The first home I really remember is a townhouse in northern Virginia. I had lived elsewhere, before, but this was the first that was home. We had a tiny fenced yard which we eventually let wild; when we left, there was a beautiful tall-grass jungle there as well as our rhubarb box full of weeds. A tiny refuge for life, surrounded by the carefully-kept cut grass of the community. I remember the crickets in the grass. We moved to another, wilder place, forested with a rainwater valley through the middle. Again fenced in. My brother and I spent a lot of time out in the woods. This was good. I liked it here. We moved again, a house with a white picket fence and a couple trees in the backyard. Artificial feeling, again. My father has a bad habit of cutting the grass.
Places in between; between wild and kept, one between the others. In my social life, too, I’ve been someone in between; on the fringes of the group, or among groups nobody else would interact with. Deeply connecting only with those also in between.
It’s lonely. Something about it makes me feel disconnected from everything. It’s like I’m incomplete, without something to connect with. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Kimmerer finds her roots in her culture and in the land. I don’t have any culture or land to turn to. It isn’t mine to take root in.
If any, my culture would be one of colonization. On one side, white colonists of Āotearoa, a place I’ve barely even had as a home. On another, Mormons taking the inhabited West. A last, something I don’t even know. My language feels sterile and lifeless, and I pour myself out to put life into it. In trying to decolonize myself, it feels like I’ve lost something.
I don’t regret it, of course. But it is something that makes me feel a bit lonely. I don’t really belong here, or anywhere. I must build myself entirely from the ground up, taking scraps from wherever I feel I have any right to. A system of magic I design myself. A philosophy of life that grows with me. A language of good, created for one and all. I adopt what culture I can, and create anew what I am missing. I don’t regret it, of course. But it is something that makes me feel a bit lonely. I don’t really belong here, or anywhere. I must build myself entirely from the ground up, taking scraps from wherever I feel I have any right to. A system of magic I design myself. A philosophy of life that grows with me. A language of good, created for one and all. I adopt what culture I can, and create anew what I am missing.
. I am a thing that creates a way.
I do feel a deep connection with nature, though. len stretches between everything, and there are so many beautiful interactions in the natural world. It’s a reason therian identity resonates with me so strongly—I belong, in the forest. It feels too far away here, in this little city surrounded by monoculture fields. Another long-distance relationship.
I find little connections in the little bugs I see, pipi pona (they are almost always pona to me) and the trees. I have favorites. One is like a little sibling to me, a little sapling in front of the next door dormitories. I give this tree my love and bind to it the goodness of community. The other is a great old crack willow, (I know this because they are labeled,) like a grandparent to me. In a big hole in its branches live honeybees! I love this tree very much for giving a home to these wonderful little friends. I’ve climbed it before, but I think I frightened the bees a little, so I haven’t done it since. In need I bind the goodness of this tree to myself.
I have no satisfying conclusion to this writing. I am still somewhat lost. I am still working to create what I am. I will probably continue for the rest of my life. I think I will root myself in what little bits of nature I can meet. There are always friends there.