elizasepistolarytravels

[elizasepistolarytravels]

Mexico, racism, and storing extraction in our bodies. A year on.

Today I want to talk about racism in Mexico. 

The point for me in these letters is to talk about stuff that I find sometimes has not been named enough, not as a final statement, but more a need to digest and process in the way that I have found useful- through setting literal pen to handmade paper, to think about topics important to me as I am going through the process of making my paper: shredding, mulching, and at last hanging up a new blank sheet to dry for me to pour my thoughts onto. 

This thought has been churning in me in its complexity for a whole year, and at last it has a semblance of structure. So here goes the story:

Since I arrived in Mexico, I have not been able to shake off an uneasy feeling, and a growing concern for a reality I am finding harder and harder to accept, now that its fibers are made evident. My experience of Mexico has been similar to living in a cast system, and I want to talk about that and possible places to start to open this up. 

My journey started when I arrived last January to the cool slopes of Valle de Bravo my head full of dreams, to start my course in alternative education in a town that I was conscious was full of interesting people and projects that promised practice in the ways of transitioning to a possibly better future. While the dreams have not left, this more extreme aspect of my experience I think can shed a light on much of what I think is lacking in these spaces even in countries like the UK where there is much more social acceptance of these discussions. 

Mexico is a place of myths: one dear to its heart is that around the concept of mestizaje. The mestizo has a heart of fire from Spain, flamenco and the corridas while lashes sprouting from agave spines and desert dreaming eyes twirl as if they were all one. The reality of the mestizo is a little less exciting, and much more of what you would expect: the mixing of peoples and ethnicities that happened in the Spanish colonisation is much more the stratification of peoples into a cast system according to their lineage and their ‘whiteness’ and much less a tale of a beautiful melting pot and a story of when ‘colonisation was ok’. Today, there is still this cast system, and much unnamed pain still stores itself in these spaces between people, in even in the most ‘woke’ environments. There may not be here as much ‘overt’ wealth separation, but I argue that if we do not address how the extraction and violence of colonisation has stored itself in our white (and whiter) bodies and continues to create separation in us, and thus, systemically racist structures, we will not achieve any of the community based projects we have set out to create, treating the effects and sources of racism being one of the most important points in creating transition towards a future that can regenerate the world.

While it is true that many of us have dark eyes and dark hair, in amongst these spaces where people look like me, there is an unspoken knowledge that in reality much of our ancestors really have lighter skin because they never spoke Masahua, toltec, or tsetsal to each other; they spoke Spanish, French, maybe English or German. Our kinship was never of this land, and the mestizaje that did happen was always absorbed as much as possible back into the homogenising force of colonisation, back into the racist idea of whiteness. And that is why we are the wealthier and the whiter, that all appear together, that is why there are still ‘clubs’ (leisure centres) in Mexico city where you can pay a good sum to be cut off from the rest of its squalor, the ‘club France’ or the ‘club Spain’, where you can live out the extent of colonisation today, mixing only with people of your ‘line’. I have simultaneously seen spades of temazcales, plant medicine offerings, drumming and ancient healing practices (a genuine interest for things that I understand), and people going back to the same race relations where the darker skinned and those who speak a language of this land are the ones who uphold these lifestyles of relative ease of the whiter and wealthier. I am not saying that the search for meaning, for the return of ritual is wrong, but that this dynamic is evident of the deep embeddedness of the cast system in the Mexican psyche so much that much of of what I described here I think is completely obscure to most people and not seen as a problem. 

Again, the search for growth is not wrong, but the point of all this was to remember that you are deeply interconnected and interdependent with the people and beings around you, and that you and your little ego is not that important really. Ritual reaffirmed what actions and practices and interconnections were going on in your community already, they do not substitute them. My problem with these spaces is that I do not see any real attempt to create interdependence with people outside of your socio-economic (and racialised) class, thus maintaining the same racist structures of our predecessors. After a plant medicine ceremony, people go back to their houses where their help is darker skinned, has less formal education than them, and this will be the only point of contact with someone outside of their cast. Wage labor can never be fertile land to create interdependence, to create actual friendship and care. I feel that racism in Mexico expresses itself in those subtle ways only those on the receiving end know how insidious it can be: in the lack of care for breaking down the structures that keep us separate, unseen, and really interdependent. Lets face it, people do not really want to knit society with those who cannot participate in the cultural game of appearing woke like they do, they can only be seen with them in the form of ‘helping them’, ‘giving them a job’. To be actual friends is very very rare, and you can only participate in the game of appearing woke if your body has inherited a certain history of privilege. 

I see that despite all the good, sustainable initiatives and the ‘healing’ done in these circles, we are not open to see how our white bodies have stored racist, capitalist and extractivistic structures of wealth, that make it that even as a middle class student making it by, if unchecked, the same structures of oppression and pain will perpetuate themselves, and there will be no real planetary healing, no real chance of changing anything for the better in any really substantial way. The hoarding of value expresses itself in the overconfidence of whiter bodies, in the looks of comparison and the implication that something about you is not enough, spurring the original wound of capitalism and the need of endless consumption, hoarding, and taking from those you deem expendable. Colonialism in white bodies is the search for charisma, is the search for medicine for your own self agrandizaition, for it being commodified and consumed, folded back into capitalism, with no context and connection to creating interdependence with the people who imparted such knowledge. You will remain a cristal tower to the world around you, and you will find yourself saying that you have tried to connect with people outside of your cast, but, it’s like they don’t want to. And it’s not on them.

To counter this, I find that to start, try and create other spaces to exist outside of waged labor together, even if it is just in the form of conversations where you genuinely care about the others wellbeing. Trade from a point of equality, of truth. Breaking from racist woke structures demands that we paradoxically break some of the uber-confidence that I have argued, is the residual storage of wealth extractivism and colonialist violence that gets stored in how we use our bodies. It demands a de-sensitisation to reactions to how we can be culturally different, just let the differences be, see them without needing to sort and categorise or see how this could benefit you. Be humble in ways where you feel no one needs to take up more space then they need to. In the same way, no one needs to dress differently, put on an accent, play being the other, pretend something is different then it is. It is a genuine curiosity to know your neighbour, the complexity of their life, their highs and their woes just like you, and see how we can help each other out, fumbling towards being friends who do not shy away from the realities of being born into a world of separation and what that implies. I am in no way dismissing my paradoxes and how I struggle, even in my own family, where this relationship sometimes still plays on, and leave me forever uncomfortable. 

We will still exist in a world in Mexico where wage relationships as a standard are the reality, and if like many, you benefit from the help of people in your house, the issue is not the exchange of value, but wage relations in this way is an extension of colonialist history, and mostly the only history, and that the numbing to the reality of the roots of this separation is what keeps this going. Lets look into what lenses we were given, how we hold our bodies, where our priorities lie. 

Much love. 

E xxx

[elizasepistolarytravels]

A knife.

1.) I've never cried once when I waxed my legs. 

I can feel it though. 

as I can feel the breeze and the cold

and the salt evaporating from 

the sand caked beach. 

And its taste on scrambled eggs,

and your rain coat on the peg, 

and your stolen eyes 

stealing my body 

as the door screeches 

shut 

in that scream that I dread. 

And I can hear the sound of pop corn, 

and people in the street, 

their red mouths like 

poppies 

and bulls eyes

in a Rolling Stone magazine. 

Telling lies.

And yeah, I like my coffee black. 

S'how I decided to like it 

as I have once in a party 

sworn 

that I was born 

with my tongue flipped backwards,

my taste buds starting at the bitter bit instead.

Said that just to excite them. 

I love movies. 

But never cry in public. 

I'd never cry if it pleased the Republic. 

What I do is, I try to get a grip of their minds

See my vision through a 

screen.

But lets not get too dark, shall we?

I love the sight of wool-

Transformed and processed,

refined, 

Blessed. 

And how it scratches on my back, 

sharply.

And how it goes around and itches my neck, 

hungrily. 

And wraps around my waist and burns me. 

But that is how I choose to dress. 

And yeah I love the feel of rain and stuff,  

and cycling, 

and laughing, 

and falling, and scrambling 

and crying,and crying. 

And the crisp sheets on my childhood bed,

how when you got lost in them by yourself, tearing the sheets apart. 

I felt nothing. 

Not the wool, nor the the coffee, not even the leg waxing. 

As you saw, as you watched my eyes go forever red.

2.) 

The scent of her bluebell

earrings made them mad. 

She swayed a halo of hair at their 

bluebird eyelashes that wished to fly away 

and perch on her shoulders, 

adoring her teacups of cracked silence and 

dry toast. 

The love she held to them was bitter, 

conscious of her power, 

she did not let them see through 

her skin. 

Lotus palms higher chakra fingernails 

on her parchment thighs and a longing of 

consumption of trimmed misery, 

a pattern of stolen space shared in corners. 

They were all so beautiful. 

Their souls were white, I tell you. 

And one by one, she would let them into her room

and thank their lives.

Kissing their shoulders with 

whiskers of leaves. 

They would try to run their hands over 

sudden quivering glimpses of lake blue stillness,

that shattered across her eyes. 

They were making it worse for themselves, 

They were making her remind herself of 

the numbing stitches that lay as maps over her brain. 

2.)

How is it for you, 

as you sit pink eyed? 

Your skin, un-stretched 

from hurtling warship storms

shines golden, 

awesome disney penny golden,

slightly akin to our 

Kath Kidston bread rolls and hours of 

spiky cricket. 

It is easy to fall in love 

with your idea of an anxious 

death of new-boy, 

oxford- sandle- schoolboy. 

Beatings. 

I relish in your fire. 

In your even slightest oxygenation and combustion rust.

When clippings fall off your Thatcher-esque milk-carton teeth. 

But that barely satisfies pits of knotted words. 

And jaws pulled open to emplace chastity belts. 

Onions, 

Wikka crosses. 

Suffocation. 

My body is a battlefield of eyes, 

rashes, scratches, and many many apparent scars. 

I try to walk across your face, 

down expensive liquor suns. 

My life was an orphan. My hands

were open and a ghost took them.

Now I can only scream. 

Your sight makes me cry and you continue to shine,

And you sit down in the sand and - ‘help me’. 

This is snow globe ancient.

It is swoons of acid sooty waves, storms and storms 

of the shipwreck cleaner - the orphan. 

You explain to me life as if it were a mere 

plastic 

globe. 

Eccentric.

Disposable. 

And most probably Toxic. 

One of the reasons I am doing this project is because of trauma. 

Poetry is so wishy-washy and ambiguous so lets get straight to the point. 

Not many people detect this, some may sense pain and things like that, but on the whole, out of all the things this project has turned out to have a connection to, the trauma that also spurs it is not something not talked about a lot. It has paced my life, as good old trauma tends to do. It paces this piece of art. As so, it turns out that this is also an attempt to heal. I am taking courage, taking hold over my life now. I will write and speak and run until I don’t need to, until I feel at last at home in my own crawling skin. I will run to where I feel most protected, where I have felt I can breath at last, the warmth of the earth and the quietness of the fields of Nature. Where I feel I am of the same mud as the rest of this earth. 

Trauma. As it is for many others, trauma is insidious. It is a natural, scientific, real, proven, (blah blah look up the research) whatever you want to call it, phenomenon. It changes your brain. It is when something or someone through your childhood development and right into your adult life, comes in and disrupts the healthy boundaries of your body, your mind and your sense of self. When you are ok, you have a normal bubble where a healthy ego may develop and later on in life, thrive. When not your bubble is more this weird mashed potato. Or many different states of mashed potato. When you have not experienced trauma you know the boundaries of yourself and others and more importantly you know how to maintain them. My bubble, both physically and mentally, was distorted (made mash potato), from an early age. It was not for me one event, it was also a, combination of people and moments. The lines are blurry, and yes, I agree, the line of victim and perpetrator is difficult, and sometimes confusing, there there remains a constant. From an early age my boundaries were laughed at made lesser than, later used and twisted. It is the plight of the perception of women or anyone made lesser, their bodies made objects. Just to repeat: My existence, as for most of us, is a lot of pain. It is at times unbearable. You cannot demean this, or make this any smaller than the immensity I feel in my mind at some points of time. I guess this is speaking truth to survive. So back to the little talk on trauma. The healthy development I was meant to have by now is supplemented by the voices of those who opened me up and ate me raw. Psychologically, it is self-doubt and even hatred, somatically, it is sometimes a bodily fear of others or not knowing boundaries, exuding too much closeness and intimate energy and then at times freezing up out fear when my body suddenly realises the danger it put itself in. Or just fading away, giving in, not feeling. It is also crying and panic, yeah that happens. I can’t imagine what it must be like for people with trauma greater than mine, but this is not the point. I am here to talk about my trauma. Because it is time to take back what people took from me like chocolates, when truthfully, if he really cared for and respected me, he wouldn’t have ever fucking done that. There is no way to reconcile that in my mind. I have tried utter, truthful and surrendering forgiveness, but you know what that just didn’t work for me. So here is my story.

I met an old friend the other day, I didn’t expect him to be there, or ever see him again, although paradoxically I knew we would cross paths. This past month has been a month of giving for me, of building up projects like this one. I fucking stamped out the voices that were being stupid and managed to do the things I needed to do. I have had a precious time, I have met wondrous people. If you recognise yourself here, well done! I love you. I have made some true connections and touched others’ lives because I reached out in my truth, and so did hey. Spoke from the soul. It is something that I am proud of, my present life has taken a turn I really like. I am now again fighting for something that is outside of me, but in the process makes us laugh, connect, and feel at home. I am a fucking warrior. I did what I promised to myself, I fucking fought and got out of my hole of self pity, and I was happy for a while. But the golden light passes, as all will pass, and already, as a woman, I feel the end of the cycle coming, a time for darker thoughts needing to be processed. But also, this time was also powered by unsustainable energy, of escapism by excessively giving, and as I realised on the only day I was really sober, that parts of it were numbing. Some of you picked up on that, because after a while you see the cracks in my self, you see that something is wrong, does not quite align, you don’t know what it is, can’t put your finger on it, but something is very off. And that is when usually I ward you off or distract you with part of a persona I create. Frantically. No, I am not always OK. As many of us are. 

A person of my family, a close friend of mine, grew to take me and what I am  made me separate and lesser, a thing he could use. Anyway, starting off as a weird symbiosis of children it turned into an entitlement to the body of women,  because I don’t know, like our sick culture of disgusting posh all boys boarding schools? Just saying. And because of his parents and the rest of the family gradually built him up to think of himself as the best. That can hurt and damage a person forever. What does all that pride give you, when you are a hollow empty narcissistic vessel by night? Just saying. Anyway, that is my trauma, or whatever, or was my thing, I can make it public because I want to, and because I like the idea of revenge, and because you do not overstep my boundaries. This piece of writing is a knife.

When I met you again, dear friend, you reminded me of this. And yes, the beautiful, and real parts of this project, are a part of it, but they are not everything. The need to reconnect with people of my life is because I have presented a frantic, scared, fractured persona a lot of the time. I have manipulated and quickly attached myself to a few people, a few best friends that would fill up my broken terrified heart. I have a string of best friends, relationships, that I become intensely entwined with to feel safe, out of pure need to survive. And then cut them off without the batting of an eyelid. That is fucking terrible. I don’t know how you could stand me for the time you did. I was a manipulative piece of shit, that could probably not respect your boundaries also. And if you took distance, that was very wise of you, I thank you for that, because the pieces of me that can still feel want you to be happy. I would cut off my friends as soon as they saw this. Next. It was all just survival. I would then hunt for my next prey and hope they would fill in this hole by using them in a weird symbiotic way as a part of me. The letter writing is also to not hide anymore, to get back in contact with you, to say sorry, but also, to truly talk to you and laugh about our past, to feel kindred spirits in this world that is tough. Because this state of frenzy has to stop. This fear has to stop. It is time I take back the knife, and stab back where it hurt the most. Enforced empathy. Making you hurt like I hurt even if you don’t want to. Now you will all know. Now the world will know. That I will not shut up. Now we attack back. 

This girl fights. You seemed to have forgotten that. 

Trauma. We build up this conversation together my dear friend. You who monologues a lot like men do, who forgets that I made this myself too, a part of you may feel good for having helped me, but this is also fucking self-generated. We talked about this together, how trauma is the underlying epidemic to us all. It is the sweeping waves of suicide that we seem to find hard to explain (Duh??). It is the never-ending cycle of creating men (and sometimes steel women) who are not warriors, but machines. Of honouring psychopaths, capable of disguising themselves as heroes, but who are actually machines built up from a world that has taken out a piece of their usual empathetic development. It is not usual male aggression. It is broken boys. Fracturing other peoples sense of self, as traumatising a population becomes the greatest weapon of war. Civilians and women, children, weaker men. Today, battling in Syria and elsewhere, we are not fighting a just war. Our machine men from our psychotic culture are traumatising women and children, sexually abusing other men (remember Abu Ghraib in Iraq? that seemed hard to explain for some reason). The greatest form of destruction is to destroy the minds of a population. Fighting terrorism is a weird Freudian cover up of a will of our population to manipulate and enjoy destroying another. It is the need to keep our women quiet and useable, to satisfy this machine mentality of soldiers off to feel good about killing things. 

You and I were a microcosm. 

You took a part of me, as some have taken a part of you, to fill in the hole that they start to take out of us, to be part of this culture. We inherit the past of our parents. It is the Ouroboros. The never-ending cycle, a snake eating its tail. Until someone in the chain decides to say fuck off and break from it herself. You also had a choice when we started to see it happen. But you just wanted your own satisfaction really. Psycho.

My escape is a necessity. It has now gotten to the point that it is more dangerous for me to stay silent than to reach out and take control. 

This is me yelling. My art is me yelling. Our poetry is us yelling. This is me yelling about the very mantle of trauma that is stitched into the fabric of our society. It is so entrenched, as it has been in society, that it is barely utterable. Like a colour we cannot see, a collective amnesia. And it suddenly started spluttering out: Me too!

And me. 

I am one in three women, 

Lots of men told to kill their feelings.

Trauma comes in degrees, the refugee families and individuals I have met have amongst our laughter, our alchemy and dancing, talked about their trauma. I relate. It is not my trauma, nor my degree. But it is trauma. A category I relate to.

This is us taking back control. I do it for you but know that it is our turn to fight back. It is healthy to re-establish your boundaries of a world that took yours away. Create your knife.

So lets write, paint, sing, yell, make moments happen. Transform the world. Lets gain back control over narcissists that have fucked our world over. You are allowed to be the best you can. To brandish swards. 

So this is my life’s work. 

This is why I am doing this. And will continue to do things like this for all my future. And also, I am now going to have a fucking good time and enjoy life and not get caught up on this moment, or what ‘happened to me’, but it is important that it is out there, that it is not told to be kept silent. And if you every want to consider re-building your mind, or if you want redemption, this will be your life’s work too, or I will make it yours by force. Trust me, I am now the girl with the dragon tattoo, a dragon of my Mexican people that have been fucked over by white men like you (By the way, can you feel the power of Mexico and other countries starting to fight back? Being beautiful? Exciting right?). 

So these are the letters. The start to break silences, to have stabbing conversations. No I am not tame. No my parents. My family. I will not do this nicely and silently. If you want to write a letter that stabs go ahead, if you want to thank all those who truly saw you and your truth go ahead. If you want to honour the world with your words and your beauty, go ahead. Lets cut to the real. 

In a letter, you open the world. You can build and do other things you want from there. So lets start to stitch together connections of real discussions, or raw real open discussions, of the possibility of connecting networks between those who have seen trauma and who understand the pain of the world, and who alchemise it. We are the future. 

And fuck those who tell you to be less real, to tone it down. They are cowards. 

Dare, 

Dare to connect. 

We need truth more than ever.

We need reality more than ever. 

We need beauty more than ever. 

Fuck you Jack. 

Eliza. 

Right, now this is done, lets get back to life and cycling. 

[elizasepistolarytravels]

It became a letter to Stuart Corbridge.

Oops, my first pieces of paper accidentally became a letter to Stuart Corbridge. 

(our university’s vice-chancellor). 

Off I go.

(Or more, it was  like 7 tiny letters). 

I hope he appreciates this strange object injecting into his life. 

This is the letter: 

Dear Stuart Corbridge,                                                                                                  I know you are probably just a face on a big institution that possesses an internal working far too complex for one person to be accountable for alone, and thus cannot be the cause of many of the things I am talking about here. I just don’t quite know who to turn to in this maze of information that is the university. So this is why I am writing to you. You see, here in this business of Durham it has not always been the best of times, like everything else in life. But something wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t help but feel particularly disengaged from the fragmented idea of how I was meant to live here, that seemed to promote the ethos of a particular version of studenthood at university. Through my time in a little college, despite the beautiful people encountered there, I could not help but feel as if I was constantly being distracted from something, kept following flashing lights as to not see things otherwise jarring. The constant entertainment felt as if to be honest, I was being conned into thinking that I had made the right choice by paying an exorbitant fee for a uni degree. A fee that I cannot afford, but where we live in a world where we are told we can less afford not having a degree. That is a scary consumer choice to have to make as a kid. Anyway, you’ve heard that all before, but whilst I grew here, I saw many cases where spilt champaign and a pressure to open a smile is only done because everyone promised you would have the best time of your life, and you are so deep into it now that you better cover up your feelings before anyone discovers how fearful about your state you are. Covering up an epidemic of mental illness of the kids left in your hands. I also saw that the distractions you call investments were obscuring what was most important of this city, it’s individuals and of corse, the ties between them. Yes I know has been overdone, but I am sure you know this as a human geographer. It is of corse this that makes a place, the rest is just show or junkfood. In a last call for your attention, could you please take a stance to show that you care about them more than anything else? I know, a lot to ask. My professors have shown me the depth of value of human life, people who have pushed their minds as far as the brim of human knowledge, can you make sure they will continue to be able to live well and to have a fulfilling life, in one of the last careers of passion left? Whether they capture the minds of a seminar group alone on a Thursday night, or are the next Cambridge analytica, can you place value on those who capture the meaning of our time here with truth, not simply to produce a marketable transaction. Value in the real world is far more organic, messy, and at times intangible, even more, invaluable, than the idea of a uni that you seem to have. The flashing lights and noisy dinners have taken me away from a community of Durham, a city where people live in a connection to history and place and a valuing of this ‘intangible’ that is breathtaking. They have often been pushed to the side (read: spatially), and they will continue to be so in the expanding of the factory, the ingestion of more fleeting students through a growing ghost town that is becoming Durham. It was and has always been also their city. And they were here before you. Your expansion of your idea of happiness, your idea of value, with no connection to the backs of thousands that Durham was built upon, an industry that powered your ideal of progress in line with a history of the UK, is not great as a way to show a connection to a people, and respect them as equals. And lets not kid ourselves, the expansion is not for the working classes or other minorities you find could be of immeasurable value if you just shift the needle on the compass a tiny bit. It is not great to expand the idea that more people should chain themselves to a blackhole of debt in order to live in this world. Not great to price out people from their homes and not try and value those who are already at your doorstep. Stuart. If you care about ‘the people’ please show a little more involved connection to your words. We have been striking and supporting, we are hidden behind closed doors of panic, we are with our friends from Durham city wanting to co-create a place of home that has always been a rich tapestry of crossing people from far away and from centuries of staying. Instead, allow its heart to grow, the people living here and passing here to connect deeply. Who knows, you might find that in Durham, city of sanctuary, has already so much value. 

Love, 

Eliza. 

[elizasepistolarytravels]

A month on: thoughts on the future, uncertainty, and ‘doing things’.

Dear all,

Indeed, the depressive spiral was, there, as it usually is though. All good though as of today. Now facing up to the waves of the future, I feel myself starting to lift out of the haze. Life has felt unreal. The world seems like it is hanging on fingertips, and university strikes have left me with a feeling that we are in suspension, waiting for a crash. It has also affected my reflection on my work and how to engage with the world, and what the point of my time here is. This strike has been essential, and I wonder what feat of nature or fate has made it land on this last year, giving my end moments here an air of staged performance and reminding me of my past relationship with school. 

So yeah, I have been having difficulties getting my feet back on the ground. I can remember a few weeks ago, I had a pretty intense moment, where I was just walking around town, and then I stopped in the middle of the pavement and stared up into space, not seeing a reason to continue walking, or doing anything. It lasted a pretty long time actually, I might have been interesting to my fellow pedestrians and I am glad if I provided a moment of entertainment. I have since moved slightly out of those levels of inertia promise. My descent there has spurred me to re-evaluate what gets me going in life and to re-engage with this project.

I guess my relationship with school and work has always been tense, as it is for many. I have followed the train-tracks it seems for years, but have also momentarily raged against the powers at be, only to be railed back on track  some time later. At times, I have struggled to exist inside it: I went to an alternative school as a kid, which looking back probably affected my capacity to adapt to formal schooling- my parents should have seen that coming. I was a sensitive from an early age, and I felt the later homogenisation of school like a violence. Luckily, I saw moments of education for educations’ sake in my first schools, moments of beauty and human connection as being of even greater value, that made me curious and want to engage with the world with passion. The rest of my life has been a search for that golden evidence. I had seen my last school crush the sensitivities of different unmarketable minds, and so in my first time out of education, or on what people call a ‘gap year’ (a gap in what? Life?) I was led to go to Finland by myself to see what the best education system had to offer. My time there was simply spurred by hanging onto the belief that there were other ways of living, because I have experienced them before. And because being in a school like that made me sick. It took time for me to learn how to learn from myself again, and how to engage with the world in truth. In Mexico after, I almost did not go to university.

Now as my time here is running to an end, this type of engaging with knowledge has been difficult and paradoxical to apply to my time here, and I have been looking for escape routes throughout it. I am part of the people who still believe that the ways education is structured are not inevitable, and that attitudes towards work in these institutions are at the crux of power of our ideology. Today, the strikes continue on. I aline with being fed up of being treated like a clog in a factory. My debt making me feel as though I should kill for kind of job that can get me out of this situation (that makes a lot of moneeey in the citeeey), a job that could kill me in the process. My depression stems a lot from here. (As does parts of the epidemic of mental health problems in the UK. hehe). I have often disconnected with my work at university, and felt like that time on the pavement, unable to see a reason to it all, the best result being as quoted above dying in an office job.

Anyway super dark right there, lets bring it back to the start. I have been thinking about what to do after university. This journey I am planning is a last fuck you to a morphing form of violence. This is to the ones who’s worth was not measurable through the education metrics. I am lucky I got pushed this far, and that I will have a degree (usually, I still have a months’ left of work). But what is that for? It is only for a few that this university is really made for, and for the world after. What about those who need to connect to their bodies and minds and hearts, connect to the land, to create a meaning in life. What about if this is a simple human need? When will my work be of enough value in that kind of path? To me as to many, it was only a matter of time before we break away. To do this is to go into the deep end, it is a choice, not one that all can make. It is not risk free, and will have consequences on my future life that I cannot predict. Am I committing myself to a form of defeatism, to a simple life, or was I conditioned to think of a path of discovery and creation of artistic moments as invaluable, as scary, crazy, stupid, as a simple luxury? 

Anyway, I find myself again in front of the wall of creating things for their own sake, of needing again to engage into creating things by self-motivation, which I guess is growing up right and the meaning of our time here na? 

I only know that I still feel that this is hard, but this is brave for me. It is for the first time in my life a path that I am truly choosing myself. And that the art form I am choosing to engage with will align with how I wish to see the world, and how I believe it is possible for others to do so too. And to maybe  change minds about what the priorities of people’s life should be, and those who govern them.

Till then, I will create a Facebook page soon for the project, much to my dismay, so stay in touch,

Love,

Eliza.  

On a happier note: here is a quick sketches of how the trailer could look like!! 

[elizasepistolarytravels]

A reason for doing this: another story of black clouds.

Dear all,

My body at the moment feels like the crumbling paste walls of school hallways. Damp, melting. 

The black cloud is back for a bit, the one that comes just in time usually to stop me feeling. It also makes it impossible to think, about stuff like the future, which is not good I guess. Silver linings pass in glimpses, but drift soon into a scrambled mix of black cloud soot. 

I am writing this not really knowing if this is any good to anybody, and I feel that there is something weird going on with the need for people to express their mental health online. Not that we should not talk about the silent number of people existing in pressurising and alienating systems that are facing depression alone in these winter months, but there is a slight unease in me with the idea of talking about my mind here.  

It might come from a prude reluctance of an upbringing taught to keep myself to myself, but it also comes with a feeling of caution I will try to explain. I have been unable to talk about myself for a very long time, to talk about what is really going on in my head, and what I have experienced in my past. Years of psychotherapy have helped me open up, but most of my encounters and even my closest friends report parts of me being alien to them forever, parts of my mind strange, and them being in a perpetual uncertainty of knowing who or what I really am, more than for most people. The problem I have here is that I feel that if I don’t talk about ‘having depression’ and have an ease of rhetoric with this, my presence is strange, uneasy, my inability or fear to connect and communicate is put into the category of anti-social and weird (which it definitely might be). I feel now that ‘telling your story’ is the only way that allows for you to be appointed this boxed up, pre-packaged empathy for a (not always) victimised and simplified idea of you that does not extend to those beyond the social media diagnosis, and when before there is no possibility of compassion for those who’s pain does not ‘tick the boxes’ of how you are meant to express it an era of perpetual ‘confession’, ‘identification’ and ‘retelling’ online. I feel it makes us fucking weak, and breaks our feeling muscles. 

So I won’t be talking about my past, or really going into depth of my depression, but I will state that this trip has a link as you may guess to my darker times, or more, how I get out of them. 

The only problem with me, and I guess, with this black cloud, is that to get out of these thought patterns, you have to actually do something. And well, I like the idea of things. My depression is linked to addictive cycles, where the abused substance has to stop me thinking and doing. It could be anything, but I find that the stream of social media and other algorithm rich parts of the internet to be best at this. You get lost into it, it makes you feel like you are connecting to people and most importantly it would stop me from ever having to face the hardest part of the day: 2am, the time when your mind comes to haunt you. Before, I used to cry myself to sleep for weeks on end, until I discovered that you could just stay on a constant stream of distraction and entertainment until you became too exhausted that your eyes would just shut, and I would sleep immediately. I would skip the time I was alone with my mind, skip the silence of the night. I beat myself up already at how bad this is.

And I feel really guilty at my inability to connect with others in this time, even if I appear to be very functional on the outside, in times of depression you retract into yourself, instead of being able to spread your energy outwards. You become very raw and always fear being vulnerable. I feel I come with daggers and spines to my encounters, which is something I feel, so bad for. I wish I could express joy and love for all these people I know are amazing, but depression is very narcissistic, and I back off, cut you off, make you feel uncomfortable. Your knowledge of this won’t really help you come into contact with me.

I am not wanting pity, or to be victimised, I just want to talk about how this journey I am doing is ultimately relating to my search for a full day of peace in the sky and break in the clouds. 

This is why the need to truly be alone with my thoughts, alone without the constant distraction of the internet, is so important. I need to see myself through to the other side, as difficult as this may be, as difficult as is letting go of any addiction that serves the purpose of numbing. The act of travelling alone, with only the company of my own thoughts looks fucking tough, and I don’t know if I will not go crazy to be very honest. A shaman often in many cultures goes on vision quests, on solitary walks for days, weeks or months on end, to induce trance states that come from strenuous physical activity, solitude, and the monotony of landscape. This is often part of breaking open the mind. Pilgrims and wanderers have been a constant of much of humanity, and this journey wishes to fit more into that endeavour than what appears to be a sudden burst of backpackers that search for ‘authenticity’ outside of themselves, and can only prove it through the construction of a perfect image of the ‘authentic’ online (although, we may question why there is a need for this, and if I am not trying also to find this same exterior ‘realness’ myself). 

If I cease to exist online, do I exist at all? If I do not retell, document my life, and construct its image online, did it really happen? What happens if I stop engaging with the main medium we now centre all our connections around? 

This produces great anxiety. 

But before the internet existed, there might have not have been the possibility of this thought; of corse you existed, maybe you existed more if you just ‘lived’. And ‘the internet’ is not the reason for this existential anxiety, it reflects thoughts that are created by a larger social structure, that sure are amplified, but have always existed. 

As so, this trip will not be a production of an online construction of a purified ‘authenticity’, there will be no online updates. No pretty pictures. This is counter intuitive. One of the most productive things out of this endeavour will be finding out more about the coils of my mind. I will spend days alone, or with only spontaneous encounters, and with lots of time to meditate, to feel as I once did in the heart of the forest, of the country, when my being was less analysis, and more being. I also think that to free one’s mind today from the trap of anxiety and speed of a rat-race city, one needs a hell of a time to think, a hell of a time to be bored, a hell of a time in nature to read books that become bricks in the temple of your mind, while I still have plasticity to break from how I was made to wire my brain on Facebook.

Often, radical forms of art come from dark places in people’s mind, and yes, sight forms of insanity. There is maybe an unfortunately glorified but definite correlation between mental illness and art, and one can see art as the end product of someones’ therapy here. I have become a dark pool that hides daggers in her words and that is scared to face her mind, and that finds it hard to exist in this world where you are pressured to be the literal opposite than a strange sensibility I was born with. One that is deemed useless.

This trip is thus a need to take back control of my mind, my existence, and to build upon my strength and to counter the idea of a future we are given in this world, one that many of my fellow millennials can’t identify with anymore. The only problem is that this won’t happen ‘then’: it will always, even in the future only happen ‘now’. This is a need to take control of my time.

The need to write letters is a way to reshape my connection to the other, I will appreciate those who I have met, and hope that they can be made to feel appreciated, and will have to rely on the real kindness of strangers and my ability to reciprocate this kindness to exist. This is the second ‘productive’ part of this journey, the web of truth I hope to create, and maybe we can actually be encouraged to think about the ‘production’ of art, as maybe some things can just not be commodified and sold.

I will ride the next wave, till then, I am getting out of the black hole, I am climbing out slow as I do always. Don’t worry about me if you see me, and this year, I have never felt the despair of the past, despite the pressure being higher than ever. This is due to a cohort of beautiful people in my life, that take the worst off everything. Depression really isn’t that amazing, and I am still weirded out by my need to ‘confess’ online despite me being opposed to this, so don’t feel a need to say anything if you see me, nothing has changed.

Till the next wave, 

Love, 

Eliza. 

[elizasepistolarytravels]

Traduction en français du projet.

Je prévois de partir l'année prochaine.

Bon, pas tout à fait, mais disons que je vais plutôt me déconnecter du monde et de comment nous sommes censés interagir au quotidien, afin de me reconnecter d'une manière que je pense être meilleure pour moi-même, et peut-être dans certains cas (j'espère), pour d’autres personnes aussi.

Je veux voyager en Europe pendant environ un an, seul, avec pas grand-chose d’autre que mon vélo, ma remorque et de quelques trucs pour m'aider en cours de route. Je suis en train de finir l’université, et j'ai beaucoup réfléchi à la façon dont je me lie et me situe dans ce monde. Je veux faire de cette relation une qui soit vrai, bonne, et me libérer des attentes écrasantes d'un monde auquel je ne crois pas en un rite de passage radical et cathartique.

Ce n'est pas un projet précipité. Je ne veux pas attirer l'attention, faire des millions et être vu comme quelque chose dont je ne suis pas, même si je ne peux pas cacher qu'il y a un besoin d'exister et d'être comprise du point de vue de ma vérité et de me connecter aux autres à travers ceci. C'est une chose plutôt personnelle. La volonté de courir et de renouer avec la route, avec moi-même et avec les autres, existe depuis mon enfance, mais je ne l’ai jamais prise. Une enfance difficile et souvent solitaire, refoulée et dissociée a contribué à cela, ainsi qu'une certitude de ne pas faire partie de ce monde. J'ai voulu fuir depuis toujours.

Grandissant et mûrissant, ce projet prend beaucoup de place dans mon esprit depuis quelques années comme une expression plus concise de ce sentiment, tout en allant ironiquement contre ma fuite initiale et totale de l’humanité et en voulant que ce voyage soit enfaite un moyen de renouer avec ce monde d'une manière curative. Je veux choisir comment me connecter avec les autres et mon esprit intérieur comme je le pense plus sain pour moi-même, pas comment on me dit.

Pendant environ un an, je vais me détacher de nos modes habituels de communication, c'est-à-dire les médias sociaux et le texte instantané, pour atteindre mes proches à travers des lettres. L'écriture de lettres était quand j’était jeune un moyen de sentir que je n'étais pas seule, et était souvent la meilleur et unique façon de me connecter aux autres quand c’étaient difficile. C'est un art que je sens que nous perdons, et nous nous attardons plus à penser longuement aux autre et à leur dire ce que nous ressentons vraiment, et le sincèrement. Je trouve aussi très difficile d'exister dans la façon dont nous sommes censés nous connecter. Je ne peux pas réellement. Et je sens en fait que je veux aller contre cette façon d’être, que j'ai le droit d'être comme je suis à un certain degré. Et voir si cela peut aussi être libérateur pour d’autres aussi.

Je veux t'écrire des lettres. Je veux aussi être seul. Je veux sentir le silence de la route, le processus de connexion de mes pensées à un vrai, dur et long voyage qui consiste à prendre un vélo et à atteindre ceux que j'aime et qui me manquent d'une manière qui honore vraiment leur existence. Pendant que je fais ce voyage intérieur, je vais aussi prendre mon vélo et ma remorque, avec un simple atelier portable qui me permet de créer du papier recyclé. Le papier sera fabriqué à partir de journaux, de serviettes, et d'autres choses de ceux que je rencontre en cours de route, ainsi que de fleurs et de touches personnelles d’où les gens se sentent à la maison. Je vais les encourager à prendre un peu de temps de leur pause déjeuner pour écrire à quelqu'un qui leur tient à cœur, quelqu'un à qui ils aimeraient avoir dit quelque chose, ou même écrire à un anonyme qui souhaite se connecter à travers des lettres aussi. À une époque où les murs sont construits, où nous sommes convaincus que nous sommes plus différents que nous ne le sommes en réalité, la chaleur et la vérité des lettres je crois a le pouvoir de briser nos bulles et de ranimer nos âmes. Je veux que les gens de toute l'Europe se connectent, de tous milieux, même ceux qui sont venues de loin pour trouver ici un refuge et des mots accueillants.

Je t'écrirai, si tu le veux, si tu me le permets. Pour communiquer avec vous, pour essayer de rattraper toutes les fois quand je n’ai pas réussi à me connecter. Je souhaite rencontrer des gens le long du chemin d'une manière directe et réelle. Ce voyage sera également difficile, il pourrait me briser, car je ne sais pas si je peux physiquement et mentalement faire quelque chose de cette sorte du tout. J'espère que ce me brisera pour le mieux possible. Tout ce que je sais, c'est que j'ai depuis toujours le désir brûlant de partir, de comprendre la distance dont j'ai besoin dans le monde, d'apprendre à faire confiance à la bonté des autres, d'apprendre à être seul avec mes pensées et ma route. J'écris des lettres à celles et ceux que je trouve incroyables. Et d'avoir une liberté totale sur mon esprit et mon lieu.

Parallèlement à cela, ce voyage sera l'expression d'un questionnement intérieur que j'ai depuis longtemps, sur la possibilité ou l'impossibilité du changement. J'écrirai sur ce sujet, pour voir si un voyage comme celui-ci pourra changer quelque chose, pour voir si en effet j'apporte mes ennuis avec moi, comme je m'attends à le faire.

Je publierai des mises à jour de mon projet tout au long de l'année, pour terminer en juillet 2018, à Durham, au Royaume-Uni, quand je partirai.

Je voulais juste mettre ça dehors pour que ça ait plus de physicalité que dans mon esprit. Si cela vous touche, alors c'est important pour moi aussi. Cela me met très mal à l'aise de mettre ça là, donc si tu trouves ce projet d’une quelconque valeur je ne peux pas cacher que ça m'aide à croire en moi. Je serai ici pour l’instant, si vous voulez discuter, et me demander des choses. Je ne ferai plus de publicité, je partirais.

Vous pouvez venir me rencontrer lors de mes voyages et écrire des lettres avec moi.

Plus à venir, restez en contact.

Amour à vous tous,

Eliza.

[elizasepistolarytravels]

Start: collecting home addresses

I have bought a pair of note pads to start collecting your addresses and to write my ideas. 

I will be collecting them in here throughout the next 6 months, to be able to hold the names of the people and their location with me once I go.

Could you please now if you have a moment, send me your home address on Facebook or at [email protected] :D 

I don’t really mind if we only met once, or a few times, or heck if I don’t really know you. Know that I find you legitimate to write a letter to and that and that it won’t be a pretentious act to send me your address. This is the whole point of the exercise, and I wish to honour this. 

I will not misuse this information also promise. 

Hoping to hear from you soon, send me your address! Don’t be shy! I will find it cool. :) 

Eliza. 

[elizasepistolarytravels]

The project.

Hey there. I plan on going away next year. 

Well, not quite away, I am going to disconnect from the world and how we are made to relate to it, in order to reconnect in a way I think is better for myself, and for maybe in some cases, (I hope), for other people too. 

I plan on travelling around Europe for about a year, alone, with little belongings apart from my bicycle, my trailer and some things to help along the way. I am finishing Uni, and have been thinking about how to connect and be in this world that I feel is true, good, and to break free from crushing expectations of a world I don’t believe in in a radical, cathartic rite of passage. 

This is not a rushed project. I do not want to grab attention, make millions, and be seen as anything more than what I am, even if I can’t hide that there is a need to exist and be understood from my truth, and to connect like this to others. It is more a personal thing. The will to run and to reconnect with the road, with myself and others,  has existed since I was a child. A tricky and often lonely, repressed and disassociated childhood has helped with that, as well as a certainty of not fitting in. I have wanted to run away for ever. 

Growing and maturing, this project has taking up a space in my mind for a few years as a more concise expression of this feeling, as well as ironically going against my initial fleeing, and seeing this travel as a way to get back to the world in a healing way. I want to choose how to connect with others and my inner mind how I deem healthiest for myself, not how I was made to, or told to. 

For about a year, I will be detaching myself from our usual modes of communication, that is social media and instant text, to reach out to my loved ones through letters. Letter writing was what kept me feeling that I wasn’t alone, and was often the only and best way I could connect to others when times were difficult. This is a skill that I feel we are loosing, and we no longer expected to think for a long time about people, and tell them how we really feel, what is really on our minds. I find it hard to exist in how we are expected to connect. I cannot actually. And I feel actually that I want to rebel against that, that I have a right to be as I am. And see if it can also be liberating for others. 

I want to write letters to you. I also want to be alone. I want to feel the silence of the road, the process of connecting my thoughts to a real, hard and long journey that is to take a bicycle and to reach out to those I love and miss in a way that truly honours and cherishes their existence. As such, while I do this inner journey, I will also be taking my bike and trailer, with a simple portable craft workshop on it that allows me to create recycled paper. The paper will be made from newspaper, napkins, school sheets and other things from those I meet along the way, as well as flowers and personal touches from people’s sense of home. I will encourage them to take some time of their lunch break for example to write to someone they care about, someone they wished they said something to or haven’t spoken to in a long time, or even write to an anonymous who wishes to connect through letters too. In a time where walls are being built, where we are convinced that we are more different than we really are, the warmth and truth of letters I believe has the power to break our bubbles, and rekindle our souls. I want people from all of Europe to connect, all backgrounds and ethnicities, and people who have travelled from far away to reach a place of safety, to connect with all who cannot relate. 

I will write to you, if you wish, if you allow me to. To connect with you, to try and make up for the times I could not connect. I wish to meet people along the way in a direct and real fashion. This journey will also be hard, it could break me, as I don't know if I physically and mentally can do anything like this at all. I hope it will in the best way possible. All I know is that I have a burning desire to let go of a lot of things, to understand the distance I need to the world, to learn to trust the kindness of others, to learn to be alone with my thoughts and the road as I write letters to the ones I find incredible. And to have utter freedom over my mind and place.

Along with this, this journey will be the expression of an inner questioning I have been having for a long time about the possibility or impossibility of change. I will be writing about this, to see if a journey changes anything, to see if indeed I bring my troubles with me, as I expect I will.

I will be posting updates of my project throughout the year, finishing off with my take off day in July 2018, Durham, UK.

I just wanted to put this out there for it to have more physicality than just my mind. If it touches you, then actually that is important to me too. It makes me feel very uneasy to put this up there, so if you like this I can’t hide that it helps me to believe in myself. In any case, I will be here, if you want to chat, and ask me stuff. I will be here until July when I will pull the plug, and I will not be advertising, I will go. 

You can come and meet me on my travels, and come and write letters with me. 

More to come, stay in touch. 

Love to all,

Eliza.