Fossilized and Withered History

I feel like it’s been forever since I last sat down and wrote. I started this year sprinting with all of my passions. As I write this I just finished my side project to my side project (which you can watch here). It’s horror music, I have no other way to explain it truthfully.

I feel that a huge theme of my life has really been centered around estrangement. Lately its been focused on cultural estrangement but I feel that social estrangement is something that has plagued me since childhood too.

The cultural and social estrangement I feel are interlinked (obviously), but really reflecting about why this isolation has been so heavily felt had me digging deep into shadow work.

When in the midst of recording for Life Through Lenses I was talking with Josh about the need for growth when pursuing our passions. This evolved into a conversation of generational trauma and how that had affected my development.

When I was filming 60 Days of Ambidexterity there was this one episode named ‘They Murdered Her‘. In short I cry about grass being cut. I saw myself in it unconsciously.

The culture I was born from, the social circles I float in and out of. My life cycle was embodied in that dewy field of grass.

When I would sit out there on my lunch breaks it was my moment to breathe from the stress of dealing with those kids (even though I loved them). I would see all these bugs and insects do their motions down below. Dragonflies playing tag in circles, bees whisping from flower to flower, some bird above me resting in the summer heat with me. It was peace, even the ants would come up circle on me and leave here and there.

When it felt like all I knew was to drown myself in work that whole ecosystem is what I needed.

And then it was all cut.

Life was silent, a shadowed bird of some sort sat frozen as I recorded everything for that day’s video. The sadness I felt only beginning to exfiltrate from my system.

Of the destruction that laid there after only a lone dragonfly caught my eye. My unknowing mirror.

I was born accident. Nothing that exists in my life was ever meant for me. My family all did their best to raise me for what they saw as right in the situation my birth forced upon them.

Culturally I view my Haitian heritage as the loud and vibrant field of grass and my current experience as that dragonfly surrounded by the cut field. Dead memories surround it, uncertainty awaits it, but it still must continue to push forward.

A history that I can never experience or witness.

My family has told me how they wish they could have me see Haiti and all the beauty it has to offer, but day by day it becomes an impossibility. Like my ancestors who where disconnected from their homes and brought to Haiti, I too have become disconnected.

Echoes of yesterday still reach for me but their origins are unknown, the world and reality of Haiti has never been known to me, only its fossils.

The same story in a different time. Chains exchanged for dollars I am stuck, a slave.

I’ve toiled over thoughts about whether or not if freedom truly exists for years now, for a while I settled for the idea that to be my own slave master was to be free. But it only ever offered a taste at what I could accomplish.

On the tiktok I spoke about this very thing, I got a comment about how a shift in perspective for how we view ourselves as a part of culture heavily settled into me.

The not so obvious realization about the importance of self.

My circumstance with how I’ve viewed culture, placed it in a stagnant bubble I was unaware of. That perspective with a whole other slew of experiences that molded my development led me to not being actively aware of the ways in which culture is inherently fluid. But also did not allow myself to be seen as a part of any of the cultures I grew up in.

Conformity was a prison but it felt like it was the only way I could find acceptance for too long of my life.

I think of those dragonflies, their identities and existences where never questioned or changed to continue thriving in their ecosystems. They were themselves and all other parts of life shared in the songs they played.

Even when alone surrounded by death. It still thrives.

Even though I feel and felt estrangement, the reality can not be refused.

You can not be estranged from what is inherent to you.