07 June

Once you wanted revolution;

Now you're the institution.

How's it feel to be the man?

-Ben Folds, The Ascent of Stan

There are certain institutions which demand desecration. Henry the Eighth, Marriage. None of these, however, are inherently bad; it's we who have made them into something worthy of desecration who are bad. Henry the Eighth was once an agreeable little boy and there are many husbands who love their families.

I've always wanted to sing this at somebody, perhaps at myself. I haven't particularly wanted to be the Man-- although, according to Nicholas and several other anti-establishment Newspaper vagabonds, I have been-- and I haven't particularly wanted revolution against any particular institutions. Institutions are too vague to revolt against; if one is small, as I am, and one wishes to succeed, one mustn't revolt against an institution, but against one or two individuals who symbolize it. One must realize one's scale; rather than throwing one's body at an institution in hopes of having become a Brontosaurus, one must realize that one is a kitten, and use one's pointed teeth.

Eventually, however, one will realize that apart from teeth, one also has fur. One has vital organs. At this point one will long for the institution in its finer form-- one will grope blindly along its moss and grime hoping to find a clean and well-lit place to rest. And one will rest. One will give up the search one way or another-- it is inevitable. One will lie in the moss or the sun. This is, Steinbeck-style, simply another facet of the struggle between good and evil which has peopled our skies and our shoes and our poetry. We will lie somewhere, and where we lie will define us. We will become an itinerant monument to joy or to Wall Street or to despair or to meekness or to lesbianism. Humanity always wishes to symbolize, to the fullest extent, an entity other than itself. We all become an itinerant monument to something.

It is Hope, trite, incorrigible Hope, which keeps my fingers mossy, searching for the bright patch. This is why I will marry, and why I will Iron, and why I will allow some bright patch to father my children. I will not become an itinerant monument to Feminism. I will not desecrate Fatherhood, for a Brontosaurus is not needed to survive a mouse.