The Swedish Feminist Man at work

The Swedish Feminist Man at work

Gosh, what a blow! He never knew why he came to end up in that place, feeling like closed-in because of his wife´s Feminism. Well, he was of some kind of Swedish heritage. Perhaps a Russian as well. And very well then, very rare. His wife had told him to read Virginia Woolf´s book: ”A room of one´s own.” Was he the latest joke in town, as he had to sit by the desk by the same mobile and talking to old friends, who now seemed remote?

The Feminists claimed that his work should only last for one year. To take care of the child, working with food, washing, cleaning, doing stuff in the kitchen he had never before dreamt about. A typical Swedish man. And now. The baby was crying, it kept on and on. The same yelling tone in his rare ears. Was he but a joke? He slowly had to admit it. This room and this year was going to be like a hell, or like a prison. Gosh! Such a clever woman he had. And now she was taking care of the office in New York city. His old place, in a remote house, off his main course of life.

The room seemed like spinning around. Washing. Cleaning. Working between walls clad in depression. Walls holding tight with no other singular impression but female despair. Was it a joke or was he her bloke?

This work in this very room was his never-ending duty. For a year at least. Next he would skip it and try to go back to some kind of normal conditions.

He felt his legs beneath him. Shock. Like a bomb shell from Sweden´s latest paradise. Cleaning and washing and making the food and – what about the cooker? Was it the button he could not handle? Button to press to the oven. Simple job. Easy done. For females yes, but not for him. Always the same beginning, same endings. Over and over.

One day the baby wanted to be fed. He gave her a bottle of home-made milk, whatever it was made of. Fed and fed. Until he was simply fed up. A whole year passed as slowly as a snail in a bunker. Gosh! Rush up the time,man! Speed up the light to come to the conclusion of Einstein. A room, time and energy working into his sphere of Ideology. E=mc². Easy piece. The room went spinning round. He became aware of how time stepped on its materialistic feet. Feet of Feministic Ideology. Did she think she could fool him with a certain Virginia Woolf? The famous, the one and only. Gosh, was he Swedish now? Time span the same work, the same cleaning. It was as boring as the everyday show on the same screen on the computor. A screen that told him to breast-feed the multi-coloured TV-set. A mixture of song spreading its chords in a room that was of his own silly imagination. If he could just get into the room´s atmosphere to gain a kind of support from outer space. But Einstein made him feel closed in. Indoors indoors indoors. Very rarely he visited his mum and dad. Very seldom he could go out to have a drink.

It was not horror he felt. It was not pride. It was like nothing at all took place. It was like there was no action. No Mr Bond. No crime. If there had been at least a criminal situation in this monotonous situation. One day. Two days. Three days. He wrote down each and every day, to have a suggestion of how to count time. And time turned into Einstein. Was he a Feministic philosopher by now? Was he? The baby cried. It did sound like a foreign something from an unknown world. It was really not his world anylonger.

He sat down to smoke. The milk in the bottle. The bed had no bed-spread. The pillow looked squeezed. The blanket dirty and a slight colour of grey. The dust covered the table by the sofa. The sofa had become a bit of his life. Sitting there. He took the baby in his arms. It kept crying. To take care of another sort of creature made him feel mad. What was it all about?

When fifty days had passed away he felt a grin sneaking into the corner of his mouth. Just about to climb the walls. The wallpapers had an urge, had a way to make his gaze trot the pattern. Over and over and over again. Trot and trot the search for the meaning of seeing the same, the same, the same. The floor was dirty. The carpets was Oriental, red and hungry for attention. A call of the red colour. He gave them no attention, no matter how much the colour searched for his eyes. The eyes gave a look upon the baby in bed. Slowly she came to a silence that was unknown to his ears. Ears had no lust for music. He had tried music, but his neighbours had complaint. And in the aura of Johnny Rotten the fury had driven him to a point where he knew he could not escape.

After hundred days he came to know the ultimate loneliness. Ugly it got stuck to his face, his muscles, his flesh. Ugly body that wanted to set his own self free. But where? And how? And when?

Perhaps it was a day like all the rest days. The baby was sleeping. It had fall asleep on the floor in the bathroom. He had forgotten his wife´s own treasure, the baby. If she thought it such a rare and wealthy sign of creation, why did she leave him all alone? Torture had crept into his wife last name. He thought of mixing up a kind of separation. Easy come, easy go. She had stayed at a hotel because she needed a space of her own. The treasure on the bathroom´s floor slept. Such a nice silence. He felt separated from his own wife. Felt no despair, not even longing after her. His longing walked the streets of his own mind. Lonely, deserted, almost empty streets. If he could just turn himself into a poet. Oh very well. There was a closet with hidden books. He opened it and out spread and floated a secret. Lots of poetry books ran into his world. He grabbed a lonely volume. Grabbed it, sat down on the Oriental carpet. The screaming red colour had not yet left its pride. He sat. Under him he felt it had a touch, a caressing mind. And he began reading the poems from the book. He read. He stayed there on the carpet, like a minute was a sole minute, the quarter of an hour was just what it was, an hour passed by. The same hour stretched its horizon into four direction. West, east, south, north. It was like a truth from a forgotten tribe. Perhaps the weather map had been invented by the Greeks, of whom he knew nothing. Greeks invaded the Aristotle time. An arrow flew in the first Western philosophy as ha sat there reading. The poems uttered its own impression. Uttered. Had a phrase. It was read and read over. Reread the words. Two hours had crept into his brain. He felt no time no more. Einstein´s battle was over. It was the ninth month of the year, the year that had to crawl like a swimmer in the Atlantic Ocean. He began to think about his heritage. How did his Great Grandfather cross that ocean. At that time it took months to cross the ugly sea. The very feeling to leave the past behind, of course. He felt all this when reading the poem. He had left Europe and now his longing crossed a bow before him. He saw images and Archetypic scenes. He saw a kind of Russian land stretching in many and a far distances. To sit there in a room. To be able to recall the past.

He was back on his feet again. Fed the baby as it came to wake up. Silent she was for the first time. When he felt peace coming back the baby saw it in the glimpse of his smile.

He cleaned the room. Where did all the dust come from? The more he cleaned the more dust came back day after day. Dawn was a brilliant scenery out the window. High up he could now see the sky. It had colours. The rainbow looked alike the screen on a film he could remember. Of course there was a treasure hidden. The baby knew the jewellery of mind. She knew to smile, giggle, she knew the silence of the words. She knew suddenly why he had to work indoors with all this big stuff. Stuff for a man that slowly had to be a poet of the room. Poetry could become his latest duty. He brought the baby to the sofa and began reading some poems. Sounds came from the beautiful baby, like she understood every piece of art in the phrases. Letters ignored because the baby tried to search the context of the text. The whole and nothing but the whole. In her mind there were no small pieces of letters. She could not take things literary, as the man in the room did.

Greece and Rome was poems written down in the book. Symbolic meaning of Empires of the past. How could he have been so unaware of – whatever! This was the meaning of Feminism. The man had to learn the female condition of lonely rooms and of work that seemed to have no literary meaning. Was this his task? His first duty? The baby smiled. The context of the room began to spin. Round and round. The mobile kept ringing. From out of nowhere he felt a mixture and a shift with the gender history. Not that he had aimed for it, but now the shift was here. Perhaps because of Virginia Woolf. A splendid thought she had. As he saw the baby for the first time he caught an insight from the poetry. A kitchen was a lady´s first place. All ladies and woemen all over the world knew something about loneliness of being closed in and feeling outside big buisness, politics and philosophy. Being outside it all.

Sweden rang a tone in his brain. Sweden was known for men taking care of children, cleaning, tidy up, doing kitchen work. Gosh! How silly! How mad! Those men back in Sweden must have come to a certain kind of conclusion. Loneliness could be taken care of.

Had girls and housewifes known something for ages. That dust turns into materia and has to become philosophy? Had the cleaning an aim and a meaning beyond his own knowledge? Was the bed a place where sleep taught the dreams to dream stories and plots. The bedroom then was a palace to each and every one. Did they all have a palace because of clean sheets? Was that what it was all about. But somehow. As he had become an American he knew -no he knew more than that. He was a proud New Yorker Man. A man who had to talk loneliness to the President. And perhaps the President would understand. And in the corner of the living room the walls was clad in the American flag. He had come to know of his roots and his heritage in his remote loneliness. It was like a duty and a task. And now twelve month had already passed. That quick? Like in a wink from an eye. It was all over now, baby blue. The silence came to him like a wind from the Atlantic. Free at last. Was he that free? His loneliness had given him a lesson. The loneliness had been his war. And from his Swedish heritage he knew about if from now on. The baby was to be his. If his wife had left him, he should bring up the child himself. Somehow and in some odd way of his own mind. And in his mind he saw streets in all directions. He could roam the streets and find fantasies and daydreaming. Things he had to teach his baby. One year was over. Life must go on.