On weddings

I had no intention of crying but before the bride even appeared in the doorframe, my lids had welled up quicker than flowerpots in a rainstorm.  This wave of emotion struck me as especially odd considering that only hours before,  as I was writing the Congratulations card, I struggled to recall memories of my friend (the groom) from college.  We spent countless hours together over those four years but, sitting there in a hurricane’s eye of wrapping paper scraps and ribbons with only thirty minutes before the start of the ceremony, I could only summon blurry vignetted flashbacks of sitting in the passenger seat of his SUV or stirring boiling pasta in the speckle-stained kitchen of his all-guys house.

But somehow, where my conscious memory failed to produce much substance of our friendship, my subconscious managed to conjure instantly at the sight of him walking down the aisle.  Seeing him in that moment filled me to the brim with an overwhelming pride and happiness that can only be felt about someone rooted in your life — whether or not you remember all the circumstances of the rooting.

The ceremony followed the conventional pattern: Guests mingle amongst themselves sitting in chairs facing the “stage”/altar.  When the music comes on, everyone stops talking and turns backwards to watch a slow motion parade of people down the center aisle until (cue song change) the bride appears and everyone stands up.  Once she has arrived at the center of the arrangement -- groom on the right side of the MC/priest who is flanked on the left by a file of matching women and on the right by a file of matching men -- everyone sits to listen to a series of readings, speeches, vows and “I Dos” and then they whistle and cheer at the official pronouncement and subsequent Kodak Kiss.  The slow motion parade then happens in reverse at a slightly faster pace, there is more mingling while the couple is absent, then food, tearful toasts, drunken dancing and then the couple’s epic exit (usually involving some sort of bombardment).  

I recognize that each element of this ceremony has origins in various religious and cultural traditions.  Allow me to preface the rest of this post by disclaiming that I am not a hardcore feminist (anymore) out to condemn the patriarchal symbolism.  I am simply surprised by--for all the time and energy that people spend planning their weddings--how few people depart from the standard structure.

And it’s not for lack of wanting to be different.  People love kvetching about other people’s weddings more than San Franciscans love complaining about rent prices.  I could invade Russia with the army of bemoaners of how expensive weddings are “these days” and how overdone the whole charade is and how awful it is to be around so-and-so the Bridezilla.

And yet, there in the Graveyard of Famous Last Words, among the skeletons of college student oaths to never vote republican and daughter’s vows to never become their mothers and all of my resolutions to eat dinner before chocolate, is the mountain of promises people make to themselves to have a simple and inexpensive wedding.

But I think that's OK -- getting married is a big deal!  All the most important people in our lives are going to be there, it only happens one to four times in our lifetime, and -- in case we have any insecurity about how to plan a successful and socially acceptable wedding -- there is a billion dollar industry ready to sweep us up in breathtaking capitalistic efficiency and tend to every worry we didn’t even know we had.   It’s going to cost a lot of money, it’s going to be a production, we will fret over details we never imagined would be important, but we should all be prepared to accept this.  Maybe even embrace it.

However, I still don’t understand why the day itself has to follow such a specific formula.  Let’s consider the objectives of the event:

--To celebrate the love between two people

--To commemorate the new union of two families

--To reunite old friends

--To inspire sentimental feelings about the bride and groom’s lives and relationship

--To take a lot of pictures, especially of the young people in their physical prime

Other than that, it’s just a party where the standard objectives apply: to enjoy entertainment, food, drinks, music, dancing, and general merriment.

It seems like there are a variety of ways to achieve these ends that don’t necessarily involve sitting backwards in chairs watching a slow motion parade.  For example, why does the couple hide before the ceremony?  If all of my closest friends and relatives traveled from near and far, requested time off from work, painted their toenails and ironed their shirts to come and see me, I might consider greeting them at the door.  Of course, there will be a lot of people to chat with and ask about how their flights were and compliment their haircuts and it may be exhausting but, if we consult our handy list of objectives, “Enjoying a relaxed and introverted evening” did not make the cut.

As for the rest of the ceremony, I am one hundred percent in favor of putting on a show starring the couple and their families and best friends.  I, as evidenced by yesterday’s sneak attack of tears, find the slow motion parade very moving.  But it occurred to me that the same effect could be accomplished in another scenario with, for instance, the main cast of characters actually facing the audience.  Perhaps, instead of readings, each person could share a funny memory or sing a song or show some old photos.  What if the bridesmaids and groomsmen sat together on stools on one side of the stage?  What if they didn’t match their outfits? What if, instead of the father/daughter mother/son dances, the first dance was a big group dance so that everyone is already on the floor when the party music starts?  Again, it’s not that these ideas are any better -- they are just possibilities that seem to never get considered.  

These are probably my own famous last words.  I can see myself reading this the day after my own daffodil-themed Pachabel's cannon white-dress fairy tale wedding and scoffing at my youthful hubris to invent a new version of something steeped in centuries of tradition.  

But, mark my words, if I ever get married, there will be chocolate before dinner.

Rooftop reflections

Have you ever had one of those days when you are riding your bike and you feel a tire go flat?   And  you notice that every pebble jostles your balance and you push the pedals twice as hard but go only half as fast?  But then, when you get off to check the pressure of the tires and they are both tight as drums, you have that moment of realization that the flatness is in your own body?

The morning stains the western tips of the sky with a citrus glow, but above the horizon’s blush the lavender dawn is almost unblemished.   The only interruptions in the entire dome of the Earth’s cap are the moon (whose unsubtle and pearly presence looks like the work of a bad Photoshop artist), a diamond gleam in the east (whether a star, planet or spacecraft is unknown), and, in the bottom inch or two of skyline, chimneys, satellite dishes, rooftops, and various other urban spires of mysterious name and function.  All is still as a picture, save for the occasional aviary silhouette gliding from one spire to another.

Climbing up to the roof is to take a camera lens and crank it ninety degrees to the left so that all the things that were impossible to ignore--traffic lights, swerving mopeds, skateboarders, slamming gates, sirens, dogs yanking on leashes--suddenly blur out of focus and the silent plume of steam exhaling from a roof pipe above the Picassoesque geometry of shingles upon housetops upon balconies upon towers comes into sharp relief.  

I come up here to think.  After several months of chasing after my life with a butterfly net, I was due for a moment of pause.  For I have learned this about myself: I am a creature of The Now.  Whatever is happening in this waking moment takes precedence over all else and unless I forcibly remove myself from my daily Ferris wheel, I will follow the breadcrumb trail of buzzing phones, work emails, dinner invites, race registration alerts and free samples all the way down into a sleepless oblivion, in a comatose state of knee jerk Yes! reactions to all immediate stimuli.

Some people struggle with living in the moment.  They buy books about the art of Zen and present-mindedness.   For these people it is an effort, a prayer, a New Year Resolution to bury memories and anxieties and to just bask in each of life’s savory moments as they pass.

I am not one of those people.  All of my cares about the future weigh less than Forrest Gump’s feather.  I lose sleep over nothing (unless I am on a plane in which case I lose sleep for lack of prescription medication to make me forget that I am trapped).  Most of the worries I discuss with friends are more topics of conversation than actual sentiments I mull over when I’m alone.

The go-with-the-flow lifestyle is ulcerless and lovely… to a certain point.  The only problem arises when “the flow” starts drifting in an unintended direction.  The problem is when there are so many things to do but, when you look closely, no real reason for doing any of them, other than the fact that the opportunities presented themselves, in sequined and sexy nowness, at the door.  The problem is when getting out of bed every morning is more a result of muscle memory than will power.  It’s when you find yourself moving through the days by some unnamed inertia, happenstance gusts of wind and the momentum of a busy-ness addiction, without any internally anchored drive to arrive at any particular destination.  But a wheel can only roll for so long without a motor.

As I pondered this on the Rooftop of Catharsis, I decided that, in defiance of Carrie Underwood and in homage of Incubus, it was time I take the proverbial Wheel and outline something of a life plan for myself.  

I dug up my faux-leather serious-thoughts-only notebook, and started thumbing for a blank page.  At almost exactly the midway point, I found the end of the inked section and stretched the stiff binding open flat, like cracking vertebrae on a stiff back.  Upon closer inspection, I realized the page I had opened to was not, in fact, empty.  It was almost blank except the top corner was labeled 12/2/2013 and on the header there was a single scribbled word in all caps: “GOALS.”

I suppose I am nothing if not consistent.

Superhuman

Sometimes I’m pretty sure I am a superhuman.  Last night, for example, I managed to unlock the outer gate and the front door to my apartment, carry my bike up the stairs, walk into the kitchen without knocking anything over, and assemble and consume three medium sized burritos (each with a flawless chicken:guac:slaw:salsa ratio).  I accomplished all of this with a blood alcohol level of whatever results from chugging five 5% beers while running 2,000 meters plus two 8% celebration beers.  

I deserved a trophy.  Made of carbs.  The fact that I got last place in the Beer Mile was overshadowed by the olympic execution of this complex series of tasks.  The last and most challenging event of the Frontal Lobe Decathlon was to make an online reservation.  I needed to reserve a Getaround car (like Zipcar but better) for 7:15 the following morning.  It needed to be under $7/hour, automatic transmission, within a mile of my house, and big enough to fit my bike.  Processing this amount of information with so few available brain cells would not be easy, but I was in a herculean mood.  Using mostly my index fingers and one squinted eye, I clicked and scrolled and entered my correct password (on the third try) like a champion.  

The day’s work done, I slept the sleep of a sweaty baby on a merry-go-round but, thanks to satellites that remember daylight savings, my cell phone alarm did not fail to punctually end the restless night.   I “awoke” (if you can call it that) feeling just enough head pain to make me feel alive.  I stood and faced the world outside my window and inhaled all the momentum my lungs could hold.  By 7:30, I was heading out the door with my helmet, goggles, swim cap, running shoes and registration number for the Redwood City Triathlon.  How did my dehydrated raisin brain remember to assemble all of these things? I marveled.   

But alas, at the height of my invincibility, the universe saw fit to remind me of my mortality.   Right before I left, I went to loosen the anti-theft pin on the front fork of my bike so that I could easily remove the wheel when I got to the car.  If you’ve never seen one of these, they look like this:

I twisted and heaved until my palms were purple — the pin would not budge.  My pajamaed roommate leaned against her doorframe, watching with lips pushed to one side of her face.  I stood up and looked at her.  

“I’m going to the streets to find a man.”  

She gave an earnest nod.  “Good luck.”

There is only one type of man to be found on the streets of SoMa in the early morning hours on a Sunday.   He is not known for chivalry.  There was a pack of four of them on the corner of 8th and Howard and I rolled towards them at an uncertain angle, like a grandma’s bowling ball toward a cluster of four pins.  When I was close enough to realize they were all simultaneously spitting profanities at each other, I rolled straight on past without a word.  Gutter ball.  The bike shop was closed and so was the liquor store.  Sleepy weekend dawns in The City are normally one of my favorite things.  Most Sunday mornings, I love nothing more than riding through the still urban streets, quiet as the apocalypse.  But on this particular morning, I was just annoyed by the astounding lack of non-drug addicted humans within a mile radius of my house.  I stared up into the windows of the new gleaming high rises — come on hipsters!  I know you’re in there!  Don’t you want brunch already?!  

Fortunately, right as I was passing the gas station, a cop car pulled in to the coin vacuum.   I silently apologized for cursing the San Francisco police just one day earlier after getting pulled over on my bike and I gave the officer my brightest debutant smile as he stepped out of his car.   He was obliged to rescue my distressed damsel self, even when I muttered something about “yeah well I loosened it” when he unscrewed the pin on his first attempt. 

I checked my watch — 7:48, plenty of time.  Everything was back on track… until I got to the parking lot and the car was not there.  I called Getaround and was informed that I had made the reservation for 7:15 PM.   Wait a minute.  What does that mean about my perceived success of everything else that happened at home last night?  The stealth entrance, the perfectly ratioed burritos??  (Suddenly I saw a grizzly flashback of a clanking bicycle, scattered tupperware lids, guacamole plopping to the floor.  Nooo!!)  God bless Josh, the phone support guy at Getaround, who immediately booked me another car—a Prius, automatic, $7/hour, big enough for my bike—only two blocks away.  

This post has been brought to you by Getaround — official sponsor of the Peace As In 

✌ blog and the best invention since Craigslist. 
(I’m kidding about the sponsorship, but serious about the rest.)

As someone who hasn’t owned a car for almost a year and hasn’t consistently driven at all in the past three years, I have a question for the automotive world: when did keys and ignitions go out of style?  To an outside observer, I must have looked like a chimpanzee in a science experiment trying to start the Prius — turning and flipping the fob, lifting it to my eyes to stare at it from every angle, smelling it for clues as to where the actual key might be.  When I finally deduced the right combination of levers and switches to pull a tiny key out of the fob, I couldn’t find anywhere to insert it.  

I spent about ten minutes triggering windshield wipers, clicking the emergency lights, activating the brake and turning on the radio before finally resorting to a YouTube tutorial.  My IQ pride was slightly comforted by the fact that I only needed to type “How to start a P” for Google to know what I needed on the second guess.  Apparently there are almost as many dumb drivers as people who want to start a photography business, so at least I’m not alone.  

But nothing restores healthy ego like a bunch of white people giving you high fives for swimming, biking and running all in a row — especially when they assume that your lack of wetsuit is not an act of stinginess, but an intentional act of bravery.  I am not cheap, I am daring!  Icy cold water be damned!   You amuse me with your attempt to freeze me to death!  By 11:00 AM—less than 17 hours after I was clutching my knees to hold back Budweiser vomit on the track—I was strolling the strut of a king out of the triathlon finish area, bike in one hand, bagel and a banana in the other (did I mention I think I may have superpowers?).  

Back at the car I realized that the Prius is actually big enough to fit my entire bike without having to remove the front wheel so… I’ll know for next time to skip the charade with the street men and the cop.  Somehow it took another ten minutes of monkey detective work to put the damn car in reverse (seriously Toyota, what is with that shifter?), but when I was finally driving out of the parking lot with the windows down, sun on my forearm, Bay salt in my hair and crumbs of peanut butter bagel all over my face, I was a winner.