Wedding Rehearsal

Power back on, it went off this morning, about 6:30, when a tremendous storm blew through. An inch and a half of rain in twenty minutes, thunder, lightning. I rolled over and went back to sleep, no getting down the driveway for a few hours. Finally got out after ten, had to stop several times and clear debris off the road, stopped at the spillway for a few minutes because the napp over the top was a cascade of enormous proportion. The museum basement was flooded, D had been running the sump pump all morning and there is still a mess to clean up, because several board members wanted to see what had happened. In consult with them and several city engineers and sewage guys for hours. Wrapping up the wedding prep today, and I had to solve various riddles for them, then stay late so they could rehearse the actual wedding, then later still, so they could discuss the food logistics which had not been organized, as far as I could tell, at all. Working tomorrow, as they need to get in early and I'll need to open. But I need to be in town anyway, to renew my license and tags at the DMV, and I'll need another library book and more whiskey for the delayed birthday non-celebration. Sushi from Kroger, my usual self-medication, and a good book. Have to meet the chairman of the board and a serious quantum mechanic, a Theoretical Sewage and Drainage expert, at the museum on Monday, because the chairman is flying out (his own plane) on Tuesday, to check on his fleet of plumbing supply stores. I have to haul trash, again, because the wedding prep and extra lunches for all the help has filled the trash cans, which need to be empty for the clean-up after the wedding and reception. Mom calls, I guess this is because of my birthday, but it's never mentioned. We talk about end of life issues. They're giving up the house and most of the contents, cutting my brother loose; there are still options, as they are both lucid. Dad broke my heart tonight, when he got on the line; he's legally blind, can no longer read, and I mentioned he should get recorded books, and he said, no, he was comfortable holding hands with Mom, sitting on the sofa, watching shows he couldn't see. His hearing is fine and he constructs a reality. Mom always taught me never to judge the way another person constructed their life. Even my father. That's an Annie Dillard line. What a great writer she is, not what so much was, as the way it presented itself, her language. The way oblique things come to bear. I spread my keep exactly as far as necessary. Now I need just this. A certain precision of dying. It doesn't matter how well versed you are, another wedding, all souls: eventually you come up against a brick wall. In the mean time, my dance card is full, and I'm comfortable with that, doing what needs to be done, digging stumps or mounting a show. As someone said, it's all the same.

Tom

Probably Beckett.

Couldn't send this because the phone was out.



Wedding And Reception

Had to get to town early, to go to the BMV, get a new license and sticker. First one in the door and I was paranoid about the vision test because I know my short-field vision is getting worse, but they actually test for distance perception, and despite the fact that I took several different pair of glasses, I passed without any. Various wedding people arriving at different times. The testing of the sound system, all recorded music for the wedding of a lead singer in a band, was painful until they got the gains correct. Then I worried about the doll heads shattering, went down and told Bo to hold it at 100 decibels. That's about one chainsaw. Great misspelled sidewalk verbage next door at the bar. Tony Is Perty. Even if it was a joke it would be Purty, so it's not a joke, just illiteracy. Put out small fires for the wedding party, round up extension cords and separate out demand on different circuits, lest we blow a breaker during the gala. I'm in good form, calm and amusing amidst the increasing anxiety. The Wedding Party are all supposed to be there an hour-and-a-half early, the guys are in the board room, at the front of the museum, the bride and her maids are in the staff common room, second floor, rear. My office opens right into that space, so I'm privy to intimate bridesmaid conversation right at the brink of a wedding. It's pretty raunchy. I enjoyed it so much I stopped reading the book on my lap and tried to not laugh out loud. Read a plethora of essays on Emily, and read several dozen poems during the actual service and reception, pilfered food from the kitchen. I offered the bridesmaids the left-over wine from the birthday party, it was going to waste, and they jumped right in. I never could get their names straight, they were all dressed the same. At funerals most people wear black, but at what other event do people wear the same thing? Does it mean something? did it used too? I don't have a clue. I wear a threadbare Grateful Dead tee-shirt over my faded black jeans; I don't mean anything, what you see, you know? She went on to be successful, a wizard in her field, I was never anything other than peripheral.