(three months.)

one month, plus some.

People say wedding days are perfect, and that is because they are right. I have never been to a not-perfect wedding ever, and in my case I imagined perfect and then found it to be actually even more perfecter times ten. Not only was I getting married (!), but our closest family and dearest of dear friends crossed continents to come and there was sunshine all over the South Downs and lunch in the library and croquet on the lawn and it was in so many ways ridiculous as well as being exactly right. The trouble is that these are facts and details and things, and they are important things but not the essential thing, which is the something deeper that still thrums through my marrow in ways that have not been written yet in fugitive words that slip through my fingers in life's liminal spaces; taking the stairs down to the design department, waiting for the bus to slow at your outstretched hand, the breath between soul-borne bone-shaking laughter over something already entirely forgotten. It is like I have searched happiness of all its synonyms and found language outdone. Words as I have known them no longer hold their weight.

So instead I am looking for new words, and in the interim I will say this straightforwardly: I married John William Morgan in the London Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at high noon on the eighth of June and it is to this day and counting the very best thing I have ever, ever done or will do.

 

all photography : dean govier

city of superlatives.

If you know me in real life, you know I'm an easy read. My face is all-access emotion; I live near the surface, if I feel anything beyond the earliest morning's apathy, you'll see it. So it's a really good thing that I only ever had to lie over the phone last week, that when John said see you in ten I replied yes thank goodness can't wait and he couldn't tell I was counting hours, not days. Because there's nothing quite like catching a red-eye and showing up in New York that very next morning. 

He was speechless, as in words no sentence putting together cannot. It was the best thing I've ever done, at least until the rest of the weekend happened—and as for that, I'm still searching for synonyms that go beyond magic. The only thing better than those four days? He's coming home today. As we speak, on a plane, coming. home.

Oh yeah. World: meet the boy I love. Boy I love: world. Good. Okay. Here we go.

1. red-eye sunrise from 17F. 2. the text I sent at 7:15 that morning.

3. bagels for breakfast at a bench on broadway. 4. recreating childhood photos.

5. this storm got the better of us. and by better, I mean best.

6/7. columbia campus tour with my fave alum. 8. taking one for the team at magnolia bakery.

9. learned all about automats at the NYPL's current lunch hour exhibit, which besides being so superbly well done made me a) want to be Doris Day in That Touch of Mink, b) consider a future kitchen with a wall of automat options, and c) hum this all day long.

10/11. library lions, NY state motto. stole it for my own. 12/13. favorites from the met.

14. secretly I only walk through the greek and roman rooms to steal ideas for my jewelry box. I am a gold girl and nobody does signet rings like the ancients.

15/16/17. top of the met. 18/19. sunday in the park with john. 20/21/22. subway shots

23. from the airtrain, which makes me feel probably irrationally futuristic but I'll save that spiel for the ode I will someday write to public transportation, my true city love.

24/25. final portraits from the same time zone; on the streets and JFK.

PS: this blog's been the slow boat to china of late; 

find me on instagram for the everyday-up-to-date.

xoxo E.

PENELOPE'S THEME // NATHAN JOHNSON

favorite movie (one of) // this music is love // not to mention: adrien brody

and I dream about that coat. perfect film is perfect.

FULL SIZE HERE

conversation.

This image is actually completely relevant.

mum: It's really, really good and heading towards lovely, which is better than great.

me: well. thank you. it's the lovely part that has me worried--it's really nice all up there in my head, but translating that to paper is proving difficult.

mum: Oh, yeah, that thing called writing.

me: All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

        Hemingway.

mum: And figure out a way to do that without making a mess.

            Leeches?

belated.

Neon pink spray paint. A cast-off card from the art museum. An honest-to-goodness true line from an actual book that really said this, no edit necessary. How could I not.

Also, mugwumpery is a real word. As is mugwumpish, or the delightfully rhythmic mugwumpian. 

And people ask me what I'm going to do with my English degree.

v is for victory.

and also valentine. (in this case, they're basically the same thing.)

YESTERDAY: wake up, five hours sleep (this is good), drive to Provo, go to class, think for a minute about King Lear and the calamity of fatherhood. write a love letter, go to class, consider the number of girls walking around with roses (it's a lot), homeworkhomeworkhomework, teach a writing workshop, worry about the alarming amount of students hell-bent to succeed but absolutely indifferent to learning. homeworkhomewo--deadasleeponabenchinthehumanitiesbuilding--rkhomework, go to class, take pages and pages of notes, decide a night out salsa dancing is probably the last thing in the known universe that you are going to do, discuss love, passion, and pretzels with your sister, walk home zombie-like, tell your roommates that a night out salsa dancing is probably the last thing in the known universe that you are going to do, leftovers for dinner (thank you, mum). check the mailbox because you just never know, find it a flurry of hearts and happiness, owl always love ewe (thank you, Ren), discuss love, languages, and sea-salt caramel with roommates, inform M (guilty of the NPR Valentine) of his supreme dorkdom, recite a line of Whitman, remember the frosting and graham crackers in the cupboard, become confused over the correct use of a butter knife. wonder if you are not actually awake and moving after all but in the beginning stages of a scientific miracle: girl devoid of any real-time response walks, breathes.

collapse onto bed, fully clothed, possibly dead. decide you should probably at least brush your teeth. it would be the responsible thing to do. look up. on the ceiling: u r sherlocked.

ALLISON FOR THE WIN.

/////////////////////////////////////////

SHERLOCK:  

But this, this is far more intimate. This is your heart. And you should never let it rule your head. You could have chosen any random number and walked out of here today with everything you worked for. But you just couldn't resist it, could you? I've always assumed that love is a dangerous disadvantage. Thank you for the final proof.

THE WOMAN:  

Everything I said, it's not real. I was just playing the game.

SHERLOCK: 

I know. And this is just losing.

nothing good gets away.

Last night I was asked about Steinbeck. If I like him. And the answer is no, not entirely, not overly much. (NB: East of Eden is widely exempt from that apathy.) So of course I wake up to read this (literary karma? I feel like there should be a more concise word for the phenomenon). To which my answer is actually, yes.

JOHN E. STEINBECK

A Letter to His Son | New York | 10 November 1958

Dear Thom: 

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First -- if you are in love -- that's a good thing -- that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second -- There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you -- of kindness and consideration and respect -- not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply -- of course it isn't puppy love.

But I don't think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it -- and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone -- there is no possible harm in saying so -- only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.
Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.
It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another -- but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I'm glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens -- The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa

heart on fire

In Indonesia, we wrote letters every week. Green letters, they're called---every missionary writes them, but we wrote one more. One to President, another to each other. Lily and I signed them pulang pergi. There and back again. 

They are funny, they are sad. They are upset, discouraged, fighting, faithful. They are each in an envelope like art; one of them coiled into a BubbleTape container that made the elders laugh out loud. They are (a few of them) perfect fodder for fire.

We've been planning it for months, this Valentine tinder, and tonight was the night. Matches in one pocket and selected sentences in the other. We took the back roads up to the mouth of the mountains and walked our way around to an empty space on the hill. One match, two. Twenty-seven. I love the way flame blooms, how the corners curl and the incandescent amber complements the dusty-blue winter sky in bright petals lipping at the air. It was a silent rite and we burnt the last of them simultaneously, breaking into impenitent laughter as they fell to ashes, gone. It felt good, the way crossing off lists always does, the way new days begin. Lily did cartwheels across the frozen February ground.

We were driving down the canyon into turquoise twilight and I thought, I should blog again.

hi.

[ HAPPY V-DAY. ]