There is a particular kind of intimacy built almost entirely from nonsense.
Not the grand romantic kind.
Not declarations, nor anniversaries.
Not dramatic gestures performed under expensive lighting.
I mean the tiny strange things people who love each other accidentally accumulate over time.
The phrases that would sound completely unhinged to anyone else.
The private rituals born from boredom, repetition, and prolonged exposure to one another’s frequencies.
For years, driving between Dunedin and Christchurch, there was a roadside fruit stall with a sign that — depending on the season — enthusiastically instructed passing motorists to:
CELEBRATE ASPARAGUS
Which I found disproportionately amusing.
Not because asparagus itself is especially funny. But because of the absurdity and intensity of the instruction.
As though asparagus required civic recognition.
As though the nation had collectively agreed this was a moment of agricultural significance. (Which is not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.)
And somehow this evolved into a ritual where, every time Joy and I passed the sign, we would both do a little seated dance in the car.
Not a good dance. Nothing choreographed. Just two adults briefly wriggling in celebration of a vegetable.
Which, now that I write it down, sounds absolutely deranged.
But relationships slowly become full of these things.
Tiny fragments of repeated nonsense.
Road signs.
Misheard words.
Accidental jokes.
Specific voices used only for one sentence.
References that no longer even require explanation.
Another recurring sign on those drives warned:
NEW SEAL
Meaning, of course, newly resurfaced road.
But once you notice that “new seal” sounds less like road maintenance and more like an announcement regarding marine wildlife, the damage is done.
So naturally we developed a ritual of making seal-pup noises whenever we passed one.
Again, completely ridiculous.
And yet over time these things become strangely important.
Not because the joke itself matters. The joke is often objectively terrible.
What matters is the continuity. The preservation of a shared invented world.
Years later, one person can simply say “celebrate asparagus” or “look out for new seals” and underneath the stupidity sits something much larger:
I remember us.
I still carry this with me.
Our world still exists.
I feel in my bones that long relationships are sustained less by grand passion than by accumulated absurdity. My relationship with Joy certainly is.
A sort of emotional sedimentary layering of nonsense.
Tiny rituals.
Repeated phrases.
Shared reactions.
Private mythologies.
The small handcrafted structures humans build against the vast impersonal machinery of modern life.
Anyway.
Celebrate responsibly.