12.18.2007
Human unsettlement. That's an ugly word that I made up. It feels proper for a painful relationship to a displaced world. The German word for uncanny is 'Unheimlich': an unhome-ness. Unsettlement is the painful dislocation of the human psyche in relationship to the expectation of routine and relationships that we anchor in a phantasmatic sense of place. I often don't believe people who say that have no sense of love of place. To say that is actually a disavowal of sorts of routine and people. Unsettlement is a process of grinding anxiety, disorienting alienation, punctuated with the shock of estrangement. Unsettlement is painful and sad, and I feel for the lost of New Orleans.
[ tyler curtain ] 10:22