happy happy joy joy

[adelaidesean]

Today is a very good day. It's our first wedding anniversary, and we're heading for the hills tonight, as we did exactly 52 weeks ago, to enjoy some quiet time. We'll also party like it's 1932 by taking this most timely quiz:



Thanks to Tiabla, Amanda and I can now find out exactly how well our marriage is going. I swear I've never talked of the efficiency of my stenographer, and to the best of my knowledge Amanda has never worn red nail polish, so we should be okay. Whew!

You can view the entire quiz here. Fun and games!

ETA: Don't read Rob Shearman's excellent short story "Grappa" the night before a wedding anniversary. It will seriously mess with your head.

Comments

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

All of Shearman's stories mess with my head.

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

also... happy anniversary!

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Cat. I was really excited that you and Rob could be with us on the big day. It doesn't seem like a year ago, that's for sure!

"Grappa" is the most brilliant mindfuck I've experienced for ages. The ending was so desperate and insightful that I wanted to weep and laugh at the same time. A bit like falling in love, really. :-)

[catsparx.livejournal.com]

'desperate and insightful '. Now thats a blurbquote!

[transcendancing.livejournal.com]

Happy Anniversary!

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[king-espresso.livejournal.com]

Congratulations to you both. Many more years of happiness.

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

Happy Anniversery! I present you both with a poem (not one of mine, fortunately)
MARRIED LOVE

You and I
have so much love
that it burns like fire,
in which we bake a lump of clay
to mold a figure of you
and a figure of me.
In a moment of passion,
we break the images to pieces,
and mix them in water,
knead and mold again
an image of you
and another of me.
Now I am in your clay
and you are in my clay.
In life we share a single quilt.
In death we'll share one coffin.

Kuan Tao-shêng (1262-1319))
Kenneth Rexroth & Ling Chung (Ed. & trans.)
The Orchid Boat: Women Poets of China (1972)

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

(Love that icon, btw.)

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Wonderful. Thank you!

(I'd never heard of Kuan Tao-shêng before. Looking her up in the web, I see that she was one of the pioneers of bamboo painting as well as a great poet. What a fascinating woman she must have been.)

[king-espresso.livejournal.com]

Bingo is my guru. :-)

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

I've got the Orchid Boat on order. I have an interest in Chinese poetry, and women's poetry in particular. There are a lot of fascinating Chinese women in history (and now, too). We need to hear more about them.

I actually first read this in John Marsden's collection For Weddings and a Funeral. We got all of our wedding poems out of this book.

BTW: Happy Birthday for the 23rd. Iain and I will be in Tassie and probably nowhere near a computer (I hope).

Best wishes to you both. Have a great time.

Here's another poem by John Ciardi (just because I can)

MEN MARRY WHAT THEY NEED

Men marry what they need. I marry you,
morning by morning, day by day, night by night,
and every marriage makes this marriage new.

In the broken name of heaven, in the light
that shatters granite, by the spitting shore,
in air that leaps and wobbles like a kite,

I marry you from time and a great door
is shut and stays shut against wind, sea, stone,
sunburst, and heavenfall. And home once more

inside our walls of skin and struts of bone,
man-woman, woman-man, and each the other,
I marry you by all dark and all dawn

and have my laugh at death.
Why should I bother the flies about me? Let them
buzz and do.
Men marry their queen, their daughter, or their mother

by hidden names, but that thin buzz whines through:
where reasons are no reason, cause is true.
Men marry what they need. I marry you.

Happy Anniversary!!!!!!!

[synw.livejournal.com]

Kerri and I wish you both a very happy anniversary, as Rita Rudner once said "It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life".

Scott :)

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

You've got a very good memory. :-)

And a wonderful taste in poetry. Thanks again, sincerely.

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

The memory and the taste for poetry is my dad's fault. He loves poetry and read huge screeds of it to me as a kid. Never get me started on reciting because I can go for hours......

I have to admit something though. While I remembered both poems, I didn't type them out from memory. That's what the web is for....

[mortonhall.livejournal.com]

a year already? Awesome! Congratulations to you both

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it came around fast, despite being a leap year. :-) Thanks!

[austspecfic.livejournal.com]

Aww that's so cute. Continue having fun!

[starfirephoenix.livejournal.com]

Awww, happy anniversary! :)

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks!

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

We definitely intend to. :-)

[gloripebbles.livejournal.com]

Already?

Hang on, where did that last year go???

Congratulations & enjoy the celebration.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Thanks. We did. :-)

Re the last 12 months: My feelings exactly! Time really does fly when you're having fun.

[robshearman.livejournal.com]

...And, terrifyingly enough, almost entirely a true story.

Only in the final proofs did Janie insist I change the name of the restaurant, in case the owner in question ever read the thing.

(The ending was mine, mind you. But being caught listening to this strange confessional tale as the restaurant was shutting, on the night of our anniversary... I exaggerated bits, and left out details, but it's mostly true.)

Not the thing to read before *your* anniversary, though! Many congratulations!

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Rob, and thanks for the great story! Possibly my favourite in the collection (although the one about Jesus is still spinning my head around).

[robshearman.livejournal.com]

And that one's a true story too!

...Ish.

Thanks, Sean - I'm so pleased you enjoyed the book! I'm still shamefully behind with Magic Dirt. I've been writing a lot of short stories since Perth, and I find it very hard to *read* shorts whilst writing them. But I'm taking a holiday soon, and Magic Dirt is top of my pile!

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

No worries at all! There's no hurry. Have a wonderful holiday, no matter what you read. Well deserved, by the sound of it. :-)