Tag: adulthood

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Essay: On Community, Culture, Vanishing, And The Usefulness Of Shells

On January 15, 2022

In art, books, classical, COVID19, history, music, opera, personal, philosophy, theatre, writing

The bonds formed and broken over the course of the past twenty-two months has led to reevaluations around relationships, and the kinds we want, and don’t want, in our lives. Complex equations relating to time and energy, volume and content, content and quality are being weighted against sheer exhaustion; many are just so tired and often feeling so much older than our years. If age is most accurately measured in moments than time, as Lord Byron implied, there are a good few of us in the arts who have been rendered ancient between March 2020 and now. That sense of aging has played a significant role in why and how relationships have shifted and changed. Sarah Miller’s “On Not Talking To Someone Anymore” (at her website) and Katharine Smyth’s “Why Making Friends In Midlife Is So Hard” (The Atlantic) are documents of people reaching a certain pandemic point and realizing things have irrevocably shifted, for good and bad. The corona era has made those positive/negative lines sharper, and blurrier, at once; has what’s been lost, especially in middle age – outside of the physical – may or may not be worth mourning.

That loss seems more pronounced in some spheres than in others; the high-wire act of balancing solitude and community, isolation and relating, very much powers cultural expression. Vanishing and being vanished on, the sorts of people we spend time with or move away from (literally and figuratively), the nature of our relating, alone and otherwise – these notions hold particular relevance in an age where community matters less and more, at once. Such presence is more fraught (again, literally and figuratively) than at any other point in recent memory. In her piece, Miller points out that the reasons behind silences can, at least sometimes (and if you ask), be reduced to the petty, the mundane, the cutting truth (or untruth) of seeing yourself and your behavioural choices through another’s eyes (whether you have vanished, or been vanished on), and of the painful divides when experiences, time, and nostalgia for the passing of both are mismatched to the onerous realities of the present. Smyth explores the strangeness of connecting in a strange place, inwardly and outwardly, in engaging in a practice one less considered than simply enjoyed, and the various nuances of experiential difference that adhere to the digital pursuance of such. The profound loss to which articles both allude has been magnified by the relentless ephemerality of digital platforms carrying the ironic title of “social”, outlets which encourage anything but phones-away, non-posting, simple, human relating. Social media platforms, as many know, play to pandemic times: avoid safely, connect comfortably. Observing endless streams of photos posted by high school/elementary school friends/exes/co-workers/colleagues/casual contacts, one tends to automatically engage in the algorithmically-calculated behavioural compunction toward comparison-making. It is a human urge which technology has become adept at identifying and exploiting. The urge toward comparison becomes all the more pronounced when some places have live performance, and some places don’t – where some places have full houses (and antecedent requirements for that to happen), and some places outright cancel events. Such contrasts have a sometimes acidic effect for those of us in the arts, who have lost work or are still looking, who are looking to bump up CVs and pay bills. Not being a part of regular crowds these last almost-two-years (and thus not working, for the most part) encourages an insularity whereby anything good that happens to someone else, and thusly advertised, is now suspect. Envy, most especially within the cultural realm, has been writ large; those who have are in such sharp contrast with those who have not. What should be unvarnished joys – a new job, a trip, an excursion, a concert, a conversation – are flashpoints for lack, reminders of non-abundance and ultimate separation.

So much of what gets shared now seems mundane, overwrought, calculated, or a strange combination therein. People have largely burrowed into the, to quote Jim Morrison, “woolly cotton brains” of the familiar, following or leading lessons online whilst baking bread, with dusty blinds, gritty floors, and rattling furnaces intact. Ah yes, we say, seeing such familiar elements of the quotidian to which we’ve been reduced, I recognize that, yes. The yeast/flour scarcity in early 2020 has morphed into current supply-chain issues; baking shortages led to furniture shortages, and now, apparently grocery shortages, the very place the money once spent on cultural excursions, now doth flow. The familiar has become a safe bubble to love and resent, a strange new counterpoint of the era. Rising economic uncertainty, coupled with financial realities, mean community, as a lived reality, grows more distant under the weight of such mundanities, only slightly flecked these days by random twinkling lights of diversion, originating from strings of lights, rows of candles, and more often than not, a panoply glowing screens that keep us apart, talking (typing, tapping) about the same mundane things we all watched or saw or tweeted. Opening up to 50% capacity in Bavaria is a big deal – to hell with the screens, hurrah!

Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without express written permission.

But Mein Gott, who would go? Should I? Will I die going to see a concert or an opera? Or wanting to keep writing about such things? Will I get sick going backstage to interview, to chat, to greet, to hug and handshake? Drinks later? Oder? Was ist noch “normal”? Not being around people, or more importantly, being only around the same tightly-controlled group of people, aggravates such anxieties, leading to a reinforcement of experiential bubbles, and that is, obviously, bad for art, but it is what many are being forced to do, if not through their own choice now, than through guidelines that dictate external conditions. Thus do silence and its hurtful counterpart (vanishing) become as normal as overcrowding and cacophony, as alternating rhythms of zen and anxiety; somehow pandemic has underlined such extremes of living, and creating. I have come to understand, at a deep level, that people with families/partners/networks/busy jobs/illness are juggling heavier balls than I, a family-free freelancer. This isn’t to diminish the sharp and painful realities of solo creative life; lack of regular benefits, precipitous drops in income, whole months of work washed away, to say nothing of continuous days and weeks of isolation, makes those uniquely spiky freelancer balls difficult to keep aloft, and more than once I have dropped them all at once along with the concomitant connections meant to make them feeling lighter and less burdensome than they really are. Having needs isn’t the same as being needy, but often the two have blurred. Things which should connect – common interests, creativity, inspiration – somehow, now, do not. Conversation feels effortful, whether giving or receiving, and when it isn’t, one often feels as if there is a sense of impermanence: so if we have a grand old chat we can be silent for two months, right? We’d all cry out our grief, cry out our disappointment, to paraphrase Rumi, but we’re all too busy trying to survive, and besides who would want to make the effort to listen to such cacophony?

Trying to interact with those with whom we share such commonalities can be (often is, lately) like speaking the same language but with different dialects. Somehow Hugh MacLennan’s ‘two solitudes’ concept takes on a broader and yet more precise meaning; there is no real, shared language but for the words that indicate precise, sometimes intricate division, within the era of pandemic. Talking classical with equally-passionate others isn’t the doddle some may assume; it can rapidly devolve into ferocious spit-balling, name-calling, intransigent foot-stomping, bragging, finger-wagging, or some combination therein. It is not news that people who love the arts (and who work in the arts) hold strong opinions, but that’s where vanishing also (alas) can come in; such relating is exhausting, and everyone is, without question, already so tired, and thus such exchanges become another burdensome ball to keep aloft. The desire to engage in these tribalistic exchanges speaks to a need for (perceived) community, one which is greater than ever, one fostered by a love of culture, and more accurately, its live expression. New avenues can and are created within the heated (if hopefully well-ventilated) atmosphere of shared experience – but such communal engagement can paradoxically encourage a laziness of thought, a dampening of curiosity; there’s a fear of going against the herd indeed, but more than that, sometimes there is precisely no thought given to not fitting in with the herd, to not parrot what everyone says, to apply nuance, to apply context, to ask for clarification and to do so privately. There is an urge to simply agree and to “amplify” (that overused word of the times), an urge applauded and underlined by platforms which, as I’ve written, are ironically meant to encourage the notion of “social.”

Lately I have decided to keep most experiences (cultural and otherwise) to myself, to not share, to not opine, to not publicly offer applause or evaluation unless I feel it is truly warranted. I’d rather discuss these things privately with my small if trusted circle, not of necessarily “like minds” but of what I would call “like spirits.” There is more community found with such contacts, many of whom hail from entirely different cultures and backgrounds – we might have a shared love of x-y-z art, but that isn’t the reason we’re friends, and it isn’t the reason we might forgive (or question) each other’s occasional vanishings and silences – and frankly, we have the balls (I hope) to push back at one another as needed, if not always welcome. Kissing ass isn’t the point – sycophancy doth not a friendship make – because authenticity matters more. We like context; we like nuance. These things take time and attention, and when there’s time to be made, it is wholly taken. Chemistry can be cultivated, but it cannot be created whole.

Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without express written permission.

Accepting this has had personal ramifications. I have vanished on many; I have been vanished on by a great many more. I have become fussier in my interactions, and in the nature of those chosen interactions. This runs parallel with more selective listening and viewing habits; I am no longer a journalist or critic but my critical faculties now come with decidedly sharp edges, ones I wield carefully, according to that treasured context. In person, I have learned to speak with my eyes – and not. I have mastered obfuscation; I have learned silence; I thus can vanish, in many ways. Interacting from the literal and figurative safety of a monitor has given harsh if vital lessons. Rare is the moment I will drop any mask now, literally, or figuratively. The willingness to be vulnerable is what fuels meaningful connections, but its direct exercise is far more carefully considered these days. In his book La poétique de l’espace (The Poetics of Space) first published by Presses Universitaires de France in 1957, Gaston Bachelard devotes an entire chapter to shells and their paradoxical nature within the realms of creative human development. He ties artistic life with evolution of living forms, with “these snail-shells from which emerge quadrupeds, birds and human beings. To do away with what lies between is, of course, an ideal of speed… ”. In contemporary terms, that “doing away with” might constitute a great robbery, especially if one considers the heightened speed the digital world of 2022 demands, a pace which conflates perpetuation of connection with meaning, only to encourage its simultaneously illusory nature. Superficial ties are (mostly) easy to break; contacts we haven’t met (or barely met) are easy to vanish on. The people we meet and know are not immune to this virus of speed and ease, either, nor to the subsequent (and often casually done) breaking of those ties, ones which, within the creative realm, can be so inherently valuable. Bachelard continues, and offers a clue as to how to sort the vanishing/vanished-on fraught nature of modern adult relating:

A creature that hides and “withdraws into its shell” is preparing a “way out.” This is true of the entire scale of metaphors, from the resurrection of a man in his grave, to the sudden outburst of one who has long been silent. If we remain at the heart of the image under consideration, we have the impression that, by staying in the motionlessness of its shell, the creature is preparing temporal explosions, not to say whirlwinds, of being. The most dynamic escapes take place in cases of repressed being, and not in the flabby laziness of the lazy creature whose only desire is to go and be lazy elsewhere. If we experience the imaginary paradox of a vigorous mollusk – the engravings in question give us excellent depictions of them – we strain to the most decisive type of aggressiveness, which is postponed aggressiveness, aggressiveness that bides its time. Wolves in shells are crueler than stray ones.

Cruelty, it would seem, has been a hallmark of the pandemic era – cruelty, selfishness, pronounced exclusion and snobbery, bubble-think; they are behaviours that would seem to confirm beings comfortably, lazily ensconced within respective shells. For live culture and those who live by and for it, there should be another way, but we are all human, none of us (not even or especially artists) above any other with regards to the hurt humans are well capable of inflicting, and of feeling. And that capability to feel has not left, and indeed, should not.

But let us be wolves, then, in our shells, considering how best to spend and direct our energies and attentions. Energy goes where attention goes: let us hope we have learned how to direct it wisely. I want to feel such attention can be wielded, if not with great compassion (that seems like a big ask, and not a little precious), then at least with great curiosity, that such an exercise will get us out of our shells now and again, if only to breathe the cold, clean air.

The Women Understand

By Catherine Kustanczy

On July 21, 2013

In movies, Non-Classical Writing, popular culture, writing

Confession: I finally saw the classic 1980s movie The Breakfast Club in its entirety last week. I’d only ever seen it in bits and pieces before, like a giant, talky jigsaw; viewing it all the way through, uninterrupted, proved to be a revelation.

As a child of the 1980s, it’s strange to think this symbol of an era passed me by, because of all of John Hughes’ films, The Breakfast Club is perhaps the most celebrated, widely known, and deeply loved. It’s surreal seeing symbols from my generation being embraced -indeed, appropriated, worshipped, and idolized -by far younger generations. Following the movie’s screening, I combed through various websites and tweets, curious to gauge reaction, get a sense of the age of these new fans, and investigate how they expressed their love. The level of passion for a 28-year-old film, from a generation populated by those sometimes young enough to be my own kids (gulp), is nothing short of astonishing. Yes, the film is fascinating, funny, and captivating in its poetic simplicity as well as timeless in its themes -but I honestly did not expect the intense love from millenials that I found.

In the years since John Hughes’ untimely passing, I hadn’t thought much about his films, or his characters -or indeed, the chemistry of his ensembles, the genius behind his casting choices, or the thought-provoking subtext of his characters. At the time of writing my 2009 tribute to Hughes, I was floating in a sea of nostalgia. I recalled how Pretty In Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off made me feel then, as a kid -not now, an adult. While it’s strange to think I missed the TBC (and perhaps it’s a bit of a shame, because I was strangely oblivious to the cultural earthquake it created –thanks very much, MJ, Duran Duran, and childhood best friend), seeing it now, as an adult woman, has allowed a very unique insight into the nature of youthful infatuation versus adult attraction. While the “popular” boys of Hughes’ films have implied sexual histories, there’s precious little to indicate they enjoyed “it.” While that’s partly down to language -Hughes seriously toned down the vulgar vernacular that so characterizes teenaged boys -it’s also deeply related to how he portrayed female characters. Hughes consistently placed his “good” boys with supposedly “skanky” girls. It’s curious (and, looking back on them now, depressing) that sexually experienced females are portrayed as mean sluts.

Perhaps this was a symbol of the director’s identification (/fascination//obsession) with his (perennially virginal) female lead, a sort of latter-day outcast Elizabeth I, who was never allowed to be friends with “those”sorts of girls (if Ringwald’s character in TBC was, we never saw it). Andie’s buddy Jena in Pretty In Pink is a possible-maybe exception to this rule, though the nature of female-female relating in that film seems geared entirely toward Andie’s glaringly absent mother. Regardless of the “good” boys dating the “slutty” girls in Hughes’ movies, I get the sense now, watching them as an adult woman, that there is an implied (if very identifiable) subtext of the boys never really enjoying the sex they were getting -even though it happened to be with females who had considerable power on the social ladder and were aware of that power. The boys were getting it, not feeling it, and that was an important (if romantically teenaged) distinction in the world(s) Hughes created.

The act itself comes across as dirty or perhaps ridiculous (ie, The Geek or Long-Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles) -surely not pleasurable, but silly, reckless, something belonging to the (supposedly) joyless world of adulthood, and as a result, there’s something curiously sexless about the male characters; sure, that’s part of their innate charm -they are awkward teenagers, after all -but, viewing them from an adult perspective, it’s still curious. Hughes was portraying class-challenged kids (his forte), but the sexual dynamics, and the realism of their energy, are of particular importance for to the works’ continued watchability; casting is central to this energy. Michael Schoeffling, Andrew McCarthy, Eric Stotlz, Matthew Broderick, and Emilio Estevez, as they appear in Hughes’ movies, are all boyish, pretty, and entirely unthreatening. In The Breakfast Club, Estevez’ Andy fits in perfectly with the handsome-boy archetype Hughes was developing -heightening the idealizing is Andy’s being an athlete (albeit unwillingly) -and proves himself a nice guy in making himself available as a confessional figure in whom the shy Alison can trust. All these male characters (who appeared in Hughes’ films between 1984 and 1987) have two important things in common: conventional good looks and moral fortitude. You could take Jake, Blaine, Keith, Ferris, or Andy home to mom, and mom would surely approve.

The Breakfast Club‘s John Bender however, is a different breed. Unsettling and damaged, he’s the guy you’d never take home to mom. But despite – or because -of this, I think Bender is far and away Hughes’ most interesting creation -and perhaps the one best-suited to an audience beyond the one intended. Featured between Sixteen Candles (1984) and Pretty In Pink (1986) (The Breakfast Club was released in 1985), the role was originally meant to be played by John Cusack, but eventually went to then-25-year-old Judd Nelson, who was so committed to the role he emulated “Bender” between takes and ad-libbed some of the film’s most beloved moments and lines. He brings a mesmerizing, deeply authentic sexual heat unlike any other actor in the Hughes canon. It is certainly not a teenaged vibe (at least to my mind), and while it’s fair criticism that quality lessens the “realism” of the film Hughes was so keen on capturing, I’d argue it’s greatly contributed TBC‘s enduring popularity for close to three decades.

Unlike Hughes’ other male leads (including Estevez), Nelson is not conventionally handsome (though very striking, he is certainly not from the same mould as model-turned-actor Michael Schoeffling), and his character is clearly not morally upstanding. Nelson transcends his character’s wrong-side-of-the-tracks cliche, using charm, smarm, a jangly physicality and greatly contrasting speaking volumes (shouting/silence); his attractiveness is intensified as a result. The ensuing soupcon of tangibles and intangibles (bad attitude, tender vulnerability, physical prowess, louche fashion and verbal dexterity) is something online fangirls understand, just as they try to analyze him and daydream about his future with Claire. It’s interesting how Hughes gives short shrift to sex appeal and its role in attraction; The Breakfast Club, interestingly, hints at just this. Claire’s correcting Bender in his pronunciation of “Moliere” is fascinating (Ringwald’s flashing smile suggests, to me anyway, far more than mere friendliness), and in another memorable scene, we see the “Princess” looking through the various photos of females the “Criminal” keeps in his wallet. He simultaneously examines the contents of her purse, and the two converse. He asks her why she carries so much stuff around; she asks him why he has so many girlfriends. Claire eventually tells him she never throws anything away, to which he neatly responds, “Neither do I.” The look on Nelson’s face here, similar to when Claire later visits him in the closet, is wonderful to behold. Voila, a Hughes character who clearly, unabashedly enjoys sex. Bravo!

There is a distinct (and refreshing) lack of innocence about Bender that goes far, far beyond the romantic “bad boy” image so popular in cinematic history (and which many fans revel in). This isn’t to say he isn’t sensitive -he is, clearly -or that he isn’t afraid -again, he clearly is, as are the others. But Bender is menacing -an angry, abusive, violent figure living in a violent situation, horrified at exposure of his own vulnerability but simultaneously dying to put it on a stage for attention. He is also sexually confident. When he’s hiding under the table, he sees Claire’s white-pantied crotch beneath her skirt, and, integrating both sexual and provocative instincts (perhaps correctly guessing at this point that she’s a virgin), moves his face between her legs before the mortified Claire kicks him, surely a perfect example of the repulsion/attraction principle at work. Bender openly questions others’ virginity and is looked up to, becoming a de facto leader of the “club” not only because of his detention experience, but, I suspect, because of his sexual experience. This, to my mind anyway, is in line with teenaged mores.

What’s more, Bender is able to use language in a way the others may not because of that experience -even when he’s only talking to himself. His joke as he crawls through the air duct, with its vulgar element of the “two foot salami” and the naked, poodle-carrying blonde, is left famously unanswered; it’s an interesting (and I think, genius) choice Nelson made in ad-libbing the punchline-free joke, with Bender bolstering his own confidence and soothing his nerves by referencing images with such clear sexual underpinnings. It reveals so much about Bender as a person -his past, his attitudes, his values, even, dare I say, his self-opinion.

That doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t sexually confident, and it’s notable, therefore, that the character isn’t punished for his carnal confidence or knowledge (unless you count his abusive home environment), nor is he rewarded for them (though some may argue the virginal Claire is his reward, but it’s interesting their overture is left purposely unresolved); he is, rather, used as a symbol for the alienation all of the characters feel, his raised fist, both defiant and victorious, closing the film. Might he also be an unintentional beacon of a burgeoning sexual confidence in the others? And can he, through associating with the virgin Claire, “redeem” himself? Of what?! Should he be sorry about his past deeds? Should he burn all those girlfriend photos? Should he go hawk Claire’s earring? Some contemporary fans seem devoted to the idea of romance between the two (or not), and though my little teenaged heart sighs at the thought, my adult heart scowls.

It’s rather ironic an image of Bender closes The Breakfast Club; never again would film audiences see such an unapologetic, likeable, sexually potent figure in a John Hughes movie. Sadly (if unsurprisingly), Hughes never cast Nelson again. (One can only conjecture over why.) Does all this now mean I don’t enjoy Hughes’ movies? Certainly not. I look at old favorites like Pretty In Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as warm, comforting old chums, momentos from the “woolly cotton brains” of youth. Twenty-first century teens, saturated as they are with internet culture, with easy access to porn, having grown up with a myriad of saucy images and sexting, feel an affinity with his work (especially TBC) and it lives on in various ways, through various media. Perhaps, if I’d seen the movie when it came out, my reaction would’ve been similarly worshipful. Then again, as a youngin, I always preferred the smooth, pretty boys, the ones with the nice cars and the good manners who I could bring home. I loved Duckie because he was sweet, silly, and protective of his best friend; I loved Ferris for his posh tastes and intelligence. Fantasy was fun, but those fantasy figures had to conform to a certain standard of acceptability in my social and familial circles. No creeps were allowed, especially sexy, dangerous creeps. Eeeeek.

It’s only been with time and experience -life -that I’ve thrown out ideas around acceptability and come up with my own definitions. These days, my head has been turned, not by aesthetics or fantastical ideas, but by that undefinable quality that manifests itself as a mix of confidence, charm, curiosity, respect, and knowingness. Everyone gets older, and in the process, everyone gets clearer on what they want in life and love.

(via)

What happened on Monday? That’s the question everyone who’s seen The Breakfast Club asks. Forget romance! My rose-colored glasses of teendom are long gone; I hope Bender ditched class and paid a visit to the Principal’s wife. I’d expect nothing less -or more. Neither should you. Life goes on… carpe diem. Don’t you forget.

(Photo credits: Emilio Estevez as Andrew Clark via; Andrew McCarthy as Blaine McDonnagh via; Eric Stoltz as Keith Nelson via)

SLUT.

By Catherine Kustanczy

On July 8, 2013

In personal, writing

Here I am, almost seven months since my last blog, writing about the word “slut.” It’s strange, what passes for writing inspiration these days, especially since I promised in the past I’d be doing less personal-life-issues blogging. But, this word, and its usage, occupies a strange place in my mind.

Perhaps I’m blogging about this now, at this time, as I undergo some radical life changes, assessing and re-assessing the role authenticity plays in my life, and how sexuality is key to embracing that authenticity in a more complete and satisfying way.

Sex columnist Dan Savage’s response to a young woman being called a “slut” hit some buttons, mainly because I have been called the same thing, by a woman who is friends with my mother, no less. it wasn’t said in front of me, and perhaps I wasn’t meant to ever know of it, but, it didn’t surprise me, to once again be called “slut,” especially by another woman.

In dealing with female friends in the past, I used to feel a particular pressure to cover up, dress down, go shapeless, never be too revealing. That was thanks to a youthful lack of self-confidence in my appearance, but it was also a way to fit in with my chums’ idea of how females “should” look: no bare shoulders, no decolletage, always tasteful and subtle. There was still glammy makeup and vampy nails, and a growing passion for lingerie. Like the veiled ladies I used to see buying hoards of lacy knickers in Harrod’s years before, I felt I had a fabulous secret to savor hidden underneath the high-necked velvet tops and long skirts.

Gradually, I began to bust out of the mold. I attended a concert in the late 1990s wearing a tight, low-cut, vintage halter-dress; the concert wasn’t great, but boy, did I feel good, powerful even. Such boldness complemented an already entrenched taste for literary erotica, sensuous writing, and the naughtier side of history. That’s to say nothing of how much bellydancing aided in recognizing and embracing what God gave me too. Such pursuits helped me gain the confidence to claim my womanly body as my own, to express the person it contains, outright, -through dress, through manner, through every single visual and aural element shrieking “AUTHENTIC” loudly, proudly, finally. I realized the absurdity in dressing -and thinking, speaking, choosing -just to make other people comfortable.

None of this is to say I don’t believe in work-appropriate wear (I do), or that I don tube tops and micro-mini skirts daily (I don’t) -in fact, I’m typing this in jeans and a t-shirt. But stepping out in public still, inevitably, frustratingly, invites judgment: Your jeans are too tight; your top is too low. (Never mind that I’m wearing bare-bones-makeup and tiny stud earrings.) Perhaps it’s the nature of human beings to judge, maybe it’s our madly media-heavy, super-connected world making things worse (those “things” mainly related to the business of cultivating female insecurity around looks). Maybe it’s that depressingly common female competitiveness rearing its ugly head. Does the awareness of such human fallibility make it okay to call someone a “slut,” a woman who’s taken years to come to terms with body, soul, flesh, spirit, and all the mixed twisted vital veins pulsating, glowing between them? Why this desire for a slut and a saint, at once? A vixen / mother? A seductress / soother? Peacemaker / homemaker?

Choice is a funny thing, and sometimes it’s in embracing choice fully we court the snap judgments and narrow perceptions of others. It’s stunning, and sadly unsurprising, to be called a “slut”in 2013. Dan Savage suggested such the use of such a term is rooted in jealousy: she’s getting laid, you’re not, how shitty. The reality is more simple than that, I think: even if you’re not technically getting laid, if you look like you could, conceivably, be perceived as somehow sexually desirable (and the assumption is almost always to men), boom, out come the knives. One has to, as Savage suggests, take the mindset of, “who gives a shit what those bitches think?” Right. But I wish they didn’t have to be bitches. I wish things weren’t set up thusly. I wish I could have more pity in my heart, more consistently, for those who close their minds and hearts to others. Walt Whitman puts it a bit more poetically in I Sing The Body Electric:

Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

(Photo of me from my Flickr photostream)

Remember Laughter?

By Catherine Kustanczy

On October 21, 2012

In personal

This blog was started as a means of celebrating a sense of “play,” both in work and in life. Lately that element has gone sorely missing in my life.

Amidst stresses personal and professional, playfulness is often the first thing to be jettisoned; it’s as if the dour responsibilities of adulthood stand diametrically opposed to smiling whimsy of play. Why is this? Why do we dump fun things when the going gets tough? Maybe we have to give ourselves permission to have fun, without any guilt “oh-I-should-really-be-doing…” Maybe we have to give up our inherent need to please everyone around us. Maybe we have to throw open the door to a tiny bit of fun chaos every now and again.

An old friend visited recently, which afforded the opportunity of pulling out some old toys we used to share, enjoy, and occasionally war over as kids. In that magical moment, all the trappings of our dour adult lives got put aside: the complicated jobs, the painful relationships, the pressing money issues, the maybe-maybe-not plans for tomorrow, the droning ugly siren’s call of Monday morning. Silliness and imagination took precedence; neural pathways of joy were blasted open in a joyous expression of carefree loveliness. Nothing else mattered but living in the moment of our shared creativity. It wasn’t a drunken series of incidents, either; amidst bites of tomatoey veal and sips of red wine, there erupted much laughter, as we posed superheroes and bits of every day ephemera in a sort of cacophony of cartoon surrealism. Our old worried selves became carefree kids once more.

I’m thinking about those moments of play a lot right now as I face a particularly stressful series of situations yawning, with ugly, hooked fangs, before me this coming week. Something about the joy of that experience feels light, instructive -redemptive, even -and beautifully pristine, as if I can always return to the warm, nurturing arms of play. Those arms are never really as far away as I’d imagine. I don’t have to wait for the proverbial “tinkle trunk” to access that joyousness: it’s already there. Just takes a bit of reminding, a bit of time away from the computer, thinking everything has to be done right away, this very instant. Allowing myself permission to laugh freely at silly things is good. Giving myself permission to smile is grand. Discovering I had the keys to the kingdom all along is a shock. There’s a sort of divinity at work I’d never imagined.

A few superheroes still sit on the kitchen table. Far from being false idols, they’re talismans, reminders, fortifiers. Cheerleaders for play. Adulthood doesn’t have to be all misery; sometimes it’s good to allow play in to brighten up the room, the week, the grey pallor of grown-up-hood. I’m glad I did. We plan, God laughs. Maybe it’s time I started laughing more.