Back to the Beginning
It will be four years ago next month that Proverb and I first 'met'. Since we took our diaries online only a few days ago, on the eve of our wedding, there's a lot of backstory missing.
It began with a simple email Proverb, who was then very new to the Internet, sent to the literature section of an online magazine with which I had been associated. We consider it a very lucky beginning because the magazine was no longer online and to this day we have no idea how her email was forwarded to me. Add to that the fact that her search for literature groups yielded a large number of returns, it's either blind luck or fate that this relationship began.
I was living in Orange County, California, at the time - just south of Los Angeles. Proverb lived in a town close to Porto in northern Portugal. I was a freelance photographer shooting mostly music concerts for jazz and rock publications and record labels. Proverb was, and still is, a journalist for a Portuguese newspaper. I spent a great deal of time online, mostly posting images from my assignments for clients to choose the shots they wanted and buying and selling guitars on eBay. A friend of mine in New York had started an online 'Internet Culture' magazine in 1998 for which I was the Arts and Letters editor - a great project that failed due to a lack of funding. Website advertising was still in its infancy, as was subscription-based sites.
In Proverb's first email she asked if I could tell her the birth dates of Henry Miller and Anais Nin. I had no idea, but was a fan of both, especially Miller, and was intrigued by the question. I had received a great deal of email from readers of the magazine asking various questions, but never birth dates. I also liked her use of English, it was straight to the point, but attractive, not dry.
This was in September of 1999. Over the next couple of months our email exchange grew to daily. Finally, in November of 1999, we started chatting over ICQ. That quickly became an almost daily event, and not just a quick hello, how are you, what's new, but hours and hours of talking about our views on life and art. It became the part of our day that neither of us could do without. Despite the eight hour time difference and our work schedules, we somehow managed to find those hours together every day.
Neither of us had ever 'met' someone online, nor was that our intent. The building of our relationship naturally progressed as we got to know each other and realized how much we enjoyed each other's company and our exchange of ideas. It amazed us then, and still amazes us today, how two people from such different backgrounds could have so much in common.
It would be two-and-a-half years before we would meet in person.
Paris was the city of our dreams. We had often fantasized about how wonderful it would be to walk along the Seine hand-in-hand, finally together. When the time came for us to meet, it had to be Paris.
My plane landed at Charles DeGaulle International on May 7, 2002. Proverb had arrived in Paris the night before and was to meet me at the airport. I knew what she looked like from the photos she had sent.
She wasn't at the gate. I waited. A million possibilities ran through my mind. I knew she was a person that kept her word and worried that something not good had happened.
You can't imagine the size of my smile as I write this.
While all I remember of the thirty minutes I waited for Proverb at the gate is an image of me frozen to a spot scanning the crowd, I will never forget the first time I saw her beautiful face.
I had rehearsed what I would do in that first moment, how I would take her in my arms and tell her I loved her, but when the time came all I could do was smile without a word or touch. She smiled back.
We walked over to the airport café, sat, and ordered coffee, both of us nervous and shy. She opened her Paris mapbook and showed me, in great detail, how she had navigated her way through the Metro and trains to the airport. I watched as her fingers traced the route on the map and without planning looked in her eyes and said, "You have beautiful hands."
to be continued...