transitory ("go find your roots")

i spent the last couple of days with a friend who's going to leave the bay. she reminded me that this feeling of floatation, of never really being fully able to identify with any community is always going to be something we must deal with.

when someone stupid told her to "find your roots", she responded with the fact that we were up-rooted long before birth, that our existence is part due to the loss of roots. our parents did all they could to forget where they came from for different reasons (violent pasts, poverty, guilt) and in the process left us as confused creatures.

so now we float, all of us, encountering people who will tokenize, misunderstand, generalize and drown us. never finding people who will know us for the detached wholes that we are. we both shared similar stories of never being properly understood culturally, of having settled for half-truths about ourselves, settled for other peoples' versions of who we are.

my friend is the last installment of a mass exodus from the bay and from my house that started months ago. she made me realized that i'm going to miss living with the detached wholes that i've grown to love this year. with the kids who know they don't belong anywhere, not even the places they were born. kids who can't tell you exactly where they're from when you ask, who's parents forgot themselves, who constantly fluctuate and proudly bend the boarders of our communities in order to live truthfully.