Friday in Stockholm

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:

Friday? Really?

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.

Just a little bit of summer

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.

That dude, what's his name?

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! :)

Colors

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.

Happy New Year

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.