On getting down to the nitty gritty...

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang!

I am sorry but I am getting a bit fed up now. Slightly sick and tired of how incapable people are of seeing what this is really about. The fact that what I do still evoke so many strange feelings. Why is it that there are so many things we handle better than this…
Why is it so hard to respect personal choice, why is it so hard to respect that the consensual choices of others might not be what you like. But, the opportunity for others to make those choices and turn away from lives prescribed to them by gender, class, race, age, size…whatever you would like, is what makes this world worth living in.

I am sorry but we must get personal now. This here world of assumptions of femininity is not big enough for the both of us. I am telling you, dear creators of “open” and “accepting” spaces, do not fuck with me… and beware, cute is a scare!

……

I am in the tackiest of clubs. I have told her to sit up straight to make it is easier to endure the strange feeling of being a zoo animal, little girls don’t come here. Little girls with frames don’t come here. They don’t wear silk blouse. They don’t wear silver crosses. Amongst leather pants and whips hanging from a belt, amongst eyes that measure me as a falsely conscious little girl not yet having found her place at the feet of the patriarchy.

I survive that evening because I cling on to her physically. When they look at us I look at her. There is a fatigue in her eyes the same as mine. A tire of those eyes that invade us, that measure our bodies and what we do.
When she is preoccupied with other things and I roam the vast club on my own I seek the eyes of other Ladies.
A woman with her boi on sofa…the knife slowly caressing hir fingers… She looks at me with that same fatigue, we sigh and I nod at her. I know what it’s like.

That’s when he approaches me. I must confess I didn’t like him that much prior to this either. He is the invasive kind, the exploiting kind, everyone in a space like this are vehicles for lust and that is his lust, he thinks.
I have been waiting for her which I clung to, who I told to sit up straight so that something would be endurable in this place, he looks at me with that icky middle aged man smile.
“Aaaw, little miss…” he says. “How are you?”

I am shocked. I am shocked at how easy he does it. How easy he belittles and ignores me. I am sure he knows what I do. I am sure his partner, who has seen me work stripes into shivering strong backs many a time before, have told him what I do. I am sure he knows that even if I am a girl I am no one’s girl.
I hope my eyes burn with that famous black soot I have been told they have when I tell him that I feel fine although I haven’t been able to play here since I didn’t feel safe.
Yet when I leave I am turned off, furious, hurt and sad. My invisibility was so hard to face. His, the middle aged man’s, part in that so obvious it stung my eyes.

…..

Let’s talk a bit about what he couldn’t cope with. Power. Girls with power. Let’s talk a bit about why the idea of the dominant woman is still scary. What have I done? What are we doing?

I grew up in an environment that respected my femininity, and the power I ascribed to it. I call my upbringing a matriarchy – my mother and her sister, my cousins and me, formed a bond of femininity and power. It stemmed from my grandmother and her sister, from a strong sense of survival and belonging.
I never knew of no patriarchy, I never knew that women were not allowed to have power. I never knew I wasn’t allowed to decide for others if they wanted me to do that.

And I was always just as puzzled when I saw the mindfuck in their eyes. In the eyes of men and women alike, when it didn’t match. When my body didn’t match my mind.

Or that’s not right, I match perfectly find with all my expectations of myself. It’s their expectations that I don’t match.

You see it’s not about exploitation, not about abuse and not about oppression. The way she cooks for me and the man, always a man, peeks in at us and asks me if I shouldn’t do that – as the girlie girl.

I don’t tell him to fuck off. I tell my glorious butch girl to tell the “nice” man that that is not how we do things. And she does because she loves me. She loves me when she squirms under my touch, when she bends her neck for me. And I love her when I do it, I love her the most when she gives all of her to me – I love her the most when we rip that patriarchy up by the roots, when I insert the matriarchy that fed and clothed me into the void that the loss of man-made worlds made in her.

I never understood why this was challenging. I never understood why women, girls, I, couldn’t do this? What prevents me? What would force me to do otherwise?

I am sorry but my mother, the Pentecostal, married, heterosexual mother of two, never taught me any of this. She taught me to hold my head high and give myself with love to others, and they will love me too.

So please, put your assumptions, your false notions of female sexuality and femme identities elsewhere. Please don’t put them in my lap – and mind you, don’t force them down my throat. I don’t really do that shit you see.
Ask the girls who have been mine, butches, femmes, bois and grrls alike what they felt when they were with me. What we did when we shared that love my mother told me to share. How we catered to one another.
Ask the patriarchy if it hurt when we ripped its roots.

…..

I leave that club numb. We agree it was bad night, a really bad night. I give her a quick hug before I get in the cab. I tell her she will pay for dragging me all the way there…. She knows I am more serious about then I look. I giggle as she blushes.
On my way home I write a letter of memories and paths travelled for all the women and men that ever giggled sweetly at me assumed I was nice and humble only because I was cute.

To patriarchy with love, best wishes - little girls of the matriarchy!

On this fall

I am not keen on making this, my blog, a place where I wring myself and all my innermost feelings inside out and put them on display.
I am not keen on how this, my blog, has become a pit of the darkest of loneliness, cold feet and doubt.
When it was supposed to be a profound and burning masterpiece on all things fair, femme, crip….

Well, the truth of that matter is this. I am not really okay these days. This has been one of the most bizarre falls in my entire life. I have made progress, at least on the map. I relocated from A to B, from the rural to the anti-rural from roads made from grovel to the Capital, and people told me it was brave and mature and that I was doing something extraordinary, and under my breath I muttered… fuck you… kindly but sternly… fuck…fuck you..

And I made my way, from close proximity with a very fiery landlady and her bratty cat to my own chilly and draughty apartment, made more and more my own, and less and less and anonymous set of walls.
I struggled; I can’t say I didn’t do that. But I kept my head up. And they said I was brave again, and they wondered how I was doing, like really doing…and I whispered fuck….fuck you…kindly but sternly fuck you all…

For a couple of weeks all was blissful between my new four walls. My very own room. Katarina came from Oslo and we indulged in food and drank beer and laughed till we cried like we always have. And she went away again and I was strong, I kept my head up and I was fucking going to make this…kindly but sternly I said fuck…fuck you…

I got straight B’s, I read all my books, wrote all my papers. Drank rivers of tea. Marvelled my own work as in throbbing words on paper, as in striped backs, as in smiles on other peoples’ faces. And I dreamed of lifting that very strong butchy chin and whispering kindly but sternly…fuck you….please let me…

Slowly but steadily and not at all kindly, confinement dawned on me. I was still brave, I was still strong and determined and I still knew how to do it they said.
I remember calling her, telling I could never do it, that they would never pick me amongst thousands and thousands…she laughed in that sniggering manner and said she would have to humbly disagree with that.
But it’s true, the deadline is creeping up, and I am not even halfway there and I am not sure, I am not ever sure I will do it. I worry deeply that I just can’t.

There is only a tiny sea between us, it’s not even a sea it’s a lake. And she came to visit, and she left me a shivering, shattered mess of girl. And it’s pretty much downhill from that, I couldn’t make it out. They said I had been too nice, that I’d given too much, I said I should have listen to my mother…and I still dream of plucking up the courage to say. Fuck you, perhaps a bit unkind and maybe not all that stern, but fuck you…

I don’t remember December much, confinement hogtied me. I remember the 5th of it. A bunker, razzle dazzle, short short skirts, silk blouses, crosses, laughter, shivering knees, success.
Then I think I just slept and slept, and sometimes people visited me. And I made my way out and up on that stage, and transfixed my gaze on to her and her striped shirt was the most gorgeous shirt I had ever…. And she said, were you nervous? And I said no… and they said I was brave, and I was strong and determined and I filled my lungs with victory and held my tongue…fuck…no …bless you, kindly but sternly…bless you.

Now I am back at point A and last night I was snowed in at my cousins house, and all was warm and funny, and we spoke of my grandfather who would have been a 93 years old yesterday, and I told them how much I worried and they didn’t understand why, because people very rarely do… and didn’t care about they fact that they didn’t get it….

I am back up tomorrow. Because I am always back up, bouncy me, right? And I am not giving up now. Because that would mean that this fall the most odd and heart-sickening of falls would be it, and that’s not fair! I am worth a lot more as any last chapter of anything….

On crip concentration

I am trying to concentrate. Trying my best to write a paper of the notions of dressed and dressed up. It is going very slow, I have all week but I wanted to have it done by now.
The reason it’s slow is not my own, I have read up on all the literature I have made an outline, and I have written half of it already. No, it’s not me; it’s what’s around me these days.

You see a concentrating as a crip demands a different kind of attitude then concentrating overall. Right now I need to concentrate despite being confined in this apartment until I get my new taxi card, which I so slow I haven’t even gotten to sending in the applications yet. You see, before I actually do that I need a medical permit, and to get that medical permit I need to go see a doctor, and to see a doctor I need to leave the house, and yes when leaving the house I might need a taxi-card.

I have arranged things with my PA’s so that I at least can get my self to and from University for my lectures. Otherwise I have no idea. And all the people I call and ask about this, the people I assume should know how things work and be able to give me straight answers about when and how and why and where, they seem to know just as much as me or even less.
It always puzzles me how they can say things that are so bizarre you wonder if your life is a sitcom or it the person on the other side is an alien with no manners whatsoever.
Now follow, an authentic conversation just had today…

I: But how do I make this work? I am stranded in my apartment otherwise!
Bureaucracy of Babylon: Well I don’t know, people don’t move here often…..

What in heavens name is that! Well know I don’t know what to do when a hurricane hits, you know we don’t get that often. Oh you say you’re dying, oh well that has never happened before.
You are saying you are unable to leave your apartment other than together with your PA’s and only at the times that you have scheduled them to come and pick you up…oh well, you are saying there is from now on no spontaneity in your life. You worry about being isolated. Well you see, I couldn’t help you even with the simplest questions about that, people don’t move here often so I wouldn’t know.

Well, let me tell you why people don’t move here often. It’s because this bureaucracy of Babylon is a set of bondage ropes around my shivering arms, it’s because you cripple me and make me invalid. You make sure my studies are not worthwhile, you make sure my concentration is lacking since I need to take breaks to cry and scream with worry.
You make me question if my time is well spent in this city when there is nothing but trouble here. You make me stare at this screen at the black words hammered down on the electronic whiteness through a haze of tears and anguish.

I am not built for this, I worry too much anyway. My heart is that of a rabbits, jumping quickly under collar bone. My constitution is one in need of safety and warmth. Uncertainty makes me ill.

Somewhere I do realise that this is a dam breaking. I haven’t cried about any of the hardships I have encountered since I moved here, I have only pondered through stoically, so I should have seen it coming now. When am partially safe in my own home and most of the things work out for me, then there is a space for me to crash like this.

I came to this town with visions, and I do still keep them. I am sorry Babylon but there is now way in which you will break me. I know you aspire to do that, even if you haven’t verbalized it for yourselves yet.
You think that crip girls like me are satisfied with little. Well, dearest Babylon – listen up when I say I am never satisfied. That is also part of my constitution. That of the escapist dreamer who saw herself dressed in Victorian velvet walking through the vast room of a mansion when she grew up. You say that is way too much. You say I should settle in with a day job and a few swims in the heated disabled people’s pool for leisure activities.
I say give me that mansion. Give me that an apartment in the city. Give me spaces to write and perform within. Give me my lovers’ heated kisses on my neck, give me the traces of my presceans across their bodies. Give me whisky; give me the force of darn good song. Give me the softness of tea and milk and the warmth of my army.
Give me all the heavy scented perfumes there ever was in the world.
GIVE ME MY LEATHER!

Bless my family, my army, my muses and my flexible PA’s when all is madness as it so now.
And I know there are loving people above me, who brush away the clouds gently as they look down, there is a face that looks like mine, there is curly hair and swelling hearts and there is a great uncle.
Who looks at me as he smiles, because he knows what fighting is, and perhaps he wished he could have gotten all that I have know. I wish I could have met him, we could have sang songs; he could have told me it was going to be hard, this crippled life.
But now, as she his fringe falls in his eyes, and I recognize the shape of my own lips on his face I know that he’s saying.

På dôm lisch jänta!
(Go get them little girl!)

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 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 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 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!

On living in the Capital

Here is an open letter to my new home town

Hello Capital,

I am here now. But I am sure you have seen me around and out and about in you. I mostly get around in yellow cabs, but it doesn’t make me feel like a New Yorker. You may not have known that but I wanted to live in New York when I was younger. I bought a map over New Yorker City and spread it across the floor of my room among the Blue Mountains. I traced the boarders of Manhattan with the tip of my eleven year old finger; it’s purpled nailed polished chipped away. I had used the same nail polish to paint hearts on the red leather of my wallet it never held much money in its belly, but it held all my dreams of a new and vibrating life.

I longed to grow up, I long to write whenever I wanted to – and have the chance for others to read it. I longed to walk down a street with red and yellow autumn leaves soaring above my head. To open the door to any kind of room where art happened, to step into the dark of theatre, the serenity of a writers den or the messiness of an artists studio. Then it was just as much the images that those ideas conjured within in me as the actually activity that took place in these spaces, that intrigued me.

And you see Capital, it’s happening now. I am here and I soar in cabs. I get asked to speak my mind at dress rehearsals of friend’s productions and I must say you, dear Capital, spark my imagination. I see people I want to tell about, I hear conversations I want to finish in text. There are places that need to be filled here. There are venues that I can use; there are people who want me to use them.

I feel awaited now that I am here in you Capital. People are happy to have me here. It feels good when actually getting to live here is still hard. Because you see Capital I am still struggling not only to survive here. But to live.

The people I have been in touch with have a hard time wrapping their minds around how I want to lead my life in you. They say:
“What… are you saying you don’t know how your days will be scheduled from day to day?”
“Ah meetings you say, talks about creative processes, lectures, rehearsals….and you want that to be flexible…oh yes…”

I don’t know in what kind of life these people live, if them and I even share the same city. Dear Capital, you for one should know, do we?

I want to ask them if they plan every day to the minute, if they would feel okay with not deciding about their own time.

It’s a struggle, this really is.

But I keep confidence that once all this struggle is over and I have finally settled down here. All will be as I wished. I long to make art in this city. I long to work with people who love me and respect me and se me for who I am. And I know I will…I know that the projects that I have planned and the subjects I want to dive down into with my studying. Thing are coming together really good in that sense.

And I think that is necessary to keep my head up during this time. There is an army for me and it’s a damn good army.

So Capital, for the two days that I have made you my home here a lot of things have happened. Good things and not so good things. I soon have my own home and I hope that once I really fight Babylon it will be over with swiftly.

I know this is a fight but I always fight – all art is fighting all fighting is life.
Other people have travelled this before, they have made it and I will make it. There are memories from these people sprinkled along the path, there is a history for me, voices produced by throats in bodies with tensed muscles that whisper “It can be done…and it can be done well.”

So for my next meeting with the Babylon I will bring with me the shadows of other spasmodic fighters, they will see them guarding my back if they look close.

Bye for now then new home, look out for me while I am in you.
Love, Kittin.

On my brother, Warren Zevon and I

Below is the song ”My shit’s fucked up” by Warren Zevon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2aUJF3gdog

I heard it on the radio yesterday and it instantly stuck. It is by far the best song ever written about having a body that (by age or other reasons) doesn’t work the way you would like it to…

“Let me break it to you son your shit’s fucked up… the shit that used to work it
wont work now.”

Recently as I have been planning my move to the Capital, which has been a very emotional ride, I have spent a lot of time crying in the bath, but equal time being picked up and pepped by glorious friends and family, I have come to think more and more about my body and the illness that it inhabits.

I have found that they way I speak and act, the articulate and verbal mind I have worked hard to gain and take pride in using often clouds the real state of my body. That my physical lacking gets shadowed by the way I express myself… It puzzles me that it doesn’t seem to be obvious that I am disabled. I wonder if my crooked legs and tensed hands are overpowered by my seductively unbuttoned blouses and pink lips. If my frame and my shaky way of walking doesn’t show cause I tell people I believe in

“a Theatre that resurrects and builds a community… that through the
juxtaposition and commonality of words and flesh aims to give all people a sense
of strength and pride. A Theatre that rattles as well as it dazzles...”

Today I met with my brother. We were born three months too early and the lack of oxygen through our underdeveloped lounges to our brains marked us permanently. It gave us a brain damage known as cerebral pares made our legs spasmodic and stiff and our balance poor. Growing up we never dwelled on this. Even though we spent months in hospital and hours after hours in sweaty gymnasiums with out physical therapists. We were happy, smiling and safe kids. Brought up to believe that we lived because of a reason but never sheltered from the injustice that come to those who are different but taught to fight through it. Taught that everybody has a something that is painful in their life, and that it didn’t have to be physical.

My brother is one of those intentional beauties. He’s hot- I can say that because he is my brother. Well groomed and casually smartly dressed in a way that I can only aspire to become. When I saw him today, sheltering his stepson in his tattooed arms and kissing his forehead, I came to think about how we view our disabilities and what it has come to do with the way we view others.

I have often been told I am very ‘Zen’, that I accept all that come my way are not very easily aggravated when thinks are not what I want them to them. I think this has a lot to do with my inability to move freely while growing up. Acceptance of the status quo was crucial for my survival – if I had blown every small thing that wasn’t the way I wanted up and become angry about it that would have taken so much energy.

Being this mindful also made me very aware of my own body. I wonder if my brother and I share that. If he too knows exactly where every stiff spot is, where every joint is when it aches and what every muscles does when it spasms. If he wakes up in the morning feeling run over, with pain rushing through like waves hitting the white sands of pain.

The paragraph above is also something I have been told I do a lot, I write about pain. I write about bodies and dirt and blood, other people say it’s icky and strong. I never see that. Sometimes pain is like an axe splitting your backbone, sometimes is like a pair of hands pulling the joints of your elbow in separate directions until it clicks. It’s not my fault; it’s the way things actually feel.

I have thought I didn’t dwell on my disability. But I have realised now how much of the work that I do that really is body centred, how my disability has given me a fascination of the able-bodied body and what it can do. How that has driven me into directing and acting, how my exploration of my own body and it qualities has given me a greater sense of what is perceived as normal and what is perceived as deviant, and what I ascribe to these two concept. My body has forced me into being still but given me a vivid imagination and an understanding of the written word because of it.

Because of my disability and the way others perceived me due to it, I felt the necessity to well articulate and driven. To rise above what other people saw as the sweet disabled girl. But it’s only recently and from others telling me about it, that I have begun to see the juxtaposition between these two images an how well I use them and thrive on using them. I like to think of myself as a mindfuck. I thrive on not always being what you perceive me as. I love how my awareness of my body and its sensuality succeeds not only in drawing people in, but also in rattling the close-mindedness that I too often meet while out and about.

But recently I have wondered. When being told I am too well to be given a PA when I move to the capital and having to tell people that I assumed knew what my disability meant for me in real life, once again, that I cannot mange on my own. I worry about passing as able-bodied even though it is very very visible that I am not. It puzzles me, and I don’t know what to do. What to change about my appearance and the way I act in order for them to give me what I need to survive. Of course I know that the answer is nothing, of course I know that it’s not a disadvantage that I am this verbal and driven. I know I have fought hard to become that and that it what has made me me. Still I wonder what they want a disabled person to be, who they see when they think of one, and what that person’s everyday life is like.

I wonder if my brother worries about this. If he too worries about the rapid decay of our bodies and if our liking of fitted clothes and dressed up appearances is an act of resistance against death. I know we could do better, exercise more, eat healthier, and sleep better. But we’re not like that, at least not now. Now is all about fighting the decay best we can anyway. It’s about unbuttoning the top button on my blouse before I meet with the municipality’s disability conslour; it’s about marking our beloved deviant bodies with needles and ink, about sheltering the kids that are important in our lives. To tell them what others taught us. Your body is only yours. Your mind is solely your mind. And your life is worth living.

Dearest beloved brother, my darling beautiful.

We know of pain and monotony we know of dread and bondage in its true sense. We know of deep fires and heavily beating hearts. We know of scars and casts and plastic tubes. But mostly we know of love. We know of laughter you and I. We know of freedom and rushing speed. We know that bodies are but bodies, muscles are but muscles. We know that weakness is needed in order to be strong and stillness is needed for there to be force.

As Miami Ink’s Ami James put’s it “WE FOUGHT TO MAKE, NOW COMES THE FIGHT TO STAY ON TOP!”

On cripness, gender and sex.

Haven't written anything here in ages, other writing has been consuming a lot of time, as has plain living.
Weeks ago I had a plan to follow up on cripchick and wheelchairdancer's blog posts on disability and gender, I wrote something but didn't think I did well. Today, as I was reading through old things lying around on my harddrive I realised it might have been okay anyway so here it is.

Following in the footsteps of cripchick and wheelchairdancer I will try my best to write about my take on ’crip’ as an identity, its relation to power and sex.

Firstly, I would like to say that it has taken me a while to find myself as a crip-girl. Honestly, my disability even though it is at times very crippling has not been a major issue for me and not until the last year’s part of my identity as such.

I credit this to my childhood and my ideas of myself growing up. Even if I knew there was something different with me, I was never told that different equalled bad.

Growing up in a very including Christian environment I was often told my disability was a blessing. Later I came to know that was not always the take on disabilities amongst other Christians and certainly not amongst other Pentecostals, as my family was.

Growing up in a Christian environment also meant that the ideas of sex and sexuality were different than others. I often found it puzzling that Pentecostals would devote themselves so physically to God and the Spirit while at church but be afraid to touch subjects that I thought alike, lust and pleasure. It was not rare when I grew up to see women hiss the name ‘Jesus’ between gritted teeth as their bodies shock. And when finding out about the Spirit myself I likened it to an orgasm.

Because I had always been told my disability was a blessing, meaning that God had greater plans for me and brother and had let us live even if it wasn’t possible, I grew up believing strongly, and still do - that all that is good within me comes from God. Hence, the love I felt for both boys and girls wasn’t a trouble.
Finding out I was both a crippled and a bisexual I started to asses myself at a very early age, thinking about what I like and disliked. Linking fantasises desires and wishes together I also discovered I was Dominant. (Will this odd-ness never end?)Again, seeing that it was in me and was a good thing since it sprung from love and also couldn’t exist without a submissive counterpart and a consensus from that person, I accepted it.

As a Dominant-crip-pseudo-lesbian I struggled to find an identity that fit me. Combining the weakness and frailness of my psychical condition with the force of my mind and my ‘sinful’ love for other women.

For a substantial period of time I was on growth-hormones since I was way too short for my age. I am still pretty short but without the hormones would have been even shorter. The hormones, a jolly mixture of steroids and testosterone, sent my body off on a post-adolescences joyride. I bulked up like I had never done before; I was longer frail in appearance even though my body was.
In an attempt to mend the gap between my physical appearance and my mind I went into a period of being a very butch girl. Shaving my head and trying desperately to find out where this rollercoaster was to take me I went from crazy unisex tops and shirts to dresses and back again. All the time feeling uncomfortable in an appearance that I didn’t know.

Getting of the hormones I dropped 8 kg to 38kg for my final 145 cm and finally recognised what I saw in the mirror. I went back to the clothes that I had worn as a girl, I indulged in skirts and flowery tops, flaunted my tits and tried my very best to make my body sexual and owned by me, rather than an asexual object owned by doctors and syringes filled with steroids.

As a crip-girl I believe that is my biggest struggle. To believe that my body can be desired through the eyes of others. That it isn’t something freaky but something hot, mostly because I myself through active choice in my appearance and manners make it so.
I thrive on being raunchy and outspoken about my body and my sexuality, since it breaks a long lived idea of crippled people as asexual, making use of it as I would like. Learning to make it work its best to give me and my lovers the most pleasure and so and so.

Through this process of ‘returning to the roots’ I discovered my last add-on identity so far. I was not only a Dominat-crip-pseudo-lesbian; I was also a ‘femme’.
Putting my ‘invalid’ body on display because I chose to, doing it with the tools of a feminine appearance altered to fit my needs (see crip-chick’s post on altering the tools of femininity, such as clothes, to fit the needs of our bodies) allowing myself, with very little physical force, to Dominate through the mind, and enjoying that, gave me the cornerstones of the subversion that now constitute my femme-identity.

However even though I am a ‘fiercely femme Lady’ according to beloved Sister Hillevi, I find I am rarely viewed as that by people who don’t know me. Again it’s that asexual image of disabled people and certainly disabled women that gets me. Also, my ‘classically feminine attire’ combined with a well expressed Christian faith often boxes me in as a sweet-Christian-girl. Not to say that I am not but there is certainly more to me than meets the eye in that sense.

In order for a discussion to take place around disability, gender and identity society needs to acknowledge disabled persons identities not only as homogenous disabled group but see that all kinds of identities fit within the disabled ‘community’ as well as in the able bodied.
That even though I am a disabled person it is not equal to my disability being the cornerstone of my identity.

My crip-identity as it is today took me years and years to build and it was through my other identities that a sense of subversion of my crippled body arose.
When I call myself a crip today, it gives me a space to joke about the quirks of my body, my spasm, my freakishly tensed muscles, a space where I can promote photos as the one here on the blog where I kiss the chrome on my walker.
Also, it gives me a space where I find strength in a world that is made to fit the able bodied, it gives me a sense of community and support, a renewed sense of what my body needs and strength to acknowledge that these needs are different than my able bodied friend’s.

(Might be brainy, might just be ramblings)

On (a)muse(ment)

I promise this is my last blogpost today. :) I felt the need to put up lots of thing as the blog is re-birthed now.

I am known for having lots of muses, really being my muse is not as difficult as it may seem.

There needs to be a certain flare around you, a sense of force and vitality combined with something vulnerable. I need to feel a sense of beloning but also a sense of being apart. That I can study and be studied. See and be seen.

Usually I know instantly if there is something there. I can not hide from the force in me, telling me to be inspired.

This post is on one of the most important muse's these days. My actor-muse My. We met when we both studied up-north. She was an actor, and a damn fine one, I was a director trying to make my way through. We lived in the same corridor, we shared a kitchen so out-of-standard we were scared, we cooked in crocked pans and drank tea from broken mugs. We shared wine and dreams. We spoke of the only thing that is important. To make art. Art that creates brotherhood and meaning. Art that serves as a connection.

I directed her in a play I wrote called "Christmas- the return" a story I wasn't sure of, a role as a director I was even more unsure of. It was something special, she was great and I was spellbound. Directing in that process was never easy, but the result was true meat. Words and flesh combined. She was my muse.

Recently, I visited her in Karis, Finland. Where she had studied and worked with the director Anna Allgulin. Allgulin's work deals with the mystical, with the actor as a link between the human and the divine. The played Oidipus.

A sweaty, screaming, angsty kind of play, dealing with destiny and free will.

It was an explosion, involving it's audience in a story told here and now. I was childlishy happy and I loved seeing My on stage.
At the after party (seen in picture above) we spoke of projects to come and what we felt we needed to do.

There we made up something we now call "Obs(!)scen."
As in obscene but also as in, "Mind you! A stage".

Having pondered it today as I struggled with a feverish heart and an aching body. I want it's theme to be the boarders between actor and audience, are they necessary?

Is it necessary to only be watch or to watch?

It it necessary for the stage to be a closed room, what happens if we are all involved in creating that room- at the same time both actors and audience?

If a stage is public can we choose not to watch what goes on there?
If a stage is public can I choose not to be on it?

We plan to bring the stage to the public and the public to the stage. We plan to bring the audience to the story and to bring the story out of the audience.

I will update as we go along, now just writing to see what is in it.

Bring us your ideas, stories, longings, and shortcomings. Obscene or not- we will try and make them a base, a stage.