Friends, family, && loved ones ;;
Once, current, && future lovers ;;
Estranged aunts, strange uncles, those I haven’t met yet ;;
I’m so excited to tell you that Ben Donald and I are getting married.
We’re getting married, and you’re invited to the wedding on August 22! It’s going to be a blast. I’m attaching your invitation to this email. You’ve heard the old yawn about teachers and how we can’t afford to mail out paper invitations—so you know what to do: print out the invitation on the nicest card stock you can find, mail it to yourself, and then hang it on your refrigerator.
Please RSVP by replying to this email no later than August 1st (even if you think we know you’re attending). The wedding is going to be at my parents’ house in New Jersey, USA—a small outdoor affair. We’re inviting you because you’ve carved out an important, tender spot in our lives and we really hope you’ll join us in celebrating. We also understand that NJ is a destination for quite a few of our invitees. We will still love and care about you, even if being here physically with us can’t happen in this timeline.
Some FAQS:
Should I bring a flower? Yes! Please bring one (1) flower to contribute to our socialized bouquet. I’m imagining alive flowers that you don’t pay for—whether they be yours or ones you appropriate, that’s between you and your garden shears.
What is the dress code? Please dress for success. It will be warm and the wedding will be photographed. Dress how you will feel most comfortable and beautiful. Remember that you will be walking on grass. Ben and I will probably be sporting spiffy vests / suspenders for the ceremony, but we may change to something cooler afterwards.
What if I have any dietary restrictions? Please tell us! We’re planning on a meat-free menu, but let us know if there are ways we can help reduce the number of autoimmune fatalities you experience with us.
What about gifts? It’s a cliche but your presence is present enough. Seriously, we live in a small apartment and have all the things we need. If you really feel compelled to bring something, write a poem or learn one by heart, tell us a story, film a video and send us the link, make a toast—write one of us a bang-up job recommendation. If it’s important that your gesture have the weight of money behind it, consider contributing a small amount toward an adventure or charity. Adventures we’re interested in: sky diving, an Icelandic excursion, dinner with you, a lifelong education. Charities we support: The Ali Forney Center, CamCare, The Bronx Defenders.
Is there any required reading? In anticipation for our collective adventure, please read Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino and be prepared to discuss / embody it.
So excited to see you,
Daniel (and Ben)
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Dear one,
If you’re reading this email, that means Ben and I have successfully conned you into celebrating our megalomania. Thank you for indulging us. It’s less than two weeks before August 22 aka the wedding (!) aka LIFT-OFF, and I hope we’re all wrapping up our reading of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between The World And Me. Please write your own discussion questions and be prepared to defend their inclusion in the syllabus.
Let’s address some of your concerns:
Where am I going again? The wedding will be held at my parents’ house, 41 Clover Hill Road, Colts Neck, NJ USA 07722. Their names are Ann and George. You’ll love them, I promise. In the case of EXTREME weather, we’ll be at the Unitarian Universalist Meetinghouse at 1475 West Front Street, Lincroft, NJ USA 07738. I’ll let you know closer to the date if that looks like a real possibility.
How do I get there?
If you have any questions about how to get to the wedding, please let me know. We’d hate for you to be abducted by crocodiles (or worse!) en route.
What am I forgetting? Check your smoke detector. Bring a flower for our socialized bouquet. Fight the patriarchy. Call your dentist and make an appointment; your dentist misses your cute little tooth-grimes.
We’re so excited to see you!
d&b
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Late night rescue mission to Penn: Success!
Acquired 1 Tim, washed up from Newark International Airport
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That Day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and
stared as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed, to find out what waited inside for us
And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow
But you didn’t notice because
That day, the day the saucers came, by some some coincidence,
Was the day that the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because
On the saucer day, which was zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
A ship built of dead-men’s nails, a serpent, a wolf,
All bigger than the mind could hold,
and the cameraman could
Not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
But you did not see them coming because
On the saucer-zombie-battling-gods
day the floodgates broke
And each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
And charm and cleverness and true
brave hearts and pots of gold
While giants feefofummed across
the land and killer bees,
But you had no idea of any of this because
That day, the saucer day, the zombie day
The Ragnarok and fairies day,
the day the great winds came
And snows and the cities turned to crystal, the day
All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
Computers turned, the screens telling
us we would obey, the day
Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
And all the bells of London were sounded, the day
Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
The fluttering capes and arrival of
the Time Machine day,
You didn’t notice any of this because
you were sitting in your room, not doing anything
not even reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.
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Months later we’ll linger in the park, wondering what the birds would do with out us here, the ones that fly back unpredictably and perch in our thinning hair, this and every November.
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On the bus the couple sitting in front of us met, fell in love, and melted together into some weird alloy ;;
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More && more I find that the best way to travel is to chart a course – let yourself get blown astray, of course – but the route is important. To see a city the way someone else intended.
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I was feeling really anxious at Penn waiting to go home to NJ, a compounding, I think, of having just missed my train (only JUST) and having too much to carry and too much to do in the next few days ;; it’s less than a week before Liftoff!
[ / ] Passing through Perth Amboy, I’m overwhelmed by the smells and sensations of Vassar in fall, of warm Krafted Cup in hand, chilled nights walking past the lake, of smooth paper in notebooks waiting to be filled.
Epilepsy?
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At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves - that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to us. It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestice setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, but who may not be who we essentially are.
If we find poetry in the service station and motel, if we are drawn to the airport or train carriage, it is perhaps because, in spite of their architectural compromises and discomforts, in spite of their garish colours and harsh lighting, we implicitly feel that these isolated places offer us a material setting for an alternative to the selfish ease, the habits and confinement of the ordinary, rooted world.
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