#who grew up in a small town in canada. my school was literally surrounded by 2 forests that i hungout in and climbed the tallest trees

[etherical-angel]

OK BEING DELUSIONAL ON MAIN 24/7 but im really loving my new fixation self so far!!! on the occasions where i feel really attatched to a character(usually bc theyre a sign for me) my physical body either starts getting changes or i start noticing things already there(usually my hair is the biggest difference, as it literally changed texture last time and i reallyyyy needed something new to flatten the curls out..found it!!)

rn im like a weird bigender girlverine, and its finally making me feel better about not shaving as much(i had a big dysphoria era with my new alters who didnt like our beard and alters who did, so now while this fixation is on theres a balence. for now). its also making me feel better about my super hairy arms and legs and chest, and also my veiny hairy hands and feet that look like. not human. so now i wouldnt even mind having more hair on them....it came at a perfect time for my nails too, as this is the first time in my life where im not bitting them and let them grow out to ungodly lengths(i cut them into points to make them sharp >:3) oh and ive got pointy vampire teeth from my vampire fixation as a kid(one of the first times this happened) so thats fun too.

but yea i look like this irl rn and my hair is sooo fluffy and big^^ (weird panel but it resonates w me)(now im just hoping for my sideburns to finally grow after 7 years of wanting them...)

[inkykeiji]

i think u once said something about living in a small town and usually there are a lot of thoughts? or urgency of wanting to get out of small towns immediately n stuff so do u also relate to that feeling or do u like being no in a small town

sorry if this is weird but i live in the city in the states nd i’m so frickin intrigued with small towns n all (like the vibe and the idea that everybody knows everybody) but i don’t think i could see myself in a small town so i wanted to know if ppl in small towns had the same feeling of not being able to leave or not wanting to leave

AH sorry this is kinda long :/ anyways i love u sm! <3

last thing! u don’t need to ask this if it’s weird or bothers u!! i’m rlly sorry if this made u uncomfy

interesting question!!! i rambled on and on below the cut!!!

i do live in a small town!! i was raised here (born close to here; there’s no hospital in our town haha) and i have lived here for nearly my entire life—during uni i moved to the city but was forced to move back home bcoz housing costs in canada are literally fucking insane atm.

when i was a teenager i fucking hated it here. i wanted to leave so desperately; i hated that every single time i went out i saw at least one person (or a member of their family) that i knew. i hated that i’d been going to school with the same 60 people for over ten years. i hated that everyone knew everyone and everyone knew everyone’s business, too (there’s nothing to do in a small town except get high and gossip, and my town has both of these issues). so i totally understand that feeling of being trapped & and wanting to escape ASAP.

now that i’m an adult, i don’t hate it nearly as much. i still miss the city like no tomorrow, i LOVE city life and i love toronto so much, but i think i appreciate small town life more now than i did when i was an angsty teenager. it’s so quiet and slow here; the air is clean and fresh and i can go hiking whenever i want. i step outside and i’m instantly surrounded by nature. there’s still very little to actually do here, but i find my own town in particular very interesting.

it’s in the middle of nowhere, so small you’ll miss it if you blink, and on the surface it appears to be this nice, clean, sleepy little farming town. but it has such a dark history of drugs & organized crime, which i won’t get into because it’ll rly give away where i live lol, and that intrigues me like crazy. we have so many small businesses that are so OBVIOUSLY a front for something because there’s no way they’d actually be able to survive in such a small town, and no one does or says anything about it (some of the reviews online from outsiders who have wandered into those businesses unknowingly are fucking hilarious, because everyone who actually lives here knows not to go near them, but when you’re from outside town and just passing through u don’t of course, and their complaints about shitty service or rude/unfriendly staff etc etc is just hilarious).

it’s supposed to be a town full of middle class families, and yet people drive to the grocery store in audis and mercedes’ and porsches, wearing fendi and gucci and d&g, with teenagers + young adults who are binging designer drugs they absolutely shouldn’t have access to. it’s just weird, it doesn’t make any sense. in my opinion, the whole town just feels off, you know? something is wrong, but you can’t really put your finger on it. i’ve always felt that way about this place.

the whole town makes me feel,,,,, this very melancholic nostalgia. it’s where i grew up, it’s where i made so many memories with my best friend + my boyfriend (both have also lived here their entire lives), and yet it’s so painful to still be here, because it’s also where all of my trauma and abuse happened—still happens, lol. it’s because of this that i still want to leave. i don’t hate this town anymore, but i don’t want to spend the rest of my life here, either. the urgency to leave comes and goes, though. some days i’m like ‘jesus, i have to leave tonight, i have to leave immediately’ and others im like ‘i wouldn’t mind staying for a little longer’. idk, i hope this makes sense!!! it’s very hard to explain hahaha

it’s interesting + coincidental that u ask this question now tho hehehe because the fic i’m currently working on is set in a town that takes heavy inspiration from my own!!! so hopefully that gives you a more in-depth feel of what it’s like living in a town like this hehe

also!!!! ily too!!!!!!!!!! ♡(˃͈ દ ˂͈ ༶ ) thank u for ur question and sorry for rambling!!! it isn’t a weird question at all my luv don’t even worry about it! <33

[jessicakehoe]

Six Questions With Caroline Pham of Montreal Jewellery Brand Ora-C

Montreal-based multi-hyphenate Caroline Pham, who launched her accessories brand Ora-C five years ago, looks at the world a little differently. Actually, it’s hard to say if sometimes she’s not looking at this world at all. Instead, Pham–who graduated from Parsons the New School of Design after studying illustration and industrial design–is a vibe seeker. Imagery from cultures both familiar and unfamiliar are the undercurrents of her inspiration, manifesting in evocative handmade pieces like earrings crafted with an assortment of gemstones, and bracelets with ‘piercings’. Having recently re-opened her studio boutique along with L.L.Y Atelier, Pham caught up with FASHION to talk about her magnetizing work and what’s been on her mind during the COVID-19 crisis and uprising of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Tell me about the latest collection, Folk L’Ore. What’s the story behind it, and what’s your favourite piece?

I’ve always used a lot of flowers and rocks in my previous collections’ shoots as props. Nature has been a huge inspiration since day one; the grimmer the world around us gets, the closer I want to feel to nature. But in the Folk L’Ore collection, I used the floral inspiration and the use of stones more literally in the shapes of my pieces. I have botanical references all over, like petal shapes stamped with my finger tips, vine-like swirls or coils, and natural semi-precious gemstones such as carnelian, jade, blue-lace agates and freshwater pearls. This collection is also a slow re-birth of my work toward leaving textiles and tassels behind and embracing the use of stones, which are the main medium I now use in my one-of-a-kind series.

My aesthetic has always looked towards a romantic form of nostalgia for historical jewels, all while making them look like they still belong in modern days. My jewellery lives in a sort of made-up exoticism, like coming from a far away world we think we can recognize, yet cannot quite put our finger on. It’s a theme I have played with a lot in my work due to the fact that I grew up in multiple cultures at once. I never lived each culture in-depth, I therefore would create my own narratives about them since a young age. In my jewellery, I think it allows people to weave their own narrative into the pieces they buy from me. This is the reason why I think jewellery can be so personal and precious to all.

My favourite piece from Folk L’Ore seems to be changing regularly. I personally wear the Ginette earrings everyday! They are these feminine petal-shaped dangles that can look like you have two earrings at once. A nice little tingling sound follows you around all day when you where them. However pieces like the Roberte and the Louisette earrings really make me feel proud of my work. They are the bolder version of my aim to make regal-looking pieces, a fantasy I have been inspired to explore a lot lately.

And tell me about your OOAK designs. What inspires them?

The original inspiration came during my first trip to Mexico three years ago. I traveled with two friends around the country and found so many amazing hand-cut stones and dead-stock loads in bazaars and small towns; the kind you cannot find when buying from regular avenues. I bought so many, it created this new departure for me to attempt to use unique stones in my work for the first time. Before I knew it, it became an annual ritual. To release the new OOAK series in the spring and summer, based on the stones I have been gathering on trips I would take during the winter days.

It’s such a freeing mindset, to break away from the regular fashion schedule and create pieces that are unique and not reproducible. This makes the designing process a lot less restricting and releases my creative juices to go the extra mile with wilder, bolder pieces that can attract a more niche clientele. In fact, this direction is more and more an avenue I have the intention to explore. It is finding parallels to my values as a small business of promoting slow fashion and ethical sourcing. It also refocuses my love for making and designing jewellery in a creative way. To me, mass-producing pieces that are already available on the market for the sake of trend and profit bores me. I guess I am a romantic artist at heart.

Photography by LMChabot.

How does living in Montreal influence your work?

 Montreal is a very progressive city when it comes to sustainability mixed with full-blown creativity. There is a real sense of community that pushes for slower consumerism, environmentally-friendly practices, and support for smaller businesses. In fact, in the last few years I have noticed an ever increasing growth of very interesting brands that is redefining the Montreal fashion scene into one to watch out for in the international sphere.

I feel like moving to Montreal has allowed me to make ORA-C a reality. It’s extremely affordable and is hence a vibrant hub for small businesses and creative people in general. There are so many inspiring people here. The pace of living is really soothing, too. So much stress comes from running a small business alone, if I was still in New York City–I lived there for 10 years before moving back here in 2013–I would have had multiple burnouts already. Working here has really helped me be more aligned with my core values of ethical practices, while still being surrounded by extremely creative and talented people to pair myself with to produce incredible work.

Photography by LMChabot.

What’s the biggest difference you’ve noticed between the New York fashion industry and the industries in Canada and Montreal?

New Yorkers have a fake-it-till-you-make-it mentality, with dabs of side hustles all around. I lived there for 10 very formative years, so in a way there is a part of me that was cut from the same cloth. To live in New York has taught me to work my ass off. But also it inspired me with its ever-dazzling boldness, and its fearless attitude to be seen and heard. The creative juices coming out of this mega city are endless, from the lowest brow to the highest crust. But in the long run, in order to create and focus on my own work, Montreal was a much better fit for my brand.

The Montreal fashion industry to me is a smaller and quieter pond in comparison. At first when I moved back here in 2013, I thought the Montreal fashion industry was too safe and beige. But in the last few years, I really noticed some exciting new brands and designers coming out with the boldness and fire I always loved in New York. It’s having a moment lately, but it’s still coming out of its shell. So though it does not reach the same vibrance levels as New York’s fashion, it has the asset to be malleable. There are fewer established rules, so creativity and innovation is open to all. Plus there is less of an economic pressure for Montreal brands as living standards here are less expensive. We can live comfortably on the edge, without gambling away our brands’ to huge investors that will demand profitability over art and ethics. Additionally, with the industry slowly moving away from retail into the online sphere, the city where your brand is based is almost irrelevant. People can find your work from all over the world and buy it online. As a result, I feel grateful to be living in a city where the rent is affordable and living standards are calmer, all while being surrounded by a vibrant community of inspiring creators in this lovely city.

Tell me about your studio, and why it’s important for you to be able to interact with your customers there.

 My studio is almost more my home than my apartment is. I practically live there. All my work is handmade in this beautiful space, mainly by myself, except for the occasional extra hand I get from a single assistant whenever demand gets busier. Mostly it is me and my studio-mates; we’re three artists sharing the space. Since last year, the studio has partly become a boutique space open to the public every Thursday for anyone to come visit and try on pieces in person without the pressure to buy. It’s a great way to avoid the fees of a brick-and-mortar boutique and to keep a sense of privacy when I work during the rest of the week days. To welcome clients directly into my work space creates the possibility for a deeper relationship with the people who buy my work–to share what goes on behind the slick images of my brand. I can show people how the pieces are made, what is in the works, and show them that it’s really just me behind it all. Customer service for me has always been key. I love chatting with my clients and will always repair pieces they have bought from me, most of the time on my own dime. I just want people to love and wear their pieces for as long as possible.

Photgraphy by LMChabot.

What are you feeling optimistic about these days given the many issues the COVID-19 crisis and the Black Lives Matter movement have recently brought to light?

I was reading an article in the New Yorker the other day that compared the current pandemic to the 14th century worldwide Bubonic plague and the Black Death in Italy. The article argues how though it wreaked havoc, it essentially lead way to a new wave that opened people’s minds on science, philosophy and politics. It gave way to a wind of fresh air of common sense, basically allowing the birth of what we now know as the Renaissance.

After reading that, I do hope that somehow this worldwide disruption we have been going through lately is indeed a gateway to a new future. During COVID, as we have all been glued to our phones, the news has exposed so many problematic structures that bypassed us for so many years. We are forced into introspection and therefore cannot be distracted by anything but our mortality–and stupidity. People are using this moment to get their voices heard to call all of it out! It is not the first time people have tried, but it’s the first time the people in position of power are listening. White people especially. Racial inequality towards Black people is a huge issue the world has never wanted to pause on. But also the subjects of women’s abuses, inequalities towards Indigenous people and LGBTQIA communities, and issues of immigration, poverty and sustainability. Are we finally recognizing that classism and discrimination in the modern world is no longer wanted?

It’s hard to say if it will really all change soon, considering the federal push back in the U.S. and the extreme austerity measures in China and other countries. But my optimistic hope is that a new mentality of tolerance and mutual respect for others could be in our future. We’re forcing discussions at least.

Actually, in light of all this, I am most hopeful for the consumerist fashion industry to finally be forced to change towards what we have been pushing for years already–that is, shifting from the established rules to more environmentally-friendly practices, slower turn around of products, smaller quantities, more local goods, and more diversified goods. Things that are less conformist, so everything does not become one trend with only a few companies really profiting from it. Also, I hope that we will be more inclusive and less classist, racist and gender conformist. We should inspire each other to reach better living standards together, instead of elbowing each other to be at the top of others. I think this is cultural, and I can see that the younger generation is already changing [our] culture to be a more inclusive one.

The post Six Questions With Caroline Pham of Montreal Jewellery Brand Ora-C appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

Six Questions With Caroline Pham of Montreal Jewellery Brand Ora-C published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

Class Carpetbagger

Pete Buttigieg’s comedy of class-signaling errors

FORMER SOUTH BEND, INDIANA, MAYOR Pete Buttigieg and I have a few things in common. A few.

We’re both cis white guys. We’re about the same age. We both graduated from expensive Ivy League schools, and we both know everyone cares.

I trust we’ll prove equally successful at becoming President of the United States.

From there, slight differences emerge. Pete, though no giant on the political stage, appears to be slightly taller than me. I put this down to a lack of proper nutrition on my part. My father was frequently unemployed but always alcoholic. My mother is a stranger to me and has been homeless for most of my adult life. I’d like to think that with a little more support at home, I, too, might have picked up an extra seven or eight languages and a few inches of height.

Pete and I have both had books published with our names on the front. If we ever get to chat, I’d love to talk to him about his writing process.

We’ve both traveled the world and seen the dirty business of American empire up close, albeit from slightly different perspectives. We both enjoyed Graham Greene’s The Quiet American as undergraduates. Pete wrote a thesis about it, which has been described as a total misreading that’s overly sympathetic to the titular character, a young CIA officer in Vietnam. My takeaway from Greene’s book was rather more traditional: colonialism is an evil inflicted upon the undeserving by the unctuous, overprivileged, and naïve.

Pete may have feared for his life at times while deployed with the United States military, but it is also true he signed up for that risk. I don’t remember anyone asking me if I wanted to experience childhood poverty.

With the help of psychoanalysis, I’ve come to conclude that perhaps the only reason I’m alive today is that I didn’t listen to people like Pete. When he speaks about education and opportunity, Pete reminds me of my high school guidance counselor. That guy was a jerk. He didn’t want me to go to college when I did. He thought I needed discipline and suggested service work or the military. I didn’t need discipline, but freedom and respect. And money. Mostly, I needed money.

Similarly, Pete says college isn’t for everybody. I agree, in principle. That doesn’t mean I want him—or anyone of his class background, for that matter—deciding who is and isn’t suitable for management, government, and other professions reserved for the literate and educated.

Pete’s salt-of-the-earth schtick is profoundly annoying, beginning with the folksy nickname he has adopted to make himself seem more like a character from a Norman Rockwell painting.

Still, off to college Pete and I both went. After leapfrogging from Harvard to Oxford, Pete quickly (and now infamously) found a job at McKinsey & Company. Though I did well academically, no one taught me how to job-hunt. After college I felt lucky to get accepted by a temp agency. They set me up as a hospital janitor. The crew, mostly older women, rarely wore protective gloves to handle the cleaning chemicals. Such precautions slowed us down too much to hit our quotas. Their joints were swollen and knotted.

Those kind women shielded me from the worst of the job, like a “code brown” in the operating room (use your imagination). It was the professionalized nurses who were always most snippy and pushy, in the way that people tend to be when capitalism grants them some slight power over others. Judging by reports from his forced march-style campaign events, these women were close to the Platonic ideal of Pete voters: Nurse Ratcheds administering a sedative to a political prisoner, humming “high high high high hopes” with a skip in their step.

But my comrades on the “housekeeping” crew did not need more paperwork, or whatever else Pete is selling. They needed free health care, housing subsidies, and a labor union.

Those aren’t items on Pete’s agenda. What’s worse, he acts like a management spy. The clearest illustration of this was last year when he showed up to a United Auto Workers picket line and awkwardly interrogated a man holding a sign how much money was left in the union strike fund. Recently The Intercept reported that his campaign was hiring workers through Amazon Mechanical Turk, a nefarious project to crush labor power forever by turning every imaginable job into soul-crushing, ultra-low-wage piecework.

When I look at Pete, I see the face of America’s rotten sham meritocracy, and I know I am not alone.

Like so many bourgeois strivers, Pete takes up space wherever he goes. He never wanted to be a journalist, but he still took a newsroom internship. One of his Harvard professors got him the gig. According to the Washington Post, the reporter Pete ended up working for had been “pushing for her station to find an African American intern—or at the very least, someone who actually wanted to be a reporter.” In short, he used his connections to deprive an aspiring black journalist of an opportunity that might have made their career. Why? Because he wanted to be president one day, and thought it would be useful to see how the media worked.

“I grew up surrounded by crumbling factories and empty houses,” Pete recently said in his endorsement interview with the New York Times. But does he know what it’s like for people who lived and worked in such places? I think not.

I’ll tell you, Pete: it’s difficult. When I got my Ivy League graduate school acceptance letter, I wasn’t excited. I was ashamed of myself for leaving friends behind. And I was terrified, not just for social but also financial reasons. I’d had to sell my car because I lost my driver’s license over a ticket I couldn’t afford to pay, issued for a noisy muffler I couldn’t afford to fix. I took a Greyhound Bus across the country from Olympia, Washington to Columbia University in New York. It was not my first such trip, and having learned some lessons about self-defense, I arrived with a sleeping bag wrapped around a baseball bat.

Unlike Pete, I had a good reason to be there. I actually did want to be a reporter, for it seemed the only way I could make a living that suited my skills and temperament. Horatio Alger and Abe Lincoln myths aside, I knew the presidency was not for people like me. Did Pete ever once doubt himself? As far as I can tell, Pete thinks he’s qualified to lead the country because he went to a prep school, then to Harvard, then got a Rhodes Scholarship. Congratulations, Pete. Gold star. Lucky you. But you’re wrong. These plaudits say nothing about who you are.

Pete undoubtedly worked hard for his achievements. But boy, oh boy, did he have help. Not all of us are so lucky. What help I got came mostly from strangers. I benefited tremendously from the kinds of socialist-inspired programs that Pete thinks don’t work. Thanks to a federal tuition subsidy, I was able to complete an undergraduate degree, which neither of my parents did.

As a teenager, I was uncontrollable and fearless, because I was more or less permanently dissociated. I gobbled every drug I could find. I stole a car and drove it across three states. I was lucky to be a white boy. Not long after getting out of high school, I found myself in my hometown jail. I didn’t call dad to bail me out. He was a lot scarier to me than the guys in the drunk tank. I don’t know if Future Mayor Pete ever went to parties, but if he did, and the police showed up, I’m they knocked politely and told his prep school friends to be safe, have fun, and turn the music down by ten o’clock.

I know what I learned: America desperately needs socialism. What has Pete learned? That if we all work together, we can achieve absolutely nothing?

The most delicious thing about Pete’s campaign is that, possibly for the first time in his life, his privileged class position is a liability, not an asset. It’s visibly crushing for Pete—who recently had his own “please clap” moment at a rally full of geriatric whites—but as for me, I’m lovin’ it. The recent, widespread stirring of class consciousness is the best news for American politics in decades.

I’m not the only person who has noticed how Pete tries, and fails, to slum it. Last month in Iowa, he touted himself as a Washington, D.C., outsider, “somebody who can actually walk from his house to the nearest cornfield.” Golly! Shawn Sebastian, an Iowan and Working Families Party member, tweeted in response that Pete was “the mayor of a small college town dominated by a massive private university. Pete’s dad was a Gramsci scholar and he went to private schools his whole life. Enough of this phony rust belt/rural signaling. Pete walks into wine caves, not cornfields.”

When the New York Times’ Binyamin Applebaum accused Pete of fixing bread prices in Canada during his consulting days, the candidate again sought refuge in slumming it, this time with the calculated use of profanity. “So the proposition that I’ve been on front lines of corporate price fixing is bullshit,” he replied. I was not impressed by his command of the vernacular. He sounded like Mister Rogers miscast in The Aristocrats.

When I surveyed my social media followers for their “Pete peeves,” they offered a laundry list of class cues. “He stands for nothing except his own career,” one person responded. Others noted the “self-righteous smirk whenever he’s criticized,” as well as his “vocal affect where he believes that taking a portentous tone makes his banal statements seem profound.” Another concluded, “he seems like a phony apple-polisher who volunteers at soup kitchens because it looks good on their resumes.” Reader, where is the lie?

This salt-of-the-earth schtick is profoundly annoying, beginning with the folksy nickname he has adopted to make himself seem more like a character from a Norman Rockwell painting. But it is a victory for the working class that someone like Pete feels compelled to downplay the upper-class cues he spent a lifetime mastering.

The most delicious thing about Pete’s campaign is that, possibly for the first time in his life, his privileged class position is a liability, not an asset.

When I see Pete tense up and purse his lips, or take a hasty gulp of water when he feels pressured to explain some facet of his paint-by-numbers political career or his regressive, unpopular policies, it makes me want to barricade the street with burning tires and shut down a container port. If Pete is nervous, it means others like him are nervous. They fear that everything they have worked for in life—not in the proletarian sense, mind you, but in the sense of writing ingratiating letters and leveraging connections—is at risk. They’re afraid of the socialist movement. Good. It’s about time.

Consider how pathetic Pete’s class carpetbagging act looks next to the smooth, class chameleon act of his fellow Rhodes Scholar, Bill Clinton. The arch-neoliberal former president is, of course, my political enemy. Yet I still find stories about his brutal childhood incredibly affecting, powerful, and, as the spin consultants say, “relatable.” Clinton’s ability to speak authentically about his underclass upbringing is part of why his charisma clicked with so many Americans. And yet “the boy from Hope” was, in the end, a class traitor. I’d like to think Bill might have turned out better without the Rhodes.

Pete is no Bill. He has no story to tell; he has studiously collected anecdotes. He is an unapologetic conservative in that he doesn’t think class matters at all, except to the extent that he can exploit it. His pitch is based on a phony heartland appeal. Nobody’s falling for it, except people who are even more out of touch than he is with working-class struggle.

When Pete was asked at the Vice News Iowa Brown & Black Presidential Forum what he would bring to a potluck, he was stumped. “Is it a breakfast potluck?” he asked. After a clarification from the hosts, Pete said he would bring “chips and salsa.” Chips and salsa! Thanks, Rhodes Scholar Pete. Such stinginess is typical among the upwardly mobile. How about we eat at a restaurant next time, and you can pick up the check?

While we’re on the subject of authenticity, it’s past time for a frank assessment of Pete’s most-touted qualification: his military service.

I’ve never met an enlisted veteran who talks about war or military life in the way that Pete does. I certainly noticed how, in the last debate before the Iowa Caucuses, he spoke of the plight of “enlisted people that I served with,” as though they were a separate species. Even for an officer, Pete seems especially smug.

I asked enlisted U.S. Army veteran-turned-author Joe Kassabian, an outspoken leftist and co-host of the podcast Lions Led By Donkeys, what he makes of Pete, a Naval intelligence officer on a direct commission. “Nothing about Pete Buttigieg seems genuine, least of all his time in uniform. His service is hollow and speaks of the weird caste system that America has,” Kassabian said. “Who the fuck leaves a highly paid consultant position to deploy randomly for six months? That simply does not happen. But whenever the wars are brought up, he immediately brings up his six-month rotation, like being a lieutenant on some forward operating base allows you some higher knowledge of the war in general. He clearly failed to learn anything, because he doesn’t want to end it.”

Even John Kerry, an unabashed blue-blood officer, had the decency to throw away his medals and march against the war when he returned from Vietnam. Prior to his commission, Pete toured the imperial occupation zones as a civilian profiteer. How patriotic is that?

I would never claim Pete hasn’t faced challenges in life. I have no right to lecture gay people about their particular struggles, racial minorities about theirs, women about theirs, and so on. So please, can someone explain to me why rich kids feel so gratuitously entitled to tell the working class how to live? Go ahead. I’ll wait. I really want to hear this explanation, especially from Pete, but any rich kid will do. Please, Bret Stephens, come to my home and explain it to my face. Bring your own beaujolais.

Why the hesitation? Are you afraid? Do you think the poor are prone to violence? Do you think we are unbalanced and unpredictable? Damaged? Pitiable? That perhaps some form of mandatory national service might help? Debt peonage—that’s the ticket!

Do you think we could not possibly understand our own plight, or how to fix it?

This goes for all of you, but especially for the presidential candidates. Stop talking down to the working class. Stop stealing our valor as veterans of poverty. Simply say, “I am a professor’s son. I am more conservative than my father was, and here’s why.” And then, Pete, you can start listening. Only then will you understand why your class act falls flat, even though you’ve ticked every box like the good student you always were.

Is “Pete” alright? Can I call you Pete? “Mayor Pete” doesn’t sound right, seeing as how you aren’t a mayor anymore. Let’s be honest, though: Wouldn’t you prefer I call you Mister President, Sir?

Corey Pein writes Magical Thinking for The Baffler. He is currently based in Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon, and has a book coming out in April 2018 titled Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley.

[czugwrite]

Owning Your Weird.

Published piece for The Yellow Co. Monthly Periodical

Three Creative Women Who Are Owning Their Weird. Beautifully.

Author’s Note: When I first set out to write this piece, ironically, I envisioned a narrow scope of the term “weird.” My archetypal American mind thought “Okay, weird means BIG, LOUD. Who’s really making a cultural splash? Who should readers be looking to for personal examples of massive, profound, rebellious metamorphic social or creative capitalization of their so-called  “weirdness?” I reached out to some individuals whose “weirdness” was amplified across bigger, broader platforms. And I was greeted with something unexpected: insecure disapproval and  harsh dismissal of the term “weird.”

I thought about this, and turned it over and over in my mind. And I realized something: There’s great humility in the ability to personally translate the descriptor “weird” into unique, valuable, or powerful.  I took a moment to step back and admire the openness, the humility, and the vulnerable personal journeys that I was welcomed into for this feature.  The willingness to consider what is “unique” about them to be, only for the sake of the story, described as “weird.”

The women who you’re about to meet flexed my understanding of what it means to own your “weird.” It’s a term that is wonderfully relative. No matter what our story, we all have an understanding about what it means to stand out, to not fit in, and to be unsure of what to do with that experience.

The women below elicit a quiet, organic, beautiful uniqueness not unlike your own, dear reader. Their “weirdness” falls into varying categories. Racial. Cultural. Physiological. Philosophical. While these external descriptors set these women apart, they all reflect a nearly identical human experience. Whether they realize it or not, their most beautiful triumph was not an acceptance from others, it was an acceptance of themselves;  an inner embrace, a celebration of their own uniqueness. It’s an experience everyone needs. Especially me.

And so, I’m endlessly grateful for the opportunity to introduce you to three women who own their weird.

Meet Roxanne, Satsuki, and Isabel.

 1. “My oddities are a gift -- I intend to treat them as such.” 

- Roxanne Fernania

Have you ever tried to be three places at once? Despite what you may think, it’s completely possible --  culturally speaking, that is.  

Freelance writer and founder of Golly Magazine, Roxanne Fernania lived the experience of a “third culture kid.” A “third culture” experience describes a multi-cultural environment, such as a household where parents raise their family amidst a culture that differs from their own. The parents identify with their home culture,  and the child identifies with the dominant culture of their surroundings, which then creates a third, middle-culture experience between the two cultures. While ultimately beautiful, a third culture experience can present many challenges, and certainly create the false idea of “weirdness.”  

Raised in Staten Island, New York  by parents who were Haitian immigrants,  Roxanne’s relationship to her “weirdness” stemmed from this third culture experience, not just as a child of immigrants, but as a child of black immigrants.  Although she grew up in a semi-diverse neighborhood, her family sent her to all-white Catholic school.

“As an American-born black girl with immigrant parents... I always felt a bit like a fish out of water. Add this to the fact that I was (and still am!) a quiet type, very much lost in my own thoughts, and you have an effective recipe for that familiar childhood feeling of not fitting in.”

As she got older, Roxanne became increasingly aware of her cultural and racial challenges. The reactions and comments from those around her were confusing, and, well, weird. She often withdrew into herself, or into a book.  Roxanne’s passion for reading and writing transcended the oddness she often felt; her creative drive too vibrant and voracious to be stunted by any insecurity or flimsy aspirations. And as it turns out, what is often mistook for shyness is instead a quiet display of skillful observation.  

“In my capacity as a writer, I’ve also learned that there’s value in my tendency to listen first and speak later.”

Sure enough, with a little time, talent, and encouragement from other creatives, Roxanne was able to turn her childhood solace of language arts into a dream job. A steady stint as an e-commerce copywriter for EBAY eventually led her to becoming a freelance writer and co-founding a print magazine called Golly.  She currently writes for several online publications and women’s periodicals.

“Over the years, I’ve managed to surround myself with a growing community of people who embrace, appreciate, and encourage my ever-evolving identity, which has made all the difference .”

Who could have predicted the incredible opportunities available to writers because of the internet? Between essays, creative writing, and copywriting, Roxanne supports herself full-time. Her concentrated experience with a diversity of cultures and colors has given her an understanding voice and bright humor that comes through in her work. She is able to speak to so many issues, stories, and struggles because of her “weirdness.” In a time when, more than ever, the real-life perspectives of a female person of color need to be heard, honored, and shared, Roxanne humbly and  beautifully steps into these moments.

“If weirdness is just another word for that which is unusual or unique, I think [everyone] benefits from our quirks and personal charms.”

2. “My weirdness allows me to be the authentic self that I am meant to be.” 

- Satsuki Shibuya

Hearing. Sight. Smell. Taste. Touch. Most everyone is equipped with five senses, each with varying degrees of sensitivity. But what if you had a few more than just five?

Satsuki Shibuya is a watercolor artist with a physiological sensitivity called “synesthesia.” Synesthesia is a sensory phenomenon where certain senses can cross, and produce an additional, heightened experience. For example, Satsuki can “see” sound, “hear” color, and has a highly developed sensitivity to personal energies, also known as auras.

“[Growing up,] when I would share with other people what I noticed from my surroundings, no one around me understood what I was sensing, or the depth to which I sensed it. It always made me feel like an outcast, or like I couldn’t relate to anybody.”

It was many long years before Satsuki was able to name her unique sensory experience. She was aware of her sensitivity, but not fully sure of how to manage it in a healthy way. While always interested in working in a creative field, it’s only very recently that she has been living as a full-time “intuitive” watercolor artist.

In 2011, Satsuki experienced a  full year of severe, debilitating unknown illness. She saw doctor after doctor, with little to no reprieve. After a year of not working, she received a very clear prompting to paint. And paint she did. When she eventually got around to playing with watercolors, she finally discovered the perfect medium for channelling her unique sensory experiences.

“Weirdness has changed to uniqueness. I can harness that part of myself now, and I’m not afraid to incorporate my uniqueness into my art or creative mediums.”

The right moment with the right person at the right time. Satsuki’s watercolor paintings and the clean, peaceful feeling they evoked was magnetic. Her work became featured and sought after in the art and fashion communities and businesses. The abstract sensations she encounters, intuitively or physiologically, lead her to the patterns and textures which are now so widely beloved. With high-profile clients such as POKETO and Urban Outfitters, her work has reached all around the globe, from Canada to Japan, and many places in between.

As celebrated as Satsuki’s work has now become, however, her artistic experiences of synesthesia can still produce mixed responses from others. Her art has finally given her a much-needed medium to express her powerful sensitivities  to sound, color, and smell, and a way to celebrate this unique ability in a healthy way. But she can still feel glimmers of the “weird” label from her past.

“I definitely feel that my “weirdness” is a strong suit when I’m in my element, when I’m being creative. But when I’m in an environment where people tend to value sameness, my normal way that I see things or my “quirks” can make others uncomfortable.”

Weird versus Unique.  One isolates, one celebrates. But Satsuki is passionate about gently guiding others through their difficulty to understand. With her, it’s often her unique abilities she must explain, however, she’s very aware of similar gaps in understanding  that can divide people. Whether in her art or her personal interactions, she very much wants to bridge that divide  in humanity which oscillates between fearful ignorance and warm understanding. And her peaceful, watery displays of sound and color are a magical contribution to that worldwide effort.

“Weirdness is one of my strengths, and I’m thankful for it now.”

3. “I remember thinking, ‘Well, whatever I’m doing clearly isn’t working so I’m just going to stop trying [to fit in] and just do my own thing.” 

- Isabel Sloane

Meet Isabel Sloane, freelance writer and fashion features editor for Canada’s leading fashion magazine, FASHION MAGAZINE. Literate and opinionated from an early age, Isabel felt immediately disconnected from her small-town grade school peers. Not an abnormal experience for many young children; often, it’s one they grow and conform out of.  While it was unfortunate that her advanced reading level negated those early attempts at social connectivity, it merely fortified her self-confidence and independent mentality.

And, incidentally, miraculously, luckily for us,  she never outgrew it.

“By the time I graduated 8th grade, I was a full-blown freak. Like, ‘the only girl not invited to the pool party’-level of unpopular. And while I was kind of traumatized by the ostracization, it did sort of cement my lack of interest in fitting in.”

In a pre-internet childhood, Isabel felt freer to discover alternative art, music, movies, and more. She  uncovered a few unexpected personal passions -- including an empathy for all things “other.” One of those personal passions was fashion.

The fashion world is a complicated place. Much like its own city, the world of fashion is full of leaders and rule (trend) setters, and alongside them, the rebels and rulebreakers. There’s high, low, modesty, liberation, and everything in between. It’s another social construct of sorts. Another social construct Isabel longed to participate in, and critically observe. Then, introduce the notion of feminism, and the fashion world becomes a (somehow) more fascinating place. Introduce the notion of feminism to a nuanced young fashion fan like Isabel, and suddenly you have magic.

Isabel’s difficult ostracization as a child, while hard, enabled her to be a thoughtful independent thinker, and ultimately, writer. She started her own fashion blog called “Hipster Musings,” which blew up, and earned her loads of credibility and attention online. As the trend of fashion blogging ballooned into an online movement dominated by product placement and showy influencers, Isabel pivoted from her blog and stepped deeper into the world of writing. While this transition was difficult, it shaped her into an even more insightful writer, only further equipping her for a defense of nuanced thought. During a time of filtered images and manufactured personas, her authentic voice has never been more valuable.  

From celebrating women’s body hair, to her well-reasoned feminist defense of Hooter’s, Isabel approaches her subjects with a seasoned objectivity that only a true outsider can genuinely muster. She’s the court jester, the fool of the tarot: she observes, comments, and even moderates. She feels equipped and privileged to be the voice of the other, in the fashion circles she writes for, and beyond.

“[My weirdness] allows me to come up with stories that are unusual and most other people wouldn’t have considered. The downside is that there’s a smaller audience for those types of stories, but I’d rather be proud of the work that I do and have a few people relate to it rather than an audience of a million people...”

As a freelance writer and fashion editor, she’s in the perfect position to question and critique. Down to her daily participation in her magazine pitch meetings, Isabel makes it her job to cover alternative stories that would interest, and ultimately, enrich the mainstream.

What began as a simple fashion blog by a small-town high schooler led Isabel Sloane into the crazy, wacky world of feminist fashion writing.  Beneath her love for fashion writing is a love for insightful, individual expression -- something so rare and beautiful, amidst much of the brash binaries and sensationalized oversimplification we see today.

“I tend to be ambivalent about most things in the world, but I am delighted to be considered “weird.”

________

If short, if there’s anything to be learned, I feel it is this: perceived “weirdness” merely opens our eyes to the blind spots (literally and figuratively) in our society. There is great wisdom to be found in the “weird” nooks and crannies, and even gaping divides between individuals. Consider these three, yes, but ultimately, consider the “weirdness” among the collective with new eyes as well.

Truly -- what other strange, unknown gems of “weird” truth are out there, waiting to be found, catalogued, and embraced?

[nookishposts]

In Praise of the Porch

The distance of years can certainly soften some realities of memory, preserving the best and discarding the rest of what may well have been formative. pivotal experiences in our lives. Perhaps it’s a part of the mechanism that slowly allows us to let go of old hurts and create space for new perspectives. We may notice an old scar on our elbow and have some recollection of the pain of falling out of a tree, but more likely will remember with great fondness the joyful building of the secret fort that got us into the tree in the first place. That we dragged old boards and stolen nails into the branches and made a hideout, a safe perch from which to observe the world below as we examined our options, was a rite of passage in itself: we learned we could build stuff,  felt entitled to a quiet space of our own, shared only  by personal invitation. An elbow gash from missing a step was a small price.

Tree forts and snow forts and blanket forts aside, many of my own fond memories involve porches. Throughout my life, even as a student with a postage-sized fire escape or a young adult with an apartment balcony, those just-outside-the-door havens have been my go-to and sanity-savers.

On the farm, the first home I recall, had what felt to me like an endless porch, hung like a one-armed hug around two and a half sides of the house, and elevated about 3 feet from the ground on 2 of those sides. The floor planks were wide and sturdy, likely to a depth of 8 feet from wall to lip, with 6 generously square brick stands upon which rested thick wooden posts soaring to uphold the pitched roof.Those posts held a blanket hammock very nicely, and a loose floorboard made a great stash for childhood treasures. It had been many times painted, so splinters were few and the deck sealed so thoroughly in oil that it was almost soft under bare feet. There were 3 doors from the house, one from the kitchen and two from the living room, thick wooden doors with mysteriously huge iron keys that felt important in my hand but which nobody ever actually used. The farmhouse was not large or fancy, but it was as solid as a fortress and that porch had been built as a refuge and retreat from the hot sun, to catch the cool breezes after a day in the fields or the cloying dust of the barn.

My cousin Shirley, 5 months older than I, used to come for weekends in the summer and we would be allowed to sleep out on the porch when the nights were hot and still. We’d put a couple of old blankets down as a pallet, perpendicular to the wall so that we could lay on our bellies gazing over the fields as we’d talk or on our backs to watch for falling stars, and still have the surety of the house within easy reach of our toes. We felt ourselves quite brave in not flinching when the coyotes would call or the night hawks would swoop heard but unseen nearby. If it rained, we pretended we were on a ship in a storm and kept watch for leaks that we might heroically plug to prevent our vessel from sinking. We scanned the bright skies for constellations and gazed dreamily into the face of the Man in the Moon.

If I had been home sick and  eventually deemed to be in recovery, the porch was my half-step re-entry place. I recall being bundled into a blanket and carried out to a chair, a cup of milky tea with lots of sugar placed on the low table, with a box of kleenex, and a book to read. Usually Heidi, as the big firs outside my bedroom window on the farm could roar just as well as the firs did outside her Uncle’s house in the Alps. I could snooze in the swaddle of my blanket, safe and warm, with the starlings and the chipmunks and the occasional groundhog to watch over me, dimly aware of house-sounds through the open window: Mum doing dishes or starting supper.

When the gardens and fields flourished to bursting, my Grandmother would come to stay for a couple of weeks to help with the picking and processing. There were long afternoons on the porch with bushels of peas to be shelled and beans to be snapped, corn to husk and apples to peel. I filched peas from the big clay bowl knowing if she saw, Grandma wouldn’t say a word. She and I would be tasked with the berry picking: strawberries and raspberries proliferated along the fence on one side of the long rutted driveway. Gooseberries grew near the pond behind the barn. Black caps burst in our mouths with a seedy sweet/sour gush that puckered our grins. There would be fresh pie for dessert on the porch after supper, and tomorrow the pickling and canning would begin.

We would sit like stair steps in the cool shade: Grandma on a tall straight-backed chair, my Mum on a 4 legged stool and me on the floorboards at their feet.  As we shelled and snapped our gleanings,the very air we breathed above our filling bowls smelled and tasted green and fresh, with a hint of sunlight and a sense-memory of soil. Family gossip would be exchanged between pea-pings against the metal pan, and if Grandma were in the right mood, she would tell me stories of the Auld Country; about her parents and grandparents, siblings and cousins; colliers,  foresters, and labourers all. About hopping over the stone wall at the edge of their garden on her way to school, with a twist of newspaper “Peas in a poke” in her hand for a snack along the way. About babies born onto clean newspapers at home in front of a peat fire. About scraping the muck off her father’s boots and the dust off his back as he came home after a 12 hour day in the mines. About how horribly seasick she was as the huge ship of immigrants crossed the English Channel bound for Canada, and the promise of space and prosperity. I watched the kalidescope of emotions on her face as she gazed into the distance, deciding what to tell and what would best remain unspoken. If I asked a question, she would turn her eyes to mine: hers were a riveting cornflower blue in comparison to my little black buttons, and I would be enveloped in a warmth of expression that could have lifted me into the clouds. She would feed me the comical bits, the quirks of genetic predisposition she could see in both our faces, like teaspoons of honey infused with magic. I was entranced. On rare occasions, my Grandpa came too, but our time on the porch was mostly silent; he smoked his Players unfiltered and nursed a beer and dropping a hand on my head, spoke volumes.

Moving into town as a teen, my parent’s back porch was the place where I retreated in piques of simmering resentment over some remark at school or frustration with the world at large. I slammed the door coming and going in adolescent argument, stomped emphatically to cover up my insecurity, smoked furtively, secretively, in the wee hours while everybody else was presumed asleep.I comforted myself in a porch corner with a guitar on my lap writing angst-y songs of the type of meandering melodrama that leapt regularly in the heart of every 14 year old female.  I was pressed into service with trays of sandwiches and tarts when there had been a funeral and everyone came back to my parents afterwards to mull over the details, men shedding ties and rolling their shirtsleeves, women fanning themselves with the order of service pamphlets and tut-tutting at the sultry weather. I came out to my Mother on her back porch at the age of 22, and she told me she had known for years. My homosexuality wasn’t nearly as much of a problem as the fact that I was dating a married woman at the time. I sat on thinking on the porch a for very long time that night.

In each of the places I have lived as an adult, I have managed to either build or re-build a porch. Having a predilection for neglected century cottages, I’ve learned by doing how to safely remove and preserve the best of the old while also shoring up and strengthening footprints with new and/or recycled wood. I’ve dug post holes and unearthed small treasures ; metal toys and pottery shards, bottles and coins and arrowheads, chunks of coal. Tiny animal skeletons, from abandoned under-the-porch homes. In our current location, our porch is quite large especially given the small footprint of the house, and we quite literally live out there April through October; we cook and eat our meals outside, step off into the vegetable garden, and surround ourselves with flowers. We talk and read, and nap, and dream on that porch to the extent that most people check the back gate first, before the front door, knowing they will likely find us there.

There is an indefinable quality to the unmistakable symphony of porch sounds; that combination of floor squeak, screen door bang, rain on the roof and wind in the eaves that seems to leave us comforted. Countless important conversations have occurred in safety there; any number of friends and family have unburdened themselves against the trickle of a tiny pond fountain on the edge of the darkened porch, in the shadows that keep tears private and thoughts escaping freely in unfettered bursts. It is as if the openness provides more room to squirm our way through difficult subjects without accidentally banging elbows in the process, while the proximity of our knees from chair to chair acts as anchor. It’s a great porch for potlucks, for celebrations, for watching fireworks, and for little ones to roll around on with the dogs. By candlelight , its quite romantic. In the sunset, with a glass of wine, its heaven.

I still turn to the porch, whether it’s been a good day or a not-so-good one, for the steadiness and re-calibration of place that it provides me. I meet myself there and remember who and where I am, and am reminded to be grateful for both. I have found myself wishing that in the constant turmoils of an uncertain world, I hope there are porches enough to go around; that there may be that sense of pause and shelter in which a few quiet breaths may give rise to new and respectful conversations, to remind us of our common dreams and those basic things we hold so dear, chief among them, one another as co-travellers in a world where it is all too easy to become lost.