Writing An Article About Freja Beha Erichsen kept me in a loop for a while. Life really is simple. It’s the people who like to complicate it. Or don’t, but still do.

…Yet Her Pictures Keep Me Here is what I wrote in my Instagram stories, each word on each of Freja’s photographs I’d selected on Instagram without thinking, but wishful thinking that if I would have done so (written the actual words on the photographs), I would have, eventually, written everything that crossed my mind (or something) about a girl I would have turned gay for. For a day. A week.

Everything. Sounds big. Is big, because there’s something this woman has that makes me, instantly, at once, both relax and straighten my backbone. And lose the track of time. It’s Sunday evening and here I am, unable to stop from looking at pictures of her, from on top of my bed.

There are people who have this power to make people feel present by being present. Through a photograph, a screen even. Imagine what it feels like in real life. We, now, hear be present, more than ever. In the world of 2020, even though it’s ~newsflash~ 2021. There must be some sort of joke about hearing a thing, knowing a thing, but almost refusing to do the thing? Choosing not to. Choosing to.

Being present is one thing. Exercising is another. Eating fruit and vegetables versus taking yourself too seriously when talking about eating. Yes, talking. And then there are the jokes about eating vegan, about running the marathons. Yes, those. I don’t remember them, but I can mentally smile at the thought of them.

Worrying, in some sort of sense, has been – wishful thinking makes me want to write had been – present in my life, so I’m beyond happy when I realise I’m not worrying. It’s precisely when the most wonderful things happen. Usually, with a special kind of people. It sounds so simple, magical even, and it is. The mindset and the people.

Where is this going?

So, I guess people tricked themselves into believing they needed games. If there are no games, they think life is, you know, simple, and it can’t be simple. Just true and clean. Easy. It seems like, sometimes, people don’t even consider it as an option. They, moreover, start making up all these things only to confirm their belief that life isn’t as beautiful as they haven’t even dreamed of believing it to be. It is! I’m on the no games boat and it was at the sight of the games boat that the worries had started to form. Had started – a tense to show an action that both started and ended in the past.

Be here, be in the now, ha! It’s when the real game begins.

I can’t remember when this love started – ten or maybe more years ago. I’ve always liked cool ladies that minded their own business. What I can tell you, for sure, is that it is Freja who stars in the Saint Laurent ad in Vogue Vogue Vogue. I love Freja and her float tattoo floating in a pool, shot by Juergen Teller.

I tore the picture from Vogue, kept it on my desk for a while, then got it framed, and it is, currently, on the wall in the living room, at home, just beneath the disco ball. And Whitney.

It reminds me to float through life, just take it easy, be calm, just float. Literally. It takes discipline. Especially when my head seems on the verge to explode. Or heart. Especially heart. It also reminds me of the fact that I wanted to have a little monkey, when I was a kid.

I’m so used to the home screen on my phone that I almost forget about it. I have to stop, once in a while, and marvel at the picture it features. The same Freja ad. Well, when I like something, I really like something.

Self-discipline takes us to self-respect. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness. However long we post-pone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves (Joan Didion, Self Respect. Its Source. Its Power, Vogue).

It’s tricky when you let yourself float. You stop worrying, everything and everyone around you says float. But then a wave comes. Luckily, again, I like waves, also. At first, I might be surprised by the wave, but then I ride it. Alone or not, I ride it. When I feel I can, I let myself float again. When I choose, again, to float. To open my heart again and again, and again, because live all you can, it’s a mistake not to (said Henry James).

Float feels like a good synonym for surrender.

In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues (Joan Didion, Self Respect. Its Source. Its Power, Vogue).

A wave is here to remind you to float again. Look at the sky, the sun… And it’s all baby blue, and shiny, and calm, and free…