something brittle and eternal as gems

Last night I went to a wedding. It was, as most weddings are, an inseparable mixture of the divine and the mundane. It was alchemical magic and it was overcooked lamb. It glowed incandescent with the heady ineffability of love and history and hope and family, and it dropped heavy with the dull obligation of making small talk to people you’ve never seen before, don’t really have much interest in, and will never see again. It was a wedding of a friend of mine, and he looked positively suffused with his ardor for his bride, and she reflected that aureole back at him. They were glorious: bright and warm and shiny and untouchable as suns.

You’d think it would be difficult for me to attend a wedding right now, what with the glittering possibility of mine being so recently yanked out from under me. It was hard to see others wed, and yet it wasn’t. (And if it seems my writing currently dwells in the land of dyads, it does, as do I. I am seeing everything in oppositional doubles right now, and I give equally as much and as little credence to both polar opposites. I feel less like Dr. Doolittle’s eternally dissatisfied pushmi-pullyu than Hindu’s Gandubehrunda, the mighty two-headed bird that watches in all directions.) The wedding went on around me, and I watched it, neither particularly pained nor particularly joyful.

It was, I admit, difficult to look at the table card with both my name and Donny’s listed in happy round brown type. It was odd sitting at that table and seeing his chair empty, the lone empty chair in this room of people; it was hard not to feel this chair was mocking me. I did, from time to time, think about how Donny would feel were he there, what he would be entertained by and how he would react. He would have been tickled, I think, to have gone to a wedding where Clarence Thomas was in attendance, given that Donny follows politics, and I don't. He would have also been happy to see the buildings he built from both the Hudson and the East Rivers, for this wedding took place on a boat, the overly aptly named Romantica. Donny would have stood on the deck alertly, poised to point out his buildings and talk about the foundations, and I would have listened to him because I love him.

I didn’t avoid talking about my boyfriend/fiancé/X. I mentioned him in small talk to strangers, but I don’t think I was particularly preoccupied with his, to me, palpable absence.  I felt, unsurprisingly, both bogged down by my boyfriend/fiancé/X’s weightless presence and freed by my solo status. I admit: I did weep when my friend, wending his way round and round the tables to greet his guests, touched me on the shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, you’ll have one of these one day.” He meant to reassure me, and I suppose he did, but his kindness necessitated a trip to the bathroom, where I briefly wept into cheap, stiff tissue.

Late in the voyage, after the vows had been said, and the orange-grey dusk had turned dark, and the meat had been eaten, I found myself standing at the stern of the boat with a couple of couples, engaged in a conversation about something with another guest, a woman. I looked up and above us hung the twin garlands of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Williamsburg Bridge, both lit bright dotted white and looking like two giant diamond necklaces strung across the throat of the black velvet sky. On either side of the boat glimmered buildings like Piet Mondrian paintings in light, while the river beneath us unfurled like an infinite bolt of oily-dark charmeuse.

The woman standing beside me looked up at the bridges, grinned, and extended her arms out to them, embracing them, the night, the city, this moment in one large and spontaneous gesture. It was the best possible reaction to the view.

Standing beneath and between these lights that glittered brittle and bright as gems, I felt the strange tenuous beauty that is human connection. All around, we touch and jump apart, like atoms that bounce off one molecule to become part of another. We are like those great weighty structures of bridges and buildings, these monolithic creations we see without seeing until some ineffable circumstance shines them with a strange light and we see them anew. The lit bridge becomes jewelry and the jewelry glitters with all the fragile brilliance of cutting gem and tensile metal. We come together and we connect, we break apart and we find ourselves alone. We sail on in the night, glad when we stumble blank-eyed as a child at the unexpected wonder and we are gladder still when we share that moment, however ephemeral, with another person, however much a stranger.

Comments

[tracy]

i have been following your recent turn of events, coincidentally as my own relationship entered a similar void. just like you, i was pressing for further commitment...after several emotion charged days,i have something that resembles what i think i want...if you sense ambiguity, you are spot on...i think we all strive to make that ultimate,life affirming connection but in the end we only have our own perspective.

i send you really positive, good wishes that you find/have what gives you happiness

[Selena Kitt]

...but the unexpected wonder is all around us, all the time... and we are each connected, always, with each other and with something greater.

[Learn]

Way to tunnel into my heart.

I don't comment often, but I don't see how I couldn't comment on writing quite as close to me, or as beautiful as this.

Just.. stunning.

(And you mentioned pushmi-pullyus!)

I wish you all of the very, very best!

[.6]

CG,

It is a difficult time for you, and I am quite surprised that you had to attend a wedding (of all things!). I wish you all the best, and all the time, strength, and tender moments to expedite your healing. Your words and your spirit forever remain inspirational.

Best,
.6

[Him]

Hey, through all that is trying, I hope you never lose your sense of wonder.
Him

[alphagirl]

And after all you have been through in the last week - you find beauty and the courage to continue to write beautifully and share with us - thank you.

[Boldn'Brazen]

I don't know you, except from here, in this world of frippery that is the interwebs...

and yet I say this without irony or sarcasm...

I love you.

Bn'B

[marx marvelous]

You make gray a pretty color.

[O]

That was truly beautiful..

and so are you.

[MR]

Hi CG,

I've been reading for a while now, but this is the first time I've felt compelled to write you.

I've spent the last 7 years separating the pick-up sticks that constitute my life. Looked at by my family like their Gibraltar as the next, regularly scheduled crisis touches down and makes its way to the terminal. Pick one: relational, financial, health, bipolar daughter, failed suicide attempts...and the one thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that there are no accidents in the universe. That which arrives is invited, somehow, by me. That which never appears has simply bumped up against the wrong end of the magnet.

I admire your talent and the amazing way you bear your soul over and over, and in such an eloquent fashion. I'm very sorry you are in pain. I won't presume to offer advice to you concerning your current troubles; it would be gauche of me to pretend that I know you well enough to suggest a path.

All I can say is, in all things, strive to understand your role in creating your reality and all that is unnecessary will dissolve away.

You're obviously highly intelligent, and your insight into your own life appears, almost always, profound in the extreme. Having said this, I can't help but ask the one question that keeps coming to the fore for me: how surprised are you, really, that this has happened? I understand equally if the answer is "a lot" or "not very surprised at all" or anything in between.

Best regards from a simple fan,

MR

[Sailor]

I'm in awe- I love your writing, your sense of wonder, and wish you nothing but to be happy, in whatever happens next. That you can share with us all, and do it so beautifully, is a tremendous gift.

[Introspectre]

Oh, my sweetness, I ache for you. Maybe I ache for me, the memories your words dredge up, but I ache in a sisterly love.

*sigh*

It's really those moments that make it all clear, isn't it? The stranger on the boat, in a moment of whimsy and unfettered by self consciousness... they remind us of what we really are.

I bought a bottle of bubbles a few weeks ago. I haven't opened them. I felt there would be... a moment. A proper moment. And I think I'm going to find a tree to climb into today, think of you, and invisibly blow them into traffic. For you. For me. For all of us.

[knowtoryous]

achingly beautiful