Ira's Interdimensional Push On Saying I Do #9

Dear Lovers, Since I wrote last I married the woman of my dreams. Not just the person that I dreamt about before we got back together but my number one pick and the person I asked to be with. Asked G-d or the universe or maybe the person who I was finally honest about with myself that I wanted; however you want to think about it - I asked and now my family tree doubled overnight, with another branch growing as we speak. There has hardly been a second to mull over what it all even means with the people coming and going while working and planning and running up and around Amsterdam and back to get it all the way I wanted. Now the dust is settling and I’m getting a good hard look at the next seven or eight some-odd decades. I’m grateful for this little blog to hold me to account to ask the questions that will help me make some meaning of all this budding life-long partnership and love: 1. Wedding weekend: To put on a wedding requires a pile of logistics as it turns out - getting not just aligned on the vision but coordinated, giving everyone time to prepare for whatever it is that we are asking them to do, notice to the guests, and of course cold hard cash. The weekend itself was your run of the mill mix of stress from watching the wave function collapse on our vision one way or the other (but mostly for the one way!!) and joy from watching the wave function collapse with the people we love. The way I see it, to plan everything effectively there needs to be a really strong shared vision, a really strong system of compromise, or one person needs to bend the knee. In our case, as with everyone I’m sure, it was somewhere along the continuum. Some parts of the wedding we were both super ready to go with - we both really love Dianne who presided, we both really wanted to root the ceremony in our love first and foremost, and we both didn’t really need anything fancy or high-status going on. There were also all sorts of differences to plan for accordingly too - how many people should we have, what should be on the menu, what the hell does the budget look like, what the hell does it look like when we go over the budget we couldn’t agree on in the first place?? This is where, as with marriage I’m sure, the choices are to compromise or bend. For the right person all this compromise and bending is bearable and how it is it that we handle the differences makes all the difference - is there a constant strive for understanding on both sides? An equal effort towards accepting what we cannot change? Not just compromising but compromising on how we compromise. Can we say together that we are doing this together? These are the characteristics that make a partnership a partnership and while I don’t feel that we can answer in the fuck yes for all of these yet Talja is the only person on the face of the Earth that I would spend my time trying to answer these questions with. 2. Tying the knot: To quote a wise woman who single-handedly saved half of my wedding logistics and was probably quoting someone else when she said “like dancing without music is just exercising, living without love is just work.” Love brings joy, togetherness, beauty, and adventure as two people say yes to each other and start share the threads of their life and line to make new lived experiences and lineage. With enough love any inconvenience, incompatibility, difficulty, or problem becomes an invitation to try something a little different and see up close and personal how else life can be lived. This is what marrying means to me - a chance for Talja and I to make our lives and family together more beautiful than the sum of their parts and I’ll let the [photos](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VRdRHYuk8yBFax_Gfg-eFLzRDmrw8R0W?usp=drive_link) do the rest of the talking from here. 3. HotTug: There are no words, just photo-visual gems in the folder listed above ^. Also check out the fine pictures of ~~Talja’s water breaking~~ Talja spilling tea on the couch!!! My deepest gratitude to all of the photographers who photo-documented, all the schleppers who schlepped, all the blessers who gave their blessings, and all the people who sent their love to make my wedding such a powerful and unforgettable day. Never have I ever committed to anything until death do me part which while being objectively insane, in my mind, forces a certain attitude about going through life instead of around in a way that I’ve never had to do before. I hear my 19 year-old self saying “the data doesn’t support” and my 69 year-old self saying “do it.” I’m excited for this experiment and reassured by it’s tenuous basis in sanity from all the people I’ve seen do it before me. While “no one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved” maybe it’s enough to try. From one step closer to the center of the core of the center of the core, Ira