1st Anniversary

This past Friday marked the one-year anniversary of the day Matt and I got married . . .




Wedding - October 24, 2007










Ohio Reception - May 17, 2008









California Reception - June 1, 2008









Massachusetts Reception - August 17. 2008




After all the wedding celebrations, it was nice to have a very low-key anniversary celebration. We just took the day off, caught a couple of matinee movies, and had a nice dinner out. Sushi - yum. Keeping with anniversary tradition, we both gave each other paper gifts. I wrote Matt a poem. (Sorry, won't be sharing that. That's his and his alone.) And I also gave him two books:

The Hungry Scientist Handbook, by Patrick Buckley and Lily Binns, seemed right up his alley because he loves to analyze cooking techniques and recipes in scientific terms. (He adores Alton Brown's show Good Eats.) After I'd already purchased the Buckley/Binns book, I saw this article about another great science-focused cooking book. Doh! Sounds better. I guess I'll just have to get that for him next.

Matt read his first graphic novel several months ago (Persepolis) and really liked it. He'd heard that this graphic novel, Watchmen, is being touted as the best graphic novel bar none, so he was really curious about it.







And Matt gave me these three books:

At different times, Matt and I have read entire books aloud to each other. It's a really neat experience to share. The first time we did it was with Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos, but we also did it with The Best American Non-Required Reading, 2003, edited by Dave Eggers. I'm hoping How We Are Hungry, another collection of short stories, will be another we read to each other. I'm a big fan of Eggers - the author . . . and the man. Matt knows this because he stood in line with me forever waiting for Eggers to sign my books and was totally amused by the fact that I shamelessly flirted with him once I got up there. The people in line in front of me wanted him to sign their books, but they weren't even talking to him. (I think they were the type who collect signed books regardless of whether or not they liked or had read the author. Their books were probably up on Ebay later that same day.) By the time I got up there, the poor guy was totally bored, so he drew a piece of balsa wood on the title page of one of my books (in addition to signing it). I told him he could make the other one out to "a fellow sock-slider" (an A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius reference). He gave me a big smile and wrote "Sock Sliding = En Fuego." Wood? Fire? He was so hot for me. ;)

View with a Grain of Sand, by Wislawa Szymborska, is one of my favorite books of poetry. Because I love it so much, about a year ago, I found myself in one of those moments where you're torn between wanting to share something and selfishly wanting to keep it for yourself for fear that it won't be returned. Well, I'm happy to say I decided to share, . . . but what I feared would happen did happen. It was never returned. Matt knows how much I love it, so he bought this as a replacement. I'm still not opposed to sharing, . . . but I will be more careful about it in the future.

Sharon Olds is probably my all-time favorite poet. I've got just about all of her books, but The Dead and the Living is one that I didn't have.








And, a gift to myself while we were out and about celebrating:

Kay Ryan is the current poet laureate. I had read, and heard her reading, some of her work online, but I really wanted to get one of her books. Unfortunately, there was a run on them when she was first announced the new laureate; many bookstores had to wait to get more until the publisher could crank out another print run. Then, of course, there's the usual problem of most bookstores just not carrying much poetry to begin with. So, I was very pleased to finally find a decent selection when we were out on Friday, and, after inspecting three, I chose this one - Elephant Rocks. I'm loving it so far. And it's kind of funny because my style of writing poetry is very similar to hers - well, except that she does it brilliantly and I'm a hack.

Movement & Confinement

Upon seeing someone recklessly speeding on the highway, my parents would always say, "There goes someone in a hurry to get to their funeral." Now, when I see the same, that phrase inevitably pops into my mind - and sometimes out of my mouth. (We do become our parents, don't we? [Please say no, please say no, please say no.]) For instance, a couple of weekends ago, I was driving down to San Diego for a wedding when, all of a sudden, I noticed a hearse speeding by me on the left. I had to chuckle. At no other time in my life has that phrase been more appropriate.

That odd occurrence got me to thinking of the recent trip I took to LACMA (the one I posted about last month). One of the installations that really affected me was one called "Rigor Motors" (a play on the word rigormortis), by Ruben Ochoa and Marco Rios, which was part of the Latin American Modernism exhibit. The artwork consisted of a black and a white coffin, each constructed to hold a body in the seated position. The authors conflate the concept of the coffin with a custom car, the work inspired by the feeling that the car is in more control of the person, rather than the other way around. The artists realized that they more often sit in a driving position than they do in a prone, sleeping position and asked themselves, "What if I died frozen in the driving position? What would the coffin look like?'"

"Rigor Motors" is an arresting enough art installation on its own, but it particularly struck me because it reminded me of a dream I used to have. When I was in college, I had a disturbing, recurring dream where I was driving my boyfriend at the time's white Camaro. (No, the disturbing part of the dream wasn't that I was driving a Camaro. That was a disturbing part of my waking life, . . . but that's a story for another day.) In the dream, I would be going pretty fast and the back of the bucket seat wouldn't stay up and support me as I went faster and faster and faster. Then, I would discover that the brakes were positioned just barely out of reach. As I stretched my foot further to reach the pedal, I would end up in a reclining position, my line of vision dipping below the dash board. When I finally made contact with the pedal, I would realize that the brakes didn't work. The dream would always end the same way - I would crash the car . . . which would instantly transform into a white coffin. I would always wake with a start, in a cold sweat, and not be able to fall back to sleep. (My subconscious telling me things about my relationsthip with my boyfriend at the time? Oh, of course. Duh. But, again - that's a story for another day.)

The drive to San Diego also reminded me of something else I'd seen at that exhibit - an installation called "Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement," by Julio Cesar Morales. In it, the artist "illustrates some of the ways in which undocumented immigrants have attempted entry through border crossings into the U.S. by hiding inside vehicles or freight." (To the left here, you see two such illustrations.) In the same room, accompanying 6-8 such illustrations, a looping video by Ruben Ochoa employed "special effects, applying large-scale digitally printed photographs of highway landscaping onto freeway walls, to make the walls appear to disappear." The video was meant to "question the notion of physical or perceptual boundaries and whether they can - or should - be maintained."

I remember the first time I drove to San Diego and was surprised to see the signs on the highway alerting drivers to be careful because groups of immigrants fleeing Mexico often try to run across the busy highway (see sign here to the right). As I traveled the same road that these immigrants do, I couldn't help but be struck by the disparity of our circumstances - me: traveling in comfort, for pleasure, without fear; them: traveling under harsh conditions, for survival, afraid at every turn they might be caught; me, having moved to California from as far away as the east coast, free to do so without restriction; and, them, unable to (legally) move a short distance north to a land that, back in the day, was theirs first. Kind of sobering thoughts to consider right before a wedding, . . . but certainly something worth considering as we quickly approach the November presidential election. Do you know where your candidate stands on the issue of immigration (Obama, McCain, Nader)?