So, those in the know know that today was Iryska’s Citizenship Ceremony … we were both running on a wave of coffee and adrenaline over a deep and wide sleep-deficit (like, Mariana Trench style), but coasted through in fine form and now my loveliest love of all time is a full-fledged U.S. Citizen, with all the rights and responsibilities the rest of us Natural-Borns take for granted or piss away in a middle class, angsty drug moan. I wrote some thoughts, with no particular sense of style, whilst I sat in a highly uncomfortable seat in the Civic Center balcony. and here they are:

The dais is flanked on both sides by 90’s style LCD projectors casting a zoomed-in view of a flag waving in ultra-slow-motion, making it sort of undulate behind white, drop-shadowed text that reads “Celebrate Citizenship” and other such happy bites. The large but mismodulated speakers pipe out tinny but quite identifiable patriotic songs– i can hear “God Bless America” on repeat, midrange jacked up high to float over the dull bass roar of the crowd of citizens-to-be.

I notice that most everyone has a rather large entourage with them. One man, rather than an entourage, seems to be wearing an American Flag cape. Actually, it appears to be a beach towel, brand-spanking & colorfully new, stars and stripes and all, draped over his shoulders. From this distance, I can just make out that he has tucked it into his polo-shirt-collar. I admire this, grinning so much the kid next to me stares at me with huge brown eyes.

I have told this story in the past, to at least a few people: I used to drive by the San Diego Civic Center and see the plastic letters on the backlit sign spelling out ‘Naturalization Ceremony’. It always gave me a deep conceptual kick to imagine a dense, half-sweaty, cheap-cologne-and-perfume-and-cigarette musk-ed crowd, standing, hands raised, and forswearing allegiance to foreign potentates in unison.

I see Iryshka walking, off to my right, looking tall and elegant in the legs, flowing a little (a benefit of the wide flare of her stylish pants) — & looking more than a little ‘cute mouse’-y in the head & shoulders region as her nerves make her head bow and her brain swim a little, I am sure. Part of that worry must be the Russian preoccupation with paperwork, and part of it assuredly is my wife’s willingness to give herself over to worry as a sort of primal, driving, state-of-mind (I think she gives in because the nature of worry produces a repeating cycle of thoughts, forcing her to check and re-check and re-re-check (ad infinitum) and so she comes out the other side with everything– INS paperwork, for example– in order). She’s sitting now, her head still bent low, sunk a little between a flat topped Pacific Rim type and a balding man whose skin is the color of my morning coffee. I am hoping she feels a little calmer now that she’s passed through, successfully, the first gauntlet of officers stamping paperwork on collapsible tables.

There are a huge number of people here, more than I expected. I am a little surprised and how unremarkable, in total, the ethnic mixture is. I mean, it *is* mixed, with veils and burkas and dyed cotton wraps and silk shirts open over 6 inches to the chest revealing gold crosses in wiry tangles of black chest hair. There are hooked nose, snub Bjork noses, skin the wondrous color of shiny coal, skin the color of soft beach sand, skin the color of Baltic mists. I see large white beards, low cut cleavage, tight skirts, crumpled old suits, pot bellies, skeletal wrists, and a gaggle of small US flags poking out of peoples’ breast pockets. It is mixed, it’s just that this seems to be the normal street melange of San Diego anyway. I am saying, it looks pretty business-as-usual for a stroll through downtown. Not, let’s admit, Prospect Street in La Jolla, or on most of the beaches north of OB, but surely when we’re trolling for Ethiopian food down on El Cajon Boulevard.

It is difficult to locate Iryna again, as the seats all around her fill up. I do find her, but her two flanking gentlemen have disappeared for the moment, so it took a little extra.

Well, that was all I was able to scribble in the notebook. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the ceremony, most particularly when they went through the 98 or so “host” countries and had the soon-to-be-former-citizens stand, to the applause of their families, friends, and others who shared their origins.

The deep rumbling oath was all that I had dreamed it would be, and I knew that when it was over, Iryna would turn and blow me a kiss– and she did not disappoint. My lovely new citixen (which is my typo, which i will keep, since it calls to mind a hybrid citizen-vixen). I went outside to buy her a coffee (well, we were both quite exhausted [another story]) and handed her her first caffeinated beverage as a full fledged honored-and-responsible, child of the United States. It wasn’t too great, this coffee, but then — few symbols are magnificent in their own right. It’s the idea that counts :)

So, my most crazy, out-of-body-and-mind, arc-of-a-falling-star, without-reservation-but-with-abandon, congratulations and love to my wife, Iryna Clark, who I love in ways I never thought I might, and ways I never knew I could, and who confirms every day that I made the best choice of a terrestrial lifetime when I married her. Welcome to the USA! Live Free or Die!