It’s unfortunately always easier for me to start with the place that lost me now. But maybe it’s the place that held me as well… Or a place that still holds me. My motherland. Famous for holding people against their will. 

Still holds me by my roots, by my family ties, by my friends connections and memories. But what I’m listing, what I’m describing, does it really relate to a place? It’s people and stories. Ancestors. But what places in my homeland actually still hold me? My apartment? My childhood home? Who cares? 

Then what?

Someone once told me that they could never leave Russia because the graves of their parents were still there. I didn’t get it. At all. Why should I be tied to someone’s graves? But who is going to take care of them? - asked that person. And then I thought it was extremely unfair - why should I care about the dead until I myself die? Why is it so inherent in my cultural code, in my country’s code to wait and suffer, suffer and wait. Terpet. In English there is no direct translation of the Russian word ‘terpet’. It’s a mix of waiting and enduring, waiting while something hard or at least unpleasant is happening. 

I was and still am a being held by the country that tells me - Terpi. Wait and endure and suffer. 

But if I am still held (held back, not held gently in an embrace), then why do I think that is the place that lost me? It’s more of a place I want to lose, isn’t it? I am trying to lose you. And maybe you’ve lost my body, at least for now, but you’re still holding my soul hostage, tied by the roots in the ground growing through the graves of my ancestors. 

Are you also a place that changed me? No. At least that is a definite no. Being outside changed me. Every time I managed to run away, I would come back a changed person. Every place that is not you, my dear homeland, changed me. Some places changed me more, some less. But I am now a collage of all the places where I’ve been, lived, loved, and breathed. I am almost whole, I am almost complete. But my soul…

There is a folk Russian fairytale about Koshei the Deathless. Undead king. He put his death into a needle, and he put a needle into a duck, and a duck into a rabbit, and a rabbit into a wooden chest, and he buried this chest under a large oak tree. Whoever gets to the needle and breaks it, will find Koshei’s death, and thus defeat death itself. 

That’s what I feel. My needle in a duck in a rabbit in a chest is still under some Russian oak tree probably in the graveyard of my ancestors. And I can be almost whole, almost complete. But my soul… But my death… Is still there. 

There was a rooftop. Nighttime. Very warm for december. Lights. The city lights. I don’t really like that city. But I have nowhere else to go. the exit is blocked. there is a kitten waiting for me in finland. buit it’s not even my kitten. what can be lonelier than babysit someone else’s kitten. why was it the first memory that came to me. i think it’s because of the in-betweennes of that experience. because everything was falling apart. because home was lost what seems like forever. but it was not just me on that roof. it was us. and i looked at you and i thought - ahh. so it’s all crushing and burning and it’s all gone. but you know what. it’s okay. even if i never see you again. or this roof. or this city. even the fucking kitten is not a certainty. but fuck it. it’s okay. we’re here and we can breathe the sea. and it’s too warm for december. and it was all worth it. maybe losing home was worth being here now with you. maybe i never lost home. maybe i never had it, and i was just supposed to travel until i find it. and maybe just maybe in this moment it started getting closer. 

A place that held you. 

I remember running, and there was a toy truck, and another kid we used to play with. We were just visiting before finding a place of our own. It was a hotel or a stay area on a horse farm. It was summertime, the sun would shine between the leaves, and the soil was compact. Maybe from horses and cars going through. It’s hard to remember all the details. I remember around this time my brother was in the habit of biting people, and I remember him biting my sister, and my mom putting pepper on his tongue. We weren’t there for very long, but somehow I still remember, we then moved to an apartment. I was around the age of 5 or 6 while my brother was around 4 or 5, and my sister 6 or 7. There was a year when it was just my brother and me at this apartment while my sister was at school. At some point, we drew unicorns on the wall in crayon. My mom worked from home, which meant we weren’t to disturb her. I remember having a bike. I remember being scolded by my mom in a language I didn’t understand. I think this was right before the financial crisis, so we moved into the countryside where it was cheaper. We had an apple tree that the bears would climb, and a shed that they would try to get into. Coyotes would drag dead deer into our yard. 

A place that changed you. 

I think I remember feeling embarrassed and uncomfortable all the time, and yet despite that, I would still wear colorful clothes and be the odd or weird one out. Change also felt unreachable, and expanding oneself felt unreachable. I remember sucking in my gut because I felt so uncomfortable in my body and imagining myself as something in between. I remember drawing cats and dogs and they were typically feminized or masculinized respectively, but I would draw myself as a feminine dog, and maybe it was this internal attempt to disassociate myself from misogynist stereotypes of girls and women, but I have thought back on it as maybe it was trying to imagine myself differently when who I saw around me didn’t reflect who I thought I was or would be. I think it somehow also felt uncomfortable and embarrassing just to be in that body and in that time and in that place, in some ways, I was held more in this place, and yet, it was also emotionally difficult. I remember catching frogs and thinking about how they became this. I remember there was a girl from the class under me who would catch frogs. I think there was a rumor she would kill them, but I think I remember catching them her together. 

A place that lost you. 

A place that lost me, I think back on having friends, and simultaneously all figuring out who we are, also in such an odd place and time, and a lifetime ago. I think I also left with anger and frustration for this place, not for the friends I had in this place, but I think the place just lost me. I think I lost this friend group when moving, and I haven’t been back to see them in eight years or so, but I think it was also losing that part of yourself that could have been loved and cherished and held by your friends. A place that lost me, and I found myself losing, and found myself getting lost in. Simultaneously, you’re reflecting and getting lost in what has changed you and where you have changed, so you are time-travelling between the moments of loss, losing, finding, changing, living, holding. A place that holds that time-travelling also becomes lost as it is layered with memories of another.

A moment I realized I was home was maybe when starting in a new program surrounding by people who had never been to Finland and I was the only “local” which was a new feeling as I had never felt like a local anywhere else. Feeling like a local and feeling at home are maybe two different things as compared to others who grew up here or speak the langauge I don’t feel as much of a local as there are stories and liminalities and slang you can only access through the linguistics of a site. I think this “local” feeling is also a pedagogical point as it becomes an opportunity to share rather than to learn a new place and it’s customs, you’re no longer in a position where you are the one asking but instead the one sharing, teaching. So it becomes this axis where your knowledge is attuned to the locality and you know the secrets that can only be discovered through time. I think home is also a feeling that you long for and you feel nostalgic over, you are nostalgic for feeling at home in another place and for things that made you feel at home. You are nostalgic for the memories and the embarrassment and the cringing and the moments you had even when they were so mundane. So feeling at home can also be a temporal relationship you only realize after moving away and you no longer feel at home in your current circumstance, the juxtaposition of home of the present and home of the past and home of the future also impact this impression and moment of home as your moment of home changes and fluctuates. I think a moment of home is also feeling as though you can return, that one is not just lingering or visiting but returning while it’s possible to stay longer, not just as a visitor, so home as a tourist or home as a place you reside.

i want to write about islands, every island is unique but islands are also not islands, i am from a collection of islands called the british isles. that is two large land masses, and many smaller ones, one of the larger ones has a land border to a country that is not a part of the united kingdom. i am from the united kingdom. i am english, i suppose being english is the worst way of being british. 

i have always loved islands, because especially on small islands you can never be that far from the sea, and i love the way that on an island you are forced to confront the tininess of our ‘places’ and the enormity of the ocean. but even on the largest land mass of the british isles, that comprises england, wales and scotland you are never really that far from the sea. in global terms these are not large pieces of land. 

in 2019 i spent the winter on a tiny island called iona, volunteering in a tiny artist residency centre and youth hostel. i was very isolated there and only spoke to a handful of people during the entire time. most days i spent painting a boat. it was january but still i put my body in the cold sea almost every day, i danced on the beach, i grieved a bottlenose whale whose corpse had been washed up on the beach. i dreamed of seeing dolphins, i tried to transform into a seal, i kept a diary which transformed into my application for my master’s program here in finland, where i am now writing this, from that school. i got into that school from that place. 

in the summer of the same year i moved to the isle of skye, to work at a castle, from where tiny boats took tourists every day to see a colony of harbour seals. the seals were my work colleagues. i spent the summer getting to know seals and seaweeds, by every day putting my body into the water and getting entangled amongst the knots of kelp and wrack. i dreamed of transitioning with the seaweed, of not needing pharmaceutical transition because i had seaweed, i wanted to be seaweed, i felt like my body was seaweed — fragile and easy to break on the land and strong and flexible in the sea. i wrote emails to my friends telling stories of all that i was learning from the island, and how it was changing me, of how i was transitioning. 

i’ve been thinking about what it means to arrive to a place, to be with a place, to be situated somewhere. what is knowing of a place and how can one know? what are the ethics of arriving with all my queer dreams to a place that is already populated — also by people who historically have had to fight so hard to preserve their way of life, language and culture. 

i lived in this big old house by the sea and many queer people came there to visit me. it felt so important to be able to offer this little home to people, to say – ‘here, come here, rest, take a bath, swim in the sea if you like’, what a precious and important time. building a home there. the boatmen asked me to stay, asked me if i wanted to be a boatman too. and what it would have been to stay, but i left, came to finland to carry on my studies. ‘you can’t put your life on hold for this place’ they told me. i guess they were right. being a boatman always a fantasy for a middle class person like me. how fucking complicated it is to have the most gender affirming experience of my whole life here, there, in these relations. what a knot of tangled kelp. but we felted together, like my handmade selkie skins. i dreamed of a home next to the raging atlantic. i rode my bike. i was strong. i didn’t want to leave. leaving skye was probably the hardest it’s ever been to leave any place and still i hope that skye is waiting for me. my friend who is from fair isle, the most remote island of the british isles, situated in the north sea between orkney and shetland. she told me that islands are patient places — islands wait. but they perhaps cannot wait forever. what happens when an island sinks? that is happening to islands in the pacific already, how to preserve a home and all that means when your ancestral home is underwater? that will happen to iona and skye too sooner or later. what about skomvær the tiny island in sápmi i will spend this summer. but i am from none of these places. i am from a suburban and ordinary place, actually not really that close to the sea, in the north of england. but there is a river there, and in my dream the river was the sea, and the bridge was under water, and then i knew that water is connecting us across all places, water is inescapably always there, and a force so powerful it can shape and destroy lands. we fixate on borders but water tears them down all the time. but the stakes are not the same for all of us and just because we are all water, surrounded by water, does not mean that water means the same thing for all of us. 

terrifying 

when am i home ? 

i affectively don't really like the word home 

when did i realise i was home ? 

i think i realised at some point that i have a home in puotila when 

people came to stay there with us 

this image of this blue sofa bed

which isn’t there any more 

but it did a magic trick

to be able to invite people to stay there with us ~ to sleepover ~ to have their own space in my space

i will cook for you 

we need a new blue sofa

it should be blue

my home is blue 

gathering blue things to my home makes me feel home

even though i don’t like the word home 

maybe i don’t like it because i don’t know what it means 

the only word i feel strongly and fiercely true about my identity is trans 

i know that i am trans 

so then trans is home 

being trans is ontological reorientation of everything 

and that’s all that i know 

that the order of things is not as it seems 

and that totally blew open what home could be and indeed where 

and i’ve been searching since then 

in the in~between 

longing

belonging 

my belongings are in finland 

does that mean that i belong here? 

queer migrant longing 

trans migrant longing 

belongings 

what are the belongings of my transmigrant life? 

weighted blanket

blue things

selkie skin 

tiny blue plastic eggs 

blue postcards

blue fabrics 

blue bed sheets

blue mukki 

my blue clothes 

blue blue blue blue blue 

books are ambivalent 

i don’t want to have so many objects that weigh me down and make it difficult for me to leave this place 

i might not want to stay here forever 

or more importantly, i might not be able to 

my fragile and unpredictable body does not guarantee that i will be able to stay and that makes building a home 

those gestures 

that we associate with building a home 

scary 

but i know i have a home 

when i leave 

and i know there is somewhere to come back to 

that is home for now

waiting for me 

that there is a place that is waiting for me  

A place that held you

A venting session in a Hungarian forest surrounded by trees and heavy bass and the moment I realized I can count on myself by allowing other people to really see me.

- This happened at a festival in Hungary which was the moment I felt I was sealed with my best friend in the depth we now have. I had spent a number of days with some people who we just were not aligned in the same wavelength, and was not asked how I was at all. Then after a misunderstanding with them, my friend finally asked me “well how are you really though?” which felt like the first breath I had taken in days. That was the moment I realized the importance of actually trusting yourself enough to open up to those that are actually invested in seeing you.  

A place that changed you

A therapy session with a closeted Virgo close to home, in the liminality of your loved ones dying, allowing them to see you cry.

– After moving back to Cyprus, six really close people to me died in the span of two years. I found out the news about one of them when I was out in the city, walking around with my ex. That therapy session was the first and only time I cried in front of my therapist and I think in front of anyone, really. I’m still really bad at crying and am jealous of people that actually have that sort of release but I at least now am in touch with those affects, more than I’ve ever been.

A place that lost you

Every queer structure that places within its nucleus men that follow the same power-plays and distributions as their heteronormative, patriarchal counter-parts. Nightclubs, collectives, activist groups, groups of friends.

– I stopped interacting with groups of people that simply want to get a seat at the table, instead of attempting to tear it apart. I’m done with people trying to performatively “fulfill” the agenda they think queerness, simply because they’re so self-obsessed and gratuitous to understand that the whole point of queerness is burning those agendas from their core. 

Abracadabra aga ou a a aga ou aa aga ou aa. I woke up today mindlessly checking my instagram and then Gaga’s performance popped up from Coachella. I remember when I saw her performance for the Super Bowl and how I felt. It somehow felt like “one of us” was performing FOR us. It somehow felt like that closeted kid she advised that they were born this way has now grown up and taken center stage. This time though, the feeling was different. It was like I was betrayed and I needed to stop myself from actually enjoying it. After finding out that she’s a Zionist it felt like the one person I had in the mainstream had stabbed me in the back. Of course I wasn’t surprised since even Lebanon Hanover said “popular music is contamination” but sometimes, you get down with the sickness. If I think about these two instances, what comes to mind now is whether home can betray you since that has always been a power-pull with me and my relationship to my actual country. I always say, I love my country but my country doesn’t love me back. Obviously, her politics didn’t dilute my past experience. Obviously, her stance will never take away the way I felt with her as an energetic mediator at the time I actually felt comfort in representation or simply, viewership. However, maybe the front door mat is the most important thing in a home since you should always read its text before you wipe your feet on it.

HELD

Nikos childhood home 

Nikos home

Niko

The places that come to mind are connected to my ex boyfriend. We were together for 8,5 years. When we broke up we cried in each other's arms and said to each other that we would always be each other's family. 

I moved into his childhood home together with his brothers and later his brother and sister and her partner. This home was located very close, like 5 minutes away from where I lived with my parents, but it felt like another universe. The parents decided to sell the home, and Niko moved to the city.

Niko’s home in Bjølsen is my permanent temporary home whenever I am visiting Oslo. It is next to Akerselva, the river that divides the city in east and west - the working class and the rich. We named it Bjølsen brothel and guest house, because it is a space where people come and go and get laid (except for Niko himself). This is just something that happens. We don’t know why this phenomenon exists but we joke and laugh a lot about it. 

CHANGED

Somerniemi 

Moving to Finland

Countryside

Along, not knowing what was waiting

Not knowing anyone

Not knowing the person I was moving in with

Going to Helsinki every Thursday to play drums

Staying at Klaus’ place

Risky

Meeting Kaisla

LOST

Oslo

Leaving Oslo is maybe also a thing that changed me. I moved away two times within a year. The last time was seven years ago. I was on the waiting list at this mental hospital at the same time as I got accepted to the art academy in Bergen, and at the same time as I was doing a project for ANTI festival. There were so many choices to be made at this time. Stay in the same place to get mental health care, move 

Home is so strongly connected to people for me. I don’t care about blood relations. I have never felt connected to my family, always felt like an alien in their presence. Unwanted and tense. Also I am a techno child. This I learnt three years ago. I was splaining the concept of IVF to my parents, when my mother told me that there is something I have been meaning to say for a long time, but never knew how - then disclosed that my dad is infertile and that I was made with donor sperm. My dad is the one comforting me in my many rage outbursts when I was little. I remember crying with rage, sitting under the drying rack and him coming to stay with me. 

When I think about home I think about my nesting partner Vicky. I think I realized they were my home during one night very early in our dating process. I was out, and she was working at this bar in Bergen. When I was going home, I realized that I had lost my keys. I called Vicky and was like “hey, I have lost my keys, can I please stay at yours tonight?”. They were living with their parents and never had had someone spending the night. After some consideration, they said yes. In the morning I met their dogs and mother, who was such a loving, sweet person and made me feel so welcome.