Sedentary Travelogue #10: Fast are the Hands

A negligant correspondant am I.

But hopefully you all know me well enough to know that it's nothing personal and that I still think of you. My head is an odd theater sometimes, with all of you as characters running about in my thoughts and in the wings while a few hang from the curtains and send smoke signals.

Still, it's been an especially long gap in writing this time. There are numerous reasons for this, but one in particular dominates them all. Namely, I fell madly, joyously, thoroughly and dramatically in love.

Since I've still been awfully busy lately, I'm going to let most of this entry be filled with a story about this written by Cecil (more on that below). First a few details. Who is this person? Timothy Jean attended our construction workshop last summer, which is how we met. We struck up a correspondance that carried us swiftly along until she came back for a substantial visit in October. She was very interested in living at Dancing Rabbit, as well as in spending more time with me. Love proceeded to daily hit me over the head with a cast iron skillet until I was dizzy with it all. And Dancing Rabbit turned out to be exactly what she was looking for in life, so she became a member.

We are both very interested in and excited about crafting rituals for our lives. And so we decided to craft one around our relationship. There are two essential parts to the ceremony and to the committment that we have made. One is a handfasting. The term is an old one, but we've created our own ideas around it. We bound our lives together with a committment for a year and month (one cycle of the sun and one cycle of the moon). Our relationship will certainly be much longer than that span - neither of us sees any end to it. But the idea is that relationships evolve over time, especially if they last a long time, and so we wanted to structure ceremony around that as well. Every year and a month we will have another hand-fasting to examine and recommit to the relationship. As the years roll by, our ceremonies will cycle through the seasons as well. This feels like a new and untried approach to relationships and it feels perfect.

The other half of the ritual is the blood bond, which is not about a romantic partnership, but it a permanent statement of our kinship bond. This part of the ceremony is not one that we will do each year, since it is permanent. I'll let the story below explain things.

The story is more wonderful than I could have asked for. We planned the ritual to be a small thing and we did it quickly (obviously) representing the certainty with which we approach the relationship. Just our fellow communitarians were there. My delightful friend Cecil wrote a story describing it all for my mother since she couldn't be there. This is the story he wrote and I now share it with you. I'll try not to wait so long before writing again.

with love,
Jacob

Sunday morning, January 16, 2000.
We had our routine business meeting, but were able to skip the clean that normally follows since we had done it the day before.

After the meeting we discussed what time to have the ceremony. Jacob said "well, get there at three, definitely get there by three fifteen, by three thirty definitely be there because we're gonna start." Kalen and I helped him finish the train of thought: "by four, definitely be there because we'll be doing it with or without you, by five you better be there because you'll have missed it" we all had a good laugh.

Needless to say, Kalen and I were late. Ooops! I was late because I was waiting for Kalen, but still. Kalen was late because he was dissecting an owl he found by the road, probably struck by a car. In any case, I was glad to accompany Kalen in his lateness because it's no fun to be late alone, and when you don't have a watch and are eagerly dissecting an ongs.

At this Jacob and Timothy Jean kissed briefly, gonged the Tibetan cowbell, and poured the wine into the silver cup Timothy Jean had spent hours polishing (to calm her nerves, she said). Then Timothy Jean picked up the knife.

Now, I'm given to understand that not much has been said about the knife and its uses in this ceremony. But I don't agree with that policy and as it's my story, I figure I can tell it as I see fit. I guess I think you've been around a bit and seen this and that and just because your middle one is ritually slicing his hand open and mingling blood with another is no reason to get all apprehensive about telling the truth. Anyway, it's not as bad as it sounds. True, watching it could accurately be described as excruciating, but really it's no worse then the Academy awards.

The point of the whole thing is this. I assume Jacob explained to you about how the ceremony is for commitment-a year and a month's worth, to be renewed if desired. Well, that's all well and good. But the blood bond is something different. It represents a lifetime bond, though not necessarily a romantic partnership one. In my mind, it shows that something deep has gone on between Jacob and Timothy that can never be erased no matter what happens and that they will take with them to their grave. While they may not always live together as handfasted partners, they'll always be blood bonded.

Anyway, Timothy picked up the knife, took a deep breath, and slowly drew the blade across the palm of her hand. You could never tell Jacob had spent the past two days sharpening the dang thing, because she soon shrugged and tried again. Well, she went over and over the cut so many times I was getting ready to offer my pocket knife from sheer hyperventilation. Apparently I grasped Jess's hand hard enough that gangrene was a realistic fear. It seems that although the cut was happening, the oozing blood effect desired was not. (I hope mention of blood isn't unappealing. I look at it this way: it's always just a millimeter from the visible surface. It courses through your eyeballs. If for a few minutes Jacob wants to see it up on top, well, it's his business. What do you think?) In any case, after a few minutes of vigorous and, we were to be later assured, pain-free sawing, Timothy decided it was good enough and passed the knife to Jacob. It's a beautiful knife, by the way. Perhaps thoughts of that should distract you from what happened next, was that it was Jacob's turn to energetically attempt to persuade the surprisingly blood-free pad of his left hand to give up some of its vital fluid. A thin red line finally signified success. A second kiss, longer than the first, indicated the depth of emotion they were getting in visible touch with feeling.

At this point, Timothy and Jacob grasped each other's left hands. The cuts were made to form an "x" when hands are clasped. Raised in the air, they took a multicolored and tasseled strip of cloth, and together, each using their free right hand (easier for Jacob than sinister Tim) tied a knot around their clasped hands. At the beginning, the cloth was draped over their wrists and hung down to the floor, brown and purple. As they spoke in turn of the meaning of the commitment and the details of their dreams, they alternated lifting the ends over and around their hands and forearms until their hands where solidly joined. They then slowly rotated, lowering and raising their torsos in a slow-motion dance of blood siblinghood.

The cord was then removed and the rings untied from where they had previously and deviously been attached to the tassels of the binding cord. I thought this was a brilliant way to tie together the blood and handfasting rituals, myself. They placed rings on their fingers and pulled the cord taut to leave a solid and permanent knot in the binding cloth. Ash was rubbed in the wounds to help them scar. Well, at least it wasn't facial. The wounds were cleaned and the vows were read. I suppressed the urge to insert after the first line of the vows, "To the primacy of this bond", "James Bond". The vows were moving and beautiful and you can read them elsewhere I'm sure. The ritual wine was shared and Jacob donged the gong once more. A final kiss, long and deep, indicated the strong feelings coursing through the wounded veins of the newly joined couple. We cheered and sang "When I'm Sixty-four" all together, then a version of "Everytime I Feel the Spirit" with lyrics written for the occasion. We milled about and ate sushi, honeycakes, wine and juice, while exclaiming over various aspects of the ceremony. Timothy Jean proved she can ingest wasabi in quantities that would tarnish brass in minutes. Tony took pictures.

The ceremony had been the perfect length, I think. It was long enough to have weight and meaning, and impress itself upon my memory. But it flowed smoothly, captivating my heart and imagination, and ended while I was still in the energetic sharing, without having reached the lull of attention that can sometimes sneak up on one during a solemn proceeding.

One of the most interesting aspects of the ceremony, for me, was observing the people around me. Timothy Jean was so solid, so present, so committed, that I just knew she was the right person for Jacob to be with. I don't believe anyone less appropriate could have projected the same air of trueness. Watching them stare into each other's eyes at the end of speaking the vows, the distinction between metaphor and reality was broken down and their bond became some present in the room with us.

And of course, I always love watching Jacob, it's like feeling myself breathe. Natural and necessary.

The audience was fascinating as well. Everyone paired off into a wincer and a support person during the slashing. More seriously, you could tell that some of the commitments stated by the people on stage were shared in various degrees by the gathering friends. It was almost an opportunity for the group, by participating in the commitments of others, to renew its own vows to itself and its members. I've always felt that weddings are our modern culture's only way to be joyous as a group, while maintain the dignity of a tradition. While this handfasting was surely not a wedding, there was still a similar sense of congregation.

And that's how it happened, as seen through my eyes.

Cecil, 1/17/2000