So, that was Martha's wedding. What a weekend it's been. The wedding wasn't very formal -- it was held at her parents house, with Aug doing the ceremony in a completely secular way. It was very unique, and interesting.. I bumped into someone I knew from a long time ago from Outland (took me a while to remember from where I knew him).. and actually bumped into a number of people who I haven't seen for forever.. it wasn't by any means a complete thing, nor was it 'pure' in this way, but it resembled a meeting of the first generation of SFF. It really takes something special to pull together so many people from all over the place to one location. It made me feel kind of wisty -- last time I was at Martha's place, it was under very different circumstances, and the evoked feelings and memories were odd and uncomfortable.. It was a lot of fun, and my traditional gift, blown up to enormous proportions, was hopefully appreciated. Fortunately, Will seems to have no feelings for my acting like a schmuck the last time we met. Either he's enormously generous, he understands what I meant to Martha at one point, or he understands what I was likely going through. He seems to be a good guy, so while I still am a bit wisty over the whole thing, I hope they're very happy. It helps to have had a relationship in the meantime, even considering how it went.
Afterwards, we went to the reception, which was initially not the most interesting thing in the world (receptions tend to start slow), after the (tasty, mostly veggie-friendly) food was made available, it began to turn into a .. well, party isn't the right word.. kind of mix between SFF social and a relatively tame party. I got to catch up with people I haven't seen forever, and found that still more people are planning to leave Columbus. This touches on a general theme of the gathering, which I'll get to later. Once things were more than halfway through, the dancing started, and I alternated between dancing and talking with people (as tiredness permitted). I believe that dancing, outside of a formal context, requires two things, with a third being optional -- energy, shamelessness, and perhaps a good sense of rhythm. I have all three, and so while my dances probably looked silly, I did have an enjoyable time, and also did some dancing with SFF-affiliated folk. I was reminded a bit of the complex past/present interrelations between some of us by some of the conversations, a few of which were a bit sharp..
One generally interesting snippet of conversation I had with someone was the note that so many of Martha's ex-bfs were present at the wedding (with one notable exception). It was joked that that was probably why the ceremony didn't include the question, "does anyone object to this wedding", in whatever words it's phrased in.. and somewhat more seriously noted that this wedding is a time to acknowledge a closing of a door, if not in the past few months, then at least now. It's been noted by some of my friends in Pgh that these things are emotionally a bit weird, and that's certainly been true for me..
Little Bird, Little Chavala I dont understand whats happening today Everything is all a blur -- Fiddler on the Roof, Chava Ballet Sequence
On that note, along with unity, the normal theme for a wedding, seperation is the other theme I alluded to earlier. There's the acknowledgement of a closed door, and then Martha and Will's moving out of the SFF sphere, out east to philly. The move of others, like Kurt and perhaps Justin, away, and the changing of a name... Things change.. and we, in SFF, had a good thing. SFF will probably live on.. but it pains me to feel that sense of loss.. of change. I haven't had my fill yet, and the bowl is being taken away..
And he looked, his staff of power had become but a stick, the castle had become a row of rocks, the ending of the games, illusions stripped And so, where the world tree had been, he simply walked over the soft ground, raised his stick, and poked it into the ground, walking away. A new beginning, but not for him. Such is the way of gods.. imagination has been 90% of the trick.
On Friday, before I left for Brecksville, I cancelled my DSL -- I'm likely to switch over to Speakeasy or Telerama. Apparently Verizon doesn't want my DSLModem back, so Telerama's requiring of my having a DSLmodem isn't as expensive as I might think.
Jason, in the area for a few weeks, is visiting my place for a few days. I'll be showing him around town.. unfortunately, I also have large blisters on my feet from all the dancing -- the shoes I wore were terrible for dancing. Ouch.
There're at least a few new things on my calendar -- there's going to be a gathering in Columbus sometime soonish I'd like to go to, and there's also a road trip that I might join in on when it passes through Pittsburgh. Finally,
I've added some more content to the private section after the fact. Not that anyone presently can see beyond the veil... At some point, I'll make the private levels a bit more sophisticated so people can, on a per-user level, see things I mark as being for certain users/groups (ACLs?). Then again, nobody ever logs in, as far as I know, to my BLOG. *shrug*
I have a lot of ideas that I recorded using my voice recorder that I'll write about later -- I'm tired now. It's very very late.
