Disconnected

Re: How is Taylor Sirard?

Hey all! You may notice this post refers to travels past. I've linked posts (in red) regarding those references. If you're interested in more backstory, feel free to click those links and follow down the WITS rabbit hole. If you are a total badass and have already read those posts, I salute to you dear reader.

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With a hundred miles between us, I was still mourning my departure from New Orleans. I left the comfort of hip cafes, intriguing shops, people with similar interests, and endless restaurants. My travels since leaving had been a roulette of bland, scary, and  disheartening experiences. At the same time, I wished I was still in New Orleans and I beat myself up for not leaving sooner. Chasing the excitement I left in the city, I drove through to Santa Fe.

I landed at an uninspiring, vaguely western-themed restaurant and bar in downtown Santa Fe. I ordered one of the sparse vegetarian options on the menu. For dessert, I had a hot cocktail that I sipped while writing in my journal:

I don't feel good. That is so hard for me to admit, but it is true. I want to do all the things I shouldn't, and I am for the most part: Drinking, smoking, ignoring self-care. [I'm] spending so much money I really don't know if I'll make it to [San Francisco.] I have no discipline.

The only thing I can convince myself to do is drive. I've always been good at actions that are beside the point.

I don't like Santa Fe all that much on my first impression. Maybe it's just me.

I have this urge to be self-destructive that I don't quite understand.

My waiter, when I asked if there was somewhere I could buy cigs brought me one wrapped in a box of matches from the bartender.

I smoked the cigarette and called my best friend on my walk back to Bernadette. I waited until I was inside my RV to break down and cry to them.

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The next day I attempted to start fresh. I bought a seven dollar day pass to the local community center, with which I attended a yoga class and took a shower. Great deal. 

Afterward, continuing my feel-good regimen, I found a highly-rated restaurant for breakfast. Despite recognizing how beautiful, unique, and full of character the establishment was, I didn't take a single picture. The food was delicious, but I couldn't rid myself of my thoughts from the previous day. My only documentation of the experience was a short entry in my journal:

Cafe Pasqual's:
Too small for everything. Big chairs, all tables full. The bathroom hallway gives just a few inches of space on either side of my shoulders. Maybe six above my head.

Huevos Motuleños: two eggs, black beans, corn tortilla, sauteed banana, feta, green peas, roasted tomato jalepeño salsa, red chili.

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I reasoned, as I had the past few days, the best thing for me to do was keep driving. So, I aimed my wheels in the direction of my next destination, my grandmother's retirement community, with no plan for where to stop for the night. I had, however, researched some hiking trails near Albuquerque to stop at on my way. It was my next effort to halt the toxic hamster wheel I had hopped on: experience an uncomfortable emotion, enact an unhealthy coping mechanism, punish with negative self-talk, round and round.

Just before sunset, I arrived at the Sandia Foothills, public land just east of Albuquerque. The two dollar entrance fee and the friendly conversation from the park worker lifted the corners of my mouth, if not my mood.

As I was lacing up my shoes, a sweet dog came around my open door. I clasped the tag on his collar as I pet him. It read "Gus," which I soon heard being called from down the trail. When Gus' humans approached we exchanged greetings and went our separate ways.

I started up the trail and began to notice. I noticed the dirt crunching in sync with my footsteps. I noticed how demanding a blue sky can be against a desert hill.

[Image: A mountainous desert landscape against a clear blue sky.]

At first, the terrain all blended together, scattered greenery on a wash of dusty orange. Gradually more colors emerged from the landscape. My eyes caught the flick of blue iridescent feathers on a bird with a burnt umber collar. I noticed the subtle gradation in the cacti from dull pink to pale green.

[Image: Spikey leaves jut out in front of low and round cacti. Beyond the plants is bare, sandy and rocky ground.]

When I noticed a rock jutting out of the hill ahead, I set my mind on reaching it. On the way, I passed a man on the trail. "Hey, how ya' doing?" he asked with a bob of his head.

"Good. You?" I replied trying to mirror his ease of enjoyment.

"Rockin'." I almost didn't notice his pun. I was giddy with appreciation when I did.

With every new thing I noticed, my pace picked up. I scurried from discovery to discovery; from new plant to unfamiliar insect. My playfulness was in full commission as I approached the rock I had previously sighted. I scaled the verticle pass leading to the base of the rock and, after a brief chess game with the land, planted my feet on top.

Looking over the path I had just hiked, I was astonished at how different I felt compared to my first steps on the trail. The immediacy of nature to recalibrate me was stunning.

My prose fails me in expressing what I felt. For this, I will refer to Henry David Thoreau. In his book, Walden, he reflects on his experiment of leaving the city and society behind to live simply in nature. Although the climate and natural scenery of Walden Pond were much different, I think the effect he describes is quite the same:

To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.

To me, no matter how vibrant a city feels, there is no experience more viscerally healing than the natural world. I can be pulled from any distant future fear or plucked out of any unresolved past by surrounding myself in a world without man-made objects. If being in nature does not change the way I feel, it, at the very least, allows me the presence to deal with it.

I had been separated from nature for so long, I lost touch with that idea. On this hike, my desire to be in the city evaporated. Not to say that, along with it, so did all of my problems. Those were all still there. However, I was there with them, which felt better than consistently distracting myself from them.

On the mountain, and again in the words of Thoreau, I was reminded of a truth greater than my desire to be in the bustle of a city, "I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers."

Solitude is so important to me. Often I am starved for it before I allow time by myself. However, I don't mean to say, nor did Thoreau, that loneliness is caused by other people. To explain, allow me to take a brief philosophical detour:

Firstly, I will attempt to define the opposite of being alone; being with. To be with someone is not just an act of physical proximity, but an act of mutual attention. Imagine you are near someone, but you do not acknowledge them. Instead, you pay attention to your work, or a movie, or drinking a beer. Have you been with them? If you walk into a restaurant full of people and sit at a table alone have you had dinner with any of the other patrons? Surely, the answer to both questions is no.

Next, let us consider each individual psyche as comprised of two parts: one who exists and one who witnesses.

For a basic introduction to this theory, consider this: You have thoughts, but who hears those thoughts? The answer is a rephrasing of the question: a part of you has thoughts and a different part of you observes those thoughts.

The witness is pure attention. This part of the self (attention itself,) can be directed towards the future, past, fantasy, fear, or towards the other part of the self. The other self that is existing. The self that is feeling. The self that is touching and moving and breathing.

Whole self is when both parts are with each other. To be with, as I first defined, means mutual attention. Firstly, the witness self is giving attention to the experiential self. This just means someone is paying attention to what they are doing while they are doing it. Secondly, the experiential self, which includes someone's thoughts, is giving attention to their observational self. This means someone is keeping in their thoughts the recognition that there is a separate self, the witness part of self.¹

If my selves are not with each other, I am not wholly there.

Even in the company of others, I am not wholly with them.

Without the company of others, I am not even with myself.

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"I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers."

-Henry David Thoreau

The "being alone" Thoreau loves is being with both selves. The loneliness he describes being "among men" is the lack thereof.

Outward surroundings, such as chambers, are minor characters here. Being alone allows the parts of self to be with each other with less distraction, but doesn't cause that union. Similarly, nature is a great facilitator in being with the whole self, but does not guarantee it.

I can be miles from the nearest paved road and still thinking about tasks that await me inside of some distant building. I can spend an entire day not interacting with another human, yet the whole time watching people interact through a TV screen. In both scenarios, I have failed to be with myself regardless of my surroundings. 

Nevertheless, solitude and nature are a great help. The ease of self-union within both is what makes nature and solitude such divine companions. In times when I have forgotten how to be with myself, these tools are instrumental.

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The dissatisfaction I journaled about in Santa Fe had started long before I left New Orleans. At some point, I had disconnected from myself. The city just provided me with consistent distraction from that.

I write this as a reminder to myself that the only way out of an uncomfortable feeling is in. Be with the feeling. And sometimes, the easiest way in is to go outside.

[Image: In profile, Taylor Sirard leans against a tall rock looking beyond the image frame. In the background is a mountain of green brush dotted with rocks against a clear sky.]

Thank you so much for reading. I am grateful to share not just my experiences, but my innermost feelings and challenges with you all. If you are interested in exclusive accounts of my inner Thoreau, or if you would like to show this blog some love, head over to my Patreon. A huge thanks to all my patrons who have recently helped double the frequency of blog posts. WOO!

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1 For applications, practices, or benefits relating to the witness-self/experiential-self theory, seek any meditation related practice or information. For example, yoga, mindfulness, Headspace (mobile app), Buddhism, etc.^↩