Barefoot and Gargling

Last Thursday....I thought it was Friday and so no post.  I was on the town with friends and I when I say friends, I mean friends - at least I hope.

Friends forgive one another's stupidities and I was stupid last Thursday.  I was trying to make a point about something, and frankly I do not even recall what, because I made a huge gaff.  My foot was lodged so deeply, I received a stomach acid pedicure!

Sadly I cannot report that verbal clumsiness is new for me.  I am grateful to have been granted forgiveness by my dear friends, many, many times.  Their generosity does not excuse me of course, and I spend hours of my life reliving moments I dread, again and again, through deep regret.  Despite the remorse my habits do not change.  It seems things leap out of my mouth before the leash has hit the brain;  It is only after the dogs are loose that realization kicks in.  My pain is genuine, but I fear it is no more than theirs.  I pray their remorse at my friendship does not outweigh the benefits.  If it does, I have lost more than my dignity, which went the way of all flesh ages ago.

I want to write a note, but that will only rub salt into their wound (I managed to offend both people of the couple).  I will wait it out and hope kindness falls on my side again.  In the meantime, perhaps it is time to tweak my humorous story repertoire; that or invest in athlete's mouth spray.

"...And Not A Drop To Drink"

Astrologically, I am a Gemini.  My mother used to say that this was the correct sign for me because I was all over the place, doing more than one thing at once and  that I loved change; all of which is correct.  I defined flibbertigibbet for her.  However Gemini is an air sign and while I like air, generally it provides me with far too little support and even less cushion. Huh?  Well, I fall a lot, always have; air is not kind to clumsy people. Water, on the other hand is my friend.  Water lightens me, supports me and yet absorbs me when I, true to form, fall.

Water silences the noisy sounds of the air and softens the look of the harsh world.  It comforts my skin and entertains endlessly.  Whether playing in the waves, salty and wild, or swimming deep under the surface of an indoor pool, laned and chlorinated, water restores my body and soul. Even watching fountains, waterfalls or rain can be effective. Is it any wonder that my field of printmaking called to me; soaking the beautiful paper to soften it or making an image based on the fact that oil and water repel on another, (lithography) water is critical.  

Studies say that our bodies are 50-75 percent water.  I must be on the high end, mushy and heavy, wishy washy and spreading, but oh in my element, so happy.  My husband says I swim like an otter; I am happy, larking about in the water (how is that for mixed  metaphor)? Of course my new little buddy Syndey loves water as well; kidneys adore water.

If you need escape, seek water; swim, walk by a river, creek, or the ocean.  Watch an undersea science show on TV, go fishing, sit by a fountain, drink a cup of tea or run through a sprinkler.  Just find some of that amazing substance, let your mind wander and play: and if anyone ever says to you "You're all wet" remember to say "Thank you!"

Better Idea!

Note to Bloggers:

Never post post a pint of Guinness.  It makes for a warm glow, poor grammar and nonsensical reading.

Happy Wednesday!

New Construction; Warm Memories

      

    

There is a house under construction in our neighborhood.  It does not seem very remarkable from the outside.  It looks nice and will make a lovely place for some family; clean, contemporary and new.

My parents had the house I grew up in, built.  Some of my earliest memories are of driving to the site, walking around the rising structure and painting the last triangle of wall on the northern side of my bedroom, a gentle yellow. Ours was the last house on the street when we moved in, except for the neighbors all the way at the end of the cul-de-sac, so far down that we could neither see, nor hear, them.  

The street filled in with new houses as I grew up. Then a new street behind ours emerged and was also developed, one house at a time, each a bit different according to the year it was constructed.  I spent my childhood in construction sites.  We played Star Trek, ( I was always Bones or Scotty) Batman (I was always Robin since I had black bloomers from school, which looked just like Robin's)  It was wonderful.

One neighbor let all the kids on the street dig his basement, he was actually building his house himself.  We had a blast that summer, until Ronny hit his brother with a pick by mistake.  They were fine, but a back-hoe was there the next day and school started a couple of weeks later.

During our later, pre-teen and teen years, my neighbors and I would run all over these sites.  We climbed ladders and spanned floors of 2x4s. We smoked in basements and on rooftops, we talked about anything and everything.  We grew up.

When the footings were laid in some of the houses, after the workmen had left for the day, we wrote our initials in the damp concrete, leaving our mark for posterity.  One of my friends died in the eighties; but his name remains in the neighborhood, in the footings. 

I loved spending time in the bones of a house.  It is really the mere suggestion of a house, full of possibilities without the suffocating separation of walls.  Air flows freely and bits of sky hide in the rafters. At night the animals creep through, as we had earlier in the day.  They seek bits of food or shelter and they hunt; they live.

I see the lines of the houses like the lines of ancient ruins, but rather than disrepair, destruction and a sorrowful past, there is wonder of the future, of our capacity to provide such housing and at the knowledge and skill of those who build.  I do not know how to build a house: I admire that very much. 

I wish I could live in a half built structure, the warm wood and the lines remind me of the awe of the Acropolis. The unfinished quality lets my mind expand, to take any space to a different completion in my mind, each day. It smells of fresh wood fiber and has the warm glow of pine and late afternoon. 

In an unfinished house I can still hear the warm, young voices of the past on a pleasant summer evening, engaged in living, breathing conversation, side by side, in sawdust and friendship.

                                 
       

                           

                   

    

Dark and Stormy

A headache in the making...Dark and Stormy; and I was this morning.

Gin and Tonic tonight; much calmer weather.

It is a good thing I get hangovers or I would be the worst souse you have ever met.  It is also useful that smoking has so many issues or I would be spending a fortune on tobacco, which I dearly love. Coffee in non negotiable in my life, just ask my doc.

I have another insidious habit, the internet; clean internet, but still social media seemingly wastes my time. I stick with it though because my friends are so interesting and I have more contact with a broad range of thinkers than I have had in years.  I read articles which would never have crossed my desk, and I see art exhibitions, studios and media which would live in relative isolation without the web.  

So while I am more cautious about drink and tobacco, the net I will keep as a companion.

Techno Challenged

Technology challenges; I have them. People I know who are computer savvy have them too.   I am not a computer fool, but there are times I feel hopelessly lost.  Usually I rely on Google searches to help me and they often succeed.  Tonight for instance I password protected my router because my Netflix signal kept dropping out;  people were stealing my bandwidth!  It has taken me three months to work up the courage to potentially lose all my network connections while trying to fix the problem; and I did - for a minute or two. It helps that my kids are not home, I would hate to bear the consequences of an error in that circumstance.

I read an article tonight about not using the "like" button on Facebook, in order to change the tenor of one's "feed."  This led to a prompt to read another article in which a person described liking almost everything in his feed, which led to a home page of almost entirely publication articles and ads.  It seems that a lot of people do not realize that their posts and reactions are fed through an algorithm that determines what appears on your home page.  If we saw everything our friends post, we could never keep up with the volume of information, we would simply be overwhelmed, so Facebook slims down the trend by "watching" what we do.

This "watching" also leads to those creepy ads that react to what we write.  Have you noticed that if you post that you got new shoes -shoe ads start cropping up?   I posted about my new website and now I am getting website ads.  The same thing happens in my Gmail account.  I don't really care because nothing particularly private is happening in my Facebook or Gmail accounts; glad I am not a spy, for so many reasons.

I have become pretty quick about disconnecting my power cord and then popping out the battery of my computer when I think some awful virus might be loading itself.   I start up again in safe mode, load my "Virus" user name and re-set my computer to an earlier date. These are the silly techno things I have learned to do in order, most humbly and feebly, to try to protect myself from wiser, though nastier computer savvy folk.

I hope the hackers who hijacked my blog last summer leave me alone.  Fingers crossed that their fingers have found real pies into which they may pry.

Finally a Web Site!

Years in the making......www.pennylisk.com is now live.

It needs a little more info and a few more photos, and a lot of text editing, but there is finally a less than totally embarrassing web site of my work.  Yea!

In the meantime, I must sleep to build more tomorrow.

Scrooge and Polluted Chocolate

Ask my children and they will tell you that I am an old Scrooge.  This manifests itself in many ways, but mostly in my constant concern over wasting money.  I nag: use a cloth dishtowel when possible and not paper towels.  Don't use paper napkins as paper towels, wear jeans more than once before you wash them (unless you have been mud wrestling)....little cheappie things, that can add up to money over time. It is  not just the money though, I want them to think about actions, choices and values.  Be aware of what you do and what the consequences are.

Candy is a splurge I indulge.  I do not buy fine chocolates, but I do buy candy, Hershey's Treasures and tiny Dove pieces mostly. I am also a fiend for Russell Stover Coconut Nests (despite their horrible name). My pet peeve is Nutella.  I HATE Nutella; I am Scrooge. Firstly, I do not like it (Sam I Am) and nothing will make me like it.  Add to the fact that it has virtually no nutritional value and costs a small fortune, I am Scrooge about it.  That being said I have spent a small fortune on it, since I do indulge my children, it is cheaper at BJ's and it seems to be addictive (no not literally).  I have seen a two pound jar vanish in less than a week (only two people  in my house eat it).

The company claims it uses twenty five percent of the world's hazelnut crop; one quarter of the whole world supply?  What?  Lastly, okay, the stuff is from Italy, but nooootella?  Please, the first three letters are descriptive: nut.  It is Nut - ella.  If Newt Gingrich owned the company I would call it Newtella;  it tastes like old newt skins to me anyway.  What  a terrible thing to do to chocolate. There's my real peeve eh?  "You got hazelnuts in my chocolate!"

Fortunately the bloom is off the rose, finally.  Peanut butter has won out, as it ought. Peanut butter is American, cheap and nutritious.  I hate it on any food stuff,  but nothing adorns a spoon so well as peanut butter, except perhaps Betty Crocker chocolate icing.  Even Scrooge has her shortcomings in self control.

Blue Hair, Fins and Laughs

I went to my first Jimmy Buffet concert tonight.  It was on my husband's bucket list.  We had seats indoors and it was wonderful.  It also gave me an excuse to throw the blue color in my hair.  I am officially a blue haired old lady!

The concert was a huge sing-along and everybody had a great time.  Some entertainers not only know how to have fun onstage, but to also to entice the audience to be a part of that joy; Buffet excels at this.  He had fun, we had fun.

Buffet is also a much better musician than people give him credit.  His songs are fun. but melodically very pleasing and his lyrics touch a nerve; they expose our culture concisely, but not morosely.  We have fun in his fantasy escaping from the omitted stress, which is so well implied as to be defined through absence of description.  He is very, very good.

While a capacity audience at the Susquehanna Center in Camden dances with hands pointed over head, leaning while singing "Fins to the left, fins to the right" (and yes I did it too) we realize that while the sharks may be all around us, we are dancing all together and laughing - "all the way!"

Another Step Towards The Horizon

The packing is over and the traveler has arrived at his destination, eight hundred miles from home.  He is happy and primed for another year of study, and all of that other stuff too.

I am facing another new year of parenthood at a distance.  I don't mind it really; my "children" are grown and they can handle life pretty well.  They consult with us.  They make errors and fix them by themselves, sometimes, and sometimes they seek help; even mine. They sound like the rest of us "adults." One day they graduate and then they must do the really adult things; make an income and take full responsibility for debts and actions.

My graduate school teacher (in a mentor based program we had one) told us that the two years we were there would be the easiest and most productive of our lives.  That we should take advantage of the time and the equipment; to use the opportunity for such fully focused time to work.  He was right.  I never again had days fully devoted solely to thinking about my work and to doing it.  The rest of my life has been shared with day jobs, family and interactive needs.  I may be coming closer to those days of my youth, but I lack the energy I had:  I also lack the panoramic vista of time.

My vista was always a shortish one, since I knew I would be ill in my thirties or forties, but still, it was so many years ahead of me and I had such visions.  I confess, though my eyes have grown far-sighted, my vision of the horizon grows shorter.

My children often wonder why I am not as passionate as they; I am tired and I want to spend my passion at the end of my fingertips.  Perhaps what I find there can do more good than battles -out in the world- of which I may have intellectual interactions, but no physical experience.

At the end of my fingertips and nose I seek to find a vocabulary of allied individual expression, to connect with others from a seat in my house in the dark of the evening, or at the end of a brush by the light of day; hopefully both.

Packing

College calls to my son and I must spend much time, shopping, washing, and spending every minute with him before he boards his plane.  So until the wings are glinting off unto the sunset I am taking a short hiatus.

I shall write more, damp eyed, next week. Until then my jealous time will be devoted to good byes.

Ice Bucket Challenge

Terrible storms are passing to the south of us, but do not worry this photo is not the remnants of a hail storm, rather it is the remnants of my son's acceptance of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Yes, he poured ice water over his head to challenge five of his friends, to donate money to ALS or to challenge others.

Many people think that this is a hoax just to get lots of videos on the internet, of people foolishly complying with this request, in order to achieve five minutes of fame.  Whether or not this is the purpose of some participants, the fact remains that donations to ALS research have sky-rocketed this year.  So dump away my friends and lets' help unravel the suffering of people all over the world.  We have two friends who have ALS, one has completed his battle and the other is still striving to survive.

My son did not challenge me, but since I know that I would not pour freezing water over my (hot head) head, I think I shall donate without a challenge.

http://www.alsa.org/donate/

We Grieve

Zorba:    Why do the young die?  Why does anybody die?

Basil:      I don't know.

Zorba:   What's the use of all your damn books?  If they don't tell you that, what the hell do they tell you?

Basil:     They tell me about the agony of men who can't answer questions like yours.

Zorba The Greek - Movie



I grew up with this quote and many others, which are used to introduce pieces of music on the soundtrack album of the movie.  Since my father was a dying Greek man these words stuck hard in my brain, along with all the other quotes.  My Dad taught me to dance with this soundtrack.

Tonight when I heard that Robin Williams had died, I thought of the words, as I so often do in the face of death.  We do live in an agony, of wondering, sadness and frustration, and rely on faith that reasons, from overpopulation to religious teachings, can try to console our grief.

It is amazing that we can grieve so hard of the loss of movie stars with whom most of us never interact; but we do grieve them.  They give us their time talent and treasure and we are grateful.  We grieve the loss of their potential for more; more work, better work, more surprises and insight, more of them.  We genuinely grieve; not as family, but we grieve.

Goodnight Mr. Williams and thank you for your work, which has brought me to tears of joy and tears of emotional empathy.  You were outstanding and will always be, in the transparent form called film.  The ghostly image of your past days will live long after you and continue to entertain.  We will laugh again and thank you with every, chuckle, guffaw and bah ha ha.

Much Obliged

It occurs to me that a lots of time and hard feelings seem to wasted on interactions based in assumptive obligation.  If I, then you....  I ought... I really don't want to but....   A lot of politeness is based in these thoughts and I am delighted by a decent level of deference to the feelings of others; it's nice to chew with your mouth closed, and flush the toilet, wear deodorant, not talk about differences of opinion in a condescending or degrading manner.  However do I need to order steak when I want salmon, so that you can have crab and steak, since we can share?  Does a spouse need to go to an opera he hates just because his wife loves it or vice versa?  Does a mother have to do laundry? (and yes that is still a question).

If we engage in activities, from trivially to seriously unwelcome in our lives, because we ought, are we subliminally keeping a tally sheet? Do we really need to do these activities? Are we doing them for us or for others, or a combination of the two, with that chart in our heads of who gives the most? Is that the point of deferential interaction? Are we keeping score to judge our worth and theirs? Can we help ourselves; really?

I think it is in the nature of human beings to give to one another, but order to give, someone has to take.  I was speaking to an Episcopal Priest years ago and he described an ongoing problem with the ritual foot washing that takes place on Maundy Thursday (The day before Good Friday); the foot washing precedes an all night prayer vigil.  The church never had a problem making sure that someone was there to pray all night even through four, five and six AM, but to get anyone to allow their feet to be washed was very challenging, and ideally they wanted many people.  Every year it was a problem; no one wanted to be the recipient of care.  They would neither bare their feet nor expose themselves to a gift, even though this gift was a critical, symbolic part of a religious service, in a church where they were active and dedicated members.  Eventually someone would uncomfortably give in, out of obligation.

So where does the burden and grace of obligation lead us?  If we act in order to avoid being on the short side of a virtual score card are we being good people?  Does that score card account for human decency? Is obligation, in all of its' pros and cons, the backbones of human social interaction?  Is there room for joy in obligation?  I certainly hope so.

Lying to Hide

I love it when people lie to me.  Obviously lying is sometimes not so nice,  a lie of convenience is just maddening.  Lies that hurt physically or mentally are dangerous and ought not to be ignored. However most of the lies I encounter range from merely annoying to hilarious.  Catching someone in a lie reveals so much about the liar, leaving them more exposed than the truth ever would have.  It uncovers fears or shame, and therein lies the humor.  It amazes me what frightens people, and occasionally tragic what shames them. Very often we flee from the most trivial events, traits or errors. It is the very thing we want to hide the most, that typically leads to lie.

Back-pedaling is a corollary.  I cannot recall what was said by a doctor by whom I was being treated, but it revealed a thought he was trying to politely conceal from me and when he blurted it out and then back-pedaled most severely; I burst out laughing.  The result was a deeper trust between us.  I knew his thoughts and he knew that I didn't hold them against him; we felt safe.

Cheating is another tangent of lying.  I went to a bridal shower last week and I was horrified to find myself cheating at a game.  I was so intent on winning, I borrowed a word from another paper to gain a bottle of soap.  In reality I just wanted to be the smartest; I wasn't the smartest, but I was the best....at cheating. What a pathetic, needy moment that was! The friend I was sitting with knew it too. I am laughing at myself,  now if only I could return that bottle of soap; ill gotten booty.

I cheated once in school, in the third grade.  I was terrible at multiplication, I stayed after school every single day to run drills with the teacher.  We had a test and somehow I had come by a little plastic rotating drum calculator; pink and yellow with big black numbers on white stickers.  I used it to calculate  9 x 6 and 7 x 8 - the tough ones for me.  I can still see my hands turning it, in the shadow of my cubby desk in the back right corner of the room.  It was such an awful moment that it stands in brilliant 3-d relief in my mind.  I never did it again; except when it doesn't really count, like at a bridal shower.  Sigh.

New Stuff

New work begins.  The press is restored and it prints as nicely as ever.  I am delighted.  It is so nice to have ink in my nail beds again. These are etchings.

New paintings are beginning as well.  These are "toned" with green to make the surface of the canvas less pristine, it helps to get me moving.  This is the very, very beginning. We're (the paintings and I)  going to have some fun this fall!

Some Days...

Some days bring exhausting experiences, this has been one of them; filled with tension, relief, memory, rage, growth, temporary resolution and progress.  A day plagued with a roller coaster of data, which tornado like, has altered the landscape and yet not changed anything at all.

The one truly altered thing is my level of tired; max.  I tried to relax by watching TV but I kept falling asleep. I woke, again and again with a start of where are we, what is happening, who are these people and why are they yelling on TV? I am happy to say I still knew it was on TV.

I got some good work done in the studio, though it was mostly mechanical alterations of existing images, it was work that needed to be done.  I have also started building a website; finally.  So progress and a brighter future?  I certainly hope so; baby steps.

In the meantime I write a post which inspires not so very much, but also shares that some days are really about slogging through to the next one.  Days when I pass by the little things which usually fill me with wonder, and though I see them and know how precious they are, I cannot generate that feeling of awe inside of me, today.  I know that ability will return to me tomorrow.

On such a semi sweet, needs just a bit of milk and sugar moment, I think I shall seek the kindness of  a pillow to regroup and find solace in sleep. (Here's hoping).

Slim Memories

This evening at 8:30 I started sorting through a large box of slides from my mother's house.  The house had a devastating fire in 2004 and the slides were cleaned, but not sorted. My Dad took a lot of photos, all on slide film. I looked through about 750 slides tonight.  I have at least three hundred more in carousels  and probably more.  I also have my old artwork slides - slides!

I can send them out to be converted for a fee or buy a scanner do them myself. I do not want to do them myself, but I fear mailing them into oblivion in good faith that I will in fact, receive digital images in return. Eventually, Like Lady Macbeth, I shall "screw my courage to the sticking place..." and get the task accomplished. It has only been ten years.

In the box I found images of my nursery school 'graduation' celebration, my brother's field day in first grade, a photo of my grandfather with dark hair and one of him with his best friend Mr. Himmonocis.  Mr. H. was a delightful man; he was large and fat and he liked to laugh.  He owned a button factory and made a fortune. I still have a cloth bag full of buttons from his factory.  They are not fancy, but I love to put my hand inside the bag and let the buttons run through my fingers.  Plastic was expensive in Greece in 1961 so these buttons are not plastic.  I assume they are bone, or wood, or stone. What ever they are made of, they feel wonderful in their cotton hammock and they bring back memories of two outstanding men laughing comfortably.  I never understood the joke, as they spoke in Greek, but it made me feel warm and happy anyway.   Mr. H. spoke English, but Papoo, my grandfather, did not, nor do I speak Greek.  I spoke buttons.

There were also slides of dreams and scraggly Christmas trees, a house being built, me in Danskins when they were brand new as regular clothing rather than  dancing attire.  Motels, mountains, seas and a mother who when we went fishing wore a work dress with an accordion skirt - really (that was Mom) are all in little boxes of film. .

There are several photos, for the insurance company of our shattered sliding glass door.  It was 1965 and safety glass had not been invented, so the glass hung in the frame like giant sharks' teeth.  I was outside during my brother's eighth birthday party when Freddie came running through the glass shouting "Geronimo!" He just didn't see it; it was clean.  I saw the whole thing;  like something out of a movie.  There was silence after the initial disaster, for a moment, and then the delightful noise of Freddie screaming; kids who are really hurt do not scream.  He got 37 stitches on his elbow, period.  We were all so lucky he was running, the glass exploded outward instead of falling on him.  When my mother called his, Freddie's mother said immediately, before my mother had told her what had happened - "which hospital are you taking him to?"  Wish we had known that before we invited Freddie; or at least before we cleaned the glass door.  I ran into Freddie one night at Jim's Steak's, in the 1980's, I wondered if he thought about that afternoon often.

It is amazing how many memories are stored in the surface of one little slide.

A Place of One's Own

Now is the season of relocation.  Kids are coming and going from summer jobs, into and out of dorms, into college and back home again: "out of the frying pan and into the fire" (yes saw a bit of The Hobbit over the weekend).  While all of this hub-bub is going on and I watch large piles of childhood debris walk through my house while I wear a winsome look, I am also gleefully plotting.

I have a space of my own, in the very near future.  No, not theirs, and it is not mine permanently, but for six months I will have a glorious empty space in which to work and it is not in my house!  I am enthusiastically clapping and jumping up and down (actually I am sitting and icing my sore leg, but that's life at 55).

For decades I have fudged letting my mind go.  I have not worked in a space in my mind nor in my person, where time has vanished.  I always have obligations in my house, and loving people who just have to tell me something; this is great, and not so very great. In order to really work, I have to leave all of that behind, way behind.  I have been working in a printmaking studio lately, a little bit, all by myself.  It has taken me an hour or so each time to get into the mindset where I no longer fidget, pace, tidy or check the time. I have to work out all my domestication and let the feral emerge; only then can I begin to work, to create, to enjoy and live in the process, it is only there that creativity functions.

When I move into my borrowed space, I will take an easel, paint, brushes, music, a chair and a coffee maker; then I will leave my "reality" and live.  I can hardly wait!  Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

Ritual

I went to a bridal shower this weekend.  It was a wonderful party; outstanding food and drink and good company. It was traditional, with games and prizes and kindness;  a ritual in preparation for a ritual.

Life traditions, rituals, mark events to be sure that we take notice.  They seal in our minds, and in the minds of those around us, the seriousness of the undertaking we are pursuing. Marriage is an undertaking, if you'll pardon the obvious pun.  A lifelong labor to connect with another human being in any and in all conditions, it challenges.

The marriage ceremony and the rituals leading up to it attempt to prepare and to encourage the people entertaining the thought of marriage, to take the process seriously. It is also to help them get a running start; we help them to set up their home, and remind them that love inspires while companionship steadies. Those of us who are now older, know the days and nights of illness, worry, disappointment and fear.  We know the happiness, joy, wonder and fulfillment. They dream: we are in the trenches on their mountaintop.

The ceremony for many is a religious event witnessed by God, and typically by friends and family as well. The ritual takes us through a portal of experience which bends our lives to a new perspective; nothing is the same after a twenty minute set of speeches.  We have committed. What we commit varies from individual to individual; regardless, our lives have entered a prism and have come out differently.  Ritual helps us know that we are not dreaming or making up the feeling. It has been noted and repeated over generations, to sear the experience into our hearts and our souls.

We focus on the rite, because we can all share in that event and so we celebrate together; the living part is more private. When the living gets difficult or a moment of reflection about good fortune arrives, the ritual makes it easier to remember the fullness of our experience; it makes our lives richer in breadth and depth. The sharing of the ritual binds us not only to a spouse, but to all who speak those words: it does.