Essie the Vampire
Ess has nicknames for all of these. I think this one is called the Twisty Slide Playground?
We’ve been married for 15 years! This picture is from an overnight we took to the St. James Hotel in Red Wing. What a fun little trip: short and low stakes made it feel like the best parts of travel, the parts where you leave your routine and enjoy the company of the best person you’ve ever met.
Our evening reservation to try out E-BIKES!! for the first time was torrentially rained out, but we got to go the next day. And, well… e-bikes are absolutely incredible and I am deliriously excited to buy one or some or many. The feeling of having this invisible force respond to your effort, pushing you into the wind or up the hill, is like the very best parts of driving and biking, without the hyperawareness required when motorcycling.
The only thing that could dull the thrill of riding would be the dread of a dying or fiery battery. So, I’d like to see some standardization around the battery packs, because the e-bike makers do not seem to acknowledge that bikes last a long time and batteries do not.
As for being married to Mykala for 15 years? An incredible journey. And at this milestone, an overdue confession: at the beginning, I had a lot of dumb ideas about how to do life. They were bad and stupid. They were bad because they made life worse for others and they were stupid because they made life worse for me. And there were a lot of them. So many bad ideas. Rigid, dogmatic, arrogant, vainglorious, puritanical, unproven, concerningly under-examined ideas. Over time, I’ve basically found that the default view I had on most everything wasn’t, like, good. And my behavior was neglectful. I could go on for PAGES with examples. Here are a few, in no particular order: go back to work days after your wife gives birth, because money. Assume that the hard way is the only way. Incessantly, without room for negotiation or moderation, go to the gym because you’re afraid of aging and won’t admit it. Stonewall and refuse help with your wife’s business, because money. Willfully misunderstand every single thing about what vacation is for. Not get your wife a card when she graduates from grad school because… and the worst part is I don’t even HAVE a “because” for that one. Maintain a secret mental ranked list of priorities that only includes maintenance and upkeep, and never people. On and on! I was this overconfident and obnoxious and overbearing jackass pretending to be a meek and polite spouse. I’d like to go back in time and punch myself in the face. Maybe that could assuage some of the shame.
Really, the only view I had at the beginning of our marriage that I hold now with more conviction is this: I think curiosity can lead us to compassion and empathy and thus away from fear. (Sure, I can make some syllogism-based argument that fear is what lead to my dumb ideas at the outset, but excuses are shitty. And excuses.) Anyway, curiosity leads to questions:
Is there a different way to do it?
What paths can we follow to help us understand why we are here?
Is it necessary to preserve our corporeal manifestations at all costs?
Do you succeed because you are lucky or good? (Spoiler: lucky.)
Must we hoard and save any and all spoils of participation in a non-optional capitalist game?
Or?
OR?
And: why? Why did I do it that way? Why do I want it that way? Why do I value this and not that? What SHOULD I value?
So you see: small questions, big questions. And who has the curiosity required to ask them? Who has the courage to think and rethink through them? That would be Mykala.
Oh, oh, before I forget, here’s another: how can we conceptualize life and meaning, and how does changing that concept also change the ranked hierarchy we use to prioritize our brief, brief time before we die? Kind of an important one. Clock’s ticking.
And so, Mykala stuck around while I ran away from, denied, intellectualized, avoided, what-abouted, basically committed every logical fallacy and relational subterfuge you can imagine to not confront my failures. To avoid questions like those above. I really hate that I failed at my job to be a good partner, failed at self-knowledge, failed at showing up, failed at being nice, but I have. I will try like hell not to, but I will again.
Frankly, I’m embarrassed at who I was. Don’t much like that guy. Which is not to say I’m super, like, fond of my current self. Lot of work to do here, to this day, right now. But I know I am absolutely graced by Mykala’s decision to stick around long enough to give me (more chances than I’ve deserved) to grow.
I am so lucky and so SO grateful to be married to someone who is, truly, the most clear-sighted person I have ever or will ever meet. To be partnered with someone who sees things as they are, not as I want or wish or hope they could be, but someone with the insight and intellect capable of transcending the myopic in favor of the magnificent, is grand enough. But to see the potency and beautiful audacity of what happens when they take that vision and bring the full force of such clarity into their art and business and endeavors, ones that combine philosophy and music and movement and environmentalism and beauty… all while producing works of timeless soul-salve, lifting up both artists and viewers, well, that is a breathtaking gift. And then, to see your partner focus her compassion and unconditional regard and love upon your only child? You can’t believe what wellsprings of grace and tirelessness and patience and wisdom she brings forth, but there is the result, right in front of you: a joyful, funny, creative, confident, articulate, thoughtful ten-year-old daughter. It is too much, I don’t deserve it, it is too beautiful.
Mykala, you have brought so much strength, joy, clarity, hope. That credit is yours alone.
And Mykala, I love you. And I’m sorry. And I love you.
Is someone afraid of change? Well, what can ever come to be without change? Or what is dearer or closer to the nature of the Whole than change? Can you yourself take your bath, if the wood that heats it is not changed? Can you be fed, unless what you eat changes? Can any other of the benefits of life be achieved without change? Do you not see then that for you to be changed is equal, and equally necessary to the nature of the Whole?
— Meditations VII. 18, trans. Hammond
Jonathan McIntosh at Pop Culture Detective took the works of Greta Gerwig (The Barbie Movie), bell hooks (The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love), and Allan Johnson (The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy) and combined them to produce an excellent, reference-level definition of patriarchy.
This is a potent combination: a voice describing patriarchy, while characters from well-known films show how it harms. For me, though, I feel the high quality writing is not getting all the way to my brain as I am also trying to simultaneously pay attention to the moving pictures. So I found it helpful to transcribe part of the video:
All you have to do is turn on the news or go to the movies and you’ll be inundated with endless stories centering men. Obviously, this doesn’t mean that women are never centered under patriarchy, but when they are, it’s often framed as a woman’s story, rather than a human story. “The Barbie Movie”, for example, is very specifically a story about the gendered experience of being a woman in society. We can contrast that with a movie like Oppenheimer, which is a story about becoming “death, the destroyer of worlds.” Yes, this “destroyer of worlds” happens to be a man, but notice, the story isn’t focused on the gendered experience of being a man in society. In fact, all of Christopher Nolan’s films center very important men, but none are about their gender. They’re billed as stories representative of the human experience writ large. Greta Gerwig’s movies, on the other hand, all center women, and are very explicitly about being a woman trying to navigate a man’s world.
That’s not a criticism of either director, by the way. It’s just a stark illustration of what “male-centered” means. In patriarchy, men are viewed as the default for “human” and therefore, male experiences are framed as an exploration of the human condition, while women’s experiences are, first and foremost, framed as being about women. Incidentally, this deep-seated cultural expectation of male centrality helps explain the waves of backlash against any entertainment that’s made for a general audience, but doesn’t center men, or masculinity.
Male identification is a little more complicated, but it is a critical piece of the patriarchal puzzle. It means that:
Core cultural ideas about what is considered good, desirable, preferable, or normal are culturally associated with how we think about men, manhood, and masculinity.
— Johnson, The Gender KnotThis is why professions that elevate qualities like toughness, competitiveness, strength, control, rationality, and invulnerability, are so highly valued and highly paid in our society. While occupations that revolve around qualities thought of as feminine, like compassion, sharing, and care-giving, tend to be systematically devalued and underfunded.
Those problems with patriarchy above are just some of the reasons I am a feminist. I believe feminism is extremely correct. If you read bell hooks’ Feminism is for Everybody and you disagree, I don’t want to talk to you. I just don’t.
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