On hijabies and me, crip-femme meets Islamic Fashion....

I am doing a lot of research today, so inspired by the first real good lecture at University on Islamic Fashion. Got hooked on the hijablog, a Norwegian ‘hijabie’ (veil wearing Muslim woman) who lives in London and blog on Islamic Fashion trends all night.
The slightly paradoxical practice of covering up something that is assumed to be alluring and tempting but replacing it with something that stands out even more in a crowd fascinates me a great deal. For the hijablog blogger it is obviously not only a religious statement but also a very clear fashion statement, that involves and industry that cater to Islamic Fashion and magazines, blogs and fashion shows that project what’s new and trendy.

For me this lecture was especially good since it is the first one on this course that clearly deals with identity not only as being part of a certain, religious, context but also as an identity important to the self and expressed through clothing in as many ways as there are hijabies.
The personal relationship between faith and practice is very real to me as I have grown up in a very religious (by religious referring to Christian spirituality, and not necessarily conservatism) context, and ascribe a lot of my identity and my actions to my faith.

The modern hijabies of today speak about the hijab as something very feminine and something that emphasises strength and personality in its bearer. One of the women that took part in the ‘Islamic Fashion’ show in Stockholm in 2008 said this about her vivid use of fabrics and patterns in her hijab.

“When you go out you know people look at you anyway, so why don’t really give them something to look at, in a way I think that is disempowering to many of the prejudices that comes with “Islam”…”

I really felt I could relate to that, very much as a crip-femme. I know people study me, I know people turn too look at me one extra time when I pass by. And I understand that, I would look too. First off I am tiny, my walker is purple, and I am loud. Secondly, I dress smartly. There is again that contrast that I spoke about in the stone femme post.
What did you see, a little girl or a woman? Can you look at the disabled woman’s cleavage; is that a politically correct action?
If you know they’ll look at you, make them look again…

Yesterday I went to interview two girls who I hope will be my new PA’s when I settled in in this city. I choose my meeting attire with the greatest care. Often I am a bit too much then, I wear very short skirts and my favourite flowery tops for example. I choose jewellery with greater care than I would otherwise, and if my complexion is in a stable place (sadly it hasn’t been recently, more on a make-up free femme appearance later in this blog) I wear make up. The only thing that did fail me yesterday was my nail polish, I still haven’t got to buying a remover and now I just re-polish and re-polish and that gives as somewhat tacky look.

So yesterday, I wore:
-A black, short sleeved top with a small flowery pattern, my absolute favourite although it is giving out a little nowadays…
-The shortest skirt I own, a black jeans skirt that reaches mid-tigh, the most.
- Black cotton stockings, perhaps it’s something rural, I don’t wear nylon all that often.
-Black plastic pearl necklace.

Usually I joke about the reason for me wearing that skirt being that I can do that Basic Instinct thing, but I have never pulled it, and with the cotton stockings I doubt there would be much excitement. I do think though, that that skirt is a very sensual if not sexual statement, to show that I am safe about being sensual in the way I dress, and even a bit more than that. That I have control over my sexuality is shown by my choice of that skirt I hope. And since sex and disability is very rarely connected I think it’s important not only to speak about sexuality as a crip but to be confident about it.

Also, I think my choice of attire is again playing with that contrast of my physical appearance and what I project with the way I dress. Being a short tiny woman often makes for me passing as a girl. So I have learnt to dress in a way girls wouldn’t dress, I wear tight fitting blouses, pencil skirts, and again tops that shows a lot of cleavages.
I distance myself in that way from a physically girlie appearance that I haven’t been able to choose myself.
However, there are also times when I choose to enhance that, and in a way the outfit described above is a kind of combined girlie/sensual outfit. In that it mixes ‘girlie things’ such as cotton stockings and flowery patterns with the colour black and the very short skirt.

Dressing in that way for a meeting gives me confidence, it gives me confidence to know that I accept my body and am willing to show it off in a sense. It also gives me confidence to know that I embrace the fact that my body is frail and tiny, but my mind is not.
In a way I think my way of dressing in these meetings is a kind of reverse to what the modern hijabies do, covering up what is assumed to be alluring but in way becoming much more alluring by doing that in a certain way.

In a way I do cover up, by wearing an all black outfit I do project a certain sense of propriety, as does the cotton stockings. The clear cut top is also a very ‘smart’ garment even though it does show a bit cleavage. I choose to cover mostly, but the short skirt draw attentions to my legs, the part of my body that is most obviously disabled.
What I thrive on in wearing these outfits is just that, to dis-empower my disability by clearly drawing attention to it in a way that I choose myself. But also to raise multiple questions in my observer’s mind apart from my disability. Why is she wearing all black? How does she carry herself in that skirt? (The truth is, I don’t ;) )

To express the disabled body as sexual and the disabled person as self assertive and confident in that way is my biggest asset in coming across as what I ultimately am, so much more than the connotations ascribed to the disabled female body, and mind.
These are just very cursory thoughts that came up just after the lecture. I am planning to return to the Islamic Fashion and my on Pentecostal background and its fashion in a later piece. I just need to look through the archives and pick out nice photos for you all before I write.

Below is a picture taken from the hijablog, the models wear fashionable turkish 'high'-hijabs. I love it, I think it's a bit "If Victorian England had been a Muslim culture..."

On this morning....

Good morning Capital, good morning blog. It’s a rather pretty sunshiny day. I am chirpy even though I slept four hours or so. I woke up by the door slamming and Landlady returning from the shops, in a white moment of fear I worried it was eleven o’clock or so. She said it was about twenty minutes past eight. And since then I have been up.

Even though we do disagree about my identity, even more so after discussions on femme and crip that took place yesterday, I really like living with her.
Even more I enjoy that she is (it seems) the only one unable to see my femme identity as a valid identity. I am glad so many glorious brainy femmes cover my back.

The time difference between Stockholm and London made things rather late last night, but so much fun had. And I am delighted to see that the much overdue episode of Fishy Femme Fiction is still coveted. And I’ll take images of close proximity muses with me all over today. I am sure I will be a smiling girl indeed.

In fact I am thinking my martial arts muses need to fight each other at some point. Oh, come on girls! It could be my birthday treat, please? Or for Christmas or New Year’s or whenever, any day is a partying day, right?

I am going back up north on Wednesday. I look forward to seeing my parents and my brother and his family. I long to see those mountains again, to breathe air free from smog. And travel through a country that is my heart, were the roads are my veins and arteries. Those roads are inside my skin now, dirt roads and crackling paving. The house. The strong tall trees that grow around these people for protection that protected me as I grew up.

I long for my father’s language, his storytelling. My mother’s fiery comments and loud laughter. My aunts’ care. Jesus. My grandmothers just steps behind me wherever I go.

I’ll rest when I am home, I might crash for real. I need to read a lot though. I figured I’d do most of it on the bus on Wednesday; four hours should get me far I think. I need to write a lot too. I wonder if I shall bring this laptop or if my parents stationary will do? Am I greedy if I want a tiny computer for my writing? Perhaps not. But I am not rich these days. For Christmas?

I have realised I need to write more cohesively in Swedish as well. As I have said earlier in this blog I have existed mostly in English these days. It’s nice, but of course a bit distancing at times. Even though it’s a language that’s close to heart it is not mine, as such.

I’ll need to work on that “Jesus-piece” for the stage too. That’ll be in Swedish so that will be good. I am thinking it’s well needed. The Pentecostal woman is all you never thought she would be. Indeed. Or more so I am perhaps.

I should get dressed now. I need to ‘femme up’ especially since I am having a meeting with a PA agency this afternoon. Two potential girls for me to interview, I really hope they want to work with me. My personal ass.’s as Kicko would say.

After the meeting I’ll have to sit around at Uni for ever to wait for my lecture. The taxi cards are a bit confining when they run low. I need to get hold of that man today too. Wish me luck.

Watch out for me while I am in you today Capital. I think I might like you now.

On love....

The following is a fictional piece I wrote in Swedish last year, and then translated to English. I remembered it a couple of days ago, and here it is for you all to read.....

Snowfall

- Your gaze burns me, he said.
As he picked the wool sweater from the floor, the gray one, and shun his body from my eyes. He wore nothing but that sweater; it scratched my cheeks as he kissed me. It smelled of him. From him. His smell was all around us, all in me it was.

It was a long time now, since we had last seen each other. But his eyes fish-hooked me, pulled me in close, to the vulnerable magnetic field that he was. His hands were strong, warm from the summers they had known.
Snow fell that night, snow rested tenderly between our loins. Snow fell in my heated memory. Snow fell on his name.

Later that same night, that same bed, with her.
- Why did you see him?, she asks.
-I had to, he loved me so dearly, I replied. And I loved him too, no I was in him and he was in me.
Her fingers wander the hills and valleys of the duvet.
- He was the only one I could ever see myself with, I said. Beside him, growing tall. Tagged in pictures by others. In this picture: Him and her. The man and the woman.

Snow falls in bed with her, snow falls on her breasts and at the back of her knees it makes puddles. His smell is in the snow. His smell is in my hair. At the back of her knees.

That night I wake up. I watch my face in the midnight-dark mirror, ghostly pale and longing. She sleeps sound. Breast rises and falls. Her hair is tangled from my fingers. Glued with sweat.

I have missed him that is why I wanted to see him. He had that wool sweater even back then, but perhaps it is not the same. Perhaps it’s a new one, one especially bought for me?
His body is covered with hair; he doesn’t need to wear that sweater. He was ashamed when we undressed that first night, of the hair making a Persian rug on his back and chest, lingering its way down.

He was fragile. I mounted him. He was never strong, I was always weak. He sought shelter in me. I held him in arms blue from cold. Felt his strong back against my breasts. He closed his eyes and into me he flew.

I picked him up and I held him, as I would a damaged bird from the shores. He was so brilliant, luminous. In pale light he shined but my gaze burnt him he said. As I would hold him he would tell stories, all of which I kept, hid in my heart. Locked away safely, sealed by my arms strong hold of his body. His breathing intertwined with mine.

The stories of his childhood dreams. The big wardrobe made from oak, the princess next to him pulling out the drawer presenting him with shoes of gold. He was a storyteller; it was what poisoned his blood. Listening was mine, and keeping. I ran my finger down his neck as morning grew outside, struggling its way through the thick mist of crushed hopes on pavements, and the sun lit the spots on my sheets.

He rolled out of my arms when he fell asleep, safely he spread his arms to cover me, and snored. He snored all night. The sounds demolished my thoughts, I couldn’t share this. I couldn’t write this, ever.

She wakes up, her eyes are restless.
- You still want him! She accuses.
- No, I say. I want me. I want who I was then.

I clime into bed with her, her eyes are burning and her fingers hard on my ribs. Snow insists on falling, snow insists on covering my heated memory of his name. Snow melts in my mind, water rises from the well, she shelters me, as one would a bird from the shore. She holds me in her arms. The melted snow rivers from my eyes, trickling down my cheeks onto her collarbones. And beyond them to the sea they float.

I tell stories, I tell that story, of him. How my gaze burnt the fabric of the sweater, how it burnt his hands strong from summer lit fields of barley. How his snoring ate my thoughts and spit them out on the floor. How I spit him out. Carelessly.

On northern livings and stories, and muses...

Yesterday morning, or day since I don’t get up in the mornings these days, my actor-wifey-muse My had written a great comment about this blog on Facebook.
I was so touched seeing that she reads my words and that they have an impact on her. It made me miss her madly and I spent most that day reminiscing about the time we spent up-north.
Rambling about the poor quality of our education at the moment, opening up like we had never done before, outlining the future and realizing that there were no ‘plan b’s’.

So, fröken Ström, this is for you:





I miss you.

I miss the miserable sate of our kitchen; do you remember that pan that everything stuck in? Do you remember how the heating system used to howl, that sofa with that iron piece in middle of it, how my back used to hit that as I threw myself down a bit too bravely?
I miss your cooking wifey, I miss that wasabi-lime spice, do they have that in Finland?

I miss the times when you stopped smoking. How the sparks would fly around you, how your green eyes would burn deeply. And I used to giggle. I am sorry.
On that black floor we shaped our dreams. And we spoke about them in that sofa, in that grimed kitchen. We frowned upon the exercises we did, we reached deep within our aching, acting souls…

We marvelled all our odd neighbours, I wonder what happened to them, like Anders? Is he still there, does he still look like he was brought back straight from the 80’s? Has he found love? Does he still eat that crappy food?
And why did he really move back from Australia?

I used to wait up for you when you were at taekwondo practice. You’d come back all bulky, in that white suit and eat with a passion. I had never met anyone which such a sense of routine. I could never beat you to that “let’s break it up, I need my sleep…” thing. You’d eat noodles and I’d ramble, ramble, ramble.

I shaped myself through those ramblings with you, if it wasn’t for those talks that we had I wouldn’t know half that I know about myself now. If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have written all that I wrote. It was because I could share it with you that it broke out, that river, that flood of words.

You were my mirror; you were the actress on which I could base my ideas about directing. On that black floor, in that kitchen and that canteen, I saw a vision in your acting. I saw a fire under your skin, and you made my knees weak and my skin shiver with joy as I saw you.

Do you remember the Tudors, the cinnamon rolls? How we fattened up when you could practice and we just ate and rambled.
Do you remember all that red wine that would make our hearts widen? Do you remember my speakers and your mp3-player? The chilly winds under our coats as we smoked on the balcony? The drunken kisses.
My notes on your door? That I made coffee while you crept out through the corridor, your brain shattered by that hang-over?

The snow. The silence. The Nordic light. How I used to read you scary stories from the Bible.
My name is legion, ‘because we are many….

Spring. Dreams of Finland of, dreams of leaving. Your cargo pants. My dresses.
“Oh wear that one your daddy brought, the chequered one”
(Haha, aww! Sweet you!)
You brought me back from that ‘acting is dirty’ crash. You told me that it was beauty, pure beauty.

I missed you when you returned to Malmö to do those tests, I was sure you were back in bad habits when you got back, all skinny and sun-kissed and happy. But love had touched ground.

I still keep that poem you wrote me, as you studied me on the floor, do you remember that night? One of the best, we played cards. You wrote about me, you wrote about the veil that covered me. That my beauty was only for certain people to see.

Do you remember you used to unzip my dress when I couldn’t do it myself?
The manly men would give us puzzled looks as you’d follow me to that. Do you remember you’d say that hugging me made you feel huge and tiny at the same time? Do you remember you and me and Isak all those nights?
You two were my test, and you assured me I had done well. That I actually could make words into flesh.

You remember we still have stuff do to, don’t you? We still have projects to work out; I still want to direct you again, and again, and again. You still need to cook for me again. I still need to share cigarettes and sips of deep red wine with you. I still need to look into your eyes as they glisten from sedation. I still need to see you on stage ‘til I die.

I know you’re busy, and calling is expensive. I hope you take care. I have mailed that letter now but it will take a few days. I hope you feel you’re doing all the best you can in a good place. I hope your fire burns as deep as ever.
And if you ever feel the need to quit smoking, please tell me and I’ll tell all your new classmates what they can await. ;)

But more importantly, fröken Ström, remember I love with all my heart. Remember those days of work and evenings of talking; remember the yogi-tea and the chocolate. Remember what we made then, the land that we measured and mapped, the rooms we built, the stories we shared, and the stories we wrote and acted.

The stories we lived.

On stone-ness...

This post is inspired by Sassafras Lowrey’s post on stone-ness on The Femmes Guide.
The post, in case you’re too lazy to read it, in which case shame on you, is about stone-ness and the identifications of stone butches and femmes. Lowrey discusses the idea that the sexuality of a stone-femme is determined and decided by the link to a stone-butch, and ultimately the sexuality of said butch. That femme's who identify as stone-femmes and/or confess to being attracted mostly by stone-butches in doing so, are portrayed in relation to their butch partners rather than on their own. And reaches the conclusion, that (of course) that is not all there is to it...

In the end of the post there is a question.

How about all of you, do you identify as a stone femme? If yes, how do you define it?

So I thought I’d be a good blogger and answer that, plus it will give some extra time away from my University reading which I really cherish at this point. Lazy schoolgirl as I am.

So, my femme identity. It’s very much built upon force, and the force ascribed to the feminine appearance. This comes from growing up in an environment that very much credited power to femininity and strength to womanhood. In my rural matriarchy the woman was never inferior but seen on her own and valued separately from whomever she chose to part with.
My mother brought me up with a strong sense of dress, she knew that she was no less a woman wearing pants, and I was no less an emancipated young woman wearing skirts. She taught me to bring consciousness into the way I dressed.
To think about how I looked and how others saw me, and she delighted in me playing with that. Having the ruffled skirts collide with a strong sense of power and a sharp mind.

I would say that my femme identity is about contrast in many ways. It’s about a very girlie appearance paired with a demanding power; it’s about enhancing my crippled body and my crooked legs and tiny hands with alluring cleavages and tight fitted skirts. It’s about enhancing what is hot about my own body and what is hot about my mind. It’s about combining my giggling and my fondness for ruffles and flowery tops with those rugged pairs of jeans and that chequered short-sleeved blouse, the three top buttons unbuttoned.

It’s about embracing sexuality, sensuality and strength. But it's also about allowing me to find piece within the fact that my body is frail and weak, that it is petite and in need of shelter from others at times. My femme identity has helped me combined all these things into something that feels good for me, that there is no juxtaposition as such in being strong, girlie, and alluring.

I would call myself a stone femme.
But that doesn’t have anything to do with stone butches, or any butches at all.
I am a stone femme since femme is my major identity, it’s that umbrella under which all my other identities, my rural-hard-working-blue-collar-Pentecostal sense of self, my crip ideas of self, my power and ideas of dominances, my longings to be weak, to crash and be lifted sheltered and comforted, can exist without any problems.

On the latter part of that sentence, I think that that longing to be sheltered and picked up draws me to people with a butch aurora around them. That I know that they are stable and strong enough pick me up not only physically but also mentally.

However, as I have spoken so much about contrast. That sense of power and physical strength within another person also gives me the greatest urge to break that, to know that I am in control of that power and the strength, that it is used to shelter and protect me as I chose.
Furthermore, I thrive on sheltering my partners especially if they are butch-ey, I thrive on that person ‘giving in’ and showing me their own weakness. I long to be that strong sense of ‘home’ and ‘safety’ for another person, I love running my fingers gently over my lovers strong back and tell them that all will be fine.
As much as I long to feeling that persons arms around my own shivering body.

To argue that

‘stone femme’/... / [is a] /..../ sexuality tied exclusively to that of /.../ butch partners /..../,

is not fair.

Not to the femmes who describe their stone femme identity as an attraction to stone butches since it insinuates that the femme is only valid through the butch, and hence marginalizes the femmes and femme as an identity of its own.

Also, it’s not fair to stone femmes as myself. To which the concept stone is not valid in relation to any other person femme, or butch, or whatever, but solely as that centre of me. That place deep inside were I am at rest, where I don’t question myself but accept all that I am. Where all that I am co-exist in every breath that draw.
My ‘stone’ is a cave, a room, within my soul.

A room with a magnificent closet, where linen blouse and massive silver jewellery hangs alongside tulle skirts and tailored power suites, leather gloves and knitted mittens, tops with their sleeves cut off, all my push-up bra’s and my knee-high socks.
Where my heavy perfume and make-up sits next to the Bible and the icons my aunt brought me from Krakow, where there is a place for me to kneel and give praise, where there is a place for me to shout and embrace the fierceness and overthrowing power that my religious conviction is.

It’s a room where I can laugh ‘til I am a wet puddle on the floor. It is a room where I can rest, a room where I can lay down why a sweet soul brings me tea and salty snacks. It’s a place were I kept the secrets people tell me, and the ones I have told them.
It’s a room with a bed where the sheets are never neat, only wet and tangled. It’s a bed where backs are arched and shivering before the hit the mattress. It’s a room where my glitzy nails can make maps on backs, where they pluck gently at the soft hair of slumbering guests.

It’s a room where sun shines in from the window making golden squares on the floor. A room that smells of lavender and sits amongst mountains and fair green shadows. A room that throbs when my heart beats. A shelter, a refuge and the origin of all my dreams.

On making it here and everywhere...

It’s eight minuets past midnight. I should go to bed since I have been getting very little and odd sleep lately. Landlady is dozing of in her bed beside me, there’s some odd film on the 1920’s depression on TV.

I have been up reading through old diary posts. I have done that a lot lately, reading through writing in Swedish since I feel like I need to regain some kind of power over that language again. Hence, writing this blog in English right now might not be constructive. But I think it’s cause I have moved, extended my roots to an environment I don’t know if I’ll find my place in after all, that brings me to expressing myself mostly in a foreign (…but perhaps not as foreign…) language.

My progress in this town has been great. I now have a fully furnished apartment which I move in to on the 21st. Next week I have a meeting with two girls that will hopefully be my new PA’s. I feel like I am on top of Uni for the most part. As always I struggle with my body but it seems alright even though I am in rough state right now.

I get along surprisingly well with Ulrika, my landlady. I have come to see so many great qualities in her during the time we have spent together. And I am getting quite sad about the fact that I am moving out and won’t be seeing her as much.
Still, I know it will be great to have my own place. To try and make a routine that will work for me and to spread my winds in this city.

To return to what my initial point was with all this though. As I have read through my old diary posts I have come to see how determined I have been about all this. Of course there were a couple of projects that I had to get rid of this year, for example that monologue didn’t happen. But it is alive and well and I will play it.

But over all I managed to write a lot, I worked my ass of as an artistic leader for a group that was so messy I tore my hair for the most part and didn’t think they liked me. Then I met a few of them in a clothing store up north, just before moving here, and they were ecstatic about my work. Telling me I had lit fires, opened their eyes, made them feel safe!

I long to do that again. I long to work and it feels good that I have been able to keep certain ideas and projects running in peoples minds even though we have been far away from each other. At a distance I have tented to what I know call my ‘home’ in this city. A social sphere of people I know cherish me, and I cherish them. Due to everything being a bit hectic since I got here, I haven’t had time to see them all. But I am really longing to see all of them soon. And bringing them together in my new home.

I guess I mostly started writing this post because I needed to spell it out for myself. To wrap my head around the fact that I am actually here, and I have made it possible to stay here. It is not a spur of luck, although a few things might have to do with luck or more so things coming together at just the right time to make my life work. I did, and I am keeping on doing it.

Anyhow, I should get that sleep now.
And for the record.
I did it- STEEEEINWWWAAAAAY!

On this evening...

The wind is blowing up in the Capital, this evening the line between worry and reality is a slivery string of smoke. Crossed.

I don't want to to dwell in case I stir things up.
But I need to write this.
There is not much physical force in me but right now I wish there were, I wish I was taller, stronger, and able to split myself.

Like in my favourite story about the Hindu god Krishna who clones himself and loves some many women in one night that the world trembles and opens up.
I wish I could be anywhere were all of you are, and whenever winds blew up and Death draws near, for they are Death's little soldiers, and fear is what drives them, then I wish I would stand behind them.
Gently place my hands on their shoulders and whisper into their ears what their deepest longing was, all of their most intimate secrets...I would tell them I knew, just what they were after, and they would crumble and cry and my nails would bury themselves deep into the smooth adolescent skin on their necks. And I would pick them up and place them elsewhere. Where they could do no harm.

I don't have any force but I have words. They beat in my veins and the flow threw my fingertips. They are not as powerful as I would hope tonight. They are no nails or grips around cocky necks, but they are all I have for you and here they are. They are made up with all my love for you, all my deepest gratitude for all that you have taught me since I have known you, and they are blazing with anger and fury, the kind of fury that makes me want to grow tall and wide.

(This is a text called "Skinnygirl the return"- it's all I every want to be for any of you when thing like this happens, this evening it is slightly altered...)


We were one and one. Separated.
I waited to hear cautious whispers before the attack.
When together we would become a body, a longing, a strength.
When we would roam the streets and eat everything that had eaten us. Crushing those hands, that touched us without permission underneath our heels. Together we would hold hands. And the world would tremble, cause the world would know that there were fires underneath our skin. That it crackled and popped with faith and strenght. And the world would know that that fire would touch ground soon, spread through dry grass. The earth would be forced to reveal the words that were spilled. Tremble in fear.
For we will return, and we will regin. Look at us twice, cause it might be the las time you see us.

On doubt...

I wrote this while waiting to attend a lecture at University. I guess I was not so chirpy yesterday.

Recently I have been feeling so shattered, and recently it has been so slow. So far from what I imagined it to be.
Recently my skin has been giving up on me.
Recently I have been existing solely in English.
I have fenced myself in by everything that is foreing.
There is a vacuum, I don't know when and how and why.
There is very little respite for me here. I am often just tired, sluggish, slow and feverish. I should get some engery, I should get some chocolate, I should get some love.

I worry about ending up outisde of the system. I worry about becoming lonely- isolated. A shattered piece of glass shivering in bed while the forever ongoing sounds from the road right outside my window just keeps pounding and pounding in my templates.

I worry I was not built for this kind of life after all. That there is a rural failure, built in from birth.
It has soon been a month, I have neglected the fact that I am behind on so many things.
It is fall, and I am detergerating, dying.

Moody, why am I so moody? What is this drive that forces me to exist outside my own cultural frame? There is a certain alienation that comes with posessing these 'abilities'.
I worry that I am fake, nothing but a fraud. Nothing but a dreamer.
Am I only good with words? Only good with the internal and what goes on inside my own head.

I must learn to become a maker, a doer.
I am wondering wether I am only an academic person because I have been forced to. If I read and wrote out of necessity rather than interest.
Where is my body in all this? Where is the validity of physical experinces this? Where are the people, the sweat, the blood, the tears, the laughter - the wailing.
Do I fit here?

On internal Sir-ness....

I have always been a really pretty girl. Like a real pretty one. It was what I was dressed up to be growing up, and what I liked being when I was a child. I was smartly dressed in chequered dresses white blouses and patent leather shoes by my mother. I chose tops with roses and tightly fitting jeans when I became older.

Then suddenly, as my body was filled with growth hormones, a jolly mixture of testosterone and steroids and my puberty was put on hold, there was a shift in me. I will not credit it only to the hormones because I believe that is a way too easy escape route, it also had to do with me leaving a context that had very subtly kept me in line.
I was sixteen, I left my village I spread my wings and I shaved my head. I looked at myself in my first ever own bathroom mirror and I said: Look I am a BOY!
I loved my shaved head. I loved what it did to my face and for sometime I did like what the hormones did to my body, it made me bulky, something I had never been and but somehow always felt like.

You see, there had always been a longing for power within me, and I had become skilled at practicing some parts of it. A subtle power of the mind, a power driven by words and tones of voice was already mine. However, this was something else. This was a kind of masculinity that I had never felt. And for a short period of time I thrived on that.

Then, as I have said in an earlier post I became unhappy with the way the hormones made me look, the bulkiness made my arms stiff and I didn’t recognise myself in the mirror. Coming off the hormones I returned to being that rose-top-fitted-jeans kind of girl again. I was home; I had just been out of my own skin a bit.

But as I look back on that period of my life and what I took with me when I came out of that I can really see what I gained. This period, even though I couldn’t see it myself then and I am sure no-one else did, allowed for me to explore a masculinity that had been ascribed to a certain kind of force and power in my culture, and it bred within me secret room where that is stored.

For it’s true, when ever you see me as girlie as I can ever be there is till that notion of a very masculine force within me.
I think it comes out the most obvious if I look at my own taste of music, below is a picture of American Folk singer Tim Eriksen, I just love that man. There is softness in his voice and the way he carries himself that just melts me. I wish I had his voice, in a sense I wish I could be him.



I speak about that a lot, the longing for a somewhat deeper voice. To not be so girlie and frail. To be able to be physically overpowering. I think it comes from a need to be taken seriously, to not be seen as tiny and sweet all the time, an urge to have others see that confidence in me all the time.

I know people say that it’s nothing that I need, that it doesn’t matter how tall you are or what you wear if you handle the world like I handle the world. I am grateful for such compliments, but even if so it’s slightly oversimplifying I think. Of course it is so that I don’t take up as much space in a room naturally as a person who’s taller than me. I need to fight to take that space, and I do that gladly and somewhat on autopilot nowadays. But that is only because I have had to do that, not necessarily that I have wanted to do that all the time.

The Sir in me is sparked by Tim Eriksen’s singing. By lyrics like this:

One bright summers morning as the fields were a-dawning
Bright Phoebus had rose and shun over the lea
I spied a fair maid as homeward was riding….
I stood in amaze and said I, bonny lassie if you’ll only consent and go to Jamestown with me
No other in this world will be mistress of my castle, there none will go clothed more finer than thee
-Lass of Glenshee, adapted by Tim Eriksen.

It is sparked by the whisky-cokes I drink when I am letting my hair down, it’s sparked by seeing butches giving me ‘the look’ when they see my glistening nails and ruffled skirts. (I instantly think “Oh I’ll show you girlie :P”)
It is lit by the limelight, and by grabbing my tits on stage as I speak of my ideas of femme in said limelight.

Even though hormones did fuck me up pretty badly during the time I took them, I think the changes of my physical appearance were important for me to realise this. To allow a certain kind masculinity to flourish, and then tucking it in were only I could see it, was crucial for the way I see myself nowadays.
For the choices I have made and how I speak of my constitution. I wouldn’t go as far as to say there was any kind of transition within in that, even though there were noticeable changes of the way my body looked and what I felt and did during that time.

What has scared me a bit when I look back on that time though is that I wasn’t given a choice as such with this. Of course I could have chosen not to take the hormones but that would have made me sickly short. It scares me that even though I assume what I got was a pretty low dose of testosterone I could still very clearly see and feel its effects. It scares me that no-one told me that this might happen, that my body as I had known it would not be the same during the time I took the hormones.

As it is today I love my female body, I cherish its frailness and the fact that I am petite. Recently, I have come to learn that my boobs are not as small as I always thought though, and I struggle a bit with wrapping my head around how to handle their alluring power ;)
But most of all I cherish my female appearance and my femme-ininity since I am confident that there is always more to me than what meets the eye.

That even though I am still that girl I was when my mother dressed me up in chequered dresses and socks with lace, I know that there has always been, and will continue to be a very feisty ‘man’ within that. One I could only see shadows of growing up, but who I carry with me close to heart these days.

Here am I, the girlie girl. Inside me is Sir.

On life just now...

Clear your mind, just be real shallow.

Alright, here is the thing, I am struggling a bit with my other writing and I haven’t written a real update about my life in the city in a while. So, that’s what I am going to do now, for whomever it might interest.

I still share generous landlady’s Ulrika’s one room apartment. It has been very good indeed. I thought it would much worse, and that we would nothing but quarrel. We haven’t had any serious quarrels, but I don’t know how much of that I should credit to not speaking about certain matters.
Even though it has been lovely to stay I think that the close proximity is taking its toll in a somewhat subconscious manner. I sense that I tense up, since I feel constantly monitored and I am quite sure she does too. It’s not that we don’t like each other, just that one needs privacy.

However it’s only a matter of another week I would hope, since I now have my own apartment, a tiny tiny place on something called Cherry Road. It will not be large, but I hope that well furnished and lived in it will at least be mine.
I am looking forward to some kind of refuge there a place were I can rest and reach out from. Where I can schedule my own time and making things work for me.
I long to invite people to my place and drink tea and ramble, I long for winter there, smells of saffron and cinnamon. Christmas cards, decorations, laughter.

I am going there to look at it tomorrow. And moving all my stuff on Wednesday, I hope I have calculated everything right so my things will fit.
Babylon proved to be kind in the end so I am hoping to meet a new PA soon too. In a broad sense all is fine. I am happy about what I have managed to make in the short time I have been here. It has just been a little more than three weeks, so a lot has happened even though I haven’t thought about that so much.

There has been a refuge for me. An apartment with more than one room, where one can eat meat, and were a deep blue sofa, like my Sistah has, will swallow you. The newlyweds Mrs and mrs Krieg have taken me in, and I am so, so happy and grateful for that.

I look forward to make art in this city. I am writing, but I am always doing that, I long to work on my words and that shared reality with above mentioned mrs Krieg. I am thinking it will be fabulous more than fabulous; it will be strong, vibrant, and glorious. Once we get started…

So that’s it. I have cleared my mind. I have other posts planned for this blog soon but I need more time, and some kind of solitude again.

Love people, bless your hearts.

On friendships, ending

I did not think that I would devote time to this on my blog but recently it has been, yeah, pissing me off.

I have this friend, or more so I used to have this friend. Our parents knew each others from the Pentacostal Congreations they where part of but my parents had left. My friends aunt and my mother are best friends, right now hiking in the hills, I hope they're having a good time.
Anyhow, we became friends in middle school. I am not sure how it happened, I guess I broke away from click from kindergarden and then I was seated with this person and one of the funniest boys I have ever know, Robin, they made the otherwise horrendous time in middle school okay.

Then we where BFF's until I moved away for the IBO programme and kept up our realtionship through out that time and up to this year.

You see, now this person is totally ignoring me. She won't replie to my congratulations on her engament on Facebook or answer any of my messages for her, even though I see she replies to others. I have send her multiple texts and emails and have gotten nothing back.

I think this is really odd since I see such a clear cut between being friends and then not being that all. Or more so acting like we have never been. There hasn't been a conflict or an issue between us, she hasn't been angry with me, neither I with her.

Having traced this down with my mother I have comed to the conclusion that this person clearly has a promblem with what I have 'becomed', she has not said, it that's, true but I feel it.
I have felt it over the last couple of years, I know I have kept silent and I haven't spoken up about the real me. I couldn't spread my wings inside that heterosexual monogamus cage. And I am sure they knew. In fact they were the first people the assume that I were, or would be a lesbian.
Please people, I am not a lesbian unless I say I am, okay!!

Recently I have been ticked off by people deciding for me, telling me what I am or not listening to me when I say I dislike certain kinds of identies that they ascribe to me. It's been trickling down on me, nibbling on my stamina and making me warry. Please when I tell you about something I don't like, don't say it's "nothing" only nothing is nothing.

To return to the initial subject. I understand that this person and the kind of click that she, and I used to, belongs to are having a hard time to wrap their minds around me these days. It's not that I don't get that. And I would rather not have them in my life if they are not accepting of they way I will lead it.
However I would like for her to speak up about that, to say that she cannot realte to what I am doing right now, and then we can have a discussion about that. I want her to say "Hi!" at least or "thank you for your kind words concerning mine engament..."

For now I mourn something that we once had. But it is also somewhat of a double nature, I mourn having her in my life, yet I know I was not all I could have been then.
I am sad it had to come to this. But I do know that if she won't accept me they way I am , that is no friendship.

For my very real and caring friends.
Here is a verse from the ever so lovely Tim Eriksen's song "Friendship" from his newest album "Every sound below" (I am obessed with that man)


Friendship to every willing mind opens a heavinly treasure
There may the sons of sorrow of find sources of real pleasure

Thank you!