Where I'm at . . .

My Best Friend's Wedding




Last night one of my dearest friends was married . . .

I drove down to S. Diego . . . missing the Chupah, but making it in time for his grand entrance after the cheder yichud.

The setting was intimate, held in the hall of the local Chabad House.

I've been by many a friend's wedding in the past few years . . . but never one like this.

It was everything that I wanted, and everything that I feared.

I could not have, at that moment, been happier. Yet a selfish voice inside of me chimed in, singing a melancholy tune. The friend that had traveled the world with me, had put up with my shtick, and called to make sure I was up in the morning . . . would no longer be able to do so for with me.

My friend was leaving -to a certain degree . . . He was stepping down the path of life, while I seemingly stood rooted so firmly in my spot.

He had looked past his personal inhibitions . . . I had remained imprisoned by mine.

Being a child of Los Angeles, how others see us, what they think, remains an issue of paramount importance.
The facade is all that there is.
Am I seen as who I am, or how I look? As how I feel I am, or how others think I am?

Me, me . . . I, I.

Is that all there is?

Is this is what I have come to . . . obsession with the singularity of my existence?

The dirge of the city of angels.

But in truth the problem is not in how others see me, but rather how I see myself.

If I were to see myself for who I truly am, not as who I wish to be -If I could live up to what I am supposed to be, and not as what I wish, then all would be as it ought.

Is this how things are, how they are meant to be? Plans made, then dashed cruelly asunder by the tumultuous seas - the many waters - upon the jagged teeth of upturned stone that line the shore of life?

'I want you', I say.

I know how things are meant to be . . .

But You tell me that You know far better. After all, as Creator, You have the right.

I have my plans, and You have Yours . . . But while mine may unfold as I wish, they may also not; Yours, however, always will be, and for more I can not wish.

Frozen in place, stuck in my path, but with my eyes turned to the king . . .

He smiles to me . . .

My eyes focus on the the choson.

His lithe figure, cloaked in the silken gleam of a new Kopote and girded with a dangling gartel, bobbed on the shoulders of a friend. His arms flying over his head like a rider on a wild bronco, he scanned the crowd - the last rays of the setting sun refracted from the window and glinted in his eyes, his face aglow with fires within and the fires with out.

This is everything I have wanted, and nothing more.
The singularity of my existence is not some separate entity from that of my friend, we are one. I need not fear a dissonance in our relationship, a duality of desires . . . for when he is happy, then I can not be happier.

The music swells. The crowd roars.

I dance, as I have never danced before.



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