When I visit places, I often spend time thinking about whether I\u2019d like to live there, whether it would have the things that I want in my life, whether it would inspire me in new ways.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve done this all my life and, in fact, when I\u2019ve spent lengths of time in other places (like in Seattle for Clarion West or in Antigua, Guatemala, to study Spanish), I did try to fit myself into what living there full time would be like.<\/p>\n
And I enjoy doing that, even if I\u2019m only in a place for a few days. I always fantasize about what it would be like to live there.<\/p>\n
While part of that is simply the joy of figuring out what the local patterns are, I think there\u2019s another reason I do it, a deeper one: I don\u2019t feel rooted anywhere in particular.<\/p>\n
Now I am, as most people know, a native Anglo Texan. My people go back around five generations, pretty much as long as there have been Anglo people in the state. (I use Anglo in the usual Texas sense to mean \u201cWhite, non-Hispanic.\u201d)<\/p>\n
I am certainly tied to that culture in many ways. It certainly comes out in my accent, some of my favorite music, some pride in my ancestors, especially the strong women of my family on both sides.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m also tied to it \u2013 as are many other Texans \u2013 by a rejection of some things that are also inherent in it, such as racism and exponential growth.<\/p>\n
But while I still feel the ties \u2013 positive and negative \u2013 and love much of the country there (despite the weather), I don\u2019t feel this deep connection to the land.<\/p>\n
Part of that, I suspect, is because the land represented by Texas has only been controlled by Anglo Texans for 200 years.<\/p>\n
When you look at the Indigenous populations of the Americas and how long they\u2019ve been here, 200 years is laughable. <\/p>\n
I recently saw statements from people who suffered serious damage in the recent fires in the Texas Panhandle about how their ranches had been in their family for generations. I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s three generations, maybe four, tops, because the Texas Panhandle was Comanche territory until the 1870s or even later.<\/p>\n
That may sound like ancient history, but really, it isn\u2019t that long ago. It\u2019s post-Civil War, which, if you\u2019re paying attention to current politics, really wasn\u2019t that long ago at all.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m beginning to think that one reason I\u2019m not rooted anywhere because my connection to the only place I have any real ties to is not very deep and is fraught with contradictions.<\/p>\n
I do not think this sense of rootlessness can be resolved by traveling to Ireland or Scotland or England, though most of my ancestors can be traced back to those places. I\u2019ve been to England, and while I found it fascinating (and would have enjoyed living in Cambridge, for example), I did not feel any tie to it at all. In fact, it felt more foreign to me in some ways than Guatemala ever did. (There is substance to the joke about two peoples divided by a common language.)<\/p>\n
I was raised with more mythology about Ireland, but I suspect I wouldn\u2019t feel any differently there.<\/p>\n
I do know people in the U.S. who are tied not just to this country, or a particular state, but to a particular region. It\u2019s not necessarily their ancestry, either. It does have a lot to do with where they grew up.<\/p>\n
And perhaps if I had loved where I grew up more, I might feel the same. But the truth is, I couldn\u2019t wait to get out of my hometown when I left for college and I have never wanted to go back.<\/p>\n
I suspect there are places that, even with their flaws, are so inherently magical that you can\u2019t help but want to live there. I didn\u2019t grow up in one of them. I grew up in a narrow-minded small town that became a suburb of Houston, and I was never fond of Houston anyway.<\/p>\n
I should point out that I have at least one friend who never wanted to leave Houston, a friend who shares many of my political opinions. So that tells me that some of my thoughts about why I don\u2019t feel rooted may just be stories I tell myself.<\/p>\n
Maybe I am just rootless because I like to learn about all the different places, all the different cultures, all the different ways people live, even if I can never be fully part of them.<\/p>\n
And maybe it\u2019s because the place where I want to be rooted doesn\u2019t exist as yet. I often say I\u2019m nostalgic for the future. Certainly there\u2019s no past where I\u2019d want to live.<\/p>\n
I can conceive of a culture, maybe even a place, where I might feel rooted, but it involves bits and pieces of many places and things. And it needs to include many different kinds of people.<\/p>\n
But maybe there\u2019s another reason. Maybe what I\u2019m really rooted to is Earth. I mean, we all are, really. We evolved with this planet. Every being here truly is from Earth. We all belong here.<\/p>\n
I wrote a senryu about that the other day:<\/p>\n
I\u2019m rooted to Earth,
\nnot just one place or people,
\nthe whole damn planet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I visit places, I often spend time thinking about whether I\u2019d like to live there, whether it would have the things that I want in my life, whether it would inspire me in new ways. I\u2019ve done this all my life and, in fact, when I\u2019ve spent lengths of time in other places (like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[636,17],"tags":[909],"class_list":["post-3438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-rants","tag-roots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3439,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3438\/revisions\/3439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}