_{"Television" by Jowita Bydlowska}

Hannah is Carrie. Shoshanna is Charlotte. Marnie is Miranda and Jessa is Samantha. But none of them are me or you. Chances are some North American males may not be able to decode this one but most North American females are probably already/… Read full post »

 _{"Dis-functional families" by Jowita Bydlowska}

Motherhood is not a job. In fact, it’s worse than a job. It’s hard, unpaid, often unpleasant work. In her article Motherhood is not a Job, Mary Elizabeth Williams talks about the P&G’s commercial that declares women taki… Read full post »

 Baby, until there was you nothing else mattered. Sometimes when interacting with other parents this is the feeling I get, that that’s how they think of their offspring: Life was kind of pointless for a while but now with the baby around, oh, it’s just so fulfilling, so full o/… Read full post »

_{the cat that pees on my son's clothes}

Pets are a drag. But it's not their fault they're a drag - it's your fault, actually, dear pet lover, because you're trying to fit the proverbial square peg in a round hole when you insist… Read full post »

  _Moth

One of my favourite memories ever is me at 21, walking in some city in Europe, in a blue dress, unwashed, drunk on vodka, with hair full of sun and cigarettes, laughing with close friends who at night would turn into accidental lovers. We were going to live forever,… Read full post »

 What are our choices? The right hand has no choice. The left hand has choices. Choice number one is to leave it as is and see what happens. As the hand grows, because of the fusion of bones and skin, the ring finger will eventually pull the middle finger with it.… Read full post »

 She danced to Michael Jackson in the dacha living room like no one I’ve ever seen dance before. She shook her bum and made faces like an actress or a singer. Sexy faces.  She said, completely matter-of-factly, that she was very sick and was probably going to die from he/… Read full post »

 I’m a sick person. I got my MRI the other Saturday and it sounded like experimental techno music, all the clicks and knocks and the rhythmic banging around my head. I lay there, not moving – you have to lie still – and I kept thinking about the young Muslim girl… Read full post »

I have no idea why I bought the monkey, but I bought it, and now I’m carrying it home in a cage covered with a green towel, and I try to come up with reasons to own a monkey. It was on sale. "House-trained," said the girl who sold it… Read full post »

Her eyes in my face, only her eyes, so serious, nothing else, the eyes, green and something else, clear, the way they are, the way everything blurs around and the focus, of them which wants you to divert yourself to it because it needs you to pay attention now and… Read full post »

“Not a week of my life goes by without somebody urging me to try yoga,” my friend Nyla wrote in her Facebook status update. Somewhat predictably, underneath the update, people made smartass remarks how they feel the same about crystal meth. Doing either a lot seems to be life-changing so… Read full post »

After you get sober, every social thing you do has to be customized for the clear eyes and nervous hands; your voice is a little too loud in your ears or too soft so that suddenly no one can hear you. You – the booming voice of the party! Imagine.… Read full post »

What I remember is lots of excitement, snow and tanks seen from a window somewhere in the sky. My grandmother was worried and so was my mom but man, this was way better than sitting in the kindergarten classroom drawing flowers for our dear leaders. The… Read full post »

I’m a fan of Sasha Grey. She’s a porn star who’s inspired a lot of my photographic work. I like her too because she seems to have a great sense of humour (in one of her movies she has sex with a man in a bear-mascot costume). I admire this… Read full post »

The Internet has allowed a lot of us to come out. Come out of our conventional selves and explore both the dark and the light sides, and discover new sides we never knew we had. This can be wonderful. It’s playing dress up all over. When I was a child I… Read full post »

Why are people so obsessed with breastfeeding? Mary Elizabeth Williams writes in A Victoria's Secret star's model breastfeeding that the first picture of Miranda Kerr’s nursing her baby boy is a great reminder that boobs are not only for play and that there’s nothing gross about—yaw… Read full post »

Every week or so, my partner and I sit in a shrink’s office getting over our bafflement. We’re making progress. We’ve been baffled for some time now, about 17 months. Or to be specific, 17 plus 9, so 26 months. We’ve been so baffled because we’ve never planned to have ki… Read full post »

I never thought I would write about this but it’s time to fess up: I killed my brother.

 Wait, this is a cheap, maybe-catchy intro and I need to explain right away that it is not entirely true. Now we can all relax. Sort of. Because I did kill… Read full post »

I remember looking at my Amazonian self – way too big for the apartment where I grew up, I was like Alice who never stopped growing – in the mirror, and then looking behind the mirror into what used to be my old room. She was sitting on the bed, eating… Read full post »

I suddenly realized that I was sitting in a giant display case. Inside, the lights were full on. Outside, it was dark. It's like I'm in some kind of a human fish tank, I thought, not my apartment any more. From outside, you could probably see my every move. Me making… Read full post »

We had to survive three nights on our own. We were nine years old. One of us had a bad ear infection and another had lice. We hitchhiked first then walked for miles in the forest. We’ve found the perfect spot and built a hut out of moss. Our group fared… Read full post »

There are moments when, naturally, I wonder if I’m a hipster myself – after all, I try to reject all that is Hipster and that is a sure sign of hipsterdoom.

In my defense: I do not own a pair of eyeglasses that announce to the world that I wear… Read full post »

 I had bought a nice bottle of wine which I had drank in the hotel room while watching a TV show about adopted children reuniting with their biological parents. It was a good show.

 I danced a little in the small room, as much as one could, really, in… Read full post »

On my boyfriend’s birthday we were out at one of those hipstery tapas restaurants. We were eating something small and potent. It came to us on a square plate surrounded by thin paisleys of sauce. The restaurant was definitely a hip one. It seemed half a dozen of these places would… Read full post »

In the middle of my relapse it was cold. I just finished a photo shoot with Chris. Her thinness impressed and worried me. Her legs were like sticks in boots. She shook and twitched in the cold. She would compose herself and stay still or jump in perfect half arches when… Read full post »