Author: Ellinor Kall

I have been living in a naked reality – stripped of the glamour, the interpretations and extrapolations of my mind. Exhaustion and fatigue prevented me from connecting the dots and coloring the fields of the world. No wonder life was lacking meaning. I see that now. I remember now, what I was, who I’ll be. The frozen becoming fluid. I’m beginning to let myself protrude out of the shell. Entering the world again, slowly, growing tendrils, tilting reality, expanding chaos, edging ideaspace till I’m all wet with possibility.

My taste when it comes to literature is kind of diverse. I love contrast, I want diversity. I like deep psychological probings as well as pulp horror with tentacles. Here I’d like to introduce three of my absolute favorite books too you. They are of the more serious kind and all happen to be written by some of the Swedish literary giants 50-60 years ago. All three have in common that they were written very fast in a creative frenzy claimed to come from outside the authors. All still valid, today more than ever.

Aniara | Harry Martinson, 1956
Might be my all time favorite and a life changing read for me. A science fiction poem/novel about the spaceship Aniara that has an accident at launch and hurls lost towards the big nothingness. Big questions and small, about humanity and humans. You should all really really read this!

Kallocain | Karin Boye, 1940
A dystopic sci-fi novel about a totalitarian state, written ten years before Orwell’s 1984. Boye is mostly known as a poet (and writer of early queer identity prose) but wrote this out of nowhere after seeing the brooding darkness growing with the Nazis in Germany.

Island of the Doomed | Stig Dagerman, 1946
Dagerman only wrote four novels and all of them would be on my list of recommended books. In each of them he explores the dark and painful aspects of being human. A Burnt Child is the most straight forward of them and might be a good starting point, but my favorite is probably the anxiety nightmare of Island of the Doomed.

I’m not right handed, nor left handed. And I am not ambidextrous. I use my right hand for some things and the left for others. With my right I write with a pen, with my left I write on my phone. Right for brushing teeth, left for putting lipstick on. Right for flicking the finger and shaking an angry fist, left for caressing someone I care about – or myself.

They are not interchangeable, wrong hand feels uncomfortable, but they can cooperate sometimes. Both for my guitar, which I love to play. Both for driving, which I hate to do. Neither can paint or draw but sometimes does it anyway. I got silver rings I made myself on the right; it’s strict in its shiny adornment. The left is naked and free; untamed and impulsive. Two sides of myself, living in symbiosis.

Why choose one above the other?

I can get so lost in my thoughts that when I wash my face in the shower I sometimes end up water-boarding myself.

Relationships – Either they end or you die.

I’ll become a nun in a writing convent/cloister. Is there such a thing? If not, who’d join me in starting one? Bring your writing tools, toothbrush and dildos – but no relationships whatsoever.

“Get up early, sister Ellinor, you’ve got coffee duty! Grind the beans vigorously so that the writers may be divinely inspired!”

Then we’ll dress in black garments and write a few hours, or at least until breakfast. Or lunch. And there’ll be long walks at the lake or nearby forest to think and when tired in the afternoon take a nap or hang out with the other sisters. Maybe some wine in the evening. Not to friendly though, no intrigues or hanky-panky!

Then back to writing for us night-owls. Catch that nocturnal flow of inspiration and then off to bed. What a dream.

Oh, what do nun’s pyjamas look like? Are they black and comfy? I imagine they must be – cause sleeping alone can get very cold.

(I’m keeping emotions at bay here.)

She very cranky snappy several days though says all good. Teeth dog snap snap. Her unemployed days filled with overflowing laundry. From work I gym rage. Shower have to wear last resort panties. Also groceries carry trembling tired. Feel bad fucked all time. Want be sushi roll in blanket. Travel away away. Wish alone. Walk home like black cloud. Old lady approach on bike downhill puts her legs out in air and smiles. I tears my eyes.

I had been looking forward to this day for years, been preparing for a month, re-watching the old seasons, really getting in the mood for the last days before the premiere. And the day came, I was happy and giddy all day. Couldn’t wait to get home.

But then she was there. Upset, crying, being unfair about things, once again thinking her way is the only way. She occupied the TV and I started crying. Not because of what happened between us, I can take that. I cried because it had made me lose my happiness.

All the built up excitement gone. Always when I am happy something bad happens. I cried and cried and couldn’t stop. Finally she said she was sorry, and that my joy would come back. But it feels like she always does this, she never gets where I am.

She says she is empathic but at the same time she can be kinda egoistic. Maybe I’m unfair too. Things are never that easy. She sat down by the computer in another room while I wiped my tears and watched the two premiere episodes I had been longing for for so many years.

And then, to watch the show in the state of mind I was… I was left speechless. Joy isn’t back just yet, but wonder is. Wow. Just wow. Season three is pure magic.

I wrote a post earlier this week. A kind of metaphoric text about myself. Only a few sentences and I felt it turned out like a good read worth sharing.

But before I could post it my muse came down with her idea hose and sprayed me with words. I continued to write, 667 words to be exact. What I thought would be a simple, single post, turned out to be the synopsis of a short-story set in Azza-Jono.

So I can’t post the original text because it would spoil the story. I wanted to continue writing but it was too late at night already and I had to go to work the next day.

And of course, while at work my muse came down with the hose again. Now it’s going to be a whole novel. Damn. Why didn’t she get here when I was unemployed instead? There is not enough time in my life as it is now!

Well, she is a bitch, but she is my bitch and I love her. Bring it on, darling, I’ll buy a new laptop and try to keep up.

Yesterday I wished I was a ball of yarn, rolled up into myself, like a warm, cozy little self sufficient world.

I’m an introvert gone supernova. I need time alone, and that includes time away even from my partner. We have had rough times for a while and I’ve tried to make it work by acting extroverted, talking for the sake of talking and always trying to do things together. That, of course, only made things worse by draining me without giving anything to us. But I didn’t understand, so eventually I got stuck in that mode.

I had moved to a new city and left my few but close friends behind. And in this new setting I entirely forgot that I am an introvert and that when I am social – which I really do enjoy – I must get time to charge my energy in between. But I was trying to fit in and got desperate somehow to make everyone around me happy. Except myself.

I didn’t understand why my energy got so low and never recharged. I became, like a star burning it’s last fuel in a bright flash before dying, a supernova. This is my most recent insight into myself. It was just the other week I finally put the pieces together. Introvert and never alone. Of course I’ll get fatigued. Now I try to make sure I get time by myself and though it’s a long way back, I’ve started to recover, I think.

Being someone you’re not is exhausting.

I have so many messages I need to get out. But my communications array is overloaded. It’s the middle of the night here and I can’t sleep. There is a chaos waiting to be formulated, put into words. Like I want to harness my feelings, making them real by shaping them into words. While they are still undefined those feelings have power over me, freezing my conscious self while the unconscious runs amok. I have to make them tangible. Need to write them down. I’ll try.

Addendum: Every fragment I write captures some thoughts, piece by piece. I’m just afraid I’ll discover that every piece comes from a different puzzle. Or maybe that would make me relieved — then there’s an explanation to this mess that is me. Thinking of it, now I’m kind of curious.

There is a rare kind of woodpecker living in the wall of the old house where my father lives. Every morning while I was visiting, at 6.15 sharp, it woke me up with a noise like a small machine gun. But since this particular species is an endangered species my father doesn’t want to chase it away. In fact bird watchers go there to watch it.

First morning, vacation and all, I just wanted to shoot the damned thing. But then after a few days I got used to it. Last morning it didn’t even wake me up. Now I am on a train going home and I have accepted that even noisy birds must be allowed to live and do what they do best. I suppose I’m a noisy bird myself.

Cease the day, roll out the night, as I discreetly move in the fringes of the second dimension of time, I push the borderland, I embrace the unknown, the abstruse, dives further into idea space to find the stem cells of the mind, the malleable words that simultaneously creates myself and the world.