I feel bad for the kids of today, because their first exposure to Jennifer Aniston will be through her movies, like that one with Adam Sandler last year, and this summer's Horrible Bosses. There, she's playing Jennifer Aniston, Movie Star: her hair is shiny and her voice is perky and she's outrageous and winky. But back when she played Rachel Green on a little TV show called Friends, she was actually - and I know this is shocking - pretty funny.
All my dude friends just groaned, because while some of them think she's hot (and the majority think she's unappealingly shrill), almost none of them think she's hilarious. But if you watch old episodes of Friends, after they tone down her character's daffy rich-girl-striking-out-on-her-own storyline of the first few seasons and actually made her into a person (or as much of a person as characters are allowed to be on sitcoms), she's really funny. She's got timing, she's got the balanced beauty of someone who conceivably live in your apartment building, she lets other people be funny, and she works really well with her material.
The kids of today, of course, know her as Jennifer Aniston: Movie Star and Jennifer Aniston: Tabloid Fixture, and the kids of ten years ago knew her as Jennifer Aniston: Wife Of Hot, Hot Movie Star. Much the same way that Ryan Reynolds has gone from Sitcom Goof to Hot-Bodied Action Hero, and Scarlett Johansenn went from Blank-Eyed Indie Girl to Sultry Pin-Up, the early days of today's mega stars have been steamrolled by their publicists, stylists, agents, and other team members and imagineers into basically not existing.
Obviously, I have my own celebrity blind spots. Jason Bateman, who was on Silver Spoons and then Arrested Development, only came to my attention post-AD, when he played the potential adoptive father in Juno. Bateman's public persona was a many-layered thing: he was a former child star, the center of a cultishly popular sitcom and the brother of Justine Bateman, who was famous for a many of the same things. I was, at the time, ignorant of this history; I just thought his Juno character was a jerk. Likewise, my first encounter with Zach Braff was Garden State, which was sad-sack and featured a grating Natalie Portman. Braff didn't have a bunch of goodwill with me, because I had never seen his delightfully weird sitcom Scrubs. I just thought he was a loser.
It's hard for me to predict which of today's TV stars are going to make the jump into movies. Evangeline Lilly, the perpetually dirty-hot Kate from Lost, will be featured in this fall's Real Steel, a movie that, as far as I can tell, is based on Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. The upcoming Muppet movie stars Jason Segel, who is best known for How I Met Your Mother (although anyone who hasn't seen Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the only movie that featured both full-frontal male nudity and puppets, really should), but HIMYM has been on for for roughly one thousand seasons and my dad still hasn't seen it. It's not ubiquitous in the way that Friends, Seinfeld, The Drew Carey Show, and any number of mid-1990s, TBS-syndicated, juggernaut sitcoms were.
I'm not all that concerned with Jennifer Aniston's legacy per se, because she's going to be just fine. Even if her movies don't stand the test of time, her Elizabeth Taylor-level of tabloid fame should secure her in the public's memory. What I think is interesting is that the way she became famous to me, by being a legitimately funny actress on a hugely successful TV show, is no longer the primary reason she's famous. The same way that Nicole Richie is now a "jewellery designer" instead of "noted anorexic," you know? I guess it sort speaks to the sitcom's loss of primacy in most network's programming (although it does seem to be creeping back), but it also seems hard to market a celebrity after they've won on Survivor, The Bachelor, or whatever reality TV is gobbling the airwaves this season. I like celebrities to have an embarrassing horror movie credit to their name before they hit it big. I like sitcom stars that turn into movie stars. I like movie stars who turn into tabloid fodder. But that doesn't seem to be the life cycle of the average celebrity any more.
At the risk of sounding old fashioned, I miss when people were famous for a reason. All the people I see in the rags now got their start on shows like 16 and Pregnant, which seems repugnant. I know who the Kardashians are. That seems insane! They don't do anything! At least Aniston and her sitcom-bred cohort did stuff (acting) to merit their ink. Even if I didn't recognize Braff and Bateman when I went to their movies, I can now. Fame, like anything else, should be merit-based, and I miss the days when folks earned their way to the top. Rachel Green, I salute you.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The Exercise Room
I've pledged in the past to get active. "I'm going to be a triathlete!" I've crowed, "I'm going to take up marathons!" This usually goes hand in hand with a silent vow to lose 30 pounds and become one of those flat-stomached women who have ropy arm veins and assassin's eyes. I've always wanted to have that kind of determination, but usually I end up on the couch with chocolate drool on my pajama pants and the DVD menu music looping endlessly as I doze.
This past year, I had surgery, skated dangerously close to abject poverty (and the ice is getting thinner as we speak), recovered from an eating disorder, watched my parent's relationship reconfigure itself into something new and unexplored, worked a miserable job, quit that miserable job, and continue to deal with the deaths of people close to me and close to those around me. It's been a stressful 12 months. I've also sighed some big sighs as I've watched myself go from looking pretty normal, to post-surgery skinny, to stress-induced fat. This has coincided with that moment in one's late twenties when it takes more than 20 minutes of jogging to get into shape: my metabolism has slowed down, you guys.
I've never had a really normal body experience. When I was a child, I was normal/skinny, but when I hit puberty, everything ballooned: my hair, my breasts, my skin, and my body. I was unprepared for boobs. I was unprepared for acne. When I was thirteen, I caught whooping cough, an antique disease that made me cough so hard I would barf. Then came over a decade of craziness ("Chapter 9: Eating and Barfing"). I'm not going to get into that, mostly because it's private and painful, and also because I don't want to be one of those "tsk-tsk-instructions!" people. Every year or so, the teen magazines run their concerned article about eating disorders, which, if you're damaged and desperate, can read like a how-to manual. That's not my scene. Suffice it to say that I was nuts, it was bad, and I only really stopped because it occurred to me that, if I kept it up, I was going to die.
Lighthearted! Anyway, this isn't really about that - it's about why, at the age of 27, I'm finally trying to develop a "normal" relationship with my body. In the past, I've exercised so that I can loathe my body a little less: if I'm two pounds lighter on Friday than I was on Monday, I'm obviously a better person. This, apparently, isn't really how things work. Most people exercise to feel good, to lose weight, to get strong, or to tone up. I was using it as a shield, as an attempt to fend off the self-loathing. I mean, damn, for a while I looked awesome. But, like any disorder, I couldn't sustain it.
I just got back from an 8-day canoe trip, which was difficult in a number of ways. It was definitely physically demanding. After the first day, I was exhausted and my arms were sore - I can only imagine how my boyfriend, who was steering and paddling, was feeling. But by the eighth day, we were able to keep pace with the other canoes, and my arms weren't achy at the end of the day. We were eating lighter meals than I usually do in the city, and I felt healthy and fit. Again, I vowed to get in shape, and I would use those eight days as the kick-start to a healthier lifestyle.
It's tough, though, for me not to fold that into some weird, controlling behaviour. I want to just be normal: to have a range of pants, from "skinny" to "premenstrual bloat," that I can wear without judging myself. I'd like to be fit. That means I can use (and see) my muscles, but I'm not telling myself, "I'm only worthwhile if I'm losing weight." Learning to accept my womanly curves - seriously, if my breasts were real estate, they would be a sprawling country farm - and recognize that I'm not going to be movie-star skinny. I mean, at least not without some serious backsliding into some pretty creepy territory.
Anyway. I guess this post, which started out as more of a light-hearted romp into the exercise room, has evolved into some group-therapy business. That's fine. For the first time in my life, I see the value of getting fit for the sake of my body, rather than trying to appease that voice in my head that says "People only like you when you're small." And that it's taken me a really long time to get here, and it feels a little like a mountain ledge, but I seem to have developed a knack for dealing with hard things (or trying to deal with them, anyway - some things are harder than others), so I want to use that talent. Bodies are weird, and exercise is boring and hard, and I appreciate my gym buddies and my encouraging friends. And now that you, dear reader, know the full scoop, you can join the ranks of the gym buddies and encouraging friends, or you can keep your mouths shut when I flex my underdeveloped shoulder muscles at you and crow "Aren't I coming along nicely?" Because the answer is yes, we're all coming along nicely.
This past year, I had surgery, skated dangerously close to abject poverty (and the ice is getting thinner as we speak), recovered from an eating disorder, watched my parent's relationship reconfigure itself into something new and unexplored, worked a miserable job, quit that miserable job, and continue to deal with the deaths of people close to me and close to those around me. It's been a stressful 12 months. I've also sighed some big sighs as I've watched myself go from looking pretty normal, to post-surgery skinny, to stress-induced fat. This has coincided with that moment in one's late twenties when it takes more than 20 minutes of jogging to get into shape: my metabolism has slowed down, you guys.
I've never had a really normal body experience. When I was a child, I was normal/skinny, but when I hit puberty, everything ballooned: my hair, my breasts, my skin, and my body. I was unprepared for boobs. I was unprepared for acne. When I was thirteen, I caught whooping cough, an antique disease that made me cough so hard I would barf. Then came over a decade of craziness ("Chapter 9: Eating and Barfing"). I'm not going to get into that, mostly because it's private and painful, and also because I don't want to be one of those "tsk-tsk-instructions!" people. Every year or so, the teen magazines run their concerned article about eating disorders, which, if you're damaged and desperate, can read like a how-to manual. That's not my scene. Suffice it to say that I was nuts, it was bad, and I only really stopped because it occurred to me that, if I kept it up, I was going to die.
Lighthearted! Anyway, this isn't really about that - it's about why, at the age of 27, I'm finally trying to develop a "normal" relationship with my body. In the past, I've exercised so that I can loathe my body a little less: if I'm two pounds lighter on Friday than I was on Monday, I'm obviously a better person. This, apparently, isn't really how things work. Most people exercise to feel good, to lose weight, to get strong, or to tone up. I was using it as a shield, as an attempt to fend off the self-loathing. I mean, damn, for a while I looked awesome. But, like any disorder, I couldn't sustain it.
I just got back from an 8-day canoe trip, which was difficult in a number of ways. It was definitely physically demanding. After the first day, I was exhausted and my arms were sore - I can only imagine how my boyfriend, who was steering and paddling, was feeling. But by the eighth day, we were able to keep pace with the other canoes, and my arms weren't achy at the end of the day. We were eating lighter meals than I usually do in the city, and I felt healthy and fit. Again, I vowed to get in shape, and I would use those eight days as the kick-start to a healthier lifestyle.
It's tough, though, for me not to fold that into some weird, controlling behaviour. I want to just be normal: to have a range of pants, from "skinny" to "premenstrual bloat," that I can wear without judging myself. I'd like to be fit. That means I can use (and see) my muscles, but I'm not telling myself, "I'm only worthwhile if I'm losing weight." Learning to accept my womanly curves - seriously, if my breasts were real estate, they would be a sprawling country farm - and recognize that I'm not going to be movie-star skinny. I mean, at least not without some serious backsliding into some pretty creepy territory.
Anyway. I guess this post, which started out as more of a light-hearted romp into the exercise room, has evolved into some group-therapy business. That's fine. For the first time in my life, I see the value of getting fit for the sake of my body, rather than trying to appease that voice in my head that says "People only like you when you're small." And that it's taken me a really long time to get here, and it feels a little like a mountain ledge, but I seem to have developed a knack for dealing with hard things (or trying to deal with them, anyway - some things are harder than others), so I want to use that talent. Bodies are weird, and exercise is boring and hard, and I appreciate my gym buddies and my encouraging friends. And now that you, dear reader, know the full scoop, you can join the ranks of the gym buddies and encouraging friends, or you can keep your mouths shut when I flex my underdeveloped shoulder muscles at you and crow "Aren't I coming along nicely?" Because the answer is yes, we're all coming along nicely.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Reading A-List
I love a good reading list. I know I'm not alone on this one - the popularity of features like Amazon.com's Listmania! and the scores of end-of-year must-read lists demonstrates that most of us like a curated experience when it comes to reading. That's not to say that I don't enjoy wandering through bookstores. The pleasures there are of the unexpected and hidden finds - a reissue of a book your dad once recommended, or a new book by a favourite author. Once you get past the tables of prominently displayed best-sellers and into the meatier, denser shelves, there are literally hundred of thousands of titles to pick up, mull over, and maybe even read.
Back during my interminable undergraduate degree, one of my favourite pleasures used to be, in the first class of the term, receiving the syllabus for the course. The book list always felt like it held such promise; as an English major, I trafficked mostly in novels, so each syllabus would usually contain a few critical texts and then a stack of fiction books that I might enjoy as a civilian, or that might be an academic slog through page upon page of Olde Englishe lunacy.
Early on, I rejected the stale canonical babblings of dead white guys, and instead enrolled in every genre class I could find. I pored over detective fiction from the 1920s, Caribbean bildungsromans, a truly dreadful science fiction book that should have had an editor's scythe through some (nay, most) of its 800+ pages, and Daisy Miller. I read comic books and Jewish fiction - lots of overlap there - Thomas Pynchon and Shelley Jackson. The books piled up around me, making built-in shelving a requirement for any new living space I moved into. Some of them went ignored and unread. I was a student more interested in the idea of learning than the actual legwork, and usually six weeks into the term, I was too distracted by my own latent meltdowns to focus on The Fairie Queene.
I just finished Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends, in which he dissects the works that most influenced him, both as a writer and as a human, and then talks about his own creative methods. Some of the stories that he loves include Sherlock Holmes adventures, His Dark Materials, the myth of The Golem of Prague, and pulpy mid-1980s comics books. It was assembled, it seems, as a sort of reader's map to his wildly successful 2000 book The Amazing Adeventures of Kavalier and Clay, but it also includes an extensive and thoughtful index of his influences, an index that also functions as a de facto reading list.
As a lazy sort of writer myself, I wonder what my Maps and Legends would be about. Working from childhood, I would be a dirty liar if I didn't own up to my soft spot for The Babysitter's Club - but maybe that fontanelle helped me side-step that embarrassing wasteland known as chick-lit. I love Stephen King novels, but I've recognized that his writing is often dreadful; people read him because they want a good yarn, not a masterful literary voice. I've picked up dozens of comic books, essay collection, and short story anthologies because I love the challenges and beauties of short-form writing. It's not likely that I'll ever pull a Chabon and write a gorgeous, multi-layered epic like Kavalier and Clay, but I've written hundred of essays on this website. The high-brow literary classics I was taught in school rarely got under my skin the way science fiction, horror and fantasy did; in university, it was a struggle to read things like Shamela, because I knew there were other, more relevant books for me out there, just waiting to be read.
On my desk right now, I have a to-do list that includes some mid- to macro-level items: nestled among "make a doctor's appointment" and "laundry" is "make a summer reading list," a task that I've put off because I don't want to have that bit of pleasure come to an end. I know it'll include some Chabon-recommended books, but also delightful books I bought months ago that got lost in the job-stress black hole, gifts from my boyfriend, loaners from friends, magazine articles, re-reads, and false starts. I want to order it so that there are breaks - my re-read of The Crying of Lot 49 isn't immediately after my false-started The Pale King because, while I like both books, there's only so much experimental fiction one's brain can really take.
But mostly, I'm trying to capture some of that promise - the idea that every book has the potential to teach me something, whether it's how to write better, how to live better, or just how to scare the everliving fuck out of myself at 12:30 AM on a Thursday night.
Back during my interminable undergraduate degree, one of my favourite pleasures used to be, in the first class of the term, receiving the syllabus for the course. The book list always felt like it held such promise; as an English major, I trafficked mostly in novels, so each syllabus would usually contain a few critical texts and then a stack of fiction books that I might enjoy as a civilian, or that might be an academic slog through page upon page of Olde Englishe lunacy.
Early on, I rejected the stale canonical babblings of dead white guys, and instead enrolled in every genre class I could find. I pored over detective fiction from the 1920s, Caribbean bildungsromans, a truly dreadful science fiction book that should have had an editor's scythe through some (nay, most) of its 800+ pages, and Daisy Miller. I read comic books and Jewish fiction - lots of overlap there - Thomas Pynchon and Shelley Jackson. The books piled up around me, making built-in shelving a requirement for any new living space I moved into. Some of them went ignored and unread. I was a student more interested in the idea of learning than the actual legwork, and usually six weeks into the term, I was too distracted by my own latent meltdowns to focus on The Fairie Queene.
I just finished Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends, in which he dissects the works that most influenced him, both as a writer and as a human, and then talks about his own creative methods. Some of the stories that he loves include Sherlock Holmes adventures, His Dark Materials, the myth of The Golem of Prague, and pulpy mid-1980s comics books. It was assembled, it seems, as a sort of reader's map to his wildly successful 2000 book The Amazing Adeventures of Kavalier and Clay, but it also includes an extensive and thoughtful index of his influences, an index that also functions as a de facto reading list.
As a lazy sort of writer myself, I wonder what my Maps and Legends would be about. Working from childhood, I would be a dirty liar if I didn't own up to my soft spot for The Babysitter's Club - but maybe that fontanelle helped me side-step that embarrassing wasteland known as chick-lit. I love Stephen King novels, but I've recognized that his writing is often dreadful; people read him because they want a good yarn, not a masterful literary voice. I've picked up dozens of comic books, essay collection, and short story anthologies because I love the challenges and beauties of short-form writing. It's not likely that I'll ever pull a Chabon and write a gorgeous, multi-layered epic like Kavalier and Clay, but I've written hundred of essays on this website. The high-brow literary classics I was taught in school rarely got under my skin the way science fiction, horror and fantasy did; in university, it was a struggle to read things like Shamela, because I knew there were other, more relevant books for me out there, just waiting to be read.
On my desk right now, I have a to-do list that includes some mid- to macro-level items: nestled among "make a doctor's appointment" and "laundry" is "make a summer reading list," a task that I've put off because I don't want to have that bit of pleasure come to an end. I know it'll include some Chabon-recommended books, but also delightful books I bought months ago that got lost in the job-stress black hole, gifts from my boyfriend, loaners from friends, magazine articles, re-reads, and false starts. I want to order it so that there are breaks - my re-read of The Crying of Lot 49 isn't immediately after my false-started The Pale King because, while I like both books, there's only so much experimental fiction one's brain can really take.
But mostly, I'm trying to capture some of that promise - the idea that every book has the potential to teach me something, whether it's how to write better, how to live better, or just how to scare the everliving fuck out of myself at 12:30 AM on a Thursday night.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
My Toronto Has Everything
When I ride my bike around the city, there are two things I notice about downtown Toronto: the transit system and the nice-ass cars. My hometown of Stratford has three bus lines and most of the cars are homegrown Dodges and Chevrolets; it's middle-ground transportation for a small, mostly middle-class city. There are a few Audis parked in front of the large homes, and the buses are packed during the high-school commute rush hour, but most of the time, the transit system runs empty routes and the cars are mid-range sedans.
In Toronto, there are tons of fancy, high-end cars: Mercedes, Audis, Porches, and even a few Lambos here and there. I live downtown, in a wealthier part of the city, but this isn't unique to the Annex. At the same time, the subways, buses and streetcars are usually pretty full. Not just rush-hour, either. Last week, during the heat wave, I rode the subway all day (what? It was air-conditioned. Don't be judgey) and was never alone in the car.
This week marked the longest municipal city council meeting ever held in Toronto, as literally hundreds of Torontonians came out to speak out against Rob Ford's proposed funding cuts to almost every area of city operations. Libraries? Pools? Parks? Housing? Day cares? Elder care? Transit? Nothing was safe. Ford's council has frozen taxes, and has to make up the difference by cutting spending elsewhere. In a way, I feel for Ford - his campaign promised no taxes/no service cuts, and he's delivered half of that and then gotten stuck. His council has said that everything is on the table, and people have come out of the woodwork to put their name on record to say they feel squiffy about this.
Rob Ford was voted in on a platform that appealed to the suburbs - giving people a break when they buy houses and drive, which lots of people in the 905 do. The downtown core was firmly against Ford, but in a sprawling, amalgamated city, Ford's conservative vision was popular. Now, however, Ford's popularity is faltering. He's had a series of missteps, like blowing off Pride and allegedly flipping the bird to a woman driving alongside him. This review of core services was a disaster; instead of pledging to bring better service to Torontonians, he raised the specter of privatizing some services, hacking away at others, and shutting some down completely. Almost every city citizen would be affected in some way by the proposed cuts: less police funding means less of a presence on the street and more bureaucracy; library costs might go up, putting its poorer user groups at risk; transit fares might be hiked through the roof; and so on, and so on.
Which brings me back to the transit/Audi thing. In Stratford, a small city, we don't have very many amenities. The pool is run by the YMCA, and there's one undercover cop car (bristling with antennae and driven by a uniformed officer, natch). Almost everyone exists on the same playing field: white, middle-aged, doing well enough to have a car, but not a really nice car. In Toronto, folks diverge wildly. Some get a bus pass and use the library for internet access, while others live in Forest Hill and hire live-in nannies as their child care. The distance between the haves and the haves-not is greater.
People come and live in this city because they don't have to be ultra-rich - hell, they don't even have to be middle-class - to get by and feel comfortable. They have access to amenities that help align them with folks who Have It, and those amenities are often provided by the city. Those amenities help newcomers integrate into Canadian society, help green the city, help folks recycle, help people find jobs, housing, and medical help, help people feel safe, help children get to school, and basically give almost everyone a reason to live in Toronto. If you start carving away at that, what do you get? Empty transit, hordes of same-same people, and people who move away to cities who can offer vibrancy, community, and accessibility.
Rob Ford, you're on notice. Threaten my Toronto, and you'll get a ranty blog post. But threaten everyone's Toronto, and you'll be in real trouble.
In Toronto, there are tons of fancy, high-end cars: Mercedes, Audis, Porches, and even a few Lambos here and there. I live downtown, in a wealthier part of the city, but this isn't unique to the Annex. At the same time, the subways, buses and streetcars are usually pretty full. Not just rush-hour, either. Last week, during the heat wave, I rode the subway all day (what? It was air-conditioned. Don't be judgey) and was never alone in the car.
This week marked the longest municipal city council meeting ever held in Toronto, as literally hundreds of Torontonians came out to speak out against Rob Ford's proposed funding cuts to almost every area of city operations. Libraries? Pools? Parks? Housing? Day cares? Elder care? Transit? Nothing was safe. Ford's council has frozen taxes, and has to make up the difference by cutting spending elsewhere. In a way, I feel for Ford - his campaign promised no taxes/no service cuts, and he's delivered half of that and then gotten stuck. His council has said that everything is on the table, and people have come out of the woodwork to put their name on record to say they feel squiffy about this.
Rob Ford was voted in on a platform that appealed to the suburbs - giving people a break when they buy houses and drive, which lots of people in the 905 do. The downtown core was firmly against Ford, but in a sprawling, amalgamated city, Ford's conservative vision was popular. Now, however, Ford's popularity is faltering. He's had a series of missteps, like blowing off Pride and allegedly flipping the bird to a woman driving alongside him. This review of core services was a disaster; instead of pledging to bring better service to Torontonians, he raised the specter of privatizing some services, hacking away at others, and shutting some down completely. Almost every city citizen would be affected in some way by the proposed cuts: less police funding means less of a presence on the street and more bureaucracy; library costs might go up, putting its poorer user groups at risk; transit fares might be hiked through the roof; and so on, and so on.
Which brings me back to the transit/Audi thing. In Stratford, a small city, we don't have very many amenities. The pool is run by the YMCA, and there's one undercover cop car (bristling with antennae and driven by a uniformed officer, natch). Almost everyone exists on the same playing field: white, middle-aged, doing well enough to have a car, but not a really nice car. In Toronto, folks diverge wildly. Some get a bus pass and use the library for internet access, while others live in Forest Hill and hire live-in nannies as their child care. The distance between the haves and the haves-not is greater.
People come and live in this city because they don't have to be ultra-rich - hell, they don't even have to be middle-class - to get by and feel comfortable. They have access to amenities that help align them with folks who Have It, and those amenities are often provided by the city. Those amenities help newcomers integrate into Canadian society, help green the city, help folks recycle, help people find jobs, housing, and medical help, help people feel safe, help children get to school, and basically give almost everyone a reason to live in Toronto. If you start carving away at that, what do you get? Empty transit, hordes of same-same people, and people who move away to cities who can offer vibrancy, community, and accessibility.
Rob Ford, you're on notice. Threaten my Toronto, and you'll get a ranty blog post. But threaten everyone's Toronto, and you'll be in real trouble.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Canoe You
I'm going camping next week, so my life has been reduced to a series of lists. Things to do before I go. Things to bring. Stuff to buy. Stuff to make sure I put in the freezer lest I come home to a sludgy mass of what used to be bananas on my kitchen counter. Stuff like that.
I've never really done the whole camping thing; I like activities that allow me to sleep on a mattress at the end of the day. Two summers ago, we did a bike trip to Guelph which, while challenging, started in the 416 and ended in the 519 a few hours later. This is an 8-day canoe trip - which means we're canoeing from site to site nearly every day. No convenient stops at a Best Buy or a Bulk Barn along the way for more water and Freezie Pops. Most people on the trip are bringing one change of clothes. I'm, of course, bringing a dress.
When I was a kid, I used to pore over nature-survival guides, fantasizing about being a pioneer and living off the land. I think this carried over into my young adulthood, where I've spent hours debating various urban siege tactics and zombie survival methods. (The recent realization that, even if I survived hand-to-hand combat with the undead, I would be dead within a month because I have no gardening skills, was demoralizing.) I don't have a lot of experience with that whole "living off the land" thing because, like I said: I read about it. I didn't actually put any of those knot-tying, fruit-drying and bird-call-identifying tips to any use.
I like the idea of the wilderness living. Something about that level of self-sufficiency is so attractive to me, where someone - not me, obviously, but some virile young man or bonneted young woman - could construct a shelter, catch their dinner, and birth a litter of babies all before the crops come in. Margaret Atwood has had a field day with the Canadian fascination with the wilderness; in her eyes, it's a thing we're usually cowed by. Canadians! Such victims! Snooze. The wilderness can be a scary place, I'll give her that much (begrudgingly, but still), but I doubt that most Canadians have had a really meaningful interaction with the Great Forest Spirit. We're an urban nation now, struggling to move past our white settler roots into a more cosmopolitan existence. This is my chance to reconnect with what would have been my Canadian roots if, 70 years ago, my grandparents weren't going AWOL from the Russian Army and being indentured servants on Ontario farms. As it is, it'll just be a trip into the wild. Just.
This is my chance. I've got my list of stuff to bring (on which I've written the word "book," not an actual title), and one of those enormous European camping backpacks with more straps that I have hairs on my head. I now own things like a headlamp, and a carabiner looped with cutlery, and a drybag. I've never owned these things before, because frankly my idea of wilderness is a horrible bog filled with spiders, man-eating coyotes and tents that collapse in the middle of the night and give their inhabitants a coronary. But 2011 is the year of trying new things, being brave, being on my own side, and getting past what I - or Margaret Atwood - assume about a thing before I actually do it. Plus, as a Canadian, I'm obligated to tip a canoe at some point in my life, so it might as well be soon, right?
I've never really done the whole camping thing; I like activities that allow me to sleep on a mattress at the end of the day. Two summers ago, we did a bike trip to Guelph which, while challenging, started in the 416 and ended in the 519 a few hours later. This is an 8-day canoe trip - which means we're canoeing from site to site nearly every day. No convenient stops at a Best Buy or a Bulk Barn along the way for more water and Freezie Pops. Most people on the trip are bringing one change of clothes. I'm, of course, bringing a dress.
When I was a kid, I used to pore over nature-survival guides, fantasizing about being a pioneer and living off the land. I think this carried over into my young adulthood, where I've spent hours debating various urban siege tactics and zombie survival methods. (The recent realization that, even if I survived hand-to-hand combat with the undead, I would be dead within a month because I have no gardening skills, was demoralizing.) I don't have a lot of experience with that whole "living off the land" thing because, like I said: I read about it. I didn't actually put any of those knot-tying, fruit-drying and bird-call-identifying tips to any use.
I like the idea of the wilderness living. Something about that level of self-sufficiency is so attractive to me, where someone - not me, obviously, but some virile young man or bonneted young woman - could construct a shelter, catch their dinner, and birth a litter of babies all before the crops come in. Margaret Atwood has had a field day with the Canadian fascination with the wilderness; in her eyes, it's a thing we're usually cowed by. Canadians! Such victims! Snooze. The wilderness can be a scary place, I'll give her that much (begrudgingly, but still), but I doubt that most Canadians have had a really meaningful interaction with the Great Forest Spirit. We're an urban nation now, struggling to move past our white settler roots into a more cosmopolitan existence. This is my chance to reconnect with what would have been my Canadian roots if, 70 years ago, my grandparents weren't going AWOL from the Russian Army and being indentured servants on Ontario farms. As it is, it'll just be a trip into the wild. Just.
This is my chance. I've got my list of stuff to bring (on which I've written the word "book," not an actual title), and one of those enormous European camping backpacks with more straps that I have hairs on my head. I now own things like a headlamp, and a carabiner looped with cutlery, and a drybag. I've never owned these things before, because frankly my idea of wilderness is a horrible bog filled with spiders, man-eating coyotes and tents that collapse in the middle of the night and give their inhabitants a coronary. But 2011 is the year of trying new things, being brave, being on my own side, and getting past what I - or Margaret Atwood - assume about a thing before I actually do it. Plus, as a Canadian, I'm obligated to tip a canoe at some point in my life, so it might as well be soon, right?
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Back In The Saddle
I recently quit my job. I once read an anecdote about Walt Disney, who was apparently a bit of a hard-ass. When he would descend on the peons who animated his films, the whisper would come through the office: "Man is in the forest," a riff on Disney's own Bambi. It was like that in my office. When my managers came in to work, the rest of the staff would shrivel in their wake. It was almost supernatural. I developed a panicky demeanor whenever my manager came near me: lightheaded to the point of feeling faint, shaky, stomach in knots, skin breaking out. The day I quit my job, I handed in my notice and then stood in the elevator lobby taking deep whooping breaths. It was as though all the air I couldn't breathe over the last six months came at me all at once.
Walking away from my horrible workplace was the right decision. Despite my former co-workers assurances that not all offices are like that, my time at that company has left me feeling deeply mistrustful of the office vibe. I got dinged constantly: for letting a bra strap slip, for stapling incorrectly, for spending too much time on the internet despite having no actual assignments, for getting sick, for taking time off when it had already been approved, and so on. The general consensus seemed to be that I couldn't do a damned thing right, which is demoralizing at best. Not to mention false: in the areas that actually mattered, like client support and their subsequent feedback, I got great reviews.
I've always kind of been a late bloomer. Although, uh, not in the puberty area, so much? Because I was eleven when my chest started to bud, and it was pretty rough there for a little while. But in a lot of other ways, I've been at the back of the pack. I lost my virginity late, I first fell in love well after my 20th birthday - no passionate high school romances for this girl! - I graduated long after most of my friends, and, as I close in on my 28th birthday I'm still only really eligible for entry-level jobs. As I watch my "normal" friends have successful long-term relationships and celebrate promotions at work, I applaud then with a certain wistfulness: when am I going to figure my own life out?
I just erased 300 words that were basically me trying to avoid the awful, naked, needy truth: I like to write, but I am afraid. I'm afraid I'm not as good as I think I am. I'm afraid of writing to fancy magazine editors and having them laugh at my poorly designed pitch letters, or, worse, ignore them completely. I'm afraid of trying something and failing, which is the story of my life, and which is tediously tied to self-esteem, perfectionism, and fears of success. But I also really, really love doing this. I think about it all the time. I want to do it. But right now, taking a leap of faith after working in an atmosphere that subtly told me every day that having faith in myself was having faith in a loser, I'm a little gun shy.
I need a boost, a little rocket pack to get me out of these doubts. Just because my former boss made me feel like shit doesn't mean all bosses do - I've had plenty of terrific managers. And happens if I become own boss? I need to pat myself on the back for getting out of there at all, let alone with a sense of integrity still intact, and focus on trying new things. New job, new focus, new love of what I do.
Walking away from my horrible workplace was the right decision. Despite my former co-workers assurances that not all offices are like that, my time at that company has left me feeling deeply mistrustful of the office vibe. I got dinged constantly: for letting a bra strap slip, for stapling incorrectly, for spending too much time on the internet despite having no actual assignments, for getting sick, for taking time off when it had already been approved, and so on. The general consensus seemed to be that I couldn't do a damned thing right, which is demoralizing at best. Not to mention false: in the areas that actually mattered, like client support and their subsequent feedback, I got great reviews.
I've always kind of been a late bloomer. Although, uh, not in the puberty area, so much? Because I was eleven when my chest started to bud, and it was pretty rough there for a little while. But in a lot of other ways, I've been at the back of the pack. I lost my virginity late, I first fell in love well after my 20th birthday - no passionate high school romances for this girl! - I graduated long after most of my friends, and, as I close in on my 28th birthday I'm still only really eligible for entry-level jobs. As I watch my "normal" friends have successful long-term relationships and celebrate promotions at work, I applaud then with a certain wistfulness: when am I going to figure my own life out?
I just erased 300 words that were basically me trying to avoid the awful, naked, needy truth: I like to write, but I am afraid. I'm afraid I'm not as good as I think I am. I'm afraid of writing to fancy magazine editors and having them laugh at my poorly designed pitch letters, or, worse, ignore them completely. I'm afraid of trying something and failing, which is the story of my life, and which is tediously tied to self-esteem, perfectionism, and fears of success. But I also really, really love doing this. I think about it all the time. I want to do it. But right now, taking a leap of faith after working in an atmosphere that subtly told me every day that having faith in myself was having faith in a loser, I'm a little gun shy.
I need a boost, a little rocket pack to get me out of these doubts. Just because my former boss made me feel like shit doesn't mean all bosses do - I've had plenty of terrific managers. And happens if I become own boss? I need to pat myself on the back for getting out of there at all, let alone with a sense of integrity still intact, and focus on trying new things. New job, new focus, new love of what I do.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Movin' On In
It's always fascinating to me to watch other couples figure their ish out. I'm one of those people who flips though gossip rags on my way through the grocery check-out, so I'm in love with following other people's stories, although, it should be noted in my defense, that I don't stoop as low as afternoon soap operas. If I wanted to watch people wearing too much eyeliner over-emote and drink in the afternoon, I would just head over to Queen and Ossington and while the day away.
Anyway, one of my favourite things to parse is people's living arrangements. I myself have never lived with a boyfriend, but I have lived with upwards of fifteen people in a house with one kitchen. I've also lived by myself. My friends have lived in apartments, condos, houses, by themselves, with partners, with roommates, with partners and roommates, with various siblings, cats, reptiles, houseplants and people they were originally neutral about but grew to hate with a passion. But the ones I'm most interested in are the romantic pairings, because the will-they-won't-they tension is dynamic in the way that a couple pals deciding to get a place together so they can spend more student loan money on beer and guacamole fixins isn't.
Most of my friends who decided to live with their partners did it as a spur-of-the-moment sort of endeavor. Two different couples I know began as roommates and started dating shortly thereafter, thus setting a land-speed record for living in sin. One of my best girls asked her now-husband to move in with her (and the aforementioned 15 people) about ten weeks after they started dating. My group moves fast. There are also friends of mine who have never lived with their boyfriends or girlfriends, even though they've passed the half-decade mark in their relationship. After all, living together is a pretty big deal.
Interestingly, even though a lot of my friends cohabit, the vast majority haven't made it legal. Studies have shown that couples who live together before they're married are more likely to divorce later on; there's a mentality (not for every couple, but for lots of 'em) that the living-together stage is a test, or a convenience, or both. Those couples are more likely to slip into a quasi-roommate existence, even if they do get married eventually. I can see why: when the unionizing step of your relationship isn't actually focused on affirming the relationship itself (like, say, a wedding is), but about your physical space together, then it might be tough down the road to remember that you love each other when you're busy playing chicken about who's emptying the green-bin.
Some couples, usually for religious reasons, don't live together until after they tie the knot, which isn't a choice I would make - there's too much likelihood of rushing into a marriage just so they can start having sex. But I understand that choice. Frankly, premarital sex is sort of a given in this day and age, but I understand the desire to honour the relationship by intertwining the house, the love, the marriage and the sex into one big honking night.
It sounds like I'm down on the common-law experience, which I'm not. People make all kinds of decisions about their partners based on all kinds of criteria. Some of my friends have decided not to get married at all. They still have a strong commitment to each other, to their lives together, and to moving into the future ("like, with jetpacks?") with each other. Just because I'm a girl who might one day want to get married doesn't mean that the folks who eschew that life path are weird. But I still am fascinated about why people make their choices and decisions. For me, living together is like marriage the same way frozen yogurt is like ice cream: they're both deliciously cold and tasty, but they're not really the same.
My sister said that she would want to be engaged before she shacked up with a boyfriend. I think she's on to something. There's enough of a commitment to say "Yep, this is moving forward and I am loving it," but if something goes really wrong - if there's a fundamental difference in lifestyle that had hitherto escaped both parties - there's still time to put the full-on, forever-type commitment on hold while y'all figure out how to fix it. But the thing is, in any good relationship, the honesty and openness should be there all along. People. Please. Play your kink cards early, mention the mentally-ill PMS soon, and try to work together to figure out to manage the craziness before you merge your CD collections.
In any case, I'm not planning to live with anyone any time soon, at least not romantically. I'd rather hold out and make sure the time is right; not having done this before, I'm nervous. My current squeeze is terrific, and has talked me off several let's-shack-up ledges. Right now, practicing on housemates and family members is preparing me for tedious conversations about chores, bills, schedules and messes, but I'd like to think that living with a lover is different. Hopefully much better, if we can get it right. And no matter what form it takes, or why we decide to move in, I know that love will be a big part of it. Cheesy? Oh, you betcha. But also true.
Anyway, one of my favourite things to parse is people's living arrangements. I myself have never lived with a boyfriend, but I have lived with upwards of fifteen people in a house with one kitchen. I've also lived by myself. My friends have lived in apartments, condos, houses, by themselves, with partners, with roommates, with partners and roommates, with various siblings, cats, reptiles, houseplants and people they were originally neutral about but grew to hate with a passion. But the ones I'm most interested in are the romantic pairings, because the will-they-won't-they tension is dynamic in the way that a couple pals deciding to get a place together so they can spend more student loan money on beer and guacamole fixins isn't.
Most of my friends who decided to live with their partners did it as a spur-of-the-moment sort of endeavor. Two different couples I know began as roommates and started dating shortly thereafter, thus setting a land-speed record for living in sin. One of my best girls asked her now-husband to move in with her (and the aforementioned 15 people) about ten weeks after they started dating. My group moves fast. There are also friends of mine who have never lived with their boyfriends or girlfriends, even though they've passed the half-decade mark in their relationship. After all, living together is a pretty big deal.
Interestingly, even though a lot of my friends cohabit, the vast majority haven't made it legal. Studies have shown that couples who live together before they're married are more likely to divorce later on; there's a mentality (not for every couple, but for lots of 'em) that the living-together stage is a test, or a convenience, or both. Those couples are more likely to slip into a quasi-roommate existence, even if they do get married eventually. I can see why: when the unionizing step of your relationship isn't actually focused on affirming the relationship itself (like, say, a wedding is), but about your physical space together, then it might be tough down the road to remember that you love each other when you're busy playing chicken about who's emptying the green-bin.
Some couples, usually for religious reasons, don't live together until after they tie the knot, which isn't a choice I would make - there's too much likelihood of rushing into a marriage just so they can start having sex. But I understand that choice. Frankly, premarital sex is sort of a given in this day and age, but I understand the desire to honour the relationship by intertwining the house, the love, the marriage and the sex into one big honking night.
It sounds like I'm down on the common-law experience, which I'm not. People make all kinds of decisions about their partners based on all kinds of criteria. Some of my friends have decided not to get married at all. They still have a strong commitment to each other, to their lives together, and to moving into the future ("like, with jetpacks?") with each other. Just because I'm a girl who might one day want to get married doesn't mean that the folks who eschew that life path are weird. But I still am fascinated about why people make their choices and decisions. For me, living together is like marriage the same way frozen yogurt is like ice cream: they're both deliciously cold and tasty, but they're not really the same.
My sister said that she would want to be engaged before she shacked up with a boyfriend. I think she's on to something. There's enough of a commitment to say "Yep, this is moving forward and I am loving it," but if something goes really wrong - if there's a fundamental difference in lifestyle that had hitherto escaped both parties - there's still time to put the full-on, forever-type commitment on hold while y'all figure out how to fix it. But the thing is, in any good relationship, the honesty and openness should be there all along. People. Please. Play your kink cards early, mention the mentally-ill PMS soon, and try to work together to figure out to manage the craziness before you merge your CD collections.
In any case, I'm not planning to live with anyone any time soon, at least not romantically. I'd rather hold out and make sure the time is right; not having done this before, I'm nervous. My current squeeze is terrific, and has talked me off several let's-shack-up ledges. Right now, practicing on housemates and family members is preparing me for tedious conversations about chores, bills, schedules and messes, but I'd like to think that living with a lover is different. Hopefully much better, if we can get it right. And no matter what form it takes, or why we decide to move in, I know that love will be a big part of it. Cheesy? Oh, you betcha. But also true.
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