[from my tarot reading at kentuck]
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
(Wendell Berry, "The Country of Marriage")
In the country of marriage, the only bureaucrats are persons who cannot bear to share an institution with others who threaten their formulas.
In the country of marriage, citizens wear rings as passports and those who wear rings act like Americans in the customs line.
Americans expect to receive special privileges by nature of their citizenship.
Sometimes I am ashamed to be a citizen of this country of marriage that defines itself by what it keeps out.
The country of marriage is always in motion.
The movements that sustain it are the ones which begin with the cover drawn over two heads. The doors we close against other motions.
A wave is the way a hand moves against time. A wave is the way we wash our goodbye.
But what else is the wave in my eyes? What is a wave except maybe running away fast hoping water is strong enough to stop you?
In the country of marriage, there may be tourists. We may call these tourists "children."
We may believe these tourists owe certain duties to the soil ravaged by their enthusiasm.
But a tourist is a tourist. A tourist is one whose feet seek the feel of foreign lands.
What is a siren except beckoning and warning in the same breath?
What is a breath except the way air moves through one body and then another?
We are native nowhere.
We are the fairy tale that gives rise to a foreign language.
Our love is a lexicon against the world that says we must be this. We must be that.
As if marriage is a country we enter to please the world we are trying to escape.
We are inside the house of looking out for what comes in.
We are inside the country knowing others may wander through without tasting. The words are magic but the weather is common. The weather is nothing we can hold.
