On resistance and success....

I know I said last year that this blog would grow to be less private and more of my comments, on all things femme and crip and fabulous. Yes, I realise that that involves a certain amount of private, but I no longer wished for this space to be the selfabsorbed rant that it was. I wished for my life to get better than it was this fall and winter. And I had great hopes, I really did.

Right now I am not sure though. It could be this cough that I have been draging around with like a wheelbarrow of tiring pain, it could be the fact that I have had to reduce my student loans and that I am financally not safe at all. Or it could be the feeling that there is very little reciprocity in my life. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of it in some places and from some people, and I am hoping to get remarkably more of it from others in my life. And I am grateful nowadays for all that comes without a fight.

However, last night I reduced was to a wailing mess. There was very little understanding and I felt the pit that I had been in for all of winter open up again. Things are so far away here, I never seem to do enough, or be well or focused enough to do enough. And aparently it's my fault. There is very little understanding of what my body and I need in order to form that team that other peoples bodies form everyday, all the time, from birth. And it hurts the most to be less than understood by someone I imagined would be close.

I have only just realised this myself. How much I need rest, how much I need activities that fit me and make me feel good, how much I need activities in my life that work for me instead of againts me. That invigorate me instead of draining me. I have just now begun to realise myself just how hard I have always pushed myself to keep up, and what a rest it has been to be around people who genuinly understand, especially since the people who really do aren't even disabled themselves.
It's uncomprehendably painful then, to be told

Well dont you think you need to get out...?

Especially since I have just been out, especially since I had no need of getting out. And you know what it doesn't matter. I have coughed my heart out, I have an exam next week and I will stay in as much as I would like. You see I don't go for a walk all that much, in fact I don't walk all that much, or well, in case you hadn't noticed.

Lately I have been thinking about a wheelchair. I haven't told anyone, but right now I will tell the ether. I haven't told anyone since it is such a lifechanging descion. It will limit me, limit where I go, where I live, who I see and when, it will limit my sense of my body, of agency and saftey and it's a descision you will never have to make.

I am far too nice, I know. I am far too generous, no I am not generous at the worst of times, I am stupid. It's true I am a died in the wool provider, and I care through giving and put others ahead of myself. And it's truly one the assets that I am most proud of when it comes to myself. However, right now I just wonder whenever I will get back, and why it always comes to this, why I work my providing knees to the bone paving the streets with gold for other until I realise.

I don't really have time to write this post though, eventhough I needed it. I need to hit those books again, because you see, yesterday, bawling between the sheets I realised that true work and progress is the best kind of resistance. Success' the only thing I have got, and it will demand hard work, and it will demand prioritizing - me!

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 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 this evening

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swedish works better to sum it up today….

Något gräver ut sorgens tomrum, ekande, under bröstbenet.

On paralysation

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

On 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