penfield | The process of removing weeds from a garden

My dear friend CC is getting married this weekend, and I'd like to wish her a preliminary mazel tov. Sadly, I will not be attending the wedding because times are tight and because her family probably still thinks I'm weird from the time we lost contact for six months and I e-mailed her mother and sister to find out what the heck happened to her, and it turned out that she was just sort of busy.

My brother is getting married in about nine months. He has asked me to be a groomsman and to give a reading at the ceremony. I am honored and humbled by the request. As I await word of what text I am to recite, I am trying very hard not to assert my own creative judgment. My mantra must be: "Whatever they want. Whatever they want. Whatever they want."

But that doesn't mean I can't think about it. At the risk of boasting, I can state with some authority that I know my way around wedding rhetoric. I have given toasts at no fewer than four weddings, to a fair amount of critical acclaim. It is true, I struggle with some of the more formal liturgical practices and passages, but this is a function of my unfamiliarity with the source material, not dogmatic principle.

Here are some of my favorite wedding readings. The first is a recommendation by my mother, who selected this for my parents' wedding:

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness.
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
- Khalil Gibran, "The Prophet"

Here's a more contemporary, realistic and refreshingly witty piece:

I want
to shove my clothes
to one side of the closet,
give you the bigger half.
Quietly I'll hide most of my shoes,
so you won't know I have this many.

I will
rearrange furniture to add more,
find space on my shelves for your many books,
nail up the placard that says
poets do it, and redo it, and do it again.

I want
to share a laundry basket,
get our clothes mixed up,
wait for the yelling
when my reds run wild
into your whites
turning them a luscious pink,
your favorite color of me.

I will
move my pillow
to the other side of the bed,
lay yours next to mine,
your scent on the fabric
always near me,
even on the nights you're away.

I will
buy a new bureau to hold your
thousand and one black socks,
find a place for all those work boots,
the ones I refer to as big and ugly.

I want
more pots and pans to wash,
piles of them leaning high
from late night meals
cooked naked and drunk,
red wine pouring into
a sauce of simmering
tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil,
kisses bitten between bites,
and platefuls of our late hours,
stacking up into dawn.

I want
to stock cupboards, closets and pantry
fill the house with us.
I want to gain weight with you
because our love,
our love makes me fat.
- Kim Konopka, "I Want"

And then, of course, for the couple that likes to break rules, push boundaries and to hell with punctuation, this one never fails -- although it's almost more fun to read than to hear:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
- ee cummings, "i carry your heart with me"

To CC, who may at this very moment be experiencing the joy of pre-nuptial nausea, I wish the very merriest of nuptial tidings. Enjoy your day, and all that marriage stuff.