Alexander
VV: Mother and I got in a fight. She wants her body to be cremated after death.
A: It's better to burn out than to fade away says Mother.
VV: 15kWh of electricity....
A: The equivalent of watching a VHS copy of Titanic on a small TV every day for a month.
VV: I'm the king of the world.
A: As soon as I was old enough to understand, Mother told me that I was supposed to be born a girl. Veronica Victoria, she told me, Vivi for short. My mother never got a daughter, instead opting for a hysterectomy after her second child was born biologically male.
VV: She must have been so disappointed when that little penis was pulled from her caesarian incision.
A: Over time, she continually let this information be known when it came to her. Trips to purchase clothing saw Mother browsing the Junior Girls department and dreaming of how to dress her daughter. Many birthdays prompted conversation regarding Veronica and speculation on what her life would have been like.
VV: Did you find Veronica had a place within yourself?
A: If everything is Nature, including fiction, and let's say fantasies, (as Haraway states) then am I inherently Veronica?
VV: Was Mother out of line in her push to create Veronica, her "feminine", daughter-like son?
A: Her being is deeply engrained in me. You can't just draw the curtains on something that you feel so naturally.
VV: But what if Mother's sense of feminine already so misguided by the heteronormative structuring of gender?
A: Judith Butler states “ . . . if gender is constructed, it is not necessarily constructed by an ‘I’ or a ‘we’ who stands before that construction in any spatial or temporal sense of ‘before.’ Indeed, it is unclear that there can be an ‘I’ or a “we” who had not been submitted, subjected to gender, where gendering is, among other things, the differentiating relations by which speaking subjects come into being . . . the ‘I’ neither precedes nor follows the process of this gendering, but emerges only within the matrix of gender relations themselves”
VV: There's a small person present. I'm not sure if I should run.
A: It's not a fair game to run so fast when you have long legs.
VV: Will this create a child who forever believes in theirself as slow?
A: Only in pubescence comes fairness.
VV: Once we are of the same speed we can call it a fair game.
A: I sat at a dining table for a small human. I'm separated from the rest of the family while we eat supper.
VV: Mother never pushed you aside, rather she gave you voice within me.
A: And what have you done with this voice?
VV: I have continued to cherish it. To let that voice out. I have continued to nurture my feminine side.
In a room sits a hand-tufted rug. A oblong shape of white, similar to a pony's head sits on a ground of pink. These are the only two colors. A hand-embroidered information hang-tag is hanging from one corner of the rug.
On top of the rug sits a small table . No chair is necessary to sit at this table. The heavy wooden top is perched above four long, noodle-like, white, ceramic legs. The wood is varnished over it's natural color, and three Lisa Frank stickers are stuck to its surface.
Atop the table sits two large hand-made ceramic vases. Their presence is loud, and each is adorned with embroidered punk patches by their favorite punk bands, Crass and Dystopia. Each vase is filled with fresh cut flowers of a seasonal and local variety.
Next to the vases sits a large ceramic bowl flanked by a ceramic fork on one side and a ceramic knife on the other. The bowl and utensils are glazed in the same colors as the large vases. In the bowl sits a large amount of peanut M&M's candies.
This is Veronica's space. She hasn't been here for a while, but she has left it as she always has.
Dear Veronica, It's been a while since our last mail. Things here in Rotterdam have been slow besides the fact that I've been moving every two months.