Fragments From Floyd

There was the beginning and now there is the ending. In between is a blur of suitcases, traffic, brisk walks always into the wind, quick conversations, hurried meals and tempus generally fugiting in a way it does when you know that the passing moments are priceless. You cannot grasp them to hold, and must be content to watch them move on. Jotted notes or journal entries bring some of those images back, and the photos of the wedding help, but they only show the who and the where, leaving the viewer or the rememberer with nothing of the how or why. And more and more, as it recedes into the past, the past few days of a thousand details will simply be 'the wedding' having earned it's mark on the calendar of a year about to end, a decade moving into its second half. So here we are back in our own present, and the seas close around the little island of time that was Saint Louis, and life goes on.

I can't pick out any one thing that someone outside the event would really care to know about; I think my blogging muscles have gone flaccid since I last sat in this desk where usually too much rather than too little comes to mind. Let's see...

My impression of St. Louis is that it was more 'southern' than I expected. Drivers were assertive but not aggressive or obnoxious. People in public places were courteous and accommodating and not in the self-centered hurry I tend to stereotype to people in some other big cities I've been to. I'd like to be there when it wasn't as blustery. We were close to a lot of things to do, but without a car and with the cold, didn't do any of them. I did go with my daughter to the Arch, quick to the top, five minutes peeking through the portholes, then rushing back by way of a wrong turn to the wedding rehearsal.

I found out while sitting on the front pew of the church in my suit at the wedding that I WAS to be the only photographer. I had told Nate I would be happy to take some candid unofficial shots, thinking there was someone else arranged for THE wedding pictures. Nope. So here is part of my inability to focus on words about the event: I have 230 images to work up by the weekend so the kids can chose a couple dozen for printing. Lighting in the church was, of course, subdued. I had my flash that I'd bought three months ago for this purpose, but I just hate the harsh, flat, contrasty lighting of on-camera flash, especially when it can't be bounced from a white ceiling. So most about half of the lot are hand-held, 1600 ISO, 20th to a 30th of a second, wide open. Amazingly, there are enough keepers in the bunch, provided lack of absolute focus and presence of little digital noise are not big issues.

We finagled an early flight out yesterday. I should tell you, it came in handy: at least a half dozen times (due to my mother's missed flight out on Friday and her lost luggage that came two hours before the wedding on Sunday) I used Delta's 800 number, the said AGENT four times to the robot voice in their phone tree, and moved immediately to a person. Here's a list (blogged previously, I think) that you might want in your laptop or PDA for travel purposes.

Now, let me see if there are any of these wedding photos I can share.