Mike & Jenny's Wedding Page - Readings

Readings

These are a set of readings that will be done during the ceremony which are intended to represent the 8 years that the two of us have already been together.

The officiant will announce the readings at the beginning, but there will be no announcements between readings - so if you are reading, know what comes before you. When it's your turn to read, stand up, face the crowd from where you are, say your piece and then sit down (those of us who are on the island will remain standing).

1) Jennifer Epel

Excerpt from "Love and Other Phenomena", Cynthia Heimel

The thing is, you gotta wait for it. Falling in love is something that will happen to you once, twice, maybe three times in your life. And you can't convince yourself you're in love when you aren't. When you are you'll know it. Everything will just seem right, and there you'll be.

And do not, at your peril, overlook the sense-of-humor question. You can't be in love with someone who doesn't have a sense of humor. You just can't. Unless you don't have one either, and that's a situation too macabre even to contemplate.

A sense of humor isn't everything. It's only 90 percent of everything. And since, like snowflakes or fingerprints, every person's sense of humor is different, people invariably fall in love because their senses of humor are uncannily similar. So if you laugh uproariously when confronted with tofu fritters, and your inamorato doesn't get the joke, you're on very shaky ground.

More ways to tell if you're in love: - If he dresses with an astonishing lack of style-bell-bottomed suede trousers with fringed vests, or polyester leisure suits with clip on ties spring to mind-and you don't care. Not only don't you care, you actually let your friends see him. Not only do you let your friends see him, you let your ex-boyfriend see him.
- If one of your major fantasies about him involves shopping in supermarkets.
- If you know for sure that he's scared of spiders, anal-retentive about the cap on the toothpaste, can't swim, and faints at the sight of blood, and you love him just as much (but not more).
- If you feel smarter, prettier, funnier and happier when you're with him.

2) Musical Piece

Octopus's Garden

3) Elissa Epel

"Burnt Norton", T.S. Eliot

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

4) Joseph Epel

"The Fantasticks"

There is a curious paradox that no one can explain
Who understands the secret of the reaping of the grain
Who understands why spring is born out of winter's laboring pain
Or why we must all die a bit before we grow again.
I do not know the answer. I only know it's true.
I hurt them for that reason, and myself a little bit, too.

5) Joan Muller

"The Water is Wide", traditional English ballad

The water is wide
I cannot get o'er,
And neither have
I wings to fly;
Give me a boat
That can carry two,
And both shall row,
My love and I.

(Flute and cello will play "The Water is Wide")

6) Emily Epel

"Habitation," Margaret Atwood

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

The edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire

7) Ed Smierciak

"Jabberwocky", Lewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

8) Michael Muller

"as freedom is a breakfastfood", e.e. cummings

as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
or molehills are from mountains made
--long enough and just so long
will being pay the rent of seem
and genius please the talentgang
and water most encourage flame
--time is a tree (this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough