October 4th, 2008

Yasuko and I got married!!
Clicking on the picture above you can see some of the best pictures that my good friend Mickey took of us at the pond by Stony Brook village before the ceremony at the Town Hall.

Thank you Mickey!!

In 1983 - 25 years ago - I came to NYC on a vacation trip with my dad.

I still remember the excitement, the skyscrapers, the twin towers, the old guy playing a tenor saxophone in the street at night by the Empire State Building, my first dinner in a Chinese restaurant with a friend of my father and the ride he took us afterward, us up and down Manhattan, at night, in a long and wide station wagon with wood-paneled exterior, the long walks along most Avenues (we must have walked at least 100 miles in a week!)... but the one episode that really will last forever in mind is when we decided to go buy a little gift for my mom at Tiffany's.

We entered the large sunshine-lit first floor and my father went to the first counter and spoke in his typical broken old-style British English asking to see some beautiful turquoise bracelet for his wife. Now, I have no idea why, but in many trips with my dad many people believed that he was some rich guy from the United Emirates. No idea why. His picture is at the top of this page on the right. You judge yourself to see if he looked like a gentlemen from that country. It happened in Switzerland and a few times in London. And it happened in New York. At Tiffany's.

A woman came to us with a big bright smile and accompanied us to the elevator, bringing us to the 6th floor. Over there there were no counters, just little private rooms, and by the time we got there a man had already prepared an astonishing collection of turquoise jewelry. Every piece was absolutely amazing, and even if I was just a child, I was mesmerized by the shine of the hundreds of diamonds that were on that small marble table in front of us.

My dad glanced briefly over them and politely said that this was not the price range he was looking at. So we took the elevator and went to the 5th floor. From there they brought us down, floor after floor, showing us more and more jewelry, until we arrived back to the first floor and purchased a little something for my mom.

Since that day, I always wanted to come back to that place. And last Saturday, when we decided to pick our wedding bands, Yasuko and I decided to look at Tiffany's ones. Initially she thought about Bulgari, her favorite jewelry store, but then realized that by buying our wedding bands at Tiffany we would have had a lifetime memory of having had our wedding in New York.

And so we drove there, after calling the store to make sure they had what we were looking for. A very nice lady put aside the two wedding bands and was waiting for us when we arrived at the second floor ("Engagements and Weddings") of the worldwide-famous Fifth Avenue store. Her name was Ronnie. She was exquisitely nice and sweet and made us feel very comfortable along the process of picking the bands, helping us to chose the right size and then wrapping the beautiful platinum designer bands in the famous little blue boxes.

White Copse, Study 2, Wakkanai, Hokkaido, Japan, 2004.

Michael Kenna was born in 1953 in Lancashire, England. After graduating from the Banbury School of Art and the London College of Printing, he moved to San Francisco where he became assistant of Ruth Bernhard.
Today his romantic, surreal, haunting and jewel-like images are exposed in dozens of galleries and permanent collections all over the world. His work is also available to the public in 18 magnificent books.

Yasuko and I were invited by my friends YinJwu (on the left in this picture) and Filipe to their son Johann's baptism. They also asked me to take some pictures of the event. As usual, you can view some of the best images on my Flickr account by clicking the image above.