#56: about marriage & time
my friends got married!
My friends got married this week in a lovely intimate ceremony at City Hall.
There was friends and family present, and an equal number of them video calling in on an iPad. All in a cozy virtual room with front-row seats.
I’m a big cryer at weddings. 100% track record. I’m doing it now as I look through the photos and try to choose which one to show you.
Kurt Vonnegut writes in Slaughterhouse Five about the Tralfamadorians, who can see through time and live in any moment in time:
“All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.
The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance.
They can see how permanent all moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them.
It is just an illusion we have here on earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.”
It feels like time unfurls just like this at weddings. Every moment past, present, and future existing simultaneously.
I see my friends dressed in white, standing in City Hall, promising to stay by each other in sickness and in health.
I see them 7 years ago in a jam session at my apartment on the night they first met. I see it with the fresh eyes of a new encounter, and with the eyes of hindsight - this is the moment Lindsay meets her husband.
I see the notebook Maged reads his vows from. It is simultaneously new in his hands and battered in the hands of his future children, who marvel at this physical proof of their dad’s love for their mom.
I see the parents, and grandparents, and great-grandparents, in a chain as far back as the eye can see - did they ever think about this moment? About their place in a line of lives that led here?
Time lurches back and forth, simultaneously a memory, a moment, a dream, each equally real. A web of connection, no thing separate from the other.
“It is just an illusion we have here on earth that one moment follows another one.”
So much love for the couple and everyone’s lives they touch ❤️
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The photos from my first modelling job are coming out! It was so much fun to be on set and to be fussed over. I’d worked with the team before and they’re all wonderful, funny and warm and talented.
Also funny to see how you literally are a model for the clothes:
the shoes are only for standing in, not walking in
don’t fold your arms because the shirt will get creased
don’t sit down because the shorts AND shirt will get creased
lean over to drink coffee so you don’t accidentally spill anything
Shots from the next shoot should be coming out soon!
In the meantime, here’s me coming back from a video shoot for work. I love how much time I’ve spent on set this year!
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Last of all is funny Gemma. We have a game where we’ll run down the hallway from the elevator to my door whenever we come back from an evening walk.
She’ll get really excited and grab her leash, then swing it around as she chases behind me.
Recently, I added a poop bag dispenser to her leash. Which means this dog is now running around swinging a flail against people’s doors. That thing packs a punch when it hits.
Hope you’re feeling the coziness of fall settling in even as the warm weather lingers.
✨
Warmly yours,
Nina