After 18 years...

18 years ago tomorrow, Di and were married beside a waterfall in Cleveland, OH.  We picked the date because of a Bob Dylan song, "Isis" - what a prophetic choice!

I have always loved this woman - and this song - but back on our wedding day I had no idea how intertwined they were.  The tune, of course, comes from that wildass Dylan "Rolling Thunder Revue" tour that began at Jack Kerouac's grave with Allen Ginsberg and continued to bring women and men of poetry and passion together as it wound around America for nearly two years.  The show opened at the War Memorial Auditorium in Plymouth, MA and proceeded to morph into an alternative vision of the American dream.  It was a genre-bending extravaganza marrying poetry and politics, rock and roll and Americana, irony and art to say nothing of joy with hope.

Dare I say the same has been true for our marriage?  There have been ups and downs, skinny and fat (and now on a diet), poetry of all types and tons of music from rock and roll to jazz with a healthy does of chant and sacred songs, too.  Dianne is a brilliant musician - a sensitive poet - and a ton of fun.  As Springsteen says in "Living Proof," she "shot through my anger and rage to show me my prison was just an open cage - there were no keys no guards just one frightened man and some old shadows for bars..." We've danced a ton (and will again during our get away in Portland), made some incredible music in three great bands (Cleveland, Tucson and Pittsfield), been all over the world together, share a love for London and have come to be "home" for one another in the deepest sense.

After church tomorrow we're headed away to celebrate doing what we love the most - finding a new hip place to wander and explore - this time in Portland, ME.  Later this summer we'll head off to the Montreal Jazz Festival, too and bask in the goodness of the love we've been  blessed to share.

Sometimes life is cruel, and we've known that truth; sometimes it is uncertain and crazy.  So we've learned to take the blessings and beauty as they come and savor them deeply.  I am blessed and like the Boss says, "I've seen living proof..."