Zen and the Art of Speedskating

This blog shall return to its usual coverage of speedskating and the struggles entailed shortly, as recently my literary energies have been mostly absorbed by a wedding I was asked to write a toast for! Chris and Varya are dear friends, and they knew of my literary inclinations- So they asked me to write/recite a toast for their wedding ceremony! The wedding was beautiful, moving, emotional. And the toast I wrote seemed a hit, and since so many people asked me for a printed copy, I thought the best thing to do would simply be to post it here. (Speedskating returns tomorrow, I promise!)..

So here it is, Thanks Chris and Varya for being such true friends!!

April 16th, 2005

Its spring, and for each sunrise and sunset
Phalanxs of spring peepers chorus
their one note outward to the warmth saying:
“I’m here, I’m here..

Its spring, and birds in new plumage
Dart together across the blue sky–

Squirrels scamper across tree trunks
Weaving a spontaneous crosshatch of tails.

Flowers find the sun
Find the wind
and begin again.

Fish wend their way from Cayuga’s cold murk
To spawn in the sunlit riffles of Cascadilla Creek.

And if you look closely in the night sky
You can see the bats whirling through the dark
Loving each other upon a carpet of stars.

Yes its spring, and we are here today,
In the sun and air
In our best plumage
full of song and ritual….

Driven at first
By those same unnamed ions of union
driven by the clear sky and carpet of stars,

Yet

We alone of all species
need to understand why we do this.
To grasp our complex path
Of love that is more- because we have chosen it
Because it is our own path through
This often dark & difficult landscape.

And what of the Chris and Varya story?
What moments come to mind
On this spring day celebration?

It began in winter, during a long hike, lit by cold sun
In deep snow Ithaca woods
A hello, a conversation,

A conversation continued through emails, then dinner.
The path through the woods opens to clearings
Of honesty, light, possibility, courage.

Because love takes courage,
Courage you two have.
Love is looking the world in the eye, for better or worse
for the unexpected days when the ground can give way beneath your feet.

As it did on one of their first dates,
Varya falls through the ice of Cascadilla creek,
And Chris pulls her out,
And later they manage the
The perfect goodnight kiss
Even with mutual hypothermia involved.

There is no mathematical theorem of chance
No chaos theory algorithm to explain
Two flames of soul reaching higher because they stand together

Yet when Chris and his 2 dogs first visited Varya’s
Chris’s black lab Jazz can already tell
This home is good-
These two together make all well
So held aloft by love,
Jazz took a stroll out a window, onto the roof
And fell off the house
And was completely fine. He was right.

And then on a later hike,
Ringed by the rolling upstate New York Hills
Chris pulls a ring from his pocket
And asks Varya a question.

So now, on this later spring day
If you asked me for a mathematical proof of love
I would fail.

If you asked me to decode physicists triangulations
Explaining the oscillometry of love
I would fail.

If you asked me for the true weatherman’s forecast for our souls
For the high and lows, sunny days or hurricanes to come
I would fail.

But if you asked me,
On this sunny day
Can you point to what love is?

Chris and Varya, you are my undeniable proof…

And I don’t need a weatherman to see how all our hearts
Soar for you, and with you.

So I ,
And so we all
Raise our glasses of sunshine to you two
Chris and Varya.
To your love
and to your lives together.

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