Extracts

There hasn't been much going on in my life lately, but I thought I'd gather my thoughts and recap the last weeks happenings anyway.

My new course started yesterday. "Feminist Theory: Perspectives from Continental Philosophy". I'm looking forward to it a lot. It'll be the third course within my Masters that I'll be taking at Center of Gender Studies.
It doesn't have scheduled classes the first weeks thought, so I'm visiting my friend E. in Gävle for the weekend for the first time in a year and a half! It'll be lovely. I'm hoping for more of the spring weather we've had here the last couple of days, but I'not holding my breath, it started snowing again today after all...
Then I'm spending the following week in Stockholm. Going to meet my family, celebrate my brothers birthday, meet friends and pick up literature for my new classes. I have some school work I really want to finish before going to Madrid for Easter, so I need to get started about now.

On another note, a friend of mine is moving back home to Bolivia. I was hoping he would stay the entire semester as most of the exchange students. But he's already been here for two years, and life's calling I guess.
Also, and old classmate and friend of mine got back from Japan about two weeks ago, and visited me spontaneously this Friday. As always, hanging out with him ensures hilarity and good stories, and I had missed him. After spending a year in Japan studying, he was incredibly lucky to get out just before all the mind-boggling catastrophes that hit the country. It is almost unbelieveble how one disaster has followed another, and the process of grieving and rebuilding will tax it's people heavily.

I think this about sums up what i've been thinking about lately. Not much, but I caught a really stubborn cold about two weeks back, which turned into a mean cough. Last week I had a doctors appointment and got a very effective cough-syrup that took care of the problem. As a side-effect, it also made me really tired, and I had a couple of nights of rest where I didn't even wake during the early morning hours, which was much appreciated. Actually, even after I stopped taking the medicine this weekend, I keep sleeping like the dead. Don't know what that's about, but I guess I needed the rest, which resulted in me having a lot of slow days lately.

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Lastly, and completely unrelated to anything else: writer Diana Wynne Jones passed away this week. She was old, and had been fighting cancer for a couple of years, yet kept writing up until the very end, with a half finished book and many ideas left behind. She was one of the female fantasy authors that I enjoyed the most, and her Howl's Moving Castle still remains one of the most charming books I have ever read.

Late Night Update

I caught a cold over night, and cancelled my plans for the day.
Instead I spent it all reading, knitting, browsing appartments online, cooking, and writing on reviews for work. Pretty productive in retrospective, I'd say.



Have a bit of difficulty sleeping with this cough, so I'm just gonna curl up on the couch, finish knitting my friends scarf, drink tea with honey and watch The Good Wife.

La Femme

Yesterday was International Women's Day. It started out as a rights movement amongst working class women, and has throughout the years spread around the globe. Now in some areas, it has apparently lost some of it's original meaning. And in some parts of the world, women still don't have the basic rights to even be allowed to discuss their human rights.

In Sweden, it has becaome a tricky topic. Self-procliamed as "the worlds most equal country", a lot of people think that protesting for, and demanding of, female rights is ridiculous. Or, as I often hear: "You're pushing things too far."

In a so called equal society, feminism is becoming an insult. Men "don't like" feminists, because they're all man hating crazy women. It's obvious that feminists don't want equality, they actually just want a reverse order where women are on top. And some women don't like feminists, because it's "so obvious they're all just butch lesbians".

Not only do I think this way of thinking is repulsive, it is so ignorant. Men who think feminists are "out to get them", are actually just painting the world in clearer colors. You KNOW how priviliged you are. You know that you have the power of millenia of patriarchy at your back, and you're scared shitless of being pulled down from the top of the food chain.

And women who don't like feminists, often seem more concerened by how men percieve feminists, than what it actually stands for - equal rights. Not being belittled as just a kind of breeding cow, but accepted as a person with the same pre-disposed abilities to learn, to evolve, to proceed in a field of work.

I am sure there are pretty extreme feminists out there. Women who think men are the scum of the earth. That doesn't mean that they are supposed to represent everyone, in the same way some child molesting catholic priest doesn't represent all Christians, a man in a cave somewhere wearing a turban doesn't represent all muslims, and a wife beater doesn't represent all men. Statistically, most rapes are of women falling victim to men, most often men they already know. Family, friends. Just because horrendous things like this happens, it doesn't mean that all men are untrustworthy psychopaths. That because these men are monsters, all other men are to be lumped in together with those predetory sickos we see on news broadcasts.

What I'm trying to say is, there is no finding of truth in viewing the world through such ignorant eyes. Form you own opinion based on facts. See to what the root of an issue is before you judge a cause or the people fighting for it, and don't think that one fanatic is ever to represent a group.

Yesterday, was 8th of March, and yet another year in my life passes by where nothing much has changed in the worlds view on women. We stand for more than half the population of the world, but amongst our gender you find the poorest and the sickest. Women are left without rights to express themselves, without means to education, without material assets, and not even with the rights to their own bodies and sexuality.

And even in Sweden, "the worlds most equal country", women get lower wages for the same work as their male colleages, and are seen in much fewer positions of power. They are still denied employment because they stand the risk of getting pregnant, and therefore costing companies money. They are still seen as the home-maker despite the fact that many women work full time, and are expected to spend more time with they're children than the fathers. A father, who does not stay home at all with he's baby on paternaty leave, is still not uncommon. A woman who only takes the minimum of given maternaty leave to return to work, is regarded asa terrible and unsuiteble mother.

Why? Why are we not worth as much as our friends, brothers, lovers? And why do so many still ignore it? It's not about winning, or about who one-uped the other. This isn't about women's rights or men's loss of rights. It's about human rights. Who has them, and who doesn't. And why we keep accepting a society built on such disgusting values.

In the end, my main point is, how can you believe in human rights, in humanity and in a progressive society, and not be a feminist?

Sunshine Dreaming

Jag är i Stockholm några dagar nu. Springer ärenden, får lite jobb gjort, träffar ett par vänner och är med familjen. Just nu är jag ensam hemma hos föräldrarna, har just ätit och pendlar mellan ifall jag borde plugga spanska eller läsa manga att recensera till jobbet.

Egentligen borde jag gå igenom min CV, som legat orörd sedan februari 2008. Jag har bara lektioner på fredag nu (kanske jag sagt?) och ett deltidsjobb skulle ju vara fantastiskt. Samtidigt betyder inte bristen av planerad lektionstid att jag har lite att göra i skolan, snarare är det fullt upp. Så å ena sidan oroar jag mig för att ett deltidsjobb ska komma i vägen för skolarbetet (så som det alltid gjort), samtidigt som jag både vill ha något som bryter av mot studielivet och behöver en ny inkomstkälla. Lagom till sommaren tänkte jag flytta ut från korridoren, och det skulle vara skönt om jag antingen har en deltidstjänst eller lite sparade pengar att utnyttja.

Värst är att jag mest av allt bara vill bort. Jag vet att våren äntligen börjar närma sig, och ja ja ja, jag älskar att det töar och att solen skiner bakom rutan tills platsen i soffan blir alldeles varm där jag sitter, och hur jag de senaste dagarna ångrat att jag inte tagit med solglasögonen så snart jag stigit ut ur huset. Men det hjälper inte. Det räcker inte.
Det är för sent för mig för nu har jag redan resan i huvudet och det river i mig av viljan att komma bort, att uppleva annat att gå på nya gator, äta ny mat, dricka annat vin, låta solljuset smeka benen och solglasögonen hålla tillbaka håret.
I november intygade mig mina grannar spanjorskorna, att jag borde hälsa på de i Madrid kommande år. I den iskalla novemberkylan, -20 redan veckan efter min födelsedag, var det som om någon fångat mitt hjärta med en fiskekrok och bara vevade in mig. Jag ville plötsligt inget hellre. Det var allt jag kunde tänka på första veckan. Men jag hade inte råd, inte tid och så stod jag inte ut med tanken på att åka någonstans varmt och skönt (inte för att Madrid inte har vinter, men de lyckades ändå ha det mer än 15 grader varmare än Stockholm/Uppsala), och sedan komma tillbaka till det här.

Så vi planerade, funderade, och i julas bestämde vi oss för att åka till påsken. Nu närmar sig utsatt datum. Jag skrapar ihop lön, sparpengar och ber om gamla utlånade pengar tillbaka. Jag försöker att inte unna mig några utsvävningar den närmaste månaden, lägger undan det jag har, medan kroppen känns nästan elektriskt laddad av förväntningar, av en längtan hos någon som åtrår något med tunnelseendets intensivitet.

Casa del Corazón

Today marked the two year anniversary of me getting the appartment keys to my place in Uppsala. I really can't believe I've already lived here for two full years. This place, this small corridor room, with it's shared kitchen space and all it's ever-changing neighbours, has turned my entire life upside-down.

I was another person when I got here, which sometimes feels like just yesterday (and just as often feels like forever ago). I've learned a lot of things: that I'm stronger than I thought, and more resilent. I'm less scared of new things now, more excited by the prospect of new adventures. I'm happier than when I got here. Richer in terms of experiences, in seeing and understanding the world, and most of all in friendships.

I've gotten to know a lot of wonderful people. Caring, un-inhibited, clever, witty, supportive, encuraging, party-loving, trusting, loyal people who have shared everything from their laughs, pain, their bad habits and their good sides with me. I love them, and though some of them have moved on and live far away from me now, I miss them and think of them. Remember them and cherish what they have given me.
I can't count the nights we've been up just talking. Or the times we stumble in at one, three or five in the morning, dead tired from dancing and tipsy, just to start cook right then and there for 10 people or more. Or the ridiculous corridor parties we've had, with the nightmarish amount of cleaning lined up for us the days after. The movie-nights, the cardgames, the travelling, the danicing and clubbing, the sharing of news and stories from home over cups of tea, the lazying about in the sun... I've been very lucky to have gotten a second family like this one.

Ofcourse, nothing is always good. There's been rough times. Stress, sickness, bad news, dissapointments. But all the many ups and downs included, it's been amazing. I really wish I could thank each of the crazy bastards that made my corridor (or Horridor, as it is so affectionally called, with a lot of varied spellings depending on who's talking...) life such a laugh. It's been like nothing else, and I doubt anything in my future, despite how great it might be, will ever compare to the insanity that has been my past two years. It's been quite the party.