Wedding Day or, are they going to elope, break up, or come back? I'd Go Anywhere With You

A wedding was a very exciting thing, and Lewis's many cousins and aunts and uncle were wrapped up in the big celebration. The sudden speed of things seemed to come second to their sheer affection for him, the oldest brother's only son and oldest child. He relished the bustling household of people, however they fit into the lives of himself and his family. He’d never seen firsthand how the decision of two people could have such ripples. Many of the cousins took an automatic liking to his frankly winsome and petite bride. Of his new in-laws, he had enjoyed the hospitality of Cousin Lynn just the week before. Old family friends, too, arrived, his mother’s best friend and her husband among them.

When Lewis arrived, he realized he’d spent little time with his parents recently. Perhaps they didn’t have much in common past the hours of their domestic life together. But once upon a time, they’d worked side-by-side in the family business. They’d spent vacations in the mountains, roasting marshmallows. His mother had read to him. His father had taught him to drive, taken him to the gym. They’d taken on so many household construction projects together. The whole family had worked in the field picking vegetables until sundown, and more watching television and snapping peas and green beans to bite sizes. They had gone to church three times a week, and had dinner with other members afterwards. They had stopped going together so much before he graduated high school, and then he had attended college on scholarship out of state.

Years later, he would feel much closer to these memories, but at this point Lewis felt much more distant by his new experiences. He thought of how, when he began paying all his own bills, he first truly appreciated just how much his parents had fended for him, sacrificed for him and his sister. His mother, strict as she was, gave him still more freedom than her parents gave her. His father, however hard he worked, had spent more time with him, provided for him, and been more of a father than his own had been. They had, as parents do, made so much up on the fly.
He was sorry he had not had more time to ease Gina into the family, more time for everyone to keep company. His father had wearily sunk into his favorite chair and watched baseball, last time they visited, while his mother busied herself with every chore imaginable. Just the same, he felt the need to go up to his Mom and Dad today, hug them, talk with them for a little while. They found him happy and eager to press forward, if a bit put off at not seeing Gina. He wanted to thank them for all they had done for him, to make him capable of surviving, for teaching him pride, for encouraging him the best they knew how, for trying to show him right from wrong. What were their differences, really. They loved each other very much.

While this was a special day to share with all of these people, it was not really about anyone but the two at its center. What had been very personal and intimate seemed, at present, as though it would swallow them whole! Tradition was keeping them apart until the wedding at 2:30pm; it was bad luck, after all, for the groom to see the bride. Why that would be, no one seemed to know. "Because."

A deeply intimate experience united them. In Lewis's rush to get the wedding date set as soon as possible, there was very little time to adjust to sharing their wonderful secret with everyone. Perhaps a less superstitious and silly old fashioned motive of young girls who could hardly fathom all of this would've led to a brief conference in the hallway. This created the desperation that led him to the outside of Gina's room, bright notes in the key of 'G' insistently prying his young bride to the window.

"This is bullshit, honey!" he declared. "I want to see you! I want to talk with you!"

Lewis was not the most patient---or perhaps, emotionally stable---and definitely not, tame---young man at this point, if ever. Who knows what his friends he'd grown up with thought about any of this; he was known to have a wild side. For some of the wedding guests, it had to be a clue, when he didn't change...and then, they heard the news: he and the bride had vanished.

They disappeared without warning, not an hour before the ceremony.

One minute, Papa Archer was going over the steps of the wedding vows amidst a very busy household packed past capacity with people.

It was no quiet occurrence. Whatever dose of nerves or feelings or madness led Lewis to utterly disrupt the proceedings, to him it was a mix of clingy desperation and the unique closeness he felt to Gina. Who the girl REALLY was seemed to evade most everyone. But they were the only two people at the center, suddenly, of all the attention of everyone in both families and more.

This very private conspiracy to love one another completely and for always now had seen the inescapable light of day. Who knows what loneliness may have driven them both together? In his case, it was of choice; the person he had been was fading like a shell opening to reveal a seed, which ate away the nutritious coating of what it had been before, to take root in the elements. His old way of life was changing in every way, and so, it seemed a time to slip away from his place in all of it. An exciting new idea of what to try to be beckoned.

For Gina, it was so much more simple: she'd quietly slipped out of sight, too. Always her sister's shadow, she had tried to live a little for herself, but the consequences left her very disappointed. Her appetite had fled, her work became her life, and about her troubles she knew not what to say, until her beautiful young man had come to her with warmth, humor, and affection. He'd fed her with his own mouth, and given her attention that elevated her sense of self-worth to reveal more than the shade she'd become.

So when this pied piper of her heart came to her window, playing his harmonica, she smiled, all the way to the eyes, for the first time that day. Her well-meaning wedding help had plastered her with adorable, doll=like dollops of make-up, as her petite frame longed for his embrace, and perhaps, a nice nap. When he said, "this is bullshit, honey, let's go somewhere for a minute! Come with me! Seriously!" he said it with a smile, too.



Original text follows, from 2011

They disappeared without warning, not an hour before the ceremony.
One minute, Papa Bowman's going over the steps of the wedding vows amidst a very busy household packed past capacity with people.

An announcement at "Gina's" job, which she didn't tack up but which she couldn't avoid, let all of her co-workers, her sister's co-workers, and her brother's ex-co-workers know: her impulsive decision to marry her new boyfriend was going to lead to a lovely, quickly-put-together ceremony in her hometown. It was the closest thing to a Charlie Sheen moment in their lives, so out of support and curiosity for the bizarre, many, many of them came.

A wedding was a very exciting thing, and Lou's many cousins and aunts and uncle were wrapped up in the big celebration. The speed of things seemed to come second to their sheer affection for him, the oldest brother's only son and oldest child. Many of the cousins took an automatic liking to his frankly winsome and petite bride.

While this was a special day to share with all of these people, it was not really about anyone but the boy and girl at its center. Tradition was keeping them apart until the wedding at 2:30pm; it was bad luck, after all, for the groom to see the bride. Why that would be, no one seemed to know. "Because."

Lou was not the most patient---or perhaps, emotionally stable---and definitely not, tame---young man at this point, if ever. His decision that dressing up in a nicely made suit would be "fraudulent" and his insistence to wear embarrassingly simple clothes, as though he were going hiking, was taken in stride as eccentricity---by the family, at least. Who knows what his friends he'd grown up with thought about any of this; he was known to have a wild side, to be one who would choose to stick out. For some of the wedding guests, it had to be a clue, when he didn't change...and then, they heard the news: he and the bride had vanished.

It was no quiet occurrence. Whatever dose of nerves or feelings or madness led Lou to utterly disrupt the proceedings, to him it was a mix of clingy desperation and the unique closeness he felt to Gina. "Gina" was just a nickname, an airhead's nickname borrowed from a so-so comedy, Martin, for that matter. Who the girl REALLY was seemed to evade most everyone. But they were the only two people at the center, suddenly, of all the attention of everyone in both families and more.

This very private conspiracy to love one another completely and for always now had seen the inescapable light of day. Who knows what loneliness may have driven them both together? In his case, it was of choice; the person he had been was fading like a shell opening to reveal a seed, which ate away the nutritious coating of what it had been before, to take root in the elements. His old way of life was changing in every way, and so, it seemed a time to slip away from his place in all of it. An exciting new idea of what to try to be beckoned.

For Gina, it was so much more simple: she'd quietly slipped out of sight, too. Always her sister's shadow, she had tried to live a little for herself, but the consequences left her very disappointed. Her appetite had fled, her work became her life, and about her troubles she knew not what to say, until her beautiful young man had come to her with warmth, humor, and affection. He'd fed her with his own mouth, and given her attention that elevated her sense of self-worth to reveal more than the shade she'd become.

So when this pied piper of her heart came to her window, playing his harmonica, she smiled, all the way to the eyes, for the first time that day. Her well-meaning wedding help had plastered her with adorable, doll=like dollops of make-up, as her petite frame longed for his embrace, and perhaps, a nice nap. When he said, "this is bullshit, honey, let's go somewhere for a minute! Come with me! Seriously!" he said it with a smile, too. The urgency was contagious; against the efforts of no less than four or five of his adorable cousins, she managed to get out the door and into his hands. It was all one big game to them. He'd simply disappeared from Papa's side to reach her through her bedroom door, and barefoot the two of them fled to his getaway car, as the slightest early spring rain began to fall once more.

The chaos and bemusement left in their wake was barely apparent to the two of them.
"Are they going to elope? " "they BETTER not, after all the trouble we went to arrange a nice wedding on short notice!" "They're going to break up!" "You don't know them, they're more likely to elope than break up." "They'll be back. Maybe it's just the pressure of the day." "Maybe they figured out they are in over their heads. I wonder what will happen next?"

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The Head is a place you must learn to make your friend (also, "No Wasted Time")

The head is a place you must learn to make your friend.

From the beginning of this blog, I had two original ideas: one, give my personal history to my friend who I haven’t seen or heard from after two decades, and second, for the writing to energize his efforts to heal himself.

Now in my friend’s case, tackling a wildebeest would be more fun than his headaches---don’t know the cause, can’t cut the medication---it’s a defining distraction, let’s say. So whatever problems you face, be thankful if you’re head is a physically comfortable place. But don’t feel sorry for T.J. If you’re an expert on chronic pain, I’ll gladly put you in contact with him!

My friend Tammy Brewster is cleaning her house today in Georgia, wondering how she managed to find things this way this fine spring day. For this writing, I go to a room in my head I’ve been meaning to straighten for some time, kind of picking up this and that so you can get in but mostly just peeking in and smiling and saying, “that’s something I’m going to get to on such-and-such a day,” meaning you’ve just made peace with the fact that you are simply not going to get to it now, however much you sincerely may care!

You can work with yourself and your surroundings to create the state of your mind. It’s one reason silence is such an excellent starting point for finding a useful thought. As soon as you are able to stop your thinking and glide for two seconds, you are living!

"no wasted time"

So I’ve set out to be the peace I seek in others, the laughter I seek in others, the wonder I seek in others. I got a crash course in the nature of such things when I married a girl I’d met six weeks before.

The insight that’s come to me is that I should always remember the day we drove across Kansas, because we had not planned to be there four days before, just as we were then completing a trip to Colorado that I had not planned to take with her, since we had previously never met.

There is a feeling running through the beginning of things, a greatly inspired sense of assimilating one’s purpose, summoning one’s strength, and joy, set into whatever relief the situation provides. The joy can simply be turning away from panic or fear, or the joy can be an apotheosis of emotional treasures, for joy is what it is not---but more.

When you like the companionship in your life, you choose it as a goal unto itself. I tend to relate to people as an individual, dealing with existence in the ways an individual does, but the cultivation of my individuality shares in the product of one person, sharing the sacrifices of her life and time while I devote all my life to awakening the work I dreamed I would make, with moment-to-moment bits of clarity assuring me that I have found a way to be myself.
Everything that pours out of my connection to the love that makes creations finds some way into the light of my closest human companionship. Already my privately cultivated world, which I’d so recently learned to successfully treat as my own faithful companion, poured forth in its excited, primal bits, as the novelty of sharing every communication possible spurred me to talk through much of that four days’ ride. We chose to go it without one hotel stay, making our car our home, our love our substance, our journey, our purpose. Somehow we could discover in the elements of some new place a life set to support our dreams, our discussions, the pursuit of a better life.

You begin to know a better life as you find it, and without a doubt, there are healthy activities we’ve learned to pursue that promote well being, with many more we’d like to try; we have the feeling now about our bodies that we were beginning to have about our lives that day, when we stopped in Cloudland, Kansas, music and miles our only companions just days after a hastily-called wedding at her family’s house, the same family from whom she’d never spent a full day. They are people we think of fondly even now, as events would eventually tie me to the pleasure of better knowing them.

There are roads we cannot find when we fear we are lost, and calls that super cede many things that contribute to what is called the pursuit of happiness. Yet there are transitory possessions, and there is the one chance to begin seizing the enduring and critical opportunity to find some place in the siblings of humanity that you make. Fortunately, that chance drifts by the side of the living every second of the day, and its existence is the pillar of my optimism.

That day on the road, started when a state trooper rapped on our window to make sure we hadn't frozen, represents innocence. Later that day I was moved to buy a comic book during a fill-up. I gave it to her to read, and she did so, aloud, to pass the hours of that day that varied between cloud and sun. The Fantastic Four were all normal people in this story, living lives orchestrated to consist of the simple pleasures of pursuing non-super-heroic lives. Well before the Matrix, this story from 1981 or so featured the discoveries of their present existence within tiny androids alive in a constructed setting, set in motion by the man who hates them and links with them throughout their serialized (and fictional ) careers, Victor Von Doom. He's an angry, vain fellow who dresses like an armored stand-in for Death, jealously trying to destroy someone who'd pointed out a mistake to him, which pride would not countenance, leading to his own personal disgrace. But the things you think about, the choices that make your life real or happy, those are the creative inspiration you take away as the fantasy resolves over the course of carefully drawn pictures that lead into purely imaginary abilities and obstacles.

The difficulty of the choice to deny a false yet benevolent seeming reality resonates in the character's reactions, leaving us questioning what sort of denial will we accept if, on the surface of things, some side of ourselves is truly satsified. The surprising exercise of inventing one's own sound, motion and sense of time from the pages, which represent the creative nexus of drawing and writing, stimulated my new bride happily, and she began to glimpse the hidden power of contemporary comics in motivating my academic success and undoubtably the nature of my listening ability, which tended to explode with resonant images carrying emotional content associated with the symbols of each person's words. She did, incidentally, put it some other way, but her observations continue to challenge and delight, as well as aid, her blushing spouse.

This seemed to keep away her nausea; it had not been but since I met her that she’d regained interest in her food. This was final part of a decision to, without outward drama, give up on the wonderful woman she could create and give to the world. I could see she was deeply sincere, truthful to a fault, concerned for people and the consequences of her own actions, and carried an understanding of the wide-eyed dream of the life we all might know, but for the misunderstanding of its possibilities amongst the wide cast of humanity’s participants.
I have never had sorrow more than over what I discovered wasted. But such is one tree down the long path of life. Still, somehow my friendship with this girl evoked everything so warm and generous and humorous about her, provided her with happiness she’d grown afraid for which to hope, if I may phrase it so awkwardly. Truth without guile, beauty without style: if only I could tell you how glad it made me to get her interested in eating, something I could make her do by example of my own faithful appetite, an appetite for a simple life and a common touch while not truly understanding overly much about status or fame. However, an innate sense of guitar playing as the bridge to extemporaneous theater had led me to quixotic illusions that I might assemble from my confused psyche songs and a life of making music for people in concert and do all that position, done successfully, could give me opportunity to do, in terms of promoting, thoughtfully, the causes of the week. The weak.

I have auditioned for many roles to continue my survival, all predicated on honest, no-hassle dedication to freeing an inner muse, while occasionally fearing the outer man would age beyond the successful recognition of those dreams. No one’s dreams should ever be used against them, but sometimes you are simply afraid of death because you cannot deal with wasting your life. Yet you think of how others live with their own dreams, and only in time does it become simple again that life in the broader sense traffics in conflict, since some dreams violate the notions of others, or even the viability of bringing anything from those dreams to light. That is very personal business within everyone.

I’d hoped to pursue the muse, literally return to the mountains I’d climbed the summer before, become a very healthy person with a bright and generous life. Now there was someone there when I showered, there in some park in Tennessee while I’m using the bathroom, even---another person, a female, just as I’d always wanted, beside me in every meal, usually based on some meal we bought just for the purpose of splitting together. All these things I now share with you, I gave them to her, first on the promise that we would decide, in the course of every single day, if we belonged in this relationship, based on the idea that every love requires freedom, though that is hardly the only element one thinks about. I did not want to live a life I dreaded fulfilling, I did not want to live a life with my choice erased. What I found in time, is that once you are accepted for all that you are, in the vision of knowing all that you consider right and motivating and all you would become, you are likely to reconsider every day and conclude without doubt that if you are so happy to see a person smile, if you are so moved by their sharing nature, if you are so enamored of the way they enjoy things and understanding of what causes them distress, you will likely find that you do not need to waste time on reviewing the
quality of your choice, but will probably relish its wisdom.

When you mess with your lover’s hair, when you rub their sore spots, when you get some little thing from the fridge or help them find something or tell them more about something you know they find personally interesting---when you think about who they love and what they’ve learned, when you consider what they’ve done for you, when you wonder what activity might be a terrific fit for the two of you, you are having something that preserves memory, increases the values of one’s personal experience, something that brings peace to the willing and composure to new pictures in life. It is no wonder that much grief is born of its absence.

When she called her parents that spring day to tell them she was half a country away, that her first honeymoon plan didn’t make sense but with enough of everything we owned packed busily into our car, she would not be needing her old job, her old room, nor any worry for her concern, but she had decided we should try my original plan, to leave the hometown and search for a fresh start. The fact they trusted and loved her meant the choice of the help was only a phone call away, but she took this leap without more than a phone number to an apartment manager---actually, purposed to house mostly elderly residents, by my dear friend David’s mother, my host the summer before one week. I’d had a taste of adventure out there, and I found a satisfying way of mixing with total strangers.

Sometimes you long to get away and sometime you yearn to fall in love. Imagine the feeling of one day finding yourself in the process of both. That’s something you can check for perspective whenever you’re working along the flow of Who is going to become What!