Nathaniel Clark

Get­ting ready– small, agile lap­top. Online back­ups we hope we can access. Installing server on lap­top to run dev sites. Drink­ing water.

Sit­ting in the semi-dark of Lucian’s room, play­ing with a word­press app for my new “smart­phone” (a title no object deserves when it requires so much instruc­tion and direc­tion), review­ing fam­ily, christ­mas, music, and food in my head (in that order).
See­ing the arma­ture of xmas in a vision and it’s dark, sil­ver and pur­ple and blue. There are other lay­ers– esp. that 50s-tinged jan­gly post­card and toy skin so close to the sur­face that it often mas­quer­ades as the true face; how­ever, there is (for me) a soft gloam­ing, a pur­ple shadow on snow, an infi­nite refrac­tion of a lamp when seen through a web of ice-rimed branches… That is core.

Inter­est­ing because this feel­ing is tied to an envi­ron­men­tal vision, not a domes­tic one.

Try­ing to pull off the cob­webs of sleep, left­over from the long and spine-scraping week­end. When Iryna is sick, the whole world is off-kilter. Sleep was the first sac­ri­fice. Yes­ter­day, a nice “day off”, was con­founded by an over­taxed ner­vous sys­tem and a rogue stub­born­ness dae­mon that encour­aged me, through deli­cious whis­pered promises, to bang my head against the walls and book­shelves. Cof­fee, while tasty, was furtive and ret­i­cent to lend a help­ing hand, pre­fer­ring to nes­tle qui­etly some­where in the more saurian parts of my brain– kept my heart beat­ing, but that’s about all. I guess, in ret­ro­spect, that *that* was still pretty use­ful, and I am grate­ful, but when your hopes are for heaven while your body drags on the earth, that is a sub­tle form of hell.

Now, we (the dai­mon, the cof­fee gnome, the white noise ghosts, and the shadows-of-promise) are left with a dis­em­bod­ied feel­ing. Like a dream where you don’t notice you’re float­ing until you start try­ing to walk, and then you look down to see your feet ped­al­ing use­lessly in the air, a few feet above the ground. Good Morning.

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!

Our deep­est fear is not that we are inad­e­quate. Our deep­est fear is that we are pow­er­ful beyond mea­sure. It is our light, not our dark­ness, that fright­ens us most. We ask our­selves, ‘Who am I to be bril­liant, gor­geous, tal­ented, and famous?’ Actu­ally, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your play­ing small does not serve the world. There is noth­ing enlight­ened about shrink­ing so that peo­ple won’t feel inse­cure around you. We were born to make man­i­fest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we uncon­sciously give other peo­ple per­mis­sion to do the same. As we are lib­er­ated from our own fear, our pres­ence auto­mat­i­cally lib­er­ates oth­ers.
~Nel­son Mandela

There is much to tell you, gen­tle reader– much more than I have time for this mild sub­trop­i­cal morn­ing in San Diego. But I shed the warm blan­kets of blogging-laziness to announce one thing: Thurs­day, June 22nd, saw the unanticipatedly-kind CIS offi­cial smil­ingly stamp­ing Iryna’s pass­port– and Katya’s by phys­i­cal asso­ci­a­tion– with the “Green Card” stamp. My wife and stepchild– Con­di­tional Per­ma­nent Residents!

I tried to find an image– via Googling– of a Green Card to jazz up the post with an ‘visual’, but the sites & images that came up were, let’s say, sketchy. And if it takes more than 35 sec­onds of Googling, it prob­a­bly isn’t worth it. But there is noth­ing to worry about– words still have the power.

More to say, more to say… but I am sit­ting at the Del Mar table, sip­ping cof­fee, and the day begins to move towards sun­light and activ­ity. So I can do this for only a lit­tle bit; but a vast arc of hope and expec­ta­tion has come to its con­clu­sion. It is in the nature of these things to not pause, but open up the doors to all the other activ­i­ties now required, and we tend to for­get the sin­gu­lar­ity of this moment.

The last thing that I want to say is that Katya is telling me that she dreamed about blow­ing a giant gin­ger­bread man’s head off with a machine gun, while in the girls bath­room of dreamland.…

on the East Coast, this is already fact; on the West Coast, there is still about forty min­utes… so I sit on the cusp of my two month anniver­sary, hap­pily wed­ded [though too often sep­a­rated] to Iryna Clark, born Kotl­yarova, and for­merly Zinchenko. It is with plea­sure that I over­lay my name on these for­mer ones.

This pic­ture, shot by my mother, is first offi­cial [by paper­work, though not by vow] por­trait of Iryna and I as a mar­ried cou­ple. It was cold. I had been ner­vous (refer to the water in hand). But while pin­ning the flow­ers on my lapel, and see­ing Iryna with the much-coveted nosegay (oh there is a story there), my heart sang; deeply into the din­ner in Lit­tle Italy and on into an elated drive up north. I can see with stark clar­ity the dark umbers and cold-browns of the cor­ner of Man­hat­tan, on into the Bronx, as I sat in back with my new wife; it reminded me of so many bus-rides I had taken through­out the north­east– always alone, book or sketch­book in hand, look­ing out the win­dow, mus­ing, wrap­ping my thoughts into the clouds. How strange, how far the dis­tance from those times, and what a mile­stone of mem­ory. I am too tired and screen-struck to explain the fine nuances of it, but the core of it is fairly easy: I was rippled-through with poten­tial, with the strik­ing open of new vis­tas, with a new panorama lay­ing itself out before me in the soft pur­ple and crushed-leaf shadow of dusk. I loved being mar­ried, which is one of those things I always expected to be sur­prised at and was only sur­prised that I wasn’t; that is, I loved it thor­oughly with­out cling­ing to any remainder.

The length of this two months has been mea­sured in hard­ships not related to being mar­ried– in fact, it is this mar­riage that enables some san­ity whilst the rest of the envi­ron­ment con­torts with ambi­gu­ity and flux. And I promise you, all you peo­ple of the world, that I will bring such joy and hap­pi­ness into my wife’s life, bring such light to her days that all the days before will seem in shadow.

So good­night; or, if you’re read­ing this Iryna– good morn­ing. And Happy Anniver­sary. I love you