Nathaniel Clark

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