on marriage

had an afternoon of arguing with my cousin about a number of things. one of them started when she talked about all the shopping she had to do for bridesmaids dresses, ended up being about marriage as an institution (nothing to do with k or anything personal). i said i don't believe in marriage and we argued about it.

interesting things that she and my mom argued were that the vow of traditional marriage, this frankly outrageous promise, help smooth over the inevitably difficulties of being with somebody. it helps give one the endurance to deal with petty things to then have the bounty of a long term relationship because IT'S IN THE CONTRACT, whereas if you didn't have that "forever after" you'd be less tolerant and more liable to traumatically split up because you wouldnt have that obligation, so they say. logically following from this (though they didnt say this) would be that divorce should be harder, because that'd force people to work harder to work things out and reap the ultimate payoff of staying together. i'm not sure about that.

i mean, sure, down with traditional marriage, but i end up feeling kind of silly railing again marriage as a thing because, well, i'm down with long term relationships, and marriage is just a way of codifying them. i suppose the thing in my mind is when there're children. rather than a couple pledging to sort out their pettiness for decades on end and have somebody to fall back on, marriage or something like it should be all about kids. having kids, if you want to, should be this crazy serious undertaking occasioning all the preparation that weddings currently get. a commitment to not fuck up the life of a life you're creating is a far more substantive and important pledge than Let's Love Each Other Forever. THAT should be the big moment.

i dunno. why codify longterm romantic relationships? is there any harm to it? i mean, imagining a marriage excised of all the hideous bridesmaids-ing and gift registries etc, is there some evil cost associated with pledging formally to be with someone for a long time? one does it anyway telling someone they love them, love them forever. why not a plain old contract? perhaps i'm not thinking radically about this. i'm not questioning long term relationships, or monogamy or something. people in long term relationships breaking up sucks a lot, but that's all divorce rates are; nothing to freak out about maybe. this is super messy and dumb, disappointingly lacking in bold prescriptions. a reformed marriage'd probably be fine, i guess.

erin brockovitch and the prestige

erin's a simple feel good movie that's also got nice stuff about stay at home dads that i appreciated. there's just that the crux of the whole thing rests on this number, 335 million. there's a huge celebration over it. but it's actually a super pathetic number before you even count the 40 number that lawyers take out of it. it's a triumphant "true story" about the system working, but one wonders how much actors had to ham up that ecstasy at the end. i hope they did, anyway. the system is fucked, however blindingly julia roberts smiles.

i just watched the prestige which is neat. gotta give this plot a lot of leeway. if you don't think too much the metaphors are killer, but it rests an awful lot on an outrageous premise. but it's a spooky, enthralling premise. i also appreciate all the ugliness—dead birds, broken hands, drowning—the big ugly stakes. life's so much more interesting when things go wrong; i'm thinking again of people being blind in Unforgiven. and the image of all those hats in the field? that's haunting. if only the electricity didn't already look so dated. i was super ready to hate a christopher nolan movie, but this was pretty great.