This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn't have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.
Even now, I'm very superstitious, in silly ways. I always put my left boot on first. Or on set, I always tie my bow tie from right to left.
Every hotel room, every apartment we rent, I am sage-ing. And I have crystals that I travel with. It just makes me feel better.
I have lucky boots for military embeds, a lucky scarf for road trips, a lucky handbag, and lucky days of the week. I tap into my gut for 'right' or 'wrong' feelings about such simple things as whether I should go grocery shopping.
Everyone has something that they desperately need that makes them feel good, that they don't want anything to get in the way of. Whether it's a man's golf game, whether it's a woman's cooking. I have a friend who has to clean. She's addicted to cleaning.
I'm a very ritualistic person. I have to wash my face twice, and on the second wash before I rinse, I brush my teeth, then I rinse, then I floss, then I put on moisturizer. I'm ritualistic. Jewishness is very ritualistic.
Habits are to the soul what the veins and arteries are to the blood, the courses in which it moves
Like everyone else, I have my quirks. For one, I have to own only black cars and the registration has to have eights. It's not something I can explain, it's just there. Another obsession I have is smell. I have to smell good all the time.
Every day my mother had tea. My dad has his ritual cigar. They had their evening cocktail. Those rituals were done nicely, with flair and feeling.
I do have rituals. I'm a fairly superstitious person.
I can say a prayer while washing my teeth, but that does not mean I should wash my teeth in church.
A handkerchief can never be put in another pocket after it has been in one pocket. I don't walk under ladders. I have items of clothing that are lucky for me. That rotates, but I am luck-oriented.
My temples are only in India. When I am in India, I go to the religious ceremonies.
Ritual which could entail a wedding or brushing one's teeth goes in the direction of life. Through it we reconcile our barbed solitude with rushing, irreducible conditions of life.
My mother still has a three-step system to eating candy corn. First she eats the white tip, then the orange middle, then the yellow end. She swears each segment tastes different.
