All great movies are based on shock: the surprise of the unexpected thing. Some movies go overt with this more than others, like when, in The Big Lebowski, the Dude mush-mouths, "New shit has come to light, man!" but most movies have the premise of normal-normal-something wacky-deal with it-climax-return to normal, albeit with a wink at the fact that everything's changed. Consider The Royal Tenenbaums, wherein Royal's return to his estranged family is the something-wacky, and the the movie spends its remainder dealing with it and trying to put that family back together. Or Shaun of the Dead, where most of the movie is also dealing with the zombies infesting suburban London, and the winking return to "normal" is punctuated slyly with a plus-ca-change atmosphere of post-apocalyptic triumph.
But movies aren't real life, and a shock to the system on screen (entertainment!) is often a painful few weeks in real life. When Something Big happens, it's a lot of work to pick up the pieces, and it's unfortunately not wrapped up in a neat 121 minute package, complete with theme song. Which is a bummer, really. No montage sequence for us: we have to sweat out those 15 pounds in three months, or try on twenty-three actual different bridesmaids dresses, all of which look terrible. Or we have to go through the really painful parts: the breakups, the diagnoses, the deaths.
I'm sorry, I know I should be all wisdom and flowing goddess gowns right now, offering up platitudes like One Day At A Time and It Gets Better and Serenity Now and other meaningless things that are designed to make us sound less like assholes with no words in our mouths when something bad happens. God knows I could try. But life ain't like the movies, where a thoughtful platitude makes Julia Roberts square her shoulders and get on with things.
So here's the truth: I'm sad you're sad. I'm sad you've lost someone you love. I love you, and I know your strength, your firm sense of family, and I hope those things help carry you. I would do anything to make this easier for you, because I can see on your face how hard this is. Please remember to breath.
For Mike, Jamie and John.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
The Big Sleep
When I wake up in the morning, my first reaction is usually something along the lines of, "Ughhhh, it's early." Thanks to that whole sleep-rhythm thing that humans have managed to utterly destroy in the last century or so, my body, which has not gotten the memo that 8 hours is a good start (and anything less will make me into a blood-shot-eyed crazy woman), I wake up when the sun starts graying through the blinds, and then fall back asleep for a dream-filled 90 minutes. By the time my day actually starts, I've had more wakefulness than I really want, and I'm ready for a nap.
When I first started my job back in January, the days were short and I was unaccustomed to waking up before 8 AM, so the adjustment to the new hours were a bracing, unpleasant shock. In the longer, warmer days of summer, I'm happy to get up before the sun starts to heat my third-floor room up to an oven-adjacent degree. As one of those people who needs a heavy duvet to sleep, the morning temperature spike corresponds to a brutal, sweaty awakening that's best avoided if I get up before, say, noon.
I'm not what you might consider "a morning person." My lovely boyfriend regularly gets out the door before 8 AM for work, but I'm decidedly less enthused about starting my day that early. I like a stretch, a lie-in, a good breakfast, maybe a little emailing, and then I'll think about putting on pants. As a result, I tend to do everything the night before: shower, make lunch, and lay out my clothes like I'm a good little school child, which prolongs the waking-up and shortens the mad dash for the door.
There's a family legend about the time my mom almost called the cops due to my love of the lie-in. I was in bed on a school day, having resolutely ignored the alarm and slept past the homeroom bell. Then, as now, the way I sleep was to roll myself up in the blankets and become almost invisible: a little sowbug tucked away. Maybe a few hairs were sticking out the top of my sleep-burrito. In any case, my mom came in, glanced at the messy but seemingly-empty bed, deposited a full basket of laundry on it (on me), and then pursed her lips and panicked. "Kaitlyn didn't come home last night!" I heard her say on the kitchen phone, and I had to make the hard decision to either come clean about my truancy, or have the blue-and-reds come blaring up the street in a few minutes. I trundled downstairs, took the ensuing lecture while I ate my breakfast, and then went to the school.
It's not laziness. If I was lazy, I wouldn't put so much effort into lazing around. I would skip breakfast and maybe even lunch, wear sweats to work, and take transit both ways. I don't do those things. But I love the drawn-out morning wake-up - made better by waking up next to someone I love, their warmth in the sheets and mussy hair making them look like they're about ten years old. Eating breakfast at the kitchen table - a hardboiled egg, a banana, and cereal with milk, every weekday for the past six months - gives me an anchor in my day the way squawking and dashing out the door with one arm in my jacket just doesn't. I firmly believe that humans are designed to have way more leisure time than we currently give ourselves, and that the supposed "downtime" we have is eaten up by things like maintaining our overlarge houses, commuting because we live far from our jobs, and shopping for the food we'll eventually throw away. If we had more genuine leisure time, we would be less stressed, more focused, and easier to be around.
Hence my adoration for the slow morning. Even though it's actually part of the work day, the time before I leave feels like it's firmly my own. I don't have to wear a shirt if I don't want to, and I can snooze for an extra 15 minutes knowing that my lunch is made and all I have to do is make vague waving motions at my hair for a minute to groom myself. It gives the illusion that the time I'm spending getting ready for work isn't somehow related to the workday, but about me and my love for my bed. Sadly, this isn't really the case.
When I first started my job back in January, the days were short and I was unaccustomed to waking up before 8 AM, so the adjustment to the new hours were a bracing, unpleasant shock. In the longer, warmer days of summer, I'm happy to get up before the sun starts to heat my third-floor room up to an oven-adjacent degree. As one of those people who needs a heavy duvet to sleep, the morning temperature spike corresponds to a brutal, sweaty awakening that's best avoided if I get up before, say, noon.
I'm not what you might consider "a morning person." My lovely boyfriend regularly gets out the door before 8 AM for work, but I'm decidedly less enthused about starting my day that early. I like a stretch, a lie-in, a good breakfast, maybe a little emailing, and then I'll think about putting on pants. As a result, I tend to do everything the night before: shower, make lunch, and lay out my clothes like I'm a good little school child, which prolongs the waking-up and shortens the mad dash for the door.
There's a family legend about the time my mom almost called the cops due to my love of the lie-in. I was in bed on a school day, having resolutely ignored the alarm and slept past the homeroom bell. Then, as now, the way I sleep was to roll myself up in the blankets and become almost invisible: a little sowbug tucked away. Maybe a few hairs were sticking out the top of my sleep-burrito. In any case, my mom came in, glanced at the messy but seemingly-empty bed, deposited a full basket of laundry on it (on me), and then pursed her lips and panicked. "Kaitlyn didn't come home last night!" I heard her say on the kitchen phone, and I had to make the hard decision to either come clean about my truancy, or have the blue-and-reds come blaring up the street in a few minutes. I trundled downstairs, took the ensuing lecture while I ate my breakfast, and then went to the school.
It's not laziness. If I was lazy, I wouldn't put so much effort into lazing around. I would skip breakfast and maybe even lunch, wear sweats to work, and take transit both ways. I don't do those things. But I love the drawn-out morning wake-up - made better by waking up next to someone I love, their warmth in the sheets and mussy hair making them look like they're about ten years old. Eating breakfast at the kitchen table - a hardboiled egg, a banana, and cereal with milk, every weekday for the past six months - gives me an anchor in my day the way squawking and dashing out the door with one arm in my jacket just doesn't. I firmly believe that humans are designed to have way more leisure time than we currently give ourselves, and that the supposed "downtime" we have is eaten up by things like maintaining our overlarge houses, commuting because we live far from our jobs, and shopping for the food we'll eventually throw away. If we had more genuine leisure time, we would be less stressed, more focused, and easier to be around.
Hence my adoration for the slow morning. Even though it's actually part of the work day, the time before I leave feels like it's firmly my own. I don't have to wear a shirt if I don't want to, and I can snooze for an extra 15 minutes knowing that my lunch is made and all I have to do is make vague waving motions at my hair for a minute to groom myself. It gives the illusion that the time I'm spending getting ready for work isn't somehow related to the workday, but about me and my love for my bed. Sadly, this isn't really the case.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
No Justice, No Peace: Penny Bethke 1950-2011
Penny Bethke was, in the words of former CCRI president Emmett Ferguson, "a grand old dame of co-op." She was feisty, and would go to the mattresses on all kinds of issues. She was smart as a whip, and was never afraid to talk someone's ear off until their own personal little light bulb went on. She considered herself a teacher, was proud to be a pain in the ass, and was an expert on community-driven initiatives like credit unions and co-operative housing, having immersed herself in that world for decades.
Penny passed away a few weeks ago, and I miss her. I find myself looking at people who look like she did on the street, and I wonder for a second how she's doing.
My first experience with Penny was through my co-op's board of directors. Primarily made of students, the board offers two of their twelve seats to alumni members - people who had lived in the co-op and then moved on. Penny had been a resident in the 1970s, and had worked for the co-op as the summer rentals girl. The co-op's always been a little bit rough around the edges, and in the summers, that loosey-goosey attitude goes through the roof. I can imagine that the co-op, with its proximity to the hippies in Yorkville and the bikers in Rochdale, was a crash-pad for the young, disenfranchised and drug-addled. In other words, not a job for the faint of heart.
When she returned as an alumni director, she was in her 50s and was able to bring scads of financial and social expertise to our often-inexperienced group. When I first met her, I was coming in to talk to the board about my dissatisfaction with the food services the co-op was providing. It had been an eleventh-hour agenda item, one that I was asking for a decision on, and Penny was irritated. "Something like this should be on the table well before a meeting," she pointed out acidly, "so we can have time to review its merits...or lack thereof."
I pushed on - I needed an answer now, dammit, because my housemates were filing their teeth into points and looking murderously at one another, and I couldn't wait another month for the board to reconvene with all the details and fooferaw at hand. Inside, I died. I had been roundly chastised by a woman I barely knew, in front the directors, some of whom were my friends, and I deserved it. I got the motion passed, I went back and told my housemates we would have more freedom to decide on how we spent our food money, and I mentally noted the importance of planning ahead.
Now, seven years later, I sit on that board, and Penny had become our General Manager. Folks will regularly show up, making all kinds of demands with minimal notice, and we sigh and send them away to write something up, check on our policies, and work with staff members. It's annoying when people just appear out of the blue and make demands, a phenomenon that occurs with tiring regularity in cooperatives. I learned from Penny that when you push people to work for what they believe is a birthright - a free pass, an exception to a rule, a change in the system - the lazy and faint of heart will often disappear to gnash their teeth and complain. The people worth working for, and with, will come back with a better proposal, a more complete outline, and a good attitude about the changes that you ask them to make.
I learned that volunteering is a great way to spend my time and get experience. I was never a student-government person, and the kind of activism that really raises my hackles often involves an entitled white person, identity politics, and a trip to some underfunded area filled with poor brown people. But I think it's important to be involved in one's own community, and the easiest place for me to start was with my housing co-op. Getting to know Penny over the last few years was rewarding, because she thought along the same lines. She also stressed the importance of a learning curve - new things are hard! - and once told me that it was okay to be intense. She was well aware of her own intensity, and used to to cow the people she disdained and elevate the people she admired.
It's a trite thing to say, but sometimes when we lose a friend, triteness has a fresh gravity: her spirit will live on. She was respected and admired by her community, and she influenced and taught the next generation of co-op leaders what they were doing, and moreover, why they should do it. While I'll miss her, I know that her voice will carry through the years because she has influenced hundreds of people. She will continue to inspire.
Penny passed away a few weeks ago, and I miss her. I find myself looking at people who look like she did on the street, and I wonder for a second how she's doing.
My first experience with Penny was through my co-op's board of directors. Primarily made of students, the board offers two of their twelve seats to alumni members - people who had lived in the co-op and then moved on. Penny had been a resident in the 1970s, and had worked for the co-op as the summer rentals girl. The co-op's always been a little bit rough around the edges, and in the summers, that loosey-goosey attitude goes through the roof. I can imagine that the co-op, with its proximity to the hippies in Yorkville and the bikers in Rochdale, was a crash-pad for the young, disenfranchised and drug-addled. In other words, not a job for the faint of heart.
When she returned as an alumni director, she was in her 50s and was able to bring scads of financial and social expertise to our often-inexperienced group. When I first met her, I was coming in to talk to the board about my dissatisfaction with the food services the co-op was providing. It had been an eleventh-hour agenda item, one that I was asking for a decision on, and Penny was irritated. "Something like this should be on the table well before a meeting," she pointed out acidly, "so we can have time to review its merits...or lack thereof."
I pushed on - I needed an answer now, dammit, because my housemates were filing their teeth into points and looking murderously at one another, and I couldn't wait another month for the board to reconvene with all the details and fooferaw at hand. Inside, I died. I had been roundly chastised by a woman I barely knew, in front the directors, some of whom were my friends, and I deserved it. I got the motion passed, I went back and told my housemates we would have more freedom to decide on how we spent our food money, and I mentally noted the importance of planning ahead.
Now, seven years later, I sit on that board, and Penny had become our General Manager. Folks will regularly show up, making all kinds of demands with minimal notice, and we sigh and send them away to write something up, check on our policies, and work with staff members. It's annoying when people just appear out of the blue and make demands, a phenomenon that occurs with tiring regularity in cooperatives. I learned from Penny that when you push people to work for what they believe is a birthright - a free pass, an exception to a rule, a change in the system - the lazy and faint of heart will often disappear to gnash their teeth and complain. The people worth working for, and with, will come back with a better proposal, a more complete outline, and a good attitude about the changes that you ask them to make.
I learned that volunteering is a great way to spend my time and get experience. I was never a student-government person, and the kind of activism that really raises my hackles often involves an entitled white person, identity politics, and a trip to some underfunded area filled with poor brown people. But I think it's important to be involved in one's own community, and the easiest place for me to start was with my housing co-op. Getting to know Penny over the last few years was rewarding, because she thought along the same lines. She also stressed the importance of a learning curve - new things are hard! - and once told me that it was okay to be intense. She was well aware of her own intensity, and used to to cow the people she disdained and elevate the people she admired.
It's a trite thing to say, but sometimes when we lose a friend, triteness has a fresh gravity: her spirit will live on. She was respected and admired by her community, and she influenced and taught the next generation of co-op leaders what they were doing, and moreover, why they should do it. While I'll miss her, I know that her voice will carry through the years because she has influenced hundreds of people. She will continue to inspire.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Scott Pilgrim Vs. My Brain
When I first read Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, I was in my mid-20s, sort of floating around, working crappy jobs and half-heartedly entangling myself with mildly disresputable young men in an attempt to work through some of the heartache my Big Ex had landed on me in the midst of our fraught breakup . In other words, I was the prime-time demographic for this graphic novel, and the blend of Toronto city landmarks, sarcasm, video-game tropes and weirdo 20s love was intoxicating.
I wasn't first on the scene - the books started coming out in 2004, the series wrapped up to huge fanfare last summer, and I started reading sometime around volume 4. Scott and his romance with the mysterious Ramona Flowers was progressing about as well as you'd expect: he was living (and sharing a bed) with his gay roomie, not working and mooning over Ramona, while she zipped around, delivering Amazon.ca packages, dying her hair, and alternately making Scott miserable and terrifically happy. In other words, it was the perfect encapsulation of what most of Canadian slacker-types go through in our mid-twenties. We grow up, albeit dragging our heels and moaning about it the whole damned time.
I love Scott Pilgrim. I love Ramona Flowers. I love all the weird side characters, like Joseph, the incredibly bitchy dude who engineers Scott's band's horrible album. I love Kim Pine, the drummer of that horrible band, because she wears a warm-up jacket in every panel and can be friends with Scott while simultaneously knowing he's a moron. We all have friends like that - people we know are idiots, whom we hold dear because they're funny, or play bass passably well, or because the people we're friends with between the ages of 17 and 26 are often bonded to us in a way that brings to mind shamans and blood-brother ceremonies.
The movie, which was released last year to great critical success and indifferent audiences, captured some of the comic's delights. The supporting cast was superb, but Scott was whiny and Romana never once cracked a smile. It was hard to imagine why the two of them would even date, let along battle seven of Ramona's evil exes in order to be together. The comic, with its meandering storyline and jokey asides, allowed for the readers to get a glimpse of Scott's neuroses outside of Ramona: the absentee parents, the recalcitrance about getting a job. It also showcased Ramona as Awesome Girlfriend. She was funny, sweet, caring, and genuinely seems to dig Mr. Pilgrim despite, and maybe because of, his flaws. It becomes much easier to see what works about that pairing when we're allowed to sit back and watch the relationship take form.
While the spotlight tends to be trained on Ramona's evil exes, Scott also needed to work out his romantic shizz. Cue Knives Chau, the hilariously obsessed 17 year old Scott ditches for Ramona, who gets her own story arc. The awkwardness of hanging out with a teenager when you're in your early twenties is so well-done in some scenes that I cringed. That dynamic can be so tense - we all like to pretend that we're so much smarter than people five years our junior, but the things I've learned since I was 23 include "check the pasta sauce for mold," and "you can't wear monthly contacts for 56 days in a row." Knives would appeal to an underachiever like Scott, but as Scott grows up, girls become less appealing than women. Knives, with all her excitable fervor and devotion, is a girl.
Likewise, Kim Pine is also a Pilgrim ex, and the relationship they've created, based on music and pretending that their romance never happened, isn't exactly a foreign concept. We all have people we adore as friends who were auditioned for the girlfriend/boyfriend role - maybe even understudied - but never quite made it to opening night. Scott, gratifyingly, works through some of it. Some of it stay unresolved, because Brian Lee O'Malley is smart, and his comics, though they feature video game-inspired fights, are pretty honest.
I don't know if the comics are going to be timeless, or if they'll become a time capsule of early millennial Canadian urban angst. Maybe both. Re-reading the comics recently, I was struck by how funny they are. The characters make fun of each other, fall down, aren't perfect. Scott's comebacks are often "You...something....mean words!" which is pretty much exactly how most people's brains work when faced with surprising meanness. The characters go to shows, come out of the closet, go off to university and have wilderness sabbaticals. They also make terrible music, have fights with their ex-boyfriends, and get kicked out of their apartments. They keep trying. Scott and his buddies are some of the most perfect 20-somethings ever created, because they radiate that indomitable spirit of the young adult: anything is possible, nothing can't be conquered, and flying, fanged ex-boyfriends are nothing compared to the ass-kicking getting a job will give you. Oh, and falling in love with the right person? Worth fighting for, both with your fists and your heart.
I wasn't first on the scene - the books started coming out in 2004, the series wrapped up to huge fanfare last summer, and I started reading sometime around volume 4. Scott and his romance with the mysterious Ramona Flowers was progressing about as well as you'd expect: he was living (and sharing a bed) with his gay roomie, not working and mooning over Ramona, while she zipped around, delivering Amazon.ca packages, dying her hair, and alternately making Scott miserable and terrifically happy. In other words, it was the perfect encapsulation of what most of Canadian slacker-types go through in our mid-twenties. We grow up, albeit dragging our heels and moaning about it the whole damned time.
I love Scott Pilgrim. I love Ramona Flowers. I love all the weird side characters, like Joseph, the incredibly bitchy dude who engineers Scott's band's horrible album. I love Kim Pine, the drummer of that horrible band, because she wears a warm-up jacket in every panel and can be friends with Scott while simultaneously knowing he's a moron. We all have friends like that - people we know are idiots, whom we hold dear because they're funny, or play bass passably well, or because the people we're friends with between the ages of 17 and 26 are often bonded to us in a way that brings to mind shamans and blood-brother ceremonies.
The movie, which was released last year to great critical success and indifferent audiences, captured some of the comic's delights. The supporting cast was superb, but Scott was whiny and Romana never once cracked a smile. It was hard to imagine why the two of them would even date, let along battle seven of Ramona's evil exes in order to be together. The comic, with its meandering storyline and jokey asides, allowed for the readers to get a glimpse of Scott's neuroses outside of Ramona: the absentee parents, the recalcitrance about getting a job. It also showcased Ramona as Awesome Girlfriend. She was funny, sweet, caring, and genuinely seems to dig Mr. Pilgrim despite, and maybe because of, his flaws. It becomes much easier to see what works about that pairing when we're allowed to sit back and watch the relationship take form.
While the spotlight tends to be trained on Ramona's evil exes, Scott also needed to work out his romantic shizz. Cue Knives Chau, the hilariously obsessed 17 year old Scott ditches for Ramona, who gets her own story arc. The awkwardness of hanging out with a teenager when you're in your early twenties is so well-done in some scenes that I cringed. That dynamic can be so tense - we all like to pretend that we're so much smarter than people five years our junior, but the things I've learned since I was 23 include "check the pasta sauce for mold," and "you can't wear monthly contacts for 56 days in a row." Knives would appeal to an underachiever like Scott, but as Scott grows up, girls become less appealing than women. Knives, with all her excitable fervor and devotion, is a girl.
Likewise, Kim Pine is also a Pilgrim ex, and the relationship they've created, based on music and pretending that their romance never happened, isn't exactly a foreign concept. We all have people we adore as friends who were auditioned for the girlfriend/boyfriend role - maybe even understudied - but never quite made it to opening night. Scott, gratifyingly, works through some of it. Some of it stay unresolved, because Brian Lee O'Malley is smart, and his comics, though they feature video game-inspired fights, are pretty honest.
I don't know if the comics are going to be timeless, or if they'll become a time capsule of early millennial Canadian urban angst. Maybe both. Re-reading the comics recently, I was struck by how funny they are. The characters make fun of each other, fall down, aren't perfect. Scott's comebacks are often "You...something....mean words!" which is pretty much exactly how most people's brains work when faced with surprising meanness. The characters go to shows, come out of the closet, go off to university and have wilderness sabbaticals. They also make terrible music, have fights with their ex-boyfriends, and get kicked out of their apartments. They keep trying. Scott and his buddies are some of the most perfect 20-somethings ever created, because they radiate that indomitable spirit of the young adult: anything is possible, nothing can't be conquered, and flying, fanged ex-boyfriends are nothing compared to the ass-kicking getting a job will give you. Oh, and falling in love with the right person? Worth fighting for, both with your fists and your heart.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Two Hundred And Five Oh!
This being my 250th post, I thought I might do something special: throw a coat of paint over here, frame the posters that have been rolled up in the corner since 2009, or at least change the sheets. But nope. I'm just not that technically adept, so instead of packing up and moving over to Wordpress, or at least changing that blasted dotty background, I'll just ruminate on the last 250 essays.
I don't often do things 250 times. I think I've done 250 sit-ups in my life - a cumulative figure, of course, starting when I hit puberty and started to expand like a star going nova. I've definitely read 250 books, but a lot of those were Sweet Valley High novels where Jessica steals Elizabeth's identity in order to impress a cute college TA who turns out to be a date-rape-y jerk; in other words, it's unlikely I've read 250 good books. I haven't kissed 250 people (I can hear you sigh from here, mom), I haven't washed my sheets 250 times...or my hair, for that matter. I am kind of gross, kind of lazy, and kind of ill-read.
But I have written 250 blog posts. They're a smorgasbord: Chuck Klosterman, aging gracefully, breaking up, horrible office politics, an ill-conceived series on women I like that turned out to be kind of boring, horror movies, the now-defunct Cookie magazine, and zombies. My brain is a dense bramble of things: empty Coke Zero cans, anxieties about my body and my career (whoops, I'm sorry - "career"), useless tidbits of celebrity gossip, half-remembered jokes somebody else once made, and a mild yet long-lasting obsession with the best brownies in Toronto. The blog posts, all 250 of them, are my way of working out my little frustrations, celebrating the victories, and asking "What's up with that?" hopefully in a way that's funny, or readable, or at least passingly interesting.
When I was in high school, I enrolled in Writer's Craft, a course that tried to teach 17-year-olds how to write well, or at least better. We read Alice Munro stories and wrote long final projects, which we then read aloud to each other in the semester's final weeks. I remember some of them: Mike Gilson wrote a character who gets beaten with a bag full of oranges, and my classmate Cynthia (who was pretty, skinny, and sort of mean) wrote a great story about climbing a cliff and bad influences, and it was really gratifying to find out the whole thing had sort of been an allegory for her born-again faith, because, for some reason, that made it less incandescent to me. I wrote about hip-hop.
My future kids are going to be embarrassed to find out their mother once listened to hip-hop. Living in a small Ontario town meant I didn't have access to a lot of emerging artists, but I willed myself into finding out more. This was right before the internet was A Thing, so a lot of it was Swedish message boards about train arts and haphazardly posted videos of breakdancers. I read oral histories of the early days of MCs in New York City, and of DJs in Manchester. Because bored, alienated teenagers have more in common with each other than they do with any other person alive, I felt I could project myself into their world. This is, of course, hubris of the grandest scale.
When it came time to read my final project aloud, I was nervous. I hadn't followed a strictly linear narrative like most of my classmates; I had instead opted for little vignettes, linked thematically. One was about a breakdancer with a mentally ill brother, I remember that much, and a dialogue that had a lot of swearing in it. What I do remember is the hush that gradually fell over the class as I read. I am not particularly beautiful, or smart, or nice, or gracious. I slunk through most of high school with several close friends, a couple crushes, and the burning desire to both stand out and become totally invisible. But when I read those stories out loud, my voice ringing off the blackboards and into the thick late-June air, my classmates turned and listened. When I finished reading, there a pause, and then loud, enthusiastic applause.
It was amazing. I think that people who crave that kind of attention who are pretty enough become actresses, while us civilian shlubs learn how to write, or be good at cocktail parties. It was one of the first times I had done something to elicit a response. It wasn't based on how I looked, how old I was, or who my friends were: it was a feeling, heavy in the room, of people being impressed with writing. With words! Amazing!
Since then, I've been an addict. Writing is my way of interacting with the world, of processing and giving back. I write when I'm sad, or lonely, or bored, or upset. I write with elation and joy and grace and forgiveness. I write to celebrate my own minor victories, or the accomplishments of those I hold dear. I write to pick fights, to call bullshit on those who are unfairly lauded for mediocrity. I write because if I did not write, I would die.
As I spend more time not-writing, I spend more time being deeply unhappy with not-writing. Trying to stay away, to quell the need to write, is like trying to live without vitamin C. At first, you don't even notice anything's missing, but by the end, you're a shipwreck of a human with your teeth falling out. I mean, who needs that? Instead, let me just try to write more, as often as I can, with hilarity and clarity and, um, parity? Whatever. Bring on the next two years, the next 250 posts.
And if you'll excuse me, I'm going to wash my hair and change the sheets.
I don't often do things 250 times. I think I've done 250 sit-ups in my life - a cumulative figure, of course, starting when I hit puberty and started to expand like a star going nova. I've definitely read 250 books, but a lot of those were Sweet Valley High novels where Jessica steals Elizabeth's identity in order to impress a cute college TA who turns out to be a date-rape-y jerk; in other words, it's unlikely I've read 250 good books. I haven't kissed 250 people (I can hear you sigh from here, mom), I haven't washed my sheets 250 times...or my hair, for that matter. I am kind of gross, kind of lazy, and kind of ill-read.
But I have written 250 blog posts. They're a smorgasbord: Chuck Klosterman, aging gracefully, breaking up, horrible office politics, an ill-conceived series on women I like that turned out to be kind of boring, horror movies, the now-defunct Cookie magazine, and zombies. My brain is a dense bramble of things: empty Coke Zero cans, anxieties about my body and my career (whoops, I'm sorry - "career"), useless tidbits of celebrity gossip, half-remembered jokes somebody else once made, and a mild yet long-lasting obsession with the best brownies in Toronto. The blog posts, all 250 of them, are my way of working out my little frustrations, celebrating the victories, and asking "What's up with that?" hopefully in a way that's funny, or readable, or at least passingly interesting.
When I was in high school, I enrolled in Writer's Craft, a course that tried to teach 17-year-olds how to write well, or at least better. We read Alice Munro stories and wrote long final projects, which we then read aloud to each other in the semester's final weeks. I remember some of them: Mike Gilson wrote a character who gets beaten with a bag full of oranges, and my classmate Cynthia (who was pretty, skinny, and sort of mean) wrote a great story about climbing a cliff and bad influences, and it was really gratifying to find out the whole thing had sort of been an allegory for her born-again faith, because, for some reason, that made it less incandescent to me. I wrote about hip-hop.
My future kids are going to be embarrassed to find out their mother once listened to hip-hop. Living in a small Ontario town meant I didn't have access to a lot of emerging artists, but I willed myself into finding out more. This was right before the internet was A Thing, so a lot of it was Swedish message boards about train arts and haphazardly posted videos of breakdancers. I read oral histories of the early days of MCs in New York City, and of DJs in Manchester. Because bored, alienated teenagers have more in common with each other than they do with any other person alive, I felt I could project myself into their world. This is, of course, hubris of the grandest scale.
When it came time to read my final project aloud, I was nervous. I hadn't followed a strictly linear narrative like most of my classmates; I had instead opted for little vignettes, linked thematically. One was about a breakdancer with a mentally ill brother, I remember that much, and a dialogue that had a lot of swearing in it. What I do remember is the hush that gradually fell over the class as I read. I am not particularly beautiful, or smart, or nice, or gracious. I slunk through most of high school with several close friends, a couple crushes, and the burning desire to both stand out and become totally invisible. But when I read those stories out loud, my voice ringing off the blackboards and into the thick late-June air, my classmates turned and listened. When I finished reading, there a pause, and then loud, enthusiastic applause.
It was amazing. I think that people who crave that kind of attention who are pretty enough become actresses, while us civilian shlubs learn how to write, or be good at cocktail parties. It was one of the first times I had done something to elicit a response. It wasn't based on how I looked, how old I was, or who my friends were: it was a feeling, heavy in the room, of people being impressed with writing. With words! Amazing!
Since then, I've been an addict. Writing is my way of interacting with the world, of processing and giving back. I write when I'm sad, or lonely, or bored, or upset. I write with elation and joy and grace and forgiveness. I write to celebrate my own minor victories, or the accomplishments of those I hold dear. I write to pick fights, to call bullshit on those who are unfairly lauded for mediocrity. I write because if I did not write, I would die.
As I spend more time not-writing, I spend more time being deeply unhappy with not-writing. Trying to stay away, to quell the need to write, is like trying to live without vitamin C. At first, you don't even notice anything's missing, but by the end, you're a shipwreck of a human with your teeth falling out. I mean, who needs that? Instead, let me just try to write more, as often as I can, with hilarity and clarity and, um, parity? Whatever. Bring on the next two years, the next 250 posts.
And if you'll excuse me, I'm going to wash my hair and change the sheets.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Block Head
Writer's block suuuuucks.
It's not just writer's block: it's life block. You know when you go Harvey's and you get a hamburger, and it's tasty, but over the next few hours you start feeling all woozy and nauseous - the more excitable among us might spend some time convinced that we are pregnant - and then later, you have the kind of horrible poops that make you wish you were the kind of person who hung around outside of dive bars on a Tuesday afternoon, because then you would have a hook-up to some Demerol? Like that.
Or, you know when you go shopping, and on a whim, you decide to try on a bathing suit, even though you're all bloated from your bad-decision Harvey's burger, and you're four sizes bigger than the last time you shopped for a suit, and the lighting highlights every wrinkle and glob of cellulite, which seems to be multiplying under your skin as we speak, and the results of trying on said bathing suit are two glasses of wine and 45 minutes of pep-talking by your less mentally-ill girlfriends? Like that.
It's wrong numbers and missed calls, it's spiders in the shower, it's too-cold A/C at the office and scratched glasses lenses. It's just the pitfalls of modern life. Boo fuckin' hoo, right?
In any case, I'm still around. I wrote a bang-up couple of posts this month, so if you haven't read those yet, feel free. I re-organized the front room in my house, watched half of Inglourious Basterds, had a cuddle-fest with my boyfriend, and shopped around a resume. But right now, I feel distracted, bored, cold - it's like, 12 degrees in my office - fat, lonely, and sort of pointless.
And writer's block is a total symptom of that. That little voice in your ear, whispering, "Nobody gives a shit if you write or not," trying to tempt me into putting my face in a bag of Sunchips and not surfacing until I've eaten them all. I don't want to give in - I won't give in - but it's hard to write when all I want to do is complain. It's not helped when my long-distance girl-crush is getting written up for her communal-living, chicken-harbouring ways. Sigh. Hippie glamour.
Anyway. Just checking in. Holler at me if you've got any ideas for posts; I'm happy to work on commission. I've been re-reading Scott Pilgrim, so I might write about that soon. But, like, you know....don't give up, right? I love writing and I love blogging, so I'm sure this is a little pit stop to rest, pee, maybe pump up the air pressure in the tires, and then I'll keep rumbling along, content to blather into the abyss about maxi dresses, Tarantino movies, and c0-op housing. See you all along the way.
It's not just writer's block: it's life block. You know when you go Harvey's and you get a hamburger, and it's tasty, but over the next few hours you start feeling all woozy and nauseous - the more excitable among us might spend some time convinced that we are pregnant - and then later, you have the kind of horrible poops that make you wish you were the kind of person who hung around outside of dive bars on a Tuesday afternoon, because then you would have a hook-up to some Demerol? Like that.
Or, you know when you go shopping, and on a whim, you decide to try on a bathing suit, even though you're all bloated from your bad-decision Harvey's burger, and you're four sizes bigger than the last time you shopped for a suit, and the lighting highlights every wrinkle and glob of cellulite, which seems to be multiplying under your skin as we speak, and the results of trying on said bathing suit are two glasses of wine and 45 minutes of pep-talking by your less mentally-ill girlfriends? Like that.
It's wrong numbers and missed calls, it's spiders in the shower, it's too-cold A/C at the office and scratched glasses lenses. It's just the pitfalls of modern life. Boo fuckin' hoo, right?
In any case, I'm still around. I wrote a bang-up couple of posts this month, so if you haven't read those yet, feel free. I re-organized the front room in my house, watched half of Inglourious Basterds, had a cuddle-fest with my boyfriend, and shopped around a resume. But right now, I feel distracted, bored, cold - it's like, 12 degrees in my office - fat, lonely, and sort of pointless.
And writer's block is a total symptom of that. That little voice in your ear, whispering, "Nobody gives a shit if you write or not," trying to tempt me into putting my face in a bag of Sunchips and not surfacing until I've eaten them all. I don't want to give in - I won't give in - but it's hard to write when all I want to do is complain. It's not helped when my long-distance girl-crush is getting written up for her communal-living, chicken-harbouring ways. Sigh. Hippie glamour.
Anyway. Just checking in. Holler at me if you've got any ideas for posts; I'm happy to work on commission. I've been re-reading Scott Pilgrim, so I might write about that soon. But, like, you know....don't give up, right? I love writing and I love blogging, so I'm sure this is a little pit stop to rest, pee, maybe pump up the air pressure in the tires, and then I'll keep rumbling along, content to blather into the abyss about maxi dresses, Tarantino movies, and c0-op housing. See you all along the way.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
The etiquette of the breakup is one of those things that people will comment on but never really unpack. "Never on the phone" is said with the solemn tones of one incanting a rite against loneliness, "always in person." As someone who once left a voicemail saying "Um, hi, it's me! I don't think we should see each other any more!" I clearly have little respect for the so-called rules. But now that I'm in a relationship - one that I like and care about very much, with a dude I like and care about very much - I've recently given more thought to breakups. It sounds counter-intuitive - why examine what I hope will never be? But should a separation occur, what would I want done to ease the pain? What would I do and say to make things easier?
Like most urban, mid-twenties folks, I'm a dedicated Savage Love reader, and he often has a lot to say on the topics of breakups. As the writer behind "DTMFA", Savage clearly understands that, for most relationships, endgame is part of the package. We almost never enter into a relationship with the intention of ending it - most of us want forward movement in our lives, and that often takes the form of dating/cohabitation/marriage/kids. But hello, I'm not married to my first boyfriend, and chances are, neither are you. In a world where Facebook relationship statuses have serious emotional weight, and more people are willing to consider a flexible or open marriage, some new relationship continents have been discovered. Time to map them.
But as we move past legitimate reasons to leave a relationship and into the hows of actually doing it, I'm going to pause for a moment and say: yo. Breakups suck. I've never met anyone who really enjoys sitting someone down to have the "I no longer want to know you" talk. Like everyone, I've been dumped, the way you dump a murder victim on the side of the road - hard, by a dude still makes me want to slash his tires when I think about him. One of my friends threw a celebratory DTMFA brunch when she finally broke it off with her former fella. The demise of that relationship was excruciating: it took months for her to work up the ovaries to kick him out, he still owes her money, and oh, by the way, he left his kid behind. Classy, non?
The zen master in me wants to put on a soothing voice and say that everything happens for a reason, that we learn from our pasts, and that pain can be a teacher. But we all know that guy is an asshole. So there are ways of doing it classily, that make it hurt less and leave the door open to friendship. Maybe not right away, but eventually.
Rule #1: always do it on neutral territory. I got Big Dumped in my kitchen, which sucked. I would have been embarrassed if I had started sobbing on the Starbucks patio, but at least I wouldn't have gone downstairs the next morning and been like, "Here are my eggs, my Cheerios, the place I was emotionally eviscerated...I'm not hungry anymore..." I'm not saying that you have to end it on a busy streetcorner with a busker providing the soundtrack. Go somewhere you've never been, and will likely never go again. Do not break up with anyone in a bedroom.
Rule #2: Cliches are your friend. It's not you, it's me. I need space. I'm going to figure myself out. That said, only use cliches that actually apply. If you don't want to be friends, don't say, "Maybe someday we can be friends." Don't say, "Maybe someday we can get back together" if you already have your eye on someone else. Know that the person you're breaking up with will likely examine everything you say with a microscope, so don't say anything you don't mean, even if you're saying it in the tritest way possible.
Rule #3: Be nice! If you're breaking up with someone, you're already rejecting them pretty hard. One of my exes, mid-dump (gross!) told me I "wasn't inspiring," a comment that drove me batty for years. It was unnecessary! Moreover, it was designed to hurt, and in a breakup scenario, that's uncalled for. So BE NICE. Don't be that guy. Be complimentary. "You're going to be fine," you'll say, "you're so smart and pretty and fashionable and well-read that guys will be falling down to date you. But I need to find myself? And so, um, we should see other people."
#4: But be honest. If there's someone else, or there's going to be someone else, give your new ex a heads-up. You may want to choose different words than "there's someone else" or "I have the hots for Emily from work," but the sentiment remains the same. If at all possible, try to make sure your romances are more like pearls on a string than Venn diagrams, but if that ship has sailed, be courteous. Facebook pictures will show up of the two of you smooching, and your ex may not be a fan of finding out via the internet that you've been groping new people.
#5: Be respectful. This is the biggest one, maybe the only real rule. It obviously applies during the relationship, but the post-breakup temptation to be spiteful and malicious can be overwhelming. If you're the dumped party (table for one - zing!), you're entitled to your Lost Summer: the six weeks following a major breakup when you drink too much, smoke too much pot, make out with some regrettable people, and call your ex at five AM after a bender just to be a dick. But that's it: 45 days of breakup-induced craziness, and then you have to come back to reality. Oh, sure, you'll likely look like a grizzled old mountain man when you do, but that's fine. It's expected!
If you're the dumper (again, gross), you have to grin and bear it. If they want to talk, let 'em. If they don't want to see you, that's just fine. You, mister or miss relationship-ender, are not allowed to touch them (not even hugs), tell them about your sex life (if there is one), or allow them to buy you things. The friendship status is wholly up to the person you just split with. Some folks will turn out to be great friends, but others may call you in the middle of the night to slur obscenities in your ear. Forty-five days, and then you call the cops.
The trick about breakups is the long view. There's no-one I've dated that I think about wistfully and say, "You know, we really had something there." Two of my exes are married or engaged, which is great: they found their Big Love, and it wasn't me. Breaking up was a necessary step to getting them there. One of my exes, shortly after we split, became an insufferable hipster, someone I would pay money not to hang out with. But I'm rid of him, which is fab, and with someone I really dig on. They suck, they hurt, they make you drink too much and shake your fist at happy couples on the street, but in the end, breakups are like ipecac for the soul: getting rid of what's not good for you, in the most painful way possible.
Like most urban, mid-twenties folks, I'm a dedicated Savage Love reader, and he often has a lot to say on the topics of breakups. As the writer behind "DTMFA", Savage clearly understands that, for most relationships, endgame is part of the package. We almost never enter into a relationship with the intention of ending it - most of us want forward movement in our lives, and that often takes the form of dating/cohabitation/marriage/kids. But hello, I'm not married to my first boyfriend, and chances are, neither are you. In a world where Facebook relationship statuses have serious emotional weight, and more people are willing to consider a flexible or open marriage, some new relationship continents have been discovered. Time to map them.
But as we move past legitimate reasons to leave a relationship and into the hows of actually doing it, I'm going to pause for a moment and say: yo. Breakups suck. I've never met anyone who really enjoys sitting someone down to have the "I no longer want to know you" talk. Like everyone, I've been dumped, the way you dump a murder victim on the side of the road - hard, by a dude still makes me want to slash his tires when I think about him. One of my friends threw a celebratory DTMFA brunch when she finally broke it off with her former fella. The demise of that relationship was excruciating: it took months for her to work up the ovaries to kick him out, he still owes her money, and oh, by the way, he left his kid behind. Classy, non?
The zen master in me wants to put on a soothing voice and say that everything happens for a reason, that we learn from our pasts, and that pain can be a teacher. But we all know that guy is an asshole. So there are ways of doing it classily, that make it hurt less and leave the door open to friendship. Maybe not right away, but eventually.
Rule #1: always do it on neutral territory. I got Big Dumped in my kitchen, which sucked. I would have been embarrassed if I had started sobbing on the Starbucks patio, but at least I wouldn't have gone downstairs the next morning and been like, "Here are my eggs, my Cheerios, the place I was emotionally eviscerated...I'm not hungry anymore..." I'm not saying that you have to end it on a busy streetcorner with a busker providing the soundtrack. Go somewhere you've never been, and will likely never go again. Do not break up with anyone in a bedroom.
Rule #2: Cliches are your friend. It's not you, it's me. I need space. I'm going to figure myself out. That said, only use cliches that actually apply. If you don't want to be friends, don't say, "Maybe someday we can be friends." Don't say, "Maybe someday we can get back together" if you already have your eye on someone else. Know that the person you're breaking up with will likely examine everything you say with a microscope, so don't say anything you don't mean, even if you're saying it in the tritest way possible.
Rule #3: Be nice! If you're breaking up with someone, you're already rejecting them pretty hard. One of my exes, mid-dump (gross!) told me I "wasn't inspiring," a comment that drove me batty for years. It was unnecessary! Moreover, it was designed to hurt, and in a breakup scenario, that's uncalled for. So BE NICE. Don't be that guy. Be complimentary. "You're going to be fine," you'll say, "you're so smart and pretty and fashionable and well-read that guys will be falling down to date you. But I need to find myself? And so, um, we should see other people."
#4: But be honest. If there's someone else, or there's going to be someone else, give your new ex a heads-up. You may want to choose different words than "there's someone else" or "I have the hots for Emily from work," but the sentiment remains the same. If at all possible, try to make sure your romances are more like pearls on a string than Venn diagrams, but if that ship has sailed, be courteous. Facebook pictures will show up of the two of you smooching, and your ex may not be a fan of finding out via the internet that you've been groping new people.
#5: Be respectful. This is the biggest one, maybe the only real rule. It obviously applies during the relationship, but the post-breakup temptation to be spiteful and malicious can be overwhelming. If you're the dumped party (table for one - zing!), you're entitled to your Lost Summer: the six weeks following a major breakup when you drink too much, smoke too much pot, make out with some regrettable people, and call your ex at five AM after a bender just to be a dick. But that's it: 45 days of breakup-induced craziness, and then you have to come back to reality. Oh, sure, you'll likely look like a grizzled old mountain man when you do, but that's fine. It's expected!
If you're the dumper (again, gross), you have to grin and bear it. If they want to talk, let 'em. If they don't want to see you, that's just fine. You, mister or miss relationship-ender, are not allowed to touch them (not even hugs), tell them about your sex life (if there is one), or allow them to buy you things. The friendship status is wholly up to the person you just split with. Some folks will turn out to be great friends, but others may call you in the middle of the night to slur obscenities in your ear. Forty-five days, and then you call the cops.
The trick about breakups is the long view. There's no-one I've dated that I think about wistfully and say, "You know, we really had something there." Two of my exes are married or engaged, which is great: they found their Big Love, and it wasn't me. Breaking up was a necessary step to getting them there. One of my exes, shortly after we split, became an insufferable hipster, someone I would pay money not to hang out with. But I'm rid of him, which is fab, and with someone I really dig on. They suck, they hurt, they make you drink too much and shake your fist at happy couples on the street, but in the end, breakups are like ipecac for the soul: getting rid of what's not good for you, in the most painful way possible.
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