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A man in love is incomplete until he is married.  Then he's finished. 
~Zsa Zsa Gabor

     A couple of Sundays ago, my betrothed and I married. The word betrothed is a synonym for "promised," and the first thing she made me promise was not to write about the wedding. But I wouldn't dream of writing about the wedding, anyway, and here's why: You don't reach my age without having sat through quite a number of these ceremonies. And the truth is, they're pretty predictable--I mean, how often does a bride or groom say, "I don't?" Oh, there are little surprises, sure, like the fact that our so-called "unity candle" kept going out. But I can't write about that.

     When it comes to words, like "wedding," I am something of a strict constructionist; I construe the meaning narrowly to mean the ceremony itself. The rest of the experience, however, is fair game as far as I'm concerned.

The other day, on my way to what is euphemistically and antiseptically known hereabouts as "the transfer station," I looked up at a road sign as I turned right off of Cemetery Road and nearly ran into a tree because I was laughing so hard.

The sign said, "West Side Highway.

It's good, in these troubled times, to have things that set you to laughing, but this is just plain ludicrous: everyone knows that the West Side Highway is a six lane expressway that runs straight as an arrow down the length of Manhattan's west side (duh!) right along the Hudson River. The speed limit, as I recall, is fifty miles per hour, unless you are a yellow taxi, in which case, by law I think, it's ninety. I checked this with fellow New Yorker, Bad Michael, at the Burton Coffee Stand, and he agrees...not that that means much.

Vashon's "west side highway" (let's not honor it with capital letters), is a narrow, two-lane rural road that wanders hither and yon through the trees and salal shrubbery on the far side of the island. It looks like it was laid out by a drunk. Highway? I propose it immediately be renamed, clearly and accurately, the "west side byway." I mean, really; what were they thinking...

Ah, Progress!

A week ago, the state transportation department repaved sections of the main road across our island. It snarled traffic--such as it is on an island--for days. And the result is that the new pavement is way bumpier than what was there before.

I'm not trying to be cranky (I don't have to; it comes naturally), but I am a deeply caring person...at least for my car, Gigi. And no, that's not a vanity plate; it's one half of the license plate the state gave me. I'm protective of Gigi; I don't want her jarred unnecessarily.

For one thing, I just spent $3,000 having her overhauled. Her resale value is something less than $2,000.

Before you sneer, allow me to point out that this is not just any car.

It's National Poetry Month.

Poetry, you will recall, is what you compose if you are a truly exceptional writer and have inherited a lot of money. Or at least have a day job. Try to tell your mortgage company you're a poet.

Anyway, I was reminded of this while thinking about the first line of T.S. Eliot's long, famous, and generally impenetrable masterwork, "The Waste Land," the twentieth century's signature song of universal despair. Upbeat it's not.

The first line, of course, is: "April is the cruelest month."

Why was I thinking about it?

I made an astonishing discovery the other day at our island library.

I was browsing the LARGE PRINT section. No, I haven't reached the stage of seniority (that's a couple of years off) or infirmity (open to debate) to need large print books. It's just that the aerobic machine I use at the local athletic club, where I strive to fend off infirmity, has a reading rack that is too far away for my reading glasses and too close for my distance glasses, and the thought of tri-focals is just too depressing to consider.

That's when I made my discovery, right there in the hushed confines of our library, and here it is: There is something terrifying going on in the LARGE PRINT section.

My local coffee stand and morning walking companion, Bad Michael (to distinguish him from another regular, Good Michael), understands that I am not, deep down, a nice person. He understands this because he's not one either. And we understand that the reason for this is that we're both from New York City. Actually, that's not entirely accurate: I grew up just over the Bronx border in Yonkers, a city long run by the Mafia; he is from Long Island City, a section of the borough of Queens composed largely of massive windowless warehouses run, I think, by Macy's.

Anyway, the thing is, being a wise guy is a birthright in New York. In fact, "wise guy" comes in the water in New York, with the fluoride. And the highest form of admiration and affection you can get from a New Yorker is a nearly continuous stream of insults, often mentioning members of your family in less than flattering ways.