God rays and white walls

It might seem strange that my favourite photograph from the day is of signs on a wall, but not if you know me. It’s not just that we were snapping a bit randomly, and both posing a bit reluctantly, for the photographs of ourselves to have much more than a feel of familial contractual obligation about them. The favourite photograph isn’t that way by default. It earns it, by capturing, more than any of the others, the light that Wednesday, the shafts of SoCal sun that were all the more precious for having needed to push photons through special-effect storm clouds. Film-makers call them ‘God rays’, I believe, and I’ll harumph a bit at the allusion, while admitting that it does capture something that’s exactly right.

Maybe I’ve been spending way too long recently watching Lord of the Rings extended DVD extras and Kong production diaries, but looking back I can’t help thinking that the day owed something to the filmic cliché of hours of frantic rushing and complexity so that a single moment can seem so simple. A. has eloquently documented elsewhere the mad rush which began the day. The dress having been secured, things calmed a little, though the drive along the weathered coastline was a study in shades of wet grey. Off to the left, dolphins roamed happily, not needing to say so long to anyone, or thank anyone else for the fish. We drove past the Knopflerish but slightly too literal ‘Telephone Road’, and the intriguing ‘Santa Claus Lane’. What is it with American street names, anyhow? They often seem like the product of some undergraduate project in random generation of referring expressions. And why is Euclid so richly remembered in thoroughfares? Why not Eratosthenes Avenue, or Pythagoras Square (on the hypotenuse is, etc. etc.)?

And then the light broke through above the gentle streets of Santa Barbara and on the white stone walls of the courthouse, beaming on one last errand: the completion of a marriage licence, the holding up of a palm in sincere affirmation of the truths of statements made in writing. Then some final preparations in the pleasingly, pomp-punctuatingly informal setting of the courthouse bathrooms (To UK readers: You know it’s a euphemism, so feel free to substitute the real word here), and suddenly lights, cameras, and action. All was in place, as if by the simple matter of a week of crazy-making planning and running around. Rings on fingers, thanks to the ex-Mayor of the town, and suddenly we were alone, married, the afternoon barely begun, the prospect of an unhurried drive back to the big city along the coast road and a night of shutting out the world suddenly seeming very appealing indeed.

But first, some photographs: of the flowers so cunningly sent by my family; of each other, by the steps, and up in the Vertigo tower; of the courthouse, the white walls punctuated by ornately scripted signs with splashes of illuminating colour, the light flashing its last across the stone seat. The odd peace of shooting beyond the end of a flurry of rushing and having it all work out.

And a beginning.