On the Holy Spirit

As a Pentecostal the idea of the Holy Spirit, a swift wind inspiring change and freedom is central to my understanding of myself and my Christian Faith. As this weekend was Whitsun and the time when the Spirit first fell on Peter and the other disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem I will write something about breaking free, like a swift wind, about finding one's own voice even if it's in a language you haven't been told. About speaking and thinking in tongues. This new process is still very vulnerable, but it is forceful and it's happening right next to me. Getting to witness it is a great honor.

There was a time when I would shiver from the cold in my bathroom when I showered, now I place my feet longingly on its chilly tile. My white concrete walls glow from heat and the black floor of terass sizzles, when she shows up, to work.

I watch her in her white t-shirt and black shorts, her boyishly blond hair, those God-given arms, red from yesterdays tanning session on the sizzling terass.
I do a little bit of reading on the concepts of body modifications and the notion of the skin as a closed envelope for the self, freed from imprints caused by roaming postmodern identities of contemporary life. I rant a bit about narrow minded middleclass assumption of femininity and skin, and we end up talking as we usually do – about abilities, scars, clothing, butch, femme, girls, crushes, power, exposure, pain…

We talk about visibility, how she often passes as able-bodied, me often as a little nice girl, we compare scares. I show her the one at my loins (hardly visible she says) and she the one at her shoulder, it is wide and deep and the skin is leather-ey.
I show her the one at my Achilles tendons, bluish, thick and cold.
What does it mean, the skin as an unbroken envelope for the self? Does it mean that our selves slipped out somehow when they cut us up? Must I like the mark of the exit on my body?

We come back to butches and being read as male. I show her pictures of trans-men I know, cinnamon skin, piercings, blue shirts. And she says, all of a sudden, and in effect, with sadness to her cocky tone of voice.
It's UNFAIR!!
What do you mean, I say, why is it unfair?
Well look at them…they are beautiful, hot, strong, well made self-made men…

I take her hand in mine as I giggle.
But they have altered their bodies, they take T…
She interrupts me.
I...I want to look like that.
My smile is wider, I am so happy she would finally say
Oh…tranny boy!
Now she is the one giggling, but she has a fierce spark to her eye.
Boy, she says, yeah –boy!

We talk about identities again, the notion of being forced into a femininity that neither of us could have chosen. How I have used it, how I have known from involuntary changes of my body what it is like to be trapped underneath one's own skins, underneath the sealed envelope that 'protects' the self.

He doesn't understand, she says. That I am offended, when he says he thinks it's annoying that others read me as male. He can't figure out that that is at least partly what I want.
Have you told him? I ask.
No...
Well perhaps you should.

We make our way out on the terrass. I make a silly joke about her carrying the nuts and she calls me boss.
I lean out over the rail and admire the busy street below us, the stout houses with black roofs and royal icing ornaments.

Ze looks at ease beside me, as if ze is finally come all the way out.
We talk about energies, how I knew a long long while ago, what a boy she was…
And I tell hir kindly but sternly that ze mustn't be fooled by the gender binary, or by any false notions of what transitioning is. That it is only import to be comfortable in ones skin. Underneath the safely sealed envelope.

Ze tells me about yet another gay man, insisting "she could carry her baby herself…" hir eyes spark again…
Was he really that clueless? ze fairly shouts.,
But darling boy, I say. You must tell them…."I don't think I'll ever carry any babies and I don't like my tits that much!"
Ze laughs, loud and hir eyes glistens as ze says YEAH, just like that.

Hir shift is over, ze's barley worked, or at least ze doesn't think ze has. You're my gender boot camp ze says and I laugh inside, thinking of the femme, cis-gendered woman I am, how I am always the one who cries: NO FUCK GENDER! I DON'T CARE!

When ze is about to leave I make another silly joke. Ze say something about hir balls, and I point to hir chest and ask, which one?
Ze laughs. Oh, that's not okay, ze says. You don't make jokes about tranny boy's breasts.
My heart swells. Blessed boy, blessed, blessed little boy.

So yes. The wind has struck. The spirit. The wind of change and freedom, and we speak in tongues, we speak the truth. And the wind strikes. Like a paperknife it rips the envelope that confines our true selves.

Walk on tranny boy, walk on into glory and I shall cover your broad back with mine, until it bleeds.

On getting down to the nitty gritty...

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang!

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

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

……

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

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

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

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

…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…..

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

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

On just now...

Alright here I am again, and I have nothing more fabulous crip-femmish to report. But I have realised I shouldn't go around investigating that ambition too much. Rather, I have med the concious choice that whatever I write from now on is by default fabulosly crip-femmian since I have written it.

As I predicted in the previous post I will be deadly poor this spring, it's not fun and I do believe I am quite stressed about it. But I am sure I'll manage... (if I show up on you doorstep hungry and puppy eyed you mustn't refuse to feed me, okay...)
The cough still lingers, which is very tireing and makes me feel odder and odder, I am quite sure it's nothing more than a very slowly developing cold though.

Otherwise, I am quite at piece. However, I have realised a few new and perhaps not so healthy emotional obsession but for once I will not bring them out into the ether, again I think it's best not to investigate that as much.
Certain frustrations are stil growing and the sense that things are still very far away in this city is ever present.

Yesterday though, I attended a great lecture and stayed on to discuss my Pentecoastal upbringing and my intrest on what that environment does to the children and grandchildren of it's inhabitans.
I also bonded extensively with a older man from my course, we talked about all things, crip, political, narrative and access related. So yes, things are happening in this city, however slowly and perhaps not in the areas where I would want them to.

Anyhow, I wasn't supposed to stay long so to speak, I am off to bed to cure this cold off - and worry a bit about my financial under the sheets.

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.