88mph to a wedding in a vineyard

6\07


Driving out east. Kathrine drove me out east for a wedding in the Hamptons. "Katherine O'Shea and Guest". Thank you for capitalizing the G in Guest, but it didn't make me feel like anything more than a place-holder in a sea of local celebrities. Would it have been funny to introduce myself to people as "Guest"? Maybe for one or two people, but it couldn't last long. It's too self-conscious.

Driving out east. It's like driving backwards in time. You watch the buildings shrink and for once in your life on Long Island the sprawl is green and natural. But it's never enough to pull you too far deep into the past, never believable enough to be comfortable, only enough to get you to slightly identify with the idea when you read about it. Enough architectural anachronisms and they aren't anachronisms anymore; they are what is.

First you see a Ford dealership, maybe a Starbucks somewhere, a Lexus dealership, definitely a Starbucks right over there, then a shiny new supermarket big enough to make Jack Gladney blush.

The illusion was never shattered because it never existed in the first place. We never escaped the 21st century. We were always in a car that was anything but an '85 Delorean. We were never more than three cars away from a luxury SUV.

So we went to a wedding. A ceremony for two people in love, ideally. It was nice to be out in that vineyard in another illusion. This was the illusion of love that will last forever when united ceremonially. But we never left the real world. I was introduced to one of Kathrine's uncles, a divorce lawyer. He makes good money helping people negotiate the terms of their realization that they have failed in their public promise to each other and their one family which will soon again be two families.

Driving out east we never left the real world. We never left it because it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist just as much as the imaginary world does not exist. We never left the world as it is. We live in the crossfire of what we imagine the world to be like and what we imagine the world to be. Perhaps there were some cynics in the wedding party who would cite the rising divorce rate or decreasing marriage rate as evidence of the institution of marriage failing. As if that had any bearing on the ability of two people to be in love.

What is love? Well, maybe it's the constant rediscovering of someone intriguing, maybe it's a chemical reaction, maybe it's a goldfish forgetting what the other half of the tank looks like as soon as it reaches the other side. Whatever it is, it exists. Even if it's nothing more than the sound of the word being formed on our tongues, it exists. I believe in it because I choose to. It's a game I play.

Soccer is a good reason to stay in shape, to go running, to be with friends. Why bother asking what the point of kicking a ball into a net is? Why question the meaning of the lines on the ground further than their obvious function? Why over-regulate yourself? There are a few simple rules to any game of pickup soccer. Don't break any obvious rules and remember that you're there to have fun.

That's love.

I never asked what the point of a kiss is, I just think about what it does to me. I just remember that I'm here to have fun. Love, soccer, both two games that don't matter to anyone other than the people involved.

I went to a wedding this weekend and it was a ceremony. It wasn't the World Cup, it was more like a high school championship.

Games.

Playing games.

That's what people do. Not just eating or sleeping or mating, but recreation despite whatever reality you can't escape.

Come to think of it, driving out east isn't like driving backwards in time at all. It is driving backwards in time. We got there by not analyzing the inescapable anachronisms and thought only of the impressions left upon us by the shrinking buildings and sprawl that is vernal instead of urban. We drove back to a time where the divorce rate didn't exist because divorce did not exist. The buildings disappeared and we sat in a field of wine grapes. We drove in a car to a time before cars, before the dark ages, before the bronze age, before objects, before artifacts, to a place where two people became two ideas and before our eyes they became one idea. They were beautiful.

The idea behind inviting Guest to your wedding is that there's some unknown person that someone you actually do want at your wedding would like to have beside them. The idea is that you are welcoming an outsider.

This is a message from Guest, the welcome outsider, from one idea to another.

Don't break any obvious rules and remember that you're there to have fun.



It's ok to bend reality a little bit because there is no reality. There is only the world as it is.



After years of being conspicuously abstinent from alcohol I decided to have a glass of champagne at this wedding in the vineyard. There was a message at the bottom of the glass:

"To Guest,

Don't break any obvious rules and remember that you're there to have fun."




This is me raising my glass for a toast to two strangers who helped me learn the importance of playing games.