intimate walk with Jonas

Jonas was the first one who contacted me to go for a walk in Stockholm. Already two weeks prior to my arrival. So at least I knew there would be one walk happening for sure. We agreed by mail to meet at 4pm in Södermalm at the Hornstull metro station south exit. He wrote he was going to hold a minimalistic bicycle. I replied he would be able to recognize me by a white baseball cap. Finally today my first Stockholm walk. I arrived there 20 minutes early and walked once around the block. When walking around the block I noticed some soreness in my sacrum. From back-bending too much in my yoga practice last night. I tried to relax my sacrum and swing my hips a bit more to create more mobility in that area. I caught myself looking at my reflection in a shop window to makes sure my gait wasn't exaggeratedly effeminate now. It wasn't. I felt a new freedom and body awareness, but from outside the difference was minimal. I could feel it in my backbone that this intimacy project in Stockholm was going to open something in me. When getting back to the Hornstull south exit I became quite excited in a soft way. Differently from my previous intimate walks, this was the first time I was going to walk with a complete stranger. A crowd of pedestrians was crossing the street when the lights turned green and walked right towards me. I stayed there with this multitude of people coming at me and enjoyed the idea of opening myself up to all and any of them. A few young and not so young men passed me on more or less minimalistic bikes - but none of them was watching out for a white base ball cap. Then an sms. I'm at the corner. Wearing all black w bike. I looked up from my mobile phone and  saw a black figure standing with a bike at the corner 50 meters down across the street. We waved at each other and I made a sign that I was going to cross to meet him on the other side. There he was: Jonas. He was wearing dark sunglasses, black pants and a black shirt. On his forearms he had tattoos depicting two birds. His hair was thick and black. He reminded me a bit of John Travolta in Grease. Or of the cool Portuguese bike mechanic and skater who used to fix my bike in Amsterdam. I'm not sure if I really thought this when I first saw him or if I'm only making these comparisons now in hindsight. But it's funny to realize how quick I go looking for references. Probably to help me feel more safe and reassured ... that what I see and am about to get to know more intimately is not completely foreign. Julia once brought my attention to this same habit I have with landscapes.
I had walked around Hornstull the day before and had seen some people swimming in the bay in that neighborhood. This morning I wrote a quick email to Jonas saying that I would bring my swimsuit. We shook hands and exchanged a few first quick sentences to downplay the awkwardness of this blind date situation. 'So this is your minimalistic bike.' was one of mine. 'So where would you like to walk?' one of his. He remembered my proposal for a swim and said he knew a good spot for that. On the way there he was pushing his bike beside him. It was a very light weight bike with very thin tires. We talked briefly about the intimacy project. I asked him how he was related to Kristina and found out that they had met in a bar over a couple of beers. He wasn't connected to her via university or the konsthall as I had suspected. He told me about his work as a photographer. He studied in Stockholm and one year in New York. He likes taking portraits of people and explained how people who are used to having their portrait taken always hit the same kind of poses and give him the same kind of looks. I had to think of the very fashionable locals I had spotted everywhere the day before. Then we arrived at the swimming spot. A little wooden platform with railings into the water. It was a quiet spot in a residential district. I found it very inviting. He made it clear though that he wasn't going to swim as he had been sick last week. I already wore my swim trunks underneath. I found it very generous of him and a bit selfish of myself that he was going to wait there while I had my pre-announced swim. And the weather was windy and overcast so first I thought I was going to decline as well. But then I thought: No, let's do it. It felt like a good decision to follow my desire and and not let the expectations I think the other person has of me stand in the way of getting intimate with my surroundings. That merging with the waterbodies of Stockholm felt like becoming intimate with the city at some subconscious level. I felt more open and eager to take in the majestic city and the unique personality of Jonas.  He took some pictures of me swimming which made me feel a bit self-conscious, but another part of me was flattered to be shot by the photographer. From that point onwards I asked more questions and felt more awake and things flowed smoothly. We talked about the architecture we passed. About the temperament of the Swedish in winter and in the summer months. I asked him about his background which I had been curious from the beginning but didn't dare to ask right away. He was adopted from Guatemala but grew up entirely in Stockholm. He said that he didn't spend much time thinking about his origins and his adoption while growing up, but that he is now dealing with it . . . still dealing with it. He has been to Mexico City on an art scholarship, but not yet to Guatemala. We crossed a big bridge (the Västerbron) to Kungsholmen where we entered a park with an amphitheater. There we did the exercise of 5 minutes sitting in silence and just being present. First he was going to take some Ritalin. He explained me that he was diagnosed with ADHD about a year ago and that Ritalin helps him focus and be more in the moment. I said not to worry, no pressure and felt a bit arrogant and responsible for proposing this exercise. But then we did it anyway since he insisted that he wanted to try it and thought it's good for him. And I felt very touched by his sincere effort to try this even though he said it wasn't one of his strengths to do meditative practices. He can meditate best on his bike in the crazy city traffic when his full attention is required to keep him safe. We agreed to start walking back towards Hornstull metro station, but then we passed a bouldering playground. And I said let's try this. We both had a few goes at climbing up the two boulders. He said that this was more like his kind of meditation and that he had always wanted to try bouldering and never had. I did it once with Swedish Daniel in Amsterdam in an indoor climbing hall. And I came across super nice boulders and boulder-climbers in Hampi, India. But it had never occurred to me  that one could do this for free and without equipment in a park in Stockholm. If I lived here I would come here regularly to get that nice tingling sensation in fingers and lower arms. I also tried to promote the Osho dynamic meditation to Jonas. But bouldering and cycling is probably more up his alley. When our paths separated at the metro station I genuinely and enthusiastically said that I had had a great afternoon. And I think he enjoyed it too. My spirits had lifted from post - Sweet&Tender for the End of the World depression to an outdoorsy and active approach to a city and its inhabitants - and Jonas had been my intimate guide and barometer.
I sent the text to Jonas to double-check and this was his comment:
I´m ok with the text! Only thing would be that I wasn´t taking my ritalin to do the meditation, but rather, I have a time every afternoon i have to take them. It´s  when my morning-dose wears off. It just happened to be right when we were about to start the 5min meditation. Perhaps you could change that? Or if its to hard to rewrite, just take it out completly? Just that I´m kind of sensitive about what language is used about theese sort of diagnosis and medicines You know, people thinking that kind of medicine is to get high or whatever rather than to just be on level... 

Oh, and the diagnosis is actually ADD. ie no Hyperactivity, hehe.

Put what I write here into the blogentry also if you want.

Anyway a very sweet text. 

Really wanna try bouldering now.....

Lonely Allegiance - intimate walks in Stockholm

I was invited to participate in the group exhibition LONELY ALLEGIANCE curated by Kristina Lindemann. Before and parallel to the exhibition I got the opportunity to take up the intimate walks again in the frame of a two-week residency at Residency Botkyrka and MDT in Stockholm.

I arrived in Stockholm on Monday. Today is Wednesday. I must say that my thinking and writing capacity and my ability to take in, process and digest information is rather slow at the moment. I see myself in a recovery process from an overload of responsability, stuck emotion, sexual frustration, alienation and insecurity which has accumulated during my last project SWEET&TENDER FOR THE  END OF THE WORLD in Bern. It was a month-long residency project with 20 artists which I coordinated and co-organized. I'm not going to try and analyze the details and reasons for this overwhelming sense of failure and confusion right now. Paradoxically to my own perception the project was deemed a success and great gift by most people involved. It was mainly my own 'movie playing in my head' that threw me so completely off balance. I did have a short, less than a week's break before coming to Stockholm during which I walked in the Swiss Alps with my friend Catalina. This little Swiss holiday didn't restore my equilibrium though and I still found myself in a state of mild depression until this morning. My friend Roger wrote to me in response to an 'intimate' email: What is THE ORGANIZER? in capital letters? Is it a role you were supposed to play? Or is more the role where you find yourself stuck in? The image of yourself? Walking is nice. Depression is ok. Right now I feel is something to deal with, only that, that's it. So don't worry, give yourself the chance to feel that too. 

Yesterday I also wrote an email to my mother apologizing for my stressed-out and consequently impolite behavior when I was at home in the village shortly before leaving again for Sweden. She replied: I hope you will slowly find yourself again during these two weeks in Stockholm. I always sense very well if you are doing well or suffering. I think you have been too ambitious with this big project. I hope that this will teach you a lesson not to bite off more than you can chew. You're not an organizer after all. Try to be content with more simple things. Don't you think you could choose a much happier and more relaxed life teaching yoga?   

Luckily Kristina had arranged for me to arrive a few days early to acclimatize and get to know the context in which we are operating. I'm only officially conducting 'intimate walks' from tomorrow on.
I didn't manage to do a lot these three first days. On Monday I went shopping and bought mainly fruit and vegetables for my green smoothies and raw food diet - during Sweet&Tender for the End of the World I gave up my diet principles and slipped into old habits of drinking too much coffee and sweets to counteract a blurry mind and tired body.
So I told myself I'll use this time in Stockholm to recover a sense of intimacy and care. A regular yoga routine is also on my list of things to get back to. So far I haven't been able to find a good rhythm though and indulged in sleeping in late which I apparently needed. Fine. I promised myself not to be hard on myself for a change this time.

On Tuesday I went and had lunch with Erik and Kristina at the Mangkulturellt Centrum. Erik studied fashion design and works now as an outreach coordinator at the Botkyrka Konsthall and Mangkulturellt centrum. He made a dynamic and relaxedly efficient impression on me with his hip (self-tailored I imagine) clothing style and sleepy out of bed look.  He works with adolescents and school kids in the neighborhood trying to make art and culture more accessible to them. I also met Tatiana, a native Bolivian who works at the Mangkulturellt Centrum at the exhibition hall and in the office. I perceived her as a tough girl, but very nice. Proud of her origins. I talked to her in Spanish when she said she was from Oruro, Bolivia. It's the city with the famous carnival.

After lunch I walked with Kristina around Fittja, the neighborhood where the residency and the multicultural center are located. I couldn't help but see in her the person who invited me and therefore had certain expectations of me. The group exhibition LONELY ALLEGIANCE is her final project for her master studies in curatorship. I felt already a bit guilty because the communication by email and some skype meetings in preparation for this residency had sometimes been a bit much for me. Kristina tends to give A LOT of information and since I had for the past month been immersed in the overpowering End of the World project I often found myself unable  to filter out the truly important info from the less important. So I guess upon meeting her in person I was already a bit prejudiced and worried that I wouldn't be able to fulfill her expectations and keep up a professional dialogue with her. During the walk in Fittja she was mainly the one talking and I became aware that she was actually very accommodating and nice trying to provide me with all the information and knowledge about the neighborhood I might possibly need. She noticed when my focus drifted a bit and started to talk about the object upon which my gaze had apparently come to rest. This impressed me very much.
Eventually her pace of speech slowed down a bit and there were more pauses and silences which I appreciated. I went with her to the neighborhood library to distribute flyers and in the evening we went together to the MDT theater's season opening. Throughout this time spent together I could see that she was making a great effort to be polite and nice to people in a genuine and unobtrusive way. There had been some misunderstanding with MDT about the content and format of my 'research presentation' there. While I was already dreading problems and hard feelings, Kristina stayed patient and let me know that she wants them to be happy with the collaboration and finds it important to establish a sustainable relationship.