Piece Work

Winter, and the loom
of the sky has been
picked to wire.

Light etches its memories
through the long strands
of twilight.
We inhabit
the shell of the world,
and carry it gently.

It carries us too,
the echoing stairwell,
the empty glass aflame.

Look what I have brought–
sand from a bullet-pocked
beach, ribbon from a dead
girl’s hair.
It reaches
through shadow play, gesture,
the conspiring laughter
of birds strung high overhead.

We dwell here, suspended
in ether, vibrating
the strands of the web.

Watch all film-poems in order

Theirs was not a traditional ceremony. Instead, having dedicated themselves to running Ojai’s local professional theater, Theater 150, they decided to write and stage a musical to both celebrate their commitment to one another, and raise funds to support the theater. The result was hilarious, profound, and disarming. Attended by hundreds at Ojai’s Libbey Bowl, the production involved inexpensive but clever props and costumes, a band and chorus, cheerleaders cueing Rocky-Horror-Picture-Show-style audience participation (ranging from throwing plastic bats to waving sprigs of kale), breakdancing Jello, the Greek god Hermes, and much more.

The result was a remarkable fusion of reality and theater, concluding a mix of heartfelt and zany theatrics tracing Deb and Chris’s journey through love and insecurity with an actual act of matrimony. And when they exchanged their vows and rings, and the real tears came, I felt stunned by the rightness–though it wouldn’t have been my own choice–of this particular, unbelievable, once-in-a-lifetime experience of their union.

Thank you, Deb and Chris, for showing me, through giant dancing plants, plastic dolls on zip lines, and a horde of Mongol raiders composed of  pint-sized local volunteers, the dynamic I seek to cultivate in my own marriage–a relationship of rich, bold, and rewarding creative symbiosis. Indeed you have made a statement, both uniquely yours and universally applicable, of what it means to be two artists married to one another, and to your art. Heartfelt congratulations to you both.

“…how amiable the gorgeous advantage of the newly born.”

I am somewhere over the Midwest as I type this, returning to the West Coast from a weekend in Boston. Val and I made the trip to attend a very special wedding. Seeing two dear friends–both kind, courageous men–exchange vows with each other, and blessings with all in attendance, renewed my understanding of what marriage is all about.

We stayed in the Omni Parker House Hotel, home to Emerson and Longfellow’s Saturday Club, and spent what little time we had on this trip getting acquainted with American history up close. We visited beautiful old churches, and made the trip up to Harvard–a school founded by Puritans to unite scholarship with spiritual pursuit.

Though most of us made the trip from California, Massachusetts turned out to be the perfect place for this kind of wedding. It was the first state to abolish slavery, a haven for religious diversity, salvation to the starving Irish, a haunt of Franklin, and later, the Transcendentalists–peopled with the inheritors of great wisdom and fierce compassion; steeped, on every Boston street corner, in our nation’s founding ideals.

We also made this journey to meet a very special wedding guest–the two grooms’ newly-adopted daughter. At lunch today, I got to hold her. She is the first baby I have held in my arms since our son, James, died four years ago. And yet the experience was pure joy. When she opened her eyes, and looked in my face, she started smiling, and laughing, and delight seemed to bounce between us, gathering up our faces in grins and giggles.

I picked up a hard-to-find book of poems by Marvin Bell at Grolier’s just outside Harvard, and have been reading it on the plane. A poem that begins, “The dead man encounters horrific conditions infused with beauty,” also contains the phrase: “…how amiable the gorgeous advantage of the newly born.” I read it, and thought of this lucky little girl, who will come to embrace love’s many facets as naturally as she forms her radiant smile.  And arcing now across a small, dark section of globe, fresh hope lights up inside of me–for myself, for my country, and this beautiful, incomprehensible world.

As soon as Val and I got married, we started referring to ourselves as a family. After the death of our infant son, my understanding of what marriage and family means changed dramatically. The commitment we made in our wedding ceremony–to love one another unconditionally, as best we can–was held to the fire. Grieving our hopes and dreams as parents tested the definition of “family” as a unit of support. Certainly, we were stronger together than apart–but some days we found ourselves both simply unable to give any more. It was in these times that the greater family–including relatives and friends–buoyed us up. Our commitment to love each other, and to support each other in learning and growing in the midst of adversity, became a new, refined definition of what it means to be married, and to be a family.

Shortly after Val and I got married, my best man met his man. Even as our lives ran in parallel when we were single, I also see both he and his partner now demonstrating this new meaning of marriage and family–supporting one another in learning, and growing, and becoming better human beings in the midst of adversity and prejudice. They baby-proofed their home prior to the adoption agency’s inspection the way some budding lawyers study for the bar exam–extensively, meticulously, because so much is riding on the result. They have been waiting for their child for some time now. Lucky the child who gets these two great, eager dads.

I would love to see them legally married. Not because it would deepen their commitment, or somehow legitimize their relationship, but because it would support a definition of marriage and family that is predicated on striving toward unconditional love. Anywhere this is found, there is a true family. Anywhere this is practiced wholeheartedly, it forms a bond thicker than blood. Because what makes life meaningful, what makes it all matter, is love. And love, like life itself, does not fit neat categories. It does not match our expectations and ideals. Because it is about so much more than gender, or genetics. It is about what makes us essentially human, and gives us the courage to endure.

Marriage is the sanctification of this commitment to love. A family is a unit of support that has made this same commitment to each member, whether two people or twelve. The success of these units in supporting each member to learn, and grow, and become better despite life’s challenges, is the measure by which the health of our society can be gauged. But first, this opportunity must be extended freely and without prejudice, in acknowledgment of its importance, and in acknowledgment of the potential of each one of us to better ourselves through loving one another past our differences and challenges–as family, in the truest sense of that word.