half, good homily, but wow. Dinner and smokes with Mags and The Man With The Throat. Tried to go to bed early, and I promised too...I don't know what happened...I'm sorry.
Today it is raining and chilly. The sky is lovely and grey and streaky with full, heavy clouds. I am suddenly aware of how incredibly stressed out I am. I want to say everything and nothing; I need to talk and let it all go; I need her ears and shoulder; I need gentle arms and sleep.
And now, drawn-up, back straight: I must return to the world of grease and wrenches...a world I have learned to hate, unfortunately...But I will savour the rain, thank the clouds, take comfort in the cold. I will dream of a dream that is much to far from now, but holds me in such wonder and excitement; In memory and hope I will abide.
Because the Dude---the Dude abides.

Wow I am exhausted. Coming off that the adrenalin high that has kept me jumping all week...Gonna sleep so well

It is strange to be a place where you know life is changing a lot and that the things you have come to know well and grown comfortable with will soon all be gone and different. This is both an exciting and an unnerving time...I am looking for a new job (still in California, just not at TAC), changing my outlook on the future (I actually have a desire for job security and roots, believe it or not!), and in the meantime trying keep my footing beneath a landslide of tasks and projects that will have to be finished and cleaned up if I actually intend to move. My ideas about work have changed a bit too; I still have hopes of pursuing the dreams I have held onto for many years, but I am ready to accept that if I want the quality of life to go up and I want opportunity for family/house/car/travel/etc. in the future I need to be serious about taking a job that will accomplish that, even if it is not an ideal one. And really, what is worse: feeling crappy about being a low-level mechanic/minion and struggling to make rent with zero savings, or putting up with corporate-related bullshit but having respect and enough money for financial peace of mind. Either way it's not exactly 'living my dreams', but fulfillment comes in time, and under many different guises. But despite all this, I know that I tend to live like a poor man, and the things that mean the most to me have nothing to do with money at all...I am merely seeking to cover California living expenses (bastards!) and an escape from the 'empty pockets stressed-out blues'. On a more immediate note, life is absurd right now...my roommates and friends are playing a sort of 'musical houses' (or at least talking a lot about it), and I have so much to do that I get home and stare at the wall because I have too much to do. Okay, not really, but everything that gets done seems to produce three more to do as matter of course. I guess this is called 'being growed-up.' (Sigh).

Mutter mutter...

The other day I was talking with my mother on the phone and we got into a conversation about her and my dad and, more or less, the story of their love. The passion and tenderness with which she described her thoughts and feelings for my father really blew me away... I had known growing up, of course, that they loved each other, but in youth you don't tend to give a lot of thought or weight to your parents' personal lives (for the best I am sure); but my parents' love, after 26 years still burns with an intensity I am only now coming to understand. If anyone wants proof there is such a thing as soul-mates, and that that kind of love really lasts, they just need to talk with my folks for while. It's interesting that I didn't see this for so many years---I even treated their marriage as something awful, largely because when I was in highschool they were both at a sort of mid-life state of depression---and I have to admit I am rather shocked. I am sure also that my recognition of the beauty of their love is greatly affected by my own experience and understanding of love and life. I am suddenly excited for my parents! I want to hang out with them and talk together as if they were peers; I am fascinated and deeply encouraged by their vivacity and sincerity. A lot of us here in our early twenties, especially guys I think, tend to see love and married life only from the desirous romantic side, and only from a personal standpoint. You talk with young men about marriage, and what are they thinking about? Sex, doing dishes and laundry, sex, maybe she could be a companion of sorts, sex, sex, oh yeah, children; sex... There is so often little regard understanding for the other as a person. The idea that marriage is mostly about being trapped and burdened, and you have to have your 'guys', to escape to when you can't deal with the 'girls'. Okay, so there is a scrap of truth in that, but what about the respect, the admiration, the deep friendship that should grow out of honest love for a spouse? Listening to my mother speak about my dad, there was no hint of 'I just can't understand him', or 'he's such a typical man'; no, when she spoke of him, her voice almost cracking with tenderness, she described her very best friend, her confidant, her hero, her lover, her closest, dearest friend... and that is truly lovely.
I am reading Fathers and Sons, a Russian novel highly recommended by a good friend, and I ran across a very simple but beautiful paragraph:

'Vassily Ivanovitch took his hands from his face and clasped his wife, his friend, as firmly as he had never clasped her in youth; she comforted him in his grief.'

I think, my friends, no words are needed...

OWWWW!!! My most of me!!!

Thinking today about my very first blog post, written while sitting in the Dunlap's bedroom with Seldom and Equivocal on an old half-busted laptop in the early stages of one of the best roadtrip/weekend vacations I have ever had. Life has really been full and good to me. Someone once remarked to me that memories are very dangerous, and at the time I sort of agreed with her: a lot of pain and sadness can come of dwelling on the past. And yet....since then I have come to disagree completely. Without memory you cannot develop, you can't move forward. If you shut out the past you not only tragically lose all the warmth and joy of the good things in your life, but you put up a wall that blocks you from learning and keeps you from building a better life from knowing your missteps and your own sadness. Memory is a precious gift and something to take seriously. Without it you (I) could not live.
This weekend we watched Metropolis, the (Anime one), and it was stunning. Toward the end there is a scene that is quite possibly the most beautiful sequence I have ever seen in a movie. You should watch it. Also this weekend, we watched a commercial being made on a beach in Malibu, rode a motorcycle, played music, made delicious food, almost fell off a cliff while hiking, missed a flight, split wood, and lost our minds (not all in that order)...good weekend.

What am I gonna do with myself?

Who would have thought that you could actually work on cars for long enough that in one day you could develop huge blisters from turning wrenches?!

I am mourning a distinct lack of creativity.

I really like these cloudy, still days. Crisp, a little cold, waiting...