The crown has led us to the crux

Sounds almost HP7 Part 1ish, doesn't it?

We're not talking about he-who-shall-not-be-named's horcruxes though, we're talking about the crux of the matter brought to our attention in light of Prince William's recent proposal to Kate Middleton which is that "neither men nor women need to be married to have sex or companionship or professional success or respect or even children -- yet marriage remains revered and desired."

Thank you "What is Marriage Good For?" for this observation and thank you ACK Roomie for sending this article my way upon reading it yesterday morning and thinking of me.

Interestingly enough I've just re-read part of an old email I received from an ex-boyfriend I would describe as having been on "the marriage track" with at one point once upon a time. In it, he said:

"I don't need to get married for any financial reasons, emotional or "goal oriented" reasons. My dream isn't having kids and taking them to Europe or Disney..."

His second sentence is less relevant to the TIME article, I'm just compelled to include it in light of having referenced ideally wanting a boyfriend who loves traveling to those two locations equally as much as I do a couple posts ago when I was babbling on about my "must have" list... which I'll get back to before too much time goes by also, since I've yet to let you all know what it was that the Celebrity Relationship Expert Lady had to say about said list.

Sidenote: my bff zinged me last night when I cracked him up by saying him pointing out the warning signs of wrinkles on my forehead even when my face is at rest was the worst thing that had happened to me since my brother first shattered the bubble I was living in about 5 years ago by calling me out on having cellulite.

Terrible.

The zinger was the bff suggesting I share that exchange with my blog readers. All 3 of them. He has ADD and can't stand reading a blog that isn't linked to Broadwayworld or Playbill.com so I don't take offense to him also telling me I ought to try writing shorter posts. Especially because I know the 8 or so people that read these from time to time are more often seeking sufficient distraction from their desk-jobs and willing to lend me their ears or eyes as it were for the time it takes to read through these verbose rants I go on.

Anyway.

Back to the article, the timeliness of my receiving it within a day or so of posting about the fact that marriage gets brought up in my day to day life on average once every six hours and the various interesting topics it touches upon. On the whole it's rather fascinating to find ourselves facing the statistics it highlights, and I noted at the article's end that similarly to the way in which my married friend wrote off the "dating" done by our 20something friends these days, the claim is that mere "cohabitation has not yet proved to be a robust enough substitute for most Americans to believe they can build a family on it," which I take to mean, the prevalent metality is Go Big or Go Home. Commit and "close the door" as my dad would say, because even the monumental step of moving in together remains somewhat wishy washy.

And now, I have to go back to that crux part from the top of this to explain what I find myself perpetually circling around on this blog, in my mind, with each passing year which is the necessity of marriage or seeming lack thereof. Approaching 26 on the 27th, I feel like my poor ex did at 23, like I don't need to get married for any financial, emotional or goal oriented reasons. If anything marriage might serve as a hindrance to my pursuit of my dreams and career ambitions. At the same time, the further I get on my own, the higher I am educated (as this article and various statistics would have me believe) the better postured and positioned I'll wind up to enter into a successfull marriage in the long run (victoriously).

So that happy fact and Stephen Dubner (author of Freakonomics and Confession of a Hero Worshipper's) comment on the Writing Program in the School of Arts at Columbia University are two of the things that propelled me to request information on the application process to the MFA program I'm going to set my sights on for the Fall of 2012. And you heard it here first.

Louie Lips Update: She must have spent last night at her house in Queens. Lucky? for me she neglected to turn her alarm clock off, so through the wall our apartments share, I have heard her radio in its attempt to "wake her up" blasting tunes from the 80s for the past hour and 45 minutes. PLEASE COME HOME AND HIT SNOOZE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.