What Love Is

So last night, Ami and I wrote a lot of our ceremony, nitpicking over wills and shalls. Maybe love is compromise. After all that stress compromise, we wrote this poem together. Don't assume each of the perspectives are one of ours; they are merely an attempt to answer that age old question.

Oh, and if you're prudish or at work, you may want to skip it.

Love is a miracle.
From substance, flesh, synapse and the friction of skin on skin again
Comes something neither here nor there,
But hovering perfectly between.
You can’t predict its arrival
Or chart its path
You can only hope it’s on its way,
Pray it gives you some reprieve.
You must make sacrifices:
Poems, drinks, dance steps, roses again.
You must pay homage.
You may be disappointed,
but you’ll buy your two dollar card and scratch off the silver coating.
You may already have won.

Love is everywhere.
It is more ubiquitous than air.
It holds planets and electrons in their orbits.
Love is skin and vertebrae and finger webbing.
You can’t miss it.
I loved the shimmer on a dahlia petal today.
I loved how you shy-smiled in the spotlight of my ardor.
I loved the name Solomon, and a color between pink and red and purple.
I loved the way my urethra felt swollen just before urine’s Vesuvius.
I loved tortillas.
Should I question the crepe paper pineapple, dangling from the pool table light?
Should I ask for its credentials? What right do you have to please me?
Or should I revel in its dance for false wind?

Love is a lie.
They make contracts with eachother in its name,
A bargain, a deal, a sale.
Honesty is prostitution.
Every time I take an organ of yours in my mouth
You pay.
When was the last time you reciprocated?
That means gave back,
Your mouth around my suck nub?
Remember?
You owe me one,
And I intend to collect.

Love is predestined.
You are one of two perfectly-mirrored halves.
You must search.
And if it’s meant to be, you will find.
Don’t try to hide from love, because whether
You veer right or left, the path is toward a single destination.
Unbeknownst to you, but knownst.
It is writ.
His name begins with D.
She is an oceanographer.
Amen. So be it.

Love is pain.
Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me.
But I was wrong.
Lydia,
Ellen,
Demitria,
Charmaine,
Thalia, oh, Thalia,
Ariadne Minerva Peterson.
Everyone, and alone.

Love is cliché.
A dime a dozen,
Been there, done that.
Mars, Venus, a battle.
She didn’t kiss on the first date,
though he tried.
They went to the movies.
A chick flick, a thriller.
And held hands in the flickering light.

Love is a punchbowl of sweat and glue,
A concoction of avarice and luck,
I secretly thought of the idea of you.
Into my life I hoped you to tuck.
Tell me the whisper you hoped to hear,
I’ll need it with maize-corn and gin.
I’ll say it to you forever, my dear.
I’ll say it, and say it again.

Love is carved on the bathroom wall.
Denoted by the word “n”
I wonder at the fate of these couples
But would I write your name,
If I dared?
I’d say “Ruby –n- Ami”
Knowing you might see it one day, later.

Love is absolution.
Between you and me, this didn’t happen.
Your past has been didacted.
Your future is not yet hung (in the finest gallery).
No wrongdoing has occurred.
Clean is love’s slate.

Love is an enigma.
To try to know it is hopeless.
May as well try to know god.
(Does He have a first name?)
Elephant camisole tinsel.

Love is easy.
If it’s too difficult, it’s not love.
Don’t be fooled; try again.
This is nothing to lose.

Love is a pine cone
Teetering before dropping
Onto downy earth.

Love is a short, short word,
For all that it is.

Love is.

I know this has nothing to do with the wedding...

But I woke up with my mind racing this morning. Vows and catering and guest list and music and and and...

Sirens and helicopter bursts woke me before my alarm. Then the PLANNING took over, and I needed a distraction. So I indulged in some internet in bed, looking for a story on the news outside my window. No such luck. But I did find evidence on the traffic cams that the incident was somewhere between 145th and Northgate. Right where we live. I lament the lack of true breaking news on the internet. This is a vacuum someone needs to fill. I know you're trying, Google. Keep at it.

Anyway, I wound up here. Seems that NASA just can't find those darn moon landing tapes. Perhaps the singlemost important thing NASA ever did, and it lost the tapes. This oughta drive the moon landing conspiracy theorists nuts.

You wanna know what I think? I think anything's possible. I have very little faith in the veracity of government approved news stories. I love a conspiracy theory. I can't wait until they "find" them.

Good Morning, World!

If you gamble everything for love, you gonna be aaaalriiiiight. Allllllriiiiiiight.

Thanks for the Chelsea Morning, baby. Still covered in butterscotch; let's keep speaking in present tenses, OK?


And now, without further adieu, introducing:

Today's Wedding Issue:
Why won't anyone just send us a solo cello arrangement of Walk The Line?

The only problem with this new column is that sometimes we have more than one Wedding Issue per day. Like yesterday, it was "Honey, the Lamborghini is booked!", and then later it was "Gosh, how many vegetarians will it take to get through 5 lbs. of baked beans?". You'll just have to wing it along with us on those days.

Amos

Wake up!

This morning my favorite DJ, John in the Morning on KEXP, played our wedding song. He even told everyone it was for us. So good.

If you want a sneak preview, it happened around 7:06 a.m. Visit their streaming archive, and you can dance in your hallway to our song, too.

I feel compelled to comment.

Today the Washington State Supreme Court dashed the hopes of thousands of Washingtonians. We hoped to step up to the status of full-fledged citizen, with the same rights as every straight Washingtonian. We hoped those seven individuals would make history -- and more importantly make right.

Instead, bigotry and small-mindedness prevailed. I'm beginning to get a little too accustomed to those companions.

No, don't get me wrong. I encounter little to no discrimination in my everyday life -- that I am aware is because of my sexual orientation, that is. Mostly I live with the same sense of entitled privilege as the average white, educated, middle class American. My state legislature has protected me from job and housing discrimination. I am out to everyone in my life, and it's a rare circumstance that makes me think twice before revealing my sexual orientation. The organizations Ami and I work for both offer partner benefits. We are very lucky, in the grand scheme of things.

And yet we lose out. As we marry, as we age, as we grow a family those losses will manifest. We will fight for what our neighbors barely notice, like the families I saw tonight at the protest rally. They had been through a two-and-a-half year court battle to protect their families from unseen possibilities. Possibilities like a sick partner she is not able to care for without Family Medical Leave benefits. Possibilities like a long adoption process for the non-biological mother.

I will attempt to recreate one plaintiff's comments. "I'm the Virgo," she said as she took the mic. Her partner had given an emotional speech about love and heart. "I am the practical one." She went on to describe the letter she would write to straight friends when they sent wedding invitations. "We regret that we are not able to join you for your wedding. We find it impossible to share your day of joy and love while our union goes unrecognized. We wish you a happy wedding day, and trust that you will understand." Applause scattered through the room.

"We have made a donation in your name to an organization fighting for marriage rights for all of us," she concluded. We all laughed and clapped. Being me, I cried (once out of maybe five times during the rally).

I gave an interview to a reporter today about our feelings on the decision. I don't know if they'll use my quotes, but I'll let you know if they do.

I had hoped to celebrate not only our marriage but many marriages on August 26. Our outlaw theme is an attempt to be both lighthearted and in-your-face about a mindless restriction, but it holds some sadness today.

We will embarrass our grandchildren with our backwardness. I look forward to that.

This is the first time I've gotten married.

Maybe I should have researched. I guess a year is the basic planning time for a wedding. Your dress, for example, takes 6-8 months. 6-8 months. All of the bridal timelines tell you to order your flowers more than six months out.

That's one of the phrases I've learned from this, my second job: "__ months out." As in, "Oh, you're only three months out. Hmmm. Well, let's see. I'm sure we can do something..." Ya, like take my money? Please, please, please take my money.

Whose Wedding? (Ruby)

Today was day two of the wedding planning weekend. I've started to think of this wedding thing as a project: like the home remodel, or writing the novel. We talked about our mutual half-reality -- this was happening to someone else.

Turns out Nordy's doesn't have a registry. Who knew? So we trekked a whole block to Macy*s. Together we deliberated seriously over "casual china" patterns and crystal vases ("There will always be someone who wants to buy you a vase," said Jasmine, our registry clerk). But at the end of the day I felt like the wedding project was ridiculously consumerist. I think we both felt a little dirty as we blinked under the lobby flourescents.

After we were weary and all the virtual shopping was done, we went to the Kubota Garden. It was gorgeous. The Japanese Garden at the Arboretum gets most of the props, but Kubota makes it look like a well-manicured backyard. We're still debating wedding locations, and theoretically that was the reason we went. Despite our everpresent mission, I was very glad to rid myself of the eau de mall I'd picked up during the day.

Yesterday I bought a wedding dress. There is no mistaking it: it's a wedding dress. If I wore it on the street (which I wouldn't), you would think, "She's getting married today." I had no idea that's what I would wind up in when I entered the store. But there are all those cliches about how you just know when you see the dress, and sure enough, once it was on I was hooked. Significantly poorer, but hooked. It was the same way with the ring (which is being made right now and should be ready by mid-June) -- I wouldn't have chosen it until I put it on.

Ami proposed formally on Friday. It was the sweetest, most touching moment of my life. She made me an origami ring earlier that day, and she slid it on my finger like it was the Hope Diamond. The paper had a block of text in red, with a collection of sentences about me. My origami ring was heart-shaped.

This wedding has taken on a whole life of its own. It even has its own blog, which is more than I can say for me at the moment. It's easy to lose yourself -- and each other. Then, on the escalator I lean back as Ami leans forward and we stand like that, together, silent until we reach 4: Bed and Bath.