On: Restrictions

Restrictions

It has been ages since I felt this way. A throbbing lust, a stark stiffness in my arms, hands, thighs.
It’s has been ages since I felt allured, drawn to and interested in someone like her. The muscles. The strength. Her fringe, her smiles.

It was ages ago since I thought I could tame someone like her. Ages upon ages since I saw someone that strong bow their head for me. I am so used to other things now. Smooth and carrying, warm scoldings, soothing strokes against blushing cheeks.

It has also been ages since I felt so scared. Scared of what I might be able to offer. Scared to be perceived as a freak. Scared to be incompatible with someone else. Scared to be declined, brushed off, put out. Scared to be invalid, undesirable.

- Why would you pursue her? she ask.
- Oh, it’s because I think I could break her. Tame her. Otherwise I wouldn’t try.

I am surprised at my own answer. Sometimes I don’t believe the power I subscribe myself. Sometimes I don’t see it myself. Even if I know it.

I think about that other one. The same muscles. Cameo-pants and sweet smiles. Stubbornness. How we weren’t compatible. How the worst thing she could be was dependent.
How she leaned in one day and said: You know, you could decide for me if you wanted…

How I see her in this new person. There is something. A bashfulness and sweetness, something that contradicts butch-aesthetics and swelling triceps.

What you didn’t think you knew about yourself, I shall find it.

That which you think others don’t see. I will see it.

I am writing this to muster up courage. I am writing this to call up on guardian angels of strong crippled, poor, marginalized femmes.

Angie. Mother of a whole house. Sister in deficiency. Hold my hand. Help me walk the Dating ball.
Grandma, voice unheard, you who’s bobby pins I have inherited. They have been places where you would never have gone. Help me gather strength passed down by hard work and sisterhood. How one is dressed one is perceived, how one speaks one is heard. Help me dress the part.

I look back at old writing. I guess I knew something then I have now come to doubt. Or at least I played the part of knowing it. Nonetheless, then I wrote some things that I cant even think now. That I was entitled. I knew of bloodlines of resistance and power. I knew of a strength and confidence that equaled calm desire. I knew I could do it.

My hands at the back of her neck. I long to lock her arms behind her back. I long to tell her to and see her comply without the use of force.

Another club, another town. I speak of how voice and intent is the only thing that matters. That with good communication and strong will anything can be achieved.

Why is it then that I cannot speak now? That I am so convinced I have nothing to offer her. When I know I have everything to offer others.

That club in the other town. She blushes as she asks me. I don’t understand why anyone would blush in relation to me. The promoter of the club, the purple godmother of an empire tells me:

- You know, if you wanted to you could have anyone here now….

It’s as alien as anything. I am so programed to be the one pining and sighing. Not the one acting.

Her smooth skin. How I want to run my nails across it.

The sex-positive nature of things. The shame in admitting one doesn’t think anyone would want you. The lack of power that it gives.

Don’t pity me, obey me.

I have a feeling this is now or never.

That it has little to do with her, even though it has everything to do with her, and more to do with unlocking the notion of myself as an agent subject. Learning by doing.

I must overcome this hump.

We shall dare the leap, mother Angie and I. If I can take on a system of discrimination I can take on the ideas they have created in me.

The shame, the doubt, the anger.

What you think others wont see in you. I will see it

On just now...

Alright here I am again, and I have nothing more fabulous crip-femmish to report. But I have realised I shouldn't go around investigating that ambition too much. Rather, I have med the concious choice that whatever I write from now on is by default fabulosly crip-femmian since I have written it.

As I predicted in the previous post I will be deadly poor this spring, it's not fun and I do believe I am quite stressed about it. But I am sure I'll manage... (if I show up on you doorstep hungry and puppy eyed you mustn't refuse to feed me, okay...)
The cough still lingers, which is very tireing and makes me feel odder and odder, I am quite sure it's nothing more than a very slowly developing cold though.

Otherwise, I am quite at piece. However, I have realised a few new and perhaps not so healthy emotional obsession but for once I will not bring them out into the ether, again I think it's best not to investigate that as much.
Certain frustrations are stil growing and the sense that things are still very far away in this city is ever present.

Yesterday though, I attended a great lecture and stayed on to discuss my Pentecoastal upbringing and my intrest on what that environment does to the children and grandchildren of it's inhabitans.
I also bonded extensively with a older man from my course, we talked about all things, crip, political, narrative and access related. So yes, things are happening in this city, however slowly and perhaps not in the areas where I would want them to.

Anyhow, I wasn't supposed to stay long so to speak, I am off to bed to cure this cold off - and worry a bit about my financial under the sheets.

On here and now

I haven’t blogged in ages, and right now I am not wearing my glasses (it’s something about this apartment, I never wear my glasses…)

Anyhow, I have been home in Hälsingland, it was lots of snow and minus 30 degrees Celsius for more than three days. I saw my family which was lovely but slightly turbulent since a lot decided it had to happen in the days between Christmas and New Year ’s Eve, but all is well now.

I struggled with my DI application for the directing course all of the time I was there and as my computer decided it didn’t want to live anymore as I was in the middle of writing I have just now finished it – some of it by hand, oh my God, and sent it in today.

I try not to think about it ‘because when I do, I only come to fear that I fucked up majorly and that they will laugh at me when they read it. Although I have hope, and I hope that they will see what I envision for my directing work in particular, and for theatre in general. And like that.

So now I am back in Stockholm and the heating in my apartment is a little schizophrenic and doesn’t really know if it should be freezing or sickly hot, mostly it’s freezing though. I am really beginning to think that this apartment isn’t doing all that it should be doing for me in a disability access kind of way, and I hope to relocate this spring.

Future-wise I have really no idea what to do if I don’t make the DI course. I guess I will need to get at job, or enroll at University again after summer, even though academia really isn’t my cup of tea. Blood-less pretentious ramblings at most times.

But I should like to be able to work at my monologue seriously again at some point, and write a lot. So I will try and make that happen.

On directing and the process of that, I long to finally get to work with that Death piece this spring. I know that it will be a slightly stressed period of time for my actress, given the finishing time of her PhD. (How awesome is that? That is so awesome! Go girl!)

And I will try to blog frequently about what we do with that text and the things we explore in our bodies as we bring it to flesh. I am so excited sine I know I will be brutally swoon by that glorious muse-actress of mine every minute of that process and I am not sure I will be all sane from having her working my words.

I do hope for this time in the capital to be freer from stress that comes from just plain living as I have had to worry too much about getting around in this city and living here. As I have now got my taxi card I do hope I will be able to create some more of a social life.

So in short for this spring I long to do what I do best, I long to make words into flesh with one of the most beautiful people I have ever met, I long to make personal sense of academic ramblings, I long to write and escape the mundane the way I have always done. I long to make use of all the facet’s of myself on stage at some point and feel the current of the stage as it throbs in my veins.

And of course I long to descend those crazy stairs to the warm belly underground, and I long for bent necks and girls in neat dresses. To be able to put the color back on shivering pale cheeks.

Well that was that then, some kind of report of how have I been, and how I want to be.

Tomorrow I intend to go shopping for birthday gifts and try and see if I can’t get hold of the taxi card people and see what they are up too.

Survival was my theme before Christmas. Now I do hope for a bit more living.

And for this blog again to not be the howls from the darkest of pits but the crip femme contemplation resistance that I wished for it to be.

On this evening

Blue days, as the sunlight leaves this place even before I get out of bed.
I am really, really tired today. It comes from physical strain, the strain of three and a half carless hours shopping with butchy PA. But it has made me gloomy. I can’t push it back now. The Blue. It’s November and resistance is futile.

I didn’t think I would get these feelings again, these fall depressions, these feelings of being caged in. I called a very dear and old friend last night, you know one of those you once said you’d marry, if things had just been right. And as I spoke to her I felt the tears welling up.
I am a bit sad now, I said. I feel it, I feel left out even though nobody is leaving me out, as such.

And I felt it today as well, you know as a sledgehammer right between my breasts, a little below that spot where the bra rests on the bone. BAM!, it said. You’re confined it howled.
It hits me now and then, that I actually am in this city, but I havent thought about it for a while.

It’s tricky. I don’t want to be needy; I don’t want to be that person that grows sad from the thought of hanging up the phone. Last time it hit me it was that. Just that.

She said: Bye…
I said: … yeah… bye…
She said: Are you okay?
I said: … No….

I am kind of hoping it’s just November that makes me cry now. I don’t want this to be permanent; anyhow I kind of know it’s not. I was alright; I was more than alright today when I strolled that mall and bought those things.
Still, I came home, I slept, I ate and it hit me.

Swedish works better to sum it up today….

Något gräver ut sorgens tomrum, ekande, under bröstbenet.

On paralysation

This is not what I have been intending to post here. There should have been a fabulous post on my mother life, or more so the way I picture my mother’s life, a couple of weeks ago.
But then I had to study really hard for this exam, and while doing so let other things slip (i.e all that wasn’t my exam).
And recently I have been feeling quite down from being so far behind on my paper, I feel like I haven’t written shit, it’s true I haven’t and the deadline is Tuesday.

I don't know how I ever got to be in this pit, I was pretty chirpy about this all last week. I felt like I was getting my life together finally, I even got the flu shot.
And yes, due to that I had fever and couldn't get out to bed for my Doctors appointment on Thursday and then I was right back on the slope.

Today I experienced, even though I don't like writing it I must, angst. Real angst. I went to lie down for a bit and had set my alarm on my cell phone in order to get up and continue my reading for the paper. And the alarm rang and rang over and over again and I just let it do it. I couldn't make myself to get out of bed. I wasn't tired, and I knew very well indeed how much I needed to write that paper and read those articles.
I felt a sensation I haven't felt for years, that one when you feel like there is carbonic acid in your chest. And I just laid there and felt the tingle of angst in my chest, and there was nothing I could do about it.

So having tossed and turned for almost two hours underneath my duvet and having serious thoughts of just giving up and going to bed for real right then and there, I got up and hade a real late dinner (well, at least by Swedish standards..)


I am intending to make this an early night and try my best again tomorrow. I am not getting a B on this one people. Let’s just pray I hand it in.

I think it’s the theory that gets in the way. I could write a hundred thousand papers on clothing and external objects worn in popular culture that restricts the human body and their influence on the performance of their wearer, if it wasn't for feeling the pressure of always having to reference the most adequate theory that deals with that. Bloody academia, set me free!
Maybe that’s the way to do it, just ramble my heart out and look up theories that fit that later…God, I don't know.

I just hate myself for having procrastinated this so much, this is insane. Truly. I did have an exam for sure, but I have had five days!
I am going to pull it off, of course, I pull everything off. And furthermore, this is just the way November is, and certainly the way it is right now. I am just going to do it.
But I just can’t help but hate the fact that I am not doing as well as I could be.

And I wonder, this city, this new life. It’s has only been a semester and I try to convince myself of that, things will pick up, things will be working later. Still….
Ah, never mind, never mind. I should go to bed now, and try not to be paralysed by the mind any longer.

Saviour visit Thy plantation
Grant us Lord a gracious rain
All will come desolation unless Thou return again
Lord revive us, Lord revive us all our help must come from Thee

Keep no longer at a distance
Shine upon us from on high
Lest oh Lord of Thy assistance every plant shall droop and die
Lord revive us, Oh revive all our help must come from Thee

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?