Today marks the third anniversary of The Big, Big Wedding. It’s an odd anniversary for us, since we have so many. We met 16 years ago in Seattle, broke up a year and half later, and wouldn’t be together again (except for a brief visit at a friend’s wedding) for another 10 years.

We made contact again in 2002, threw sparks over the Internet, fell in love again over long late night telephone calls, kissed again on Memorial Day. I took an Amtrak from Baltimore to New York, watching the Mid-Atlantic speed by as my stomach flipped over again and again. We spent a few beautiful days swimming blissfully in our togetherness, and then I returned to San Francisco to consider what had just happened.

You came out to visit, and we spent another week tangled up in each other, happy and anxious, eager yet apprehensive. For 6 months we crossed the continent to be with each other for short, intense bursts. We filled the time apart with phone calls that spanned hours, and we talked about what should happen next.

In the Fall, on my 33rd birthday, I left San Francisco with 3 bags of luggage and moved into your studio apartment on Eldridge St. in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. We fumbled and struggled and got to know each other’s boundaries, occasionally by crossing them, and learned how to live together again in the smallest, densest, most intimate space possible. We had magnificent brunches on the rooftop and dined in bistros all over town. We had the joy and privilege of getting to know some truly remarkable people, the good fortune to host friends from everywhere else. We held hands, and walked all over New York City.

We already knew we would be together, and I’d already secured Gramma’s engagement ring, when we found out we would soon be parents. On Mother’s Day of 2004, with your Mom and mine brunching on the roof, I snuck up on you, ninja-like, and asked you if you loved me. And then I got on my knee, pulled the ring from my pocket, and asked you to marry me. You replied, eyes wide, grinning, and with a slight crack in your voice, “Of course I will, stupid!”

Ruby joined us in the world of the breathing on November 22, 2004, and spent much of the winter wrapped and bundled inside our coats. Spring came, and then summer, the offer of work in Los Angeles, the promise of family on the West Coast and year-round sunshine took us west. And all the while, the planning continued. I still can’t believe that, in the middle of that maelstrom, you created your wedding dress by hand.

On August 20, 2005, in Santa Cruz, California we stood in front of more than 300 of our friends and family, I whispered my vow to you, close to your ear, and you leaned in to mine and whispered yours. The words of our vows stayed between us, carried the weight of our years together, of our love for each other, of our commitment to spend our lives together. We left the altar, together, to the wild cries and cheers of so many of the folks we love.

And then, behind the stunning effort of so many friends and relatives, we threw one of the best parties I’ve ever been to. Barbeque! Square dancing! Horsehoes! Cotton candy! All those flowers and smiling faces and promenades, the tent city and the music, the wine and the guests decked out in suits and kilts and country dresses… it was so lovely and so much fun. I never wanted it to end, but when it was over we were exhausted and knew it had gone off better than anyone had imagined.

My life has never been more vivid, meaningful, and filled with well-being than it has since I said, “I do.” And every year we’ve been together is better than the last. I still can’t believe how blessed I am to be with you, or how lucky we are to have these amazing children together. It feels strange to say “Happy 3rd Anniversary” after so much time and so many miles.

Happy Anniversary, Rebbie. I love you, so much.

Every so often I run into something on the Internet that makes me believe that all the spam and bullshit social networking garbage and cultural flotsam is worth it, just so that the writer or filmmaker or musician I stumbled across could have somewhere to hang their shingle.

I just tripped over a post by Chris Floyd, someone I’m not yet familiar with, so I stopped and took a closer look was transfixed. I’m late to the party, but I’m glad I made it, and I’m looking forward to spending time there.

You ask why the old American Establishment would acquiesce in policies that “weaken the United States.” But I think the underlying assumption of this question is unsound. It implies that the common good – the welfare and well-being of individual, non-elite American citizens – is somehow synonymous with the strength or success of the United States in the eyes of our elites. But this is not true, and never has been. They identify “American interests” solely with what benefits their own kind. They equate American “strength” with the ability to kill large numbers of people at short notice whenever they desire, and to bully and humiliate those they don’t kill into submission, in some form or other.

The American state still retains these capabilities, and our elites are quite willing to see tens of millions of their fellow citizens go down the tubes in order to keep this gargantuan war-and-extortion machine going. To our elites, this ruination is not a “financial collapse,” because their wealth and privilege remains intact, the markets remain intact, and if a bit of bother shaves a few decimal points from their fortunes, they will make it up later.

Wow. Now that’s some straight talk you can believe in, my friends. I mean strip-the-bark-off-ya, straight-up-yer-sweet-patootie talk. What else ya got in that there blog, Mr. Floyd?

Is it not time to be done with lies at last? Especially the chief lie now running through the world like a plague, putrescent and vile: that we kill each other and hate each other and drive each other into desperation and fear for any other reason but that we are animals, forms of apes, driven by blind impulses to project our dominance, to strut and bellow and hoard the best goods for ourselves. Or else to lash back at the dominant beast in convulsions of humiliated rage. Or else cravenly to serve the dominant ones, to scurry about them like slaves, picking fleas from their fur, in hopes of procuring a few crumbs for ourselves.
…
Beyond the thunder and spectacle of this ape-roaring world is another state of reality, emerging from the murk of our baser functions. There is power here, too, but not the heavy, blood-sodden bulk of dominance. Instead, it’s a power of radiance, of awareness, connection, breaking through in snaps of heightened perception, moments of encounter and illumination that lift us from the slime.
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The moments, and their momentary power – a power without the power of resistance, defenseless, provisional, unarmed, imperfect, bold. The ape-world’s cycle of war and retribution stands as the image of the world of power; what can serve as the emblem of this other reality? A kiss, perhaps: given to a lover, offered to a friend, bestowed on an enemy – or pressed to the brow of a murdered child.

Anyway, it got my attention, I thought I’d bring it to yours. I’ll put a link over on the right.