So this year at Burning Man I had been planning on proposing to Mie. I had written a simple children's story based on our relationship and commissioned illustrations from a woman in Shanghai whom I met on Flickr. The idea was that this could be a book for our own children to enjoy one day. This was something I'd been planning for well over a year, but I am a world-class procrastinator. Seriously, I'd be a contender if procrastination were an Olympic sport.
Well naturally I managed to miss the deadline because the payment for the illustrations didn't arrive in China as quickly as I hoped so I didn't have all the illustrations by the time we left for Black Rock City. Of course, as you may know, Mie took me by surprise and proposed to me at Burning Man. Since the pressure was off I got to procrastinate even more, but I finally managed to get it all put together and presented it to Mie today.
The story recounts how we met at Burning Man and how I convinced her to leave Japan to live with me. The last page ends with me asking her an unspecified question. The plan was to ask The Question directly when she got to that page. Hopefully now Mie (who is much more creative than I) can help me wrap the story up and we can have the final few illustrations done. I'm still trying to come up with a title too.
The entire thing, story and illustrations, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License. You can download it here: A Story For Mie.pdf (warning: 66 megabytes in size).
That book is soooo beautiful!
love, j
Dear Dav and Mie,
I'm so sorry that I couldn't be with you tonight to celebrate your beautiful union. Not everyone can say that they got to watch your connection grow from the first time you met. In fact, not everyone got lucky enough to go on your first 3 "dates" with the two of you. At his own ceremony my friend spoke on impossible love which shows all of the events that had to fall into place because you were meant to find each other.
In order for the two of you to meet, Dav had to have been kicked out of the first 2 places he tried to camp at Burning Man so he ended up right where Campalicious was going to set up that year. And Mie had to have her spunky spirit motivate her to travel solo from Japan to Black Rock City, Nevada to find her way back to our camp. In the words of Khalil Gibran:
"And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself. "
I have to admit, I was tempted to add a little excerpt from "The Prophet" "On Marriage" because I think it best sums up what every couple should practice on a daily basis, but instead decided to share a less frequently known passage (perhaps it was because Mie looked a bit like a flower garden when she went off to be wed):
"....Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
... be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees. "
(--FROM "ON PLEASURE," "THE PROPHET," BY KHALIL GIBRAN)
You two make sense to me like the flower and the bee.
I wish you all the happiness in the world.
Love and nectar,
Jessafire
"I have found that you do have only to take that one step toward the gods, and they will then take ten steps toward you. That step, the heroic first step of the journey, is out of, or over the edge of, your boundaries, and it often must be taken before you know that you will be supported." --Joseph Campbell
Posted by: jessafire | 2005.10.23 at 08:31 PM
That book is soooo beautiful!
love, j
Dear Dav and Mie,
I'm so sorry that I couldn't be with you tonight to celebrate your beautiful union. Not everyone can say that they got to watch your connection grow from the first time you met. In fact, not everyone got lucky enough to go on your first 3 "dates" with the two of you. At his own ceremony my friend spoke on impossible love which shows all of the events that had to fall into place because you were meant to find each other.
In order for the two of you to meet, Dav had to have been kicked out of the first 2 places he tried to camp at Burning Man so he ended up right where Campalicious was going to set up that year. And Mie had to have her spunky spirit motivate her to travel solo from Japan to Black Rock City, Nevada to find her way back to our camp. In the words of Khalil Gibran:
"And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself. "
I have to admit, I was tempted to add a little excerpt from "The Prophet" "On Marriage" because I think it best sums up what every couple should practice on a daily basis, but instead decided to share a less frequently known passage (perhaps it was because Mie looked a bit like a flower garden when she went off to be wed):
"....Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
... be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees. "
(--FROM "ON PLEASURE," "THE PROPHET," BY KHALIL GIBRAN)
You two make sense to me like the flower and the bee.
I wish you all the happiness in the world.
Love and nectar,
Jessafire
"I have found that you do have only to take that one step toward the gods, and they will then take ten steps toward you. That step, the heroic first step of the journey, is out of, or over the edge of, your boundaries, and it often must be taken before you know that you will be supported." --Joseph Campbell
Posted by: jessafire | 2005.10.23 at 08:32 PM
That book is soooo beautiful!
love, j
Dear Dav and Mie,
I'm so sorry that I couldn't be with you tonight to celebrate your beautiful union. Not everyone can say that they got to watch your connection grow from the first time you met. In fact, not everyone got lucky enough to go on your first 3 "dates" with the two of you. At his own ceremony my friend spoke on impossible love which shows all of the events that had to fall into place because you were meant to find each other.
In order for the two of you to meet, Dav had to have been kicked out of the first 2 places he tried to camp at Burning Man so he ended up right where Campalicious was going to set up that year. And Mie had to have her spunky spirit motivate her to travel solo from Japan to Black Rock City, Nevada to find her way back to our camp. In the words of Khalil Gibran:
"And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself. "
I have to admit, I was tempted to add a little excerpt from "The Prophet" "On Marriage" because I think it best sums up what every couple should practice on a daily basis, but instead decided to share a less frequently known passage (perhaps it was because Mie looked a bit like a flower garden when she went off to be wed):
"....Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
... be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees. "
(--FROM "ON PLEASURE," "THE PROPHET," BY KHALIL GIBRAN)
You two make sense to me like the flower and the bee.
I wish you all the happiness in the world.
Love and nectar,
Jessafire
"I have found that you do have only to take that one step toward the gods, and they will then take ten steps toward you. That step, the heroic first step of the journey, is out of, or over the edge of, your boundaries, and it often must be taken before you know that you will be supported." --Joseph Campbell
Posted by: jessafire | 2005.10.23 at 08:33 PM
Wow : ) You two totally rock! Very exceptionally done, Dav!
Posted by: Thomas | 2005.10.26 at 01:36 AM