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 lovely PAs

I took a walk in the campus park today; I had to go to University to pick up sickly expensive literature on folklore and dress, which I am sure I will sell as soon as I have finished the exam on this part of the course.
Anyhow, I was accompanied to University by my new butchy PA, I call her the butchy PA as to distinguish her from all my other PAs, and she is indeed a butch.

I am actually quite swoon by her; she is gorgeous and has just that right bulky aura around her. Although she has only worked with me for a bit last weekend and then today we have really bonded. I guess I found it so nice to have a PA that would understand all the queer quirks of my constitution that I just rambled.

We spoke a lot about the notion of passing, I showed her pictures of my butchy period in life and called it my butch-fail, she laughed in shock. She said she was a bit bummed by the fact that everybody assumed that she was trans, that being this butch could only mean that she wanted to transition. She spoke about girls freaking out whenever she went in to the ladies room in a restaurant or at the movies, about being referred to as “the boys” when she was out and about with her brother. The awkwardness that manly-men felt around her, not knowing what to say or not…the many heavy taps on her back, the misogynist jokes and laughs.

I felt that I was such a femme with her. Even though I am swoon I do not ‘want’ her, still I could feel my movements growing to be slower and more assertive, I was conscious about my legs and how they looked in my short skirt, my fingers around the locks of my hair, my cleavage, my perfume.

She hung a heavy door back on its hinges for me and changed my light bulbs, I dreamt of a butch valet to open my doors and carry my purses and shopping bags. I dreamt of strong shoulders and glistening blue eyes.

Today I might have had that; although she was still my PA (and I doubt she will be anything but that…) she did all the things that above mentioned butch valet would have done. And as we went walking back to the tube through the autumn colours and crisp winds of the park I couldn’t help but smile. I pondered what other people saw as they saw us. If they saw two girls, if they knew the saw a femme and butch, did they think they saw a man and a woman?

She’s funny, she laughs when I make jokes and apologies ever so sweetly for even the slightest mistakes. Can I clone her?


Just to illustrate, a photo by Catherine Opie from her exhibition “Girlfriends” found in an article on AfterEllen.com

On laziness...

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On this morning....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On love....

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

Snowfall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On northern livings and stories, and muses...

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

So, fröken Ström, this is for you:





I miss you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The stories we lived.