I Put a Spell on You

when they told me this plan i was very jealous. it sounds so EASY. why didn't we just decide to get hitched on some south pacific beach? we could wear aloha shirts and go barefoot and say some nice words as the surf rolled in. maybe our folks would join us. maybe a few of our wealthier friends. no problem. married.

but here i am, trying to hold the entire plan together in a moment of crisis. if i say, "yeah. fuck it. let's elope," there's a decent chance we'll do just that. and we've worked so hard to put it all together. and i know that running off to the tropics for some low key wedding is not what i really want. i suspect that's not what bartlebee really wants either.

we just don't want all this pressure and stress. we need to remember to be excited about the wedding we're planning. we need to recall why we've made the choices we've made thus far.

why a white dress? why a cake? why a chuppah and a band and seating cards?

because it's magic.

this analogy just sort of pours out of my head, fermented by the pressure of the day and tapped by the immediacy of bartlebee's need to hear something clarifying and believable.

what we're doing, with this wedding, is casting a spell. you collect these bizzare ingredients: a white dress, two rings, witnesses, a violin; you perform the incantations, sign the paper, drink the wine, stomp on the glass; and poof, if you cast the spell right -- you're married.

doing these crazy things will make us feel married. pictures will prove it. people will remember it. the rings will be a tangible sign. the wedding we're planning will hopefully start us out with no doubt as to our union. it is sort of silly and superstitious, all that mumbo-jumbo, but i think it works. even if it is just the placebo effect.

if you perform the actions that mean "wedding" you will feel married. just like if you mix up eye of newt and frog scrotum and repeat the latin inside of a pentagram you feel like you're the vice president.

speaking of weird rituals, there was some beltane fooferaw in the park this sunday. on the dog run.

we just went to sit in the sun and toss a disc and discovered our little park refuge taken over by hippies. and by hippies i mean hippies. they had a may pole and they all had flowers in their hair and long skirts and ren-faire get up. they bongo-bonged and chanted to the goddess and probably copulated with goats, but we didn't get too close.

we laughed at how in an alternate universe we might have ended up dancing around the may pole with a healing crystal and a pet ferret who was the reincarnation of one of our past lives. in this universe, however, we were at the other end of the dog run near a group of hipsters. they were wearing fedoras and suit coats and drinking wine. they had set up a croquet game and were playing and making fun of each other.

bartlebee and i worked on the crossword. they knocked balls around. this guy with flowers in his hair and a sleeve half torn off his yellow shirt slowly stumbled toward us, talking to himself.

and one of the hipsters said, very politely, "hey, uh, would anyone object if i beat this guy to a pulp with my mallet?"

so it was a decent weekend.

we also got to meet matt's new wife. she's brazillian and doesn't speak much english. somehow she manages to be social and outgoing, regardless. good work, matt.