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When I left the evangelical part of my religious life I left many parts of myself behind me. I don’t know if this is one of those parts or if it just is an unavoidable part that just comes when you grow up no matter where you do it.
The part I am think of is appreciating people for who they are and not for what they represent. When I was The Good Christian Girl that was all I seemed to appreciate for but more frustratingly it was the different roles people around me succeeded to live up to I appreciated them for. I judged people according to how well I thought they lived up to the role I thought were they primary role in their life. It was very important to me that my partner was the perfect partner, my parents was critically reviewed based on my image of A Parent and how they lived up to that and so on for friends, colleagues, pastors and basically everyone I ever met.
When I stepped away from the environment where I fitted in to a scary place where I was the most unusual person everyone had ever met and didn’t fit any template for how someone should be I could finally step away from my bad habit of only judge people in that way and start appreciate people for just being nice people. In some ways I never got to know my partner, my parents, friends and others until way after I came out. I was mainly interested in such a small part of them.
I just spoke to my parents for a rather long while. I feel so good and re-energized when speak to them nowadays. When I try to get to know them and appreciate them for who they are as persons. They are very nice and likable persons in a way that I didn’t recognize when I compared them only to my model of perfect parents. But honestly? Who want’s anyone to be perfect? The only thing I think a perfect person around me would give me is angst over my imperfect sides. Being an imperfect child to two perfect parents would be exhausting. I very much prefer to be myself along with two nice people that I share both good and bad sides with.
I don’t know if I needed to get away from church to grow to this place but I am very pleased to be here.
Today I yelled to my middle daughter over having Lego on her floor. A perfectly reasonable thing for a six year old to have and I was tired after a week with migraines.
I remembered my father yell with almost the same words to me over Lego parts when I was 6 years and the old me would be freaked out of being an imperfect parent and having a daughter that I haven’t brought up perfectly. This more energy-effective environmentally safe me just feel a very strong bond towards both my daughter for being messy in the same way as me and to my dad for getting annoyed for the same semi-resonable minor things. Old me: Dissapointed, feeling desperately immutable and alone. New me: A part of something big, content with just getting to know people no matter how well or badly I perform.
So I smiled, helped my daugther to figure out a way to store her Lego that fits her way to play with it better than her previous way and then I called my father and chatted for a while.
I bet there are very few people missing old me anymore. If they do they just didn’t know her as well as I did.
Now I am off to sleep and hopefully I will yell less tomorrow. And write less self-absorbed blog post and clean this messy apartment up more.
When I did some treats with my son today I thought about my non Swedish readers and thought I would write a post to you.
Every single Swede instantly knows what is on the photo. It is probably the most common pastry we have. It is made with rolled oat/oat flakes, chocolate, coffee, sugar and butter. Rolled in nibsugar or coco flakes. Simple, delicious and beyond common.
Nowadays most kids know them as Chokladbollar, chocolate balls. But when I was young and to most old people and even in one of my cookbooks from 2001 has the traditional name Negerbollar. Yes. That would be the n-word balls in English. It is not at all strange if a christian lady in her 70’s asks for a couple of n*balls to her coffee. When I grew up it never occurd to me that the name could be offensive. In 2003 a person actually sued a bakery for ethical discrimination (denied though) by calling them negerbollar and since then all people selling them has change the name to Chokladbollar.
Today my daughters had their big first roll call in school. Tomorrow they start school.
Over here kids start school the year they turn 6 in a preschool class that is not obligatory and then the year they turn 7 they start first class. My oldest starts first class and the six year old starts the preschool class. There is little difference besides the legality. I haven’t heard of any kid not starting at age of 6.
Right now I am taking a small break from the mountain of papers and forms we got today. One of the forms is a contract the kids sign that says that they will obey the school rules. Just as last year we will not sign them. The rules are as follows:
*I do my best and tries to be positive
*I do not violate others in word or action
*I respect everyone
*I behave politely and nicely in every situation in school
*I arrive in time and have the right equipment
*I behave in a way that no one is disturbed in their work
*I am careful with our school and keep our things in order
I have such a problem with letting a six and a seven year old signing a contract promising to follow all that. It is not because I want my kids to trash the school or disturb everyone else. But seriously, could you who read this follow all of these rules for a year in your workplace? To always respect everyone? To always do my best? I can try but to sign a contract that I would? I know I won’t do my best every hour of every day at work and will never expect that of a kid. So I am going to keep being the uncomfortable parent and not sign it this year too.
12-15 years ago I read a The Far Side comic strip about some one visiting Sweden and I don’t at all remember the joke but some part of it was that Sweden had a pickled herring for every season. I remember how I thought that was unfair. We didn’t have a special herring for every season. Several of the bigger holidays can be celebrated with the common pickled herring and we only have two pickled herrings that are bound to a certain season and one of them is fermented and not pickled. And we do have at least one big holiday when pickled herring isn’t an obligatory piece of food at the table.
It took me until this year to finally understand that our pickled herring habits made Gary Larson’s joke in The Far Side very reasonable. Most cultures does not have pickled herring to most of the holidays.
As long as I only spent time with other Swedes the omnipresent herring is rather odd. It is just not a prejudice. It really is everywhere. At the roll call today the kids also sang two songs and one of them is a song that every Swedish kids know with the title “Sill i Dill” with sill being pickled herring the title reads pickled herring in dill. When I came home I read the lunch menu(1) for the fall and on it in fine print it says that every time fish is served pickled herring is also served as an option.
Three or so years ago I saw my herrings as a part of the normative sides of myself. Now I have a broader perspective and see how it is something that many people regard as somewhat odd about my cuisine.
*Coming out as trans has forced me to take another perspective on a lot of things. I had to break up with my old faith and church and find new ground to stand on. With the new perspective i learned that the faith that I saw as the normal kind of christianity was in fact a very small fraction of how christianity is practiced.
*I placed myside outside of the standard core family and not until then I saw that most families isn’t just a mom, a dad and their two or three kids.
It is interesting to see how little of the normativity actually is common. But mostly: It just damn fine to grow up and form my own life according to my own likings.
Well, that’s my thoughts for today.
I suddenly feel an urge for pickled herring. Or even better fermented herring. But to be kind to you I fought my urge to put a pic of a delicious herring here and instead you got my son with some chocolate treats I made last week and a photo of a proud mother that lives here with us. I complain with all the work of three kids but she has about 50 young ones right now…
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(1) In our very fine school system all schools both private and public has free lunches for all kids until they end the 12th year of school. It has a very high standard in most places with high demands of nutrition and taste. At our kids school it follows the usual form with a hot meal, a sallad buffe, several kinds of crisp bread (one organic), organic milk and water. For every child under the age of 12 a free breakfast is served if they arrive an hour before the lessons start. No sodas, sweets or such are allowed in school until the 7th year of school.
Me and my partner Noa are having a nice and slow vacation at home right now. This summer is the first one in many, many years we have tried this. We usually only take vacations when we need to travel to some relatives or have other very specific plans. Now we have two week of just hanging out at home.
Today I am this home a bit more nice to hang out in. I am remodeling two rooms. The first the kitchen aka our son’s bedroom*. The old wallpapers were a strange pinkish red with unknown japanese signs on them. They were of very, very poor quality and generations of stains covered them and from the very beginning we all hated them. But not until now, 18 months after we moved in here I have finally taken them on me and as I write a purpleish brown is drying in there.
* This is a 3 bedroom apartment and we have a need of four bedrooms. The part of the kitchen were a table is supposed to be is a bit to small for our family and the many dinner guests we often have so we are right now using the dining part of the kitchen as a bedroom for the four year old son.
The other room is one of our two bathrooms. It is a tiny 13 ft² so it is done with almost no effort and very much needed.
As soon as I am ready I hope to succeed in dragging my family out to the woods and work on our bilberry/european blueberry stash in the freezer. It is perfect weather to work outside. Sunny and beautiful but only 55-60°F.
Well, I have to go back to my rollers before the day is over.
I do love you and I do miss you all! Thanks for all the written messages and all the thoughs you have given me the last months.
I know I am a bad blogger but hey; this is my blog and I won’t feel bad for not following the expectations ohter people set up for this.
I am having the time of my life! I love, love, love my job. My boss is the most decent guy you could meet, we share an office with four witty, funny guys that we get to have fika with two times every day. The summer is all that it is cranked up to be and my friends are really good friends.
This summer is in much colored by the fact that we don’t have any money right now but having a great job and great friends make that a small secondary thing.
Besides the monitary issue there is another cloud on my sky and that is my health. I am so happy being the right person at the right place now but my body seems to need more time to relax and re-charge so it told me to keep the paste down now.
In a week we are gong to have two weeks of vacation and we had some grand plans but we just had to admit that I need to take it easy so now we have nothing booked for that time and I will try to sleep as much as possible and really take care of this body that I worked so hard to get.
Today I decluttered our bedroom. It was something that I probably needed to do many, many weeks ago but besides that I am very happy I got it done today. I have a minor allergy to some kinds of dust and haven’t been able to breath freely for a while so I hope my body will reward me with a good night sleep now.
It is finally turning almost dark in the evenings now. After two months of light it is now so dark in the late evenings that is a point of turning some lamps on. I do love the summer light up here but I do long for a night when it gets really dark so the stars will shine. I think it is about a month left until that.
Bye for now. I hope I wont be as long until next time we see each other.
Hi there, remember me? I used to blog here a while ago.
Spring has arrived in it’s questionable glory. When my sisters in the mid and southern parts of Sweden tells me about all the flowers, the warm weather and the first dip of the year. Unfortunately our spring is a bit more modest and today it included both pea size hail and snow. But there is a lot of green and I think the last snow piles gave up and died a few days ago.
Today we moved from a home office to a very real and very nice office down in the city. Me and (ex) hubby work together but now we get to share an office with another company and get to meet actual other grownups every day! And besides from being adult they also seems really nice and fun people to be around.
This is also releasing a lot of space at home. Two officespaces, my was taking up half of our bedroom and my partner had his own room that only was functioning as an office. I will probably declutter my space and make it more easy to start painting. I haven’t met any creativity in a really long while. But maybe if I made it more accable.
I am sorry I have been so invisible both here and in other places. It is really fun to have an inspiring job with tons of work to do but a full time job, three small kids and a couple of organisations that needs time takes up all of my time right now.
Just a short tip for you who speak Swedish; I am selling my car on Tradera http://www.tradera.com/auction/auction.asp?aid=62335078
I have started to write a few blog posts about the car breaking down but I have work to do to earn money to buy a car :)
Now and then I hear people saying that churches in Sweden always is affirming towards GLBT-people. That is not at all true. Many churches welcome G:s and L:s if they live in celibacy and B:s if they marry and just ignore the T:s.
Today me and Noa got a mail from a woman who saw us on TV. I think I will grow tired of saying that in a year or so - have patience with me. Well; the writer is pentecostal and have a sister called Sara Em who is lesbian and the writer was very supportive of both us and her sister. She sent me a link to Sara’s newly released debut single “Include Me”. It’s about her struggle to be included as a lesbian in the church. Listen to it and realize you have to buy it on iTunes!
Read more on her homepage where there are some links to Swedish media appearances.
This weekend a lesbian woman got baptized in a congregation from the same denomination that our old church were we weren’t welcome as members if I outed myself.
Here is a link to the whole Sunday service and in the beginning she talks about how she felt a need to end her nine year long relationship to her partner to get to know God. The clip is in English translated to Swedish. The pastor starts out talking for a minute or so. Then Sasha starts to talk and gets really emotional. I really hope she finds God in the special way she think she will by ending the relationship with her loved one. But I do doubt it. I have heard the same story to many times.
For me it seems strange that a loving God would be happier this way. But for me most things seems strange these days.
I might be in the most beautiful place on earth right now. I have forgotten my camera but if I and you are lucky my parents remembered to bring it.
It is a beautiful countryside B&B or more like a mansion on the shore of one of the bigger and more beautiful rivers in Sweden. Me and one of sisters and our families will stay here for two days.
Tomorrow is the funeral for my grandfather and I will meet all my cousins on my mothers side for the first time in many years. It will be the first bigger family event I attend to as myself post transition. It feels really good. It is about time we get to know each other this way. I have great cousins.
Well. That is all for me tonight. My body is punishing me for my eight hour drive I just did.
I am writing this in as I sit in waiting room at the Swedish National Board of Health. I am meeting with their Legal Council today. Waiting room is maybe to nice a name for this. It is the xerox room with some chairs in. A rather small room. The chairs are nice but the xerox machine is huge, makes a lot of noise and it is probably 90° in here.
I drove down from the northern parts of Sweden to the capitol Stockholm two days ago. It is close to 400 miles to drive here. Will drive up again tomorrow.
I came to this meeting an hour ago. First I got to meet dr Andersson who will present my case to the Legal Council. Now I have to wait for them to get to my case.
I am here because I have applied for:
* A legal sex change in the government database
* A name that fits my gender
* Castration
* SRS (Sex Reassignment Surgery)
In Sweden all citizens are registered in a national database at our Skatteverket (IRS). Every citizen has a number called personnummer (person number). It begins with the birth year, birth month and then birth day. For me born the fifth of June 1979 have a personnummer that starts with 790605. Then we have the important last four digits. Well, three of them are just to make sure two people wont have the same number but the last one indicate sex. Even numbers for women and odd numbers for men.
This personnummer is the written on your drivers license, in your passport, on your journals, in every database ever keeping track of you like in schools, at work, in most clubs and organisations.
To get a new personnummer you have to do a 2-5 year long inquisition that is lead by a physiatrist. When that is done that physiatrist will approve that you apply for a new personnummer. But to get the new personnummer you need to be castrated and had your SRS. For transmen the SRS is sort of optional but women has to do it. But we can apply for all that at the same time. As I did and that is why I’m here.
In the nearest hour I will be called into a room with the Legal Council and they have already got my papers and read them thru. dr. Andersson has already said that I am genuine and will pass. So this is just formalities.
Oh, thats another thing. Being genuine. That is what it is all about. For a transsexual to get a new personnummer and everything that comes with having paper telling the right gender you have to be “Genuinely Transsexual”. It is classified as a sickness. I have yet to meet a transsexual person that don’t find that term horrible. Are you genuine enough or a bit to false?
So everything you chase for during several years is to get the label genuine put on your papers. That can mess any insecure person up. That can mess any stable person up. Am I genuine enough? Will they see that I’m genuine? If I walk like this, will they discover I’m genuine sooner? Several years of trying to prove that you are genuine enough. The inquisition is made just to find the ones that are not and sort everyone out that has any faults and aren’t genuine enough.
I started my road to this room in may -05. In a matter of minute dr. Anderson will come and get me. We were three people here today. One woman that went in first and came back just 10 minutes later a minute ago. She came back absolutely radient. Now a man sit across for me and looking fairly calm but I guess he is as nervous as me.
Just to be here means your papers are in order. I will pass, I will get everything approved and as soon as the hospital will do my surgeries I will get my name and my identity. But never the less I am shaking and sweating. So much hard work to get here.
Now dr Anderson came and called for the quiet man infront of me. You can hear a couple of seconds before he comes because of a locked door with a code on it. Will it only take 10 mins for him too? I need to go to the bathroom. Should I wait or should I go? Why didn’t I bring my bottle with water? My mouth is dry. The xerox machine just quieted down. I want a cigarette. But I quit. Or did I just run out of them? I haven’t decide. It was a while ago so I guess I have quitted. As most I smoke one pack a month so it isn’t that easy to know when you stop and when you just don’t do it for a while.
The other man just came back. He is glowing like the brightest star. Took him only five minutes.
I just took a photo of myself here in the xerox room. Here it is:
Is it minutes or seconds left for my turn? How will it go? What will they say?
Now I hear the beep from someone pressing the code at the door. It is just seconds…
It seems like I’m not in the mood of writing about all the media apparences. It was fun. Most of them got it rather right. Of course a few minutes in a national TV-show wont tell my life story in a fair way. Even if I tell my life story in just a month I wont be fair.
I can feel a bit frustrated by the fact that we are portrayed as the couple with a love that strong it could survive anything. Even if I am very fond of Noa or love has at least the same levels of frustration, misunderstandings and stupid mistakes as anyone else I know.
But it has been really fun to do. The best part is everyone who have written to us and just said hi or told us their story. So very nice of all of you!
Here is a link to an article in Aftonbladet. The biggest newspaper in Sweden. Bigger isn’t always better but I love the family photo.
And then a link to the TV-show.
All in Swedish of course.
A year ago our Swedish Integration Board published a study about Swedish values in regards to other cultures. It showed that Swedes have the most different values of all countries. Or “atypical and deviant” as the study said. The values that we have that the study metioned was:
How we reject strong leaders and fights for representative democracy where the leaders truly listen to their voters.
How we wants everything to be open and accessible especially when it comes to political decision making.
We also had the worlds highest level of trust to others.
But they failed to mention how Melodifestivalen affects us as a people. If you are in a representative sample of Swedes and want to chit-chat and ask them what their team they support most people will laugh. Sport isn’t that big here. Some love it but most don’t. If you ask what church they attend most will say “none” and it will be sort of true. Religion is supposed to be a private matter and we often are described as a totally secularized country. In that matter I just want to add that even if people say no Swede goes to church we are described as a country where going to the movies are very common and there are more visitors to churches than to the movies so it isn’t entirely true that we have no church goers and most people are believers at heart, they just don’t go to church.
But if you ask that group what they think about this years Melodifestvalen contributions you will get some reaction from everyone. There will be four distinct groups. The one that are first to tell you that they hate it. They will later on still tell you what tunes they hate especially much and probably knows the lyrics to many of them. Then we have the group that tells you that they don’t really like it but the half-time show can be fun to watch and it will turn out that they watch every minute of it. Then there are always some who really don’t watch it. Then we have the final group, we who adore it. All gay men are assumed to be in this group and that is fairly true.
But no matter what group you are in every Swede has seen the Melodifestivalen many, many times. Many families have traditions of what to eat during it.
Until a couple of years ago there was only one show every year. Now we have a system with five parts before the big final show. Yesterday was one of them. Two winners from that show goes to the big show in Stockholm.
After the Stockholm winner has been televoted to success they go off to the big Eurovision Song Contest. When I was little we won that now and then but nowadays the eastern Europe does better there so we are more focused on the Swedish parts.
A big part of the Melodifestivalen are all the bad contributions. Either with people who can’t really sing or just doing something that was supposed to be crazy fun but just became crazy embarrassing. Without those contributios the Melodifestivalen wouldn’t be the same. Sometimes the absurd and strange songs wins. Last week was one of them times. No one could really believe it was true when this came on: (Don’t miss it when the dancers pull out flags from their ass in the end.)
Then we have the really good contributions that everyone just love for real. Yesterday was one of those times. Two identical twins that we just fell in love with immediately. They are known as backups singers to a childrens band in Sweden and they have worked with music in many ways for years but this was something new that we all loved and they immediately got a place in the big final:
The reason why Melodifestivalen are so lovable is because we both get to listen to our biggest stars and get to see new stars rising. It was this way ABBA became famous. Many times it isn’t about the winner, many stars has been born just by being on Melodifestivalen.
Before 2002 everyone had to sing in Swedish and then they translated the winning song to English to sing in the Eurovision Song Contest.
There are so many reasons to love Melodifestivalen. One is that it is so easy to dislike. There will always be several songs you just hate. There are always some really strange dance or clothing. Some really good parts besides the music, the glamour, the fun or beautiful half time shows, the perfect mix of newcomers and veterans in the game, the families and friends gathering is that when we look back on the winners we get such a nice journey through time.
To round this up I will do just that and you will get the Swedish and the English version of a schlager every Swedes knows and most in my age know every single word and nuance by Carola, one of our most famous Melodifestivalen artists. She has won it three times and one time she also won the whole Eurovision Song Contest. She had a contribution yesterday that wasn’t that good but here are the song Främling/Stranger the winner of Melodifestivalen 1983. First in Swedish and then English.
No pressure but if you want to make it in the gay scene in Sweden you just have to learn this:
Well, now I am off to a quaker meeting. I will tell you all more about that later. If anyone in the Umeå area is interested to know more about quakerism in Sweden you are welcome to Rågången 2C at 14.00 today Sunday Feb. 17.
(A short breakdown for you who likes this: Melodifestivalen are the words melodi (melody) and festival (festival) put together with the definite article “en” in the end. We like to do longer and longer words so the melody festival becomes melodifestivalen. In the same way we can make any word. The trans blogger becomes transbloggaren (bloggare swedish for blogger). We share many words in Swedish and English but the grammar is rather different)
Two days ago me and hubby was in my childhood local newspaper Norra Västerbotten and today we are in the largest national paper Aftonbladet. On Wednesday we will appear on national TV in an afternoon show called Go’kväll on SVT 1. Both the paper of today and the TV-show have an estimated number of readers/viewers of about 7-10% of the population here in Sweden.
The TV-show will most certainly get online but the articles are as far as I know not online.
So in a week, statistically every Swede will know at least a couple of persons that knows my story. But that is not the huge thing. The huge deal for me is that local paper. A small little paper with a circulation of less than 40k.
When I grew up I was deeply closeted and as soon as I finished the 9th grade and turned 16 I moved away to my sister who lived in the city I live in now. I didn’t keep in touch with anyone. I sort of disappeared. To be on the cover and get a spread in the paper that most of the people I grew up with reads is a big deal.
I know many transgendered people who move away from thier home as soon as they can afford it and never comes back. It is not only hard emotionally to transition around people you grow up with, it can be a very dangerous thing to. Even if most people can accept transgendered it is easier for people to understand when it is a stranger and not someone you already had a clear image of how they are.
For me, doing this article is coming out at home. When I go back people will get who I am. Last time I was up there I met several people who I really know that looked at me and only saw a stranger. I do no look at all as the person I grew up in.
When I come out as trans to people I have gotten to know the last couple of years they still see me and just add another background story. When I come out to person that only knew me as her it is a different story. Then they have to take someone that looks and sounds like a stranger and merge together with someone else. And it was always easier just to be the stranger. Now I’m not. And it feels pretty good.
It feels like the final piece in a bit extracted childhood puzzle.
Now I just have a thousand other parts of my life to be puzzled about. Right now I’m liking the pieces I have to play with. Things goes rather well at work. If anyone wants an audio bible go to voxbiblia.com and listen for free or buy something and I will be the one sending it to you. Even if it really doesn’t do any monetary difference for me my it does for my boss and since he might be the most supportive boss imaginable I want the most of success for him.
Having too much problems with Blogger. So I gave them up and moved on to wordpress. Hope yall find me here.
So blogging works so much better with studying and being a hermit than working as much as possible, being a media whore and trying to keep up with life.
Sorry about that.
In the following 6 days I will have two national and one local media thing. I still haven’t done any radio so I guess I will keep on until then. Can’t really stop until I’ve done it all…
Well I have to go back to work but I will give you a tip of how to both support a good cause and get something nice and naked to look at: The UK transactivist organisation Press for Change has done a fabulous calendar with FtM:s.
Today I got a mail from my doctor telling me I had to reapply for my sex-change once again. So now it is get again 4-9 months until I become a real citizen again.
By some reason I got really shaken up by Benazir Bhutto’s death. It left an unproportional hole in my stomach. Than later on that day someone I really care about got ill for a while and that made me very worried and (what ever the word for that feeling you get when someone you love hurts. It must have a special word since it is such a specific feeling. But I don’t know a word neither in Swedish nor English).
Stupid last 24 hours!
The only good thing I can see in all this buer bear byer bureaucracy mess is that I have grown an incredible amount of empathy towards every illegal immigrant. To live without any real possibility to identify yourself is just crazy in this socialistic controlling country.
I’m a tad bitter today. But it will pass. Ohh, it seems like it did the moment I wrote it. Well, then I have nothing more to blog about. Everything is alright now.
I am very easily pleased during the holidays. But soon and very soon it will be all normal again and I’ll be back!
So today my American friend arrived. That is all nice an so. But I have met him before (at least most of his personalities). But the biggest thing today was actually when he came and did something he took out his wallet and there I saw something strange. In his wallet there was real American dollars. And yes, as you read this I know you will question that I am adult but that was actually the first time ever I realized that American dollars isn’t just a make up thing from all the movies and TV I have watched during my life.
I don’t think any American or other native English speaking person can get that feeling I just got. As children we look at cartoon made in the US dubbed to Swedish. Almost all movies are in English with Swedish subtitles. Since few of us knows to read at early age we don’t get much of the dialog but learn a lot of English sounds. Then in school at age 10 when I grew up and usually at age 7 nowadays we start to learn English for real. So much of our culture is media based and so very much of the media is from USA.
I have seen us dollars all my life - on TV, in movies, printed on clothes and everything. But up until today I have never seen any real physical money. It was such a strange feeling. Maybe it’s for real that country of much strangeness over there. Maybe New York is a real town, maybe George W Bush isn’t just made up to be a good source of jokes for Comedy Central. I had to touch the dollars, smell them and try to rip them apart a bit just to really understand they were for real.
I guess I have always known allt that but still I have just sort of assumed it was all fiction. I never thought there was any real people getting their salary in actual dollar. It might have been an actual kid that got their allowance with this dollars that I’m now holding in my hand. Not just kids looking at the TV seeing fictional kids getting their bucks.
Now that important gap between real and fake is starting to fade away. What is for real? Who am I?
As soon as I have my legal issues with my sex change all finished I am going to get myself a passport and going over there! I need to get me some real experiences beyond this.
The shortest day has once again passed and lighter days are on its way!
Found a blog I didn’t know of earlier today. The author is also a member of a fairly new Swedish association for transgendered issues called KIM I am a bit involved in.
http://genderwarrior.blogspot.com/
I will read it through now while I am drinking my julmust. Julmust is a Swedish x-mas soft drink that is so good it makes Coca Cola drop their sales with 50% here. During December 50% of the soft drinks we buy is julmust.
Tomorrow the sun will set one minute later and in a couple weeks there will be no problem saying when sunrise ends and sunset starts.
I mentioned recently me and my primary partner N was in an article in a local Swedish Christian paper. We was on the cover and the only heading set on it was “Störst av allt är kärleken” - Greatest of them all is love.
I have been thinking a lot about what love is in general but since I read that cover I have gone back to my questions regarding love. I am portraited as someone who knows love and still I have very little clue.
In the chapter from 1 co that Paul tells us love is greatest he describe love like this “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Apart from Paul I have only heard this describtion of love from abused women. “I do love him and I will always protect him and I will always hope he will change”. I hope my daughters will never look upon love as something where they shouldn’t keep record of wrongs. Everyone should do that I think. Yeah, sometimes it is good to ignore that record but in the long run you have to get stats on that record that works out.
I don’t stay with N because of the kind of list Paul made. I just can’t imagine that any life without him would be as good as the one with him. If we take Pauls list:
Love…
- …is patient
- …is kind
- …does not envy
- …does not boast
- …is not proud
- …does not dishonor others
- …is not self-seeking
- …is not easily angered
- …keeps no record of wrongs
- …does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
- …always protects
- …always trusts
- …always hopes
- …always perseveres.
To talk about love as a being of it’s own is a good way of Paul to just weird it up a bit but still. How do we have it on these points? After nine years this isn’t my look upon it.
- …is patient. I would say the opposite. With people I don’t know I have a rather good patience. When it comes to the people I love I am very impatient. Impatient to meet them soon, impatent for them to do nice and smart things frequently.
- …is kind. Sure. Love gives some kindness. But I am most certainly never as cruel to people I don’t love as the ones I love.
- …does not envy. That is just plain silly. When we hear of jealousy love is almost always in the picture. I am not proud of my envy of all the life goodies N has that I don’t but it is there and will always be. But I have to say that I like that he has so many envious sides.
- …does not boast. There I can almost agree. At least after a couple of years together I don’t feel much need to boast. It’s just no point. We are too much of the same person.
- …is not proud. Proud is such a hard word. I am proud of him and our relationship. At least most of the time. But I understand it isn’t that kind of proud he was talking about.
- …does not dishonor others. Maybe Love don’t but I do from time to time.
- …is not self-seeking. Who looks for love without self-interests?
- …is not easily angered. I don’t think I am the only one out there to be the most angry at the one I love most.
- …keeps no record of wrongs. No formal records of course but yeah, I try to keep in mind how we suck and when.
- …does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Here I’m sort of in agreement with him. Evil is just evil. Truth is nice, hard but have obvious perks.
- …always protects. Well yes. I think love have a tendency to make us protect each other. But I don’t see that as a good side of love. When I get treated badly I mostly swallow it and feel shitty. I have tried getting better of not protecting and that little truth part just makes all the difference.
- …always trust. Not at all. At some periods in our life I have had very little trust. Trust gets built and torn down by other stuff than love. There are many people I trust that I have no love towards. There are some I love deeply but doesn’t trust much. Love and trust in a fluffy combo is always sweet but not always a given.
- …always hopes. Maybe I agree here too. At least in the long run.
- …always perseveres. Well, not always and is it a good thing? It is so easy to forget what is best in the long run and just persistent hang in there. To fight just because it is the right thing to do without really defining what’s the goal and why.
I might have a very pragmatic view on love. But what has been our way of finding love and safety in our life together hasn’t been that stupid list. Besides from a bunch of fluffy feelings to begin with it has been a rather simple rule to write and almost impossible to follow: To talk about everything. If things makes us happy we talk about it. If stuff makes us sad, mad or just uncomfortable we talk about it. We talk for hours and hours every week about seemingly meaningless stuff about how we feels but in the longterm that makes us know each other extremely well. It is beyond bonding.
But it is all about that communication. As soon as we stop talking about everything our knowledge about each other don’t improve and the bonds loosens up. Love doesn’t offer much when communication isn’t there. At least it just makes me build up my own image of him and when the real version and my image crashes it hurts and creates loneliness regardless of physical distance. With lots of open communication prevents that sort of crashes a strong togetherness grows and the fluffy stuff grows.
That sounds all nice and are easy when the open communication is about how great everything is and how beautiful eyes you have. But from time to time life is about other stuff. Jealousy, disappointment, uncertainty and such are not that easy and socially encouraged to talk about at the end of the day. But just do it anyways. At least for me any feelings in that area grows fast if I keep it to myself and mostly just disappears if I bring it out in the light.
So, no. Love doesn’t conquer everything. Honesty does. And it kind of builds love. Love is great but I have my bet on honesty. And love doesn’t at all equals honesty.
So there is my midwinter love ramble. Next time I will write more fun stuff. I think. All i know for sure is that the sun will show for one more minute tomorrow.
I like Sweden. In many ways. But I wouldn’t say that I’m proud of it. Here’s one reason why I will never be proud:
From the local paper vk.se
Umebo dömd för sexövergrepp på dotternTvå års fängelse blir domen för en umebo i 40-årsåldern som förgripit sig sexuellt på sin egen dotter. Men tingsrätten var inte enig.
Mannen ska vid flera tillfällen ha utfört sexuella handlingar med sin fyraåriga dotter. Bland annat har mannen låtit flickan utföra oralsex.
I won’t translate it much because I like you but it is about a man here in my town who today got his ruling for sexually assaulting his own four year old daughter. Amongst other things he forced her to perform oral sex on him. Yes, she was four. It was her father. What does he get? Two years in prison. And that will probably become a lot less if he behaves.
Theoretically we focus a lot on rehabilitation in our jails. The prisons have one person cells with a bed, a desk, a window with curtains, a board to put up posters and cards on the wall and a TV. Many prisoners gets a video game to pass the time. They have to work or finish basic education in there and by securing the basic needs with safety, good food and a nice place to feel at home in the grounds for rehabilitation should be high. Sure I want allt he criminals to turn good but still. Two years? The kid will still be a small child then…
A year ago or so there was a discussion if there would be possible to keep sex offenders in prisons from porn and they agreed to stop the porn channels on TV and porn in common spaces but they decided that it would be unethical to take away the private porn from prisoners and as long as they keep it in their desks and don’t bother others.
One prison actually took the matter in their own hands and took away the porn from one rapist in their prison and the prisoner reported it and went all the way to the Supreme Administrative Court who ruled in favor of the prisoner.
I can’t understand how the government doesn’t view porn consumption for a rapist as something disturbing rehabilitation.
Since we are a country in agreement of never disagree we can’t discuss it either. Everyone gets to be sad in silence but shame on anyone who speaks up.
This makes me beyond sad.
A lot of other stuff makes me less sad. I have now been on T for two years. Tomorrow is midwinter and we will start our journey to lightness. Now there is a couple of hours of sunrise, two-three hours when the sun comes up over the tree tops if you’re in the right place and then sundown. I’m not in the right place so I can never see the sun up above the horizon if I’m at home and there is just this long sunrise that every day just fail totally and the darkness wins. I will come back when the sun does.
A month ago i did the annual obligatory bilbesiktning. It is a yearly car inspection we have where they check everything on your car, the amount of rust in important places, that all the lights work, that you’re not having to bad exhausts and such. I think it’s a good thing. Every car has to be in really good shape at least once a year.
This is the third year we have had a car and also the third car we have had. It is always a bit scary to besiktiga a new car because you sort of get to know if you were tricked when you bought it or not. But every important part of the car was in good shape. But some light bulbs were broken and one headlight aimed to high so it might dazzle the cars I meet.
I bought new light bulbs some days later and changed them but waited with the headlight. That needed tools and I was lazy. Today was the last day to fix it before the car would be illegal to drive so I took my toolbox and went down to the car with the thought it would take me ten minutes. After ten times ten minutes I gave up and went inside and did a first for me. I called a mechanic. I went down and got it fixed and read a flyer telling me that they could tell the bilprovning that the problems were fixed as long as they had the inspection report from bilprovningen. Unfortunately I had that at home and my car in the shop at the time but some sweet talking with the cashier gave me my keys back before I paid to drive home to the other part of the town to get the inspection report and drive back to pay it all and get it approved.
When I showed it to them they correctly told me that they had only changed the headlight and not the bulbs that were in the report. Yeah, that was only light bulbs, I changed them myself. Well, then they couldn’t help me because they had to do the changes themselves. I asked how much it would cost me to make them do it again and actually change my already changed bulbs to new new ones to know that they were new but they declined. I was actually willing to pay them to charge me new bulbs but only go out to the car 5 meters away but they refused. Stupid businessmen! So I had to drive a mile to the bilprovning and check my car there.
Four hours of my life I wont get back. But I managed to keep it legal to drive with my car.
But the shitty day soon changed. One of the best blogs here in town is written by the fabulous MJ Bliss and after following her blog for a long time we finally met up for a fika and she was as fun irl ans on her blog. Why does almost every new and fun people I meet in this town come from out of town? That is a strange thing about this place.
My long time readers might remember that the single reason to start this blog was to practise my English. My first posts took hours and hours with the dictionary and now I rarely use the dictionary at all and writes what ever comes to my mind. So I think I might have reached my goal. Especially after today when she gave me the greatest compliment on that part. Until we met she took me for a native English speaker. I haven’t even been to any English speaking country (yet). She also gave me a bag of delicious chocolate covered almonds!
Even though she knows Swedish we spoke in English the whole fika and it was only a few times I had to put in some Swedish word that I didn’t find the right English one. But at the other hand that happens to me a lot in Swedish too. That a English word comes up before the right Swedish one.
So, then and there I decided to never make any excuses for my English skills anymore. Yeay me!
Now I have to go cook some dinner. The kids last day in school this term gets celibrated with their favorite food and the Swedish national lagom fancy food - tacos. If you ever get to visit a Swedish family eating something to celebrate anything and it isn’t pay weekend (we get our salary once a month and almost everybody the same date) it is very lightly it is tacos. It wouldn’t surprise me if Swedes eats more tacos than Swedish meatballs. But tonight is the kids night and they decide. I’m just their humble servant. For one night every term at least.
I took some photos of the kids, the gingerbread house and other stuff for the blog but my stupid computer refuses to connect with my phone since a few months so no more photos for you… (yeah I know I have a camera in the computer, and two real digital cameras on my desktop but that is not the point!)
God Jul or whatever holiday you may celibrate or avoid!
I have a short brake from decorating gingerbread house 2 and 3. We’re having a x-mas orgie here.
For the first time since I moved away from home I am spending x-mas at home. I wonder why we didn’t think about that earlier. A lot of my holiday stress is gone when we don’t have to plan far away traveling.
We also skipped most of the gifts and other parts of the tradition that I don’t like much. The other parts that I do like I enjoy a lot more.
I can recommend that a lot.
But Alex. you might think, why are you talking about that? Make amends for blogfading, explain it and promise to never let it go more than a couple of days between posts like last year!
I don’t do well with rules and that rule of having to feel bad for not blogging on my own blog is not really something I will do.
When I started blogging my big focus were spiritual and philosophical wonders regarding transition, non-normality and other stuff that I feel have a great point in being talked about in the open.
When I started to accept myself more and more those questions faded and other questions started to arise. The new questions were stuff I liked to keep for myself. Not really secrets but stuff I didn’t want input on from others because I needed to build a foundation for myself first.
Another part is that many of my questions now will keep changing your view on me and I feel like I have put yall through enough already.
Being transgendered is hard in many ways. But in some ways it isn’t. Since it isn’t a choice but forced upon us and there is no other healthy way to handle it than to accept it and learn to live with it. I often meet people that think it has to do with morality or spirituality but I don’t think so. At least for me transition was necessary to keep me (get me) sane.
So here’s my warning. You will probably not approve with much that I will write. I don’t do well with just writing about how many gingerbread houses I have done so when I write my values and thoughts will come up. Even if they don’t fit.
I haven’t read this since I don’t read stuff about me ->
In Swedish: http://www.tidningenspira.com/artikel.php?id=455
Back in the autumn I had this idea that I was going to get back to blogging. I did a monster a thursday many weeks ago and thought I was going to put it up the day after, but obviously I didn’t. But here it is.
Then the migraines came. I don’t know why yet but we have our theories that some other medications are making them come and kick me down. It hasn’t been a week without them for a looong time now. There are a bunch of obvious bad things about that. Obviously! If you don’t get that just check migraines up in a dictionary. Besides the pain I just can’t do anything. Can’t work, can’t write much, don’t have the creativity to paint. The don’t being able to work part has been very frustrating since I am in a place where I both have and love my job. But, besides the bad stuff there are some good things with this illness. First of all I have stopped with almost every bad habit I have. I smoked some earlier but since nicotine can trigger an attack I stopped. I have stopped regularly drinking caffeine, drinking alcohol and eating chocolate. I almost only eat really healthy and I exercise and treat myself good. I hope that will make some difference soon or that our slow health care system will help me some more.
But there have been several good days too. But not enough time to really reload my batteries. So I can’t really write anything with substance. So I fill it out with some happiness in two photos taken between attacks. The first snow a couple of weeks ago and the most recent niece.
Hi. Remember me? I have some new urls and don’t even know if my old rss-feed will bring you here. Well. If it don’t I will just write to my self and that I’ll guess is alright as well.
Any questions about the loss of http://acrossandbeyond.blogspot.com/ will be kindly ignored. I will not recognize stupidity it takes to explain that change.
Now I can be found at http://alex.resare.com/ if anybody wants me. Alex as in my first name, Resare as in my surname and Com as in I would sell my soul for dime if anybody offered to buy it.
I rearranged my living room today. I didn’t use it at all. I don’t know if I buy the feng shui-thing but I didn’t like the vibe in here earlier and just didn’t go in here if I didn’t have to. Since our living room is kind of huge it seemed kind of stupid not to use it at all so tonight I moved everything around. I don’t know how I feel about it now but it is not worse at least.
When I moved around the book shelfs across the room I found a collections of poems my grandfather made in the end of his life. The first time I saw it was on his funeral. The title is “Spridda skurar” the Swedish term for scattered showers. My first honest project about my life was called “Cloudy With Sunny Spells”. I guess we had a few things in common me and my grandpa.
We lived together for a few years. It was a time when my father in long periods of time was away on buisness, my mom was working hard. It was a time where I felt very lonely. After a happening I call the ironing situation that changed.
When I as a 6 or 7 years old was accused by someone of stealing an iron (I was obviously innocent, the few things I have stolen in my life was far more logical, fun and/or exiting than an iron). I won’t tell the whole story now but it was a rough time in my life when I thought I was a burdon to everyone and felt incredibly in the way everywhere and as an unneccesary part of my family.
In the ending of the Iron situation it came down to the moment when the three adults in my life at the moment: my grandmother, my grandfather and my mother all were fighting about me. My mom telling the other two I was too nice to do anything stupid, my grandmother talking about how smart and confident I was and my grandfather telling the others It didn’t matter who had done what - I was a child and just needed love and care. I was very encouraged by that. Moments earlier I had felt terrible but just in this moment I realized all three of them had very high thoughts of me even if it came out in very different ways.
As told I was just 6 or 7 years old. I am not entirely sure what happened. But I am sure my grandfather said something that changed me.
Since I was a child the focus wasn’t what I had done or not done in this situation. I just needed love and care. I desperatly needed to hear someone telling me just that. And he told me. Not to my face, I am not sure I even was in the room. It was between adults but he said it and I heard. That changed everything in my life as things likely does at that age..
He was there when my parent couldn’t.
Now when I am grown up with two girls on my own in the same age I admire that even more. I know how incredible impossible it can be to give support and knowledgeable love at that age.
So here I am sitting here with his poems in my hands. I feel sadened by the fact that I never told him how very much he meant to me. But where we grew up feelings like that was never discussed as far as I heard. I hope he knew were he had me anyways.
Something he gave me during our years together is something that will last for many years to come. Both my mother and my siblings seems to get my father in a way that I have never understood. My grandfather gave me the tools to see both who I am myself and who my father am and how he loves me.
It was never discussed openly but he often told me stories about my father and they most often showed how he went the extra mile to care for someone or something without any words. He gave me many keys I needed.
One of the poems in this booklet I have here are called Rust Free Love. I had heard this one before I got the collection on his funeral. I remembered how he read it to my grandmother on their 50th anniversary. This in a place where men where though and feelings often kept to one self. This is a rough translation:
We have endeavoured together for many years.
My hair has fallen off
Your hair have turned grayOf all the grand plans I made
are just splinters and gravel leftI wanted to build a large house
for us and our children to live in
It only became a half built shed.I wanted to give you a rose, a flaming red,
but I hurt my finger on the rose’s thorn.
It only got to be a stain on a paper napkin.I wanted to deliver an honest I’m so thankful
But I stumbled on the syllables
It only came out as an hesitant Umm..Still it happens
You slip your hand in mine
and whisper:
My friend, I am yours, just yours.
I hope he knew that even if I never was there by his side, I loved that he was always on mine. How he years after he has passed away still helps me figuring out myself through his words and life.
When I was in the (weird) situation that I had to decide a name for my self it was his name I chose. It wasn’t even a decision. I wanted to grab hold of something of his.
Today when I rearranged the furnitures I had to get a some help from my daughters. One of them said with the utter most respect in her voice Wow dad, you’re almost as strong as grandpa.
I love that they get him and have the same look in their eyes when they talk about my father I have when I talk about his father. It is strange but good. I wonder if they need him to get me in the same way that I needed grandpa. Life is strange and interesting. We’ll se what happens.
I like the new arranged living room. My kids are finally asleep. This day is over, my blogging isn’t.
We’re down visiting some family. Yesterday I met three of my siblings and all the kids cousins. Today one of the siblings had a birthday we celebrated and among others one of my cousins with family came and ate some cake.
Tomorrow we will try to meet some old friends who live here and on friday it is time for more family and on saturday we have a wedding to attend.
It is a bit stressful to live so far away in the other part of the country so that every minute of free time should be planned to meet people we moved away from. But on the other hand - one could have bigger problems than having too much loved ones to visit…
The photos are from yesterday at my parents allotment with my kids and their cousins, my older sisters and some polar bears (or is it my sisters dogs?) and my mum.
I’m on a short vacation down in Stockholm and will not write much just deliver another monster. I hope y’all are having a good time. A special thought to everyone in Irvine at the bXg conference.
click to view in a readable size:
Yeah, seems to be Friday at last… (click for enlargement)
For a few weeks just with the kids color pencils and no water color but maybe that will change back in time. I hope the Fridays will come more regularly for a time now.
My parents-in-law came and made the kids summer even more fun. The last few days happened to be filled with many animals. I have no time to sit down and write more but you can take a look at some photos from the last couple of days and make your own story.
I have an interesting problem/milestone. I am sitting here with the application form for my legal sex change. After a couple of years it just comes down a simple one-paged form with a number of boxes and lines. I have to fill in this form to apply for a permit to do more surgery, to get my new names and then finally get my new male personnummer and then I’m done.
I have to send this form tomorrow and before I send it in I have to decide what my new names will be. My first name Alexander feels good but i want to have to other names as I do now and as most people around me have.
I have thought of what names I should take for several years and two times earlier I have applied for just a name change but those requests was turned down because of bureaucracal mistakes or inexperience from my side.
When we expected our first child we had a number of names possible for that child and when she was born and got her name we saved the list of names for future children. When the next one was on her way all the old names still was beautiful but seemed strange to think of again.
I feel sort of the same way now. The old names I thought of for me seems strange to use and now when I sit here with the surreal application form I don’t know what to choose or what to write.
I feel pretty comfortable with Alexander, the only hesitation there is that my father seems a bit skeptical and the name is after his father and parents have a lot to say when it comes to name to wear.
So what shall I write on that little line on this little form? Any suggestions will be thoughtfully considered even if I obviously have the last word. Please help me now friends and family! :)
Peterson Toscano wrote a very good post about being a refugee and I made a comment there and got thinking about personality and what it is that make me like some people/churches/clubs/situations/whatever and dislike others.
In the comment I wrote “I am my own color on Gods palette. There might not be other colors like me but I match well with other nuances and even some contrast colors.” The more I think about it the more I like that image.
I have two friends that are divorced and have a ugly fight over the children right now. They are a really bad match and they only have two things in common. They both love the kids and how they both think that the other parent is the worst being on the earth. They both have good and bad qualities and watching them makes me more and more convinced that most people are equally good and bad just in different ways and it is just a matter of finding people you get along with.
In one way this seems like something most people would agree on but at the same time we grade people differently all the time. On what seems to be a linear scale. We don’t have to look far to hear comments like “1st person isn’t good enough for 2nd person“.
If we could look upon our fellow creatures more like colors that might change. Different colors matches with each other and some colors are more popular than others but few can argue and say that purple is an objectively worse color off less worth in the world than green or that a warm nuance of red have a bigger value for the world than a colder red. I think that most people think that it is good that every color exists. At the same time I think that everyone would agree that they don’t want every color in the world on their walls in their living room. It is widely accepted that different people can like and dislike different colors and match them together as they like without wanting to change what colors should exist in the world.
I like a lot of people and I dislike some. The ones that I dislike are just colors I don’t want to combine my own color with. They might fit well in others living rooms but not mine. My color is beautiful with with my husbands but far from all colors that are beautiful with his is beautiful with mine.
Different people likes different colors together, some think that pink and red are beautiful together, others think it is a terrible combination. Some people I like myself with don’t agree and some that think their color goes well with me I don’t really see as beautiful.
Some colors you want to have around you all the time, some colors are nice for shorter amounts of time.
Yes, I think I will keep this image.
Today 109 years ago Federico García Lorca was born in Granada. I couple of days I didn’t know about him at all and when I read about him I learned that we share the same birthday so I had to read a bit about him. He was a multi talented Spanish poet and dramatist. At the age of 38 he was killed by the nationalists. In the Wikipedia article about him it says:
He was executed, shot by Falange militia on August 19, 1936. The executioner is reputed to have said “I fired two bullets into his arse for being a queer.”
I wish I could say that much has happened since then…
But today all is good up here. I have had a wonderful day today. Perfect weather, nice company, really good vegan food, thoughtful gifts and I feel so glad that I am who I am where I am today.
As I always do on birthdays I evaluate the last year and make dreams for the next year. It is interesting to see how much my dreams can change from year to year and how I seem to learn at least a bit every now and then. After I have posted this I shall relax and listen to some new music and read some more poems until the sun rises again. Not very smart but after a day with tired kids and many impressions it is nice to be awake all alone.
If there is more out there that didn’t know Lorca before here is one of his poems for you:
Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint
Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night.
I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.
If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone my master,
never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn.
–Federico García Lorca
I hope you all have a good day. Tomorrow is our national holiday. It is not celebrated much at all, at least not by the people I know. Only way it effects me is that I always can sleep in the day after my birthday. On TV they will probably sing our national anthem and humble as I am I always get the same thought when I hear that tune — I may not know much but I am not as stupid as that song. This is how it goes:
You ancient, you free, you mountainous North
You quiet, you joyful beauty
I greet You, most beautiful land upon earth
Your sun, Your sky, Your meadows green
You throne upon memories of great olden days
When honoured Your name flew over the world
I know that You are and will be as you were
Yes, I want to live I want to die in the North
First of all. The most beautiful land? The idea of beauty as something objective where one thing can be the most beautiful as that doesn’t match my way of understanding. Second of all I don’t like the idea of throning on old great wars. I can’t be less proud of wars. But it is the penultimate line that makes me sigh and wonder what they where thinking. I know that You are and will be as you were. I may not know who I am but at least I know that nothing will ever be as it always where. And that is good, change is good.
So I’m on my lunch break from work. Yes! It has been a long time since I had a job more than a few hours here and there so it is sweet to be able to say that: I am on my lunch break.
When I work I sit in my bed with my laptop on my lap and now on my break I sit here in my bed with my laptop on my lap. More specifically my job is at a company called Voxbiblia who sell the Bible on audio files in different ways. Right now I am sitting and cutting files following our Swedish Lectionary.
Noa, my husband also work at Voxbiblia and has recently made a nice little embedded player that I want to try out.
Now my break is over and I will go back to work.
Polands official spokesperson for children’s rights, Ewa Sowinska wants psychologists to examine if Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubbie is gay and should be banned from public television in Poland. Ewa Sowinska had watched Teletubbies and didn’t realise he was a boy at first and was very concerned when she understood that it was a boy that carried a handbag. You probably remember the same argumentation from Jerry Falwell many years ago.
From a BBC article:
Ms Sowinska wants the psychologists to make a recommendation about whether the children’s show should be broadcast on public television.Poland’s authorities have recently initiated a series of moves to outlaw the promotion of homosexuality among the nation’s children.
It is strange that a country can spend so much energy on the wrong things but I think it is even more strange that so many thinks that a handbag makes someone gay. I know a lot of gay men and only one of them have I ever seen carrying a handbag. Men carrying handbags are often transvestites and they are most often heterosexual. As so often the conservatives are not mainly afraid of homosexuality but of non-heteronormality.
So here’s a post mostly in Swedish. I wrote a fictional letter and I don’t think I can translate it to English but I know many of you know Swedish so here it is:
Min älskade
Nu ligger jag nedbäddad i din säng. Jag kommer hit varje dag och låter minnena av dig skölja över mig. Det var länge sedan de sista doftfragmenten av din underbara kropp försvann men jag letar ändå långsamt och noggrant mig fram med slutna ögon och tänker att om jag bara kan känna ett uns av din doft så finns du kvar här hos mig.
Hur kunde jag låta mig bli så hals över huvud förälskad i dig? Förtvivlan över att vi aldrig hann dela våra tankar om tiden innan. Tankarna om varandra under den första tiden tillsammans. Du vet hur man ofta en bit in i relationer går tillbaka och väver ihop minnena från de första stegen tillsammas. När visste du första gången att du var dragen till mig? Visste du redan när jag kom fram till dig den där första gången att jag redan fallit för dig? Visste du någonsin att jag redan innan vi sagt ett ord till varandra hade tappat fotfästet och var bortom all räddning?
Minns du när vi kysstes första gången? Det är klart att du gör. Men vet du hur det var för mig? Jag började tappa hoppet om att någonsin komma dig nära då du böjde dig fram och kysste mig. En stilla kyss, kanske bara ett kort farväl från din sida. Jag är så ledsen att jag aldrig fick berätta för dig hur du fick mig att för ett ögonblick glömma allt annat. Hur det bara var du och jag i hela världen. Inga bekymmer, inga sjukdomar, ingen annan någonstans. Det var bara du och jag kvar i hela världen.
Jag önskar att jag kunde sätta mig ner och berätta hur mycket den kyssen betydde för mig. Av alla ögonblick som byggt mitt liv är det den stunden som jag allra helst minns. I det ögonblicket var allt bara lycka.
Allt stannade upp.
Allt stannade kvar.
I den stunden vad vi de enda som fanns, de enda som räknades. Du var allt för mig och jag tror att jag var allt för dig
Men det är något jag aldrig kommer att få veta. Jag hoppas att du fick veta vad jag tänkte. Jag hoppas att du vet, verkligen vet, hur du stannade upp lela min tid, hela mitt jag. Men jag är rädd att du inte ens anar. Att det inte finns någon eller något som berättar allt det här för dig.
Det finns ingen doft kvar av dig i dag heller. Den här sängen är bara sängen du sov i, inte sängen du finns kvar i.
Min älskade, jag hoppas att jag får kalla dig min älskade. Visste du att jag älskade dig? Eller var vi bara en stund av verklighetsflykt och gemensamma drömmar för dig? När du kysste mig den första gången, kände du då också att hela världen stannade eller fyllde världen dig med skam och skuld över den börda du la på mig? Trodde du att du kunde välja om jag skulle älska dig eller inte? Trodde du att du la ditt ok på mig?
Min älskade, om jag har en önskan i mitt liv så är det att du får veta, verkligen veta, att det du gett mig var allt igenom min gläde att bära. Ingenting av det du lagt på mig var en börda. Om allt jag fått av dig var en kyss vore jag för evig tid glad. Nu fick jag oändligt mycket mer och varje dag är en dag då jag tackar gudarna att jag fick träffa dig.
När jag var barn berättade min farfar de mest fantastiska historier om tiden före vår, när magiska varelser härskade på vår jord och alla sagorna skrevs ner. Jag trodde att sagornas tid var förbi, att allt i vår tid var utan magi. Skulle inte varje väsen från alla tider avundas oss, alla tidigare historier blekna när vår blev berättad?
Den första kyssen du gav mig innan vår resa formade allt det jag är. Resten av vår saga gav oss mig alla nyanser till den tavla som nu är vårt liv. Du och jag. Allt något så stort kan vara så kort.
Varken du eller jag var perfekta. Ändå blev vi tillsammans det vackraste som någonsin funnits. Det som för evig tid kommer att eka mellan bergen. Sagan som alltid lever kvar.
Vi trodde båda att livet var över, vi trodde båda att allt var stora var för andra. Men det vi fick var den största av skatter. Att två liv kan få vävas ihop så nära, att två liv faktiskt kan