On Saturday, there was a party in my town. A celebration that started at the Dallidet Adobe and included a sunset bicycle ride to the Elks Lodge across town. At the Elks Lodge, the lights were dimmed, the band began to play, the floor shook and the stars stirred as if in a whirlpool sloshing around above us. Being there was something to experience. The memories are still fresh as though it was last night and not last week. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Before the sun went down and the musicians took up their instruments, there was some marrying that needed to take place. There were words that needed to be said and rings that needed to exchange hands. A passage from Sylvia Plath was read. And it couldn’t have been more appropriate.
“I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don’t want to look around any more: I don’t need to look around for anything.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“So I don’t want to look around any more: I don’t need to look around for anything.” And at that point, there was nothing left to do, except of course – dance!
