Getting Lost
From Mimipedia, sourced from my brain (and references)
Getting Lost |
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Painting of fireflies at dusk, |
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Originally Published: |
September 5, 2022 | |
When I was small, I remember having this really intense desire to be lost. I would trail as far as possible behind my parents when we went out to the store or a park. Sometimes they would be out of sight for a minute and I would be somewhere where no one knew who I was. When I would get to be a little lost, spaces and sensations became amplified and people appeared different to me.
I still feel the tug of wanting to get lost now that I would describe myself as ‘not small.’ I just moved, for the second time in my life to someplace where I don’t know anyone or anyplace. The first week, the sensation of feeling lost was at its peak. Everything was within a perspective of endless possibility because I could be anyone I wanted in this new place. But I think its funny how quickly this viewpoint starts to morph, slowly but surely, back into knowing-exactly-where-you-are. The same worldy-understanding that you have in your home, a familiar setting, or when you’re holding your parents’ hands at the store.
Not only is the apartment that I’m personalizing becoming more of a lodestone, but everywhere that is unknown to me is quickly polarizing from mysterious-setting to simply not-home. My familiarity with a place begets a fear of getting lost.
While my experience with being lost isn’t new, my attention to it was recently sparked while listening to a conversation between Dr. Báyò Akómoláfé, and Ayana Young, in the latter’s podcast, For the Wild. Dr. Akómoláfé, a writer and philosopher among many other titles, references a phrase from his Yoruba Elders, “in order to find your way, you must become lost,” in part of his response to defining “fugitivity.” This prompt regarding “fugitivity” is an extension of a previous conversation held between the two and stems from Dr. Akómoláfé’s own work and a book they admire, The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halberstam.
The term “lost” is much more than not knowing where you are. To be lost implies that you are outside of structures; whether this be structures of knowing (I don’t know the directions to the supermarket), structures of place (I left my old apartment), structures of society (I don’t know anyone here), structures of identity (I have no responsibility to be who I was yesterday), and maybe, in a scenario different than mine, structures of culture and hierarchy (I would like to live in a gardening commune). Both Dr. Akómoláfé and Halberstam define the deliberate choice and experience of being lost, as fugitivity.
Fugitivity, the intentional running away, is an act of subverting systems that prevent change. To become fugitive is to allow yourself to be held by the tornado of chaos that is always making things happen. It is an embodiment that allows us to evolve and increase our imaginations.
When I moved to where I am now, I briefly experienced full fugitivity. The unfamiliarity of the town and my newfound agency over my life both destroyed structures known and unknown to me, permitting me a new way of being. With no one here to tell me who I am supposed to be, I can make a choice to be whoever I want (and reap the consequences). But as I said, this fugitivity is fleeting. I work a 9-to-5. I make dinner every night. I go to sleep at the same time everyday. I exchange fugitivity for assured well-being. However, I don’t think think a life lacking of fugitivity is amiable to my life goals and I’ve seen people die from the emotional chokehold of too-many-structures. I hope to manifest and nuture my lostness. Queerness has always made it so that a part of me that is lost in my world, and it has so far been a gift; I see future endeavors towards getting lost only as an extension of it. I’m making an on-running list of how to remain fugitive:
Walk in places you’ve never been before (that are safe to you)
Follow a bug around
Start conversations with people you don’t know
Write down your routine, and then don’t follow it
Don’t show up to work (if you can still figure out a way to get money)
Make art, but like, not Art
Go camping with literally nothing
Walk for 4 hours in one direction
Be a different person (version of yourself, not identity theft)
Try to go somewhere without any directions
Start up conversations with ducks at the park
Dress-up how you’ve always wanted and ask everyone you run into what they think of your look
Work an odd job
Grow a garden
Ask someone to explain something, and only ask questions
Question something that seems permanent
Enter into a wikipedia rabbit-hole
Plant seeds [ambiguous]
Kill someone
More thoughts to come in the future as I continue to learn and experience.