November 18, 2006

We headed northwards on a rainy Saturday morning until cities disappeared and were replaced by fields, sheep, and farmhouses. We reached Corwin’s farmhouse by dusk for his non-wedding wedding, and pretty soon urban reality disintegrated around us and was replaced by rural craziness.

You see, Corwin looked dignified in this smoking jacket, but every few minutes odd things would happen. For instance, there would be awkward knocks on the door and voices coming out of the darkness:

“Do you have any horses for sale?” the voices said.

“Dude!” we said. “Nobody ever knocks on our door demanding horses.”

Or, there would be random phone calls, which Corwin would pick up.

“Dad is in the barn and mom is at church,” he would said.

It all sounded so normal, so cozy, so unreal.

“Our urbanite friends are amazed by what I say,” Corwin said to his friends when they showed up later in the evening.

Luckily we started drinking and eating* and soon forgot how weird everything was.

When we were properly drunk, we dozed off on couches, played propaganda games, and had great conversations about dogs.

“If I had a dog I’d call him science,” Corwin said. “I just want to be able to say things like like ‘science peed on the floor. Bad science!’”

We went to sleep and dreamt of Mennonites knocking on doors in the darkness, looking to buy horses. In the morning, we pulled on our coats and went outside to see actual horses. We ran through fields full of poo and mud, and when we returned to our cities late in the evening, our dress shoes still smelled like horse poo.

* Note 1: Corwin makes fucking incredible chicken. “Thank my mom,” he said. “Her yelling got it done.” Thanks Corwin’s mom.

* Note 2: I couldn’t resist taking 10,000 pictures of horses.