Day 74

1st trip to the museum...

Day 18

Day 13

For Patti and Robert

[1]

Mosquito-bitten and starving;
mid-March daydream of spring
unending. Wistful confidence,
neither regretful nor proud:
the apathy it took to get here.

[2]

I started drinking coffee

for the taste but stayed for

the caffeine. Veins pulsing

like the Ganges, I followed

it until it emptied iteself

one day in September.

[3]

I read it all in one day

racing as if to find some

magical revelation but when I

reached the final pages I found myself

skimming the words – ashamed of being a voyeur

disappointed by my envy – I realized no revelation

my life did not take on new meaning. The

book merely ended and I was one

day older. No closer

– or further – 

from the truth

than I had ever been before.

 

Still on Our Honeymoon... Prague, Day 3 (Prague Castle, Jewish Quarter, Old Town Square, Nova Scena)

The third day of our European vacation began at Prague Castle, which overlooks the city from atop a small hill on the northwestern corner of the city:

It was a hazy morning, which did little to diminish the beauty of the city, but it did serve as a reminder of the ultimate futility of photography. The camera can never see so well as the eye when it comes to panoramas and landscapes – the edge of the frame is forever encroaching, forever severing the image from its context, which makes it impossible to understand that this view of the city exists only because of the sheer castle wall on which we stood and simultaneously with the enormousness of St. Vitus towering behind us.  Nonetheless, you take what you can get, and always remember that while a picture may be more a thousand words, a thousand pictures are never worth a single moment.

After taking in the views we walked through the gate to the castle's courtyard:

One thing that really struck me about the trip in general, and this site was no exception, was the tremendous proclivity central European kings had for statues of clubbing:

And stabbing:

I understand these were powerful men, but it is beyond me why anyone, after a long day of battling Turks, would want to come home to these monuments of hand-to-hand combat. Maybe this constant exposure to violence was one of the reasons they felt the need to overcompensate when it came to building their churches;

Again, pictures fail once more because to truly understand St. Vitus' Cathedral, one must understand that it sits in the middle of the Prague Castle complex, towering over everything and making one feel immeasurably small in its shadow. I truly understood for the first time what I had been taught in AP European History back in high school – the kings and churches were collaborative rulers, sharing armies and communion without the slightest hint of contradiction.

I suppose it's important to note that this church, and virtually every church we saw on this trip, were initially constructed in the Middle Ages, that "dark" part of history where Europe was in decline and the East was ascendent. But the key thing is that they were built at the end of the Middle Ages, just on the cusp of Western Europe's Renaissance, whose ideas would finally make their way to Bohemia a couple hundred years later. In this way, these buildings provided a fascinating look not only at the fragile balance between Church and State, but also at the fundamental, indispensable alliance between them.

Also, they have beautiful organs:

Awe-inspiring worship spaces:

  And stained glass windows that set the whole room ablaze:

St. Vitus also has this impressive display dedicated to John of Nepomuk, the national saint of the Czech Republic who was drowned in the Vltava by Wencelas IV:

Yes, that is solid silver.

Coincidentally, the remains of a different King Wencelas (the "good king" of Christmas carol fame) are less than 25 meters away:

In addition to the gothic splendor of St. Vitus, there is also a much older, much smaller Romanesque church that was building well over a thousand years ago and featured the same preoccupation with human remains as we saw in Kutna Hora the day before:

I wonder about all these bones and skeletons we saw. Modern Western society is so far removed from death. It is something that happens largely in hospitals and rest homes, far removed from our day to day lives. And, when someone we love does die, we send the body to the embalmer rather than tending to the deceased in our own homes. This wasn't the case for the people who built these churches and cathedrals, who were confronted with the reality of death more frequently and concretely than we are today.

Anyway, eventually my yin and I made our way down from Prague Castle, elbow to elbow with all the other tourists (we referred to ourselves as sheep, "baaahhhhh...") until we finally made our way across the Charles Bridge and on to Josefov, which used to allow the Jews to leave and mingle freely only during the daytime, but required them to return to their homes and community by nightfall.  It?s important to note that this wasn't a Nazi-era edict, but rather stretches back for hundreds of years and speaks to the long, uneasy history between Jews and Gentiles in this part of the world.

Today, however, Josefov is abuzz with commerce, and the streets are lined with the same designer stores one sees in New York, Paris, or London. Gucci, D&G, and Jimmy Choo are all there, existing in an atemporal consumerist utopia and oblivious to the history of the streets on which they reside.   Sitting just down the street from these temples of fashion and conspicuous consumption is the Old New Synagogue, which was built in the 13th Century is Europe's oldest active synagogue.

No pictures were not allowed inside, and we found this more than once on our trip. I wonder why it is that the none of the cathedrals we visited had any qualms about photography whereas some of the synagogues did.  Perhaps it has something to do with the second commandment, but I'm really not sure. Similarly, inside the Old New Synagogue, all male visitors must cover their heads and are given a disposable kipa. I appreciated this adherence to religious tenet, which was present in all the synagogues we visited but not so much at the Christian churches, whose religious purpose seemed to be secondary to their value as a tourist attraction.

Outside of the Old New Synagogue is the Old Jewish Cemetery, which was the only burial place for Prague's Jews for hundreds of years. Jewish law requires that bodies be interred underground, and space constraints in Josefov ultimately resulted in bodies being buried one on top of the other, with headstones eventually crammed together so close that they now look like a collapsed pile of dominoes.  Unfortunately, my yin and I deemed the cost of walking through this cemetery exorbitant and were thus forced to settle for a view from the street:



Heading out of Josefov towards Staré Město Náměsti ("Old Town Square"), we encountered this statue dedicated to Franz Kafka, which I deemed to be appropriately absurd:



Eventually we made our way to our destination, where we were welcomed not only by this impressive statue:



But also by the famed Astronomical Clock:



Where someone had decided to get married on this particular day:



Of  course why anyone would want to be married at Old Town Square is beyond me because the place can only be described as a cross between Times Square and the 17th Century. It is a tremendously large area, covered in cobblestones, surrounded by impressive edifices, and absolutely lousy with tourists. They line up to gawk at anything and everything, and I couldn?t help but notice on the café chalkboards that a glass of beer in this part of town cost just as much as it would back in the States. If you've never been to Prague, let me assure you that this is highly abnormal because elsewhere in the city a glass of beer is universally cheaper than soda, juice, coffee, or water.

Anyway, my yin and I were growing tired and feeling all the classic symptoms: stiff back, heavy legs, and a lurking sense of general crankiness.  Taking a cue from this man, we decided to go back to our hotel and take a load off:



And walking by the Jubilee Synagogue along the way:



After an hour's worth of rest and a quick shower, my yin headed out once more, eating dinner at a small Afghani restaurant and then going to the National Theater complex where we had tickets for an 8 o'clock show at this modern-looking building next to the Národní divaldo, which reminded me a bit of a Rubik's Cube:

 

The group was called Laterna magika, a multimedia dance troupe, and the show was called Graffiti, which was easily one of the most visually impressive dance performances I've ever seen. Using polarized sheets of glass set on an angle and a set of rectangular white squares (resembling horizontal blinds) on the ceiling, the designer was able to create amazing optical effects using projection, which alternately made the dancers look ghostly or real, clearly in view or utterly obscured.

The most impressive effect was when the dancers synchronized their movement with recorded images of the same movement, which gave the impression of a living, moving memory, replete with all the distortions and inconsistencies that give them their power.  It reminded me of Chris Marker's work, only more so.

Re-membered: 25 September 2010

fragment #1

Wake and make coffee, journal, probably read some – what happens on these forgettable mornings doomed to anonymity? One task flowing into the next without even the structure of routinization to etch its meaning into memory. Maybe this lack of memory is the meaning. Perhaps I've been reading too much of alienation in Shibuya, Shinjuku and Japan. Tiny unpronounceable fragments signifying an immense landscape - as much psychic as geographic - of which I've never known.

A former lover, a girl with a grandmother in Kyoto, may have told me of these places, but if so I've long since forgotten.

What I do remember is calling there one December. She had left index cards with phonemes written on them (black or blue, I do not know which) so I could call grandmother's home and ask to speak with her. I do not remember the conversation, but one year later it no longer mattered.

There is no greater distance than the width of a bed between lovers, one of whom is already gone.

This is not the girl with a grandmother in Kyoto.

fragment #2

We left at 8pm, dropped leftovers at home, and went to the inlet in search of a drum circle. I didn't want to be there, but went anyway, remembering how my earlier agoraphobia had proven fatuous and empty. We found no one that night but fishermen and geriatrics, burnouts and immigrants, a strong breeze and the outgoing current rushing under the bridge. There was a deceitful full moon behind the clouds, promising to reveal itself.

We drove home moonless and silent.

This is not the drum circle in question.

fragment #3

The final thing about that night in September, just shy of two years ago, was the strange tongue-tied sensation while talking to J___ and G_____. I couldn't quite express myself, or perhaps the words got bruised as they traveled through the air, contaminated by all the things that went unsaid before. I envy, sometimes, the (apparent) ability of others to say what they mean, or at least not notice or care how their words are destined to fall short of true communion.

I got a flash of this in bed yesterday morning, when I looked at her face after making love.

In that moment I gained an understanding into the nature of images. Her face, only inches away, was nonetheless separated by an unbridgeable chasm. The eye is forever flawed, forever searching for what is outside of itself. It relies upon the hands, upon the lips, upon the touch to bring it closer to the things it holds most dear – but it can never be one with them.

So long as we are dependent upon images, we are locked in a world of infinite superficiality, a world without depth, where every passing gaze promises to bring us close, but only pushes us further apart.

This is not the image in question.

All fragments originally written on 25 September 2010 and taken from:

The journal that spanned from summer to fall.

In Response to Alison Luterman's "Because These Failures Are My Job"

These images are neither the ghosts of the past

nor the promise 

of a future.

They are merely an observation:

everything that can pass

will.

     But let also us remember: these failures –

whether "offering"

or "apology"

or "thank you"

 

 – are miracles nonethless.

redux: on (someday) turning 90

Last year my yin and I went to her mother's cousin's boyfriend's birthday party at his country club, and although this sounds like the start of some impossibly long and complicated joke, it is actually the simple truth.

(Note: no truth
- even if true -
is ever simple.)

But this is beside the point.

The point is that it was this mother's cousin's boyfriend's ninetieth birthday. To put this fact in perspective, one has to remember that when this mother's cousin's boyfriend was born, alcohol was illegal and the 19th Amendment was only six weeks old.

But this is also beside the point (as well as overly didactic) and fails to adequately set the mood.  The point is:

We walk into the clubhouse to find a room full of gray hair, red wine and mimosas. We say hello to the mother's cousin's boyfriend and then locate a corner table where the mother's other cousin (the one with the boat, not the boyfriend) sits with his wife. We sit with them, answering questions about my yin-in-law and her beau until they arrive. At which point, we continue answering questions, albeit more quietly.

After drinks we move one room west and take our place at table #4. There are perhaps 45 people scattered about, fewer than ten are under 40, and disinterested servers move from table to table asking, "Chicken, salmon, or prime rib?"

(the room is too hot)

I ask for a vegetarian plate, and after a house salad and rolls, a bowl full of over-cooked veggies doused in butter arrives. I try not to think about it, thinking (wishfully?) 'at least it's not margarine' as I attempt to eat around the spinach, which has been cooked so thoroughly that its characteristically vibrant green has been transformed into a hue resembling nothing so closely as pine needles at the height of wreath season. At this point my yin and I exchange a grateful look, wordlessly acknowledging the wisdom of our decision to forgo a traditional caterer for our upcoming matrimony.

After the main course there are speeches, and ultimately a ten minute DVD montage of the mother's cousin's boyfriend's life. I find it fascinating, especially how the change from black and white to color film stock in the Sixties marked both a metaphoric and historical break in the story being told. I saw not only the Polaroid emergence of a post-War consumer society, but also the tipping point in the mother's cousin's boyfriend's life as he crossed over the threshold from youth to middle-age. The pictures of the soldier and young husband and father were suddenly gone, replaced by a man whose children were nearly grown, whose remaining years seemed less certain.

this is the deceitful nature of images.

In the mother's cousin's boyfriend's life I saw the history of America in the 20th century, from Depression

to War

to the Boom

 that followed the Bomb

I watched the mother's cousin's boyfriend move from the Bronx to Harlem to Paramus, New Jersey - the decline and white flight from the burroughs across the Hudson, Jews and Gentiles alike.

I watched children appear and grow into parents.

I watched parents, and then siblings, fade from the picture.

(do photographs,
as Benjamin argues,
truly destroy the aura?)

The mother's cousin's boyfriend told the story of a boat ride in 1936. it began at the Bowery, Hudson-bound, and stopped at 125th Street, where the mother's cousin's boyfriend's childhood friend had arranged to meet two girls. One of them, named R______, became his wife.

They were together 70 years before she passed.

How much death does the most fortunate among us witness? Is watching our loved ones die the price we pay to ascend to the title of patriarch? Of matriarch? Is this why our elders see so much so clearly?

(a final question)

Placed next to

the unintelligibility of death|the problems of life

How can

compare?

[lapse]

After this video came the group photo, which may someday resurface at his 95th or 100th birthday. It was another tiny fragment of life enshrined and embalmed - the present moment ferried by the camera into the past...

redux: attachment

Part 1

One year ago yesterday I ran into my sister's former lover. He was sitting in the corner of a small coffee shop on King Street (downtown Boone's main thoroughfare) and from the moment I walked in something seemed familiar about him.

"Did you used to live in ____?" he asked.

I recognized the Kentucky in his voice, and somewhere in the back of my mind lights began lighting up one after another: cigarettes, turntables, jealousy and anger.

"Yes," I answered.

photograph of Ryan Adams with coffee

(a short conversation followed

i did not tell him i

once wrote a poem for him)

Looking back now, I wonder about the significance – if any – of our meeting. I do not believe in coincidences; to do so requires that one reject not only the primacy, but even the existence of karma.

Part 2

This afternoon, one year ago, I went to a small storage shed on the north end of the county. Inside were approximately 4000 comic books and my dead grandmother's belongings.

photograph by Stephanie Schneider

(

i remembered

were not there.

some of the things

there

were not remembered.

)

I made what will presumably be my last visit to that same shed two weeks ago. There was a cigar store Indian, a piano, and an oil stain on the floor. Only two of these things belonged to me, and I gave one of them away twice in as many days. The piano now sits in a three bedroom house overlooking a lake.

Part 3

It is neither letting go, nor the thought of letting go. It is the inability to reconstruct a memory that might explain the things I saw; it is the inability to imagine a memory that might make sense of the things I did not.

photograph of a photograph by Patricio Reig

?

?

?

artifact

or

memory

?

?

?

I wrote two-thirds of this one year ago. It is curious to see which of these memories still have emotional resonance and which of them have been relegated to the realm of "things that merely happened"... if such things can even be said to exist at all.

on Susan Sontag's On Photography (book rant)

[lapse]

I've often wondered about the expression, "Better late than never." While it sounds benign enough on the surface, if one looks a little closer there are certain ideological assumptions embedded within those four little words. Most obviously, it extols a temporal hierarchy (on-time, late, never) that speaks to an underlying linear notion of time, which carries with it both a certain inflexibility and an unshakable, if unspoken, faith in progress.

Secondly, the maxim privileges "doing" over "being" by assigning value to the accomplishment of a task. While the desire to realize one's goals seems common-sensical, it also has a tendency to underestimate the primacy of timing. What if the action in question had a specific time and specific place? The expression"Timing is everything" relays this opposing sentiment and is neatly voice by Robert Jordan and General Golz in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls:


‘To blow the bridge is nothing… You understand?’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘Absolutely nothing. Merely to blow the bridge is a failure.’

‘Yes, Comrade General.’

‘To blow the bridge at a stated hour based on a time set for the attack is how it should be done. You see that naturally. That is your right and how it should be done’

But this is beside the point.

The point is that it's the second week of July and I have finally finished last year's summer reading list. The list was initially (and largely) compiled in preparation for my master's thesis, but somewhere along the way Susan Sontag's On Photography got left by the wayside. I read it this past week, though, and as the saying goes, "better late than never..."

After all the thousands of pictures taken by my yin and I on our honeymoon, I felt well prepared to read Sontag's book with a critical eye. During our month on the road, I watched the paradoxical ways in which the camera acts upon the individual using it: the 300mm lens bringing one closer to the image while the camera itself puts a physical barrier between the subject and the photographer. I also experienced the desire and subtle expectation for nature to reveal itself to me, for the animals and landscape and sun and moon to pose just long enough to "get a good picture."

Sontag understood all this and more. She writes:

"Photography is not practiced by most people as an art. It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power." (8)

"To take a picture is to have an interest in things as they are, in the status quo remaining unchanged (at least for as long as it takes to get a 'good' picture), to be in complicity with whatever makes a subject interesting, worth photographing—including, when that is the interest, another person’s pain or misfortune." (12)

In my view the question of power is inseparable from the practice of photography, and there were two times during our honeymoon that I felt this most acutely.

The first time was in San Francisco, mere minutes after our arrival:

I took this picture by setting the camera atop the dinner table, turning on the auto-focus, and hoping for the best. There was something about the woman that I still cannot explain. Her beauty was too much to let pass by, and yet what gave me the right to capture her image without her permission? The photograph was indeed taken and, consciously or unconsciously, I valued my pleasure of her beauty as more important than questions of ownership or consent.

The second time was in Santa Fe:

i
m
age
miss
in
g

This time I chose not to take the picture, not to document the image of Native Americans sitting on the ground across from their white competitors. Both sides selling turquoise and silver; both sides trying to make a living. But only one side with licenses neatly affixed; only one side speaking English as a second language. The relationship between these two groups was, and is, more complex than I can explain; but if I had photographed this image, with the road providing vertical symmetry and a clear division between the groups, something would have been lost. It would have appeared much simpler, much less confusing than the emotion I felt that day.

What are these two impulses? Why did I take one and not the other?

"Photographs are, of course, artifacts. But their appeal is that they also seem, in a world littered with photographic relics, to have the status of found objects—unpremeditated slices of the world. Thus, they trade simultaneously on the prestige of art and the magic of the real." (69)

The first image, of the woman eating her dinner alone, trades on the prestige of art. There is a tension between her and the painting of the monks above her. While she eats her samosa soup, they hold their begging bowls. While she is dynamic, they are forever frozen. While she embodies the vitality of life and the living presence of the divine, they represent an idealized notion of how one should behave in order to be holy. The photograph captures all these things, and the woman's humanity (which is to say divinity) is enhanced rather than diminished by the image.

The second image, which I did not take, would have traded on the magic of the real. It would have condensed the entire history of the Southwest, the entire history of European-Native interaction into the time it takes to glance at a photo. The complexities of identity and economics and culture would have been collapsed into a single entity, easily consumable, that appeared to be real and unstaged, but actually hollowed out reality by turning it into ready-made clichés and historiographies far from self-evident.

Sontag writes:

"The history of photography could be recapitulated as the struggle between two different imperatives: beautification, which comes from the fine arts, and truth-telling, a legacy from the sciences, which is measured not by a notion of value-free truth, but by a moralized ideal of truth-telling, adapted by nineteenth-century literary models and from the (then) new profession of independent journalism." (86)

Again, the first photograph aligns itself with the striving for beautification, while the second would have taken its cue from an idealized, moralistic notion of the "truth." That's why I chose to take one photograph instead of the other, but it was Sontag's book that gave me the words to say so. This is not to say, however, that the impulse I followed was necessarily correct:

"The camera makes reality atomic, manageable, and opaque. It is a view of the world which denies interconnectedness, continuity, but which confers on each moment the character of a mystery… Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculations, and fantasy." (22-23)

With regard to the first photograph, Sontag would accuse me (or at least my photograph) of both speculation and fantasy. I do not know the woman in the photo, I do not know her history, and I have spoken with her only long enough to discuss the menu at Burma Superstar, the restaurant where the picture was taken. And yet, I presume to Know her spirit, to touch her soul in a way I still struggle to explain.

But perhaps this is the weakness in Sontag's argument: she neglects to fully appreciate the presence of the photographer (by which I mean the Presence of the photographer). This was the case in the first photograph because, no matter how limited, I connected with the woman in the image. I sensed the Peace that dwells within the center of her being, and the image thus becomes an artifact from that encounter, a reminder that defends against the inevitable onset of doubt and forgetfulness.

But in Santa Fe I was not so clear. I was unable to experience the Peace in the situation. Instead, all I saw was the detritus of history, what Walter Benjamin called "one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage."

quote taken from Benjamin's description of Klee's Angelus Nova

Finally, Sontag writes:

"It is a nostalgic time right now, and photographs actively promote nostalgia. Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art." (15)

This idea, as much as any in her book of essays, highlights the current ambivalence I feel towards the photograph. For as long as I can remember, I have disliked having my picture taken. This, in spite of the existence of seemingly happy images of the past:

author, circa 1980

These early aversions were based primarily on the necessity for posing, the creation of a moment for the sole purpose of memorializing it. Even then, I recognized this as a form a discipline (the frozen, idealized past) as opposed to freedom (the uncertain possibility of the present). Thus, the posed photograph functions as both a form of bodily and emotional coercion, and as I grew older I came to disdain the entire enterprise. For this reason, almost half of my life went largely unphotographed. Those that do exist were either contrived:

self-portrait, 1999

The result of ambush:

1995

Or taken unawares:

2002

Nowadays, though, I've come to an uneasy truce with the photograph. I now recognize that the discipline I once associated with the posed photograph is far more rampant than I realized as a child. Most of us, most of the time, go about posing and performing in one capacity or another. It appears to be part and parcel to being a human being, and I've learned to accept it as one of the primary functions of the mind.

And, while still weary of photography's tendency to promote nostalgia, I've also come to appreciate the ability of words to recontextualize the image, to question and reaffirm, to create doubt and bolster faith, to criticize and promote empathy.

(All these processes are illustrated by the above words and images.)

As Sontag writes:

"Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos." (15)

This understanding is ultimately what changed my relationship to photography a few years ago. In spite of all the questions of power, in spite of the discipline, in spite of the innumerable frailties of the image, the photograph allows us to feel. In a society that seems bent on draining the emotion out of every experience – either through repression, denial, or bottling it to sell back to us in the forms of sports and news and entertainment – we should feel grateful for every practice that helps us to experience the limitless joy, sadness, and confusion that life has to offer.

Honeymoon Day 32-?: Crystal Balls and Rearview Mirrors

My yin and I arrived in Boone on a Saturday afternoon. The final five hours of driving felt almost surreal, probably because of my desire to stretch them out until they formed an invisible asymptote, forever separating our journey from its ultimate destination. This yearning could probably be read as a metaphor for the grander, more primitive urge to circumvent or forestall death, but none of these things were on my mind that day.

my day planner, 2010-2011

Instead I was intoxicated by the distinctive redolence of the Appalachian mountains, which still smell like home no matter how long I've been gone. I caught the first whiff when we exited the highway in Elizabethton, a sleepy little town whose character is defined as much by "The Lost State of Franklin" as it is "The Great State of Tennessee."

West of Elizabethton are modestly larger burgs like Johnson City and Kinsport, and to the east lay even less populated municipalities like Hampton and Butler, towns so small that they were sacrificed to the construction of Watauga Dam, which first brought electricity to this area almost seventy years ago.

image appropriated from here

No pictures were taken of any of these places, though, not even of the sign between Trade and Zionville that reads "Welcome to North Carolina." For some reason, going home doesn't entice the eye in the same way as visiting far-away places.

I suppose the root of this can be found in the difference between the familiar and the exotic. Home brings with it a specific feeling, a sense of knowing that cannot be neatly captured by the image. We sense it, we smell it, we hear it in the sound of lawnmowers as much as in the wind.

Whitman Sleep Tonight

There is no sleep so sublime
as Whitman, under a tree
in Brooklyn, I dream
of my grandfather

fresh cut grass,
two cycle engine oil
and nostalgia.
Childhood

spent on the front porch,
chewing on sprigs of birch
pine needles in the fall.
The redolence of spring

mingling autumnal decay

the smell of impotence,
the taste eternal.

The exotic, however, demands attention from the eye. It asks to be seen, it poses, it teases and waits. We find ourselves struggling to tell loved ones what the image fails to communicate. The cliché insists that each picture is worth a thousand words, but the image also demands another thousand in explanation and context. This is what my yin and I discovered when we showed the photographs from our trip to my grandparents and mother.

But, for the time being, this is beside the point.

The point is that my yin and I have decided to extend our honeymoon indefinitely, and if the current estimates hold, it should last until sometime in the year 2089 (78 more years!) Although this estimate of my longevity was provided under some duress, I'm still view it as a reasonably reasonable forecast.

This means that the month we spent on the road is but a tiny fraction of the trips that await us, and if the vital statistics from this adventure are any indication of what lay ahead, then we have much to look forward to:

Honeymoon Vital Statistics

Duration: 32 days
Number of states: 20
Number of National Parks: 13
Total mileage: 9,555
Miles driven by my yin: <.5
Number of photographs: >4,500

What these numbers cannot relate is how much we learned about ourselves and each other over the course of our honeymoon. We encountered bears (without getting eaten), less than ideal accommodations (without getting flea-bitten), and spent more than 200 hours in the car together (without driving each another completely crazy).

even more in love than we were on Day 1

This bodes well...