Tired of the old TV shows? Exasperated by the new ones? Do reality programs, video-streaming, and subscription access leave you cold? Indifferent? Outraged? (All three?)
My wife and I feel that way, too. Aside from news about the latest headline-grabbing politician or an occasional PBS documentary, there’s little on evening television that keeps a mature couple amused and/or entertained between weekends. Cultural critic Neil Postman‘s 1984 prediction of television sacrificing the quality of information for the sake of advertising and corporate profit has become an all-too-established (and boring) reality.
What to do? We examined many differing forms of evening entertainment. Athletics and/or exercising seemed mistimed: it elevates our blood pressure right before bedtime. Movies are a more expensive form of television–action heroes fighting animatronics in front of green screens. And performance art of all kinds is reserved mostly for weekends which compounds our weekday problem.
Our solution? We went retro. How? By entertaining ourselves. Though both of us like music, neither of us is musically gifted. But we both like to read. So we decided to read selections fromour favorites to each other. Novel, short story, poetry: it doesn’t matter so long as it holds significance for one of us. Or both.
My wife says she has two selections in mind for our first session? As for my choice, since the date of our wedding anniversary happened earlier this month, I decided to resurrect a poem by John Ciardi I read for our marriage vows nearly a half-century ago. “Men Marry What They Need” appears below:
Men marry what they need. I marry you, morning by morning, day by day, night by night, and every marriage makes this marriage new. In the broken name of heaven, in the light that shatters granite, by the spitting shore, in air that leaps and wobbles like a kite, I marry you from time and a great door is shut and stays shut against wind, sea, stone, sunburst, and heavenfall. And home once more inside our walls of skin and struts of bone, man-woman, woman-man, and each the other, I marry you by all dark and all dawn and have my laugh at death. Why should I bother the flies about me? Let them buzz and do. Men marry their queen, their daughter, or their mother by hidden names, but that thin buzz whines through: where reasons are no reason, cause is true. Men marry what they need. I marry you.
Like it? Try dusting off an old poem or story you like and read it to your special one. You may not be Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning (we certainly aren’t), but who knows? Doing this could inspire me to write one myself for our next read-to-each-other evening.
I’ll keep you informed.