Two Weddings and a Credit Card Bill
If you really must know what started me on the road to behind, I’ll gladly blame it on the peculiar fact that everyone seems to always want to get married in August. I really wouldn’t mind it if y’all decided to vary it a bit, or at least get married a little closer together geographically, as in the past five years I’ve had to travel an average of 3,300 miles per trip to get to your love shindigs and damn if that isn’t more jet lag than one person can handle in half a decade. Ok, I jest, just a tad, as those of you who have seen me make my appearance at your once-in-a-lifetimes know I’d have jettisoned to Mars and back to see you properly wedded off, but you know me and so you know I have to make public my fair share of bitching and moaning about loving you guys. And by the way, if this turns out to not be a one time deal for any of you, the second time you’re on your own, but do tell me where you’re registered and I’ll send you whatever apple peeler or trash compactor or telescoping feather duster you and the backup love of your life both desire.
Truth is, the weddings were lovely and I must be getting quite elderly emotionally because they did bring a little tear to my eye, and this time I can’t even attribute it to my accursed allergies. Blinks actually got married over in Oman with amazing Saudi Arabian-Pakistani dual flair, as evidenced by the mountains of photo albums documenting the colorfully ritualistic event, but was clever enough to stage the after party in London. He thereby enabled everyone to drink themselves into amusing idiocy while wearing saucy outfits on the outdoor terrace of a swank club, all within the inviting arms of an absolutely chilling English summer night. I detest the cold, and I still adored the party. Plane ticket to London: $250, Italian silver dress from Berlin: €39, new European plug adapter after burning up the first one with a hair dryer: CHF 25, all-inclusive train ticket for getting off at the wrong tube stop four times in a row: £2, seeing Blinks get hammered to the point of alarming incoherence while surrounded by Saudi Arabian princesses: priceless.
The other treat: Meow, Pins, and Lavender (photo above, L to R: Jess, Pins, Meow, Lavender, Blinks) showed up from the U.S. While they were technically there to see Blinks off, the happy side effect is that I got to see them as well and finally had someone to travel with, a luxury I haven’t had very often this year. I haven’t traveled with anyone in so long that I worried I could have developed some annoying habits (yes, even more! Smartasses…) that might be readily detected by my new travel partners. Whatever the truth may have been, Meow and Pins put up with me all the way to Warwick Castle and back, during which time Pins was able to extract her vengeance in the way that artsy people do.
I’ve been to my fair share of castles since moving to Europe, but I have to say that no one capitalizes on their castles quite the way the English do. Warwick Castle (which is pronounced “War-ick,” because both the English and the French insert lots of random letters they have no plans of using but enjoy laughing at Americans for attempting to use) was built in 1068 and features two “machicolated” towers, Guy’s Tower and Caesar’s Tower. “Machicolated” simply means that these towers have openings between the stones jutting out from the sides of the structure. These openings were used for throwing your favorite pointy or heavy (preferably both) object down on your attackers or perhaps pouring the boiling liquid of your choice on vacuum cleaner salesmen.
Nowadays it’s some kind of Monty Python slash Renaissance Faire abhorrence overrun by costumed freaks and kids smoting down baddies with plastic broadswords. It was, in a word, staged. While this kind of thing no doubt irritates, it’s still an original castle, and it’s hard not to be awesome when you’re a castle. It still has towers and parapets and winding, dark staircases, great banquet halls and even a dungeon. Most notably it has the world’s largest siege engine (yes, I just wanted to say “siege engine”), a catapult with the Old World moniker “Giant Trebuchet,” big enough to launch boulders the size of cows. Pins, a European history major and ancient weapons connossieur, led us as reliable leaders do all the way out to Warwick to see this thing launch. After waiting five hours for the second launch of the day (we missed the first), everyone lined up at the edge of the stream and watched expectantly as four men climbed into the human-sized hamster wheels mounted at either side of the trebuchet and started to wind the giant flinging arm down to the ground. As noted by a costumed announcer, animals such as horses and oxen were rarely used to prepare the trebuchet for battle as they were too valuable and needed for other purposes (whereas soldiers were, as they are today, readily expendable).
“How are they gonna bring the giant rock back?”
Meow always asks the sensible questions that no one can answer because no one has yet sorted out the answer to the preliminary questions, such as, “Where are they getting a giant rock from in the first place?” As it turned out, they weren’t launching a cow rock at all. They were launching what they tried to make sound a lot more exciting and which probably was, if you’re eight years old - a fireball on a long rope. I can only assume that in the case of an actual siege, the guys running in the wheels would run a whole lot faster because it must have taken thirty minutes at least to set the thing up. When it finally launched, well, you can see for yourself the terror.
I was hoping that a similar cutback in cultural attraction funds wouldn’t be awaiting me when I headed to Stonehenge a few days later. The miniature foam artifact from This is Spinal Tap, anyone? Ok, yeah, so there were little Stonehenges for sale when I got there, but the circle of stones itself appeared largely free of banner advertising and people running around trying to sell you keychains and umbrellas (although I would like to take this opportunity to rub in that Meow and Pins could have greatly benefited from an umbrella hawker so they didn’t have to resort to buying Warwick Castle branded umbrellas despite me telling them that yes, it will probably be raining in England so bring an umbrella).
While it’s pretty amazing that Stonehenge is still around as it is today, being around 3,800 years old, although it has actually fallen down a few times and been put back up. Most people agree it’s an altar for sun worshipers, although it’s still not really clear who actually built the thing.
It’s a mystical, cool place, no doubt, and I would recommend that everyone see it at least once, but I will admit it didn’t move me the way standing on the edge of a cliff at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa did, or climbing Oberrothorn in Zermatt, Switzerland to see the entire valley and the Matterhorn stretching far into the clouds and sky did. Maybe I have an obsession with the sky and the sea (particularly the sky) but I want always to see the whole world from some enormous vantage point - the best I could do is my wide angle lens shot below.
I took a bus to the little town of Bath after my trip to the stones. Bath is famous for, yes, the Roman Baths (although despite living in and traveling around Europe for nearly a year now, I still get weirded out by Roman things being everywhere except it seems, in Rome), which are built in such a way as to take advantage of a natural hot spring rising right out of the chilly English soil. The water of course flows through a series of aqueducts that Romans are famous for, and was probably a heavenly little luxury during its heyday. You can still see the bubbles bursting at the water’s surface in various pools, and the largest pool, the one surrounded by cranky looking carved Roman soldiers, still sits under a layer of steam at night that settles over the water as the temperature drops. There’s another pool inside the building where the management has taken to installing a video projection of “typical Roman bath life,” with actors portraying Romans in various states of undress, walking around and chatting about Roman business and women and whatever else it is that Romans used to talk about (and possibly still do). It’s a wonder how many people were in there trying to photograph a projection on a wall with their flash on. While I still have light years to go when it comes to learning about photography and being able to call myself a “pro” (though I’m well aware that plenty of people already do that with far fewer qualifications than me), it just seems common sense that you can’t shoot a light source with another big light source washing it all out, or that if you try to shoot fish at the aquarium with your flash on, all you’re going to get is a huge white star in the center of your photo. As usual, Apants tried to tell me that these people don’t understand the light concept or that they simply don’t know how to use their cameras, and while the latter seems a bit more plausible to me, the whole thing just reeks of absurdity with a whiff of stupidity.
But as usual, I digress. There was a pool, and it was full of coins. Pounds and euros and a U.S. dime here and there and suddenly I got to wondering if people just threw coins in pools out of force of habit or were they all, each and every one of them, wishing for something? I felt the itch and pulled out whatever I had in my wallet, five pence or a pound or whatever it was, I’m not sure and I don’t even remember, and I clutched it in my palm, squeezing it so tight that the edges of it dented my skin. I’m never at a loss for what to wish for. Sometimes I consider why this is - is it because I am so focused I know exactly what I want (ha) or am I powerless victim of the moment who only manages to wish for something she wants right now, whether or not it might be of any benefit to her in the future? I’d like to think that in my wishes as well as my political views, I am more middle of the road, that I can manage to wish for something with longer term benefits and more profoundly beneficial impact. But hey, I’m only human. It’s something I despise and love everyday. At least you will never catch me wasting my wish on selfless world peace or selfish lottery winning. I know better than that, especially when a much smaller wish will do to make me and everyone around me and maybe even indirectly, over time, everyone around them happier. I pressed my eyelids shut as tightly as my curled fingers around the coin. When a tear still managed to flee the corner of my eye I opened them and flipped the coin high into the ceiling. It plunked through the water with grace and came to rest next to its many sparkling companions. I don’t know why wishes make me cry, but I like to think that when I cry it’s sadness escaping to send someone a message about my wish, and hopefully when it finally returns it will come back a lot happier.
Whenever I get that zany little sad streak during my travels, I know that the thing I must do is to take photos. To have a camera as a constant companion is I guess more than a tad weird, but if you saw my camera you’d know that it was loved and traveled and has seen as much of the world with its one big eye as I have with my two. I guess people get a little surprised when I pull it out of my handmade hippie bag with no padding around it, its corners smooshed and hand grip worn to a slick, shiny surface, dust in the lens and bits of cracker dust and sand all over the LCD. Well, it’s seen stuff, like me. If I sat around in a little padded bag all the time and worried constantly about whether I’d get a scratch or a bump or look worn out, then I suppose I’d be a lot prettier too but not nearly as useful or interesting, and what’s the point of that?
The town of Bath is apparently well known for its glass (and anyone who knows me knows that the way to my heart is art glass and not diamonds), so camera and I headed over to a glass blowing demonstration before the bus pulled out for London. Since I love glass you’d think I’d know more about how it’s created but I’ve never really watched the whole procedure up close.
The actual process in terms of steps required is simple but the skill needed to make the pieces I most adore is insane. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you can spend a lifetime learning to make glass and continue to get better, as many art forms are exactly like this, but I was still amazed at how long it took to make something that didn’t suck. In other types of art, such as drawing or painting, you can make something that’s perhaps passable as art, that doesn’t suck but isn’t great either, and that someone might actually still buy, thereby actually confirming your standing as an “artist.” I’m not sure I’d buy any of this student glass work, even if it is on the discount shelf. Misshapen and sad, it isn’t even salvageable by claiming it’s full of “character.” It’s mostly just ugly or creepy in a Tim Burton kind of way that prevents you from wanting it to buy it, let alone set it on the mantle in your house so it can sprout legs in the night time and gimp around your living room in disturbing rapture while you’re asleep.
I had the good fortune of watching a master glass blower at work, making a lovely vase with a lily-flower opening. He started with a glob of red hot glowing glass on a stick which he rolled in colorful, crumbled glass bits to produce the streaks of melting color you see on some vases and bowls. He then placed it back in the oven, melted it some more, and pulled it out. With his assistant helping to keep it in constant motion, he began to shape the vase with tools. The hardest part of this entire procedure seemed to be the perpetual spinning of the stick. The minute you cease to turn the stick, the blazing hot glass starts to drip straight towards the floor. In addition, like a pottery wheel, inconsistent spinning will make the piece lopsided, Burtonesque (see above), and liable to scare small children when finished and also end up on the student discount shelf in the adjoining store.
The difficulty of working with even large globs of glass made me even more impressed when I looked later at some of the store pieces and saw the fine threading and delicate handles and the perfectly balanced bases. During the demonstration, the assistant shaped a small piece of glass into a gossamer thread, easily four feet long and nearly as flexible as a fiber optic hair, and gave it to the small audience to handle. If you bent it far enough, it would of course snap, but the pliability was still unbelievable and it was difficult to remember that you were manipulating glass. Yeah, they got me to buy something from the store. It’s sitting on my dining room table now as I type this. I also made sure I chose one of those impossible pieces that looked like it would take twenty years to learn how to make. If you want to see it, I guess you’ll either have to come visit Zurich or wait for me to move back to California.
I spent a few more days with Blinks and his wife Sweets in London after their party. As Sweets’ family slowly dispersed back to Oman, their flat became emptier until it was eventually one family member, Sweets, Blinks at work, and me. Sweets makes the most awesome Jasmine tea - the kind that makes you fuzzy, contemplative, and full of dreams. She claims she just buys it in Chinatown but I know there’s something that goes into the making of it that’s her doing alone. One morning as I surrounded this coveted tea in a hot mug with my hands, Sweets asked me if I planned to stay in Europe. I nonchalantly gave the answer I give to everyone: “I thought about it.” She smiled in that casual, curious way I’ve come to know her for in this short amount of time since we’ve met, but said nothing. The silence drew it out of me.
“Well, you do know I thought about doing my British Horse Society certification.” I had mentioned it to her before, when I visited them in April right after their wedding in Oman. “There are lots of excellent schools to do that out here in the U.K.”
“You did say that!” she acknowledged, more supportively than I’ve heard from most people in a while. “I bet you could even do that here in London.” She and Blinks have been advocates of my moving to London since they got married.
But I’m not sure if it’s a good idea leapt into my head, as it always does, whether I’m talking to a real person or just dueling it out within my own head. “Have you always worked since college or have you taken a break?” I asked, trying to redirect the questioning while still staying on a topic that I was vastly interested in but usually too fearful to discuss.
I half expected her to say no, that she’d gone straight to work after school. Why, I don’t know, except that it’s the answer I get from almost everyone. People haven’t done anything. They’ve just worked. And worked. And worked. And generally made me feel like a lost slacker whenever I suggested taking a break from work to do something that not only didn’t make any money but might actually cost money.
“Oh yes, I took a break,” she answered, smiling and looking down for a moment. I grabbed my mug by the handle and slid it out in front of me, leaning forward ever so slightly over the table.
“What?” came out of my mouth a little more forcefully than I expected.
“I went to Cordon Bleu for six months and learned to cook.” So the secret of her delightful cooking and amazing beverages was revealed. She admitted that it wasn’t all fun and games all the time, that there really were French head chefs yelling at you all day long and a legion of male students snickering and teasing your abilities or what they actually thought was the lack thereof. And is sounds like if you really want people to love you, you go through the whole one year course which includes the baking curriculum, after which if your smile doesn’t win anyone over your crème brûlée sure will.
Maybe everyone doesn’t think this is as big a deal as I do, but you see, cooking to me is like chemistry class. If you don’t mix the right ingredients together, the whole dish will blow up. And when you don’t have something you need, you have to learn what you can use to improvise with, while preventing the aforementioned disaster from occurring. It’s all really a mystery to me. I’m the kind of person who sees there’s nutmeg on the recipe, checks my shelves and finds no nutmeg, and then promptly decides there’s no way I can make the entire dish without that ingredient since it’s on the recipe so I end up boiling ramen in a bowl for dinner. A real chef would have improvised, and not only that, but would have improvised so well you’d have thought there was nutmeg in the dish. This fascinates me. I don’t really know that that’s what they teach you over at Cordon Bleu. I suspect you have to have some skill going in to begin with, but really it’s all irrelevant. The fact is, Sweets went to Cordon Bleu for half a year and learned to cook and I am totally impressed even without the details. I think I’m totally impressed that she simply didn’t go to work right away.
Well, why don’t I take the time off? Why don’t more people do it? For mostly the same reason - people are scared. Despite it seeming like people are successfully starting up businesses left and right, it’s still not the beaten path, the mainstream, guaranteed you won’t tank track to success. It’s such an unknown that people on the main road spend much of their time either ignoring the fact that other roads exist, frowning upon people who take other roads, or giving advice to people on that other road when they themselves have never set foot off the highway. In fact, the most refreshing news I received recently was from an old high school friend who I haven’t spoken to in ages, who gave me some flat out advice about the straight and narrow that I’ve been pressured to follow for years by parents, acquaintances, and lovers: “Only do it if you absolutely love it, and you can see yourself doing it for ten to twelve years. Otherwise it’s not worth the pain and effort.” The most startling realization from that advice was - I already knew it. I’d secretly known that for years, but for some reason was waiting for someone else to say it.
One day later I was flying back to Zurich, and two days after that I was headed home to my old stomping grounds to see yet another couple wedded off. After meeting years ago on an online dating site (which I still can’t believe, but which Papaya claims is the trendy thing to do now), HalfFull and Origami were finally getting married, and while I might stake the claim to fame for flying the furthest to see them, I can’t make any claims to being the oldest friend there. HalfFull had friends from his childhood in Pittsburgh, PA make the trek out over time and distance to see him, including someone he knew when he was five years old. It seemed that everyone invited to the wedding wanted to boast about how long they’d known HalfFull, about how they were possibly his oldest friend. It was wonderful. It must be amazing to not be a celebrity or an oil tycoon, to not own an expensive car dealership or to be a rock star, and to still have so many friends who are genuinely proud to be your friend, to have them travel thousands of miles just to see you married in a park on a sunny day in Oakland while surrounded by your other friends, who, whether they’ve known you for two years or twenty, are all lifelong.
And, because life is a juxtaposition of opposites, because you wouldn’t know good if you didn’t have bad, the best day of one person’s life had to be the worst day of someone else’s. More than likely this is merely coincidence, but either way it had the effect of shifting my perspective to the middle, which is a lot better place for it to be. By the end of the reception, with everyone reeling from drink and exhaustion and celebration, a friend of HalfFull’s sat down beside me and across from other friends in a hotel bar and laid out his tale of divorce, hate, greed, and worst of all sorrowful confusion. Because what’s most of all hurtful when love goes awry is not the logistics (though those can be terrible and relentless), but the lack of explanation. There’s no answer to any of your whys, and no matter how you thrash and shriek there’s nothing to squeeze out, no real response that the other person can ever give that you can call closure. You might come up with what you think are explanations, but in your heart you know that those kinds of wounds never quite heal over.
I didn’t know what to tell him, if anything at all, understanding that while I was not the ideal person to give advice, I was at least aware that my mind was clearer than his at the moment. He wanted to get over it too soon, to say out loud that she couldn’t hurt him anymore, that she hadn’t wrecked him. But she had. “I don’t think it works like that,” I said. “I think you just have to feel how you are going to feel, for as long as is necessary.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”
HalfFull took him back to his hotel. That’s right, on HalfFull’s wedding night, he had to drive his destroyed friend back home at 3 a.m. Well, that’s why everyone came to HalfFull’s wedding, why they flew all that way, why they love him. I flew home on Monday morning, destroyed, in my own way. I’d traveled across the world in two weeks to see the happiest day of four people’s lives and the worst day of one person’s life. I had a lot of love in my heart, a lot of sadness around the edges, and a huge credit card bill. I want my partner in crime too but damn, am I ever too tired to do anything about it right now.
About a week after HalfFull’s wedding, he posted some photos that I happened to feature in randomly. They were somewhat odd photos, but there I was, thrilled to be seeing him off. “It’s a good photo of you, Jess,” HalfFull said in all his honesty. I smiled. The first photo wasn’t even about me. It was of course, about the bride, Origami. But there I was, popping in unexpectedly, saying hey there, it’s the happiest day of my friend’s life, and I’m here.
The entire London, Warwick, Stonehenge, and Bath gallery is here.
