Thursday, April 08, 2004

And I knocked this time!

I really wish I could stop walking in on my roommate having sex.
Speculations Upon the Nature of Eden: a Movement in Three Parts

The Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore has the Della Robbia sculpture from Renaissance Florence featured quite prominently as a dramatic device in "The Birth of Venus" (the recently published novel, not the Botticelli painting), the one where the snake that tempts Adam has a woman's head. I went to see it last Thursday, with Jeremy, but it was something of a disappointment.
---

On Saturday, I went to New York City for a wedding in a ratty, Azn part of Flushing. I personally didn't find it to be that great a wedding; why anyone would have a combination traditional Chinese/nightclub themed wedding afterparty I don't understand. (Presumably the actual ceremony had more decorum; I wasn't there.) You can go to a nightclub for $5 any time you want, but you only get married (hopefully) once in your life. If you ask me, in my fluffy pink thought bubbles where logic and laws of physics do not apply, I'd get married with ribbons woven through my hair, on a wooded island in a glassy lake accessible only by swan-shaped boats and fairy dust, and because my husband will be handsome, rich, intelligent, kind, and perfect in all ways, his smile would bring out the sun itself, so it'd never rain, (it may mist at worst, but that's atmospheric). Or, I'd get married in an Italian villa and ride away in a horse-drawn carriage festooned in garlands. At some point there will be soap bubbles, and ballroom dancing of the kind in which your satin dress rustles across the floor (and it doesn't matter that I can't dance, I'd take lessons six months before, with my husband, who, because he is perfect, is already an amazingly talented, yet infinitely patient, lord of the dance). And then I'd be in a loving relationship, become independently wealthy, well-rounded, good-natured, travel the world beloved by all for my meritorious contributions to society, and live a life of effortless luxury. And then after I die people will look at my gravestone and think, "Damn, she was cool."

Or something like that.

In the event that the above, by some horrendous tragedy, shall not come to pass, I should at least like to declare an edict that there will be no moronic fratboy-esque games at my wedding after-party, with flashing lights and a DJ yelling things in one of those car advertisement voices: "Now everyone on the left side cheer! What's that??? Louder! I can't hear you!!!"

There will be no Eminem or Ludacris at my wedding.
---

If I ever think about getting married, or raising children, or living somewhere or going places in my hazy pastel daydreams of the future, I inevitably find myself inserting Jeremy into the place of what previously was just some nebulous, idealized male figure. That doesn't mean though that I have anything planned, or even marginally intended. I think Jeremy finds it a bit hurtful that I make no long-term statements. It's not that I can't see myself with him in five years or so, it's just that I refuse to say anything, almost like avoiding a jinx. The thought of committment doesn't, say, make me recoil with a jolt of horror, it's simply that I fear to trust to hope as the armor against heartbreak.