Friends, we are gathered here today...

Today marks fourteen years since I was married. I guess we were married young, and life hasn’t been completely beer and skittles, but mainly because there is only so many skittles that I can handle. Then, thinking about it, we do most things young...we retired and moved to the beach at 35, so it’s all relative I guess.

I’m not too fussed about looking back and wondering about the facts of past things. It is too easy to input ‘facts’ in to a situation that simply were not facts at the time. These sorts of thoughts tend to focus too much on negative and ‘what could have been’ type things that are the stuff of fiction, not reality. However the one thing that anniversaries and other events (like paying car registration) do is act as an anchor point in our lives that we don’t really want. They give you this snapshot of life from fourteen years ago with which to mull over and wonder if you have travelled the right track and whether you are traveling fast enough along that path.

Car registration is one time of the year that makes me ponder “have I driven far enough in the last year to justify that expense? Have I come far enough in the last year?’ But to think about what I have done in the last fourteen years, that is a bit of a trip. What would 1998 Michael think of me ? I pondered on this thought for a while this morning, went for a run, which didn’t cure it, so I figured that I could either worry about it needlessly all day and probably tomorrow, or just build a time machine and record the conversation that I had with myself. Which I did and spent forever transcribing it for your reading pleasure (but don’t worry about that, I used the time machine to get that time back, then went to the beach and wasted it).

ME  : “Hi, how are you?”

1998 Michael “Dude”

ME  “Yeah dude, I know”

1998 Michael “but dude”

ME  “Yeah dude, I know”

1998 Michael “Dude weird hey.”

ME  “but dude”

1998 Michael “yeah, I guess you have a point there.”

ME  “So you nervous about everything today?”

1998 Michael “well, you tell me, should I be?”

ME  “Nah, it’s all groovy.”

1998 Michael”So how are you...us...me...whatever.”

ME  “we’re great. Did the country thing for a while, did the city thing for a while, then retired and moved to the beach.”

1998 Michael “Retired? So are we rich or something?”

ME  “argh, we do alright, but we’re rich in spirit.”

1998 Michael “So we’re a loser?”

ME  “No, it’s not like that...you’re such a dick when you don’t get something.”

1998 Michael “Dude?...did I ever finish that philosophy degree?”

ME  “Yeah”

1998 Michael “and post-grad?”

ME  “Yeah.”

1998 Michael “and a PhD?’”

ME  “Nah, started it, but life took a different turn and you’ll have a useless, alcoholic supervisor.”

1998 Michael “So what did you do?”

ME  “Switched to law”

1998 Michael “Oh...and you were saying we weren’t a loser...dick....so what are we doing on our anniversary?”

ME  “Nursing sick kids who’ve had their tonsils out.”

1998 Michael “Whose kids?”

ME  “Our kids you dick.”

1998 Michael “we have kids; I hope they take after me rather than you.”

ME  “You’re such a dick.”

1998 Michael “Hey, so, has J ever let you...well.. you know...”

ME  “Nah, not yet.”

Ok, so that probably worked better as a concept in my head than it did on paper.

1998 Michael “yeah, blame the medium.”

Hey, enough of that.

My wedding day itself was beautiful in a very ‘this is what a wedding is supposed to be’ type way. My reflections on it are more of the day before – it seemed more special – the rehearsal of the ceremony where it was just people involved in a major way that were there – it was a very close and sincere type event and, looking back, does present itself as the point in which J and I declared to all that that’s what we wanted to do. The day itself was gorgeous,  draped in ceremony and some extravagance, but funnily enough looking back it appears to me as more about everyone else witnessing us rather than us doing something to be witnessed ...but not witnessing that , seriously dear reader, get your mind out of the gutter (and don’t get me wrong, we did that later on contra to all these weird comments about that... I mean, we were tired and drunk and all, but there’s some things you just have to do...at least twice).  

Looking back at photos and memories, something that immediately comes to mind is that most of the people at the ceremony,  I haven’t kept in touch with, some deliberately, others have just taken a different road and become strangers to us. Of the ten people in the wedding party, we only stay in contact with two of them...that includes siblings and people that were close friends at the time. Some had break-downs, some died, some became tools. Actually, looking back on it, they always were tools I guess.

J and I initially had this idea of finding a really big rock somewhere in the middle of a paddock to get married in front of with just two or three close friends and a celebrant.  Living on the New England tablelands at the time, there were heaps of glorious places like that: a really big rock in the middle of many hectares of flat ground with a backdrop of mountains framing the horizon. We were then going to have a big party in a hall somewhere and put on a dance or something. I was going to write to the Tooheys company and ask them to make a keg of beer called “Borrowed” for our wedding – so that we could have “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue” all on tap. J had found the perfect dress, which she told me about many years later. It had a sort of a Wynona Rider in Beetejuice type feel to it. I would have loved that. Her mum talked her out of that into a traditional white thing, which she looked absolutely stunning in.

One of the disadvantages of getting married young is that your parents have way too much say in things. Before we knew it, our guest list had grown to 150 and the whole affair was turned into a pissing contest between families about who was spending the most amount of dosh on what. And they stamped their taste onto the wedding. The big rock was replaced by a garden as a compromise to it being replaced by a church and the jug band was replaced by a jazz band. Don’t get me wrong, the day was a perfect wedding, just more about everybody else’s understanding of what a wedding should be, not ours.

Everyone came to it, from the newly-divorved parents of the bride and  their new partners to the sister’s skeezy boyfriend who was too busy trying to hit on the slutty maid of honour to the alcoholic ring-in step aunt, all were in the prime and having a great time. But where have all these people gone? We don’t talk to most of them anymore.

Are you in this situation? Looking back on the day, there were many people there that day that I thought would stand together with us until the end of time (which is also pretty soon if you believe all these crazy Mayans). These people had such a close bond to us at the time that we thought nothing could ever break it. The crazy thing is, it wasn’t really anything huge that broke it, it appears as if time itself got in the road. It was the little, petty things that got in the way, then there was the inevitable breach of trust that remained unanswered and unaccounted for. And then a justification of the whole event from both sides to re-intent history so that it is more palatable. Strange...I guess you just have to ‘make the best of this time and don’t ask why. It’s not a question but a lesson learned in time. It’s something unpredictable but in the end is right...’

This post’s lame joke:

Time travel jokes are like, so 2050.

This post’s groovy, identity seeking quote:

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."- Arthur Schopenhauer

This post’s inappropriate over share: 

Don’t buy Rivers brand boxers. They are seriously cut the wrong way (right up the middle) and seriously give you pain where you don’t want pain unless you meat and potato the day away. So I threw about five pairs out and now am going commando most of the time, which puts an extra spring in my step and has the advantage of enabling me to do pretty much anything when I’m wearing fisherman’s pants commando style. I think I could steal the bakery oven out of Woolies and the checkout chicks wouldn’t notice.

This post’s reflection on a previous post: 

I have received many comments, jokes and concerns about the post of a few weeks ago about Dakabin State High School. Included in this is a formal complaint from the school to the academic institution that organised the prac who have labelled it non-academic misconduct and stated that “...Many of the comments made in this piece are particularly detrimental to staff at that school and I understand it is considering its own responses to that statement.” Firstly, I would welcome a response from the school and will publish it in its own right on this page as I both encourage fairness and openness and stand by my comments.