Arthur Rothstein: Morning routine, nursery school,
Harlingen, Texas. FSA camp. (1942)
United States. Farm Security Administration

"Losing our Grooves leaves us wandering relatively aimlessly in wilderness."

Being Exiled separates one from their Grooves, their essential routines that pretty much define them. Grooves might seem non-essential, but after losing every other point of orientation, a Groove or two prove at least reassuring, perhaps even confirming. They are who you are and were inseparable before they weren't. Loss of home might feel like loss of self, but losing those Grooves seals the separation. Through early Exiled days, I moved around in a definite haze. I couldn't find my rhythms, the cadences within which I engaged. I suffered from a form of arrhythmia where nothing seemed to work right. I could continue doing anything I'd done before, but without an essential elegance, as if I'd been thrown back into rank amateur status. Even activities in which I'd grown skilled became difficult. I was more likely to slice my thumb when in the kitchen. I'd even nick my chin when shaving.

Grooves grow to become invisible. Their relative invisibility does not diminish their absolute necessity, for they represent activities requiring no thinking. When it comes to Grooves, any thinking about them amounts to over-thinking. Thinking very much about them might be unthinkable because they mostly go unnoticed. They represent the invisibly ready-to-hand, the often completely bland accompaniment to something more important: the familiar coffee stop, the corner store, the oddly refreshing route between here and there. Relocating eliminates access to these essential elements of existence. I didn't notice at first, though it sure seemed as if something was missing. I felt uncharacteristically exhausted. I found little motivation. The world suddenly seemed a more hostile place, requiring my undivided attention. I had no place safe within which to go unconscious.

Reestablishing Grooves can't occur on purpose. One may not head out explicitly intending to find a fresh favorite coffee shop. Our Grooves might find us, and they perform this service on their own schedule without asking us. In the same way that thinking becomes unnecessary to maintain a Groove, it's equally unhelpful when discovering any replacement. Any specific Groove could become irreplaceable and leave a hole in the old repertoire forever after. Others will doubtless fill in, but only after some time. The period between Grooves might come to feel excruciating, but it seems to be human nature that we eventually reestablish them. It seems unthinkable that we wouldn't, for our Grooves are essential elements of any person's sanity. To lack sufficient Grooves is to feel crazy. Lacking them in the long term might be a foundation of genuine insanity.

We say we're finding our Grooves, though they seem more likely to need to find us. We might seek without finding, only to eventually be found. It might be necessary to maintain some distraction to prevent diligent searching, for as I said above, seeking routines effectively chases them away. One must at least affect an innocence if not actually embody any. Nobody needs to fake surprise, though, because you'll likely not notice them upon arrival. If you've been diligently not searching, why would you notice when you're found? A fresh Groove probably needs to hang around for a spell before anyone can tell what it is. Until then, it'll be undifferentiated activity, maybe different but not yet reliably unthinkable. Later, you might notice with little more than a sigh of recognition reflecting back to some activity you had forgotten you'd been missing.

Reestablishing oneself after any discombobulation seems like an inhuman undertaking. Who do you suppose might do the reestablishing if the self has truly been discombobulated? I believe the self takes care of itself. It suffers through significant changes, like being Exiled, but it also eventually recovers. It gratefully accomplishes this without a whole lot of direct effort expended by its sole and rightful owner. The self might know the way all by itself and, like Grooves, doesn't necessarily benefit from any thinking. Better, perhaps, to watch our worlds collapse without taking on any role but that of the observer. Fate fixes what we cannot. Our futures have their ways of finding us. Our Grooves will reemerge without asking for our preferences. It's ours to ultimately recognize when they've reestablished and express some gratitude. Losing our Grooves leaves us wandering relatively aimlessly in wilderness. Rediscovering them amounts to reentering civilization again.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz