Word: rituals
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...England Telephone rather unfairly contributes to the spring fever epidemic. Practically every day since the first tulips shyly presented some tightly closed buds, I have felt myself being propelled to the phone in quest of a pronouncement on the day's weather. Actually, it has become kind of a ritual. The alarm goes off. I ecstatically leap--okay, so I blurrily stumble--from my bed and head straight for the phone. After doing my sun dance and propitiating the various rain deities, I slowly dial the prophetic seven numbers: 936-1111. This, of course, is not easy with...
...Jerusalem's Western Wall. Around the statue, people talk louder and breathe easier, snap vacation photos unselfconsciously, eat Eskimo Pies and Fritos. But near the wall, a young Boston father tells his rambunctious son, "Hush, Timmy--this is like a church." The visitors' processionals do seem to have a ritual, even liturgical quality. Going slowly down toward the vertex, looking at the names, they chat less and less, then fall silent where the names of the first men killed (July 1959) and the last (May 1975) appear. The talk begins again, softly, as they follow the path...
...vote on who can play basketball. As Ewing was introduced for his final college game, a banana peel hit the floor of Lexington's Rupp Arena with a sickening whap. It seemed barely to miss slapping him, though he appeared not to notice. The Washington Post stopped recording this ritual when it ceased being news. "Bananas have been thrown at Ewing in at least ten games this year," Reporter Michael Wilbon says. Illiteracy signs were back also: EWING KANT READ DIS. If he is not the most glib performer in the interview room, Ewing apparently has had no trouble conversing...
...there is displacement of the meaning, there is, equally significant, placement of the word-orientations that startle, disturb, and ultimately succeed. Especially in the ritual and unbroken naming of objects, one sees the interstices between the words, the region of resolution...
...right up to the block seconds before the starting pistol, and then performed amazingly, would she change her ritual? "I might think it over a bit," the swimmer says...