Thursday, July 19, 2007
time out.
i just gave myself a time out. not because i was bad, or even stressed out--you could knock me over with a feather, but i'm really feeling happy-go-lucky this week, just . . . amazingly happy. no real anxiety, although i do sort of have a mental shopping list that never seems to go away. set up rain plan with the photographers. make those flower thingies. wrap the presents for the people.
i wanted, though, to take a minute to write down what seemed so clear this morning when i woke up, and that's that this is a big deal. i hadn't realized it, but i've been subtly downplaying both the wedding and the fact of the getting married. i don't know when it got so important to me to be too cool for school, but this is vaguely familiar, this tendency to belittle something once i'm the center of it. i'm getting married. meh. i mean, i've been excited and all, but always with this eye towards toning it down lest someone find me unacceptably enthusiastic. like i'm worried someone will pop my balloon if i let it get too big.
and the party and the foofery surrounding it is sort of easy to poo-poo. but this thing that is happening, even though it's been five years and we own a home together and have frequent arguments about the laundry, this is still big. it's big enough that we've been doing it for, what? at least a couple of hundred years? something is going to happen to me. i'm not religious, or even really the religious-lite that people call "spiritual," but i do believe in ritual, and i believe that liminal space is precious and (at risk of being mocked) magical, at least as much as anything is. i think changing your circle in the venn diagram is momentous, and the ceremonies and situations we devise to honor the middle part, the passage, the acts those are comprised of make you different. thanks, J.L. Austin. speech act theory is a reason to get married.
it may not be about anything the commercials say it is, but it is a big deal. i feel funny, floaty, like i'm outside my skin a little bit or growing a new one. it's such a tremendous privilege to get to do this, and to have the time to spend thinking it out (even if you had to lock yourself in the den with a tiny glass of wine to do so). the vantage point you have when you're betwixt is so rarely accessible. i'm soaking it up with a sponge.
i wanted, though, to take a minute to write down what seemed so clear this morning when i woke up, and that's that this is a big deal. i hadn't realized it, but i've been subtly downplaying both the wedding and the fact of the getting married. i don't know when it got so important to me to be too cool for school, but this is vaguely familiar, this tendency to belittle something once i'm the center of it. i'm getting married. meh. i mean, i've been excited and all, but always with this eye towards toning it down lest someone find me unacceptably enthusiastic. like i'm worried someone will pop my balloon if i let it get too big.
and the party and the foofery surrounding it is sort of easy to poo-poo. but this thing that is happening, even though it's been five years and we own a home together and have frequent arguments about the laundry, this is still big. it's big enough that we've been doing it for, what? at least a couple of hundred years? something is going to happen to me. i'm not religious, or even really the religious-lite that people call "spiritual," but i do believe in ritual, and i believe that liminal space is precious and (at risk of being mocked) magical, at least as much as anything is. i think changing your circle in the venn diagram is momentous, and the ceremonies and situations we devise to honor the middle part, the passage, the acts those are comprised of make you different. thanks, J.L. Austin. speech act theory is a reason to get married.
it may not be about anything the commercials say it is, but it is a big deal. i feel funny, floaty, like i'm outside my skin a little bit or growing a new one. it's such a tremendous privilege to get to do this, and to have the time to spend thinking it out (even if you had to lock yourself in the den with a tiny glass of wine to do so). the vantage point you have when you're betwixt is so rarely accessible. i'm soaking it up with a sponge.
