Total overwhelm

[sun_set_bravely]

I realized that I never explained my "living over retail space???" post a few weeks back. To make a long story very short: At the end of January, freak1c and I found a new apartment only four blocks away from our current one, and are moving next Sunday. The new place has a full-sized kitchen (this one has half-appliances), lots of light, and ceiling fans!! We are totally psyched, and in the process of packing up all of our belongings.

We are also continuing this wedding planning business, which is coming along well. However, I find myself alternating between two extremes: A) absolute assurance that all will be well and we don't have that many details to pin down, and B) total panic and overwhelm that we have made no decisions and know nothing about the immense task ahead of us. B) may be very closely related to a new guilty pleasure/sadism: kvetch.indiebride.com. It's the unbelievably active forum on Indiebride's website (on which I've lurked for several years now). Yeah, the brides are "independently minded" in many ways, but nonetheless, it's still Only the Brides spending their entire workdays posting about minute details of the wedding. Where the hell are the grooms who care about details? So, I'm trying to curtail my visitations to that website, as they only end with me wanting to curl up into a ball and give up, because there's no way any of it will ever get done. Yeah, not a positive place to be.

Also, I am writing this script. It's good. I have great hopes for it. But I just can't seem to knock out the last twenty pages of my second draft. I have a writer's group deadline. This is good. But still.

I hope this move shakes up a lot of dormant and/or frenetic energy that's hanging around. I need some focus, and I also need hot chocolate, which I will go make now.

Also, I can't stop listening to "In the Sun" by Joseph Arthur. daisydumont has long spoken well of this artist's music, but I never found the doorway into his work. Then this song came up on random on my iTunes (how did I even get it on my computer?) and I recognized it as the pensive-all-character-montage song in "Saved!", one of my favorite movies. And now it won't leave my head. And I'm happy about it. I love the respectful secular invocation of God, a concept I'm dealing with on more than one level in my life right now.

All of this weaves together, you know.

Last night, at a children's opera, freak1c said to me, "Look up," calling my attention to stained glass panels in the ceiling, but his words echoed "Angels in America," a play with lines that stick in my head like prayers, and I wished in that moment that I could one day write two words as beautiful and eloquent as those.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

i love that song. it's from the one album of his i'd take with me to the proverbial desert island. may God's love be with you, always.

[oceanic.livejournal.com]

Meg made me read indiebride a while ago-- it's completely engrossing, even for those of us who are nowhere near getting married.

Man, if I were moving to Brooklyn I'd totally steal your old apartment. I thought that place was awesome. I think it was the exposed brick that did me in. :)

[sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com]

Our friend Paul is actually moving in to the apartment, which is super cool. I wanted it to stay in the family, since the price is so good and it's a great location. So maybe, when you want to move to NYC, he'll be moving out.... ? ;) just giving you a hard time m'dear.

[oceanic.livejournal.com]

Heh, no worries. And if/when I move back east, I'll probably be moving in a more northerly direction. ;) But I'm glad it's still in the family, so to speak.

[prosicated.livejournal.com]

Because of the NORTEX!!!!
Yeah, indiebride is terrifyingly addictive. It's nice, sometimes, to know there are other people who get sucked into the American girlishness that is wedding planning and obsession with relationships, but it's also nice knowing that you don't have to open the damned browser window and be accosted with it.

[echoboom.livejournal.com]

i just watched saved a few days ago and found it entertaining..

as for the guys not immersing themselves into weddings and whatnot, i distincly rememer a night that CL and i were heavly discussing the music to be played at our undetermined wedding. a topic i continue to think about to this day....


and im nowhere near getting married... but im close to the first cut of songs...(a few days ago i added "white lines" by grandmaster flash..)

[sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can't complain about CL not being interested in the details; mostly my complaint is general-society-media-related. There are lots of cool ideas going on in Indiebride discussions, which is why I get frustrated that it's not a space that's also open to my male partner. Or that there isn't a different place for him to talk about wedding details (ie. music, food, etc. -- things that he's definitely interested in) with other dudes.

And it is awesome that you have your wedding playlist all worked out!!

[treehousegal.livejournal.com]

what kind of retail space will you be living over? i hope it's something exciting. like a salami shoppe.

is there a place i can read more about your commitment ceremony to yourself. i am intrigued enough that it hasn't fully left my mind since i read about it....

[sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com]

Right now, the three retail spaces are empty, but there is the possibility that a deli will move into one, a crepe store into another, and a hair salon into the last. Hopefully they'll all be non-chains, since our neighborhood is fighting the gentrification bug right now, and I'd hate to be above a Blimpie or something.

I'm glad you're intrigued by the commitment ceremony! I can't speak highly enough about it. You can read more about my ceremony here (http://sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com/202240.html). And you can always holla if you have other questions.

[treehousegal.livejournal.com]

i am not authorized to view that protected entry! oh no mr. bill!

[sun-set-bravely.livejournal.com]

dude! Cold! The error has been corrected. You are now authorized to read the most protected of protected entries!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I am no expert at weddings, having only done a tiny bit of planning a step-mother-in-law did for one a decade and a half ago, but it seems to me that the best weddings are the ones in which the least worry about details is invested.

I like the "away for a trip/modest reception when we return", "simple wedding at a home" and "family-only wedding" for those reasons--my own wedding was different from those choices, but hindsight makes the simpler ones most appealing.

The best wedding I ever attended? Sunset on the roof of Nepenthe restaurant in Big Sur, with everyone having a chicken or vegetarian dinner and watching the ceremony as the sun set over the ocean.
The wedding photographer? Zillions of throwaway cameras in each person's hands. The videographer? A friend with a portable vidcam. The religious ceremony? A friend from college, who bicycled down.

I'm sure other weddings were more elaborate and better planned. But this wedding required roughly a dress, a suit, a hundred throwaways, a friend with a Digicam, and a modicum of planning. But it was divine.