JEFF HARTZER's Weblog: 24 And There's So Much More

Jeff Hartzer and Debra Landau
June 6th, 1987

24 years ago today at 201 Princeton Street S.E. in Albuquerque, New Mexico I married Debra Landau on our rooftop. I am not as thin as I was then, but Debra is easily as beautiful now as then. It was a gloriously sky blue sky day for an outdoor wedding; the next day it rained cats and bunnies. We had moved to New Mexico only two years previous from Tacoma, Washington. Everything we owned at the time fit either in or on top of our 1967 Mercedes Benz <*>.

None of my high school or college friends were present. Many of my friends whose weddings I attended are now in their second or third marriages. Debra's mom and my mother were there. Both matriarchs are now gone from this world. Joining us for the ceremony on the rooftop was Debra's very good pal, Annie, and my younger brother, Jonathan. Annie is living a different life now and one could easily say the same for my brother. Things happen; time passes.

That weekend I was a non-sugar eating vegetarian and Debra was enrolled in UNM's Theater Arts Program. We had a goofy mixed-breed dog named Joplin <**>, a Dalmatian named Tulsa <***>, and a cat named Taco. Those pet companions are now long gone, replaced by our present-day pet world made up of The Four Schippeteers, a million tropical fish, and a quad-zillion rabbits.

I had been a teacher at a local Waldorf School called Earthsong. They had wanted me to take 'Rudolf Steiner' classes that summer, even after I had told the Principal that our wedding date was set. "You can change the date," he said. "I quit," said I. So that man on the roof marrying the beautiful modern dancer was recently unemployed and broke.

Our legal wedding officiant was a woman who was a reverend with the Holy Catholic Church of Antioch. She signed our license. The amazing woman who led us in our vows and actually performed the ceremony was at the time the head tribal medicine woman for Isleta Pueblo, south of Albuquerque. Though we now see neither, the magic they worked that day on the roof of our rental home was, and is, the best kind of magic - still resonating in our life together.

Here's a poem I wrote about the early days of our life together in Albuquerque. The poem portrayed life in our small student ghetto apartment with Debra as full-time student and me as whatever I was back then. It is called, "To Love A Dancer":

To Love A Dancer

To Love A Dancer
is to take the world
and turn it upside down

To Love A Dancer
is to love your life in kitchens

To Love A Dancer
is to set yourself free
from country club days

To Love A Dancer
is to love that part of you
so abandoned long ago

To Love A Dancer is to gamble on
lightning, thunder
snow and rain

To Love A Dancer
is the very thing of all things
which I most fear
To take bare feet and wings
and begin to feel

To Love A Dancer
is to hang suspended
while the dancer dances the walls
between you

And high above
the eagle soars
dances on wind
hot fever
sun

Jeff Hartzer
© 1985,2011

I would never have met Debra had I not quit yet another job and drove very far west from my native North Florida in 1981. My 'new start' in Tacoma, Washington lasted four years. It was there I learned the ins and outs of being a Litter Picker Supervisor for the Department of Ecology and developed a yen for fresh blackberries and deep red cherries off the tree. But most importantly, I met Debra, who was working at Sixth Sense, a peace center to which I had been asked to give poetic and professional voice to their phone machine message. Together we moved to Albuquerque in August 1985, so that Debra could attend the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, which surely we thought would be an enchanted place to live out our high desert dreams. Most certainly, New Mexico is a place vastly different than either of our states of origin, yet, vaguely in between the Northwest and Southeast. In our nearly 26 years together in Albuquerque we have been both rich and poor, sick and healthy,'better' or 'worser', and try as they might, no man has cast us asunder.

Today, I am reminded of Neil Young's song, "Old Man", which has the lyrics, "24 and there's so much more..."<****>. The morning of my 24th birthday I played that record (remember records?) and right when Neil got to that line, the vinyl record skipped with 'so much more' playing over and over. Indeed, the world was a different place on June 6th, 1987 and hopefully, 24 years from now, the world as we know it will still be spinning with love and all good things. May rooftop weddings persevere while this old man and his Cinnamon Girl live on and together, dance.

<*>

This old car was both amazing and neurotic

<**>

Joplin

<***>

Tulsa

<****>Old Man

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.

Old man look at my life
Twenty four and there's so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.

Love lost, such a cost,
Give me things that don't get lost.
Like a coin that won't get tossed
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

Lullabies, look in your eyes,
Run around the same old town.
Doesn't mean that much to me
To mean that much to you.

I've been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.
But I'm all alone at last.
Rolling home to you.

Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true.

Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.
Old man look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were.

We've had many 'interesting' cars over the years. Perhaps none was quite as unique as this one... a 1971 "Mail Jeep". With the wide-open side doors, it was 'air-conditioned'. Our dogs loved it. And yes, for a brief stint as an early married man, I was a USPS Mail Carrier.