tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86999961560518977612024-03-08T21:27:27.449-05:00Hipsters Are BoringKaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.comBlogger578125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-81559246261322012042024-02-17T22:43:00.006-05:002024-02-17T22:43:40.211-05:00Kith<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh34MhEW1gFLndJzbTUaCO6L1LduqaJzAp7L0cb2nfMXFD245aHR5biOmGba8xG7rCY26EbWA_AeBsnNZWNSLm7RG0dtkIC2EWl2Qdxet2wZa3CvgHFtwYG0RME8gt4TO1x5qV_uP0KD1FmVqAYlMQMmuG9tSg81za0i25Tni7V9v6ctNNOLbYyLPaN3lk/s729/I'm%20so%20glad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="729" data-original-width="563" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh34MhEW1gFLndJzbTUaCO6L1LduqaJzAp7L0cb2nfMXFD245aHR5biOmGba8xG7rCY26EbWA_AeBsnNZWNSLm7RG0dtkIC2EWl2Qdxet2wZa3CvgHFtwYG0RME8gt4TO1x5qV_uP0KD1FmVqAYlMQMmuG9tSg81za0i25Tni7V9v6ctNNOLbYyLPaN3lk/s320/I'm%20so%20glad.jpg" width="247" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>From <a href="https://www.peopleiveloved.com/collections/cards/products/im-so-glad-birthday">peopleiveloved.com</a></i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />If you had told me in my youth that the grand love affairs of my life would mostly be platonic, I would have been gravely disappointed, and that would have been wrong. I can honestly say that the people I've met in my 20s and 30s and now, in my earliest baby-steps of my 40s, are entirely amazing. </p><p>In 2024, the depth and breadth of my community astounds me. I have friends in their 70s and friends in their 20s. I have besties of many stripes, volunteer-colleagues and work mentors, mom-friends and pen pals. I'm not fooling myself that all these friendships are deep, but they are all <i>meaningful</i> to me. I cherish the warm relationships I have with people, and when we do get to know each other better—the family drama, the hiccupy marriages, the health worries, the rich wormy compost of the soul—I fucking love it. I love it! What a gift, to get to know each other in this way! </p><p>And this is post-pandemic, after a period of time when we could only be IRL with people with whom we shared an address. To be able to cultivate a garden of friends <i>during and after</i> such a life-weirding, world-altering, emotion-boggling event feels like a <i>goddamn triumph</i>, you know? I don't know if this is a small-town thing, where we're all just in the
soup together and unexpected relationships form out of sheer proximity. I
don't know if this is a product of being "on the scene" in several key Stratford spots (hello, <a href="https://revelstratford.ca/">Revel</a>, I love you). <a href="https://forge.medium.com/god-i-miss-chatting-with-the-barista-down-the-street-7d50273b6757" target="_blank">I know that having weak ties is important</a>; I also know that people like people who seem to like them (<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513823000211?via%3Dihub">especially more than others</a>). But I think we're in a moment where many people, not just me, are hungry for connections. Is it post-pandemic cabin fever? Being in our 30s and 40s? Are we all extroverts with social anxiety? Have we relaxed our definitions of what makes a person cool? (I know I, for one, find the folks with showing-up energy to be pretty sweet these days.) Or is the secret that we're all just kind of great and people like to fall in love with each other, even platonically? I don't know; it doesn't matter. We're here, together, now. <br /></p><p>I find this current friendship boom, borne of school community and small-town civic participation, so enriching. By walking my kiddo to and from school every day, I've made some incredibly meaningful friendships. Volunteering has led to some lighter connections, but it's also been great fun to get to know the baby boomers in my life. Not since university have I made this many connections in such a short period of time, and I don't even have to live in a dorm this time. </p><p>That's not to say that there's never been friendship misery. Some of my most tender scar tissue is relational: fallout from two terrible years in middle school of being bullied full-time, of being picked up and then dropped and then ostracized. In my early 30s, two Very Important Friendships went belly-up, and I'm still feeling those reverberations nearly a decade later. I feel like any joyful reflection on friendship has to include these caveats, because I've had these spectacular friendship blow-outs, and it feels dishonest to not acknowledge them. </p><p>And yet! And yet. The opportunity to learn from these friendship implosions has been deep <i>indeed</i>. The fact that those failed friendships in my 30s hurt so very damn much helped point me to the fact that I needed some actual therapy to help with the bullying aftermath, despite it being 25 years later. It woke me up to the fact that I feared those losses so immensely, and I fought against them so hard, and I was <i>fucking awful</i> while I was trying to "save" the friendships, and it was sort of no wonder that those friends bounced. Understanding that my behaviour came from a wound that could be examined with curiosity and tenderness, rather than shame and a frantic need to hide it under the guise of "being chill," has been very healing. (YES I KNOW THIS IS THERAPY-SPEAK, I did the therapy so I get to use the speak, right?!) Understanding this dynamic has changed my life, my relationship with myself. And if nothing else, I know, even if those old friends can't, that I'm not the same mangled human that I was 8-10 years ago. I can gently let myself off the hook for those disconnections.</p><p>What I like about <i>this</i> phase of friendship is that no one is trying to be cool anymore. We all like ourselves more than we did in our early adulthood. We all know ourselves a lot better. We're all a lot more relaxed. And most of have been through some shit that has softened our hearts and shown us the stakes of life—we all lose eventually, so why compete so hard? Maybe it's the latent co-operative board member in me, but collaboration is where it's at. I sometimes refer to proto-friendships, the phase where we obviously dig each other but we don't really <i>know</i> each other yet<i>,</i> as the "mutual admiration society," but I try to carry that energy into even the deepest and longest connections I have.</p><p>I love and admire the <i>hell</i> out of my friends. And they deserve that love and admiration: they're cool as anything, generous, thoughtful, funny, creative, wise, sweet and salty. Knowing them makes me want to operate on that level. We elevate each other, as all good relationships do. There's some part of me that knows I'm lucky to have so many amazing people in my life; there's another part, sweet and warm, that knows that I'm kind of amazing too. </p><p>The oldest definition of the word <i>kith</i>, as in "kith and kin," used to be one's country, one's land. Our physical locations, the places where we root and grow. Now, it means our friends, who the other side of the coin to our relatives. I like to imagine my kith as somehow both: the people among whom I have planted myself, and where I bloom. <br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-38479563332351504402024-01-30T19:13:00.005-05:002024-01-31T09:24:22.931-05:00Culture Daze<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUKuagQRZ01waUtkWJWPs6Lclr4RFB3G7NdWFYF1b5Y7kIP-KkHHn_Kpd52nIaPHCybL3S-J0J7lIU2Eh1NvG_A94e16LgyqZnULX_tRNTy-76ZQ0APHpf50A4p8-VDwaZ9WsPa3-lGcQdjwtU6wzlJravABBUs_w_OTtbU4M535Ct_lO-E0wD1CYjOqQ/s800/ba50f919defddc1a798d6d9699069289.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="554" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUKuagQRZ01waUtkWJWPs6Lclr4RFB3G7NdWFYF1b5Y7kIP-KkHHn_Kpd52nIaPHCybL3S-J0J7lIU2Eh1NvG_A94e16LgyqZnULX_tRNTy-76ZQ0APHpf50A4p8-VDwaZ9WsPa3-lGcQdjwtU6wzlJravABBUs_w_OTtbU4M535Ct_lO-E0wD1CYjOqQ/w278-h400/ba50f919defddc1a798d6d9699069289.jpg" width="278" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span class="tBJ dyH iFc sAJ O2T zDA IZT swG"><span class="richPinInformation" data-test-id="richPinInformation-description"><span>Chandni Chowk</span></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />I spend a lot of time thinking about the ways I'd like city life to be better. I'm not a daydreamer, although I do give the occasional interview in my shower, pretending that I'm running for mayor. However, I am fascinated by the ways we design our spaces and places to reflect our collective priorities, especially when it comes to cultural life. <br /><p></p><p>When we went to Iceland in 2012, I fell in love with the <a href="https://guidetoiceland.is/reykjavik-guide/street-art-in-reykjavik-icelandic-guide-to-urban-graffiti" target="_blank">street art in Reykjavik</a>. So many buildings are painted with huge murals of robots fighting or migrant caravans or cartoon suns, and it brought the city a sense of vibrant urbanism. Reykjavik is a small city in a small country—Iceland only has about 370,000 residents, and a third of them live in the capital city—but it was refreshing to see art, especially art associated with urban culture, prioritized in such a brash way. Toronto has graffiti and street art as well, but ours is <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/graffiti-alley-rush-lane">famously hidden down multiple back alleys</a>. Stratford, where I live now, has very few public art displays: we have one relatively recent mural in the downtown, and, yes, an alley that shared the history of the local music scene. It's big city-style art writ small. </p><p>I think you can tell a lot about a city based on what it prioritizes. Toronto is a place of commerce, of course, and most people live close to a corner store or a shopping corridor. On the other hand, the city's quilt of public parks and playgrounds allows residents access to green space that may not be exactly in their backyard, but is at least within walking distance. Stratford's core is oriented mostly to tourists, so we have a fair number of restaurants and boutiques, but you'd be hard-pressed to pick up a non-artisanal apple in the downtown. And a playground or a place to get lunch with your kids? Forget it.</p><p>This is one of the major bummers about living in Stratford. Private homeownership and large-ish property sizes are common, so most of us do have our own backyard. The idea of the commons—places where we can go and gather, for leisure and social time—seems relatively foreign, and the places that <i>do</i> exist are designed for consumption. Visiting the relentlessly hardscaped Market Square, with its plastic picnic tables and sidelined greenery, is my showcase point. It's used and useful as a gathering place, but it's not <i>beautiful</i> for its own sake. <br /></p><p>I'm not mad at Stratford for this, but I am frustrated. There are so many ways in which we could design shared spaces in order to maximize pleasure, beauty, and connection. The library desperately needs more square footage, and can't access it. Huge sections of town <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=17L_fIR_T2vvAXVYR1SJeqHxLqJ-4mmxA&ll=43.36909781733753%2C-80.98183524999999&z=13">lack a playground</a> within walking distance. The playgrounds we <i>do</i> have are often outdated and uninspired. The city's affordable housing is on the edge of town and looks much like affordable housing in most North American cities—that is, cheap and embarrassed by itself. Sure, there are gardens and a great-looking City Hall, but gardens are designed to be seen and not played with, and City Hall isn't a social site.</p><p>As a town, we've gotten a bit lazy. We've downloaded that beautiful streetscape onto private homeowners, creating an intense sense of keeping up with the Joneses and a singular "right" way to have a garden or a lawn. The culture that attracts tourists often comes from private organizations like Stratford Festival or the Chef's School, and while they are admittedly so much fun to attend, their priorities are driven by butts in seats. I'd love to see more art festivals like the <a href="https://lightsonstratford.ca/">Lights On event</a>: a month-long celebration of light sculptures in our darkest months. We tend to play it really safe, because we don't want to alienate anyone. It's a bit....boring. And it's sort of baffling, given how many current residents and visitors come from bigger cities with diverse cultural landscapes! Semi-weird culture is accessible—and accessed—all over. We don't need to be so staid in our approach. <br /></p><p>I think about what I had access to in The Big City and there's a sense of youthfulness, of experimentation. I once saw a light installation <a href="https://thebentway.ca/">in an underpass</a>! There are street festivals and community hubs, art outlets like the AGO and the Harbourfront Centre. Am I being unfair to Stratford, a place that has 1% of Toronto's population? Yeah, probably! But there <i>is</i> a sense of holistic lack, as though the city is only interested in me if I'm shopping at the boutiques or going to the theatre. My child, my need for fresh food, my desire for good housing, my yen for green spaces, are all much less <i>served</i> in Stratford's cultural core. <br /></p><p>Some of this can be chalked up to the relative dearth of young people in Stratford. Iceland's average age is a youthful 36; Stratford's is 44, and Toronto is right in the middle at 40. Youth is a time of experimentation, of creation and identity-building, and young people often leave Stratford because there's not much here for them. I did it myself—I waited tables here a few summers in my 20s, but when it came time to start a career in non-profits, Stratford just didn't have the job market I was looking for. It didn't have the space to <i>get weird</i> in a way that felt primally necessary at that age. I wanted to fall in love, ride my bike at midnight, get drunk on a Thursday, walk kilometres gossiping with friends, quit a job six weeks after I started it. I wanted to be a writer, an artist, a designer, a board member, a student. I wanted to kiss my friends on their rooftops and watch as the sun came up over Bloor Street. Toronto in the late 2000s and early 2010s was romantic, dumb, inspiring—a transitional moment between David Miller's utopianism and the embarrassment of Rob Ford, before the vast majority of people in my generation were squeezed out into the hinterlands. <br /></p><p>Stratford, on the other hand, is known for having the most <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/stratford-city-council-code-of-silence-awards-1.6355119">secretive city council in the country</a>. Make of that what you will. </p><p>It's been a fascinating return to the city over the last five years, navigating the ways Stratford feeds and stifles its own community. For example: despite being a flat and dense little town, there is precious little cycling scene here—the drivers are too aggressive and the roads are too chewed up. The cycling champions here are rich-dad weekend warriors. There are no regular-gal cyclist scenesters, the kind who would bike to brunch because driving is for suckers. There are two movie theatres in town: one is a <a href="https://www.thelittleprincecinema.com/" target="_blank">twee micro-cinema</a> that usually focuses on private events, and the other is a cinderblock octoplex that never met a blockbuster it didn't want to screen. Live theatre is here, and might even be accessible if you snag tickets on sale, but there's no fringe fest, no comedy scene, and no regular live music venue. </p><p>I'm not trying to dunk on Stratford, and believe me, by the time I left Toronto, I was ready to go. But it's funny to consider how "culture" manifests in different ways, on different scales. It's interesting to see whose perspectives and values get reflected, and how: are events free or paid? Are they family-focused or date-night material? What does "diversity" mean in a town that is mostly white, or where there are twice as many seniors as there are kids? </p><p>Whose voices get heard when we talk about this?<br /></p><p>We all want to live in a place that seems to want us back, right? <br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-43297764476519141322023-12-31T16:45:00.001-05:002023-12-31T16:51:47.141-05:00Things That Happened in 2023<p><b> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div></b></p><p><b>January</b>: Oh man, 2023 started off with a bang! I got my G2 driving license and basically spent the next few weeks with the goofiest grin on my face—like, <i>so</i> proud of myself—and THEN I had a fibroid surgery that I'd been sort of on the fence about/dreading for the better part of a year, and it went....totally fine! It was totally fine. Starting the year with two things I'd been dreading and then aced was a huge boost! Noah turned seven and I finished my zine about knitting, so those were also pretty great things! </p><p><b>February</b>: Former Toronto Mayor and Noted Old Person John Tory resigned in a sex scandal! Responses ranged from Yuck to LOL, which is correct. We started watching <i>Bluey</i> on Disney+ and everyone fell in love with the Heelers. Nothing much happened, really: there was some weather and we went out with friends, but overall, it was February so we were all just trying to survive. </p><p><b>March</b>: March break, again, which was another trip to Toronto. In 2022, we went to a hotel and it was very Covid-fraught; this time, we went to my in-law's place and bummed around with friend and rock-climbed and it was much more chill. I did March Madness on the theme of theme of Strong Female Leads and it was sort of...meh? Like, there are definitely a lot of movies that I love with strong female characters, but it felt kind of flat to focus on them exclusively. Anyhoo! Noah also joined the garden club at school, so that was pretty cute!<br></p><p><b>April</b>: Halfway through the month, I woke up with the fastest heartbeat I'd ever had in my entire life. I went and sat on the toilet—still half-asleep—and by the time I sort of realized what was happening, it was probably topping 200 beats a minute. To this day, and I write this in December, I don't know what that was or why it happened. Was it POTS? Menopause? High blood pressure? Allergic reaction? Stress? Anemia? Dehydration? Panic attacks? Sleep apnea? I don't know. I never found out. It kept happening for weeks. It was so stressful. I helped organize an Earth Day party and I went to Trashion Week for the first time ever, and both were just really nice moments of affirming community and my place in it. I've now lived in Stratford for five years and it's been exactly the right place to participate in civic life on a scale that feels meaningful—I sit on boards and volunteer and know my kid's principal and many of my neighbours. It's so nice to be embedded somewhere; technically, I know this feeling is possible anywhere, but it has manifested the most in co-op, in my 20s, and here in Stratford, in my 30s. </p><p><b>May</b>: I long-term borrowed my parent's very very old Prius and started driving for real this month. We started with a trip to the Beaver Valley in which the car broke down and it was very annoying (but ultimately totally fine). There was also Mother's Day and organizing Mike's 40th birthday party; I spent his actual birthday evening in the hospital because my heart rate would not calm down, and it turns out I was pretty dehydrated! Mostly it was just so nice to welcome the sun back in a meaningful way, to get some independence, and to gear up for the summer.</p><p><b>June</b>: Mike's 40th birthday party, which was a backyard shindig and well-attended by many people who love him. Then: The Smoke. Remember when the air was absolutely disgusting with wildfire smoke from coast to coast? And the kids were encouraged to stay indoors during recess, and New York looked like <i>Blade Runner 2049</i>? It's moments like this when it's like, oh, man, right: we are living on a planet in great crisis, and it's so hard to navigate the grief of feeling like our Earth Mother is dying of a disease we gave her ourselves, and that we could do something about it (only the "we" in that sentence is concentrated to a few dozen members of the human race, and I'm not in that club). On the summer solstice, I walked a labyrinth and meditated on all the ways my body felt connected to the earth. </p><p><b>July</b>: Summer holidays! Trips to Toronto! Weddings! Landlord troubles! Grandma health concerns! Multi-day internet outages! Neighbour issues! Man, this was a month of high highs and very low lows. For a minute, I was convinced we were going to be evicted because we hadn't mulched our garden beds. It was stressful as <i>hell</i>, y'all. On the plus side, the Barbie movie came out and that was a <i>fantastic</i> moment for feminist memes and the Indigo Girls. <br></p><p><b>August</b>: We spent two weeks at the cottage and that was really nice. Noah went to the hippie Christian day camp of my own youth; Mike and I went out on a date and ate Mexican food. I continued my months-long stretch of waking up in the middle of the night. When we got back home, Noah and I spent two weeks going to the library every day and helped build a city of recycled materials. August sort of felt like a hangover from the mayhem of July, to be honest. </p><p><b>September</b>: September is the dividing line in the "before" and "after" of 2023. In September, I got some explosive news about my relationship. And that was the end of it. It was the end of nine years of marriage, of five years of trying since the last explosion, it was the end of wanting to keep trying. I was shocked and appalled and anxious and sick about it. And I was also relieved, because now, finally, I could stop holding on to something that wasn't working. In the first few weeks, I would rage out or cry my eyes out—a remix of "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" had me sobbing for an hour—but my anxiety damped down and my heart stopped racing so much. I started sleeping through the night again. Marriage is hard work, but I think we made it harder than it had to be. I'm being deliberately vague because I don't want to ruin his life, or mine, but I'm not ashamed of what happened here. I hope we both get to move on from this. This was survivable. I am surviving. </p><p><b>October</b>: Okay, all <i>that</i> being said, Mike didn't move out until nearly the end of November, and the next couple months were not easy. I slept in my office, or he slept in the attic. I took a whirlwind trip to Toronto and told many friends about what had happened. Noah's anxiety started ramping up, as if mine was being transferred to him, and it was absolutely terrible to watch. October was a holding month, a month where I just counted the days until something would be different. My grandma passed away and it felt sad to say goodbye to the last of her generation. She was such a beautiful, complicated, interesting woman—just like my mom, just like me, although we each have totally different versions of beautiful and complicated. <br></p><p><b>November</b>: Mike finally moved out after nine weeks of post-explosion co-habitation and I was sort of dreading being on my own, but I came to neutrality on it in fairly short order: I watched a lot of old <i>Whose Line Is It Anyways?</i> and ate at weird times, and my heart didn't explode and I even found myself enjoying it sometimes. Then I turned 40! I planned a birthday party, but two days before, I tested
positive for Covid (!!), so I had to call it off. What a freaking
bummer. Anyway, I had been sort of mildly convincing myself that I would die before my
40th birthday (#darkthoughts) so the fact that I didn't was GREAT. <br></p><p><b>December</b>: Noah's separation/general anxiety was pretty debilitating and it was a ton of work to get him to school every morning. I got kind of bogged down in work things and will have to get caught up before everybody comes back online in early January. I hosted a Solstice party and I spent my first Christmas away from my kiddo. The intensity of single parenting means I need to find a way to savour our breaks, because I need them—I <i>need</i> them, and I enjoy them—and I also miss my kid when we're apart. I had a 24-hour trip to Toronto to see old co-op friends and fall in love with the city again. I tried some dating apps and quickly found out that that scene is <i>wild</i>—like, are the men okay?—and 2024 will probably bring some romantic mishaps, or maybe total radio silence on that front, or maybe new love?? Who even knows, because the idea of going on a date with someone right now makes me want to barf. <br></p><p>In a nutshell, 2023 had a lot going on! Like, a <i>lot</i>. Friends showed up in a lot of amazing ways, from couches to crash on to weddings and weekend hangs to just letting me cry in their backyards while our kids played together. I loved being in Stratford and the roots that I've been slowing growing here seem real and true. I got to see Toronto friends many times, and that was nice. I read books and magazines, I walked on the beach, I worried about things that didn't happen and things that did. 2023 felt like a watershed year—the end of my marriage, milestone birthday, important deaths, important friendships—but it also felt like a compilation of moments where I felt really proud of myself, or like I was growing in a direction I liked. I have no idea what 2024 will bring. I hope it's good! <br></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-57897083447778477822023-11-30T11:25:00.003-05:002023-11-30T11:29:18.429-05:00My Thirties: A Recap Post<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div><p></p><p>1: marriage<br>1: child<br>1: eviction<br>1: global pandemic<br>1: death of my brother-in-law<br>1: separation<br>1: drivers license acquired<br>1: decade of a whole life<br></p><p>2: house fires (one serious, one not-very-serious)<br>2: boards served on<br>2: people in my immediate family who survived cancer<br>2: surgeries<br>2: original songs composed for my sweet baby<br>2: bouts of COVID<br></p><p>3: grandparents passing<br>3: friendship implosions</p><p>4: main work clients, whom I like all very much</p><p>5: moves<br>5: parent-teacher meetings </p><p>6: attempts to change my diet, to ever-less-meaningful results<br></p><p>7: amazing new friendships launched or previous friendships deepened<br>7: Baby Dance Parties planned, playlisted, and executed<br></p><p>10: sweaters knit (two for my kiddo, eight for me)<br>10: seasons of Drag Race watched <br></p><p>30+: times listening through the Harry Potter audiobooks as I try to go back to sleep in the night <br></p><p>45+: Dungeons and Dragons games</p><p>500+: dollars spent annually thrifting </p><p>several: hobbies that were considered/provided for and then abandoned (I <i>will</i> do a punch-needle craft...one day), mental health crises, cherished babies made by other people, game nights with people I love<br></p><p>many: hours spent in the bathtub, nighttime wake-ups, viewings of <i>Back to the Future</i>, fights with my spouse, laughs shared with a barista, hours spent volunteering, issues of the <i>New Yorker</i> that remain partially read, times to put my toes in the water at the beach, house parties, dance breaks, hours on the phone with my mom and sister, visits with my dad<br></p><p>uncounted: hours spent scrolling on my phone, hours spent snuggling with my child in the dark, memes exchanged with friends, Coke Zeros consumed, trips to the grocery store, hours spent worrying, hours spent laughing <br></p><p>unknowable: deep breaths taken in moments of agonizing anxiety, cockroaches killed in our worst home, recitations of <i>Where the Wild Things Are</i>, tidbits of gossip shared (both with and about me), pints of raspberries purchased, ways I have changed for good and for not-so-good, stabs of worry about some bodily ailment, teas purchased in lovely coffee shops and drank in the company of friendly strangers <br></p><p>some: regrets</p><p>more: truths uncovered, moments of joy, accomplishments I'm proud of, relationships I cherish, family time I wouldn't trade for the world, things I look back on with fondness because I knew that even though they didn't work out forever, they were good in the moment and the moment is all we really get, hopes for the future, interest to see where the next decade will go. <br></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-57237357306628088002023-10-27T21:59:00.002-04:002023-10-28T10:15:46.763-04:00Fall Horrorspokes<p><b></b></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHm3dSh7pdf2uOS77c6Tb_0MpE_2KhPSnIKzIHab-VEID5jd50-2yQGhlJzOSumz1S1MTd7Rx33GIiS51xo8yHGJkuaw4B-h_-PNy2hkJB-l0Iuo2VdBnQdmh1v5lNOyiRNJs2mqtqRNKqSQmhxVqbdcQVeRn8M1o1Ediyr0zTZhBtJyTs4lfdOfnkOq4/s846/Maggie%20Carr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="846" data-original-width="564" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHm3dSh7pdf2uOS77c6Tb_0MpE_2KhPSnIKzIHab-VEID5jd50-2yQGhlJzOSumz1S1MTd7Rx33GIiS51xo8yHGJkuaw4B-h_-PNy2hkJB-l0Iuo2VdBnQdmh1v5lNOyiRNJs2mqtqRNKqSQmhxVqbdcQVeRn8M1o1Ediyr0zTZhBtJyTs4lfdOfnkOq4/s320/Maggie%20Carr.jpg" width="213"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image by <a href="https://www.maggielcarr.com/" target="_blank">Maggie Carr</a><br></td></tr></tbody></table><b><br>Aries</b>: I love marigolds. I love anemones. I love flowers that don't really get into the swing of things until the equinox, at least. The flowers that are still showing off when the first snow flies. I love the crocuses and the lilac bushes and the forsythia, of course: the harbingers of spring. Everyone loves those gals, the first ones to the show. But I love the ones that linger, the flowers that are keeping the party alive as the candles burn low. <p></p><p><b>Taurus</b>: I'm not very good at writing short stories. I <i>want</i> to be—it's a literary form I admire—but they typically turn out to be glorified character studies, and/or meandering, plotless little adventures. When I was in high school, a well-written short story was the <i>ne plus ultra</i>, proof that you were one of the writerly types, but even then, I turned in character sketches and poetry and free-form dialog and essays. And listen, babes: I <i>can</i> write. But what does it say about me that the things I'm good at are never quite as appealing as the things I don't do perfectly? <br></p><p><b>Gemini</b>: Grief is weird. My grandma died and I'm trying to figure out how to mourn her. I want to put on nice lipstick and wander around Walmart, like she would have. I want to go to bed for three days. I want to scream into a mattress. It's not just my grandma. I didn't grow a garden this summer. I didn't knit a shawl this fall. I don't know what my life will be like in a year—does anyone?—and I grieve the things and people I will lose along the way. <br></p><p><b>Cancer</b>: You know what I'm curious about? What it would like to be <i>rooted</i>. I'm talking ninth-generation whatever-whatever, the family farm of a dozen generations, the family business, the town with the streets named after my ancestors. Do you think that would be stifling? Would there be pressure to stay, to remain in that place? Or do you think it would be sweet, to have your roots networked so deeply into the soil? Would your memories be your own, or would it be like dreaming? <br></p><p><b>Leo</b>: Doesn't there seem like there's something kind of wrong with Justin Timberlake? I feel like former boy band members should be forcibly retired at the age of 25; just put those dudes on a horse ranch in Oaxaca and make them do therapy, you know? And I know in early post-NSYNC days, he was hailed as the second coming of blue-eyed soul, a spiritual successor to MJ but without the ick factor. But now! As outlined in Britney Spears's new memoir! We have confirmed ick factor! Anyway, I am looking forward to JT's display of contrition and/or non-apology; either way, he'll continue to act like a dillhole. File this guy under "ugh, men."<br></p><p><b>Virgo</b>: You are a corgi in the sunshine, an illustration of a frog wearing a hat, a mouse wearing figure skates. You are a platter of cheese and meat and handmade (slightly lumpy) crackers. You are grapes on the vine, sun on the water, the smell of campfire at sundown. You are handmade socks and homemade stew. You are little kids burying their feet at the beach. You and I are both <a href="https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/litany-7640" target="_blank">Billy Collins poems</a>. You are quilts and cotton sheets. You are a lovely gift to the world. </p><p><b>Libra</b>: I recently set an app timed on Instagram, because I was spending hours—literal hours—every day, scrolling and seeking that sweet dopamine hit. On the first day, I hit the time by dinner time, and it was like, "Oop, see you tomorrow!" The next day, I was much more judicious with my time, and I did get it under two hours, my daily maximum limit. I still check it a dozen times a day; it is my favourite app for messaging, because I am old and weird. But I no longer habitually settle in for a nice long trawl, which feels like a victory. Managing my own brain chemistry can be weird and hard; I'm grateful for the posts that make me laugh and cry, and I'm grateful for the timer that means I don't do it all day. <br></p><p><b>Scorpio</b>: It's nine PM, it feels like midnight, and I'm ready to crawl into bed. Autumn is hard, buddies. It's not all Halloween dance parties and pumpkin spice lattés: we have to accept that we are seasonal creature and we are slowing down. On average, we get 30 more minutes of REM sleep each of these dark nights: a dreamer's paradise. And even in this short days, we rise with the sunrise and stand under the October sun, a glorious golden gift that is one last hurrah before winter's cold light. Enjoy these short days; sleep the long nights; revive yourself when the time is right. <br></p><p><b>Sagittarius</b>: We Sags have a reputation for being flighty monsters who don't care about anyone's feelings, but in reality, each of my Sagittarian friends (with the exception of, ahem, myself) is the hardest-working bitch I know. They're constantly producing 'zines and scuba diving, making radio shows and taking dance lessons. They are the definition of life-long learners. Sit down, Archers! I am of your number and I'm tired just watching your Instagram stories. In reality, I think it's less that we <i>don't care about anyone's feelings</i>, and more that we are comfortable being weird in a world that doesn't like that. So, you know: carry on! <br></p><p><b>Capricorn</b>: I love a low-capacity meal. The first 18 months of my son's life, we ate bagged salad with chicken strips and oven fries about once a week, and I think of that meal with great fondness. Sometimes I feel guilty for how much I love boxed mac and cheese and frozen dumplings, but I think God gave us those things because she wants us to be happy. As we go into a low-capacity season, please remember that we have tools like bagged salad and freezer lasagna that lighten the load; eat them with abandon, my loves. <br></p><p><b>Aquarius</b>: My favourite colour is a dusky red, a brown-coral that a friend once told me was called "Nantucket Red," and isn't that just the most evocative colour name you can imagine? My kiddo's favourite colour is blue, just blue: not a fancy sky-blue or aquamarine or teal or navy, but the blue of school binders and the eight-pack of Crayola crayons. My mom's favourite colour is teal, or maybe cyan, but the colour of a robin's egg, especially when she can match it with red. When I walk into a room she's decorated, I look for the teal, and I usually find it. We leave ourselves everywhere, don't we? <br></p><p><b>Pisces</b>: If you could design a ritual, what would it be? I think you'd plan something Druidic, an event fit for Stonehenge. But I <i>also</i> suspect that you might be the kind of person who would secretly baptize your sister in the river when you were both kids. Where do you find your sacraments—in the holy water, or in the edges with the cattail, every part of which is edible? In the church, or in the light streaming through the windows on a February day? In a wedding ceremony, or in falling asleep to the sound of your lover's breath? Nothing can keep us from the holiness of everyday life. We don't need Stonehenge to make mystery and wonder. <br></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-10639426620191669092023-09-17T22:19:00.004-04:002023-09-17T22:19:52.550-04:00It's Called Fashion, Look It Up<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw5hDBkevVI01gxIA6SrSSU7eoGcOubrS55x3DeH8rAwzuP5vgCfeJxhPD4ZlVqgg6Uge3XcdeLQ4J9UX88fc1wdh6DZ0OSfcW-zGDwqOj1ZfSx0MpPMpbIyGjRqag-sTRkf73Rs_RpjWDWoaF-vfwLWw9HS12yZpt9e-AjURIbN_d1XT31jvAWLjz048/s564/45d2a4be059d22d6c664870b1cbd9dbc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="564" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw5hDBkevVI01gxIA6SrSSU7eoGcOubrS55x3DeH8rAwzuP5vgCfeJxhPD4ZlVqgg6Uge3XcdeLQ4J9UX88fc1wdh6DZ0OSfcW-zGDwqOj1ZfSx0MpPMpbIyGjRqag-sTRkf73Rs_RpjWDWoaF-vfwLWw9HS12yZpt9e-AjURIbN_d1XT31jvAWLjz048/s320/45d2a4be059d22d6c664870b1cbd9dbc.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Okay, it's time for our semi-annual fashion round-up! Did you know that all the <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2023/08/how-to-dress-like-a-scandinavian-fashion-girlie-this-season.html">Copenhagen Fashion Week girlies</a> were wearing flip-flops this summer? And tiny neckerchiefs? And that Pharrel Williams succeeded Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton, and his 2024 collection seemed pick up both <a href="https://www.reuters.com/pictures/pharrell-williams-stages-louis-vuitton-debut-paris-2023-06-21/UG6IHUSEWRLZREFYG36MFPQS3M/">ska and cigarette packaging</a> as reference points? And <a href="https://www.glamour.com/story/fall-fashion-trends-2023">Elle has declared fall 2023</a> the season of the <i>sweater</i>, if you can imagine a trend so bold? And also the colour red? And the romantic goth? And that our tops will be <a href="https://www.instyle.com/2023-fall-fashion-trends-7568601">both</a> off the shoulder and feature a plunging neckline? Somehow?? <br /><p></p><p>Phew, okay, sorry, I had to get that all out of my system. It's not that I no longer care about fashion—I do, very much—it's just that the concept of "fashion" has become so nebulous and theoretical as to be basically meaningless. </p><p>For context, I grew up in a time when there were maybe a dozen ascendant fashion houses—Chanel, YSL, Ralph Lauren, Versace, and Calvin Klein come to mind—and each year, the major fashion magazines would get together and proclaim plaid to be in and menswear to be out, or hemlines were up, or down, or some other variation on some other theme. But you could pick up a handful of September issues and be like, "ah, a trend." The boutiques and department stores would then offer some passable facsimile of the runway version, and you would buy it and be fashionable. It was simple! <br /></p><p>But all of this took place well before fast fashion like H&M or TopShop; before the rise of streetstyle blogs; before the diversification (and appropriation) of fashion houses to allow hip-hop influences; before the global fashion markets exploded; before the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/06/magazine/fashion-sweatpants.html">accelerating fashion cycle</a> made seasonality defunct, and before the pandemic and <a href="https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/19118/1/everyones-got-normcore-totally-wrong-say-its-inventors">normcore and Acting Basic</a>. <br /></p><p>Now, what we're left with, is a fuzzy squint of fashion. Everyone wears everything, all the time. There seems to still be trends—skinny jeans are out, wide-leg pants are back, and flares are in limbo, cowboy boots are everywhere—but the fashion trend and/or designer has been dethroned. And we are left to sort through the pieces, going, <i>maybe a red boot? Could that be a thing? </i><br /></p><p>The 90s is our fashion nostalgia moment right now,
but I truly believe everyone is getting it wrong. Sure, some of us were wearing flannels and ripped jeans and were cool; when <i>I</i> was twelve, I literally wore a navy-blue blazer to the first day of grade six, and I do <i>not</i> see that being replicated anywhere (thank god) (this summer, all the cool teens wore sweatshorts with crop-tops and
crocs; everyone looked like a tall sexy toddler and it was fucking <i>weird)</i>. I remember when highwaisted straight-leg midwash jeans and an
oversized Bart Simpson t-shirt were the only option for either gender, and I do not remember it fondly. </p><p>The best I ever looked was probably 2003-2012, which is when the Marc Jacobs version of the 1980s was everywhere—the era of the scene kid, the hipster for which this very blog is named! I remember a lot of denim miniskirts and Converse shoes, little sundresses, and a lot of American Apparel. Am I conflating this fashion cycle with the hotness of my 20s in general? Maybe, yeah! But it was also a time before leggings were a going-out pant. The standards were different! <br /></p><p>Now I'm in my last year of my 30s, and I've spent most of the last decade in a post-partum body: chubbier, fatigued, a bit paunchy. It's a body type that might have been <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Paul_Rubens">fashionable in 17th century</a>; today, when we're steeped in <a href="https://hipstersareboring.blogspot.com/2023/04/one-does-not-simply-walk-into-wellness.html">wellness culture</a> and the legging is, indeed, a going-out pant, it's less so. I find myself bobbing between not wanting to ever be perceived, and
wanting to be the hottest bitch at the school pick-up. When my body isn't willowy or cute, I still give it a go through fashion. </p><p>And look, I am not one of those innately stylish people. I own some truly spectacular garments, including a
sequinned bomber jacket and a refrigeration suit. I keep wearing blue
blouses and black tank tops and navy shorts. <i>Yawn</i>. I have friends of all ages, sizes, and income levels who can assemble A
Lewk without breaking a sweat. They can pop on a bracelet, shrug on a
cardigan, slip into the right shoes, and they look great! I am missing
some key styling component, like bravery or a sense of adventure, and so
I need inspiration. I need trends, stories, personas. I need to be able to look at someone else and be like, "I'm going to steal that for me." I know that is basic fashion, in all senses of the word, but I'm just being honest. </p><p>Here is my very short list of things I'm turning to for fashion
inspiration: solarpunk; Appalachian hellbillies (male variant); my
friends Emily and Kat, who always look fucking cool; <a href="https://www.instagram.com/vyana.novus/">Ojai visual artists</a>; my <a href="https://theskichalet.com/cdn/shop/products/25455_CBAP.jpg?v=1603141131">Patagonia fleece</a>,
which I describe as "spendy ski bum." The vibe I want to cultivate is
"the chillest exchange student at IKEA" or "someone who has read the Dr Bronner's
bottle" or "the aging Canadian equivalent of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/feb/08/imillaskate-an-indigenous-bolivian-skateboard-collective-photo-essay">skateboarding Bolivian girls</a>" or "could conceivably do some light homesteading, on a whim" or "Arconia resident (non-murdered variant)" or "can do a downward dog, no problem." </p><p>The current vibe I give off with most of my clothes is "This person is a mom," and that is so
BORING. If nothing matters and there is no trend cycle, then theoretically, anything I wear could be perfect. Why doesn't it feel like that? I'm a try-hard (see: that navy blazer), and fashion is supposed to be effortless and personal. </p><p>Am I telling on myself when I say it's hard right now? That I don't feel cool? I feel like I missed the memo about which windbreaker jackets are okay and which ones are actually frumpy. I wear puffy vests. I don't look good in a boilersuit. I am not the hottest bitch at school pick-up. But I want to be! I want to be.</p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-50239225563547987272023-08-22T09:46:00.003-04:002023-08-22T09:46:46.940-04:00Blop Smulture <p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn3DEE02oxAjafNXgEteDvErc4MZVJ4cK2xFVblquBl0Ikpt-judNJlNwY8xVZaaQevPx9rHS42_i2CpHF3by8Z76M2eBRkQZySYGTrgC9Xe8JkA1zFyQY_kfQx42HfUlS445F29QeZXQxdo0PSPu-hNBfdZ0crl6I_bX4XPJukcFvG0Wn-7Zob5uQ5ig/s564/Pedro%20Dimitriou.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="564" data-original-width="564" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn3DEE02oxAjafNXgEteDvErc4MZVJ4cK2xFVblquBl0Ikpt-judNJlNwY8xVZaaQevPx9rHS42_i2CpHF3by8Z76M2eBRkQZySYGTrgC9Xe8JkA1zFyQY_kfQx42HfUlS445F29QeZXQxdo0PSPu-hNBfdZ0crl6I_bX4XPJukcFvG0Wn-7Zob5uQ5ig/s320/Pedro%20Dimitriou.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image by Pedro Dimitriou<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />I feel like I've stepped out of the pop culture loop lately, and as a result, I have a weird form of writer's block. When I started this blog, I was tuned in across a lot of different channels—TV shows and movies, municipal politics in a major city, cycling, fashion, trendy books, and just the culture cycle in general. And I would write about them! Early blog posts were often critiquing other people's creative work (my very first post was about Chuck Klosterman, which, I mean, <a href="https://hipstersareboring.blogspot.com/2009/03/chuck-klosterman-is-full-of-shit.html">okay</a>). If they weren't critiques, they were response pieces—also known as a Hot Take—and then, at the bottom of the pile, musings. Later, when real things started to happen in my life, I added actual emotions to the mix, but I still write a lot about things like the <a href="https://hipstersareboring.blogspot.com/2022/05/for-love-of-good-magazine.html">perfect magazine</a> and Wes Anderson movies. <br /></p><p>But, as I've gotten older, mom-ier, and just sort of less cool in general (and less invested in being cool overall), I'm paying very little attention to things like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé and the gotta-see-it TV shows; unwillingly, I give more to the ever-more depressing news cycle that comes from living on a burning planet and with an actual doofus as our provincial premier. I look at a lot of memes about cartoon toads living under illustrated mushrooms, and I feel like many of my friends do, too.</p><p>As a result, I feel very uncool when media topics arise. No, I have not heard that album—my latest "new" album is Portugal. The Man's <i>Woodstock</i> CD, which is from 2018 and which played on a loop in my car for three months. My binge-y shows are wholesome to the point of parody; I love the try-hard teachers of <i>Abbott Elementary</i> and the cartoon dogs from <i>Bluey</i>. I saw <i>Barbie</i>, of course, and I loved it, of course, but prior to that, I hadn't seen a grown-up non-Marvel movie in theatres since 2021's <i>C'mon C'mon....</i>which was about kids. I don't listen to podcasts unless they're about <i>Harry Potter</i>. I don't subscribe to any Substacks. I don't watch YouTube like it's TV; I barely watch TV, period. </p><p>This is not a humblebrag or a weird flex. When people ask "What are you watching?" these days, we generally all start with <i>Bluey</i>, but then we're expected to be able to talk about <i>Succession</i> or <i>The Idol</i> or <i>Wednesday</i> or <i>The Last of Us</i>. And I just...cannot? I watch bake shows and <a href="https://aliceoseman.com/heartstopper/netflix-series/">gay-teen shows</a>, and that's about it. Part of it is that TV is so fractured anyway—I don't have some of the key platforms, and the buzz that surrounds each individual show is often just as tailored to its viewing audience as any algorithm. I don't think there's been a truly culture-wide show since <i>Game of Thrones</i> wrapped up, and even then, not everybody watched it. And I'm just as likely to fall into a one-hour phone-scroll as I am to turn on a show; why watch one episode when I can watch sixty little reels, as a snack? </p><p>I <i>am</i> reading a lot these days, which is nice. I'm not on BookTok, but I suspect most of the discourse over there is about erotica starring various supernatural creatures, so, you know: pass. I did a monster Michael Chabon reading project, and then read a bunch of female authors to balance the scales; right now, I'm very into <a href="https://www.otherscribbles.com/">Becky Chambers</a>, who writes affirming sci-fi and generally gives me something to think about. But unless someone picks it for book club, I'm just not reading the big blockbuster books of the day either. </p><p>So there's 600 words about the things I'm not following, the stuff I'm not watching or reading. And I don't know—I'm not 23 any more, which is how old I was when I started writing in this little internet corner, all full of opinions and ready share. My priorities, my sense of self, have shifted dramatically. I just have less time; I have more real life to live (and recover from). I feel less voracious in my consumption.<br /></p><p>When I was young, it felt essential to be so tuned in to the world. It was a process of creating myself: I like this, I don't like that. I found that my besties were similarly minded. We didn't have to love the same stuff, but the overall patterns were key—readers finding readers, concert-goers hanging out with other concert-goers.</p><p>Now, maybe that work is done, or less vital or urgent. Maybe I'm just more tired, or overwhelmed by the sheer amount of options to keep up with. Maybe I am, despite everything, just really boring. </p><p>When I do consume, I want it to be stuff that reflects my needs and values. I gravitate towards wholesome TV—no murders (okay, <i>Only Murders In the Building</i> is an important exception), not a lot of violence, and preferably, the characters seem to like each other. I dislike reality shows that hinge on betrayal or that are platforms for billionaires (paging the Kardashians); I love the ones where people get to show off their cool art. I like a queer media experience, especially when it doesn't treat being gay as leading to inevitable punishment; I love that the gay-teen stories of today often choose joy, not fear, as their central theme. I have a long list of "kid's TV" that I find, not only palatable, but look forward to watching. So much of the last few years has been unpredictable, strange, unsettling and bad; is it so weird that I want my media to, you know, not be that? </p><p>But pity me at cocktail parties, because I literally have no fun fan theories, no undiscovered gems, no recommendations, no secret treasures. I'm not an expert on any genre, I don't have a password to a streaming site that I can share, I routinely quit shows that are boring or turn me off, and I am physically incapable of taking a recommendation, even if I know I will love it. </p><p>So what am I going to write about now? <br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-6010478364166184722023-07-25T16:01:00.000-04:002023-07-25T16:01:10.579-04:00The Michael Chabon Re-Read Project<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdstxGutBWc0Hu7sVN918nO1mcUhMiGPkbTRHR4kDTDKKF7wiEiZhL5fTcDkeoQhkSbew7BiSr4qqTPHRVoVGpPquZZDlmaXTVu-XwGd7ZJPcOtC1tVDrIYdI4rDT-Kj-5AdOVc0DYDXBLzLU5xsdUvHFAwxq1hHZJcNSPpnT-sXzf-QzH_iEN4qfSQZ8/s624/Newpapers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdstxGutBWc0Hu7sVN918nO1mcUhMiGPkbTRHR4kDTDKKF7wiEiZhL5fTcDkeoQhkSbew7BiSr4qqTPHRVoVGpPquZZDlmaXTVu-XwGd7ZJPcOtC1tVDrIYdI4rDT-Kj-5AdOVc0DYDXBLzLU5xsdUvHFAwxq1hHZJcNSPpnT-sXzf-QzH_iEN4qfSQZ8/s320/Newpapers.jpg" width="256" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image via <a href="https://alex-quisite.tumblr.com/post/136146982680/real-life-glitch" target="_blank">Alex-quisite</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />This winter, I decided, for reasons not entirely clear to me, to go back and re-read Michael Chabon. </p><p>Chabon, an American writer who won the Pulitzer in 2001, has written nine novels since 1988, as well as a number of other short-story collections, comic books, and essay collections. As I declined to spend any money on this endeavour, I read the books held by my local library and my own personal bookshelf, which means I did not—and have never—read his first two novels, <i>Mysteries of Pittsburgh</i> and <i>Wonder Boys</i>. Since his novels skew either very short or very long, and are often challenging (for reasons to be discussed below), I felt that skipping the non-fiction and comics was a fine omission. Seven of these books were re-reads; two were newly encountered. <br /></p><p>I suffer, often, from a reluctance to revisit the important texts in my life. The movies I watched multiple times in high school have not been viewed since graduation; the books that opened by eyes in university were dutifully shelved, longstandingly admired, but not reopened. Fear underlies this disinclination to revisit: what if the books have become less compelling? What if I, as a reader and as a person, have changed so much that stories that were once spellbinding have become trite? What if the world itself has moved on, leaving these books as time capsules rather than vital works of art? What if I thought something was good, and I was wrong?<br /></p><p>Anyway, there was only one way to find out. I re-read them in the order I thought would be most enjoyable, or in the order they were available at the library, or the order that my whims dictated. They are presented in that order below. </p><p><b>Summerland</b> (2002): Far and away my favourite of the early Chabon. A high-concept novel about the youthful saving of a cosmic world, it involves brave girls, baseball, the history of Washington State, Norse cosmology, giants, and the price we pay when good people become involved in terrible projects. Aimed at younger readers, it remains one of Chabon's best-plotted books, and his most diverse worlds. After re-reading this on a whim, I felt generous and inspired to read the others. Chabon does best with a firm editor and an large set of themes, both of which seem to be on full display here. I suspect he actually wrote this prior to <i>Kavalier & Clay</i>, but it was published after; maybe this accounts for the relatively out-of-scope subject matter and style. In any case, I enjoy it every time I read it. <br /><b>Read again:</b> absolutely, probably aloud to my kiddo. <br /></p><p><b>The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay</b> (2000): This is the one that started it all. I first read it sometime in the early 2000s, after I had enrolled in university and was meeting Judaism in the real world for the first time. I was swept up in the story, the details of the writing: the early days of comic books, and the damaged young men who created them. By turns thrilling and tedious, the central relationship between cousins doesn't leave much space for any female characters—justice for Luna Moth, of course—but the sprawl was a hoot to get lost in. Going back to it, I was struck by how little I had retained of the story, but how much the feeling it evoked had remained. Michael Chabon is firmly established as a man's writer (that is, one who struggles to remember that women exist, and could be characters in books), and it started here. Still, there is magic in the amazing adventures, even if it's just the nostalgia for the person I had been when I first read it. <br /><b>Read again</b>: maybe in another 20 years? <br /></p><p><b>The Final Solution</b> (2004) and <b>Gentlemen of the Road</b> (2007): I read these back to back, two shorter novels—at least in theory—and a palate-cleanser before <i>The Yiddish Policeman's Union.</i> <i>TFS</i> was fine, a trim little mystery that centres on a parrot (an unlikely but real motif in Chabon's work), a mute boy, and the atrocities of war. It's fine! It's...fine. This was clearly a little amuse-bouche between longer novels, and it feels light and relatively unserious. </p><p><i>GotR</i> was an absolutely slog, a sub-150 page novella that nonetheless wandered, lost and obscure in the desert, knee-deep in period jargon and technical language, through characterizations that never told me who anyone actually was, through telegraphed details that I, a person reading in 2023, did not understand whatsoever. Originally published as a serial in the <i>New York Times Magazine</i>, I was first flummoxed, then enraged, then ultimately bored as the story unspooled and I found no place where I could get swept along. It took me weeks to read and I resented it the entire time.<br /><b>Read again</b>: neither appeals, frankly. And I would rather impale myself on a lancet that interact with those infernal gentlemen again. <br /></p><p><b>The Yiddish Policeman's Union</b> (2007): This, finally, was the proper successor to <i>Kavalier & Clay</i>: a big, meaty, alternate history that supposed what might happen if, instead of Israel, the post-WWII Jews had been installed in Alaska. Things kick off with a murder and wrap up with a terrorist attack; in the middle is some fine alternate world-building (things like dialog happening "in American" and a minyan's worth of Orthodox thugs were great); however, Chabon has never really been able to steer a plot from A to C, and this is a critical failure in a mystery novel. This may feel ungenerous, to force a master of American letters into a little genre-specific box, but he is the one who chose the genre, friends. In any case, I remember being most disappointed by this book when it first came out; re-reading it, I found myself surprised to enjoy it more, but the still-unsatisfying third act is still a drag. <br /><b>Read again</b>: probably not!<br /></p><p><b>Telegraph Avenue</b> (2012): <i>Man</i>....okay, look, I <i>want</i> to like this book. I want to enjoy the California landscape, the dipped-in-honey feeling of Oakland in what feels like 1975, or 1995, but turns out to be 2008. I want to get into Brokeland Records with Archy and Nat and their midwife wives, I want to roam the streets with Julius and Titus, and in small doses, with the prose flowing like funk across a golden August afternoon, I can dig it. But as a text? A story? A book? This is a <i>mess</i>. As pointed out elsewhere, Chabon has never been able to hold a plot, but this is egregious. His prose is sticky, including one absolutely self-indulgent eleven-page sentence that made me mad. I wish we had spent more time with the wives, rather than these silly men. The casual homophobia reeks of trying to get away with something through a character. And yet: and yet. I actually went out and bought a thrift-store copy of this book, because I feel like it might be one I come back to one day. In small doses—like when I'm trying to fall asleep—the vibe of it all might overpower the mess. It will always be a mess, but sometimes, when your muse is Calliope in a fur coat and disco shorts, it's a mess worth rolling around in bed with. <br /><b>Read again</b>: yeah! I'm not sure why! But there's something about it that feels fertile.<br /></p><p><b>Moonglow</b> (2016): I'd soured on Chabon after the one-two punch of <i>The Yiddish Policeman's Union</i> and <i>Telegraph Avenue</i>, and while I still admired his earlier work, I was less inclined to seek him out. But this was the capstone of the project, and I'm glad I read it for the first time now. A faux-memoir (or is it?) of "Mike Chabon"'s grandparents, both Jews who survived WWII, and their subsequent mental health woes, incarcerations, and rocketry obsessions. The prose is infinitely tighter than anything he's produced before: snappier sentences, more comprehensible action, and even some jokes! We love a joke. I sense that this is Chabon as he's trying to craft a narrative, not a vibe, and he's still a bit amateurish (especially for someone who has written nine novels), but, despite the nesting and sometimes confusing timelines, the story itself is relatively straightforward in a way that feels downright refreshing. I loved the grandfather—a muscular, take-no-shit fightin' Jew who was streaked with romance and sadness—and I shuddered along with the grandmother as she rode out her hallucinations and trauma. There are sections that feel more well-drafted than others, but this is forgivable, as it's true of any book. And overall, this is a good place to end. <br /><b>Read again</b>: maybe. But I do recommend it. </p><p>This re-read project has led to some interesting places. I am not quite a fan of Chabon's—what is good is very good, but what is bad is appalling—but I will always respect his imagination. Even missteps like <i>Telegraph Avenue </i>and <i>Gentlemen of the Road</i> are interesting failures. I feel like a piratical editor could have salvaged many things, if not for the fact that authors of this level are rarely taken in hand in the ways they ought to be. And his resistance to contemporary stories is an interesting throughline (along with those damnable parrots): what does it say when an author reflects nearly everything through the lens of the past, especially one as calamitous as that of 20th century European Jewry? Is that just authors being authors, or is there some deep discomfort with a level gaze on this new millennia? As we get farther from the horrors of World War Two, we rely more on authors like Chabon to transport us back there in ways that feel meaningful; at the same time, his writing often grapples with what it means to storytell about the black hole that is the Holocaust, and how often writing will come up short. (<i>Telegraph Avenue</i> doesn't bother at all with this topic; is it coincidence that it is his most formless and least serious book?)<br /></p><p>Will there be a sequel to this project? I may indulge in some of his essays; I may counterbalance this by reading all of, say, Ann Patchett or Virginia Woolf or Margaret Atwood or Elena Ferrante or Toni Morrison or Nnedi Okorafor or Becky Chambers. I may come back to these books at a time when I feel less nostalgic for my early 20s and the person I had been once; I may leave them on the shelf forever. But I do love the ways this project shined a light on me and my strange little soul. I loved the parts that made me mad, and the parts that made me wonder, and the parts that made me feel like my heart was hurtling through time and space. That, in those brief moments, is possible with this writer; that is not nothing. <br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-17631311801174457562023-06-24T22:42:00.004-04:002023-06-24T22:55:34.461-04:00For Real Estate<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiouQECAHxBvarrZyF0PanbRGVIQbKOigY6BURGP1-9zZyfgydgxTbtMxUgHCA6LUxxQiT4WczNhOAPVXBMlX2hHFnhBUTOxWHq_Q8N14bploOVMAS3WJmi-4C7YbNtSRBE4S7bFe5ioaJWWm9cqqtJt5L34pHJUOrXlQ4vhlt9ER3QRh-7EzDqfW0rquQ/s588/House%20on%20the%20water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="588" data-original-width="365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiouQECAHxBvarrZyF0PanbRGVIQbKOigY6BURGP1-9zZyfgydgxTbtMxUgHCA6LUxxQiT4WczNhOAPVXBMlX2hHFnhBUTOxWHq_Q8N14bploOVMAS3WJmi-4C7YbNtSRBE4S7bFe5ioaJWWm9cqqtJt5L34pHJUOrXlQ4vhlt9ER3QRh-7EzDqfW0rquQ/s320/House%20on%20the%20water.jpg" width="199"></a></div>If you really want to hate yourself, here's the way to do it: I suggest having a really tough time in your 20s—like, going-to-rehab tough, taking-eight-years-for-an-undergrad tough—and then having a weird stop-start approach to work for many years, working at places that were short-term contract or, frankly, abusive, until you finally become self-employed at the age of 32 (the same year you have your baby), diligently setting aside 25% of what you earn (and lord, you don't make much) so you can pay your taxes, and then slowly build up a client roster, despite a global pandemic during which you were routinely billing a cool $400 a month because the work dried up and also you were taking care of the aforementioned baby, now a school-aged child, and slowly bringing clients back <i>despite</i> the rumping-frumping pandora, now to a level where you can now afford luxuries like "new shoes," all of which is happening against the backdrop of one of the most <a href="https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-why-ottawa-doesnt-rein-in-runaway-house-prices">runaway-locomotive housing markets in the world</a>, and then think, one day, optimistically, that maybe we should think about buying a house, and arranging a meeting with a really nice guy at the bank who tells you that you and your husband can carry a mortgage that is worth, basically, a shitty shoebox on the busiest street in town, and that your shoebox will bring you a 6% ROI, so it's "a good idea," and also, have you considered having a job with a pay stub? And then walking out into the brilliant June afternoon, blue skies above and self-loathing in your heart, because you suspect—strongly—that you are an utter and total loser who is not keeping pace with the other adults of her generation, people who have things like pensions and RRSPs and deeds to the houses in which they live, while you have a collection of thrift-store shoes and a seven-year-old who knows what a landlord is. <br><p></p><p>Do I sound defensive? I am. I'm defensive, I'm angry, and I'm tired. I'm tired of worrying about when my landlord is going to want his house back. I'm tired of looking at 1000-square-foot houses that sell for $650,000. I'm tired of worrying about where I'm supposed to come up with money for this, what I'm supposed to trade in on my life—the flexibility I have with my clients and my child? my mental health? the town I live in and love?—so that I can get a good-on-paper job to impress the bank man. I'm tired of being jealous of the people who bought ten years ago, or whose families could give them money. I'm just <i>tired</i>. <br></p><p>Real estate has been a conversation topic for <i>years</i>, even among us supposedly feckless millennials. In 2017-2018, I knew more than a dozen people who were evicted: greedy landlords, take-backs, houses for sale, and renovictions set so many people adrift. I've been evicted, once, through no fault of ours. We were good tenants.
We paid our rent on time, kept the backyard clean, hushed our newborn
to keep our neighbours happy. And then one day, the woman who owned our
house moved to Toronto to be closer to her family, and we didn't have
anywhere to live. I know what it is to have a house and then, you know, not. I don't want
to feel that again, so it seems wise to work towards owning a home.</p><p>But the other side of that coin is that houses are fucking expensive! <i>Much</i> more than they should be, honestly. It's borderline criminal that things like housing and <a href="https://frederickkaufman.typepad.com/files/the-food-bubble-pdf.pdf">food</a> have been turned into market assets, because at the end of the day, if you live in Canada, you cannot sleep on the beach like Jack Kerouac or a <a href="https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/water-activities/lifes-swell/" target="_blank">surf girlie</a>. You need a roof over your head. You still need to eat. There's that meme that says "Housing, but 'everyone gets a first plate before anyone gets seconds,'" and I tend to agree with that. I'm not talking about a summer cottage and a place in town: I know people who own three or four or five houses, and complain about their tenants as they sit on five million dollars of assets. More than half of MPs own multiple properties. Like, please, I am ready for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Antoinette" target="_blank">the cake</a>? <br></p><p>And I'm not throwing shade at anyone who owns their house—they bought young, or lived with their families while their condos were built, or had an inheritance instead of a beloved family member. I'm just pissed at the system that has let us down. The affordable housing stock in Stratford is dingy and on the edge of town, creating a ghetto-ish micro-neighbourhood that is underserviced and a little scary. The affordable housing stock in Toronto is dingy and dilapidated, with a decades-long wait list to boot. The government has not invested in alternative housing models, like co-operatives, in many years. They've made it cheaper for developers, sure, but that comes at the cost of things like urban intensification (read: walkability, access to services), developer fees that pay for vital municipal services (your library, schools, and transit system), and even diversity of housing stock (there's a reason new builds tend to be megamansions in the small towns and one-bedroom condos in the cities: it's because developers like it that way). The system is broken, and all my liberal meme shitposting isn't going to solve squat. <br></p><p>Writing about it helps, because I know I'm a bit alone (most people own their houses in Stratford), but I'm not totally alone. We have people everywhere who are grappling with this question. There are people who have built their life, which includes being a chronically-ill artist, around their current rent and can't save up for a house. There are the people who moved towns in order to afford a house. There are the folks who are generally very successful on paper, but who want to buy where they live and that market is bananas. We have people who have thousands of dollars in the bank but no income; where do they go? We have people selling two properties to buy one, and crossing their fingers that they can afford a house that will contain both their family and their stuff. We're all facing our own special personalized bullshit, but the container is all this stupid fucking decade-long moment in the market. <br></p><p>The physical sensation I associate with my real-estate thoughts is <i>suffocation</i>.
It feels like my chest is being squeezed, like a firm boot on my
sternum, like I can swim towards the surface and never make it. It is
prelude to a panic attack; it is also rage, pure and simple. It feels
like there's no easy solution: we can't beg or borrow enough money to
make this good, and meanwhile, the housing market turns as plasmatic as a
<a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/why-sparks-fly-when-you-microwave-grapes">microwaved grape</a>.
I'm not rooting for a market crash; I'm rooting for benevolent aliens
to crash-land on earth and start developing laneway houses, because
honestly, that seems more likely. <br></p><p>I'm ready for my NDP socialist hellscape, please. I want good,
high-quality affordable housing. I want a cap on the number of
properties a landlord can own, or the amount of rental income a landlord
can receive. (Landlords hate this idea, but tra la la, I don't really
care.) I want the banks and the government to work together to make
housing accessible to people nation-wise, because I don't want to move
to <a href="https://www.movingwaldo.com/daily-living/cheapest-place-to-live-in-ontario/" target="_blank">Thunder Bay</a>
to buy a house. I want developers to build three-bedroom condos. I want
a better tenant-to-homeowner pipeline. I want co-op development to be
funded. I want subsidies for tenants. I want it <i>all</i>, and while
I'm full of good ideas (again, unless you're a landlord, then all these
ideas are very bad), I have zero ability to pull it off. The system is
rigged. I'm stuck. And all the blue skies and bank meetings don't take
the boot off my chest. <br></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-24677127392130811932023-05-28T22:05:00.001-04:002023-05-28T22:05:15.876-04:00Stuff<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJOuE0nb8s4WTB4OiGjEor3OXI_qpc3qmOKBAWJhhODiAHX49Is9h3cez-2M5hhcnB2HJcAhtHCWaYzv52qZG7uE1LegAGd_wtnZ19TOd_URxaYXpTwpJDciGdFgem2uyOtabqlXYGS5v9SjwY1_e7kIorDaYPJ9VugZyrks8Whaih0tKxFepPkg9V/s686/concerto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="564" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJOuE0nb8s4WTB4OiGjEor3OXI_qpc3qmOKBAWJhhODiAHX49Is9h3cez-2M5hhcnB2HJcAhtHCWaYzv52qZG7uE1LegAGd_wtnZ19TOd_URxaYXpTwpJDciGdFgem2uyOtabqlXYGS5v9SjwY1_e7kIorDaYPJ9VugZyrks8Whaih0tKxFepPkg9V/s320/concerto.jpg" width="263" /></a></div>Do you have too much stuff? I have too much stuff. I live in an ocean of stuff—more accurately, a Great Pacific Garbage Patch of stuff—and I'm at a total loss about what to do with it. I have magazines I've never read, yarn I don't have patterns for, outgrown clothing (from both my child and me), broken and outdated electronics, doubles or triples of essential things, prints we will never frame, the endless stream of paper that comes home from school, items that could be sold or donated or given to friends, furniture that needs to be repaired, empties that should be returned, out-of-season clothing in strange places, and the absolute tidal wave of Noah's belongings that has washed through every corner of our house. <p></p><p>We have rooms in our home that function better than others—the living room is, somehow, mostly not terrible—but there are zones that are dumping grounds for shit we don't use and won't get rid of. My dining room sucks: when I want to sit down and eat a meal at the table, I have to clear out a week's worth of mail, library books, abandoned toys, and atomized Lego sets. The clearance rate for my office desk, which is usually littered with empty sparkling water cans, several unread books, a plate from two days ago, and things we can file under "weird shit" (why do I have a one-inch tall figure of Moana on my desk? And a prepaid Mastercard with $6.49 on it? And a pack of crayons? And a Japanese advertising circular from 1988?) is abysmal: once or twice a week, I clear it off, and a few work cycles later, it's back to being a mess. The kitchen, by virtue of being a place that will start to stink if the mess goes uncleaned, is relatively good; the bathroom, on the other hand, is often gross and cluttered. <br /></p><p>Part of this is that our house is just too big for us. We are but three people in a three-story house, and it is a house full of strange nooks and crannies. Some of the house has been carved up into spaces that serve no real function, like the area outside our second-floor bathroom: it is as large as a bedroom, but has no doors, and leads to the attic. It is not a work space, or a hallway, or a foyer, or a closet, or anything else that makes sense on a floorplan. Its main function right now? It's where I keep the pile of stuff that I will "one day" donate to Goodwill. We all deserve better. <br /></p><p>Part of it is also that we have a seven year old whose main purpose in life seems to be acquiring things, a trait I both detest (80%) and indulge (20%). He loves trinkets and knickknacks, is not inclined towards organizing anything, and will cry if you suggest donating or selling his things. All children love their treasures, but as an only child/grandchild, he has a horde that would please Smaug. He goes through phases—Super Mario Lego, Squishmallows, Back to the Future Playmobil, Harry Potter wands, endless Pokemon cards—and as he loses interest, the unshiny toys drift under his bed or get shoved into bookshelves. I don't want to shame his loves, because he can recite obscure facts about Pokemon and playact scenes from Back to the Future; his passions are as pure and incandescent as burning magnesium, and about as long-lived. Tonight he wept real tears because his toddler towel, now too small for him, will be replaced and he's just not ready to say goodbye. To a towel. Mercy for us all, please. </p><p>And the final part is that COVID made us all weird. Supply chain hiccups encouraged us to stockpile what we loved or needed; for a while, we were just <i>home</i>, with our stuff. We couldn't donate anything or give it away. And maybe we got out of the habit of tidying up for company, because we weren't having people over? I had flashbacks to Saturday-morning cleanup sessions in advance of Saturday-night dinner parties when I was kid, and I would understand that my parents were also extrinsically motivated in this arena, and who could blame us? </p><p>ANYWAY. I'm living with too much stuff, and it's all badly organized, and I feel like I'm losing my mind. Am I alone in this? I doubt it. </p><p>But I am at a loss as to what to do about it. </p><p>I could go the Marie Kondo route—thank my things for their service, and then release them into the wild—but I suspect I will be the only one in my family to do so. Perversely, I sometimes hang onto stuff I don't even want or need anymore as a way of taking up space in my own house; otherwise, it can be hard for me to see <i>myself</i> in this place. I struggled with this when I first moved in with my husband—I moved into his place, and we had to physically carve out places for me to put my stuff. He's a collector, a completist, and a nostalgia king, a trifecta that means the in-out ratio for stuff is...pretty low. </p><p>I miss the room-of-one's-own days of my student co-op days; when I lived in a big shared house, but I had a space that was just for me. I painted my walls pink and yellow and orange; I arranged my books and my houseplants just so; I had generous closets. I filled the space with myself, and knew myself well in those rooms. We all contributed to the upkeep of the house at large—scrubbing out shared fridges, cleaning showers, endless rounds of mopping—but I could retreat into something that was mine alone. Ten years later, I look back at this time with rose-tinted glasses. <br /></p><p>The way we structure family life is that we rarely have spaces that are just ours, just for us. I share my office and my bedroom; I don't have a studio or a she-shed. Hell, even spaces that are meant to be private are regularly invaded (I can't remember the last time I pooped without kiddo knocking on the door). Maybe the solution is as simple is just taking back that privacy, insisting on it, rather than blurring the edges so abysmally. <br /></p><p>Or maybe we just need to deep-clean, again. Maybe we need to mourn the loss of the special towel and the ill-fitting clothes and then get 'em out of here. Maybe we need to divvy up our office spaces so we each have a room to ourselves, instead of half-lives here and there all over the house. Maybe we need to get ride of the ice cream maker (used once in a decade of marriage) and the juicer (second-hand; aspirational; never used) and the slow-cooker and its attendant cookbook (used annually to cook pulled pork and pulled pork only). Maybe we need to teach each other and ourselves that getting rid of stuff is not sloughing off who we are, but rather refining our tastes? (Please tell me how I can bring this message home to my husband and son, who do not operate in this modality at all.) Maybe I need to control what I can—this desk, this kitchen counter—and find the zen in the rest of it?</p><p>Maybe I need to order the largest Dumpster? </p><p>I'm kidding, sort of. I'm mostly just frustrated; I'm the person it seems to bother the most, and who has the least agency over other people's stuff. It's an outcome of the last three years that this loss of control rankles so much; in times previous, I've coasted along in a happy mess, insisting on quarterly clean-ups but otherwise taking it in stride. But I've changed; I want my home to be less visually busy, less work to maintain (having this much stuff is tiring!), and more balanced. And I honestly truly do not know where to start. <br /></p><p><br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-60149557305368750932023-04-21T22:29:00.002-04:002023-04-21T22:29:11.429-04:00One Does Not Simply Walk Into Wellness<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdaNjskJskYWm9Khnv2_WmITcqv13Usjg7vv1V9tcEsjjln3SNPqGaQSpkSFnFQ-bhtYgxJvc1EPz1Dkx3eNzE4GDCN1kTQv2lxerdd2lhAldzrC9fY7iatKna3bixAekM8Tk0CKEmpmdjgqS75z-n0WNCfBHiqWrlIPkRNYWlw7gx50jSqdvN39ar/s729/tumbleweed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="729" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdaNjskJskYWm9Khnv2_WmITcqv13Usjg7vv1V9tcEsjjln3SNPqGaQSpkSFnFQ-bhtYgxJvc1EPz1Dkx3eNzE4GDCN1kTQv2lxerdd2lhAldzrC9fY7iatKna3bixAekM8Tk0CKEmpmdjgqS75z-n0WNCfBHiqWrlIPkRNYWlw7gx50jSqdvN39ar/s320/tumbleweed.jpg" width="219" /></a></div>I'm turning 40 this year, so, as mandated by law, I'm on a wellness journey. This was a slow-fast decision—I mulled it over for the better part of a year, because I knew it probably required a new diet and I was very annoyed by this; but also, recently I started waking up with a racing heart, and while it's only happened a couple times in the last two months, it's a couple times I'd rather not repeat. So a couple weeks ago, I decided to get into it.<p></p><p>This particular wellness journey is, in fact, mostly a change in diet. When I was in my 20s, I followed a Paleo diet for a few years, and it was <i>remarkable</i> at changing my body composition, my energy levels, and my connection to my physical container. I started in 2012, cold turkey, fretting a little about if yogurt counts as a processed food (obviously, but also who cares), before settling into a protocol that was probably best described as high-protein/mid-carb/no-grains. I ate potatoes and yam noodles and sweet potato fries; I just didn't eat rice and burger buns and many other delicious, easy, accessible foods. I tried not to be a terror about it, but looking back, I probably was. </p><p>This was also the time in my life when I was most physically active: I biked my seven-kilometre commute, which included a 60-meter rise right at the beginning (yes, I died every day); I also lifted weights, did yoga, ran, and did Nia. It was...a lot. Probably too much? I had been bulimic for a decade before, then gone into recovery and gained a fair amount of weight, and then started the Paleo thing because the foods I was eating didn't actually wholly agree with me. I initially ate Paleo because I didn't want to feel nauseous after lunch, which I did when the lunch was pizza. </p><p>When I got pregnant, all that went out the window. I lived on tortellini and pesto for six weeks in my first trimester; after Noah was born, I was so traumatized by my new life that I couldn't bear the idea of depriving myself anything delicious or easy. I hung onto the pasta, and the pizza, and the chocolate. And I didn't quite care if I was fat—I had feelings about it, but I didn't really pay attention to them, and they quieted down, which was great.<br /></p><p>I've <a href="https://hipstersareboring.blogspot.com/2022/04/and-one-to-grow-on.html">written before</a> about how turning 40 is messing with me a little, and how aging means that I'm just diving into all the shit I want to do before I die. This feels aligned. I was surprised that I, too, was started to be affected by sore knees and fatigue and under-eye bags—those seemed like things for middle-aged people, which, like, I am a young person?! And there are other things, like the chronic anemia and vitamin D deficiency, the racing heart and the borderline fasted blood sugar, that I look at out of the corner of my eye: should I be worried about this? Is this going to get better on its own? <br /></p><p>My goal is not to look a certain way or weigh a certain amount—even at my fattest, I'm still foxy—but to come back from the borderlands a little bit. I don't want to fret about cholesterol, blood pressure, or resting heart rate. And <i>not fretting about it</i> can take two approaches: I can take care of myself so that it's not worrisome, or I can ignore it. And I've never met a problem that I haven't obsessed into the ground. </p><p>But, I'm also hesitant about this diet change. It's very Gwyneth Paltrow to be into bone broth and cashew cheese (although, admittedly, <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/style/fashion-trends/g43452321/gwyneth-paltrow-ski-accident-courtroom-style/">she looked good at her trial</a>). I don't want to contribute to the swirling miasma of smaller-is-better discourse around women's bodies. We're supposed to be young, thin, and curvy (we are somehow in the era of both the Brazilian butt lift and Ozempic, a true body-politic apocalypse). In shocking news, there are some things that diet and exercise just will not fix. Even if I lost half my bodyweight, I would still have a c-section scar and a belly shelf. It's just part of my landscape. Sorry! Not sorry, though. <br /></p><p>That's the biggest part of it: I did so much work to accept myself, to make myself feel beautiful and sexy at any size, to internalize the message that weight and health are not indicators of each other. Now, changing my diet feels a bit like a return to the fucking mess I was in my teens and early 20s. Am I betraying myself by doing this? Or is this honouring my health? Why is this so complicated? I don't want to be obsessive, like when I was when I was bulimic; I don't want to be restrictive, like when I was Paleo. I just want to be free from all of it. Put my brain in a jar and put that jar on a shelf, you know? <br /></p><p>Anyway: for the first time since I started considering a change in diet, it feels possible again. I am slowly divesting from gluten, and it feels....good. I stocked up on cottage cheese and almonds and I'm willing myself to actually eat them; the more I do, the more it feels like the new normal. I have fresh recipes this time around (my current obsession is <a href="https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/chickpea-pancakes-with-greens-and-cheese">socca crepes</a>), and less time to go crazy with it all. And I know from experience that success begets success—when I change my diet in this way, I often have more energy, sleep better, and have more motivation to exercise, which is also in service of the health project.</p><p>I know the vibe is "I have talked myself into this, reluctantly, so let's see where it goes," but for the first time in <i>years</i>, I'm not feeling overly resentful about this. I know how to poach a chicken breast; I can make jap chae from scratch; I get my steps in and I'm usually asleep at 2 in the morning. Those are all metrics I can get behind. I don't care if I lose weight; I just want to gain some vitality. <br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-27107611083565301652023-03-20T21:27:00.006-04:002023-03-20T21:27:57.677-04:00Therapy Fatigue<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH4bLoeW4HsRcw6VrNQACdbqdmDVexIErXUTYp6HgT9-JaPLlcpXg4qPDwr1h1zLi-iVc4aNy7F-7_4Xlpc0S2L-_4RByGPLmDWNTaOVoCwW25VJKRVmbuZBVQtbWOb4hV5fm7tRArcq5ht3HkjoRMaZZp_Zy3oxMGgSeQx3zjdHGsFC2_qUJXYAV2/s700/eyeballs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="467" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH4bLoeW4HsRcw6VrNQACdbqdmDVexIErXUTYp6HgT9-JaPLlcpXg4qPDwr1h1zLi-iVc4aNy7F-7_4Xlpc0S2L-_4RByGPLmDWNTaOVoCwW25VJKRVmbuZBVQtbWOb4hV5fm7tRArcq5ht3HkjoRMaZZp_Zy3oxMGgSeQx3zjdHGsFC2_qUJXYAV2/s320/eyeballs.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>Is anyone else tired of self-care? Self-improvement, self-optimization, biohacking, Gwenyth Paltrow's starvation diet, therapy memes, all of it? The more I try to figure out who I am and who I should be, the more I want to throw my hands up in despair: I am not a fucking pretzel, my loves. I do not need to be untwisted this badly.<br /><p></p><p>Let me be clear: I still <i>believe</i> in self-care. I think therapy is wonderful—EMDR probably saved my life, and totally re-wrote some self-esteem base code around if I deserve affection and attention (no > yes, thank god), and I have given myself full permission to give myself affection and attention even if nobody else does it. That alone is a treasure! To be in a brain that isn't always sneering at me and insinuating fault? Sweet relief. Rewire my synapses any time, Judy. <br /></p><p>There are, of course, good things about widening the trauma-scope to include more people, more experiences. Until EMDR, I had not lived my life thinking that the three years of vicious bullying and social pariah-dom I had gone through in my tween years was trauma, but...it was. That experience informed a lot of my adult relationships, in good ways and bad. Not to mention the medical trauma of my family, and the 2018 breakdown of my relationship, both of which were major yikes. Friends of mine have gone through terrible divorces, financial failure, and workplaces that made them question who they were as people: not a one is "classic trauma," but ask them if they're the same after that. And after a pandemic, and its attached social upheaval, we can <i>all</i> claim a <i>soup<span>ç</span>on</i> of trauma for our own. I mean: 2020 was fucked, right? </p><p>We know about trauma, we have given ourselves permission to ditch the
people who make us feel worst, we are gentle parenting, and we know our love languages. Good for
us! </p><p>But...we're also labelling all our exes toxic narcissists (they are just
assholes!), and we are claiming gaslighting when our memories diverge
(people are fallible!), and parroting our therapists back to our friends
and loved one—friends and loved ones who are not usually in therapy
with us, mind you. Therapists who really only hear one side of the story. We are steeped in the language of self-accountability, but with more tools than ever to shift responsibility onto other people.<br /></p><p>Maybe this isn't quite related to the permeation of therapy and self-improvement into the culture, but maybe it is: I'm just <i>so tired</i> of treating myself like a project, like a problem I need to solve. I'm so tired wading through books about trauma and triggers. I'm so bored of wondering if my relationships could be better, <i>should</i> be better, <i>MUST</i> be better, because the quality of my relationships says something about the quality of my self. How loved can I be? <i>All the loved</i>. </p><p>I suspect this is actually a direct result of the COVID pandemic: we were locked in with ourselves and our closest loved ones—friends, family, whoever was in our pod—and many of us lacked the distractions of work, social lives, and hobbies. We were mainlining our own brains, and it was rough in there! We were overdosing on our relationships, and we needed help! Self-help and therapy-speak give us some structure, some plausible deniability (I wasn't being a dick, I was triggered), and a path to enlightenment: the promise of a better life because you will be a better person. </p><p>But my god, it doesn't feel like a better life. It feels like a slog. Sometimes I just want to have a tantrum or be in a bad mood. Sometimes I just want to make a terrible decision, or be petty, and not have it <i>mean</i> anything about who I am. Failures of self-optimization feel particularly ugly, because we are supposed to both love ourselves as we are and be constantly striving to improve and be better. Why wouldn't we? Who would choose the misery of an unhealed life? <br /></p><p>I feel like we're at <a href="https://welltodo.substack.com/p/the-consumer-backlash-to-therapy" target="_blank">peak therapy meme</a>, and the tide is starting to turn. Folks are starting to recognize that the always-be-healing mindset is sort of a grind, and doesn't allow for our gritty humanity. We can ask ourselves: are we triggered, or are we just being a dick? And sometimes, the answer is truly, I was being a dick. Because we all get like that sometimes—even our softest and most gentle Bambis, even our most attuned and self-optimized therapists—we all get grouchy and lash out, we all say mean things, we all <i>fuck it up</i>.</p><p>It's not that I'm tired of apologizing for my bad moments/days/weeks—I am a champion grudge-holder, but I also say sorry and I mean it—and it's not that I want an excuse to be a jerk to the people I love. I want to be good, definitely. But I'm tired of holding myself to this imaginary standard—healed, whole, evolved, attuned—and feeling some kind of way about it when I don't. <br /></p><p>Let me lie on the floor and look at the ceiling of the YMCA and think about nothing other than my hamstrings and my dinner plans. Let me talk shit about the people I don't like, and then laugh at myself for doing it. Let me process who I am and change my mind. Let my values shift throughout my life. Let me live, for a while, without needing to be better at it. Hold me up when I fail, hold me accountable when I cross lines. As the wise and funny Aleah Black <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CmZcY90yqwy/">says on Instagram</a>, "The idea of 'fully healed' has become a secret placeholder for 'perfect."' Deliver us from perfect. </p><p>And they also <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CfHrTvHui4m/">say</a> "<span class="_aacl _aaco _aacu _aacx _aad7 _aade">Self care that is a branch of collective care feeds the soul and our ability to relate to each other." My own standards for myself are much too high: I will never meet them. Instead, I want to love myself the way my friends love me, the way my mother loves me, the way my son loves me: in all my slippery, messy, imperfect, only-partially-healed-and-taking-a-break-from-the-work glory. <br /></span></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-17832433829204097722023-02-21T17:12:00.004-05:002023-02-21T20:02:54.372-05:00An Alphabet of Great Things<p><b></b></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCSvAt8Y4_2a3Wtr4VGHZWXX4Ur-Y3x0-W85iyaQ3dU5rXBe2WcyMS42uaG0OQ3HWwtPQ1IpLda2PLHIjpe6drzi5dLlHL8AtuQ_YGeXLvYQ5_M18tmzU_bo3c4w_R0cDrIXLu37qIiBWsBJWkMalEfMzx_ZcIeYb4EyOuG9tV1gPaopzi5I-mEmf6/s1500/respect_sampler23.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1030" data-original-width="1500" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCSvAt8Y4_2a3Wtr4VGHZWXX4Ur-Y3x0-W85iyaQ3dU5rXBe2WcyMS42uaG0OQ3HWwtPQ1IpLda2PLHIjpe6drzi5dLlHL8AtuQ_YGeXLvYQ5_M18tmzU_bo3c4w_R0cDrIXLu37qIiBWsBJWkMalEfMzx_ZcIeYb4EyOuG9tV1gPaopzi5I-mEmf6/s320/respect_sampler23.jpg" width="320"></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br><i>Part of the <a href="https://justseeds.org/" target="_blank">Just Seeds</a> free fonts project</i><br></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><b>A</b> is for <b>astrology</b>, which we all love to hate. I'm a Sagittarius, which always boils down to "flaky, lucky, loves to travel," and while that's not technically <i>wrong</i>, it's annoying. <br></p><p><b>B</b> is for <b>blood oranges</b>, which arrive in the grocery stores for a glorious eight-week streak and then disappear. They are the Halley's comet of seasonal fruit and I love them. <br></p><p><b>C</b> is for <i><b>Cottage Life</b></i>, which, even though I don't and probably never will own a cottage, gives me bi-monthly DIY ideas, house-maintenance tips, recipes, photography, and a chatty and engaging editorial voice. <br></p><p><b>D</b> is for <b>dancing</b>. It's a cliche to say that I am dancing through life, but I dance when I cook, I dance for exercise, I dance in the grocery store and at the rock climbing gym, so how else should I say it? <br></p><p><b>E</b> is for <b>exercise</b>. I hated exercise when it didn't work—that is, it didn't make my body small. But when I started exercising because I wanted to feel strong, or to feel accomplished, or to take pleasure in my physical self, then I found I could love it after all. <br></p><p><b>F</b> is for <b>friends and friendship</b>. I am a big old sap and I love my friends very much; the act of doing friendship brings me so much joy. <br></p><p><b>G</b> is for <b>gardening</b>, which I started doing in 2020. This year I'm scaling back on the veggies (they're just a buffet for the rabbits) and adding more flowers. I'm very excited to see how this all unfolds. </p><p><b>H</b> is for <b>hot baths</b>. Is there anything better on a chilly February Sunday afternoon? To get into some steaming-hot water, maybe with a magazine or a book, a cold drink to offset the heat, and just soak until you're right with the world again? </p><p><b>I</b> is for <b>intelligence</b>, which is one way of saying smart and well-read, and another way of saying that someone is paying attention to what is important. I am sometimes more intelligent than others. </p><p><b>J</b> is for <b>jewellery</b>, which I rarely wear but wish I did. I admire the women who can layer on hoop earrings and gold rings and long necklaces and then just....leave the house. Rings look strange on my short, chubby fingers (I don't even wear my wedding ring any more, since I took it off one sausage-fingered hot summer day); necklaces don't suit my short neck; earrings don't work in lobes that always wear stretchers. This is a tiny sadness. <br></p><p><b>K</b> is for <b>knitting</b>, my great love affair of a hobby. </p><p><b>L</b> is for <b>libraries</b>, my favourite civic institution / community centre / nerd zone. It gives me all the positive feelings of a bookstore (look at all these books!) without the negative ones (I am poor). Plus, the best ones function as kid clubs, tech zones, and norm-shifters when it comes to our social ecosystem. They do a lot of heavy lifting for something that is just "free books" on paper. </p><p><b>M</b> is for <b>Movie March Madness</b>, the annual competition I run each year on Facebook and which is kicking off as we speak. I've been doing it for seven years (as long as I've been a mom!) and each year it's a lovely distraction from the real world as we parse out the best feel-good movie or the best TV show or the best movie franchise. It's a lot of work—it's grown from me doing all the writing to managing a group of 8-12 writers, plus a five-week-long schedule of near-daily posts. But it is worth it when I see two adults arguing about the merits of <i>Moana</i> vs <i>Beauty and the Beast</i>, or debating if Captain American fucks (he doesn't, probably, we think?). It's a hoot! </p><p><b>N</b> is for <b>nighttime</b>. After Noah was born, I didn't leave the house at night for several months, and the first time I did, I marvelled at how different the city was in the darkness with a baby. I love summer nights and walks under the stars; I love winter nights (even though they start at 4 PM); I love nights where the moon is so bright you could read by its light, and new-moon nights that are dark as anything. I love seeing the fireflies come out and the sun come up. <br></p><p><b>O</b> is for <b>orgasms</b>.<br></p><p><b>P</b> is for <b>playgrounds</b>—they are truly the workspace of children, and the great tragedy of our hometown is that quality playgrounds are few and far between. In another life, I would be a playground designer, and every small town would have a weird, funny, raucous place just for children, preferably very close to the downtown core. <br></p><p><b>Q</b> is for <b>quilts</b>. My mom used to make quilt, as did my grandmother and great-grandmother, and there are quilts at the cottage that are from when my mom was a kid. These links to other women, the family who made things with their hands, is something I can feel in my own fingertips. </p><p><b>R</b> is for <b>reconnecting</b>. In this intensely post-COVID world, it has been such a balm to go to dance jams or house parties again. It's been a gift to linger over a chat. Reconnection feels like grace—it's trying again, trying more, and seeing another phase of relationship unfold. <br></p><p><b>S</b> is for <b>snuggling at bedtime</b>, the best kid-time ritual. I think those ten minutes at the end of the day are the time we are most heart-soul connected. It's the time he might cry just because he needs a cry, or we sing together, or we laugh together, or he tells me something that has been weighing on him, or I just slip my arms around him and recite <i>Where the Wild Things Are</i> as his eyes close. Seven is a good age; he's a good kid. <br></p><p><b>T</b> is for <b>thrifting</b>, my favourite way to shop. No, I don't want to spend $115 on new sneakers; I want to spend nine months looking for the perfect pair and then I want to buy them for $8. </p><p><b>U</b> is for <b>understanding</b>. File under <i>I, intelligence</i>.</p><p><b>V</b> is for <b>vacations</b>, which I don't take nearly enough of. <br></p><p><b>W</b> is for <b>water</b> in all its forms: Lake Huron, bathwater, tears, and fizzy water.<br></p><p><b>X</b> is for <b>extra</b>, which is how I take my guacamole and all my favourite people. I sometimes like I am a high-needs puppy who just needs to be petted lest I shiver myself into oblivion; other times, I feel practically incandescent with possibility. (These are extra in different direction.) My favourite people are the kind who walk off the job because their boss is a bully, who build a treehouse for their nine-month-old baby, who teach themselves to rewire their shed, who show up to a midweek potluck with stuffed mushroom caps and four BYOB beers. They are extra <i>themselves</i>, and I love them for it. </p><p><b>Y</b> is for <b>young people</b>. Stratford is a lot of great things, but there is a noticeable dearth of young people - teens and 20s in this town. When I go to Toronto, I revel in the young people there - <i>yes</i>, show me your weird backpack and your regrettable hairdo and your irreversible ironic tattoo! <i>Yes</i>, please wear the crop top, trust me that it works on you. <i>Yes</i>, stay out late with people you don't entirely know to make art or make music or have sex or pool-hop or fall in love or ride your bike. <i>Yes</i>, devote an entire weekend to a movie festival or go live on a tall ship for a semester. I love this for you. Please don't write a memoir, you're not there yet. </p><p><b>Z</b> is for <b>zaftig</b>, as in Lizzo, the end. <br></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-26807988831059284322023-01-18T21:02:00.002-05:002023-01-18T21:07:46.861-05:00The End of the Future<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1ekgmIz1Tx4so6a18kQ2DqG5KuALSIBfPqwO5kHrwmrpU_ELrdyxSiqM-Z8vymG4uvfKdCLX8QXeBho-4wxzUaOXtWOhF4u5XABopkFttTlKMoisQX9KM5Xs5n_-m_ZXTZoCRM__BXW09RDlTMIQmBdUgYQUbr0Z9yf032N11vqbUaj_Y_-uS2y5D/s749/35d3f33cf45f5ca183d23b2e5d6b4939.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="749" data-original-width="564" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1ekgmIz1Tx4so6a18kQ2DqG5KuALSIBfPqwO5kHrwmrpU_ELrdyxSiqM-Z8vymG4uvfKdCLX8QXeBho-4wxzUaOXtWOhF4u5XABopkFttTlKMoisQX9KM5Xs5n_-m_ZXTZoCRM__BXW09RDlTMIQmBdUgYQUbr0Z9yf032N11vqbUaj_Y_-uS2y5D/w301-h400/35d3f33cf45f5ca183d23b2e5d6b4939.jpg" width="301" /></a></div> <br />We did it, gang: we reached the future. We're here! Now what?<p></p><p>We have the <a href="https://www.designboom.com/technology/flying-car-switchblade-road-legal-vehicle-aircraft-10-26-2022/">flying cars</a> and the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/7/21504797/virtuix-omni-one-vr-treadmill-announce-crowdfunding">holodecks</a> and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jan/14/its-2023-where-are-the-sex-robots-they-will-probably-never-be-as-huge-as-everyone-thinks">sex robots</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR">gene splicers</a> and the <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-watch/">wearable tech</a>. We have private space exploration and miniature computers; cars that drive themselves and computers you unlock with a fingerprint and thermostats you can have a conversation with. The future is <i>now</i>, baby, like right now, <i>today</i>, in your <i>house</i>. From the middle of the 19th century, to the utopian visions of the
1930s, straight through to 1980s cyberpunk, we've been waiting for the
early-mid-21st century to arrive. But us, our generation? We have seen the future, and it's a <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2017-01-04-griffin-connects-your-toast-to-your-phone.html">toaster that will text you when your breakfast is ready</a>.</p><p>And, of course, it's artificial intelligence. A benevolent <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARJ8cAGm6JE">HAL</a>, right at our fingertips! Huge neural networks of computing power, combined with the most data humanity has ever collected—mug shots, movie scripts, recipes, medical breakthroughs, internet searches, pornographic Tumblr posts, blog posts, program code, <i>all of it</i>—swirled together in an artificial brain and spitting out images and words that feel human. Sometimes more human than us idiots could manage. <br /></p><p>I'll admit it: I've been into it. I've admired the Marvel-by-way-of-Wes Anderson posts. I've clicked on the knitting grannies creating eldritch sweater vests. I've read through the knitting patterns, trying to picture the finished garment in my mind. A romp with AI can be fun, like thinking about what aliens would give each other for Christmas. A romp with AI can also be useful, especially if you're a <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/12/26/students-using-chatgpt-to-cheat-professor-warns/">cheating university student</a>. <br /></p><p>But I suspect that when
AI starts drawing from our immense datasets, what comes out <i>looks</i> like
innovation but is more like a remix. What AI gives
us, and what so many human designers and so-called innovators are giving
us, are retreads and smudged facsimiles. </p><p>I was not surprised when the 1990s resurfaced in fashion, because all trends come back and our consumer nostalgia cycles have been getting shorter and shorter; on the other hand, the 1990s heavily referenced the 1970s, and aside from grunge, the slip dress and the expansion of athleisure to outside of the gym, we did not do a <i>ton</i> of sartorial innovation. (The decade after, the 2000s, saw hipsters referencing moments from the 1930s barbershop all the way to 1980s New Wave; I am super looking forward to my kid dressing the way I did in university, which is to say, like a member of Blondie!) </p><p>I just unsubscribed to <i>Bon Appetit</i>, in no small part because their recent redesign explicitly references the "approachable" cookbooks of the 1960s, a time that I most associate with aspics and red-sauce Eye-talian food. (Also, the $70 annual price tag was just not going to fly in this economy.) While <i>BA</i> actually casts its culinary net very wide, especially in its post-<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/09/bon-appetite-editor-adam-rapoport-resigns-over-brown-face-photo">Adam Rapoport</a> era, the "new" look of the magazine makes it feel like "upscale suburban mid-century American striver," a vibe that kind of got us into a lot of our current mess in the first place. We're now approaching a moment where the reference loop starts to become
an ourobouros, when there are no new looks to look back on. Do trends disappear entirely? I mean, they've <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/06/magazine/fashion-sweatpants.html">already started to</a>. But when everything is a reference to the past, how do we ever crane our necks towards the future?<br /></p><p>I sense that humanity is encountering a critical failure of the imagination that goes beyond culinary magazines and chatty AIs. For so long, we've been envisioning a beautiful, shiny future—sleek and chromed and <i>so</i> easy. And then we <i>get</i> here, and it's climate change and wealth inequality and people locked inside factories during tornadoes. It's not easy. It's hot, expensive, and full of gross diseases. (On the other hand, we do have photocopiers that work most of the time.) It's so easy to look backwards, to a time when we felt safer, when the future was still a little ways down the road. </p><p>Even our loftiest goals—like Elon Musk's aim to get to Mars!—are echoes of dreams that were presented to us as children. Hanna-Barbera premiered <i>The Jetsons</i> in the middle of the international space race, a pissing contest that has been taken up, two generations later, by the world's wealthiest men. Am I supposed to believe that everything that will be invented is here now? Or that every aesthetic has been developed? The idea of a bike short would have slain a peasant dead; I live in an era when Rose McGowan wore a backless dress to the MVAs. (I hope someone recreates <i>that</i> look for the youths!)<br /></p><p>What the AI spits out is comforting because it plays with what we know. Every human creator starts from what <i>they</i> know: their memories, their experiences, their past. The future is scary now: the planet is going to roast our descendants, which is truly unsettling. We have invented the technology we need to circumvent this, but the oldest roadblock—human ego—is holding us back. I don't know what comes after the flying car: when I look up "<i><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=what+will+the+future+look+like&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=AJOqlzUZAqApEF09vHr4VHNr5rM2AzzdkA:1674092766429&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiz0afFwdL8AhWRj4kEHV9pDMcQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1275&bih=701&dpr=2">what will the future look like?</a></i>," I feel like I've been seeing those pictures all my life. </p><p>And maybe this isn't the end of the world. As a species, we've learned so much about the world in the last century, from the tiniest bits of the universe to its outermost edges. Maybe those images of the future have been propulsive to our imaginations, allowing us to see what we would build once our technology catches up to our sense of possibility. Maybe we're just tired, after all that. </p><p>But then again: when is the last time you saw something new?<i> </i>Something that made you shake your head in wonder, to clear the cobwebs out, to expand the world as you know it? Not a catchy remix or a self-referential nod, not a computer's idea of what we might want, or a designer's projection of his past self into current day, but something truly, beautifully <i>new?</i></p><p></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-47979237626838387782022-12-31T10:48:00.002-05:002022-12-31T17:15:28.139-05:00Things That Happened in 2022<p><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>
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</b></div><b>January</b>: Season three of Covid kicks off with a bang: Doug Ford, actual genius, decides that we will only be testing for the virus in high-risk areas and, oh, by the way, schools are conveniently no longer high risk! What a laugh riot. Noah is out of school for three weeks and Mike steps up in a huge way, for which I'm grateful. My dad turns 70 and we have a visit with them up at the farm—it is a massive relief to me that he has achieved this milestone, and for some reason I feel like I can breathe a little easier. We finish our Wes Anderson watch project with <i>The Royal Tenenbaums</i> and it's still a very cute movie.<b><br>Media experience: </b>Wes Anderson rewatch project<b><br></b><p><b>February</b>: Um, there is a war? Russia marched on Ukraine and Putin is very man-on-horse about it and the world is definitely like UM WAT when he is casually like, "don't make any sudden moves or I'm going to drop a nuclear bomb on you!" as though the Ukrainian populace has received instructions other than "idk molotov cocktails??" from their leadership. <br><b>Media experience: </b>The Babysitter's Club (Netflix)<br></p><p><b>March</b>: We went to Toronto for March break. The trip was a bit of a bust: our hotel pool needed to be booked ahead of time and was packed 24/7; it was rainy; Ikea was jammed; we basically kind of flopped around for five days. The big news story was the Covid mask mandates were slowly disintegrating before our eyes, which was crazy-making. I ran yet another March Madness and the Marvel Cinematic Universe was voted best franchise by a bunch of nerds. Writer's group kicked off, and seemed to promise some creative fruit. <br><b>Media experience: </b>Turning Red (Disney+)<br></p><p><b>April</b>: We got Covid! We got the fuckin' virus. It Happened To Me. Anyway, we were mostly fine, except Day One was sheer panic and Day Two was a migraine from the depths of hell; after than it was just trying to keep ourselves entertained and feeling disappointed and relieved that it had finally happened. I made an Easter meal from stuff we had lying around the house and it was good. Once we were healed, I helped put on an Earth Day event downtown for 150 people, and it gave me major Baby Dance Party vibes—doing nice things with/for nice people on a project I believe in. <br><b>Media experience:</b> the Thor: Love + Thunder trailer</p><p><b>May</b>: There was a shooting in Uvalde Texas and a lot of little kids died. I cried and I thought about it for a long time. The American Supreme Court drafted an overturning of Roe v. Wade, which was leaked and caused much uproar. I went to go see a friend in Montreal, and spending time with her and her family was an incredible experience of friendship and mutual admiration; I really love that we are still friends 25+ years after we met. I carry a lot of weird friendship trauma, and maintaining these nourishing relationships means so much to me.<br><b>Media experience:</b> catching up on the <a href="https://www.ohwitchplease.ca/">Witch, Please</a> podcast <br></p><p><b>June</b>: The court officially overturned Roe v Wade and it was A Big Deal. Friends from America came and had a visit so I got to kiss their amazing cheeks and hang out with their lovely toddler and just bask in the glory of long-term international friendship. A friend had a baby and had a bad time of it, and I felt sad that she suffered and glad that her baby was here and well. School ended and NS graduated kindergarten and I felt like we were launching, but towards what? No idea. <br><b>Media experience:</b> this <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/04/we-are-not-going-back-to-the-time-before-roe-we-are-going-somewhere-worse">blistering Jia Tolentino piece</a> about Roe v Wade<br></p><p><b>July:</b> There was A LOT of Stratford summer time around the house—I neglected to book any summer camps for Noah, leaving us desperately underprogrammed and with very few other children around to play with, so for the third summer in a row, we lived at the library, the coffee shops, and the splash pad. We went to a wedding in Toronto, which was fun. It was nice to get
dressed up and wobble around on high heels and eat a panna cotta in the
company of other step-cousins and family friends. Noah learned to ride a bike, which was thrilling. <br><b>Media experience:</b> browsing Type Books for an afternoon and buying a lot of children's books<br></p><p><b>August: </b>Cottage time this year was a bit tricky, because the first week was largely taken up by a work project deadline, so I sequestered myself in a bedroom and made charts for several days. Once that was done, though, we were free to swan around at the beach like usual—walk to the bakery, go play on the sand, help out with dinner, read on the deck—and that felt good. The cottage was under renovation and the farm was on the market, so things felt a lot less settled than usual, but it was good to be together when we were. <br><b>Media experience:</b> seeing a Minions movie in a movie theatre<br></p><p><b>September:</b> Back to school! September was a bit of a catch-my-breath month; after the hurricane of summer, it was nice to be able to watch TV in the middle of the day and have a regular wake-up time again. First grade started out well and then quickly transitioned to a litany of complaints; I'm not sure where we are with it now, but things seem slightly better. <br><b>Media experience: </b>hoo boy, I binged Sex Education (Netflix) and loved it. <br></p><p><b>October:</b> Thanksgiving, in which I cooked a duck for the three of us! The turn of the seasons! Wrapping up some excellent and fine TV shows! Getting a sinus infection! Buying a new computer! October felt productive and fun, with good weather and beautiful trees and nice family time. Noah spent the month fretting about what to be for Halloween, and ultimately decided on Ash from Pokémon. Also, the Queen died. <br><b>Media experience:</b> Owl House (Disney+)<br></p><p><b>November: </b>We went to Toronto and Noah started running a fever on the train; we were caught in the desperate hunt for Children's Tylenol for much of the weekend, which was an absolute bust. However...I had a great trip, with fantastic friend hangouts, museum wanders, thrifting alone (the actual dream!), and drinks out with friends. It was three full days of feeling like I was coming home to myself, and I felt, despite the fact that my family was sick while I enjoyed myself, very good about it. Later in the month we hosted friends for drinks at our house and stayed up until the middle of the night, and it was such a shock to the system that I felt giddy (albeit wretchedly hungover). November was a month of friendship the way it used to feel: chaotic and loud and hot-blooded. <br><b>Media experience: </b>Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (Netflix), one of my absolute favourites of the year<br></p><p><b>December:</b> We had all been sick, off and on, since August, so this was the month that everyone looked like we had been deflated slightly. There was a school concert, in which Noah embodied that Dua Lipa "<a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/go-girl-give-us-nothing">go girl give us nothing</a>" meme. Then, right before Christmas, the sky poured snow for three days straight, and the wind howled, and the roads were closed, and my parents lost power, and it was One Of Those Storms where you take bets on if a tree is going to fall on your car. Everyone's Christmas felt sort of small and off-kilter, but at least there were no fires or emergency surgeries this year. <br><b>Media experience:</b> endless, endless Christmas music </p><p><b>Year In Review:</b> Oh man, this year just felt like...sort of nothing? A lot of the family stuff felt a little weird for some reason—lot of transitions and changes and interpersonal dynamics coming home to roost, sometimes literally—and while work was good and I learned a lot, it was also sort of unpredictable in its busyness and demands. I really like the friends and community that came through this year—the school parents, the Writers Group people—and yet I <i>still</i> felt a bit isolated...almost as if the last 2.5 years are still percolating away, but now their panic has gone underground. I didn't do any of my planned creative projects, which made me feel a bit weird, but ultimately I'm chalking this up to being a year that <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/422-there-are-years-that-ask-questions-and-years-that-answer">neither asks questions nor answers</a>. See you in 2023, probably! <br></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-16942730993694729002022-11-28T12:02:00.001-05:002022-11-28T12:02:08.738-05:00Never Mind the Billionaires, Here Come the Solarpunks<div class="quoteText" style="text-align: left;">
<p class="quoteText"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ2Rhq90x4bOxbbQ2fIQ6UvV5-PA7FL8V8qNm4RjNev-UOZ8nKVupRhQdUqmQn0m7R3B721U9W8vaarVGao-xIiuw2Yf8Bb-riDfKq1T3jJeOsqy_xfIY0xjxAnAGdRtizedQNU3239OWpUzfC0-l3UlLWPhulFngayQzkZykLoKgfDaFaFo_IU8jQ/s549/solarpunk%20revolution.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="413" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ2Rhq90x4bOxbbQ2fIQ6UvV5-PA7FL8V8qNm4RjNev-UOZ8nKVupRhQdUqmQn0m7R3B721U9W8vaarVGao-xIiuw2Yf8Bb-riDfKq1T3jJeOsqy_xfIY0xjxAnAGdRtizedQNU3239OWpUzfC0-l3UlLWPhulFngayQzkZykLoKgfDaFaFo_IU8jQ/w301-h400/solarpunk%20revolution.jpg" width="301" /></a></div><blockquote><p><i>
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the
divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by
human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often
in our art, the art of words.”<br /></i></p></blockquote><blockquote><p><i> ―
</i><span class="authorOrTitle"><i>
Ursula K. Le Guin</i>
</span></p></blockquote><p><span class="authorOrTitle"></span></p>
</div><p>After my son Noah was born in the mid-2010s, I experienced a profound and cumbersome eco-grief. This wasn't the first time in my life when the global future elicited terror instead of hope, but the news at the time was especially dire—rising temperatures and sea levels, catastrophic weather events as the new normal, and a general sense of unease and mistrust about what was coming. </p><p>It was widely recognized that the wealthiest countries, companies and individuals were driving the bulk of the damage, and they were also the only ones with any real power to change the narrative. <i>Would</i> they? Well...Elon Musk has since distracted himself from <a href="https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-a-new-life-awaits-you-on-the-off-world-colon-1841071257" target="_blank">Martian indentured servitude</a> by turning Twitter into a zoo for our worst humans; Jeff Bezos has pledged to donate millions but <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/16/jeff-bezos-will-give-away-most-of-his-fortune-why-its-a-big-deal.html" target="_blank">towards what is still TBD</a>; and it seems that billionaires, as a general class (sigh) <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2021/11/10/billionaires-donate-less-than-3-billion-to-climate-causes-at-cop26/?sh=600d3c1c43e0" target="_blank">tend to avoid</a> environmental philanthropy (double sigh). It's become fashionable for us plebes to murmur "eat the rich" as we scroll through the news, but since wealthy idiots seem to think that interplanetary exit is a sane and viable retirement plan, that leaves the rest of us earthbound morons mired in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20956421" target="_blank">brain-meltingly hot temperatures</a>. I mean this truly when I say: I hope Mars is terrible and very boring! Go there quickly and forever! <br /></p><p>While I know that I and my descendants will likely be insulated from the
worst of any looming climate changes—a gift of geography and the luck
to be born in a wealthy country—I cannot pretend that we will be
unaffected. I know the summers are getting hotter, the storms off the
lake more intense. There is <a href="https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/climate/impacts/rainwater-is-now-unsafe-to-drink-due-to-forever-chemicals" target="_blank">nowhere on earth where the rainwater is still pure</a>. It's coming for us all. </p><p>When things are that bleak, what can we do? </p><p>It's hard to live when you're stuck in shitty feelings, but there are techniques to soothe. My friend <a href="https://www.terranvshaver.com/" target="_blank">Terran</a> shared her practice of <a href="https://radicaloptimism.org" target="_blank">radical optimism</a>, which is helpful. I also started gardening at the beginning of the pandemic, which gives an illusion of control (at least until the tomatoes are blighted), and have several Pinterest boards devoted to an optimistic prepper vibe. <br /></p><p>I have also, personally and as a coping mechanism, developed a few aesthetic antidotes to this whole end-of-the-world experience. Like, do you have a moment to talk about <i><a href="https://www.avclub.com/a-breathtaking-final-season-wraps-up-kipo-and-the-age-o-1845249224" target="_blank">Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts</a></i>, my current TV obsession about a post-apocalyptic world where mega-mutant animals roam wild and humans have been driven underground, but it's hilarious and queer and hopeful and also the soundtrack is full of absolute fucking bangers? Or the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/NS5/the-nsibidi-scripts" target="_blank">Nsibidi Scripts</a> book series, which explores magical-realist Nigeria and is a smart and solid rebuttal of the unrelenting Eurocentrism of most wizarding coming-of-age stories (<i>ahem</i>, Harry Potter)? Or my ongoing interest in solarpunk, the alternate-future visioning exercise that is giving me some modicum of hope in these troubled times? </p><p>At its simplest, solarpunk imagines a world where the internal-combustion engine and fossil fuels have been replaced with green energy sources: windmills, hydroelectric dams, and solar panels. The images of solarpunk are often filled with greenery and brilliant blue skies. Unlike dieselpunk or steampunk, which creates alternate histories that feel dirty and individualist , solarpunk is clean, clear, and collective: a world where everyone has enough and our human relationship with Mother Earth is less, uh, extractive than it has been to date. <br /></p><p>The first solar panel was invented in 1883, a fin-de-siecle experiment that managed to convert the sun's energy into electricity at the rate of about one percent. The first commercially viable panels hit the market in the mid-1950s, costing a whopping $300 per watt generated. These days, an Ontario homeowner willing to invest about $20,000 into a home array—the kind we see installed on roofs—would be able to receive all of his electricity from the sun rather than the local hydro company. Solar panels have evolved from bulky, inefficient contraptions to semi-ubiquitous installations that are nearly standard for a certain type of homeowner—maybe an eco-geek, or a luxe hippie, or a libertarian. <br /></p><p>The solar panel isn't a poetic generator: it doesn't belch smoke or produce soot or feel warm to the touch. It doesn't have the romance of woodstoves or coal. It's also not haunted by the ghosts of failed solar panels, the way we have avoided nuclear in a post-Chernobyl world. They are silent, easily integrated into our everyday landscape, and small enough to be carried to a campsite or installed on a family rooftop. They have a bit of a beep-boop robot feel, but solarpunk's luscious greenery balances out the sterile feeling. The technology is improving every year, and prices have continued to come down. Green energy always has its <a href="https://regenpower.com/articles/what-are-the-problems-faced-by-renewable-energy/" target="_blank">challenges</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ford-proud-cancel-green-energy-1.5368745" target="_blank">detractors</a>, but we desperately need to wean ourselves off cheap, destructive fossil fuels. </p><p>I have a Tumblr post saved on <a href="https://www.pinterest.ca/terrorofthe416/solarpunk-vibe/">Pinterest</a> that reads "Before we can live in a world of vertical gardens covering stained-glass skyscrapers, we need to build a world of backyard garden boxes made from reclaimed wood. Before we can cover every rooftop with solar panels, we need to equip every home with <a href="https://gosun.co/collections/solar-ovens" target="_blank">solar smokeless cooking</a> made of scrap metal. The appeal of those green cityscapes in the pretty pictures isn't just that they're high-tech and clean, it's that they sprout from a society that values compassion, the environment, and <i>human lives</i> more than it values profit. We need to build that society first, and we need to build it from the ground up from what we have available." </p><p>I believe this to be true. We know that corporations and the rich people who run them will not take care of the planet the way we desperately want and need them to, so it's up to us to cultivate our optimism in whatever ways we can. I envision buildings dripping with atmosphere-cooling greenery, so I start in the garden. I envision electric cars in every driveway, so I start by riding my bike. I want solar panels on the library, so I start by reading about solar dehydrators. I want a different future, so I start by dreaming. <br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-38140102004962855962022-10-27T22:29:00.004-04:002022-10-27T22:29:39.602-04:00How We Do Community <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvitoFLBF_4TxAKPt-BV-QUcgOcYQHOZeZuoMu8uvLEvoNoha9O4zgSSO_G3jKF15yCuHaBU45UZIMpbjoQWzYghJAsgkx4a9lb0D_PHHCop6K1ShxwQzj4ySu4jE4hlkTvmI3CVDS-3Q0j212uoIhgDcGIpnX93crT_nNTwiCPuznJfMTscqAPEBU/s800/a5962ae1403dbf4888df0a421a487b46.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvitoFLBF_4TxAKPt-BV-QUcgOcYQHOZeZuoMu8uvLEvoNoha9O4zgSSO_G3jKF15yCuHaBU45UZIMpbjoQWzYghJAsgkx4a9lb0D_PHHCop6K1ShxwQzj4ySu4jE4hlkTvmI3CVDS-3Q0j212uoIhgDcGIpnX93crT_nNTwiCPuznJfMTscqAPEBU/w300-h400/a5962ae1403dbf4888df0a421a487b46.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>It used to be so simple—when we talked about "community" as a concept, I felt like I had a handle on what that meant. Like, my friends and my family and the people on my street and the person who teaches me yoga, right? A community was a Richard Scarry kind of place, where there is one of every kind of person, all living together in harmony and pigs deliver the mail. <p></p><p>Now, I'm not so sure. I mean, I've been on Twitter. I know how echo-chamber it can be out there. It's not a simple matter of showing up at the water cooler or at church and letting myself breath the same air as someone who voted for Doug Ford; what does it mean to be in community with people? </p><p>Obviously, file this under "yet another way Covid—and just modern life in general—has got us fucked up," but let's dive in? <br /></p><p> Not too long ago, Devon Price put up an <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CTxVjILl2d7/" target="_blank">Instagram post</a> that kind of blew my mind a little bit. "Capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy drain us, dehumanize us, and alienate us from each other (and our own needs) daily. Forming a thriving, truly interdependent community can feel nearly impossible under this system. Our lives are set up to be as hostile to community formation as possible. Many of the things that we call community are not communities at all. They’re fandoms and friend groups or brand identities.” </p><p>And pardon me if this wasn't just a whole paradigm shift for me. It spoke to why some of the issues in what I had considered "my community" felt like intractable interpersonal rifts—it's because they <i>were</i>. Friend groups are set up on the basis of people liking each other and their shared histories together, not on a vision or a common goal or a shared belief. Friend groups are often fundamentally <i>incompatible</i> with the complexities of community, because community sometimes asks us to exist alongside (and in close proximity to!) people whose personalities might drive us right up the wall, but who <i>also</i> want to achieve something we find valuable or important. Community allows us to actively dislike some members, while friend groups are really skittish about that. <br /></p><p>I think is why "finding community" is sometimes so tough, especially as we age into our 30s and 40s. For me, this was a time in my life where I really started to question if I still believed in the same stuff I did in my 20s, and what I really <i>do</i> believe in, if not that. Things I took for granted in my 20s—the shape of my life, the family I wanted, the partner, the house, the kid, the job, the goals—all of that was upended and opened up by a series of wildly destabilizing catastrophes and losses in my early 30s. Coming out the other side, it turned out I was weirder, more tender, angrier, more open to joy, than I ever had been before. I had to be, because those are the things that let me survive that time. But those things are not universally beloved by all; in some regards, I felt like I was starting from scratch in both friendships and in community, and would have to build both back up. </p><p>I have been driven to Google "what makes a good community," and it's not usually <i>everybody gets along and there are snacks</i>, although that does sound dreamy. Communities have roles and goals: people do specific things, for specific reasons. Communities have expectations and traditions: you're accountable to the people you're with, and you're often doing it with a sense of duty and meaning-making. Communities treat each other well, with kindness and fairness and transparency. Communities involve a diversity of people—elders and children, rich and poor, workers and volunteers—and value them in thoughtful and appropriate ways. And yeah, communities often do have fun, and people do like each other. But you can also be in community with someone who makes you want to sigh your loudest and most dramatic sigh. <br /></p><p>For me, my vision of community is often centered around values: hope for a better and less scary world; that we can help each other, even when things are ugly; the power of laughter and joy in both those things. There are details that would make this a more beautiful vision—like, yes I <i>would</i> like to be living in a progressive oasis where billionaires are illegal, we have weekly potlucks, and the children actually learn about Black History Month and Pride in school—but we start with the basics, and they can be done from anywhere, with most people. It's amazing to me that they aren't universal, but, hey: communities exist for people who aren't like me, too. <br /></p><p>It has been so interesting to me the different ways that community has been present in my life. When I was in university, I lived in a student housing co-op, and my closest friends were the ones who really believed in the co-op's mission, the ones who put in time and effort and sweat to making the place we lived better. But the beauty of it wasn't that I lived only with my closest friends. I also lived with people I couldn't stand, people who were sometimes unsafe, people who were careless or rude or odd or just...<i>so</i> different from me. And for the most part, we all made it work. We got the dishes done and the leaves raked, and we threw parties and cleaned up after them. It hung together in some strange, beautiful way. </p><p>And now, in a small town, there are people I see regularly whom I adore, whose work and lifestyle I admire, who aren't quite friends but who <i>are </i>colleagues in our respective life-project. There are friends I like very much and who are also so different from me, whose political leanings or parenting choices are very different from mine, but we find other ways to connect. And there are folks who are true friends, who make me laugh and laugh and who will also drop off a case of Coke Zero when we have covid. There is friendship in community, after all. <br /></p><p>I'm satisfied with this expanded experience of community—beyond just friend groups, fandoms, and brand identities—because it allows things to be weird and shaggy. Communities are the definition of imperfect, the embodiment of "I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing" and in these days—with the disasters looming/regularly unfolding—we need all the dancing we can get. <br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-87400077772615749792022-09-21T20:05:00.002-04:002022-09-21T20:05:24.520-04:00Autumnal<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhriN7erX4hXGFJUQ8f1JjFqygdgmrR04WbTlY1huoKL0izEREd4I33hFW-nBzpMZOy-lsH_vUsDZJyXiInQkbMuFhfN6flfuGIrpLuzz08UTtMSp33be4RjZCG3tnRw5h1c0u3PQsOrsLp7Mx3TJ1HIRU_lrHPf8Ac9K7V2CJg51ADHV7oooJyt1ZA/s576/7331e0d3f70bc49a01e15361ce686c11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="461" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhriN7erX4hXGFJUQ8f1JjFqygdgmrR04WbTlY1huoKL0izEREd4I33hFW-nBzpMZOy-lsH_vUsDZJyXiInQkbMuFhfN6flfuGIrpLuzz08UTtMSp33be4RjZCG3tnRw5h1c0u3PQsOrsLp7Mx3TJ1HIRU_lrHPf8Ac9K7V2CJg51ADHV7oooJyt1ZA/s320/7331e0d3f70bc49a01e15361ce686c11.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>It's the last day of summer, and tomorrow the days will be shorter than the nights. Ever <a href="https://hipstersareboring.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-wheel.html">the wheel turns</a>, but also—<i>ugh</i>. I know that winter is coming because it comes every dang year, but every year I also harbour a secret wish that we somehow become the <a href="https://hipstersareboring.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-wheel.html">Golden Isles</a> and the winters are mild (and we also get a Target). But alas, winter in southwestern Ontario is coming, and she is never pretty. <p></p><p>My biggest struggle with this time of year, regardless of weather or the temperature, is when we start to lose the light. The days
get shorter and shorter, plus the added insult of "gaining" an hour
that really means that the sun is gone by 5 PM each day. The six weeks
on each side of the solstices are the hardest for me, because they are
just so <i>dark</i>. I am no sun worshiper, but I miss that stupid ball of radiation something <i>fierce</i>.
I try to deploy as many wards against the night as I can muster—daily
walks, exercise, eating well, sleeping (but not too much!), creative
projects—but the reality is that I tend to white-knuckle my way from
Christmas to Family Day, because it's dark and cold and I'm miserable. <br /></p><p>But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Because, first: autumn! Or as I like to think of it, Bad Summer. Like winter, summer is a real razzle-dazzle season; they have literally no/all chill, and extremes in both directions of emotion and temperature and solar exposure. Fall is milder, more temperate. Wind and rain, but not the tornado-watch thunderheads that fill the sky in August. No snow yet, or a very light and exciting dusting that melts within the hour. The garden bounty is coming to fruition—and while this is another personal <i>ugh</i>, since this year's garden was a proper disaster (I abandoned the tomatoes, my landlord ran over the raspberry cane with the lawnmower, and rodents ate everything else)—many other more dedicated and diligent gardeners are enjoying their crops. We get to rotate our sweaters and puffy vests back in, and I have never met a puffy vest I didn't immediately try to wear 300 days a year. Fall is golden light, orange leaves, and blue skies. </p><p>Fall is also the time I commit to new routines. Something about that back-to-school energy that makes me want to take on a new version of myself, so I try to get that good vitamin regimen off the ground, or I start a new hobby, or I sign up for a class. I spent 23 years in the school system, and to me, September represents possibilities in learning and identity work. I like the predictability of school days and weeks with weekends. This year, I want to dive deeper in my creative goals; producing new work for my writer's group, taking a more adventurous approach to knitting projects, and actually completing the various projects that are languishing at the 80% complete mark (like the zine I made that just needs a cover, or the cookbook with three typos, or the knitting pattern that needs to be formatted, or the pants that need a new waistband, or or or <i>orrrrr</i>.....)<br /></p><p>Aesthetically speaking, fall is all electronica and house music; something about those cool beats just hits me where I live, and it's much easier to dance when I don't feel like a walking hot flash. It's big sweaters and blankets. It's period movies about murders, and high fantasy on TV. It's candles on the table on Friday nights. It's stew and bread, cloth napkins and red wine. It's a few friends around the table, laughing after two glasses of wine or a fat IPA, the kids somewhere else in the house. I don't go in for "spooky season," which has been on the rise in the last decade or so as a dark corollary to basic-bitch PSL vibes, but fall is also dry leaves skittering across the pavement, mist in the air at midnight, and branches knocking against the window. It's a hunker-down sensation, a time of active burrowing and preparing for the upcoming winter. </p><p>I know the secret of life is that nothing lingers, and that is the gift and curse of life here on earth. Hard seasons pass and we're glad to see them go; easy ones pass too, despite how hard we try to grab hold of them. Fall is a reminder, to me at least, to pay attention to the turning of the page, the dusk and the dawn: the moments between the show-stopper, the big events, that's all our life as well. <br /></p><p>We're in the final play-days of the year. Cool nights and warm days, and that golden light, makes being outside feel bittersweet—we all know the end is coming, we can sense it, but it's a lovely way to pass the time all the same. I love fall, and her final bursts of colour, of leaves, of exuberance. </p><p>What a spectacular way to lose the light. May we all go into the darkness with this much joy. <br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-45461673906065591922022-08-18T20:51:00.001-04:002022-08-18T20:51:46.194-04:00Southwestern Ontario, 1995-2003<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Js-aIi9KxUWTtuYo7sa_FqvRRnvUSjSfShIkMt9EOPVCLHvAZ3xviCw1ZGH5dOD5l5ibSCoeaFq-cfvAB5vxyHN3uKumk8t5vtO-pjXju5yDGy9D239PrMrlP6hcGQJpFkDMmLCqEc4d-kI9mux9MAdmnLHRUvidvU7sOHdUyvg6KjwVAQ6X1qDA/s540/472ea3a423079be2d20ff61403defded.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="540" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Js-aIi9KxUWTtuYo7sa_FqvRRnvUSjSfShIkMt9EOPVCLHvAZ3xviCw1ZGH5dOD5l5ibSCoeaFq-cfvAB5vxyHN3uKumk8t5vtO-pjXju5yDGy9D239PrMrlP6hcGQJpFkDMmLCqEc4d-kI9mux9MAdmnLHRUvidvU7sOHdUyvg6KjwVAQ6X1qDA/w400-h395/472ea3a423079be2d20ff61403defded.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>It's hard to remember just how the world used to be - <p></p><p>that there truly was top-40 radio stations, and everyone listened to the
same music, a hit was everywhere: on our mix tapes, on movie
soundtracks, on the radio, <i>especially</i> on the radio, at least twice an
hour, and we would know all the words, and if we didn't, they were
printed on the inside of the CD booklet, so we could find them, learn
them, sing along. </p><p>that we would walk over the hill at Sauble Beach and end up at the roller rink on a Friday night, listening to top-40 country music and silly pop hits from the 1970s as we circled on the asphalt, holding hands and sometimes kissing, just kids in baseball hats and braces, quoting <i>Monty Python and the Holy Grail</i>, flirting endlessly, flirting that went nowhere because we were eleven, twelve, thirteen years old; sex was light-years away, something we read about in the pages of <i>YM</i> but never did, never even considered for ourselves, because how could we? We were kids at the rollerpark. </p><p>that we took trips to the Keady flea market, the Mennonite girls with their strong forearms and bad teeth working the fruit and veggie stands, and us yearning for something delicious and wrapped in plastic, tarts and strudels that were homelier than anything from a restaurant but the ugliness just made it taste better; endless toys to pick over and examine, pop-culture references I would never understand, matchbox cars whose metal bodies were already hot under the July sun at ten in the morning; thirsty in the heat and the crowds; and then going over to the barns where the animals were sold and seeing the oldest-order Mennonite women wrapped in black wool capes, under black wool bonnets, with black running shoes, ancient already at 20 years old, and me turning self-conscious in my tank top and shorts, feeling the judgement of an old God on my bare shoulders; and then sticking my fingers into the rabbit cages and pulling them back out before they bit. </p><p>that there were snow days in schools; that black ice on the roads held the country kids at home, unable to ride the bus; that the town kids would show up and teachers might not; and a harried-sounding faculty member might announce that people could study in the library or hang out in the gym, or that we could <i>leave</i>, and there was a great scraping-back of chairs on linoleum floors, and we would get out coats and snowpants from lockers and make plans—<i>your</i> parents won't be home, <i>he</i> has cable—and then we would just <i>leave</i>, go out into heavy weather, snow falling from a steel-gray sky, and sometimes we would go back to someone's house and eat bowls of cereal and watch music videos, but sometimes we would wade through hip-deep snow, through the cemetery, breathless and screaming with holy laughter. </p><p>that the farmland of southwestern Ontario would feel like the centre of the world, the blue sky piled with thunderheads, the green boundlessness of corn spikes and the shock of electric-yellow canola, the perfect circles of bales and the shagginess of stooks, a lazy gang of dairy cows out in the field, lying down when it was going to rain and chewing constantly regardless of weather; that between farms were towns with drive-in movie theatres and Christian bookstores, and that those hills would feel like the most natural thing in the world, and eventually, mountains and forests and plains would become Away and those farms and little towns would be Here. </p><p>that I could watch a thousand sunsets over Lake Huron and never get tired of them: the glowing peaches and thick reds and dreamy golds, the ripples of clouds reflecting oranges and cream, or cloudless skies where the whole horizon blazed with unyielding sun, with the fire finally dropping into the lake as the clock circled to ten at night, the sand under my feet cooling by degrees as I stood and watched the sky's colours fade to a spill of stars. </p><p>that if someone had a camera, there was a one-in-three chance they would ever develop the film, that phone were attached to the walls at our homes and schools, that twenty-five cents could buy a call for parents to come pick us up from the movie theatre or a friend's house, but otherwise it was notes on the counter, notes passed in class, mailed letters, pictures torn from magazines, messages left on machines that the whole family might hear, and that we could disappear into the places between places, unseen and untracked and unfound and a certain type of free. <br /></p><p>that we would haunt libraries, bookstores, school auditoriums, coffee shops that served BLT sandwiches for $3.45, empty classrooms, the hallways of school at 4:30 PM; places that were, it felt, just for us; kids with no money and nowhere else to be, who wanted to keep hanging out despite there being nothing to do; so we made plays, we wrote short stories, we traded mix tapes and burned CDs, we drew in each other's sketchbooks, we drew on bathroom walls, we cut up our clothes, we smoked each other's cigarettes, we kissed, we cried, we laughed, we told each other's jokes and each other's secrets, we thought we were inventing the world. We piled our stupid lonely teenage hearts together and sometimes, years later, despite everything, they stuck. <br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-44485273857954682142022-07-28T22:05:00.001-04:002022-07-28T22:05:12.114-04:00Your Summer 2022 Flowerscopes<p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><b></b></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHv2EvGxuhi05Mj9qjRMDDMd_91CKNi2vkrCUpz1hFjP0S73Lye39p--dHVZgyS8ubWm_yKjZbqEr7Bc5mD3KUOYLianl4TglesyDyPVc0i5aoJ-M_Q4xJZNkGimjrxXWbjttY6IfIB7REh1AMcdJM6voUBiKJD5ZJ_YCX5eIWT7aVRdk5_4IDU1cK/s600/69289fb644a1214f7f80a7463c3bdeb7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHv2EvGxuhi05Mj9qjRMDDMd_91CKNi2vkrCUpz1hFjP0S73Lye39p--dHVZgyS8ubWm_yKjZbqEr7Bc5mD3KUOYLianl4TglesyDyPVc0i5aoJ-M_Q4xJZNkGimjrxXWbjttY6IfIB7REh1AMcdJM6voUBiKJD5ZJ_YCX5eIWT7aVRdk5_4IDU1cK/w266-h400/69289fb644a1214f7f80a7463c3bdeb7.jpg" width="266" /></a></b></div><b>Aries:</b> It is amazing to me how little a thing needs to be scary before I am scared of it. From movie trailers to green skies, to sending a text where I have to say no (especially to a social invitation), I balk and quake at the slightest thing. Is this a trauma response? Anxiety? A reluctance to maintain my own boundaries? Well, it depends. Sometimes, things really are scary, and I'm having the right reaction to it. And sometimes, they're not. The trick is to know which one is which. <br /><b>Suggested hobby:</b> kickboxing<br /><p></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><b>Taurus: </b>When I'm not walking in the woods, I want to be. I crave light dappled through the trees, birdsong in the air around me, a pair of sturdy hiking boots. But when I'm actually in the woods, I get a little panicky. Why is that man behind a tree? What if I roll my ankle?? Who knows I'm out here, really??? But I want be outdoorsy, so either I need to find a place where I can see any would-be creepers coming a mile away—the Scottish Highlands? Iceland?—or I need to cultivate a community of likemindedly skittish forest nerds. Which do you think would be easier?<br /><b>Suggested hobby:</b> Dungeons and Dragons <b><br /></b></span></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><b>Gemini: </b>In 2024, the Olympics will introduce the sport of breakdancing to its roster of games, and I am <i>thrilled</i>. Breakdancing was one of the first things I ever used the internet for; my sister and I somehow found a page about "how to breakdance," and I still remember its black-and-white line drawing illustrations of the turtle. We were absolutely bad at it—poorly coordinated and lacking upper-body strength—but just trying it made us feel a world of possibilities. We could have been breakdancers, in 2000. We could have been anybody. <br /><b>Suggested hobby:</b> karaoke <br /></span></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><b>Cancer: </b>Part of the problem—the "problem"—of modern life is that everything lasts <i>forever</i>. Songs from every era become TikTok jams, or pulled into hit TV shows, themselves set in some other age, from the Regency to the 1980s. Streaming services offer reruns of media from our childhoods. But it's not just media—y</span></span><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc">our stupid ex is still Facebook friends with your friends, and there are pictures of everyone <i>everywhere</i>, starting in about 2008 and going...forever. </span></span></span></span><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc">I miss the days when the past was in the past. </span></span></span></span><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc">It makes it hard to look forward sometimes. <b><br />Suggested hobby:</b> collage<br /> </span></span></span></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><b>Leo:</b> I think we <i>all</i> felt it when Beyonce sang "I just quit my job" over a bouncy house beat, didn't we? Like, if Queen Bey is dropping out of the rat race, surely us mortals can take a nap. Over the lat six, four, and definitely two years, I have been craving rest like nothing else. I schedule breaks in my workday. I lie down after lunch. And still, it's not enough. What I need is <i>brain</i> rest, the kind where my thoughts are more like fluffy clouds and less like a red eyeball. I want <i>soul</i> rest, where I feel cared for and loved, even if it's just finding my way to back to myself.<br /><b>Suggest hobby:</b> cookie optimization<br /></span></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><b>Virgo:</b> In 2020, when the west was burning, a huge cloud of smoke found its way over Ontario, like a dirty contact lens over the dome of the sky. It was strange and terrifying—not the immediate terror of what was happening in BC and California, but that existential clench of <i>oh, this is a dying world</i>. But you know something, Virgo? The sunsets were fucking spectacular that month. It can be nearly impossible to find pleasure and joy in rawest existence, but that doesn't mean we should stop looking. <br /><b>Suggested hobby:</b> elaborate kitchen dance party choreography<br /></span></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><b>Libra:</b> Are you a grudge-holder? I'm a grudge holder. I <i>come</i> from grudge-holders, baby. It's an ugly part of me, for sure. I'm trying to unlearn it, because usually the person I'm grudged against either 1) has no idea or 2) does not give a single shit. The grudge hurts me and me alone, by letting the injury live in my head. But...at the same time...I don't know how to heal from some things. So what do I <i>do </i>with them? <br /><b>Suggested hobby:</b> DJing</span></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><b>Scorpio:</b> You're supposed to be the sultriest and sexiest of the zodiac, the most lipstick-and-red wine among us, and I admire that about you, I do. But what of the Scorpios out there who like a pretty sundress and a white wine spritzer? Who spent their middle schools arranging their stuffed animals on their floral bedspread? You, who are no less serious, no less important, just because your heart is pink rather than blood-red. I see you, airy Scorpio. I love your light. <b><br />Suggested hobby:</b> romantic comedies<br /></span></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><b>Sagittarius:</b> My favourite genre of music is something we might call "an absolute banger," the kind of song that, when you hear it, inspires you to throw down your hardest, to leave it all on the floor. This is agnostic to originator—an absolute banger is just as likely to come from an African artist as a UK one, from the pop charts and the indie studios, from a guitar or a drum machine. It's more about the feeling they inspire—slightly destructive but ultimately generative of blood, sweat, tears, love, energy, possibility, etc. It's music to have weird sex to. It's music to scream to. A <i>banger</i>. <br /><b>Suggested hobby:</b> writing erotica<br /></span></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><b>Capricorn: </b>There is someone in Stratford who has very posh taste in shoes; for whatever reason, they ditch their footwear after only a handful of wears, and instead of selling them on Poshmark, they just drop them off at the local Value Village. And then I find them! It is <i>fascinating</i> to me to be part of the thrifting ecosystem, where the hunt might surface nothing more than a pair of Joe Fresh flip-flops, or it might bring you something that feels like a literal gift. Our joy often spreads much wider than we ever consider. <br /><b>Suggested hobby:</b> knitting<br /></span></span></p><p><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><b>Aquarius:</b> Well, it's 2.5 years after the pandemic started and it's now unclear to me how we're all doing. I got boosted today and am waiting to see what the side effects are this time around—previous rounds have knocked me <i>back</i>, and I'm like ??? for this one. Collectively, our small talk game is really bad right now, and we're also definitely in a seventh wave, which everyone is treating as inevitable even though it was <i>not</i>. And also I miss my friends. So where are we, these days, really? What axis are we measuring ourselves along today? <br /><b>Suggested hobby:</b> Pinterest hairdos<br /></span></span></p><p><b><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc">Pisces: </span></span></b><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><span>"The cure for anything is salt water; sweat, tears or the sea." Karen Blixen, an actual baroness, wrote those words under her pen name </span></span></span><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><span><span class="ILfuVd" lang="en"><span class="hgKElc"><span>Isak Dinesen, and often when I'm having a hard day, I think of them. Research into depression has shown that submerging into frigid water can help the brain battle its darkness—hell, even dunking your face into ice water will do the trick. And when I'm maxed out on childcare, I will sometimes plunk the child into a bath, cool or warm, and watch with half an eyeball as he shrieks and dunks and splashes until he has reset himself and I have done the same. How do reset yourself, my dear little fish?<br /><b>Suggested hobby:</b> trying new flavours of sparkling water<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-83061367756895079432022-06-30T22:43:00.001-04:002022-06-30T22:43:18.925-04:00Pocket Utopias<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYlayVSllgLk2kNtkwboB7UlMwnNwhvwlv6E1xmHZ3r37SBWs8pss9BSYa4i7-Br2gyC0tj3AW5DamFevFJzM5pkZ0KcVZJqNrxS0kDzfTf9c8Xh-LewInVSRvQDS01UAVyXcUrt_iOqHZMDc0Qiu9WqHFidlKqOmLySzRHSWo_kf4RcYwF-QVEZdf/s960/47162454_1204763383004141_5572103274896556032_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="614" data-original-width="960" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYlayVSllgLk2kNtkwboB7UlMwnNwhvwlv6E1xmHZ3r37SBWs8pss9BSYa4i7-Br2gyC0tj3AW5DamFevFJzM5pkZ0KcVZJqNrxS0kDzfTf9c8Xh-LewInVSRvQDS01UAVyXcUrt_iOqHZMDc0Qiu9WqHFidlKqOmLySzRHSWo_kf4RcYwF-QVEZdf/w400-h256/47162454_1204763383004141_5572103274896556032_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>The other day, Noah and I were walking down the street when we passed by a truck stopped at an intersection. It was a family vehicle—bearded dad behind the wheel, a blank-faced tween in the passenger seat—the kind of truck people buy when they have very large dogs, or snowmobiles, or they like to camp. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about this truck, except for the <a href="https://grpride.org/product/transgender-pride-flag/" target="_blank">trans flag</a> that had slid down the dashboard and was peeking out the front windshield.<p></p><p>I have no idea if anyone in that family is trans. They might have attended the local Pride march a few weeks ago, stuck the flag in the truck, and then forgotten about it. They might have gone to a queer event—it is June, after all—as leaders, participants, or allies. There was nothing about that split-second observation—stop sign, truck, trans flag—that revealed any kind of story. </p><p>And yet: I felt my heart get lighter. It's the kind of thing that would have been nearly impossible a couple decades ago, and difficult a few years ago. A casual show of support or of identity, jumbled in among regular truck-stuff, driving around in a small town in a blue riding. It's remarkable by being unremarkable. </p><p>This has been a tough few years (hell, it's been a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1102305878/supreme-court-abortion-roe-v-wade-decision-overturn">tough</a> <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62000742">few</a> days), and I find that the deluge of bad news turns me into a reluctant news junkie: analyzing the latest Supreme Court decisions from a country in which I do not even live, or trying to parse wastewater Covid graphs from my local health unit despite achieving no higher than a C+ in either math or science for most of my high school career, or reading the names of shooting victims or the location of another residential school mass grave. Being online means that I hear about this stuff; being a human means that it fucks me up. <br /></p><p>So I live for these pocket utopias, these tiny signs that things are kind of good, maybe even great. </p><p>An aside: this year, I made a decision to stop complaining about the summer. This season is challenging on many levels, from sun-triggered migraine to unhappy anniversaries to oppressive heat. I understand one hundred percent when people are unhappy from May to September; like, I <i>get</i> it. Plus, there's this existential dread that hangs over every hot day, like, "you think this is hot? You <i>just wait</i>" and then the heat-dome goblins come and turn everything into a 43-degree hellscape. <br /></p><p>But at the same time? I have to take a step back from being miserable, because it's so easy to default to that. Besides, there are things to truly love about this time of year. The lushness of the season is a special luxury: the flowers and the backyard gardens, the leaves on the trees. I know that many things come with a dark side—hello, pollen, my old friend—but that also implies a bright side, no?</p><p>I'm not trying to be delusional in my optimism. I can credit mindfulness and radical joy for this shift in
perspective. Mindfulness has given me the tools to actually notice all
the microscopic loveliness in the world; radical joy gives me permission
to celebrate them, even when things are certifiably shitty. And it's not a secret that things are bad! So many lines on the graph are heading up: food prices, ambient temperatures, number of people killed in mass shootings. I'm not trying to ignore that. But also, after two years of what feels like fairly unrelenting bad news...I'm ready to grab onto whatever positivity I can find. I'm ready to seek that shit out like it's <i>drugs</i>, baby. </p><p>It's the reason I joined my <a href="https://climatemomentum.ca/">local climate action group</a>. I know, on an intellectual level, that there are zero things that I can do to stop the climate crisis. The people in charge know what they should be doing, and they just...don't? Instead, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on space rockets and buying social media platforms and union-busting, and it's bad. Or they run through another filibuster, or approve another pipeline, and it's also bad. And there's nothing we can do about! </p><p>But it turns out that being together with people as we name the problem—grief, powerlessness, rage, bureaucratic inertia—can actually help a lot. I have felt a lot of climate grief in the last five years, and this little group of cycling nerds and retired pastors and policy wonks and gardeners has allowed me to feel like we can grieve together. It's not a quite a pocket utopia, but it's edging in that direction. </p><p>A pocket utopia doesn't solve the problems of the world, or even the household—it is a tiny, beautiful vision of change and possibility, and a slice of an easier and more loving future. They are always all around us—the new world is coming, after all—if only we can see them roll by. <br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-41312407007145132642022-05-29T22:03:00.003-04:002022-06-01T20:22:49.024-04:00For the Love of a Good Magazine<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLHDpRhCUUZS6pwQa78ciVwzYwAs7JcChMR_XRhlFDHfrfp4-irbeflPQQoy20deBulT1YA5_GXU-6L9-93jB95AyxQTp-FCFSdS46dbZL7m6imrziEbC7xyJ93rJs2l1kEo7z0Vu9zhusjfh4qFJ2_AYmmr5pAMBPfRNaQrwSWRi8f0fclj04Y5GN/s612/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-01%20at%208.21.15%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="612" data-original-width="421" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLHDpRhCUUZS6pwQa78ciVwzYwAs7JcChMR_XRhlFDHfrfp4-irbeflPQQoy20deBulT1YA5_GXU-6L9-93jB95AyxQTp-FCFSdS46dbZL7m6imrziEbC7xyJ93rJs2l1kEo7z0Vu9zhusjfh4qFJ2_AYmmr5pAMBPfRNaQrwSWRi8f0fclj04Y5GN/w275-h400/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-01%20at%208.21.15%20PM.png" width="275" /></a></div>I have to say, of all the print and written media I can access in my life, I love me a good magazine. I'm constantly looking for new titles and stores to browse, seeking out that perfect balance of tone and content and design that elevates a magazine experience from forgettable to one that I cherish. <br /><p></p><p>Magazines are, by their nature, ephemeral. They're designed to be recycled, forgotten on airplanes, used as kindling. They're snapshots of a certain moment in time: our collective interests, hot takes, emerging trends, thought leaders, fashionable outfits, anxieties that ebb and flow as we discover new great and terrible things about the world, and, sometimes, a crossword. Intellectually, they stand in opposition to books, which are supposed be permanent and to signal a certain brainy rigor: a <i>whole text</i>, devoted to...whatever. Magazines are shorter, lighter, and skip from topic to topic with a charmingly dilettante approach. As a sidebar: this is an absolute blessing in the face of the phenomenon I call "the book that should have been a magazine article," which is exactly what it sounds like: a snappy, talented nonfiction writer trying to spin straw into gold for 180 pages, padding the content with repeated ideas and irrelevant quotes, instead of just accepting his fate as someone who should have written seventeen <i>extremely good and memorable</i> pages and not pressed his luck. Magazines win that round! Relatedly, books by start-up bros should be illegal. <br /></p><p>If you're a freak like me, you keep your magazines. I have dozens of white boxes in my office, organized by topic and title: independent magazines like <i>The Gentlewoman</i>, parenting magazines I bought in 2006 (well before I had a child! I just liked the outfits, I acknowledge I am a monster), old issues of <i>Wired</i> that somehow feel timeless even though nothing on earth ages faster than an issue of <i>Wired</i>. I have magazines from 1980s Japan, archived because they ran advertisements featuring yours truly—I was, in fact, a child model in Japan, a thing about me that is very weird—and I have <i>New Yorkers</i> from just a few months ago, which I haven't fully digested. </p><p>When I was in high school, you could find quality independent magazines at the gas station; I have a memory of picking up the inaugural issue of <i>NYLON</i> from a 7-11 because it ran a feature on Beastie Boys uniform chic. In our small town, we had a downtown store that was stacked with issues of <i>Jane</i> and <i>US</i> and <i>YM</i>, magazines about poetry and yachting and interior design and celebrities, magazines about DIY culture and fashionable parenting and homebrewing. The store also sold cigarettes, and with the decline of both print culture and the number of smokers, it should surprise no one that that address is now a fancy bicycle shop. I love biking, but I miss magazines. </p><p>Blame the internet, as always: the magazine market lost about half its value between 2012 and 2022, declining at a faster rate than most information-sector segments—think books, movies, newspapers and TV—and many titles have transitioned to a less frequent publishing schedule, gone online-only, or folded altogether. And I get it: very few people want to keep an entire issue for a single look or recipe or project; that's why Pinterest exists and blogs get traffic. But I love being able to skip around in a magazine, discovering things I wouldn't have otherwise seen. It is hard to Google and get a true surprise, but magazines can be full of the unexpected and experimental.</p><p>I think I'm nostalgic for the of celebrity that prevailed in my teens and early twenties. I'm thinking about <i>Rolling Stone</i> covers shot by David LaChapelle and Annie Leibovitz, and when world-domination bands would share the reviews page with first-time indie artists, when they were still doing long-form articles about school shootings. I miss women's magazines, especially ones that had a snarky, irreverent, slightly shit-disturbing POV (think <i>Jane</i> and the radicalized <i>Teen Vogue</i>). I miss celebrity coverage from before the Perez Hilton era, when the tone really shifted from interested/laudatory into "I hope she falls down the stairs." There are gifts in living in the influencer age—the rise of hot, fat women, for instance—but the curse is that we are all products, all the time. Let me turn my gaze to a silky supermodel, not a craven entrepreneur/reality star/wellness guru. Let me be the object, not the subject. </p><p>I am waiting for magazines to rise again, the way vinyl and cassettes did, because I feel like there's really nothing that compares. Social media moves too fast, a whitewater of information and images; websites are great but discourage cross-pollination (it's no surprise that my favourite post of any website is a link roundup: a chance to read some curated articles!); newspapers, because the world is a drag, are a drag; 'zines will continue like the punk phoenixes they are every generation, but have limited distribution. Magazines stand alone: beautiful, interesting, visual, intellectual. Weirdly disposable and yet nothing leaves a mark like they can. Join me in my weird archives any time. <br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-87514675750448770172022-04-29T22:33:00.003-04:002022-04-29T22:38:20.607-04:00And One to Grow On<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie_yDmkIFFVppH1NxcJqbdCtYoYE5qIw34AW740WJB-vwe8PtU-Xy5BlP-CzsijOOBmcmw9vtPRmcVgXvBacSFl1Dc76QRqd5nH_f26EpsHHbwQllpsIhmZzw7ziXy9xRP5aYIxXuHWM0tEh2cSAqQRfvprVCr6SNX80IysSMZA8dfTqAmv6ASxgl2/s663/f93a033ed9c19175206b8fae908a3935.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie_yDmkIFFVppH1NxcJqbdCtYoYE5qIw34AW740WJB-vwe8PtU-Xy5BlP-CzsijOOBmcmw9vtPRmcVgXvBacSFl1Dc76QRqd5nH_f26EpsHHbwQllpsIhmZzw7ziXy9xRP5aYIxXuHWM0tEh2cSAqQRfvprVCr6SNX80IysSMZA8dfTqAmv6ASxgl2/s320/f93a033ed9c19175206b8fae908a3935.jpg" width="309" /></a></div>I am going to be 40 years old next year!? In nineteen short months, I will forty fucking years old; my husband already refers to us as "middle aged," which <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_age">Wikipedia tells me is incorrect</a> and which drives me legit bananas, but my clicky ankles know better: it's coming, boys. These ankles know that in 580 days, I will enter my forties, the time when I am required by law to get a <a href="https://i2.wp.com/therighthairstyles.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/3-over-50-caramel-bronde-pixie-bob.jpg?resize=500%2C578&ssl=1">certain haircut</a> and maybe have some sort of crisis re: death?? <p></p><p>I have barely scratched the surface of anything at all; I spent most of my 20s and 30s trying to get my brain and body and life into a place where my choices weren't going to ruin me. I got my degree and worked at some good jobs; I no longer have an eating disorder and I got right with my relationship to alcohol and my desire to have a child; on the days I feel like obliterating myself, I no longer reach for the nearest thoughtless man. I've made progress! But I also miss some things from that era, like loud music at one in the morning as I'm kissing someone that might become someone; parties and pool-hopping and all-night art escapades; dumb outfits and good hair; feeling like anything might be possible, good and bad, like love was right around the corner and if this thing didn't work out, something else would. Remember those days? Before we felt locked into this track, a monorail life? Before I was tired all the time? <br /></p><p>In the spirit of absolutely panicking about my encroaching mortality, here's a list of things I'd like to do by the time I turn 40 next year: </p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Travel</b>. I really want to go to New Zealand because it looks beautiful and like Small Canada, but I doubt that I'll get there by next year. I could probably pull off a trip somewhere a bit less antipodal, like Europe? <br /><br /></li><li><b>Decide what I'm going to do about my boobs</b>. <i>These things</i>, man. I've had huge breasts since I was thirteen, and I'm pretty over them. They give me headaches and they never fit into bras; they look crazy in photographs and are just Too Damn Much. But at the same time, they're mine, I've never not had them, and I don't know how I feel about a breast reduction. So I should spend some time with the idea.<br /><br /></li><li><b>Sew fearlessly</b>. I am always very scared about sewing, because I'm a perfectionist and I hate doing things when I'm bad at them; at the same time, I like the idea of sewing, so I should sew more. Practicing the thing! Doing the thing! <br /><br /></li><li><b>Make more art</b>.<b> </b>You know: stuff I can put on my walls that tells me about myself. <br /><br /></li><li><b>Commit to my body</b>. I am the fattest I've ever been and sometimes that bothers me—like when I see a picture of myself and I'm like, "who <i>is</i> that?" At the same time, I love not hating myself for what I'm eating or what size I am. This would be more an act of care for my primal home, which needs tenderness and some ass-kicking now and then. I love feeling strong and feeling sexy. I love looking good, even when I'm heavy. I am vain! I am hot! <br /><br /></li><li><b>Commit to my friends</b>. I am extraordinarily blessed that I have smart, amazing, creative, generous, kind, loving friends who have chosen me; I'm cursed with dumb jealousy and a tendency to dwell on the friendships that have soured, which really spoils the whole damn cake. This is a reminder to both pursue the people who feel good, and to revel in the relationships that work well now. <br /><br /></li><li><b>Audit and edit</b>. I have many, many things: magazines from 2002, skeins of yarn with no planned project, clothes that may never fit again, habits that make me crazy, relationships that feel stilted or distant. Taking a hard look at all my things and deciding which should be mended and salvaged, and which can be thrown away, is a great turning-40 project. <br /><br /></li><li><b>Love my kid</b>. Oh my god, I love my kid so much. I love his tender heart and his mean streak, his goofball jokes and serious play; his awful, beautiful, transcendent humanity. I love watching him with his friends and his grandparents. I love bedtime after we turn off the lights and he asks me to tell him a secret, after which <i>he'll</i> tell <i>me</i> a secret—a six-year-old confession of misbehaviour or a bad feeling, and I'll take the weight off his heart and carry it in mine. He's perfect, he's flawed, he's my absolute favourite person. <br /><br /></li><li><b>Publish some fiction.</b> I just started a writer's group and maybe this will be the kick in the ass/support I need to actually submit some stuff? To places? That publish?? Also, just accept the fact that I will never be a Serious Literary Person and write what makes me happy, which is science fiction and fantasy, and I'll never be in the New Yorker and <i>that is fine</i>. <br /><br /></li><li><b>Write some non-fiction.</b> I've been giving these really detailed and—I think—promising shower talks to myself about ritual and community, but when I sit down to actually write about these topics, I feel like a) an imposter and b) the weight of all the things I want to say are yoked around my neck and I need to get it right. What I actually need to do is just get it <i>out</i>, draft one, and then go from there. <br /><br /></li><li><b>Make a quilt</b>. Specifically, a quilt made from Noah's baby and toddler clothes. No, <i>you</i>'re feeling tender.<br /><br /></li><li><b>Decide on a home</b>. I once read that "home is not where you're from; home is where all your attempts to escape cease," and so I don't know that I'm quite home yet. If Toronto called and invited us back, would we go? Will we buy a house? Will I throw my life into the sea in order to live in a yurt in the Scottish hillscape? Stay tuned! <br /><br /></li><li><b>Therapy?</b> We are currently seeing a couples counselor; I have also seen my fair share of therapists and done everything from CBT and group therapy to EMDR. What I'd like is a therapist who focuses less on all my weird-bad thoughts and more on my weird-bad body feelings when I have those thoughts. Does this exist? I'm so tired of talking. <br /><br /></li><li><b>Sex stuff</b>. I know my mom reads this so I'll just say: there are some <i>things</i> I'd like to <i>do</i> in my lifetime. They're on the list so I can check them off when I do 'em. <br /><br /></li><li><b>Hair and makeup</b>. This is so vain, but I just want to look <i>predictably good</i> at some point in my life. This is a two-parter: I want to figure out my wild-n-curly hair, which is sometimes an angelic cloud of curls, but more often a donut bun I wear on my crown because I don't like it touching me. I <i>also</i> want to figure out what I need to do so that I feel super pretty but with minimal daily touching-up. Is this brow tinting? Lash extensions? Fake freckles? A chemical peel? Better sunscreen? Who knows? Not me! I could try harder. <br /><br /></li><li><b>Dance like a goddamn maniac</b>. I love dancing. I love losing myself in a dark room, three drinks in, sweating, music too loud, going outside to cool down, going back in to ramp up. I love it. None of us have had in the last two years—most of us—and I didn't have it for a few years before that, due to solo parenting and baby-rearing and all the sundry parts of new-family life. But god, I just want to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRh_vgS2dFE">dance</a>. <br /><br /></li><li><b>Eco-grieve</b>. I feel many kinds of ways about being a person on planet Earth these days: worry, guilt, anger, rage, fear. I fret about how to keep Noah in a place that might become fundamentally scarier by the end of this century; I worry about how I'll manage when I get too hot or too cold or food comes off the shelf or whatever other disaster hurtles towards us. I need to feel this thunderous grief for our mother-Earth; ignoring it makes it worse. <br /><br /></li><li><b>Be with people</b>. I don't even know what this looks like, but I do know that after two years of isolation and more years of feeling on the outside, I want to just be with people. Hanging out on the porch, digging in the garden, pushing kids on the swing, dancing on a hill, making art in a garage, volunteering, walking in the forest, trading eyerolls, all of it. <br /><br /></li><li><b>Cure the clicky ankle</b>. And not just the clicky ankle: the sore hip, the itchy boob, the jaw that doesn't open all the way on one side, the uterus with a fibroid the size of a whole other uterus, the intrusive thoughts, the sinus pain. Because of my family's tendency to be diagnosed with bad things when we go to the doctor, I often go absolutely insane in advance of very routine medical appointments, and I will sometimes just avoid the doctors altogether if I think I can get away with it. Tending to my body as I get older as a way of loving that I <i>am</i> getting older. Ugh! Forties! Yay! <br /></li></ol><p><br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-65625005234424949802022-03-27T23:00:00.004-04:002022-03-27T23:32:16.268-04:00The Baby-sitters Club and the Lonely Girl<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxIEDlGgImKEcSZLnmM53OK8qsDseUb5tTiDIMfsuSIbtDXbWrfXdsaWEIqoacLYrRSTLHOnvu5DUXfrmUbNE9Lbm7oGz62rNsGQFg5gbZTxUvcDt7MXNcLFloul8uogsPhT0q8-_nu-wMfg4jpkmeIJalyWhVc8wBFXaM6vg_96EVHLm-A81khRD_/s920/babysitters_kristy.0.0.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="920" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxIEDlGgImKEcSZLnmM53OK8qsDseUb5tTiDIMfsuSIbtDXbWrfXdsaWEIqoacLYrRSTLHOnvu5DUXfrmUbNE9Lbm7oGz62rNsGQFg5gbZTxUvcDt7MXNcLFloul8uogsPhT0q8-_nu-wMfg4jpkmeIJalyWhVc8wBFXaM6vg_96EVHLm-A81khRD_/w400-h266/babysitters_kristy.0.0.png" width="400" /></a></div>To a lonely girl, books are a lifeline. It's a cliche, but it's true. The Wakefield twins, the Babysitters Club, Claudia Kincaid, Marcy Lewis, Turtle Wexler, April Hall: for the girls reading books between 1989 and 1996, that's a list of girl-heros and dreamboat high femmes, off on dates and running businesses, escaping their humdrum lives by moving to museums and, occasionally, the moon. <br /><p></p><p>We <a href="http://hipstersareboring.blogspot.com/2018/06/sagittarius-at-gunpoint.html">moved around a lot when I was a kid</a>. It wasn't until much later in life that I realized how much that had affected me: not having those deep roots, not hanging out in the same schoolyards with the same kids, and always feeling a bit like I was on the outside, not quite able to read the room. I was easily stressed and fairly anxious, laughed too loudly, used big words, and didn't always pay attention. I went to the same Brownie troupe for a year and didn't know a single other girl's name. I didn't know how to ask. <br /></p><p>But I was a terrific reader. I read a lot, returning again and again to the same series, often the same books, until I had passages memorized. I wanted to live in their lives, astral-project myself into the pages of my favourite books. I wanted to be their friends, date their brothers, crash their motorcycles. Some books I owned; some I checked out many times from the library. Some were lost in moves or to leaky cottage roofs or fires. Some were lost to the merciless urge to rid yourself of relics from your worst years. </p><p>*** <br /></p><p>Middle school was <i>awful</i>. I was bused to a collector school in another town—an hour in the morning, and an hour after school. In the first few weeks of grade six, I joined up with a group of girls from other elementary schools and for the first time in a long time, I had <i>friends</i>; by the time Halloween rolled around, something had changed, and I was <i>out</i>, baby. I wasn't allowed to sit with them, or talk to them. They made fun of me, my body, the way I spoke, and my confusion at their sudden cruelty. Because those girls were popular, others followed their lead; suddenly, I was the kid eating alone, the butt of jokes. Suddenly, I was the kid <i>no one</i> would talk to. I didn't know what my crime had been—a joke at the most popular girl's expense? A crush on the wrong boy? Did my boobs grow too fast that year?—but I was ostracized, persona non grata, and utterly marooned. The ones who rode on my bus put things in my hair, told me I smelled, kicked my backpack away from me. Written down, it sounds like nothing, it sounds like you could not be injured by this, but it was very bad. <br /></p><p>This bullying went on for nearly two years, much of hidden from my parents until I was on the verge of collapse and wanting to die. Imagine that you are going through puberty and a friendship apocalypse at the same time. Imagine that you have acne for the first time and it is <i>bloom</i>, that you have braces and glasses and your hair has gone from softly straight to wildly frizzy, that your chest aches <i>all the time</i>. Imagine you know nothing about living in your own body; now imagine that your body has become a punch line to people you had considered friends. Imagine being bad at friendship in the first place. Now, not knowing what to say or how to say it is a life-ruining liability. Imagine being twelve years old and feeling utterly, completely, catastrophically alone. </p><p>In the intervening years, I've blocked out a lot of those middle school experiences. I remember the OJ Simpson verdict in 1995, someone listening on a contraband Walkman radio and then bursting into class, interrupting the teacher, to announce it: "<i>Not guilty."</i> I remember the South African girls whose parents made them wear long braids and long skirts. I remember Mark Bundy, small for his age, who would talk to me after all the other kids got off the bus, and I remember Kevin Jadayel, who teased me mercilessly as soon as he got on. I don't remember the names of the girls who shut me out. I don't remember the names of the teachers who watched it happen. I don't remember much. </p><p>*** <br /></p><p>What I remember is reading a lot of <i>Baby-Sitters Club </i>books. I loved them. I read Sweet Valley High and a lot of Paula Danziger as well, but the BSC had a special place in my heart: I, too, babysat my siblings. I lived in a little town near a big city (metropolitan Ottawa!). But the differences were actually the key bit: they had friendships; I did not. </p><p>I read them...a lot. For longer than I should have. I wanted to be carefree and sunny Dawn, or fashionable Stacey, or artistic Claudia. I was probably more aligned with reserved Mary Anne or bossy-ass Kristy. But they all loved each other, or liked each other, and even when they screwed up or flaked out or kept secrets, they stayed friends. This wasn't my experience: my friendships usually ended, either in that conflagration of abuse, or simply because we moved away. Here were girls who had been friends since they were babies, but who made a point of welcoming new friends. Here were girls who were humane. </p><p>There was the 1995 movie, which I owned on VHS. There was rumour of a TV adaptation, which I never saw (HBO in Canada in the 1990s was some serious satellite-TV rich-person shit), and there were endless, endless books. There were super-specials about ski trips and putting on a play; Dawn moved away; new members joined; Mary Anne had a boyfriend and Claudia's grandma died. But the whole point was that they were each other's constants. Their web of friendship held them in dark times. I wanted that so badly. I craved it. If I couldn't have it for myself, these books were a dreamworld I could enter when I needed. <br /></p><p>***<br /></p><p>It's become trendy to talk about wounds in pop psychology—the kind of thing you would see an Instagram meme about—and for me, those two middle-school years of friendship and identity rupture were a big goddamn deal. Even writing about it today makes me feel sweaty, as though someone is going to read that I was once bullied and start the whole circus up again. I almost never talk about it. Many close friends do not know this was something I went through. I feel ashamed of that part of my life. It left a huge scab on the part of my soul that deals with friendship. </p><p>In the intervening years, I have had that scab peeled off in a number of painful ways. I'm a human being with failings—I can be too direct, or make teasing jokes, and I struggle with jealousy—and I have had friendships end. In the aftermath, I've been made fun of. I've had former friends stalk me online. I've been left out of parties and fun things. And I've tried to let it all go, because I want there to be no wound. I want to be fine. </p><p>But I'm not fine. That part of me will always be tender.<br /></p><p>The last few years have been really tough. Like most people in their 30s, I still have a hard time making friends—I worry about coming on too strong, or not strong enough, and I have no idea how to be like, "so, what are your top three traumas and do you like your parents?" I'd probably be fine with dating—after all, there's an <i>expectation</i> of intimacy in romance—but in friendship, without an anchor like being classmates or colleagues or roommates, I drift. In Covid, we can't spend enough time together to draw close, compounding the problem. What would normally be a weekly playdate with our kids, or a regular coffee date, has become a "next year in Jerusalem" sort of timeline. We have been on hold for so long that it's hard to know where to restart. <br /></p><p> I'm lonely again. I crave friendship, again. I never really stopped, to be honest. <br /></p><p>***</p><p>One of the things that got me through was the 2020 Netflix adaptation—now cancelled—of <i>The Baby-Sitters Club</i>. It is a very well-cast and well-written show, with very 2020 sensibilities (some very woke characters, some unexpected LGBTQ characters, et cetera), that has made me laugh out loud multiple times and covet several many outfits. And it's also just a really<i> nice</i> show. The stakes are fairly low. I don't feel stressed out when I watch it. The adult marriages are mostly okay. Alicia Silverstone plays a mom! I mean, it's just chill. We need more chill scripted TV these days. My nervous system is <i>shot</i> and I can only take so many baking shows, you know? <br /><i></i></p><p>But it's also been an enormously <i>healing</i> show. Seeing these healthy middle-school friendships embodied on the screen has been such a balm for the part of me that still hurts, 26 years later. These girls seem to like each other. They're connected. No one is sitting alone at lunch. I love that. I need to see that, again and again, to train my brain to believe that it's possible. </p><p>The only other time in my life I've gotten as deep into a fictional universe as I did in middle school with the BSC was in <a href="http://hipstersareboring.blogspot.com/2019/08/how-harry-potter-saved-me.html">2018 with Harry Potter</a>—a time when my life was falling to pieces, when I needed an escape hatch, and so I blasted myself into this alternate magic world. The BSC was another escape hatch, both then and now, and I think many of us desperately need more stories like it. </p><p>I know this is a lot to put on a show about teenage babysitters, but the
stories we come back to usually speak to a part of us that needs love. We need stories that heal us, that soothe us, that remind us that our stories aren't the only ones. Stories that remind us that friendship and love and connection are still possible. <br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8699996156051897761.post-79567876533834600402022-02-26T20:22:00.001-05:002022-02-26T20:22:51.770-05:00The House in the Woods<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjYxUUoajfrMt14E0_hZYS113JjciYIlXyvCrUHWDQJSHAUux0w8Y5C8EiQto7-HV8zynMWzrs5i_ih6a8qUa4_dTr-T9SGNj9Hz2j5Q8B_cHwlcyTJ-V-6Di1MXnEpBBX5WvSg1rWBQLnxJUCTsoLqv2rQwbM6iUrgzy8GCykS_l_or2qU8gWGh4M0=s519" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="519" data-original-width="346" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjYxUUoajfrMt14E0_hZYS113JjciYIlXyvCrUHWDQJSHAUux0w8Y5C8EiQto7-HV8zynMWzrs5i_ih6a8qUa4_dTr-T9SGNj9Hz2j5Q8B_cHwlcyTJ-V-6Di1MXnEpBBX5WvSg1rWBQLnxJUCTsoLqv2rQwbM6iUrgzy8GCykS_l_or2qU8gWGh4M0=w266-h400" width="266" /></a></div>I turn 39 this year, which means I'm edging ever closer to my midlife crisis. As Millennial nostalgia is now in high season and Gen Z is embracing trends from my own puberty (<i>rude</i>), I get to consider myself having Lived A Life and can start planning for the inevitable next phase—the crone years, the apocalypse maybe, or at least thinking about having a clean house. <p></p><p>At the beginning of COVID, people were talking about the end of COVID as birthing a kinder, gentler, more community-oriented world. Two years later, as we stumble towards yet another checkpoint disguised as a finish line, it's harder to be assured that this kinder-gentler version of the world still yearns to be built. I have seen friends go into delusional wormholes about vaccines and mask mandates; I have seen Black people in America and my own communities rightly march in the street against police violence; I have cried, watching my son play in the our backyard, knowing that thousands of Indigenous children in this country were stolen and killed or allowed to die at school. As I write this, there is war in Ukraine, food prices in have shot up, and Canada is under the Emergency Act because protestors shut down the Canadian border with anti-science demands. It's a time, you guys. It is <i>a time</i>. </p><p>Back in 2018, I had an appointment with a social worker, who listened to me for a while and then said, "Yeah, it doesn't actually sound like you have anxiety. It sounds like you're reacting appropriately to what's been happening in your life." She encouraged me to visualize a place of safety and security in my mind, one that I could visit any time I needed to, as an escape from my ongoing crises. This advice struck me as odd, since visualizing an escape is not usually productive. But I was into what my brain conjured up: a cottage in the woods, with a little garden and a trail down to the water's edge. </p><p>I've long been fascinated with all the paths I could take but don't. Some other version of me is in a Master's program, or is a full-time freelance writer. There's probably a version who has three kids, or no kid; one that stuck it out in Toronto and one that never went there in the first place. There are versions of me with dogs, or short hair, or who still smoke and drink like a monster, or who went vegan in 2008, or who powerlift competitively, or who teach Nia, or traveled more, or who got divorced, or who told that guy about my feelings for him in 2010, or who never lived in co-op, or who still has <i>those friends</i>. There are so many ghosts out there: choices I made and didn't make. </p><p>An aside: for many years, I wanted to be a gardener. Someone who could grow flowers, and, importantly, food. My paternal grandmother was the kind of gardener who grew corn in her backyard, and I admired that about her. But for most of my adult life, I didn't put much effort into keeping green things alive. Houseplants withered, outdoor garden space was nil, and so I just assumed that I wasn't much of a gardener. </p><p>In 2020, like many people, I frantically put some seeds into potting soil in the spring, and was astonished when they actually sprouted. When I put them into the ground, they grew. I read about how to care for them and how to make them bear fruit. And several months later, we had a bounty of tomatoes and zucchini and pumpkins. </p><p>It turned out, I could be a gardener, if I wanted it. If I tried. </p><p>It turns out some paths are not permanently washed away. <br /></p><p>I keep thinking about the experiences I want to have in my life: are they a shopping list? Am I trying to become someone I'm not, or am I trying to expose the core of who I really am? When I look at <a href="https://soulsalt.com/list-of-values-and-beliefs/">lists of values</a>, I think, "Well, these all sound pretty good!" and it takes me a while to drill down on what it means when I say I value, say, gratitude. </p><p>And I also suspect my incipient midlife crisis could be both mild and deep: what I'm craving is beautiful landscapes, rest, creative time, and community. Some of those require a plane ticket and two weeks off; others require more serious work, a true deep dive into who am I and how I want to live out the back half of my life. (Side note: why does building true community feels exhausting and overwhelming at the best of times? In a post-pandemic world, when everyone's politics and personality defects have been on display for the better part of a year, it feels even more isolating to try to figure out how to create a web. And yet I feel the sort of loneliness that isn't met by a single friend or a partner—it's the craving for a network, a village, a circle. Why does that feel so weird and woo-woo and cringey to write about?) </p><p>I know that the more I continue on as business as usual, the more time I spend on the work-kid-knit-cook-sleep-shower treadmill, the more entrenched I feel in this one version of myself. And I only get so much life to do it all. And I become more and more aware that those other versions are floating away, never to be born into being. <br /></p><p>What is the definition of a midlife crisis, and how do we meet it? Other than throwing seeds into the ground that have never sprouted before? <br /></p><p>I keep thinking about that house in the woods. Sometimes it does look like a house in a thicket, with a path that leads to a stony beach and great tide-offerings of seaweed. Sometimes it looks like an apartment above a downtown shop, with tall windows and a tiny kitchen and bright white walls. Sometimes it's plane tickets and a beloved hand in mine. Sometimes it's an ecovillage or a yurt, a drinking tea in a shared kitchen, and dirt under my fingernails by dinnertime. <br /></p><p>And sometimes it looks planting seeds in the earth, trying to expand who I am and who I could be. Growth, across the fields of my life. <br /></p><p><br /></p>Kaitlyn Kochanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04786479100009809264noreply@blogger.com0