wedding belly fire clean, a vision in white chiffon, she glides on the arm of her brother, fists full of peach dahlia, she rests where her future holds promise in pinstripes, and, with the words of e.e. cummings ringing in our ears, they unite everything seems to hold its breath (even the trees) and she says, I will. 090830 ... mindpop At a wedding reception, I danced around. When I stopped, another guest said I didn’t think you would dance. What? I said, confused. It was only later that I realized that she thought disabled people don’t dance. 121007 ... raze i haven't been to one of these in sixteen years. at the reception for the last one, i slow danced with women twice my age; gave my fake uncle the on-video (and genuine) advice of not letting my fake aunt sit on his face, to the hysterical amusement of her brother, my stepfather (i believe they edited that bit out of the actual wedding film, though the part where i sang a jazzy improvised a capella song about love survived the editor's proverbial scissors); and accidentally knocked a camera tripod over while flailing around to "you dropped a bomb on me" by the gap band. it made a great crashing sound. or maybe the tripod fell over during joe cocker's version of "you can leave your hat on". i'm not sure. i doubt there will be anything to match that excitement today. but you never know. 130810 ... raze a slip down a defective staircase and a grotesquely swollen left foot later, i'm thinking maybe i shouldn't have said anything. i was the best-dressed person in the hospital waiting room by quite some distance. so there's that. 130810 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Ah, thus the hurt foot in "doctors". That sucks. I hope you get better soon. I missed my mother's cousin's wedding when I was four or five because I peed in my fancy dress - there wasn't enough time to clean and dry it before the ceremony, and my mom wouldn't let me wear anything else there. This was a tragedy at the time, since I hadn't realized I'd missed the boring part. My brother just said, "I got off the internet - you can too." I said I was busy telling embarrassing stories from my childhood. Isn't that important to the world? No? Ah well. 130813 ... raze of course embarrassing childhood stories are important to the world! anyone who says otherwise is in need of some celery sticks. mmm...celery... and thank you. luckily i didn't break anything, and i'd forgotten what a fast healer i seem to be. the swelling is pretty much gone. there's some colourful bruising in a few different places, but three days after the fall i can walk pretty much normally again and have ignored the doctor's advice to wrap the thing in a tensor bandage, because i think my body would let me know if it didn't want me putting any weight on that foot. i'm such a rebel. look at me almost-not-limp with defiance! 130813 ... raze purple shirt, black tie. invisible black eye. maybe this time i won't fall. 131130 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Today - early afternoon to evening. My mother's friend and her husband, walking-distance neighbours. They were actually getting remarried: they'd been married before and divorced. Unlike the Parent Trap film, their kids didn't manipulate them into getting back together - a passive prompt, perhaps, was one breaking her leg and another running away out west (they thought he'd gone to Israel for some reason) - and there they were, and there I was, glad that my life is not such a soap opera for now. In their backyard, people gathered in front of a canopy decorated white for the occasion. My mother played the saxophone. A scratchy CD player added accompaniment, but it was like simple but sultry mushrooms on a bed of boring canned peas. My mother doesn't like the taste of mushrooms. But she is part jazz, nevertheless, as well as part crafty and part freckled. For the ceremony, the two were read marriage vows with "Article X.Y" attached. Quebec, that's damned unromantic. And then a sort of prayer with text I recognized. "I do" and "I will" and my attention strayed to the cat, who wound around the chairs and then settled on the loose drapery of the chair in front of me. All the chairs were draped in shiny off-white cloth, a bit of luxury, and the cat was in the lap of it. After that, we drove to the grounds of Stewart Hall in Pointe Claire for pictures next to the water and trees. Another wedding party with two limos, a white and a black, came by, with younger and more elaborate spouses, plus organized bridesmaids: seven, with identical turquoise dresses and nearly identical dates. There were about twenty of us, mismatched, and for a laugh we also took pictures next to the parked limos. One of the drivers walked up, frowning, but it was just because someone was touching a mirror by mistake. Otherwise he had no problem with the pictures. The trees there are very old, large, and grooved. Then back to the house for the reception. I helped bring food back and forth, even though I was tripping over the dress I wore nearly nine years ago to prom. It's bluish-purple, with a beaded bodice attached to a full shiny skirt. That is, it's almost the most ridiculous thing in the world that could cost a person (or a person's jazz-freckled mother) nearly $300, but it's a nice colour. I haven't got much fatter, or any taller. But I know who Mussolini was now. When I was sixteen, I thought Benito Mussolini was a name my brother invented because it sounded funny. It's important to know your Italian dictators, because at some point someone will ask you whether you think lil' Kim Jong-Un is a cute dictator, and you'll have to say, Well, with awareness that I am perpetuating traditional notions of masculinity, Mussolini was more conventionally good-looking. A small neighbour girl, who'd been a baby - at least, much smaller - when I'd last seen her, remembered me as "la madame qui joue au piano." I talked to another mother of small children about salad. She was one person who wasn't bored by the topic! Also, we were making a salad together. The cake wasn't that bland "angel" (white flour) mix, but chocolate. But all that white icing. It was not a necessary foodstuff for me, but it tasted good. By that time it was dark, and when I bit into the cake I thought bits of my teeth were falling out again - tiny pearly beads in actuality. 140531 what's it to you? who go blather from