SAIPUA

I think we're always looking for some ceremony. Markers to indicate and honor our labors around love, work, our achievements. I love a ceremony because I'm so serious and like drama. I also think I like (as do most humans) to have time segmented and marked off in ways that help us make sense of the stories of our lives. But in truth rarely do we get neat and clean delineations between eras or relationships. Rarely a hot knife through butter.


This morning I'm thinking about some of my friends and co-workers and the entity of Saipua itself; a big organic entity that is difficult to define, beyond my control in many respects and always shapeshifting right in front of me. Many important relationships and eras slide quietly into the night without fireworks or ceremony.


All is to say I found myself plucked out of farm planning and dropped into the flower district this week, slipping into an older version of myself and buying out of season peonies from Australia and - fuck it - a handful of spray-painted foliage. We had it all boxed up, incorrectly labeled with our business name (thank god somethings never change) and sent it to various city locations in order to engage in what I call the 'Saipua machine' which is Bryony, myself and the best freelancers New York City has; many of whom I'm lucky to count as close friends.

Deanna is one of my oldest friends; we met the first week of college at Virginia Tech when I though I might be a scientist, and she though she might be a journalist. Her and I worked on a wedding at the Green Building in Brooklyn yesterday - a local venue that made me nostalgic for an older version of Saipua and myself. I made 44 ball jar arrangements, 11 bouquets Deanna did her thing on the ladder that she's always done so well - which is to say find a way to hang some jazz from the ceiling over the ceremony.

At lunchtime Nahvae sent over lunch for the two of us from the kitchen at Eleven36 and we put our feet up and dined on tuscan bean stew with focaccia croutons, roasted broccolini and some sort of chocolate bread pudding that should be illegal. We gossiped of course, as I think most people do inside their various communities. Gossip is the glue that binds us together - at it's best it keeps us all on the same page; at it's worst it stirs nefarious motivations. I've always carefully cataloged how and why people gossip. If you want to stay on the high side of this inevitable hustle my advice to you is play it straight - never ever lie; to yourself or others.

The two ladies getting married yesterday were special to me. One was my neighbor in Brooklyn for years, Allison. I have very fond memories of living above her on Coffey Street in Red Hook, in a different era. Witnessing someones love evolution from a neighborly distance is always uncanny. I met her bride for the first time yesterday amidst the hustle of making 125 place-setting twiddly bits and felt warm on the inside. People finding the right people feels good, it radiates somehow.

During the ceremony rehearsal the officiant spoke of love as the one thing in our world that we know is right and good.

Always grappling with how to steer the ship of Saipua and the work at Worlds End, I am reminded of what an oracle friend once told me about what to do in the face of a our burning world -- focus on human connection. Try to make it as good as you can for just the people you have access to. The fabric of this world can only transform from inside, thread by thread.