2. Deracinate

Deracinate


Verb: To uproot; to take something out of its native environment.
     @ Annapurna Base Camp with too much stuff, July 2016


We all need to deracinate. Uproot our belief systems, egos, ideas, lenses, perspectives, whatever.

Ideas about ourselves, things we've been told about others, about others' characters, other's bodies, our bodies, our characters, our actions, our paranoia, our imposter syndrome....

I think the best way I did this was to deracinate myself from my home and to travel. I think that's why people travel, so they can learn and feel something else, see something from outside of their own mind, which may be going mad with self-doubt, anxiety, ADD, addiction, trauma, whatever. I know that's why I traveled, chose to live in Mexico with Mercedes, Mariano's mom, live in Spain for two years, live at Maria's ranch, live at El Ixuxu in Soto Del Rey, go to India and Nepal with Matiah, travel to various places....

The issue is you can go anywhere you want and it doesn't matter if you don't untether your consciousness from your thoughts and feelings. I didn't do that, and it was my mistake because I didn't learn some very important lessons. But I am now, and this travel is helpful. 

Deracination will start you down a path of self-realization because you'll connect a lot of dots and start envisioning people as one.

After that, you'll start accepting others' sexuality, belief systems, color, body size, intelligence, wealth, homeownership/homelessness status, etc.

It will force you to examine who you are and what you've been taught. I stopped saying "gyped" to describe being cheated out of money after I lived in Spain and saw how entire neighborhoods of Roma people (Gitanos) lived in squalor and had no running water. I learned their history and decided it wasn't my place to use their identities as an insult, no matter where the use of the word came from. People will steal when they're shut out of decent opportunities and desperate.

Anyway, that's not quite what I meant with deracinating, but it's part of it. We're all one blob, no matter how different we are and how different the histories that produced us. We're all a species living on the planet and over-consuming its resources. We all want, crave, and fear, and apparently the only way to make it through these terrifying fears and cravings is to see them, feel them, and be in them. Meditation is extremely difficult but I've succeeded at it for five minute increments, and it's been the best way to just become completely detached from the forces that make my mind chatter, and to feel them less.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

15. Frisson

Image
Frisson 1. A sudden and intense feeling of excitement 2. A shudder caused by a thrill It is hilarious looking back at this and seeing all the free time I squandered. I have a 2 month old baby and a 2 year old right now and I'm losing my goddamn mind. I miss writing. I rarely feel a frisson of any good vibes or excitement. Life is a fog of sleep deprivation and drudgery. The house is disgusting and enraging to me. The other day, seeking some excitement or maybe an escape, I ate 5 mg. of a weed candy and lost my damn mind. I should know better. I've been paralyzed by fear from that shit so many times. I need to stop eating weed candy. I scared my daughter. I thought the Russians were doing an aerial attack. There's a restored B-52 that's been flying really low and it freaked me the fuck out. We live by 3 airports, go figure. And there's an air force base not too far. But why did it have to keep flying over our neighborhood? I kept hearing screams and shots in the dist...
Read more

11. Penumbra

Image
Penumbra [peh-nəm-brə] Noun. The partially illuminated outer part of a shadow created by a solid object; The outlying, fringe area in which a condition exists to a lesser degree. The 60s housewife existed only in the penumbra of her husband. He was the breadwinner. He was the one people paid attention to. He was the one whose hand they shook. He was the one whose words had meaning. She was the one who made his bed, cooked his meals, folded his underwear, and eventually birthed his children. The children lived in a different type of penumbra, especially the female child. Their father's word was law, and every action he took eclipsed every story they had, everything they'd experienced that day. But the weirdest thing happened when the male child, at age 24, got a sex change. He became she, and his father, as much as he wanted to look away from this, had to look. The child was disowned, pushed into a different penumbra. But in the process, that child eclipsed his father an...
Read more

13. Ersatz

Ersatz [er-zahts] Noun. Describing an artificial substitute for something, usually of inferior quality; simulated or imitation. I just heard Father John Misty's "Real Love Baby" on the radio and that's where I'm starting because it was the first thing that popped into my head when I thought about writing from the word "ersatz." I don't know where the term "ersatz elevator" came from and I'm going to resist the urge to look it up right now, but I think it's from some YA fantasy book I probably read. Or maybe it's a short film by some art students I know? Either way, what a terrifying concept. To get into an elevator only to realize it's not really an elevator, and worse, you're trapped in there. There are so many ersatz things in our daily life: other people's emotions, the words people write on social media, social media itself (what are its more nefarious purposes besides connecting people?) I think people know it...
Read more