The day I was going to get married...

So this is Spencer and I at our best . . . yes he is singing. :) Now, I thought that I would take a step back and tell about this last weekend. April 13th to be exact, the day Spencer and I were originally going to get married. So first off every time I mention this people are really hesitant to say anything. I assume they're wondering if I'm okay, bitter, sad, etc. So for the record I'm fine, great even. It was just a little weird, that's all. So Spencer and I decided to go out for dinner in celebration of our almost union (which now is going to be July 6th, in case you were wondering). First of all, we went to Cranky Chuckie's American Bistro or some strange name like that and it was fantastic. It was in the upstairs of an older building in a cute little nook a block from BYU campus. The menu was small, maybe six main courses in all, three appetizers and three desserts. But for me that was perfect: not too many choices not too few. So Spencer and I both ended up getting the bacon-wrapped meatloaf with mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts and it was delicious! I can simply not say enough about this meal so I will not even try. Just for your information, though the dish convinced me that barbecue sauce is not inherently the most disgusting thing ever, so that was a huge step for me. Anyway it was delicious and I had a pizookie for the first time and then we found it necessary to eat more so we stopped by Spoon It Up for some frozen yogurt. So this part was really fun because Spencer was so excited to get exactly the right flavor combinations between our bowl of fruit and our other bowl of chocolate. With great concentration and concern I layered the mint and dutch chocolate, while he created a collage of mango sorbet, strawberry, and french vanilla. So for the toppings we basically went all out, carefully leaving out the coconut for Spencer's benefit (we trade off since it's my favorite). We also discovered these really weird gusher-like balls of fruit-flavored excitement which Spencer thought were fantastic. p.s. It's adorable when he gets excited about little things like fruit-flavored-gusher-balls-of-explosive-magic so I just thought I'd mention it. Anyway, the rest of the evening consisted of Downton Abbey, talking, and cuddling. A perfect evening . . .

. . . And then I remembered that we were celebrating our almost marriage. Weird! I mean in all reality, I'm leaving in less than a week for a study abroad. We're in the midst of finals. We'd have had no place to live. Etc, etc. I mean it's a very good thing that we moved the date to July 6th (also because we will have fireworks every year in honor of our anniversary, as well as our country...and because Claire can come! Unfortunately, my best friend Sarah will be in England but that's okay, England's pretty cool I guess). Well, all in all, I have no feasible way to describe the day one should have been getting married. Our celebration was fun but the other side of the story was not. Because for some reason, after such a wonderful evening, I kind of had a mini breakdown. Maybe it was that I was getting sick, maybe I was tired and stressed with upcoming finals, maybe I'll just shamelessly blame birth control, or maybe the Downton Abbey episode got under my skin. But either way after a little coaxing and comfort from Spencer it came out that I needed to know if Spencer still wanted to marry me. Dumb, but legitimate, at least in my head. And I suppose that looking back at that evening now I see what makes every good marriage. The ups and downs, the fun times and the sad times, the comfort, the time invested, and everything else between.

You see, technically our excursion was the night before our "almost marriage" so I guess it could have resembled the "almost before marriage jitters" but the next day was overly normal, busy, overcast, boring, basically normal? Really I can't describe it. But what I can say is that I am very excited to get
married, and Spencer is really great. The next couple months of my life are slated with amazing opportunities from England, Scotland, and Wales, to marrying and starting a new life with Spencer. I kind of want to make our almost wedding day a secondary anniversary (mostly so we can celebrate twice) but really what I remembered from the day I was going to get married was all the reasons I love Spencer. From exploring new places, eating new foods, systematically creating pleasureful bowls of goodness with green spoons, Spencer comforting me through a random crisis, or just spending time together reading, talking, cuddling, and laughing I can't for the day we actually get married. So in honor of our almost wedding day here is the story, and here are some of our engagement photos. Now I'm off to my French final.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vh1p4ahyxy6k0gp/U3euIb8CCZ

-Natalie Cherie

When Now Unstiches Then

Two weeks ago I decided I was going to become an essayist. Why? Because I started reading The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald. To be perfectly honest, this novel (or series of 10 essays) are rather confusing, initially, I found them meaningless, and overall a difficult and uninspiring read. And then I took a second look. Within the pages of an unsettled and shifting conscious I found the remnants and threads of a truly beautiful experience. But perhaps just as important I found myself in the words and mind of a human being I didn't know. Someone who expressed the reason I write.

“But the fact is that writing is the only way in which I am able to cope with the memories which overwhelm me so frequently and so unexpectedly. If they remained locked away, they would become heavier and heavier as time went on, so that in the end I would succumb under their mounting weight. Memories lie slumbering within us for months and years, quietly proliferating, until they are woken by some trifle and in some strange way blind us to life. How often this has caused me to feel that my memories, and the labours expended in writing them down are all part of the same humiliating and, at bottom, contemptible business! And yet, what would we be without memories? We would not be capable of ordering even the simplest thoughts, the most sensitive heart would lose the ability to show affection, our existence would be a mere never-ending chain of meaningless moments, and there would not be the faintest trace of a past.” 

-W.G. Sebald

Later I began to read some essays from On the Shoreline of Knowledge by Chris Arthur. Once again I found a confusing, seemingly meaningless representation of the wanderings of a human mind. But then I was instructed to find a poem in the words. Kind of weird, but this is what I found.

When Now Unstiches Then and is in Turn Undone

When Now un-stitches Then,
This harpoon from the past-
Sharp, pointed, barbed-
Carries with it a reminder that everything we do
Is transient, mutable; that memory's sarcophagi
Are buried in the sands of change;
That the moments which we colonize now,
Our perceptions, our fragile present,
Are already marked with obliteration.

[But,] I know- with a certainty
That outweighs the most cherished particularities of memory-
That I should welcome anything that helps
Attune the ear to time's complex harmonies.
Google may have made once stable images
Come crashing down,
But in the sound of their falling, I can hear
More acutely than in any monotone of static preservation
The Elusive voices of the moments we inhabit.

And that's what it's all about. I've often sat down an wondered where I would find my own meaningful existence. Perhaps in leaving behind a legacy, but would anyone read it. Besides what are words if not read, or understood. Words for the sake of words like Art for the sake of art? No one liked that movement anyway. Okay, it's a gross generalization but what are ink stains and pen scratches when the mocking corrosion of time will all too soon wipe it away? Perhaps this is nothing but the existential crisis of a writer. You see in less than two weeks I'm headed to England, Scotland, and Wales to backpack 200 miles across the countryside.  I'm traveling across an ocean to feel the presence of past lives and the hear past voices. But after the cathedrals crumble, the gardens hedge and hide their secrets and thoughts, and the shores erode their pathways will the word endure. Will a garden and misty morning inspire the words of William Wordsworth when all is gone:

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.	5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Or will that too fade?

So back to the original question: Why become an essayist when continually faced with such a crisis? Because where Wordsworth is the truth so also are the words of Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson saying, 

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

So when I also, like John Keats, have "fears that I may cease to be, before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain," I simply remember that this is my meaningful existence. To write down the story that I have to share, regardless of who opens its pages. And "through living roots [that] awaken in my head, [though] I've no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb, the squat pen rests. I'll dig with it." -Seamus Heaney

The other day as I was walking, surrounded by busy students, I myself found a rushing figure in my own person. I was heading to work. And then it stopped. Or began. A gust of wind, before pleasant, had swept away dozens of loose leaf papers from the hands of a stunned young woman. Before the blinking moment, they were slipping across the concrete like lifeless butterflies caught on a harsh breeze. A moment passed and suddenly twenty bodies, before moving in a chaotic, self-absorbed direction, all turned to chase the sheets that held meaningless words. Yet, somehow precious. I myself began to chase down papers succeeding in trapping only two sheets. But, somehow on her face, I saw the meaning of meaningless words. Somehow in our task, I had found my answer. Though now unstitches then and is in turn undone, perhaps I can somehow make something out of nothing . . . something worth chasing after.

-Natalie Cherie