Backrooms Diaspora

Time to SLAP a diaspora take on the backrooms.

Returning to my motherland after years was fucking WEIRD. First few times I did it as a kid it was mostly fine. As I returned as an adult, after being shaped by growing up in another nation/culture, and after a decade of not actively living in my motherland, coming back was vertiginous. There’s echoes, foundations of the past. But of course there’s so many new things, so many things that disappeared. What you once called home and where you belonged now feels foreign, or rather, you feel foreign. And the shift is a bit unsettling. You’re so used to being anchored to this place you once called home, and now it feels like there’s nothing much to anchor to for some sense of orientation. It’s like struggling to grab onto something in space. The feeling of being right at home is replaced with only a vague sense of familiarity. Rather than the people acting strange or not quite right, you feel like the still-life not quite mimicing them right. You’re not sure if you’re remembering how to act in this culture right, you’re not sure if the rules are the same after all this time even if you are.

There’s also the sense of time working differently. People around the world have reported how USA feels so fast paced, like you can’t rest, there’s no time to, you must work. When I went back to the motherland time felt…different. Of course, I’m on vacation when I go there so I’m not a reliable judge of time, but my family members there “move slower.” They’re not in a rush. They take their time. Just as a whole, culturally…..slower paced.

Copied from my Tumblr blog.