Wedding planning is a joyous, often stressful process – but it’s also a fascinating opportunity to engage in social archaeology.  Planning a more-or-less traditional wedding, with all the bows and ribbons and little moving pieces, is the closest most modern folks will get to experiencing what it was like to be a member of the 19th century upper (or upwardly mobile) class.

All those things people do and wear for weddings that seem idiosyncratic at best and arcane at worst were standard elements of party planning a hundred and thirty years ago: printed or calligraphed invitations with expensive tissue inside, tuxedos, live bands and dancing, table assignments and cocktails and all the rest used to be de rigueur for parties no matter the occasion – think of the soiree at the beginning of War and Peace, one of many occurring on a random night for the nobles and well-bred of Moscow.  Invitations, balls, a presentation, a band, seats assigned to promote interesting conversation, and through it all the hostess whirling with an oil can to grease the wheels of conversation.

Tides of time wash over us and bear us away, but little piles of sand endure, even though they are eroded slowly down the centuries (a Mandarin collar instead of a standard lapel, blue ink in legible font rather than black in archaic script).  I at least, having spent perhaps too much of my life in books, am fascinated to enter that world if only to visit.  If nothing else, I hope to take from the experience a breath of the majesty that would have attended a well-run Victorian party – and maybe a greater appreciation for the immense amount of work required below-stairs to make those “effortless parties” happen.

Yesterday the Substrate blog got its start with my first post!  Go there and check it out; the redoubtable Lauren M. will be posting sometime later today.

Also, pre-orders for The Book of Exodi just went live!  Get it to read my story, “On Starlit Seas!”  On the publisher’s web site you can also read synopses of the other stories, as well as watch a (literally) rocking video ad.

That’s it for now; more news as it comes.

I came across this on a Chinese blog, and it really hit me. It’s Haruki Murakami’s speech on accepting the Jerusalem Prize for literature. I’ve been trying to articulate something like the conviction below in private conversation for a couple weeks now, and he nails it.  Whatever your feelings about the particular political events he mentions, the basic truth of the essay hit me in the stomach like a 50-lb bag of sand.

Always on the side of the egg

By Haruki Murakami

I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.

Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling them. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?

My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies – which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true – the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.

Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.
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