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 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 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 travelling....

When I last travelled to the Capital I forgot to bring my mp3 player. In a vain attempt to amuse myself on the ride back home I bought a notebook and a pen at PocketShop. On 'demand' I now publish the one thing written in English on that ride...

Vanity

“It turns out I can’t get under your skin”, he said as he rose from on his elbows from the bed and stroked his beard.
“How come?”, she said.
“There are guards at the gates of your innermost feelings he said. There’s fear and vanity and guilt. And they are strong and armoured and I am only armed with love, and love has nothing on them.”
“That’s true she said as she scratched the polish of her nails. I am afraid and I am guilty and vain- and love has nothing on that. Nothing on the cold sweat and my own scorning gaze in the mirror in the morning.”

He put his pants back on and the vanity of her eyes followed the strip of hair from his belly and down below….

“You should get rid of that”, she said as she licked her lips.
“No”, he replied.
“You should get rid of that smirk it makes you ugly. And I know you don’t want to be that. Not at all. In fact that’s the thing”, he said. “You are so desperate to be beautiful. So afraid of being seen as something less than that. That is what makes you vain, and what makes you vain also makes you guilty. You feel guilty ‘cause vain people are horrible people and more important vain people are ugly people.”

The last bit came like a roar through his lips and as they parted she could see a streak of yellow brownish goo on his teeth.

“You should really brush that away she said.”
“No! this is what I am talking about- you’re so vain you think this song is about you. And you really do! It makes you ugly, ugly, ugly!”

She had her back to him now. Slowly stroking away locks of golden hair as she hissed.
“I don’t care if I am vain. If it makes me afraid, guilty or ugly. At least it gives me the opportunity to be all these kinds of things. I decide for myself if I want to be vain and I am as vain as I decide. But you…”

She lifted his baffled face up with her slovenly painted nail.

“You haven’t even made a choice to be as dirty, filthy and raunchy as you are. You are just plain lazy – and you love me. And it makes me pity you. But not at all in a bad way as one would assume. When I think about it, it is not pity, but love and slight admiration. I assume it’s a freedom to be so ignorant she said. To really, really don’t care it must be so….”

She leaned in close. He didn’t smell of dirt but of cinnamon vanilla and heat as she kissed him. When his tongue touched her teeth she made vain attempts to rub his saliva off.

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.”

On my army

In my large novel style project ’The Mermaid’, which has rested this summer and rightfully so, I write about the gathering of an army. An army which sets out to fight death. Usually when people set out to fight death in fiction I just get the feeling they are really seeking it. All the dare-devilistic things that people come up with as exciting and assume is living life to its fullest is often just really stupid. Not to say that you wouldn’t be slapping death on its fingers now and then by doing really crazy stuff, but I would guess that’s mostly of out luck.

I have tried to focus the attention of that army that I am building on making the most of every moment and trying to build a collective that would withstand all deaths trials. And I think I have done pretty well in building an interesting mixture of characters that from the outside doesn’t seem to have any thing in common at all (that was also my major theme for the text, to show that even though we don’t think we share anything we all share as much as we are willing to admit we share…) but that ends up beings closely intertwined for one major reason.

They have all suffered loss: Loss of ability or an appearance that they used to have, loss of a beloved or loss of a place or time. Death is the one who possesses all these things, and hence, in order to, not so much regain them but to teach It that It cannot go around nicking other peoples abilities just like that, they set out to fight It.

Anyhow I wanted to say, that as I wrote that text I began to think that it would be really nice to be part of such an army (even though I do have a flare for taking the lead I wouldn’t have to be the rallying force ;) ) that it would be amazing to be part of such force and such determination.
I realise now that I was very foolish in having these thoughts. Since the truth is that I am already part of such an army.

These past days I have realised that even more. Since I struggled to be able to survive in the Capital I began to see that so many people cover my back. That even though I didn’t know if they understood truly what my life has been about they give me proof again and again of knowing just what I am, and loving me dearly for it.
In this maze that bureaucracy is and amongst all the vipers in the grass that the bureaucrats are I know they walk ahead of me and behind me. To smash their machetes against growing branches threatening to choke me and pick me up when I fall.

I am sorry if I am making it out to be like I didn’t trust you to understand me, it is not so! Just that when I deal with these people telling me my disability isn’t major or consistent enough I wonder if anybody sees that within me.
If anybody sees the struggling that this is. I have known all the time that you have, I am just so grateful to see it now. In my time of need.

So this blog post is to be about my warriors. Those who walk ahead and behind of me and the people that have made up the army I longed for but didn’t see until I was desperate for it.

I have already spoken about my brother in this space, but I will gladly speak about him again. My brother Carsten and his fiancée Emma deserve all the credit they can ever get for always sticking by me and telling me to keep my head up. My brother deserves multiple thank you’s for his never ending fire within, for taking time to ramble in anger with me about how unjust all of this is and for keeping me on the ‘take no crap’-path.

The following where already part of my army before I knew I needed one. They are spoken about as a unit because I really think we are.
Katarina, Kicko and Marie. Thank you for always being interested in what I do. For brining forth your righteous anger with me when it’s needed, for helping me lay down my burdens by the whisky-cokes and the throbbing dance floors of tacky bars. For laughing with me and making comparisons to other well known crips such as Timmy and Jimmy from South Park and the magnificent Andy Pipkin from Little Britain (if Andy get’s a PA as good as Lou then I must be okay in the end…)
Thank you for seeing above and beyond my disability but never neglecting the fact that it’s there. Tämmy! TäKåKå!

My soon to be land-lady Ulrika, thank you for opening your home whenever it’s needed and especially in such a desperate time, for allowing me to bring all the mess that this has been into your life too and welcoming me with such open arms. True generosity.

Vata-Sister, Hillevi. Thank you for understanding from just the same spot how important a well balanced body is. Thank you for allowing me to ramble for hours on end about spasms and anxiety. We are so alike it scares me at times, but it’s very comforting to know that whatever I say you have felt it too. Long live the achy-shaky vata-hearts!

Last but not at all least my muses. My and Josephine. (in a way you are all my muses but I like giving people titles…okay ;) )
Firstly thank you both of you for an ongoing feast of inspiration whenever I come to think of you. You both share an aura of force and vulnerability than intrigues me deeply and sparks all my artistic fires.

Thank you My, for all your love and your support. For understanding what the important things are and never minding sharing them. For including me in what’s important to you and cherishing my thoughts and ideas. Thanks for bringing me to lovely places to see lovely people for making me part of their lives as I have become a part in theirs. For believing me when I say that I can do this. And reassuring me when I doubt. For sharing faith and strength with me and making me tea when I needed it the most.

And finally, thank you Josephine. For seeing all the facets that make me up and telling me that they are valid. For bringing a somewhat holy wrath to this fight and offering a very hands on support, for sharing ideas, thoughts and memories and building me up. Thanks for allowing me to be vulnerable when I need to and for seeing the absolute force that is me too. Thanks for your never-ending support of my work and your brilliant witty mind.

I have faith; after all I was injected with a massive load of faith growing up, that we shall conquer this. If you stand ahead and behind me now I promise cross my heart that I will do the same whenever you need me! Thank you again – the academy, Gawd, my parents, and my army!


Xoxo, Kittin! (Timmy, Jimmy, Andy Pipkin, Sally, Anne Bonny!)