If you like marriage or Leonard Cohen (also if you don't)

Spent most of your adult life away from your family? I have.

I live a few thousand miles away from my birth family, so having another family close by is a welcome gift--I married into one, for certain values of "married"--but it's a gift I'm still learning to appreciate, since I've been living this far away from my birth family since I was 17 and only got engaged much more recently.

I guess the only thing that makes this all noteworthy is that I'm gay, and obviously so is my fiance, and we're going to get married in Hawaii at the end of the year because our families will both be there at the same time. Also gay marriage is legal there, but that's kind of irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, we can just do it in California first and then have a stress-free ceremony on the beach in Oahu since we'll all be there anyway. It's also all because of Justice Kennedy's opinion in Windsor, ultimately, I guess. So bravo, Justice Kennedy, and the senator of the same name that stopped Bork and ended up getting you nominated in the first place, way back when.

If you've read this far, I salute you, since that is saccharine bullshit. It's all true, too, but I'm also thinking of tossing myself in a mental institution for a week or so in the coming days. I have that thing white people get where we all get sad starting in the fall, but out here in San Francisco September is actually our June (followed quickly by several versions of our November and then a June again), so it's really unclear when fall starts. I have other problems too, but that's the main one in this particular case. I'm not really that fun I don't think.

So I guess here are my requests for people to internet-hang-out-with:
--People who want to help write a novel about the CIA response to China finding lots of oil in the international part of the South China Sea
--People who have experience with depression and how it makes you stupid and shit
--Anybody who wants to talk about math
--People who know me
--Or just whatever, send a kind word, I could use it.


Anyway, thanks for reading,

Tynan


I guess I have a few words left, so here's a poem I didn't write, by Leonard Cohen:


If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.


Tynan
tynanburke[AT]gmail.com
San Francisco