No Time To Say

06 Apr 2009

Too much happened too quickly, and the articles withered on the vine. Here are the husks:

The roof of an abandoned mental hospital at midnight. Barbed-wire fences and fleeing down the fire escape when the shadows moved at us. Playing pool at two in the morning.

On stage at the Crazy Horse, the other punters even more startled than me at the sudden change in the show. Bite marks.

Full sun in the back seat of a convertible, vines on both sides, cabernet inside us and gravel underneath us (due to navigational difficulties). Every one of the passengers injured, but only one showing it.

Tim Minchin, Saline Solution, and a walk in the Garden. The disaster that was Hitlerhoff. Feeling never quite at home in the Fringe, without an artist pass.

Back in the ute, looking into the gearbox through a torn cover as I haul bricks to the site in 4WD-lowrange.

Checking every jewellery store in the city and Marion. The complete financial insanity of the entire exercise.

Half the things that caused us massive stress turning out to be total non-issues. Never knowing which half.

We booked the bar, but the bar bitch bailed. The Metropolitain staffed by children.

The pyrophone juggernaut, and having to walk down the beach and back for the final explosion.

Unexpected strengths and unexpected weaknesses. Do-it-yourself weddings as the ultimate team-building exercise.

Spending half a day looking at suits. Borrowing one instead.

Overwhelmed before and after the ceremony, trying so hard to talk to everyone that I talked really to no one. Greeting and letting go at the same time; some people I won't see again.

Being moved by things that have always been felt but never said.

Backyard cricket in the park at Mt Lofty; when your network is a web rather than a star, everything works.

Working to teary collapse the day before the wedding, then doing it again two days afterwards. Seeing others take heavier loads with fewer complaints, even if I didn't really know them.

Travelling back in time fourteen years to find that nothing, nothing has changed. Even the things that I wanted to change.

Feeling helpless, then completely relaxed as my phone and my authority were removed from me. Receiving a text message telling me to close my zip. Nobody really knowing how to arrange my handkerchief.

Speaking two short sentences at the end of the aisle without even blinking and finding out that I've been wrong from the start: this does change everything.

Two off-the-cuff speeches and three scripted ones. Powerful delivery by gifted speakers.

Being warmly welcomed into the club by some exceedingly long-standing members, and realising that I can do this because I've been shown how.