From "To the Wedding"

I was at a dinner party last weekend. A birthday, at a restaurant, with really fantastic people. It was the kind of evening where you start talking and laughing, and while you bounce from conversation to conversation, it feels as though there is never so much as a breath in between. You move places at the table, you eat only because food is dropped in front of you, and before you know it it's the next day. You feel as though you were part of a greater whole whether you know every individual at the table or you were meeting some of them for the first time. This is my favorite kind of night. Perhaps it didn't hurt that it was on my favorite island, and included a raw bar and dirty martinis, extra dirty. But even minus these pluses it was perfect. These are my favorite nights, and it wasn't until coming home that I read a quote from a book that perfectly described how these nights morph you from 16 individuals to one moving creature. It was the perfect way to kick off summer, and I hope there are many more such evenings to be had. Happy weekend.

"Everyone at the table in the orchard sits down to eat. With the meat they will drink dark wine. The guests start to touch each other more often, jokes pass quicker. When somebody forgets, somebody remembers for him or her. They hold hands when they laugh. Some take off things they were wearing before - a tie a scarf, a pair of sandals which have become too tight. The cutlets on the board demand to be picked up and stripped clean with teeth. Everybody shares.

The wedding guests are becoming a single animal who has been fed well. A creature half mythical [...] Probably as old as man's discovery of fire, this creature never lives more than a day or two and is only reborn when there is something more to celebrate. Which is why feasts are rare. For those who become the creature, it is important to find a name to which it answers whilst alive, for only then can then recall, in their memory afterwards, how for a while, they lost themselves in its happiness."

- To the Wedding // John Berger
Image courtesy of alecvanderboom.com