A man in love is incomplete until he is married.  Then he's finished. 
~Zsa Zsa Gabor

     A couple of Sundays ago, my betrothed and I married. The word betrothed is a synonym for "promised," and the first thing she made me promise was not to write about the wedding. But I wouldn't dream of writing about the wedding, anyway, and here's why: You don't reach my age without having sat through quite a number of these ceremonies. And the truth is, they're pretty predictable--I mean, how often does a bride or groom say, "I don't?" Oh, there are little surprises, sure, like the fact that our so-called "unity candle" kept going out. But I can't write about that.

     When it comes to words, like "wedding," I am something of a strict constructionist; I construe the meaning narrowly to mean the ceremony itself. The rest of the experience, however, is fair game as far as I'm concerned.

You may have noticed that summer has arrived. This, of course, means three things. First and foremost, it means men can now lace up their white bucks without fear of opprobrium from those raised in families of high breeding where it is understood, at the level of their DNA, that the season for white bucks is that heartbreakingly brief period from Memorial Day to Labor Day. No one remembers when this rule was established or why the wearing of these splendidly dapper shoes should be associated with either honoring the war dead or the trade union movement, but the rule is ironclad--unless you're from the Deep South, where the starting gate for white bucks opens on Kentucky Derby Day. Just don't spill your mint julep on them.

I hold that white bucks are a required item in any gentleman's wardrobe. And despite the fact that Bad Michael at the Burton coffee stand wisely refuses to accept my credentials as a gentleman, the fact is I personally have two pair. I have plain white bucks for casual affairs, which I often wear sockless with jeans, and wingtip patterned white bucks for more formal events, always worn with linen trousers and socks that match the linen (Seersucker is another, somewhat more Retro pairing). It is, by the way, never appropriate to wear white bucks of either trim style with knee socks and Bermuda shorts, unless one is in Bermuda, where the fact that this looks completely dorky seems never to have quite registered on the collective consciousness. But that's probably because the residents there have spent too much time in the sun sipping Pimm's Cup with mint. Whatever Pimm's Cup is.

Speaking of matters of liquid refreshment, the second thing about summer having arrived it that this is also the time when it is finally appropriate to drink gin and tonics without appearing to be (or actually being) a total lush.

The other day, on my way to what is euphemistically and antiseptically known hereabouts as "the transfer station," I looked up at a road sign as I turned right off of Cemetery Road and nearly ran into a tree because I was laughing so hard.

The sign said, "West Side Highway.

It's good, in these troubled times, to have things that set you to laughing, but this is just plain ludicrous: everyone knows that the West Side Highway is a six lane expressway that runs straight as an arrow down the length of Manhattan's west side (duh!) right along the Hudson River. The speed limit, as I recall, is fifty miles per hour, unless you are a yellow taxi, in which case, by law I think, it's ninety. I checked this with fellow New Yorker, Bad Michael, at the Burton Coffee Stand, and he agrees...not that that means much.

Vashon's "west side highway" (let's not honor it with capital letters), is a narrow, two-lane rural road that wanders hither and yon through the trees and salal shrubbery on the far side of the island. It looks like it was laid out by a drunk. Highway? I propose it immediately be renamed, clearly and accurately, the "west side byway." I mean, really; what were they thinking...

Ah, Progress!

A week ago, the state transportation department repaved sections of the main road across our island. It snarled traffic--such as it is on an island--for days. And the result is that the new pavement is way bumpier than what was there before.

I'm not trying to be cranky (I don't have to; it comes naturally), but I am a deeply caring person...at least for my car, Gigi. And no, that's not a vanity plate; it's one half of the license plate the state gave me. I'm protective of Gigi; I don't want her jarred unnecessarily.

For one thing, I just spent $3,000 having her overhauled. Her resale value is something less than $2,000.

Before you sneer, allow me to point out that this is not just any car.

It's National Poetry Month.

Poetry, you will recall, is what you compose if you are a truly exceptional writer and have inherited a lot of money. Or at least have a day job. Try to tell your mortgage company you're a poet.

Anyway, I was reminded of this while thinking about the first line of T.S. Eliot's long, famous, and generally impenetrable masterwork, "The Waste Land," the twentieth century's signature song of universal despair. Upbeat it's not.

The first line, of course, is: "April is the cruelest month."

Why was I thinking about it?

I made an astonishing discovery the other day at our island library.

I was browsing the LARGE PRINT section. No, I haven't reached the stage of seniority (that's a couple of years off) or infirmity (open to debate) to need large print books. It's just that the aerobic machine I use at the local athletic club, where I strive to fend off infirmity, has a reading rack that is too far away for my reading glasses and too close for my distance glasses, and the thought of tri-focals is just too depressing to consider.

That's when I made my discovery, right there in the hushed confines of our library, and here it is: There is something terrifying going on in the LARGE PRINT section.

My local coffee stand and morning walking companion, Bad Michael (to distinguish him from another regular, Good Michael), understands that I am not, deep down, a nice person. He understands this because he's not one either. And we understand that the reason for this is that we're both from New York City. Actually, that's not entirely accurate: I grew up just over the Bronx border in Yonkers, a city long run by the Mafia; he is from Long Island City, a section of the borough of Queens composed largely of massive windowless warehouses run, I think, by Macy's.

Anyway, the thing is, being a wise guy is a birthright in New York. In fact, "wise guy" comes in the water in New York, with the fluoride. And the highest form of admiration and affection you can get from a New Yorker is a nearly continuous stream of insults, often mentioning members of your family in less than flattering ways.

...call it what you like, but spirit of place is a great reality.

     D. H. Lawrence
     Studies in Classic American Literature

Four years ago, I walked some fourteen hundred miles through most of southern England with a pack on my back. Sometimes I stayed at inns or bed and breakfasts, sometimes I pitched a tent. On days I camped, I noticed something curious: I would sometimes walk hours longer than I'd planned, despite fatigue and advancing darkness, until I found a spot that was "right." Was I being picky? I don't think so. And I wasn't looking for a spot that was scenic, or even one that felt particularly safe (one of my favorites was a narrow rock ledge a hundred feet above the Atlantic): I was looking for the place where I belonged, even if just for a night--a place I liked, but that also liked me, a marriage of person and place.

Each of us has stumbled upon places that possessed an almost magical sense of rightness--a condition that we are hard-pressed to describe solely by means of the material elements of which they are composed. There is a phrase in Latin which captures this condition: genius loci. In Classical times, the word "genius" was synonymous with "spirit": it was understood that distinct spirits or demi-gods inhabited special places--gods one was at pains to please and with whom it was unwise to trifle. Indigenous peoples, like Native Americans, have a similar belief system.

We, however--by which I mean Americans of European descent--do not. We are products of the Age of Reason. When René Descartes wrote, "I think, therefore I am" in 1637, he ushered in an era that worshipped the intellect and mistrusted the senses. America's Founders were men of their Age; they had a passion for rational discourse and a devotion to individual freedom. When they declared our independence they proclaimed the revolutionary notion that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: were our "inalienable rights." But wait--in the first draft, the phrase was "life, liberty, and property." I suspect Jefferson changed it to "happiness" to make it more palatable. Nonetheless, over time, the pursuit of happiness/property in America has not just ignored genius loci but, sadly, has gradually eroded our sense of community--not just community with others, but communion with the inherent value, or spirit, of the natural world we inhabit. If today we mourn the loss of places that have special meaning, then we must acknowledge that both the loss and the alienation that comes from it are self-inflicted.

This is the seventh and last in a series of columns I'm calling, "The Anatomy of Home." In earlier columns we've looked at Place, Shape, Beauty, Comfort, Delight, and Dwelling as components of "home." This column explores the notion of Spirit.

Man must forever learn to dwell
Martin Heidegger

 Martin Heidegger, the brilliant, if often impenetrable and historically controversial twentieth-century German philosopher (he was equivocal about Nazism) was a man possessed by the question of what it means to be in a place, to truly dwell in it.

What's that got to do with home? Almost everything. Bear with me for a moment.

Words have histories that are often revealing. The words "being" and "dwelling," for example, have the same Germanic linguistic root: the word buan. So to say in German, "Ich bin," or, "I am" also means, "I dwell." What's more, the Old Saxon word wuon, which is related to buan, adds a very important, if subtle additional meaning: that of "sparing" or "preserving"--that is, being in an actively caretaking relationship with the place where you live.

When we use the word "home" in casual conversation, as in, "I'm going home," we're generally talking about the house or apartment we live in, our dwelling. But "dwelling" is both and noun and verb, a thing and an action. When we say we feel "at home" someplace, we don't just mean the four walls of the structure to which we return at night. No, there's more to it than that. The place where we feel "at home," is a place to which we attach a certain affection and for which we have a feeling of protectiveness. It not only protects us, as a refuge, but brings out the protectiveness in us, a sense of caretaking. It's a place we care about and take care of. This, of course, is why God made vacuum cleaners: so we could take care of our homes.

But seriously: a house is inert; a home is alive with, well...living.

This is the sixth in a series of columns I'm calling, "The Anatomy of Home." In earlier columns we've looked at Place, Shape, Beauty, Comfort, and Delight as components of "home." This column explores the notion of Dwelling.

    Rarely, rarely comest thou.
    Spirit of Delight

    Percy Bysshe Shelley

I made my first visit to Port Orchard, Washington the other day. I rather wish I hadn't. Port Orchard, on the mainland not far from the island where I live, is, in a sense, the quintessential American small town: its approaches are lined with shopping strips, fast food joints, and big box superstores, but its core is dying. You know a community is struggling when second hand shops pretending to be antiques stores outnumber the kind of retailers that residents actually need: a pharmacy, a grocery store, a dry cleaners, a variety shop.

I don't think I'm alone when I say that I find such places depressing. But why do I feel that way? What makes some places dispiriting and others simply delightful?

This is the fifth in a series of columns I'm calling, "The Anatomy of Home." In earlier columns we've looked at Place, Shape, Beauty, and Comfort as components of "home." Today we explore Delight.