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lördag 3 oktober 2009

On laziness...

Instead of getting to that read-athon I had planned for now, I figured I would have some more of this delicious brown sugar-cinnamon coffee and write a blog post.

I realised I hadn’t blogged in quite a while. There has been a couple of rushing weeks, I needed to study for a written exam and settle a few PA related issues, as well as hang around with great people and have some great talks and so.

But nowadays I enjoy solitude in my own apartment on Cherry Road, in the middle of the upper-class area Östermalm. It’s rather silly, these apartment are not jolly at all, and if I had a choice I would live further out of the city and enjoy a bit more of good grocery stores and green areas. But I love how close my apartment is to University, and how I walk by these beautiful 19th century houses just when I go out to by milk. Buying said milk is not as cheap as I would have wished though. My plan for now is to look around and see where the closest and cheapest store is for further life in this up-town hood not to ruin me.



My PA’s are so far a very good bunch of brainy and sweet girls. There is one them who still haven’t worked with me, the gorgeous butchy one, I am not sure about just how I will react around her. My God she is hot!

From my “kitchen window” I look out over the lovely yellow and terracotta 19th century houses with massive poise and French balconies they sigh under blushing evening skies as I write. This morning I so smoking coming out of it’s chimneys, I assumed there was a stove being lit. My mind wanders to my writing and the semi-Victorian realm. I have neglected that a lot lately, but I am thinking I will get to it tonight.

After I have finally read through all that I need to read through. It is a good thing I am a good reader when apparently I am an incurably lazy schoolgirl. Next week is going to be a bit of rush too; I am having lots of lovely visitors. So I will really need to read through all these texts now in order to be able to spend time with them.

The rural matriarchy has paid a quick visit too, my mother and my aunt came here for Thursday day and evening, it was lovely to see them but I really wished there could have been more time.

Even if so, I still don’t feel isolated. Being just by myself is lovely for now. It gives my imagination the space it needs to twist and turn and wobble in my mind. To stretch itself and widen as think about what to do with myself.



Time moves really quickly here though, it feels like I have only just got here and it feels like I have been here for a hundred days. But I guess I live here now, for real.
My aunt asked me on Thursday, how long I would live in Stockholm? I said I didn’t know, but I couldn’t see myself having kids in this city.

So ‘til I get knocked up I’ll be here. Inshaallah!

Now, even though I really don’t want to. I must read.

måndag 14 september 2009

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.

onsdag 12 augusti 2009

On the joys of writing and "other" languages

Having picked up on blogging again just now, and through it being given the joy to move on with all my other writing which I haven’t taken time to write recently. I have come to realise again just how much I love writing. And I have realised just how important it is to have a space like this blog, where even though others can read what I write I am free to ramble as much as I want.

I am writing a new Fiction for the FFF project, or more so a new chapter to the initial story that made that project up. It has been resting for quite a while since there have been too much stress around to really get the chance to write. But as I write on it now, I see it might have been just what I needed when things were the most stressful, to escape in its purest form into a world that I know and that I create as I go along in it.
However, I know my process of writing is not like that. I need a pretty long time span to build up a world within in me, a world with places, rules and peoples that I can explore once I sit down to write (writing happens mostly in stream of consciousness, which is in itself a form of escapism) hence, I can’t write before I know at least something about what I need to find out while doing so.

While attending my creative writing class in Bollnäs (reminds me that I still haven’t told my teacher I can’t follow trough with that as well as University this autumn…must do that) we were often given tasks to write quickly, in ten, fifteen minuets or so. I always managed to do really well then and it’s puzzled me. It wasn’t that I went around with a mapping for several stories in my head just waiting for that ten minuet chance to spit them out. Usually, when being alone in front of my computer that approach wouldn’t have worked.

Then I realised it was about being forced to write. That when not given any escape route but rather a very blunt entrance into the world of words my mind was made blank. And through that blankness other thoughts, those I hadn’t planned and hadn’t thought about for nights on end when laying awake in bed, had the chance to emerge.

Having done it often enough while in class I now do it every day. Take ten to fifteen minuets to clear my mind and just write. I have found that there is a theme to all of these writings even if they shift with my mood for the day. Sometime I might look through them and make something of it.
One of them have already become a stage piece entitled “Är det där min kvinnlighet…ska jag betala för den?” (”Is that my womanhood….will you charge me for it?”) and was preformed early this spring. (See the blog post entitled “On absolute identities”)

I feel like I am wandering off. I wanted to say that having found that blank space in my mind is really such an advantage. Now I find I plan as much as before, but then enter that ‘blank’ space when I actually write. So that I have all the ideas within but make no deliberate choice about what comes when and where, the process of that is a true delight and such escapism it makes my heart flutter. Also, I find it gives me a much stronger lust for writing since I too want to know what will ‘happen next’, so to speak.

In this space, as well as in the fiction project, I write in English. I am a self-proclaimed linguistic anglophile, that is to say English as a language is my biggest ‘turn on’. The English culture not as much, mostly it puzzles me or makes me laugh nowadays. But written and spoken English has a very special place in my heart.I don’t fully know why it is so. I guess it has a lot to do with being born on the 4th of July and being told America was awesome when growing up because of it. But I think it lies even deeper within, that it is one of those things that perhaps I shouldn’t know the reason for. That it’s a quirk in some sense, something that constitutes me but on the other hand shouldn’t be looked into in search of “why’s” and “how’s” since there will likely be no reasonable answers. Other than it’s that escapism again. That English served well in a time when I daydreamed a lot (like I am not still…) that it created a parallel to the well known, but yet a space which I could learn to master.

I think of the two languages as two rooms that mirror each other. I find the two ways of expression very similar and in some ways I find that they mirror various sides of me, my thoughts and feelings. Usually I know if a feeling serves best to be described in one language or the other. I know some thoughts and feelings are only good in Swedish and the other way around.


Anyhow, it doesn’t matter how much pretentious rambling I build up around my fascination of the English language
(I wonder where the need to do that comes from. I suspect it come from an inherited idea of rural inferiority, a feeling of shame and guilt, like I am possessing something that is truly not mine and somewhat above me, when I speak of the English language as a part of me. I find I justify my likening of the language and my vivid use of it whenever I do, saying things like ‘it’s not cause I want to be cool, it’s a soul thing’. And it is…) when it comes down to the nitty gritty it’s all about pleasure. I love the sound that the English language makes when someone speaks it. I the love sensation of it as it rolls of the tip of my tongue. I love how’s it’s composed and how its words look when printed in ink or on a computer screen.

Mostly I love to try and tame it, to make it what I want it to be even if it’s not my mother-tongue. To be frank Swedish as I know of it now is not my mother tongue either, it’s a language full of “ô”’s and “he”’s and “je”’s.

“Je kan’t säga va sûm gjer Äng’skan tä ett tôcke vakescht språk,e. Me je vät att ho ä he.”

”I couldn’t say what it is that makes English such a beautiful language. But I know it is.”