I practice odd little things, like sleeping with the door to my almost-house in the almost-woods unlocked, like going to the outdoor toilet late at night. I practise appreciating picnics by lakes and picking wild strawberries alone. I practise not wanting to go back home to my friends as soon as I realise there's no one around.
And ... I manage quite well. I'm not sure whether to be proud of myself, or if it's just easier now that there's not really any darkness to be afraid of the dark in, but just magically lit up Swedish summer nights.
Actually I'm starting to suspect that even those worries were due to my fucked up metabolism. I've recognised more and more things lately that have probably been symptoms of it, from further and further back, and realised it has most likely been going on for years and years – getting worse only so slowly that I've been able to ignore it. Sure, I long since realised it must have been going on for quite some time, and that I've been able to ignore quite a lot of badness, but now I keep remembering older and older stuff that has probably been part of it. It's vague enough for it to be hard to tell the too-late-hypochondria apart from the real symptoms, but it probably isn't too far-fetched to say it has been going on for at least “a lot longer than I first thought”. And a lot longer than I secondly thought as well.
For one thing it's only the last couple of years that I've felt any need to practise things like not being afraid of the dark, and maybe it isn't because I feel I should be a grown up now, or because I think it's been long enough since my mum died (that's when I first noticed being stupidly afraid of the dark) but because it didn't use to be as bad, even if the difference isn't so huge I could “prove” anything – same with a lot f things. Now that I think of it, the doctor says severe stress can be the starting point of thyroid problems like mine, and well, the unexpected and too early death of ones mum should count as quite stressful? (I was going to write “grave stress”, but ... heh.)
We'll see. It's sort of unpleasant to think that parts of my personality have been a mere chemical imbalance, but at least I haven't stopped talking and eating too much or laughing too loudly (thankfully? unfortunately?), like I guess I could have, seeing how the symptoms of this illness are described, and as long as I don't stop recognising myself like that, I'm happy I'm getting better ...
It made me think again, of time, how it disappears, never comes back – it is the oddest thing. I tend to think that I get cleverer and cleverer as time passes, but this one thing I'll never get: time itself, its passing, how final it is – and yet how sneakily undramatic. How oops, there it went.
... a week a month a lifetime
and I just never got around to.
All the people, places, moments.
I recently heard this religious person saying, sort of in the passing, to someone she met briefly and probably wouldn't ever see again: "We'll spend eternity together", like a joyful greeting, a "see you soon". I've never before been so jealous of someone's faith.
Sure, I've envied the simple solutions and instant meaningfulness at times, but always concluded I didn't really want them, not really. But this. Not "eternal life" as such, but simply never to run out of time. Not to miss, but to look forward to. How blissful.
Also, this may be the most suggestive flower bud that I have ever seen, it even has a clitoris! I had to take a billion photos of it:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sofiano
Why do they have to keep standing around, interrogating me and forcing me to point out in which direction I think I should go, before I've had a chance to check the map, since well, they stopped me from doing so? How can their laughter sound so belittleing when they say "well, then you really do need help, then you're lost", as I point slightly in the wrong direction?
Now that may, just possibly, maybe, be the reason I stopped to check the map in the first place – that I didn't know exactly where I was going. That may even be what maps are for? Just a theory.
Do they really think I'd have brought a map if I couldn't read it? How is it not part of their smugness calculations that if they'd have just left me in peace and let me read the map I would have been long since gone, in the right direction, by the time they gather those smug-points for having proven me "wrong"?
So, you say that they're just trying to be nice and helpful, and that I can't really complain about that? But, if it was just common human kindness, at least some of them would ... be women? And at least some of them would sod off and leave me in peace when I nicely but firmly turn down their offer of help, no?
I think it's simply due to the instruction to make angsty scenes with dark secrets reaching the surface, but it takes courage to do angst without irony and distance and trying to be funny, and somehow we seem to have reached a place where we manage that now. Over tea afterwards there's such honesty and closeness, and I don't ever want to go home, I want to stay with these people, with the songs and discussions, in the soft light, the nightly city noise and warm summer night's air through the window.
I wonder again, where it is – the big house that I'm going to move into with all my friends. And well, how to convince them that they want to.
I go visit her with a man who fell in love with her forty years ago. He brought a cd player, and we waltz to the music – on her grave. I waltz very badly, but it's very touching.
I think to myself that if I ever have to carry around feelings for someone for forty years, I hope it'll only be ones of love, and none of loss and sorrow. But I guess they may be inseparable.
secretively, transparently blue, dark-bright.
The nightly smell of lilacs, the sweetness, intensity, like an explosion, an orgasm, only ever so
still
Somewhat odd.
And where do I find ten wonderful people who want to go far far away with me?
It isn't necessary that they're exactly ten, but the magical number is probably “more than one”, to avoid, or well spread out, conflicts, and to never get bored with each other.
Other than that the important parts are “people”, “wonderful” and “far away” – how hard can it be?
I'm even willing to cross one of the requirements out, if necessary. Heck, I'm even considering taking another Pink Caravan-trip, although it's expensive, although it's like bringing the whole of Sweden to foreign country (hence blocking a lot of the interaction with the locals) and although I thought almost all of the 70 people last time were utterly, utterly boring. Every last one of them at least rather boring ...
This need to get going, it always grows unbearable during spring and summer. I tend to say that it's my nomad genes calling, which is silly of course, but honestly, that's what it feels like – an undeniable and inexplicable need, trying to drag me along, constantly whispering in my ear, bickering, yelling, whispering again ... and, driving me nuts.
And right now, in addition to this I feel this hurry. I'm usually content knowing that I'm going away soon, but this time it feels like soon will be too late.
Not sure in which way it'll be too late, but it is true that when I run out of inheritance- and book-money, I will have to take a proper job and won't be able to take off for a couple of months or even weeks. It is also true that the longer I wait, the more of my friends will be stuck having proper jobs and schedules and lives and families. Though most of them more or less do already, so I'm not sure time makes any difference there; maybe I should just wait another 40 years or so until they're retired.
But I don't want to wait 40 years, dammit! I just want to finish off fixing up and selling my apartment, store my furniture somewhere, and then be gone.
I even want to do the “move somewhere for a year”-thing, that I never wanted to do before, too scared to leave my loved ones. Sure, I want to do it with someone, but still, I want to do it. (E, will you come with me?)
Maybe I've just had an over-dose of “The Amazing Race”, where they are always in a hurry, while wonderful places merely flash by ...
The others draw a chart, the trans-person and I are the only ones not on it, at least he has an excuse, not being from around here, what's mine? It doesn't look at all as neat as in L Word, and if I have to go "What? I had sex with her? Oh, that's right ..." I'm not entirely sure I want to be on it. I'm such a bore.
2 am, skirt and sandals, and not even a little cold. The nightingale near the train station is back, giving its slightly eerie concert. Trying to find breaths big enough to inhale it all, embrace it all.
I'm here, quite clearly am I here, lost and found.
I would not lose myself, I brought a map, I'm the type of person who brings maps. And when someone re-draws reality, I can always improvise.
I'll always find my way home, steadily.
Cats proudly patrol their neighbourhoods, two of my best friends seem to be at the beginning of love affairs, my aunt let herself be used again – shocked as always that people will, if you let them.
Only sometimes I wish I'd let someone interfere, re-draw, use, confuse, lead me astray.
As soon as I wear something even vaguely petal coloured, little insects gather to pollinate me, and the streets are full of people with a sudden smugly sexual gaze and stride, surprised but content to discover that they had an actual body under all those winter clothes, and that now it's theirs to use again – fifteen year old punk rock girls, bald old men, suit and mobile phone guys and ladies with cautiously unbuttoned coats, they all slow down, turn from absent minded to So Very Present, in the moment, in the sunlight, in their re-discovered bodies.
And I, well, I find myself considering celibacy.
It's springtime, and it turns me into such a hippie!
I know nothing bad will happen just because I'm down and out with a fever for a few days, I know I'll get up again – there's absolutely no reason why I shouldn't. But when I listen to the silence in my apartment, when I can hardly gather enough strength to move from one room to another, let alone to go outside or face People, and when I see how quickly my usual mess turns into utter chaos and how little I want to do about it, then I can't help but seeing her in front of me, how she'd get stuck in her heaps of rubbish, and sorrows, and pills, and suddenly years would have gone by.
I'm not really sure how I end up at a small synth concert, but it turns out I know the singer, so I have to stay and listen to a few songs, though I just wanted to sit and listen to my other friends' gossip (well, really I just went to see a film, but anyhow). I'm also not really sure why he changes into a US navy uniform, a stiff face, trying to look cool-sunglasses and a much harder voice to do the concert itself, he was much better during the sound-check. (Though I didn't recognize him then, I've only ever met him in the forest, and never heard him sing before.)
When listening to my friends' gossip I once again forget about the existence of alcohol. It's interesting, possibly stupid, how I time after time find myself wondering “how on earth does someone end up doing this or that and how come I never?” and forget that the answer will more often than not be “well, I was drunk”.
How do I manage to forget that that's what people do, get drunk and do odd things (in this case meet a stranger on the pavement and end up having oral sex in a shrubbery).
And, again, I think “maybe I must learn to get drunk”, because in theory it sounds sort of nice. They get a lot more of the random making out and the random sex than I do, and only after a while do I remember, again, that random doesn't really do it for me, and that that's more probably my problem than lack of willing strangers and shrubberies.
Somehow “maybe I must learn to appreciate random and meaningless” doesn't sound like a tempting plan.
I leave early, the concert's bad, and my two friends so busy making out with eachother that I don't get to talk to them much more. On my way home I listen only twice to my new song of thirteenness. A week ago I listened to it all the way back home (well technically to a friends place), on my bicycle, through the snow-mucky middle of the night rain, I took off one of my mittens over and over and pressed repeat. So being down to two times, even at the warm underground, is probably an improvement – I'll be done soon.
It's the other end of thirteenness now, the coming out the other side, mostly whole. How suitable that it is my teenage years' favourite dyke band that plays it.
Like always, in cases of thirteenness, all the words were – most apparently – written specifically for me, for this moment, and How Did They Know? I do get it of course, that any words in a cheesy enough song will work that way, if you're in the right state of mind.
But still, the only detail they get wrong is the coffee.
I don't like it. It's ugly and impractical. It must be Microsoft.
When eating, preparing or otherwise handling Danish cheese that smells like someone's behind, a couple of months or so worth of not washing it, do so inside plastic bubble or equally airtight container.
My whole apartment smells of unmentionables even after I left the balcony door wide open for hours while I was away. The only difference is that it's now aslo very cold in here. Cold and smelly. (Which should maybe be soothing in its less human-like qualities of smelly, but I don't know, I think I'd rather be reminded of a warm smelly someone than a cold smelly someone after all.)
Also my neck/back of my head needs stroking, it has interesting strokably short hair now (C trimmed it a bit after laughing at its unevenness, so it's even shorter now than after I was done with it the other day). Maybe soaking my home in odours of above-mentioned qualities isn't the best way to get more hair-strokers in my life. I'll look into it. (But it is a really lovely cheese.)
I've never even seen a snowmobile in real life.
Stockholm has been Kaliningrad-grey for days. Meanwhile I've mended my hard-drive with tape, and bought silver to start making silver chains again. My fingers remember and it's like meditation – the repetitive motion, the slowness, concentration, calm joy.
I realize it has been almost twenty years since some things that I remember as not very long ago happened. It feels odd. I must be getting old.
And no, this is not a very coherent post.