Us Two

Listening to: KT Tunstall, "Heal Over." This is an oldie but a way goodie. It just sets that reflective / melancholy mood doesn't it?

I'm leaving in a few days for a late in the year East Coast swing. I generally avoid cold weather but I've been yapping about going out there so it was put up or shut up time. I don't think I can really soak in enough New York / East Coast in two weeks but I'm going to have to do my best. I am excited to eat ramen, to eat corn, to eat hot dogs, to stay out late and not worry about things closing. I'm looking for epic, I'm looking for inspiration, maybe I'm looking for a job. Ahem.

Preceding that trip will be a very important wedding in Michigan. One of my great and close friends is getting married. Of course the date has been set for quite some time but I'm just now facing the impending crush of it now. Like whoa, she's getting married. For most of our friendship we've been in different cities and for some of it we've been turbulent, but for all of it we've been really important to each other. We used to stay in almost daily phone contact but that has petered out some as the years progressed. She asked me to read at her wedding when she got engaged but it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I fully committed to doing it and found something that I thought would speak to them as a couple and to us as a friendship. I don't know if that's how wedding readings should go. But that's how I wanted it to be.

A few years back, two friends of mine got married and they asked me to read the "Love is patient, love is kind" passage from Corinthians. I was a bit wary as this would be inside an actual church and I was afraid I'd get smote. But it turned out well and even though I rushed through it, I emerged without any sign from God that I had offended him. So that was nice.

This time around, something religious was not going to work. So I started digging. My first thought was to go with something by Kundera. But my favorite lines of his about love and life were either too short, hard to take out of context, or a bit depressing. Then I thought maybe something by Kahlil Gibran or Hafiz. But they'd been done a millions times before. So no. Maybe something from Letters to a Young Poet? Nope. I cruised poetry, Shakespeare, more literature quotes, tried to step a bit off the beaten path, but nothing seemed right.

Then I found it. A poem by A.A. Milne that I'm excited to read, even if it'll be nigh impossible to pull off. It's a poem with some funny sounding rhyme and not something I'd be super comfortable doing in a room full of strangers. But whatever. I'll go up there, dressed in my best wedding suit (the one that's never been out of California because I refuse to pack it in a bag), and stumble and spurt my way through it. It'll be fun.