Five By Five

Five foods I love to eat:

• Kimchee. I eat this stuff with everything. On burgers, in stir-fry, on fried eggs, with cheddar cheese, on its own in a bowl, directly out of the giant 2-liter tub that I brought home from the asian grocery store...it is running me. 
• Sausage. Since going paleo back in June, I've started eating way more meat, and the house-made sausages from Fiesta Farms are my go-to. They are amazing - chicken thighs with parmesan! pork with sundried tomato and fennel! elk! - and delicious.
• Liberty yogurt. I got into this stuff when I was introduced to the plum and walnut variant, which is, for my money, one of the best damn flavours you can get. They also offer a coconut and a lemon flavour, and they are at least as delicious as ice cream.
• Green beans. I'm on a major green beans kick right now. I'm basically substituting the damn things for potato chips, which makes me sound all GOOP-y and self-righteous, but they're just tasty. 
• Figs. I know, they're somewhat vaginal in their shape and general demeanor, but they're also tasty, and so seasonal that they feel special. You know how you can get oranges all year round? Figs aren't like that. 

Five things that made me cry recently (because I am a sucker):

• The Beautiful Daughter: How my Korean Mother Gave Me the Courage to Transition (trans, queer memoir)
• A Tidy Death (illness memoir)
• My Mother Was Nuts (book trailer; tears of laughter)
• Live Through This (rape memoir)
• 21 Pictures that Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity (feeling all the FEELINGS, and then shame at being so manipulated)

Five movies I could watch again and again:

• The Iron Giant. If we are friends, I will force you into watching this at some point with me. It's a great movie. It is the Citizen Kane of space robot kid movies. 
• Back to the Future. I mean, duh. Marty McFly was my first boyfriend and Michael J. Fox is perfect in this movie. 
• Three Kings. David O. Russel's war movie, in which Marky Mark, Ice Cube and George Clooney run around Iraq, being greedy and hot. Also, Spike Jonze is in it, and the brief glimpse of him as a backwater hillbilly is worth the price of admission. 
• Wallace and Gromet: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Look, I know what you're thinking: too many kids' movies! I need some edgy horror or at least an indie darling. And I hear you, but I'm not going to lie to appear cool on the internet. Like all humans, I love Harold and Maude, but I love this movie more. 
• Shaun of the Dead. A compromise: an indie edgy horror darling. Everyone loves this movie. 

Five jobs I would love:

• Writer. I mean, like, I write a lot now, but it would be nice to be able to make a mortgage payment off it. 
• My idea of "organic farmer." When I think about the person I want to become in my fifties, she's wearing a long denim skirt and wellies, a plaid shirt tied around her waist, while a small but robust dog barks as they squint at the sunset. There are hay bales and defined triceps. There are ruddy cheeks and bottles of beer. There is a great gorgeous table covered in homemade food and friends at every seat. 
• HR consultant. This is something I'm probably going to start working towards in 2013, so stay tuned!
• Advice columnist. Marrying my twin talents of incredibly snarky advice giving and writing. Plus, people's problems run the gamut from "How do I grieve my dying secret lover?" to "Help! My dog is overweight!" and I think that's fascinating. 
• Rich person. 

Five days I look forward to:

• My birthday at the end of this month! I'm turning 29, so I basically need to get all the stupid shit people do in their twenties out of my system in the next 365 days and then I get on with being a real grown-up. I will see you all at the tattoo parlour after my ill-advised quickie marriage! 
• The August long weekend. It's my raison d'etre.
• Thanksgiving. October is awesome: bright and clear, still in daylight savings time but with the low-hanging pink clouds of November. And the chance to get together and eat giant piles of food is one I always jump at. 
• Winter solstice. I both love and hate this day, because it always feels like the apocalypse - we get about 8 hours of daylight in Toronto, and it's usually cold and horrible. But this year, I'm going to ring it in nice: my friend Lindsay referred me to a Persian tradition of staying up all night to defeat the darkness, and I'm going to make some lanterns and light some candles and thank god the days start getting longer the very next day.
•  the day when figs start showing up in the supermarkets. Love that day. 

Impostor

This weekend, I'll be participating in a panel about blogging and  - gulp  - sex. Part of the Playground conference, which aims to bring an open and inclusive mind to sexuality, the panel is going to be comprised of four XOXO Amore bloggers and moderated by Jon Pressick. It should be great. I, of course, am nervous.

This morning, I was interviewed by a Ryerson journalism student about sex blogging - why I do it, what it means, what it meaaaaans, etc - to be included in a much longer piece about sexuality and journalism and all the various ways the topic is (and isn't) covered in mainstream media. I should be great. I - of course - am nervous.

Impostor syndrome seems to be the next logical step up (down?) from low self esteem. It's the belief that one's accomplishments have nothing to do with the actual work you put into them: any success comes from good timing or luck. It's not always pervasive in life: you can feel like a fraud in the kitchen but a rock star in the board room, for example. I'm feeling it now, as I seem to have been tapped as someone who writes...for real. The sex writing aspect feels like a transparency laid over the idea that I'm, like, actually doing this, but it's there, adding to my terror.

When I was taking a year off from school at 19 - burnout! - I was still writing my crappy little diaryland account. And one day, an editor from Index magazine emailed and said, hey, your writing is really good. Keep in touch with us, we might want to do something with you. And I freaked the fuck out, both in the good way - OMG, someone thinks I am good at this - and the bad way - I am a fake and they are going to find out. This has been my pattern since then: elation at being accepted, dread at having to prove, over and over, that I am, in fact, good at this.

This being writing.

I write a lot. In my head, I write drafts of conversations and short stories that, one day, might propel me through a month of NaNoWriMo. I write this blog. I've written off and on for others, for money and for credit, and some have been lasting relationships and some haven't. But they've all liked, more or less, what I have to offer. They've liked my ideas and my voice, my clean copy and my respect for the deadline. Sometimes I've gone to them; sometimes (actually, more than I really want to say, because in this context, it's embarrassing) they've approached me.

And so all this points to the idea, slowly emerging, that instead of terror at being someday found out as a fraud - or that my well will run dry and I won't even be able to write my own name, let alone a 1500-word article on buttplugs or Facebook etiquette -  I should be getting comfortable with the idea that "writer" might be on my business card one day. Not tomorrow. Just...someday.

I know other writers struggle with this idea as well - I might have stolen that "writing your own name" line from Anne Lamott, and I have enough writer friends on Twitter to know that the ache of non-confidence is not my own invention. I guess what I'm doing here is shining a light on the monster in my closet, the one that whispers in my ear "Don't get used to this, sweetheart, it'll go away soon enough," and showing it to be nothing more than the rumpled old ideas of someone who, now, knows better.

Run It

I've been running lately, and it feels good.

I have always been a reluctant exerciser. Yoga gives me a serious case of the eye-rolls, the heart monitors on the elliptical have me convinced that I'm going to die of a heart attack any minute, but running is soothing. 

Despite the fact that is basically garbage exercise - not cardio enough to make you fitter, and without the benefits of weight training - it does help me feel like I am "getting in shape," whatever that means. Plus, fall runs are basically the nicest way of getting outside - I'm getting to see the fall colours and enjoy the dusky light, and then I get to go home and eat green beans and sausages. 

I actually think the biggest gift these runs have given me, aside from the chance to spend more time with the bf, is a sense of athletic accomplishment. Our route is 3 kilometers. It takes about 20 minutes - I don't run at a race pace, but I can run the whole thing. It's mostly side streets and one really enjoyable slice of park, with some hills and some stretches ideal for sprinting. It's invigorating to get home from a run and feel, not exhausted or nauseous, but invigorated and ready for more. 

Combined with the paleo diet, it's like a whole new me is emerging: clearer skin, more energy, higher-quality poops. Living the dream, I am. 

Every Love Story is a Ghost Story

I read most of Infinite Jest, that thousand-page behemoth of footnotes and furrowed brows, in the better part of a long weekend, lying prone on my double bed, barely moving as I powered through the thick prose. I wrote about that experience, the unbearable weight of taking on this job - reading - and having it transform into this transcendental meditation on addiction, family, and loss. I was brain-sick, absolutely pinned to the wall with loneliness and quasi-depression and the disgusting realization that I wasn't really a kid anymore, but I was too stupid and weird to be an adult. Infnite Jest was the underscore of this, and reading it clarified my idea that maybe I had to figure some of my shit out in order to survive.


That reading experience, like all our life-moments that blindside us on some otherwise normal long weekend, was a bummer and a blessing. I haven't really been the same since I read that book, but it didn't change me or ruin me or anything. It just sort of...shifted me a little, the way really good and really demanding writing always does. I feel for book critics, who could live a thousand lives in the pages of the books they read for work. By the time they retire, they must feel ancient. The ground under their feet might become unstable. I mean, how could you not surrender parts of yourself, in the face of books like Infinite Jest or The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,or Motherless Brooklyn? Or Blood Meridien, when death, hilarious, comes riding straight at you?


No wonder Michiko Kakutani is tough. You'd have to be tough, in the face of writing like that. And you'd come to expect nothing less.



When I started reading The Pale King, it was the summer of 2011 and I was bonkers with stress: quitting my job, changes in the family, and a certain uncertainty about taking on another Big Fucking DFW Book. The Pale King isn't for wimps - almost 600 pages of disjointed and unfinished writing (he was still working on it when he hung himself, and his editor cobbled together some semblance of a story out of an inheritance of writing that ranged from mostly-finished chapters to scrambled notes), but it hangs together in an odd, slightly beautiful way.

I finished the book in the fall of 2012. I read in bed, in the bathtub, on the bus, in line at the movies, on the floor. I had to restart twice, in order to give Wallace's writing the attention it deserves, and I will likely read it again, now that I know what I'm in for, so I can surrender to it more fully.


The book is a look at boredom: how we as humans avoid and succumb to it, and what it does to us when we're held under its current. Do we change? Do we grow? It's a bit meta, as some of the driest chapters are designed to mimic the type of boring-ass stuff the characters would come up against (the book is set in and around the IRS, so it's got the full cast of pencil-necked, pocket-protected characters). But it also has great swathes of crazy glorious writing: backstory that makes little sense, like the boy who wants to kiss every part of his body - yes, including his anus and the top of his own head - but treat the reader to a glimpse at what Wallace thinks might happen when we come out the other side. When we focus, and get past the shitty boredom and the distractions, and we laser-beam in on what we're doing, what can we become?


Let's be real: I have no idea if what was published as The Pale King would have been at all like what Wallace would have eventually presented to his editor. This book is interesting and challenging, but knowing that your own name is on the spine of Infinite Jest would create a lump in the throat of even the sanest and more confident writers. Wallace, despite his genius, struggled. I don't know if the editor's thesis statement for the book would have exactly followed Wallace's, so what we're left is the ghost of a novel. There's an eerieness inherent in reading unfinished work, and this book is no exception.


I haven't picked up D.T. Max's biography of Wallace just yet, and I'm not sure if I will. I don't necessarily need to know him better to know that what I've read has changed me. Mary Karr, in her excellent memoir Lit, recalls Wallace as a weirdo, a man who got her name tattooed on his arm before they had even kissed, but reading that felt invasive, like I had run into him at an AA meeting and couldn't stop staring.


I loved reading his essays about  growing up in the Midwest, when the earth is so flat that it warps your mind a little. I want more of that. More crazy, demanding, alienating writing about what it means to become a person in this time and place. Not a second-hand story about a man who used to be here.

October, Two Ways

Let's get one thing straight here: I am a total pansy. I am freaked out by the dark, by ventilation systems (I blame The X-Files for that one, rightly so), by the idea that a pair of hands are going to lunge out from behind the shower curtain and strangle innocents who just want to brush their teeth, by dogs with a certain look in their eyes, and by reports of global warming.

There's also the existential fears that make for 4:30 AM heart palpitations: the perfect storm of horror movie images, convincing myself that there's something under the bed, and oh, by the way, everyone you love will someday die. 

So October, what with its drugstore tarantulas and cobwebby home decor, is not really my scene: I'm pretty much horrified 24/7. I don't need, like, a special day to make me feel freaked out.

In college, Halloween was one of the Drunk Girl's Trifecta (the others being New Years Eve and Saint Patrick's Day): any excuse to get absolutely gob-smacked on Malibu and get yer tits out. Halloween offered the added incentive to dress up as a "sexy [insert profession here]." Sexy nurse! Sexy fire-fighter! Sexy Jesus (I've seen two sexy Jesus costumes in the last few years)! Sexy coal miner. I've got the black lung....and it makes me want to drink Jagermeister! 

I'm not sure how to celebrate Halloween as an adult. Do I dress up? If so, as what? My friend Rachel had, for years, a long black wig that she would base her costume on. Frida Khalo, sexy witch, Cleopatra, etc. I always struggle to find the balance of not trying too hard and still looking like I cared a little. For years I just dressed all in black, an extremely lazy take on "goth" that was more "bad mood personified." But you can't wear mesh to the office (seriously: YOU CAN'T. DON'T).

This year, my boyfriend is doing 31 Nights of Horror, a daily infusion of cinematic gore lasting the entire month of October. I plan on spending a lot of time in the bedroom, maybe getting caught up on some reading or looking at ways to beef up my resume (real talk: I will be playing on Pinterest and drinking whiskey). We celebrate the month in different ways; he, by embracing the blood-and-guts side of it; me, by ignoring that in favour of looking at pictures of children dressed up adorably for Halloween. Oh, and I also bake zombie cupcakes.

There are October things I genuinely like: I like the seasonal change, obviously, as does everyone who is marooned on a heat island. I like the shift to tights, sweaters, and scarves. I like the treetop colours and the turkey dinner, eating fun-sized O Henry bars by the fistful, picking out the season's knitting projects, and great sleeps. I enjoy the shrieking...from the living room.

Baby Steps

I'ms tarting to realize that, in a few short months, my work position is going to be over. Contract work is both a blessing and a curse: it's great because it's a resume-builder, a chance to hone skills and make some money; but, of course, all good things must come to an end.

I still have a number of months left on my contract, but I'm already starting to feel lightheaded panic from the next-step anxiety. What do I want to do? I mean, aside from jump on a plane to Iceland and open a cafe in Akureyri? Or enrol in school to become a sexual-health teacher? Or get a masters in...something?

Should I go full-throttle into freelance? Should I wait tables while I write by first book? Should I get another office gig? Should I enrol in school, either as a academically cloudy grad student or in a more focused college diploma course? Should I sell all my things and live off the land for a while, foraging rhubarb from the city planters and adopting a freegan lifestyle?

Here are some things I know about me: I thrive when I have structure (i.e., a day job, a regular paycheck). I am not really a hustler (which makes freelance writing tough, as there is a lot of hustling). I need downtime (working six days a week, like at my last job, or ten-hour days at a bar, is not really my thing). I hate sitting still for long (desks!?!), but I don't have a lot of formal training at the kind of jobs that are more active (i.e. childcare, cooking, landscape gardening, etc.). Oh, and I have skills that are mostly creative, some administrative, and some facilitative. I am introverted. I work well on a team. I like outside-the-box thinking.

So...what now?

My gut tells me to move past office jobs, but they are stable and I like knowing what I'm getting myself into every day. I'm also not bad at them. I also feel like I want to get more training - something to do with writing, or sexual health, or housing, or co-ops, or facilitation - because I like those things, and I want to know more about them. I like writing, a lot. And none of this is really helpful in divining what my next step should be.

So, a question: how do you decide on your next step? When your contract is up, when your kids go to school, when you graduate? How do you decide how to make your money and fill your days?

I'm at a loss.

An Open Letter to Rob Ford

Dear Rob Ford:
I feel for you, man. I really do. I mean, it's got to be tough going out there for you right now: you've basically lost control of your own mayoralty, reduced to radio-show bluster and toothless trade missions to American cities, roundly mocked for your recent court appearance during which you demonstrate the depth of your ignorance to a tantalized Twitter audience, and revealed, over a serious of missteps in both the media and city hall's chambers, to be not so good at the governance part of your government job.

It's important to remember that the first group to which you are beholden is your constituents. They are, ultimately, the reason Rob Ford is in office: they're the ones who cast the vote, who read the newspaper when you triumph and fall down, they're the ones to whom you have made promises. And Rob Ford, before he took office, had a reputation for excellent customer service.

(However! Let's get one thing straight, in this age of touting Romney's qualifications to run America based on his running of a billion-dollar asset, and in which election scrutineers in Ontario are trained to give good customer service: voting and governance is not a consumer transaction. Government and politicians have different goals than businesses and the people that run them. City Hall 101, yo.)

But it's true that not everyone in Toronto was on board with Ford before he took the officious title of "His Worship." Folks who lived downtown—and here, downtown is defined as "not the suburbs" in the same way that Manhattan is defined as "not Queens:" recognizing that both places have their own sense of urbanity, priorities, needs, and identities, while also acknowledging that those ideas don't always overlap—were wary of Ford and his bombastic promises to stop the gravy train. The gravy train, it turns out, is what keeps the city going, because it's actually more of a meat-and-potatoes train: social services and administration aren't a luxury. So even as there's a large number of voters in Toronto who were, and remain, firmly on Ford's side, there were also the people who weren't enthralled with his policy suggestions and his public persona.

Remember, Rob: you represent them too. So even though you might think you're only talking to your supporters, you're beholden to all us downtown lefty cyclist pinko Star-reading scumbags too.

It's true that the media has been watching all this play out with a devotion that would border on freaky if it wasn't their job. You've given them so, so much to comment on: missteps, mixed messages, leaderless moments in city hall, all topped off with the cherry of antagonism. Of course they don't like you. You're not very good at your job, and your job is to be the face and the leader of the city in which we all live. They're very good at their job, which is reporting on you.

But Rob, you know who trips you up the most? It's not Daniel Dale or the plastic bags. It's not Twitter or Clayton Ruby or Ed Keenan. It's your own damn self. You, Mayor Rob Ford.

You consistently fail to meet the minimum that is required of you, and you tout meaningless events as major victories (see: your football coaching, which should be a line in your bio, not your raison d'etre). You don't play nice with others: not other councillors, not large swathes of your constituents, not the media. You don't seem like you have an understanding of your role: for example, after gun violence erupted early in the summer, you reacted by promising to export anyone with a gun conviction out of the city. You changed the conversation from one of mourning and anger to, well, "WTF?" Your disastrous court appearance further exposed your deficiencies.

You consistently confuse and muddle the script, making it almost impossible to work with you. You alienate when you should reconcile. You disturb when you need to soothe. You leave when you need to lead.

Rob Ford, you have two years left in office. Two years, which you've pledged to spend campaigning for your next term in office. And thus, the cycle would continue. May I suggest a different course of action?

It's obviously silly to suggest you change your style. You are Toronto's shouty mayor, a role that might make some of us cringe but that some will point to will pride. You are red-faced, through and through.

But harnessing that style—making it work for you, and for the city—is possible. You can become a bulldog, barking over and over about how much you love this place. Not some of it, not just the parts who voted for you and whom you coach in football, but all of it. The queers, the disenfranchised black kids, the hippies, the policy wonks. Surround yourself with people who know things, and make use of their knowledge. Not yes-men: people who challenge you in a way you can listen to. I'm not asking you to become a queer disenfranchised black hippie; I'm asking you to start respecting those that are.

You strike me as a man most comfortable making it up as he goes along; learn how to learn. Running a city is different from running a business or a football team. Learn why. This is info you should have picked up much earlier in your term, but hey, better late than never.

I know that municipal politics can be cutthroat and that you like power, but you can no longer treat Torontonians like they're intruding on your needs when they demand that you fuck up less. Be proud of the place you're from and the office you were elected to; honour both by being the best mayor you can be.

I know you think you're already doing that. Rob. Dude. No. You need to start asking for help, asking questions and listening to the answers. You have to start trusting that people you think of as political foes aren't trying to mess with you. Leave that kind of belief at Don Bosco, because it's so high school. Be the bigger man. Take a meeting. Take notes.

Most of all, think critically about the vision of the future you're trying to create. What kind of Toronto do you want to govern? What kind of city do you want to leave behind?

Sincerely,
Kaitlyn