(Host) For the annual Commentator Brunch earlier this year, the theme was
"When Worlds Collide…" and we’re hearing recorded excerpts from that event all
this week. Commentator Kathryn Blume’s take on the theme was decidedly domestic.
(Blume) I’m Kathryn Blume and this is "The Space in the Venn."
I was hanging out with a group of friends when the conversation
turned to marital dynamics, and who’s responsible for what in each
relationship. When the focus turned to
me, I didn’t even think about who’s what with my husband . I just opened my mouth and out popped, "Mark’s in
charge of everything, and I’m in charge of Mark!"
Given that Mark is a highly linear, time-sensitive,
detail-oriented fellow, and I’m more of a wildly emotional, intensely creative,
big-picture thinker, it seems to work synergistically as an overall structural
dynamic.
Ironically, Mark was raised on a hippie commune in the deep
backwoods of Charlotte by a loose-knit tribe of half-naked, wine-soaked
artists, while I grew up with sexually repressed, highly intellectual,
Volvo-driving Jews in suburban white bread Portland, Oregon.
Mark, of course, always hated his surroundings and wanted
nothing more than to live in Cleveland and EAT
white bread. I was powerfully drawn to
the one family we knew who lived in a free-form concrete house they built
themselves, ate off rough clay plates handmade by a potter they knew
personally, and drank tea made from an exotic herb called ginseng.
I often think of us sort of like the marital version of a Venn Diagram
– you know, one of those images of intersecting circles where you look at where
and how they overlap.
Fundamentally different as we are, somehow, Mark and I have
managed to meet at the point where the circles of our hopes and histories
merge. Or, occasionally, collide.
Sometimes, though, we just miss each other completely.
My favorite moment of Utter Convergence Failure happened one late winter afternoon
when I was taking a candle-lit bath, scented with ginger and jasmine and
listening to the velvety tones of kd lang.
Carried away by the sensuality of it all, I called to Mark,
"Hey, wouldn’t it be great if kd lang was your lover?" He shouted back from the kitchen, "why?" and I said, "Because she’d sing
to you!"
Mark poked his head in the bathroom door. He looked thoughtful and he said, "She might not want to. Singing is her job. She might not want to
do it at home."
"Wow!" I thought. "We’re
not just different, totally non-overlapping circles here. We’re more like a couple of galaxies zooming
in opposite directions across the universe!"
But then Mark surprised me by joining me in the tub. Thereby proving that opposites – no matter
how extreme – do manage, sometimes, to attract.
See the When Worlds Collide main page.