Jul 30, 2019
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I’m thinking I want a photo wall. Yeah. Elegant. Huge flowers, like a Dutch baroque painting. It would be amazing. So I go to a site selling photo walls and scroll through endless pictures of forests, jungle animals, concrete walls and beaches. And then, this:
In that moment I completely forget that I want an elegant oversized baroque like flower bouquet and fall in love with the surface of the Berlin wall instead. It says so much about me.
I have, over time, found that I enjoy fics with other constellations than The Couple, heterosexual or homosexual. Naturally it depends on the way it’s written, but the kind where people form units that are functional - so NOT the kind where people has to choose, or are torn between people they love etc - and the road there really does float my boat.
It’s actually one happy surprise for me in The Expanse book series because Abraham and Franck incorporates such a unit. They write it from the perspective that our ideas about legality concerning such relationships has evolved, which allows people to enjoy the legal benefits of the classic marriage even if they happen to be 5 people. Today that discussion inevitably and quickly turns from polyamory to polygamy and DO YOU WANT TO MAKE IT LEGAL FOR MUSLIM MEN TO HAVE 4 WIVES. Yeah well, we might wanna discuss patriarchy overall then and what to do about that. Any takers? No. Figures, because it’s rarely about doing anything about oppressive structures. If it was, we’d be able to constructively discuss such structures everywhere.
But I digress. It’s not all that common in fanfic even if it exists. Of course it does. When I find a well written story of that kind, it’s like bloody Yule and my birthday at the same time. Here’s the thing though, I haven’t had a burning need to live like that. I don’t know if it would actually be my personal cup of tea. It might be, but it might also not be. I suppose it matters a lot who you end up with, if you mesh well as people and of you enter into it on relatively equal terms. Unequal dependency is never a good thing. Neither is a feeling of being pressured into something.
I’ve not been much in conflict with society norms concerning sexuality. I’m quite comfortable with my own sexuality. It just is. I’m not big on social structures that pressures people into something they’re not, or roles they don’t feel comfortable in, but for me personality I have rarely been at odds with the overall society norm in this respect. I’ve always considered myself as pretty standard. (I have a big beef with patriarchy though and I’m not at all happy about the role I tend to be given as a woman.) But even if I’ve had something of a happy-go-lucky attitude towards sexual norms, I’ve also always just headed in the direction where my nose is aiming. I think I’m a lot more fluid than I have ever lived, and that my way of living has a lot more to do with the way our society is constructed than my personal preferences. I have gone with the flow, so to speak, because I never felt in much conflict with said flow. I can see that it hurts others, and I would like to see a different world in that respect.
To sum it up, I simply never gave it much thought when I was younger. I just lived. But over time it entered my inner ongoing discussion with myself. I tend to be rootless in everything, and I kind of feel a bit rootless in this as well after mulling over it the past 15 years.
I have a big problem with identity. I always had. It’s deeply ingrained and I know perfectly well why (long story that I won’t delve into here). Identity is by nature excluding. I am this and therefore I’m not that. That exclusion is important because it’s a rallying point, a lot more so than the identity itself. Otherwise there would be little point in promoting the importance of identity in various groups and organisations built in identity. Not everyone is welcome and that’s the whole point. Far too often it turns into fundamentalism, especially when it concerns an identity that’s under pressure. You gotta fit the mould or you can take the highway. Fundamentalism and I are like oil and water. I get obstinate and turn into a spontaneously bomb throwing anarchist (okay, I won’t throw actual bombs - but I feel like I want to do it) when I come across it. I’m easily triggered too, and once I get that suffocating feeling I have to break up with whatever it is that I tried to marry. Always. It disqualifies me pretty much everywhere in the long run, which is a great sadness of mine. There is no tribe for me. No sense of belonging anywhere. And maybe that’s why I’m so attracted to stories with several people who find and love each other, and are inclusive rather than exclusive? Where you don’t have to fit the mould or choose?
Meanwhile, as I’m pondering this, I’m going to reread my latest (unexpected) find
What I’ve been doing all day. It’s my trusty Honda that I’m lugging around - probably the best trimmer I’ve ever worked with. It has a 4-stroke engine, which is a bit unusual for machines of this sort. Most professional machines have a 2-stroke engine. I use a 3 mil nylon thread with a metal wire core which isn’t being eaten up by the surface too fast.
Darling is the photographer, of course. He goes for the rear view when ever he can, naturally.
I have a soar throat after all that hollering at the punk concert last night (it passed as singing) and my ears have a bit of ringing going on too. Not to mention that I feel pretty dull after a late night with plenty of Czech beer.
Also, I may have taken up the challenge to get a neck tattoo. So. Need to decide exactly what to get now, of course.
I once went in search of a bronze statue, as you do, and ended up getting a Ganesha table fountain with a light that shifts in the colours of the rainbow instead. It’s one of my favourite objects in the flat. I love turning it on when I’m sitting in the living room by myself, especially while writing, which is rather fitting if you consider what he’s the protector of.
Admixture tools are fun to browse through. If you have a clue about how such things work, you can get an interesting picture by compiling all that information, weighing them together.
First of all, these kind of tools are only as good as their reference material. It leans on genetic material collected from various groups and regions. Some are based on scientific research, both gathered samples from specific groups and samples from individuals found during archaeological digs, others are based on people volunteering tests to companies selling tests. Most admix tools are based on scientific research though. The drawback is that minorities might not be referenced. It also means that these tools will interpret your results no matter if reference groups exist or not, which can cause confusion. More, I have found, with the test companies’ tools than the scientific ones, as the scientific ones often targets minorities. They are the ones that gives perspective on our genome and clues to migration. As more people test and scientific researchers keep working, the more diverse the results become. Genetics is making big leaps so it’s an idea to check in with these tools every now and then, because they’re updated constantly.
Recently an American company told me that I’m Norwegian and Spanish. It reminded me of one of the admix tools that cheerfully exclaimed that I was Icelandic. I’m neither, but the results from these two actually has more in common than you’d think at first glance, and it shows how an analysis works and how come the result can be so different.
It’s the Icelandic result that gives the clue. Iceland was colonised by Norwegian vikings. Their genome is clearly present in the Y-haplogroups, the male chromosomes. However, the female haplogroups is predominantly from the British Isles. To be frank, Norwegian vikings took female slaves to Iceland and had children with them. Norwegian vikings pestered especially Scotland, and their genetic imprint can be found there too, especially in the east and north east. Now, I know I have a British mtDNA haplogroup, particularly common in Scotland. Through the admix tools I know Argyll is especially referenced to. I get Irish hits too which suggests that the British Isles origin is the Irish Gaelic invaders in Scotland. However, I also get Orkney popping up. Orkney has a significant Norwegian genome presence when you look at the male Y-chromosomes. My mtDNA is clearly British Isles but the family from where my female ancestor originated had Norwegian viking influence.
So what has this to do with Spain then? Why did I get the weird combination Norway-Spain? Well, gather round children, lemme tell ya about the origins of the people on the British Isles. 20 years ago a researcher suggested that the Britons weren’t descendants of continental invaders as previously thought, thanks to in particular the Romans and their written records. It was not received well by anyone but the Britons. It was ridiculed as idea even. In essence, what he suggested, was that people in northern Spain began moving north, along the Atlantic coast, eventually arriving on the British Isles, thousand of years ago. They had a cultural exchange with continental Europe, and continental Europeans certainly did visit, but there was no wave of continental Europeans taking over. Jokingly he suggested that it was entirely possible that the Celtic culture didn’t originate in central Europe, but on the British Isles and then spread to the continent. Yeah, you can imagine what Germans et al thought of that idea. It would rewrite their history entirely, well, everyone’s actually.
The problem at that point was that archaeology didn’t really support this idea, and then there were those Roman records, of course. We have relied a lot on what they wrote, 2000 years ago. One should bear in mind though that the Romans aren’t 100% reliable. And they wrote from their perspective, as a Mediterranean super power.
What this scientist was leaning on was a new field, genetics. 20 years later he has been proven right when it comes to the origins of the population on the British Isles. They can be traced back to Spain. So what about the origin of the culture then? Well, that’s not settled yet. However, there’s one recent discovery that isn’t in favour of the central European origin - a weapons find on the British Isles that predates anything found on the continent. Now, the problem with archaeology is that there might be other finds yet to be discovered, so what this proves is that it’s currently the oldest Celtic find. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the Celtic culture originated on the British Isles, but it makes it as possible as a continental origin today. The Roman records is written in a way that makes you think that central Europe is the Celtic cradle, but that doesn’t prove anything either. When the Romans began pushing into new territory, the Celtic culture they encountered first was the continental European. Even today even scientists makes the mistake of thinking that the first finds are also the point of origin, and the Romans didn’t have the means we have today to look further into subjects. I doubt they were that interested either. A Celt is a Celt is a Celt. It was just one of the many different cultures and peoples Rome conquered. A curiosity at best.
In Scotland you have Picts and Gaels, two Celtic groups who originated in northern Spain long ago. If you interpret those according to ancient DNA, they become Spanish. Throw in Nowegian vikings into the mix, and the Norwegian is in itself considered ancient, and you get Norway and Spain. Or you could get Iceland. It’s the same genes, interpreted in different ways.
On a side note, when I run my test results through admixtures meant to look for African and Middle Eastern origins, I always strike high on Morocco. Now buckle up, there’s a reason for this. The Saami share an origin with the Berber population in what’s basically Morocco today. Since I have Saami heritage, when I run my results through admix tools geared towards Africa-Middle East, they interpret that as Berber and put me in Morocco. It’s just a curiosity and means nothing, but it certainly shows the limitations to the admix tools and that you need to educate yourself if you’re to make sense of them.
Rainbow photo of me in the local park at a reggae concert with Kapten Röd and friends.