OKBender

Vernal Falls

Marriage. It changes and evolves. I've been meeting people lately who have marriages like mine, where the people involved love each other very much, and want to keep loving each other and stay close as a family, but accept that change is inevitable.

It's hard at first to admit you want change. But then, it's harder not to. You want more. You want to explore other people. You want it to be okay to be yourself. If you are lucky, your husband or your wife figures this out at the exact same moment you do. But usually, one person figures it out first, and the other one has to decide to trust, and come along, and figure out how to meet their own, changing needs, which means redefining the marriage. Or else the marriage ends. Which is hard on the family.

I'm seeing more and more marriages evolve into healthy family dynamics where everyone figures it out. It's so refreshing to see couples find ways to maintain their families without sacrificing too much of themselves. A family is an organism, aka a contiguous living system. If members of the couple are not feeding each other enough, or rather, finding ways to feed themselves, the whole family suffers. Things get twisted, and people behave in desperate ways, knowing something is wrong but not what.

I think of the old definition of marriage the way I think of nuclear families and suburbs. All bad ideas that once seemed good, and safe, but are actually isolating and scary, based on outdated, patriarchal systems of ownership. What are the benefits of marriage? Tax breaks, and social acceptance. Sometimes it means being able to stay in the country where you want to live. Security? Not really. Since 50% of marriages break up. Marriage provides the illusion of security, an invisible blanket that covers our deepest insecurity: that we will die alone and uncared for.

I am convinced that the best way to assure that I won't die alone and uncared for is by finding out how to take care of myself, by connecting deeply with people, and sharing my life with as many people as I can.

When a couple grows and changes, and the members embrace each other for who they really are, the family blossoms. And the whole social network surrounding the family blossoms along with it.

The Nest

Finding personal space within the family dynamic is difficult. A lifelong exercise. We all do it differently. Those of us who grew up in big, chaotic families might have a kind of strategy that means seeking isolation and order. When I was a kid, I made friends with girls who were only children. I liked going to their houses where it was quiet. The refrigerator was always full. No siblings to battle for food and attention, and where you could sit and have a meal that was prepared for you by a mom who had more time than your mom ever did.

My house growing up was never boring. There was always action. I had four brothers and a sister, so tons of cute boys around, more testosterone than estrogen. I gravitated towards the action, but also needed isolation to regulate my energy.

And that's exactly what I created as an adult: a life overflowing with action, tons of grown-up kids and their friends busy at the studio on Market Street. They need help with projects or to figure out their budgets or to listen to their arguments about how to fight gentrification or how to dismantle capitalism. Though Zoe and her friends balance it out, my home life is still dominated by male energy. I seek isolation from it at The Nest.

The Nest, where I sit right now, is so quiet. I'm listening to birds waking up. At night, I hear the train whistle blowing through West Berkeley, and that's all I hear. I don't need earplugs and a black-out eyemask to sleep. I am even weaning myself off sleeping pills.

Joe visits The Nest. The kids visit The Nest, especially when they need to do laundry. My lover visits The Nest. The Nest is neat, and spare, and has only my things. Things that were once buried in the family home in Bolinas, and before that in Portland, or San Francisco, or Los Angeles. The Nest is a place where my visitors come to regulate against their personal chaos, internal and external.

The Nest is by invitation only, but there is always room.

Mid-Market Update

Trash Night on Stevenson

When we moved into our studio space on Market Street there was one sweat shop in this building and a weird Chinese import storefront. And us. The rest of the building was empty, had been for years. Stevenson was (and still is) crack alley. Hustlers of all stripes lurked (and still lurk) in the no-man's land between Civic Center and Powell Street, our block. Lost tourists clutched (and still clutch) their Juicy Couture bags and briskly walked toward their hotels wondering how they suddenly found themselves off course, in front of our building.

All of that is still the same, except there are other people there too now. Young people with money who are from somewhere else. And they are serious about making more money than you or I have ever thought about making. Or maybe we have thought about it, but not like these kids. They are determined to actually get it, like, this year.

Over the last three years, Joe and I filled two floors of this building with artists who could otherwise not afford to live in the City. For a long while, it was just us and the sweat shop. But the building is not empty anymore. Now there is "Hash Map App Labs" taking up one whole floor. College dropouts camp out up there to learn how to build apps in three months.  On the now posh sixth floor is "Advisor" or The Company That Supports the Back End for Apps. More rich kids, a little older and even more serious, and also from somewhere else. These people are not artists.

Stevenson is still the best destination in the City for having a psychotic breakdown, finding crack or heroin, or getting your cocked sucked by someone who needs money to purchase crack or heroin. Even Stevenson is rapidly changing. Two buildings have been rehabbed already on our block, and it means one thing: more rich kids flooding in to push up the price of real estate.

We talk about gentrification around here. It's tough to be the first wave of gentrifiers, usually artists. You can develop a sense of indignation for being an early adopter who makes a shitty place livable, when in come the rich kids to buy 300 sq foot condos for half a million dollars. But what can you do? You are just a part of the problem.

Is it a problem? Depends on who you are.

We hope the crack fiends and trash pickers can help keep it real around here.