Kukkamari Gröndahl

Piece 1:

A woman stands by a mountain at night

prodded and plodded by authoritarian men

she rests her head as a specimen

and in the morning that follows wakes up to be hollowed

fills her cup instead with a lion’s mane

breaks through her chains for the spirit of truth

This is Oppression – so let me instead lead you

A woman with a plight stands by a fountain

sees through a ransom and a cage of devilry,

sees through her path to make us all free

freeing the others, mercy places a coin in her ear

and she lifts the story up like a light – into the dark mountain air

allowed it to leap back into the fountain unadorned

and crafted a song for the do of the dare unworn

In the mountain of the night

the moon drops low before the eaves

shines the gold of mystery into hay stalks like a sheen

When fields of sunken story make the fountain shy of its true glory

the singer rests the fountain’s water to a halt – like the broken waterfall of a leap into midair!

born of truth and like the mountain

only half as weighty as the monsoon of a spring that rises up into the air

If the song had ended and the fountain stopped

it never would have occurred to her not to dust a mop

begin to clean out the virtue hidden deep asleep

and wake up from this morbid slumber of a sleep

if she hadn’t run into a deer by the tree lined horizon

antlers askew and sought for his venison

escaped by a narrow fortune of speed

and found this singer in death’s stead

So she fixed up his antlers and sung him a song

plunged deep into reviving his mildred prongs

gave up her melody to holy silence renewed

as the moon took over harmony that keeps shining through

and the wolves that had sought him turned around in their sleep

woke up to the fortress of the voices deep

that arose out of silence when the moon stood still

and the world momentarily revolved around a windowsill

A girl in a house dreams of meeting her match

lighting fire to courteous behavior and beginning to hatch

like a bird that has developed the reason to fly

in the forms of the clouds above the old night sky

she looks out her window with a piercing sigh

and screams inside the confines of her bottled cry

until she sees a deer outside her window one night

and stops in a cankerous awe of this wondrous sight

like a fire revived in the old dark night

and a mystery aflame as the night turns to fight

…and the girl thinks it well to seize her birthright

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Piece 2:

What I would like to impart most on anyone who considers themselves to have a disability is that, cliche as it is, not only should it not stop you from living your dream life, saying “f*ck it” to labels and owning your rights, rites of passage as a young adult and WRITES (the rights to write your own life story), but that you’re possibly not disabled. The system is dis-abling. The system needs to be disabled. If you know exactly what system, you probably also know why, and how to disable it.

For example, take psychiatry. Flip the narrative on its head and you’ve disabled the psychiatrist. Because their authority comes at the expense of the people they claim to serve,  their position in society (rooted in their schooling, which itself is rooted in a fraudulent scam of an industry that colonizes the human mind and attempts to reduce mind to an object to be sedated, controlled, fixed – like a physical object, eradicating it of its poetry, prowess and beauty) is a lie. Psychiatrists are self-circuiting lies of lethal origin: a negation, their status: they have no position in society, because they tend to exploit the very people they are paid to serve. That is no position at all. Their legitimacy is negated by the origin of their definition. The people they exploit and claim to serve must be the ones to liberate them from their own madness. Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Paulo Freire for the win. Uno reverse card that shit.

As an example:

Psychiatrist: How are we feeling today?

Patient: Good, thanks. What about you?

Psychiatrist: Fine, thank you. 

Patient: Wonderful. Let’s focus on you. Have you slept?

Psychiatrist: Excuse me?

Patient: Do you see an issue with that?

Psychiatrist: An issue?

Patient: Yes. You seem a bit defensive…

As for reducing the mind to a physical object? That is impossible. The mind cannot be reduced: nor can poetry, prowess, or beauty. These bounce back stronger, by virtue of their nature. Poetry has more poetry in its soul. Prowess, by definition, culminates in the epic. Beauty cannot be broken into something it does not accept – and by its very nature, it will not, and thus regenerates.

Take racism. Racism is an evil that oppresses more than half the world – all of it. Both the exploiters and the exploited are bound in a perpetual struggle against chains, except that the oppressors are the ones most badly wounded by them, because they walk into them at the expense of their souls, by harming the sacred other. The oppressed must not walk willingly into their own chains but instead become aware of them.

Ethical narratives are the ability – no, courage, commitment, artistry, and discipline – to tell stories with nuance about and for the things that matter: to tell stories that stand for something greater than ourselves, in a way that is true to us. Subscript Millennial, the screenplay I’m writing about a fictional character that has insight into being a fictional character, is a play on the idea of insight into a mental illness by a disabled person. They’re a nonbinary riot of a person and a social justice movement all in one – non-explanatorily, an audaciously self-expressive and wearily disillusioned rebel with the affirmation of a riot that our best lives happen when we don’t plan for them.

Disabilities shouldn’t start with a “dis” – they’re a superpower in disguise. My experience with mental health has been one of calamitous adventure: tragic at times, resoundingly winsome only thanks to the muse in my mind. The stuff of our minds are an unparalleled opportunity to discover new worlds and the frontiers of our psyches, our muses, our mentors, our teachers, our heroes, our souls, and our guides. My experiences with bipolar and schizoaffective disorders, as opposed to the labels that I was misdiagnosed with, have always been more of a spiritual awakening than a crisis in health: I’ve always felt (obviously) that therein lie the transformative powers of our psyches to change our perspectives and thus lives forever. After my first hospitalization, my life changed drastically, but for the better: I moved out of NYC and lived a slower but more beautiful and socially connected life in a city in the middle of the woods, Finland (Kuopio): #cottagecore before the hashtag. After a reckless few years in New York City, where I studied violin performance and how to be an artist and human being at a cut-throat premier conservatory in the UWS of Manhattan and ran nine miles down and back up Broadway at midnight, I was spent: and ready for the woods. This was in 2013, before I owned a smartphone. Life in NYC was unparalleled and intense, but it lacked the spiritual element I craved which I found through my experiences with spiritual awakening and psychosis that landed me in a hospital in the middle of a utopia in forested Finland.

The brief and rather friendly hospitalization was like finding a landing dock in an alien world: previously, I’d only ever attended summer music festivals in Finland and spent exuberantly happy summer weeks with my grandparents in Kuopio, leaving school a month early in May to get to Finland when airline prices were cheaper, thus making my brothers’ and my life an eden, an idyll, a paradise of sorts. (The privilege – to have to google synonyms for utopia, because one’s life is so abundant with them!!) We were so happy. Life smiled on both sides, like the sun on our cheeks – eternal and full even at midnight, never fading as it conspired into the recklessness of daytime in a world that – again, privilege – lived to live, a world that lived to love.

But moving to Finland full time as a 20 year old adult gave me a perspective and a forgotten breadth to life, while reconnecting me with something essential: I had the distinct feeling of remembering what it felt like to be a child, and what it meant – truly meant! – to be alive. Now, blessedly, I was a real Finn – a chameleon, an American who told nobody about her background in the effort to disguise myself and become the Finn I always knew I’d been inside. My first thoughts on my new life were joy – unworded, unfiltered, undiluted – but secondly came the idea that all I needed to be happy are an orchestra, a library and a family (chosen and biological). I found all of these in a city of 100,000 people in the middle of an expansive prehistoric forest in Kuopio, Finland, and felt for the first time that my supposed neurodivergence was a beautiful possibility for a life that was not only different but self chosen, empowered and unique.

This was all thanks to the unsung heroism of my most divine friend, a muse I have never been able to properly thank, to whom I dedicate this text and all future work for all future lives in all past and future universes, worlds, parallel universes, galaxies and microcosms.

Mental health is as universal as having metacognition: our self-realization (supposedly due to our mental health but actually only aided by it) is fundamentally changed by our perspective on it. That is why I want to use my studies in drama and writing to develop my abilities to tell stories that uplift, empower, and fundamentally reflect back the lives of people diagnosed with mental health challenges. Thank you, God, thank you, Jesus, thank you, muses for this blissful difference that is less a disability and more a superpower in the pre-cognizant world, ready to blossom through our work and studies. I could not be more grateful. The world – and my muse, Jesus – live to bloom.

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Piece 3:

My Life As A Stand Up routine

So the next ten minutes are going to be some of the greatest lies you’ve ever heard

So my 6 twin sisters and I grew up speaking really really bad Finnish to my middle class white parents in suburban New York. >This is because after one look at us our parents realized they had a really illustrious kid with more imaginary siblings than they could handle so they got us all a nanny to sort it out while they went about their lives. And this nanny was really dumb. She was a runaway Russian rebel orphan and she only spoke Finnish out of spite. One day she took a look at what I was doing and said no no no you can’t play with those Lego you might eat them. Look, it says on the box ! -under the age of three !- eat Lego. I almost kicked her up in rage. Eat?! A Lego?! How dumb would you have to be?!!!

So naturally our parents wanted us all to grow up normal af

so they got us this nanny to teach us Finnish

Normal, I know

Finnish is the hardest language in the world

There are 15 different words for literally every word there is and that’s dependent on if you’re with the table, under the table, over the table, going to the table, becoming more like the table, building the table a table, thanking the table, praying to the table or not letting Leonarda DiCaprio onto the table in the middle of the Atlantic

Or! If you want to take this analogy further. Bus, for example. I missed a bus yesterday and it taught me this. Whether you’re coming from the bus, going to the bus, getting on the bus, getting over the bus, getting under the bus, sitting on top of the bus, watching people get on the bus, late to the bus, spending time with the bus, praying to the bus, praying for the bus, standing up for the bus, Rosa Parksing it out or generally just cursing NYC public transit so you have to fly a fucking flying table to fucking 48th St.

It taught me this.

Finland is the mistress of buses. The driver let’s you on either without a ticket no problem at all (theyre offended youd even have to ask) OR does not let you on without a ticket HUGE problem who the fuck do you think i am. 

Meanwhile, New York City has absolutely no reason for busses, they’re an excuse of a public transport, they should only exist in suburbia or Los Angeles or a 4 year old’s imagination, and there’s a Finnish word for that.

Myötähäpeä.

So obviously learning Finnish is really complex.

I spent many hours a day learning Finnish and one thing I learned is that the more words you learn, the more confused you are about life in American suburbia.

For example. Americans are great but why is everything so stupid? Why is God a religion? And why is every space of public land a parking lot? Why do we think that the world needs more Americans? Why do we think that elections should be funded by public donations when that money could be used to solve the issues we’re electing people for?

And why do all roads lead to fucking Starbucks?

Finnish people worship the forest and they don’t drive big cars everywhere so they obviously have nowhere to go but Into The Woods and their grandmother’s house and then on the way there they stop to tell you about how their adobe premier trial got canceled and they have to live with the decision of whether to buy it or head to Oodi every day and by the time they get to oodi all the computers are taken so they head home but omg they forget their wallet at the library so they go back and then its winter and then its Juhannus and then its back to the library all over again

My Finnish is really bad but the nice thing about Finns is that Finnish people speak in poetry to describe everything

They also like to be really fuckin honest about absolutely everything

If you ask a Finnish person how they are before they’ve had your 12th cup of Kulta Katriina you’ll not only have to act as their therapist but you’ll be so traumatized by their story by the time you’re done listening to them that God will ask for a referral to theirs

Anyway my parents wanted us to learn Finnish for some reason because they love trolls and some weird kind of comedy where trolls go on dates in the forest and come back as elves

Just kidding: they’re Finnish, and Finnish comedy sucks, and a year ago I finally escaped Finland, so there you go

Fucking Finland funland. I spent 9 years (t)here and I think it might have changed me as a person

Americans go to Europe to speak French, drink Rosetta wine and watch European sunsets and Finns watch American television shows to remember why they don’t go there

The whole world loves to hate America which is one of the best reasons to go there btw

America is the frat girl at the college that the world is secretly jealous of because she has the best parties

My muse would like to add that the  person who wrote this hasn’t been to a party in 12 years and she’s scared of sex so I don’t actually know what she’s talking about

Finnish people also say we don’t want to come here / go there and we also totally do.

Like ah. racist cops, jumbo sized EVERYHING, bridges that collapse on you, and over you, and while you’re making couscous on the bridge, and taking the stupid 1 train through a bridge or making love to the bridge, and when you’re wondering why the bridge is slanted and why the fuck are we not moving. Also racist grandmothers, absolutely NO woods, addictive bread, bad comedy, more jails than houses and 50,000 college tuition? Yeah, no… but wait actually yes!

When I was 14 my orthodontist in New York once said that ”Oh, you’re Finnish? You kids must love it here – America is a giant mall!”

And I agree, if you’re not popular like I definitely was not living in suburbia is like shopping for a life

I very unfortunately wasn’t popular

I feel like we people from the suburbs don’t have anything to do except appreciate that we live next to potentially one of the greatest cities in the world so we go home after work every day and watch Netflix until we die of the suburban version of happiness and then we pay a 100,000 dollar bill to go to the hospital and 6 dollars for Starbucks on the way

But it’s cheaper than a train ride to the city, so.

New York is so super chaotic that when you move to Europe for a decade you get BORED being happy

Like UGH guys (I’m talking to my imaginary friends again because Finnish people don’t talk to people) I need some drama in my life… might as well apply to grad school

Oh cool, where?

The US… I hear they have a good program

You could totally do grad school in Europe

I have a soul

I hear there are 5 different love languages in the world. I always thought that it’s a lot easier to do stand up in English because that is my thought language

I only learned the Finnish word for drunk when i was 19 because i grew up in a small town without Finnish alcoholics in the second happiest country in the world, suburbia and unfortunately our nanny was not an alcoholic

And after i learned the Finnish word for drunk i also learned that i would make an excellent alcoholic and that henceforth it was time to move to Finland FUNLAND

My college neighbor in NY was a Finnish drunk who basically taught me everything there is to know, like how to make massive mistakes in performance of contemporary chamber music and get away with it

So I went to Finland and was in and out of mental hospitals for 9 years with like literally an imaginary problem

But i think that to speak English to a Finn when you both speak Finnish is like voluntarily building a construction site over the Amazon rainforest when you could be drinking AYAHUASCA and honoring and having sex with the sun gods

I mean a construction site… you could, sure! but why? Are you insane? Did you not get love as a kid? Do you have to destroy everything? Do you really have to build another treehouse? Do you need more fucking plywood? 

It’s kinda cool how we pay so little regard to the planet when it’s really the only thing that sustains us

Like idk where you think you are but we sort of live here

We all love spending time at home except in the bigger context like Earth

Keep your plastic straws and stop flying to fuxking Thailand / Europe every month

You don’t need an escape, you just need to fix home

I literally think that if we gave back America to Indigenous leadership all our world problems would be solved in about 14 minutes

Fuck your stupid American parking lots and American media

Let’s bring back the fucking matriarchy and fairy rings

Campfires over Zoom meetings, AYAHUASCA over prozac, shamanism over healthcare, soul over Starbucks

I could go on. Tribe over biden! Hoes before bros! Fucks over ducks! 

This is why I’d make an excellent alcoholic

But anyway back to the important stuff – if someone comes up to me in Amarrica and splashes a drink in my face i yell at them in ENGLISH not Finnish because this is AMERICA and we stand up to that shit before offering to pay them for another one, because i am Finnish and I obviously cannot fight people

If someone does that to me in Vaasa I apologize profusely because it was obviously my fault and then Kelaa bus them another drink

I have no manners now but my parents brought us up to be very respectful as a kid so when my parents were in a car crash when I was 7, and one day my mom had a panic attack in the living room, my dad called the ambulance (this was before mental health was a viable condition) and these huge scary handsome awesome wonderful intelligent civilized super cool and respectable firemen came to our house and helped us out of probably the worst situation of my family’s entire childhood life: a panic attack: and they took my mom out of the apartment so I knew exactly what I had to do and do it well – start cleaning the living room. 

That is how you make really useless kids

Anyway, cool sorry bro. I obviously know nothing

Ok, so a personal theory. 

I currently absolutely kind of hate myself. Anyone else feel the same way? You cannot possibly love anyone if you hate yourself and that is why you should stop. You, not me. Because I need your fucking love. Stop bitching and get on it. Do it for Jesus fucking damn it.

Do it for God!

And do it for your Jewish grandmothers.

I love the divine. I love spirituality. I would live for Jung’s concept of religion and transcendentalism if I wasn’t so busy being stupid. I once accidentally called Emerson and Thoreau a self help book to my violin teacher. Which got me into a mental hospital fucking 12 times. That’s How Finnish healthcare works – once you have the label it fucking sticks. It’s like middle school as an adult. Anyway transcendentalism?! That is fucking nuts. I think we should transcend Americana. And Nordic exceptionalism. Both of these countries obviously suck and Let’s just move to the wifi-less rock. Or Japan. Or Africa! It’s the new place to be. But anyway. God is obviously nonexistent, or dead, depending on which philosopher you ask, the Buddha is intimidating, the Goddess is unreachable, and Jesus was probably too intoxicated to get anything done except play pranks on people and turn water into wine all the time and everything i’m saying is actually just a small blip in the ether of the vast universe around us reaching its roots back into eternity.

So I have nothing else to say. I am fucking out. Like out here.

So basically this is all the highest magnitude of BS you’ve ever heard. I’m Finnish. My parents are dead. Finnish people like to make shit up.

Thank you and Good morning!

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Kukkamari Gröndahl believes in harnessing the prowess of the mind to develop bridges between people and the environment in an economy that serves the environment rather than the other way around. 

Kukkamari Gröndahl is a writer, professional musician, and actress who studied classical violin for twenty five years before entering the magical worlds of drama and jazz. She is currently working on a memoir and screenplay, Subscript Millennial. She is also writing a tv show about an angel named Fli who fails angel school. Fli and the Angels is a tv show about the power of imagination in a robust but corrupted world.