Things That Happened in 2024

+January: We kicked off the year with a fair amount of struggling! Noah didn't want to go to school, I didn't want to go outside, our recently separated household was doing week on/week off parenting, which was too long for 2/3 of us, and it was all just sort of miserable. The winter was SO GRAY and we got barely any sun and everyone felt like we were trudging towards death's door. On the other hand, Noah did start therapy and that was useful, but sheesh, January was rough this year.

+February: My dad had a TIA so the doctor pulled his driver's license, and he decided to stay with me for a month. It was good, I think, for both of us: he could walk places and I could ferry him around, and it was nice for me to have another adult in the house to keep track of Noah.  I started the month in Toronto on a visit with friends and that was SO NICE; I ended the month by hosting book club and really swung for the fences with the snacks; that wasn't "nice," per se, but I do feel like I somehow won the non-competition that is book club hosting duties, even if it nearly killed me. (I made TWO ice creams! From scratch!)

+March: We went to Toronto for March break and stayed in a very generous friend's house! We went with our friends and so Noah had a playmate and I had an adult friend and it was mostly quite fun: we went to the AGO and the mall, and generally goobered around the city. Good times. My mom and I started remodelling the back room of my (rented) house: fresh paint and new floors. It was weirdly warm and everyone kind of freaked out about it.

+April: I saw an ECLIPSE, bro! This was intensely magical: the shadows got weird, it got chilly, and then the sun went away and then came back and both time the park full of people we were at cheered. It was extremely primal; if I was an Ancient People, I would have absolutely thrown a virgin in a volcano. Climate Momentum threw its third Earth Day Street Party, which was fun. I went dancing with friends and halfway through the night I was drunk and sobbing in the bathroom; 45 minutes later I lost my fucking mind to a Cure/Azalea Banks mashup that felt intensely healing.

+May: An apartment came up for rent in the co-op Mike and I put our names in for before we were even married, and after an agonizing week where he asked me repeatedly to move to Toronto, he decided he would do it himself. This was...devastating. I was shocked—the anger would come later—but it was clearly a decision that would have huge implications for everyone. Noah set up a "pink fizzes" stand and sold fake lemonade to neighbours. I caught a huge head cold and passed my G road test despite being absolutely cooked on Sudafed. I also went on my first, and so far only, Internet date—we talked for three hours, but 1.5 of them were about his fear of commitment. It was, as the kids say, mid.

+June: The car my parents had loaned me had died a slow death in May (not my fault, she was fifteen years old and had paid her dues). In absolutely serendipitous news, a friend connected me with a man who was selling his car, and with some savings and a loan from my parents, I became the owner of a Kia with a functional battery and air conditioning! Huge news. I did a 40th birthday do-over party in which only a handful of people came but I drank, and then spent three whole days feeling like absolute hot garbage. (I have not had a drink since!) Mike and I started mediation, which was expensive and, as I'm writing this in December, still not complete! :/ I went to a friend's wedding in a library and Noah surfed on a handtruck and ate cupcakes for dinner; it was pure magic.

+July: This was the interim period between Mike's decision to move and his actual move out date, so I was a little on edge. I went to the Beaver Valley and had an awkward time with an ex-friend (it was fine, but sheesh). (The Valley and the other friends remain beautiful, as always.) Noah did two weeks of dance camp and had a great time. I did an art project where I put enormous googly eyes on the downtown flower planters, which brought me GREAT JOY. July felt fine, except that it really wasn't fine. I was just holding my breath.

+August: Mike moved. Noah went to Toronto for two weeks and so naturally I had stomach issues for ten entire days, including three days in the city when I was literally relying on Gatorlyte and bananas to stay alive. I still don't know what the hell that was, but damn, it was painful. However, going to Toronto was otherwise pretty great—there is now an Ikea in the downtown core, it's thrilling. I also spent time at the beach with my folks and my sister, and it was a nice, normal time. 

+September:  The Usual Suspects came for Labour Day weekend and it was so nice. I started doing a Couch to 5K program, and oh man, I did not feel athletic! Noah started grade three and we had some new routines, schedules, and mindsets to tackle some of the ongoing anxiety; it's always a work in progress, and will probably be that way forever.

+October: We got a cat! Legal name Marshmallow, house name Masha.  She is an exceptionally sweet little orange tabby who sleeps on her back and will kill spiders for me, so she's THE BEST. I finally saw the Northern Lights, like, for real-for real, and much like the eclipse, it was pure magic. It was a heck of a year, astronomically speaking. I made Noah a Wolverine mask out of cardboard for Halloween, and it looked really cool. I continued to run, albeit very slowly.

+November: I finally got a CPAP machine, which took roughly 90000 nights to get used to. The American election happened; I always feel like a fool commenting on American politics, but goddamn, what the hell? I made a 'zine about community. I took myself out for a solo birthday dinner and had such a nice time with it.

+December: There was so! much! snow! I hosted the Kochany Christmas for the second year in a row, and everyone brought a lot of food and it was very nice. I went to the hospital with abdominal pain and it turned out to be epiploic appendagitis, which is a real, rare thing and will not kill a person, which is great. My wallet conked out, so I made myself a new one, and I love it. I also sewed a new hat and some neckwarmers, so maybe sewing is going to be a thing? Luigi Mangione became an internet sensation. Christmas at the cottage was very nice, and Noah was charming.

++YEAR IN REVIEW: This year, I did a lot of thrifting and spent a lot of time making art. I spent some time in percolation mode regarding physical fitness: I find myself struggling with motivation, and am hoping the new calendar helps me jump-start some new routines. I spent a lot of time with my parents, which was really good—they helped me get used to being a single mom, and gave me much-needed support in the earliest days. I also spent a lot of time alone, something that used to terrify me but I now treasure. Favourite hobbies like knitting felt thin, but I did some writing and some sewing. My work was great; my colleagues were supportive and generous with their time and energy. My friends were terrific, with check-in texts and sweet time together. I feel very lucky that I have so much rich love in my life.

+++2025 GOALS: I've been slowly trying to wrap my head around what fitness and health look like in this fifth decade of my life, so more progress on that. I want to return to making garments, but my knitting mojo is paused, and I need to just embrace that. I am trying to level up in my work life, so we'll see if that works out. And I want to try just an eentsy bit hard in my dating life: I feel a bit stuck in that regard, but I also know that too soon will be much worse than too slow. Creative goals in recent years were overwhelming, so I'm going to right-size the scale of them and try again. And honestly, in talking to a friend yesterday, I am so grateful to be myself—my messy, wondrous, hilarious, try-hard self—and just settling into the person I really am feels like a privilege. Count me in for more of that.

Postcards of Recommendation

 

Artist unknown

In the tradition of the New York Times Magazine, albeit homebrewed, truncated, and full of run-on sentences, I present: an incomplete list of things I highly recommend: 

Intergenerational friendships. I love being friends with my parent's friends and people my parents' age. I have managed true friendship only a few times, but I cherish it. I also love being friends with younger people, ranging from having beautiful little conversations with a five-year-old as we walk back from school together, to people who are just slightly outside of my own generation and who don't always get my cultural references but who indulge me nonetheless. One of the gifts of streaming culture is that all music is pop music and all TV is currently airing, so people will get your jokes. Turns out, we can all sing along to Kate Bush in the car together. 

Thrifting. God, I love thrifting. I like to shop if it's a turbo-charged treasure hunt that brings out my inner scavenger. I love getting weird clothes, like the gold sequinned jacket or the vintage one-piece that was designed for working in refrigeration. I love getting normal clothes, just armloads of Joe Fresh and Reitmans and Old Navy that I can integrate into my existing wardrobe. I love getting slightly fancy stuff for cheap, like a $90 pair of running shorts for eight dollars. And I LOVE unearthing a treasure. I bought a duvet cover for $16, and they sell for $300 new and are on the beds in the White House. I found a cashmere sweater that retails for $465 and someone had washed badly, bringing it from a XXL to a M/L—it's the softest thing in the universe. A block print from an esteemed Zambian artist cost me $5.99. I feel like I'm getting away with something. It's a rush. 

Neon yellow. It's my favourite.

Cats. The memes are true! Cats are great. They are goofy and serious. They communicate by blinking slowly and biting you. They watch the toilet flush like it's must-see TV. They sleep one thousand hours per day. They will hunt a random genera of thing—socks, pompoms, mice—and bring them to you while you sleep. They desperately want to be outside, even though that's silly. They also want to be in the refrigerator and the pantry and under your covers and in the basement rafters. Cats are great. 

Midlife crises. Okay, not the kind where you have affairs and blow up your family. Also not the kind where you buy ridiculous shit to prove you're still cool. I'm talking about the kind where you, like, go back to school to become a fashion designer. Or you move to Costa Rica and start your organic cocoa farm. You take a dance class because you always wanted to and never had. You start exploring your kinks or open up your relationship. You give in to your creativity. I'm sorry, did I call this a crisis? I meant a blossoming.

Lackadaisical prepping. With the most recent American election, and COVID nearing its five-year anniversary (what are we doing to celebrate?!), it's clearer now that we can't rely on each other to "do the right thing." It turns out that, for some people, that means wearing an N95 at the grocery store without complaining, and for others, that means racistly driving a hot tub into downtown Ottawa and blaring your horn eleven hours a day. I feel compelled to do some lazy prepping for whatever social recalibration is coming. In my 20s, we used to sit around and talk about our apocalypse survival skills; now, as we hamster-ball our way through this slow-motion apocalypse, those are just our regular day-to-day skills. I admire my friend who can butcher a chicken and entertain small children for months; I myself can knit socks and grow more tomatoes than a human should consume in a lifetime. I have friends who mend clothes, fix bikes, are nurses, raise chickens. All good skills! This a direct counterpoint to too-intense preppers, who are obsessed with guns and stockpiling MREs and installing tripwires on their compounds. No thank you. I want to bunk in with the artists in the conflagration, thank yew.

Weird cookies. My sister generally hates the cookies I make, and I don't blame her. I often include ingredients that are traditionally non-cookie, such as chili powder or grapefruit peel. But a weird cookie is a pocket crossword: just enough of a challenge to be interesting, but not enough to ruin your day, and often delicious.

The UUs. I started going to the Universalist Unitarian meetings (services?) in my hometown about six months ago, and it's been wonderful. I was raised in the Christian tradition, but always felt weird about it—I don't believe in the divinity of Christ, and they really want you to. But the UUs don't care. Their literature actually says, "We believe Jesus was a baby born to human parents," which feels like a relief. They are mostly very earnest middle-aged white people, which is fine—me too, me too—and they have a strong social justice and spiritual bent. I feel comfortable in a sacred space for the first time in my life, and I really needed that. 

Doing a shitty Couch to 5K. I've been working on the couch to 5K program, which is supposed to take nine weeks to complete, for over two months now. I have not progressed beyond week four. There are reasons for this—brutal fall allergies, terrible shoes, shin splints—but the reality is, I'm kind of lazy about it. I don't particularly enjoy running (although I do like swanning around after, looking at my step counter app, and feeling virtuous), but I wanted to get more fitness and running seemed like an easy way to do it. Anyway, I'm giving myself permission to suck at this, but to keep going, and that's been helpful. Maybe I will stay at week four forever! It literally does not matter, the running police will not come and put me in jail (I would be very easy to catch, I'm slow). Highly recommend this approach!

Extremely stupid crushes. I have a crush on a man I volunteer with, who is literally just a man-shaped human. Maybe he has great pheromones or I encountered him once while ovulating or his eyelashes are good, because I sweat this dude. I have no idea why. We literally never talk to each other. He is married. It's all so unnecessary. But I yearn! I have another crush on a man who works at a place I frequent, and I have overcorrected from being slightly too warm to slightly too chilly, because I literally don't know how to talk to anyone I want to kiss. I am terrible at having crushes! In high school, I would just stare at them during class, which, if you've ever been stared at, is SO obvious and off-putting. I never spoke to them. To this day, if I ever see them at No Frills, I literally hide! Why am I like this?! Anyway, now that I'm single again, I look forward to being an absolute disaster at early-stage dating. Everyone wish me luck!

Optimism Pop

Artist unknown

I recently read an article about Coldplay and Chris Martin that made me think. Coldplay is, of course, the globally known, highly lucrative band that first hit it big with their single "Yellow" in 2000 and then followed that up with about a zillion other hit singles. I still get a bit overcome when I listen to the piano riff from "Clocks," a song that was inescapable in the first few years of my 20s and is mystical and poppy in equal balance. Martin was famously married to, and then consciously uncoupled from, Gwyneth Paltrow, and the whole thing had a very earnest and wholesome aura. His daughter's name is Apple; the name evokes both crunch and shine, much like Martin, much like the band. 

The article's thrust was that Coldplay has become, "well, motivational," which Amanda Petrusich, the author of the piece, seems to find puzzling and, at times, corny. (Her word, not mine.) She contrasts Coldplay's straightforward motivationalism with bands like Bad Brains. The D.C. punks were able to capture an optimistic mindset in songs like "Attitude," in which they boast, at top volume and speed, of a "positive mental attitude" without losing their edge. The implication is that Bad Brains is more interesting, and maybe better.

I liked the article, and not just because it reminded me that Coldplay has been around for as long as I've been an adult, which is, quite frankly, weird. It also reminded me that our cultural conversation about happiness, positivity and art can be complicated.

When artists lean into positivity, it's easy to write that off as corny, because, you know, it often is. It comes across as unsexy. Coldplay's music evokes the starry eyes of infatuation but leaves out the primal sweat of the bedroom. In pop music, plaintiveness adds vinegar; yearning adds nettles; sexual aggression adds spice. These ingredients can be present in the musicality, like with Bad Brains, or in the lyrics, as in Taylor Swift's depresso-pop song "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart." Without those elements, music can become too sweet; some of the best pop songs are the saddest fucking thing you've ever heard in your life, sung over a glittery synth line. I don't dispute this. I'm dancing—and crying—alongside everyone else.

But we live in a tough world. The planet is warming, wealth inequality is real and growing, food and housing have become precarious for millions of people, and pop music is getting categorically sadder. Do we not, as listeners, deserve the option to escape into Chris Martin's Rumi-inflected cheer-up songs about love, possibility, and our place in the universe? For me, this conversation is also about when Beastie Boys got heavily into Buddhism: while developing a more cosmic understanding of themselves, they didn't sacrifice funkiness or style. Or Paul Simon, whose 2008 song "Love is Eternal Sacred Light" is written from the perspective of a playful God who wants nothing more than to go on a road trip. In fact, much of Simon's catalog could be filed under "optimism pop."

There's an critical implication that music that centres joy, or positivity, is somehow less worthy or serious that music grappling with darkness. I...reject this. I hate this posture. For me, there is nothing edgy about being on edge all the time. It is so easy to slip towards depression and to find media that reinforces that mindset, ending up in a sucking eddy of shitty feelings. I've seen it happen.

It can feel radical to lean into joy, connection, spiritual lift, community, and a sense of positive possibility. Coldplay music is but one avenue for this: for every Game of Thrones, we need a Ted Lasso. For every Thirteen, we need a 13 Going On 30. Our lives can't only be vinegar, nettles, spice. Deliciousness is in the balance.

I will never go see a Coldplay show—I'm nowhere near that level of fan—but I do admire the approach. Martin seems to take his job as mood-lifter and world-improver seriously. While he's still a musician and performer, he's also an avatar of possibility. If it's trite, well, then, so be it: things are allowed to be trite. We can like them anyway.

We live in a world where everything signifies something: there is nothing without political implication or cultural weight. I follow poetry accounts on Instagram and read articles about the meaning of Barack Obama's pants. It's nice when I can turn my brain off. It would probably offend Chris Martin to hear that his music is a bit of a respite from the constant thinking we're all doing, but I mean it as a compliment. We all deserve an escape, even for just a few minutes—say, the length of a pop song. Coldplay's music, and other optimism pop, is interesting without being a bummer, the lyrics are generally life-affirming, and the stance seems to be "this place could be beautiful, right?" Come with us, the music says, we can be different, for a while. If we want to be.

Your Fall HairyScopes

 

Sleight of Hand by Rokus Aleliunas aka Casual Polar Bear

 

As always, please feel free to read your sign, the signs of your lovers and children and enemies, the sign of the person you most admire, the signs you wish you were, and any other signs you'd like.

Aries: In 2013, normcore erupted. The proposal was simple: release ourselves from the hipster's aesthetic chokehold, reclaim the stonewashed denim and puffy white sneakers of the Seinfeld era, and relax into a deliberately sexless, ambiguously gendered, and defiantly unironic look. However! According to its originators, the artistic collective K-HOLE, they originally meant for the term "normcore" to simply mean wearing outfits that fit the context, regardness of if they fit your own personal style: wear pleather pants at a rave, wear a blazer to the office, wear a cap to the ballgame, because that's the done thing. (What we now refer to as normcore was originally called Acting Basic.) I am FASCINATED by this switch in meaning: is this what critical theory professors mean by the death of the author? In any case, I invite you to think about places where you act basic, where you reject the dominant mood, and whether or not you feel lonely or if you feel free.

Taurus: Every year, my town hosts upwards of a million tourists, most of whom come to see capital-T theatre. It's interesting to live here, because the million of people who come through have fairly specific tastes: they like a quaint downtown, a lovely riverside promenade, and lots of local shops. As a result, certain parts of the town can feel Disney-fied, with upscale women's clothing boutiques and nice cheese shops, but not a lot of places that feel weird. And you know, that's becoming true of a lot of cities! Even big ones like Toronto are shedding their music venues and Weird Malls in order to build condos. Taurus, it's easy to bemoan this, and I think we should: when our places see us solely as consumers, rather than as citizens, it can make the experience of living there rather flat. How would you inject new life into your town, Taurus?

Gemini: There's this idea in therapy that we need to look under the first feeling to get to the real feeling.  Because of socialization, a lot of men express anger when they're really sad, and a lot of women do the reverse; we tend to funnel our feelings into expressions that seem safer or more familiar. I've been paying attention to the layers of my feelings, and it turns out that I'm often sad, angry, and afraid all at the same time, and dropping down through them feels like spelunking. I try to figure out what my biggest emotional response is, and run towards that. Anyway, all this to say: what makes you sad, angry, or afraid?

Cancer: A few years ago, I wanted to have a more sustainable wardrobe. I coveted that breezy linen look—the boilersuits, the overalls, the shirtdresses—or the waxed canvas, or the denim twill. But, like, Cancer: do you know how expensive those sustainable fashion companies can be? I cannot, in good conscience, bring myself to pay nearly two hundred dollars for a pair of shorts, or seven hundred dollars for a sweater. I know! I admire those who can, even though, probably, whatever you're doing to be able to afford $200 shorts is not sustainable either, if we're being honest. Why are ethical choices so expensive? What kind of world have we built? And honestly, Cancer, I still want the good shorts.

Leo: I love zines. I love concert posters. I love mix tapes. I love magazines. I love shitty paperback novels. I love maps. I love photographs. I love calendars (my all-time favourite was 2014's Beautiful Sheep). I love cards in the mail. I love love letters. In the digital age, many of these things have been miniaturized and zapped into our phones, and I want some of them back. A friend sent me a DVD in the mail, and scrawled a poem of friendship to accompany it; I framed it. It's almost like a museum artifact, a thing that might have been so common once—a shard of pottery, a loaf of carbonized bread—and now it's rare and precious. Do you miss these things too, Leo? Or are you relieved to not carry around so much? Make me a mixtape and tell me all about it.

Virgo: Everyone is turning 40 right now! From the giant high school-style house party to the international trip, to the non-acknowledgement to the bona fide midlife crisis, I love seeing how people are choosing to mark the occasion. I myself had Covid on my actual 40th birthday last November, so I did a re-do party six months later and woooweee let me tell you: it's true what they say about alcohol. I had my first three-day hangover, an experience so wretched I have not had a drink since. I sort of like this sober summer, especially as a part of this weird first year of separated life. Self care doesn't always look like what I think it might, you know? And when will I want a drink again? I don't know. I'm not sure I will.

Libra: I've started framing the things that I know I should do, but haven't been doing, as self harm. These are little harms, not big ones: when I spend fifteen work-avoidant minutes scrolling on my phone, or when I reach for a simple carb for the fifth meal in a row, or when I don't reset before I do my child's bedtime and end up in a furious lather. I know the solutions—put the phone down, eat some green vegetables, take five minutes—and that when I shirk them, I feel much worse. It's easy to say, "oh, that's self-care, that's boring self-care," but somehow, that doesn't motivate me. But when I flip the avoidance of self-care into self-harm, then I know it's serious. I have come through serious self-harm behaviours, and frankly, I'm glad I don't do them anymore. Taking care of myself isn't always glamourous, and sometimes I feel like I have to trick myself, but I can be both smart and dumb at the same time.

Scorpio: God, I love cheese. I'm not a snob about it—I don't need your fancy imports or your farmer's market selections—but please, yes, give me the salty, fatty, creamy goodness. I especially love a good cream cheese and cottage cheese; everyone always goes for the upmarket hard cheddars or mould-laced stinky bois, but I love soft and a little sweet and salty. I don't what this cheesy affection reveals about me, but I suspect that we all have preferences we know are slightly downmarket. Do we stand in our affection, or hide in shame?

Sagittarius: In most astrology, Sags are flighty nomads, but this characterization annoys me because I'm a rare "please let me stay home" Pokemon variant. I haven't travelled extensively since I was a young kid; the travels I did take as an adult are all at least ten years in the rearview. I have never really felt compelled to book the trip to Stockholm, to take the redeye to Porto, to do a roadtrip to the Grand Canyon. Many of my Sag friends are wonderful at travelling, but I would much rather read a good book about a seaside vacation than actually take one. What a snooze! But also, what a dream to grow roots instead of wings. What a privilege. 

Capricorn: I'm single now. It's a weird feeling, to be single at 40. My ex-husband has a new girlfriend, and sometimes I roll my eyes about it and sometimes I pity them both, for different reasons. I care about this a little, and I wish I didn't care at all. For the first year of our separation, I could not examine the question of how much of what happened in our marriage was because of me. It was such a painful question, and impossible to answer, truly; it's not like my ex would say, "Actually, I will own 68% of these problems, and that leaves you with 32%, enjoy and good luck." I am culpable for some of it; I want to be accountable, because that will lead to healing and hopefully better relationships in the future. But I couldn't even start asking myself those questions for nearly a year. It's almost time, now. I can start soon.

Aquarius: Love is like bread, as the saying goes. It must be made fresh every day. Sometimes it's a feast, and sometimes only crumbs, but we do eat every day. Tonight, my child and I walked hand-in-hand and ate mango ice cream in the September heat. We were lovely, chatty and funny. Last night, I cried in the dark because I was too overwhelmed by single parenting, by another dinner rejected and uneaten, undone and unhappy. It was too much. And yet: the loaf of our love rose again, a little miracle. I have to trust that we will find our way back to mango ice cream, back to the warm loaf of our love for each other, because the miracle of parenting is that so far, it has happened every day. We rise again. 

Pisces: Poor Pisces. You are the last on the zodiac, and the sign I find hardest to spell (and I say this as a Sagittarius). I blow my writerly load on sexy signs like Scorpio and Taurus, and leave you to the end. On the other hand, you youngest children get away with stuff that the Geminis would never even dream of. I associate you with a certain silver sparkle—maybe your fishy scales, or your empathetic nature—and a dreamy quality that belies your steely undergirding. I think we forget the Pisces at our own peril, truly. Not that you would ever be vindictive (I don't think that's in your nature), but that you would simply leave us all in your silvery dust. 

Manifesting

Artist unknown

Last week, a bestie came over, and in between cackling about crafts and outfits and feminism, she said something I thought was pretty great. She said, "I'm speaking this into being," and then proceeded to describe a sweet little date scenario, with a a specific type of date on her arm. I was like, "yes, do this magic spell on my front porch!" and we both cackled some more. 

I don't know about manifesting. It feels very woo, but it also seems to work sometimes. This spring, the car I learned to drive on was dying a slow death, and after dragging her back into my driveway, I rolled down my window and said, out loud to the blue sky, "I need a new car." Two hours later, a friend texted me: would I be interested in hearing about a car she had a line on? You bet your ass I was.

On the other hand, if manifesting was that simple, I would like to formally request some more money (without anyone dying, thank you), the ability to sleep through the night, and a child who might one day like me again. I would manifest the time and motivation to regain my bangin' hot bod. I would manifest a housing situation that didn't feel slightly skin-of-my-teeth at all times. I would manifest a hot partner who was great at buying presents. 

On that last note, I've been thinking about what type of person I'd like to date next. I feel very meh about dating right now—my brain is taken up with grief, still, about the end of my marriage and my sudden drop into single-mom life. But this week I also burst into tears listening to the Barenaked Ladies song "Enid," about a doomed high school relationship, so I know that there's something that needs to be addressed in this area. 

I recently thought about how I'd like to have a relationship that feels like high school sweethearts, but without the inevitable slide into taking each other for granted. I'd like someone clean-cut but with a filthy mind. I'd like someone who will fall in love with my kid, too: I am part of a package deal now. I'd like someone who is excited about their own life, who likes themselves, who gives freely and generously and without keeping tabs. I want someone who is curious. I want someone with hobbies, especially maker hobbies—there's something so attractive about woodworking or sewing, you know? I want someone who is smart as hell and who thinks I'm funny as hell; those two things are related, of course. I want someone who is interested in me—who sees me as more than a mom/wife/fucktoy paper doll. I want solidity, dependability, but with spark. I am going to speak those things into being.

I don't want to play the comparison game between whoever is coming next and the marriage that came before. Suffice it to say that, when I was in my twenties, I always knew the deficits of my friend Lindsay's boyfriends by the guys she replaced them with. The slob was followed by the neat freak; the mean guy was replaced by the sweetie; the emotionally stunted was supplanted by the emotional tsunami. A savvy reader could go back to my list and see where the gaps were in my marriage; a smart reader wouldn't do that.

I feel skittish about dating, like I'm going to have to come at it sneaky-like. I haven't been single since I was 26 years old; before that, I had a bad habit of convincing myself that the guys I slept with were boyfriend material, despite zero evidence of either their long-term interest in me or of them being functional adults. It never occurred to me to factor in if I liked them; I just wanted them to like me. I don't blame them—being in our early- to mid-20s was hard for a lot of people, you know?—but I also know the rush of physical affection can be swept away by the disappointment of reality. I tend to fall fast and hard, and I want to protect my heart a little, even if the next person I date is an absolute golden retriever.

And besides: what am I even looking for? Pre-marriage, I was riding that relationship escalator hard. We met, we dated, we moved in together. I wanted to have a baby, because my biological clock had been ticking since I was 26. My boyfriend asked me to marry him; I said yes. We got married and had a baby, and I had checked the boxes that meant I was a person in the world. Someone married me! I had a kid! Proof positive that I was worth something, after all. 

When all that fell apart, I finally internalized that if I was worth something married, I was worth something single, too. In fact, I had been worthy and worthwhile the whole time; I had just convinced myself that external validation was the only kind that counted. (Psych! Turns out it's the other way around. Thanks, therapy!) But I won't lie and say that being single at 40 is easy; it's just that being in a bad relationship is harder. And now I get to choose: am I on an escalator again? A dance floor? A Juliet balcony overlooking a garden? If I don't have anything to prove, what would I choose? 

I think about the Billy Collins poem "Litany," that great song to the world and to a lover. I am the sea searching for a shoreline; I am also just a woman writing on a computer about the things she would like in her love if it ever comes back to her. It's a good time for me to think about what those things are, so I can keep an eye out for them in the world. Even if I'm not ready today, I will be one day. I am going to speak that into being, when it's time.

The Grift

One of the biggest bummers about living in a capitalist hell-pit is that everything, and I do mean everything, is expected to be monetized. Our hobbies, our housing, our friendships, our gardens: all of these have a market value, and if we wanted, we could line our wallets with their spoils. 

I've talked before about Dr. Devon Price's statement on community—that is, what we think of as community "are actually friend groups or fandoms or brand identities." Friends, when I say that blew my mind when I first encountered it, I would be understating the moment. That was such a major a-ha for me. At the time, I was thinking about how the narrowness of "friend group" actually dilutes the meaning of "community"—because the project of friendship is to, you know, like each other, while the project of community is less interested in personal relationships but rather in a shared goal or vision or experience—and how we have come to use them as synonyms for each other despite that. But it also brings in those other dimensions, the fandoms and the brand identities, and asks us (okay, me—look, I'm doing an academia!) to examine how our so-called communities are complicated by those elements as well.

A case study: I recently started following an Instagram account called Deep House Yoga. I was interested in the basic idea (silent discos with yoga, it's sort of right there in the title), but the actual events turned out to have fairly narrow presentation. Almost universally, the attendees are thin, young white women in dusty-rose yoga shorts. It does not look like anyone over 40 or 130 pounds attends these events, and the darkest skin tone is, like, cafe-au-lait. 

I'm not going to lie: this bums me out. Not least because, while I am white, I am also old and fat and my yoga clothes are baggy and worn out. I suppose I'll have to do yoga to Rufus Du Sol alone, thank you very much. And yet, this account talks constantly about the power of their community, and how their community shows up for them. It's clear, however, that this community is not one that is, say, engaging in collective childminding or showing up at a sick member's house with a casserole. This community is fandom and brand identity, pure and simple.

A deeper dive shows that the two besties who run these events are not just friends but also business partners, and the business partnership is framed as the two of them helping each other manifest their financial destinies. Now, obviously, this is some woo-woo pseudospirituality. But there is a certain type of person whose work requires friend buy-in; that is, if you are friends with them, there is an (often explicitly stated) expectation that you will be purchasing their merch, working the door at their parties, posting about their events on your social media. It's the eco-system, the quid-pro-quo of how capitalist friendships are structured now: how can we make money being ourselves? Is our friendship something we can use to sell to others? Are we the product?

From what I can see, this structure usually has a few different components: a charismatic leader, or better yet, a duo modelling a fulfilling and fun-looking relationship; the idea that, by buying whatever they're selling, you will also gain access to the fun person at the centre of the hub; and that this access will make you more interesting, fitter, more attractive, or more popular. For women, it's the central spine of the modern MLM, the allure of the best bartenders, the shop owners with the savviest marketing. I'm sure men have this with certain podcast hosts or comedians. There's an illusion that you, too, can become a member of this community...if you can pay the entry fee. 

Good lord, I am sick of this. A friend of mine called it a grift, and it is. It's an illusion. Communities, by their nature, are challenging and generative and diverse and weird. By contrast, brand identities smooth the edges, giving convenient shorthand to communicate values ("I buy American," etc.). And fandoms orient, again, towards consumption; while the best fandoms are challenging and generative in their own ways, often beautifully so (see: my recent dive into Dramione fanfic, and no, I'm not taking any questions) their shared project is not shaping the world, but rather responding to media. A worthy cause, but narrower in scope than is what is useful in the hell-pit.

It's been interesting to see how many of these types of grift-communities are out there. Once I started seeing them, I couldn't stop. The tragedy is, some of it is survival: I don't fault the cool shop owners for inserting themselves or their personal lives into their marketing, because for most small shop owners, there is no real divide between who you are and what you're selling, no off-the-clock that can be guarded and kept private. And that is exhausting—these folks tend to post a lot about burnout. And for some, the tragedy is that it is sometimes revealed that there is no "fun person" at the centre of the hub: their project isn't community, but sales. As long as everybody's buying something, they're having fun, but the second that stops, things get frantic.

I know that, in the modern world, our lives are the product: our data, what we search and where we go, our interests. There are platforms to monetize everything we do, from Etsy (crafts) to Substack (writing) to Twitch (playing video games) to YouTube (opening presents), and that each of those platforms takes its own cut, either in money or information, usually both. And I know we are also yearning to connect with each other, to make meaningful friendships and loving relationships. This grift capitalizes on our yearning and promises that we can be cool, beautiful, accepted, known....as long as we have the right dusty-rose yoga pants and money for the tickets. I'm going to leave my wallet in my purse and see how I make out; it's old-school, I know, but I've got hope that it might also be the future.

Illustration by Nikolas Ilic

Slow Time

Cabinet Mineral for Soleil Rouge Digital — March, 2020 Alisa Calypso

Life has been hectic lately. I don't know if it's post-separation comedown, or post-mid-pandemic malaise, or post-busy-work-springtime, but I find myself challenged to stay motivated to do anything. Monday mornings, I often take a little crash for anywhere from one to 24 hours: rot on the couch, watch sitcoms, scroll social media, and ignore my duties and responsibilities. It's not ideal for actually getting anything done; it's also not ideal to feel slightly out of control of the crash, as though I can barely drag myself to the resting point before turning my brain entirely off. 

watching sitcoms | watching improv shows | reading romance novels | reading fun magazines | a little snack | a seasonal fruit | a new flavour of sparkling water | reading a how-to book | putting my phone away

The things that sustained me in other hectic, hard-brain times—Drag Race, knitting, cooking, queer romance novels—have lost their lustre. I don't think it's depression, because I'm still joyful and grateful to be alive, but it's like a little void has opened up and I'm not sure what, exactly, to fit it with. I like being busy, but it feels like one of those situations where you've been eating strawberries your whole life, and then suddenly, you mouth is itchy when you eat one. Where did that come from?

doodling | hanging art on the walls | sewing | knitting | blogging | writing a short story | writing a poem | menu planning |

I feel somewhat like my creative tank has been spilled out—and really, it's hard to be creative when we're in survival mode all the time. I feel also like I've been someone with passionate hobbies (those of you with ADHD and autism are shouting "hyperfixations! special interests!" and don't think I can't hear you), but to suddenly find myself with a lack of hobbies, or at least hobbies that are fuelling my creative tank, is weird. Yes, I'm still knitting, but nothing too involved. Yes, I'm still blogging, but my last post was a blob. I'm still doing stuff, but I'm doing the most basic versions of the most basic stuff. Why? 

dancing | going for long walks | lifting weights | yoga | riding my bike | swimming in the lake | throwing a football around | flying a kite | a massage

Realistically, I don't feel energized and I'm not sure why. Is this perimenopause? Is this...sadness? Is this a meme about anime and Harry Potter? Is it burnout? Is this something else? I feel much less anxious in my daily life than I have for many years, but was anxiety the fuel I used to propel myself forward? If so, respectfully, what the fuck? Because this feels boring, and I feel like I'm boring right now, and I hate feeling that way! And maybe I do need to unpack why I feel the need to be interesting and helpful and shiny all the time, but really, I also enjoy doing things and not doing things feels sluggy and weird! So: perimenopause? Burnout? Sadness? WHAT??

talking on the phone | going for coffee with a friend | dinner with my sister | walks with my mom | driving with my dad | going to the splash pad with my kiddo | pal sleepovers | visiting friends out of town | sitting in a busy coffee shop | sitting in a quiet library | therapy | sending a card in the mail | writer's group | volunteering | snuggling

Maybe this is just a season of slow. Summer is often go-go-go, but it actually carries a lot of grief for me. Summer is when people have historically gotten sick, and when affairs have come to light, and when a walk on the beach is likely to contain slow tears or a drunken sob. I do much better in spring and fall, when the heat is soft and the days have structure. And, after all, I am still grieving the collapse of my marriage, and the additional relationship devastations that have piled on since then. I feel punched in the brain, in the heart, and like I'm still trying to get up from that.

tidying up | paying my bills | laundry | sweeping | grocery shopping | cooking something easy | cooking something hard | gardening | 

And maybe this is also a bit of choice paralysis: I could be doing anything, and instead, I'm curled up on the couch because it all feels a bit impenetrable. My creative goals used to be small-scale ("knit a pair of socks!") and then I felt like I could take on more; then I started edging into territory like "refurbish the dining room table" and that might actually be too big for me. Shoot for the moon and you will land among stars? Dude, I can't even figure out how to get off the launchpad. I've thought a lot about how percolation is a key element in my creative process, but where does percolation stop and overwhelm begin? 

a soft shirt | a cozy blanket | a pretty dress | a nice bit of jewellery | showering | good-smelling soap | the right sunglasses

The idea of sitting in the void, even just for now, is stressing me out. It's not my usual way. My usual way is to distract myself with a million things to do, little jobs that keep me busy and moving and going all the time. And I want to get back to that—I do!—but the motivation is so low. I don't really know what my alternatives are. I can't force myself to feel better. I can't bully myself into productivity. I mourn the loss of the easy, spring-up side of myself, and trust that she will return. 

And if she doesn't, who will I be?

Life, Right Now

Lately the vibe of this blog has been single-topic rants/harangues/love letters/musings, which has been great for my writing chops and focus, but I do sort of miss the days of writing a meandering blob of nothing in particular. Working on this little corner of the internet for the past fifteen (!!) years has meant that I have dabbled in a lot of different formats and approaches, and the meandering blob is a perennial favourite, right alongside "the listicle nobody asked for" and "half-baked takes on things that matter to me" and "pop culture responses, I guess??", but I often feel compelled to put a little more oomph into these things, now that I'm only doing one post per month. Still: maybe this month is a little less oomph-y and a little more flowy, as a little treat.

There are things happening behind the scenes that I don't want to broadcast, or at least not yet: domestic shakeups that are not yet fully formed, changes to lifestyle and habitat, and an overall sense that the plans I had made are maybe not the life I will live. But those things are yet to be finalized, and so focusing on a collection of small things while the Big Things thunder on in the background is where I'm at right now. 

And, oh, what small things! In no particular order: 

- Spring is here, and that is very good for morale. The garden is popping off, and the azaleas and rhododendrons are not messing around. Pure beauty. Every year, I have delusions that I will make dandelion wine or pickle magnolias; every year, the moment passes and I don't do it, taking me one step farther from being a self-sufficient forager type and/or cool weird hippie, but likewise, every year I enjoy the spring more and more. I get why retired people get really into their gardens. It's good out there. 

- It's been an utterly fabulous friendship time. I feel wildly blessed that so many good people have collected around me. How? I don't know, but I don't take it for granted. These are people who make me laugh until I cry, who laugh at my jokes (the dream!), who hold me when I cry, who send thoughtful cards, who linger on my front porch, who walk with me, whose kids I love, and whose advice I take. Friendship wounds have crossed my life in many ways and those scars can run deep, but right now, I feel like the small collection of besties I've somehow ended up with are absolutely the right people for me. 

- Likewise! Beyond just ("just") friends, I am having a really nice community moment. The volunteer work I do with the climate group and on the library board is so generative and positive! I feel good about it! The relationships in those spaces there aren't friendships, but they are friendly and rooted in mutually aligned goals and values, which is affirming and feels important. Plus, because my paid work is remote and my colleagues are spread far and wide, having people that I sit at an actual table with feels like a novelty, but a good one. 

- I'm on a Harry Potter fanfic kick, and while it is DEEPLY embarrassing to be known in this way, I have to admit that the reading of the fanfic has been SO FUN. It's so fun. I have many theories on why fanfic is so fun, but it's basically spending even more time with your imaginary friends, and who doesn't want that? This is like discovering several new seasons of your favourite sitcom, or a sequel to your favourite movie, and as an added bonus, it comes with much less of the terrible politics of the author, and a lot of in-jokes and snark. 

- I just broke four years on Duolingo. I spent a year learning Japanese and retained none of it; I've moved on to Spanish and I'm...medium-bad? This is more of a phone game than a language acquisition process, but I know the Spanish word for owl now, and I didn't before. 

- I am struggling with time management right now, and I know it will get worse in the summer. I am not really a morning person, and in order to be effective, I need to get out of the house and do something right away, and then go to work. On the days I have my kiddo, the commute to school is usually enough structure to get me to my desk by 9:30; on the days I don't, I can be a gormless prawn on the couch for several hours before I haul myself to the computer. I need to break this habit, because it doesn't serve me. At the same time, I am really a person who enjoys evening work, and that is hard when I have to simultaneously do a bedtime routine. Advice on this balancing act appreciated, although I suspect it boils down to "be a different person" and that's tough. 

- My creative goals are all over the place right now, but they include (and are not limited to) the following: making friendship bracelets; framing and hanging my art; making new art; creating a kitchen-themed oracle deck; writing more chapters on my weird time-travel novel; figuring out what to do with the three yards of neon-orange mesh fabric I bought last summer; deep cleaning my house (not technically creative, but key to the creative process); refinishing the dining room table; and maybe cooking some new or low-rotation foods. 

- By the same token, one vision I have for the summer is a Weekend of Indulgence, where I just go and eat at all the good restaurants, scarf down pastries, buy some trinkets or fancy books; walk through some natural areas, and wear some great clothes. I know for many people this is also slightly-elevated normal life, but right now it feels like a real reach. Not in a poor-me kind of a way; in a "this will be special" kind of way. Holler if you want to join!

- I realized recently that the fight-or-flight hormones that had been flooding my body for....many years....pretty much constantly....have largely ebbed away. My overall anxiety is way down, along with the intrusive thoughts and generalized panic. I feel like myself for the first time in a long time, and it turns out, I like myself! I can put my foot in my mouth still, or have hard days, or struggle with motivation, but the sheer bad-feeling-ness that had become my "normal" has been a mega relief to slough off. I'm smart and funny, strategic and weird, and I have things, people, and goals in my life that feel like they fit. I like it. I'm happy. 

Image creator unknown

Fashion Vibe

Amanda S. Lanzone

I recently stopped into a new coffee shop. It was cute - the vibe was very GOOP, with refined sugar-free cookies and ashwaghanda hot chocolate - and as I sat there with my goat cheese-stuffed date and ice tea, a parade of new mums came through. It was wild how similar they all were: sleek mid-ponytail, black leggings, white sneakers, gray or black sweatshirt, little gold hoops. It was almost at the level of a dress code, or, frankly, cult member. And it made me wonder: is this stylish? Is this trendy? My baby is eight—should I dress like this?

I think a lot about style and trends. I love fashion and clothing, especially how it functions in as proxies for our social selves. Clothing creates in-groups and sends signals about how we want to be perceived. It helps create our public images. Clothing is a tool by which we create our lives. 

I've been thinking about this again lately, because it had occurred to me that the people in my life that I look up to for being stylish are all wildly different. There is my bestie who dresses like a stoned woodland princess (a lot of velvet and silk and interesting headbands); a pal who dresses like a member of a 1990s girl punk band (Doc Martens, windbreakers, leather pants); a friend who is an unabashed wardrobe maximalist, who routinely wears head-to-toe neon pink and heart-shaped glasses; and a buddy whose wardrobe, despite being mostly beige, seems so luxuriously touchable that I can't help but swoon.

In trying to define what unites these diverse and divergent queens, there are a few common denominators. They all make use of texture—wooly numbers, leather and fur, lacy bits and bobs, squishable fabrics, unexpected choices. They all have great accessories, like weird glasses choices, an excess of rings, or a funny poofed hat. None of them are shrinking violets: these are outfits designed to be seen and admired, not to blend in. And while they're all attractive as hell, most of them downplay the fuckability element. These folks are dressing for the girls and the gays; the straight male gaze is an afterthought, at best.

But more to the point, each of the people has a deeply personal way of dressing that just...matches who they are. It's hard to explain: I could write a thousand words on my friend who dresses like a girl-punk, and how she's brash and sensitive and a former member of the Pillow Fight League and how she will get in your face and defend anyone's honour...but I don't have to, because her frilly socks and t-strap Doc Martens say it better than I ever could.

So: is being stylish just a matter of matching your own vibe?

I think it has to be. I think this is why I still feel like I'm discovering my own style: because my internal vibe has shifted dramatically in the last ten years. That goes along with changes to my body and budget and my willingness to be perceived and get weird. In my 20s, I felt like my style was more like cosplaying who I wanted to be. In my 30s, it was a desperate apology for getting fatter and not being as hot as I once was. Now? Now, I feel like nothing hangs together, and it sort of works anyway.

The internal-vibe thing is so interesting to me, because it answers my question of why "it" works for some people and not others. Some people's maximalism is delicious while others' feels messy. One person's frilliness is perfect, while on another, it feels childish. Some people look like a million bucks in an outfit that could be described as moderately unhoused, while others need a boiled-wool coat and a low-heeled boot. Sometimes I want to tweak someone's personal style—I have a friend I really want to see it more 1980s band tees—and sometimes it's hard to define what's working and what's not. Why does athleisure read as slobby on one person and sleek on another? Why does office wardrobe look polished on her and like a costume on her?

Again: the vibe. The vibe is misaligned, and while it's not wrong or bad, it's just not as gloriously personally perfect as it could be. This is a low-stakes problem to have, and exploring solutions is just the most fun. Does a necklace solve the problem? What about the wrong shoe? Can we bring in a statement piece? Can we make it our signature thing? C'mon people, let's try some solutions! I don't want to be part of the Legging Mom Mafia. That seems dull as hell.

I still don't know what my internal vibe really is—am I a fritzy earth mother? a hard-edged femme? an outsidey community activist? a low-key professional who still cracks jokes in meetings? the third-hottest person at school pick-up? the girl crying in the bathroom at the club?—because the reality is, I could be any one of those people on any given day. Some days, I'm all of them (those are long days). I am weird and strong and soft and shiny, and I mostly dress to reflect that. I dress as a dreamer, too: the people I want to become, trying them on for size. And I dress in order the tell the world: I am still becoming the person I am.

The Small Job

This week, I took ten minutes and did a small job, and I feel good about it.

It goes like this: I thrifted some beautiful mid-century modern teacups, with gorgeous black-and-white graphic flowers. I had spied them in Value Village, where they had been priced at thirty dollars for a set of eight cups and saucers. Thirty dollars! At Value Village! (In this economy!) But I picked them up because they were quite pretty, and the manufacturers' stamp indicated actual vintage rather than HomeSense knock-offs. When I looked them up online, it seemed like they were a pretty popular item (a single pair of cups and saucers was selling on Etsy for sixty bucks), and so I put them into my cart, not wholly sold on the purchase but unwilling to get scooped while I was still in the store. I finally committed to them when I pictured my family sitting around my table on a Christmas brunch, drinking coffee and tea from these little mugs. Even though I don't even know what version of my family I bought them for—it's certainly not my current iteration, in seemingly constant turmoil—it seemed like maybe the mugs would help manifest the family, or at least it couldn't hurt.

Anyway, of course these cups and saucers had been sitting on my kitchen counter for six weeks while I hemmed and hawed about where to actually put them. If I tucked them away on the "good china" shelf, I would never use them; at the same time, I knew they wouldn't be in regular rotation, because they hold about two-thirds of a cup of liquid and are pretty silly as an everyday drinking vessel. 

Related: this week, my mom came and helped me freshen up my back room. Not quite a mudroom, but definitely not a living room, it serves as a storage zone/erstwhile potting shed/place to store bikes/plant hanging facility. My mom took the lead on redoing the flooring (laying laminate over old vinyl) and painting (scuffed white walls to a pinky terracotta). I mostly "helped" by repeatedly making incorrect cuts and, at one point, laying several laminate boards over top of a pencil I had left on the floor. I often consider myself handy, but I was definitely not on my game this week. But the job is 90% done, and it looks great, and I think I can mostly finish it myself. 

It was while this big job was underway that I decided to finally just hang the teacups. I went and got hooks and I got out my cordless drill and I spent ten minutes drilling, and then I hung up my teacups and they looked great. The job was done! The small job was done. The big job, of course, is not done, but we're getting closer.

I don't usually half-ass things. I have four regular clients, I serve on my library's board, I help organize community events, I'm solo parenting half the time, and I have a multitude of hobbies, from daily Worldle to this very blog to knitting to gardening to making jewellery. My creative to-do list currently includes several major projects, like refinishing my dining-room table and learning how to make punch-needle textiles. I like big, bold challenges. I like creative approaches and systems-based solutions. I sound like an insufferable LinkedIn profile, but these are true things about me: I like to do and make. 

But this year, I find myself struggling with the bigger projects. Maybe not even just this year: if I'm honest, the last few years have often been a balancing act where things like "a clean house" or "an interesting meal" goes by the wayside, so the chances of me taking on a big challenging haven't-done-it-before project are pretty slim. Things have been so busy and so different, and since my separation, even more so. I've been pretty in my head about it all, too: a lot of anxiety, a lot of time spent stretched out on the floor, waiting to feel better. 

But maybe I'm taking the wrong approach. Maybe I need to focus less on the big stuff and more on the little stuff. I know the sense of satisfaction that comes from a large project, but I also know that they can be kind of...interminable? Sometimes there's no sense of being done on a large project. There's always a bit more to finish, a few things to polish up. A small job? That has a start and an end. There's a moment where there is nothing else to do, and the brain sort of goes "ahhhh" like a sigh. It's part of the reason I like knitting socks, or hanging framed art, or even doing unloading the dishwasher: at some point, the job is done. While the big project brings a sense of creative stretch and accomplishment, the small jobs delivers staccato bursts of dopamine that, turns out, can be very helpful in actually orienting the brain towards bigger jobs. But the sense of ahhhh is also useful and pleasing in and of itself: not a full meal of completion and satisfaction, but a very delicious little snack. And who doesn't love a little treat?

As a small job, the teacup project was perfect. Aesthetically pleasing, short, and helps my house be less of a disaster? I love checking those boxes!

Maybe my next step is to investigate where my small jobs live, so I can find them more often. They're often little home- or self-improvement tasks, like cleaning out a drawer or doing a skin routine. I don't need to stack them up or do too many of them, but I might keep a little roster of small jobs I can tackle when the motivation strikes and the timing is good. I know small jobs give the illusion that more is happening and that I have control over any of it, but the reality is, I can control a small job.

I need to remember that this is not, actually, a grind: that these little jobs provide me with an outcome I enjoy, that can be done in under 30 minutes, and that make my life just a little bit nicer. In an era of my life when things are often grindy and, frankly, not very nice, I can do a small job and feel kind of good about it. The teacups, hanging and beautiful, feel good.

 

Kith

From peopleiveloved.com

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. 

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 meaningful 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!

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 during and after such a life-weirding, world-altering, emotion-boggling event feels like a goddamn triumph, 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, Revel, I love you). I know that having weak ties is important; I also know that people like people who seem to like them (especially more than others). 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.

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. 

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. 

And yet! And yet. The opportunity to learn from these friendship implosions has been deep indeed. 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 fucking awful 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.

What I like about this 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 know each other yet, as the "mutual admiration society," but I try to carry that energy into even the deepest and longest connections I have.

I love and admire the hell 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. 

The oldest definition of the word kith, 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.

Culture Daze

Chandni Chowk

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.

When we went to Iceland in 2012, I fell in love with the street art in Reykjavik. 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 famously hidden down multiple back alleys. 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. 

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.

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 do 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 beautiful for its own sake.

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 lack a playground within walking distance. The playgrounds we do 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.

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 Lights On event: 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.

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 in an underpass! 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 is 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 served in Stratford's cultural core.

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 get weird 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.

Stratford, on the other hand, is known for having the most secretive city council in the country. Make of that what you will. 

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 twee micro-cinema 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. 

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? 

Whose voices get heard when we talk about this?

We all want to live in a place that seems to want us back, right?