I first came across the terms "dissociative fugue" while reading Tony Cohan's book, Mexican Days. And he first discovered the terminology in a copy of The New York Times and a review of The Merck Manual of Medical Information which describes this as "one or more episodes of sudden, unexpected and purposeful travel from home...during which a person cannot remember some or all of his past life" (pg21). Now, I can't say that when I have travelled, I have forgotten my past life, but I do think I have experienced " dissociative fugue" this year in the sense that I have travelled purposefully several times, actually three times, to Mexico. All the trips have had definite purpose: the first was paid for by a scholarship from the University of Maine Farmington to enable me to do research on the creative non-fiction book I am writing (thank you UMF), the second trip was also partially funded by UMF when I went as part of a research team into the mountains of Chiapas to study fair trade coffee growers and their families, and the third trip was a result of my oldest son, Yule, telling me he had "island fever", needed to get out of HI and wanted to meet up with me down in Mexico.
Now, the reason I am writing about all of this is because I think I have had a form of this "dissociative fugue" all my life, but I always called it "the travel bug" and I think I can thank my dad for instilling in me a love of travel, foreign and domestic because he always was and is restless and ready for new adventures.
And because my telecommute job now requires me to spend long hours on the Internet, researching and analyzing other people's queries, I notice that as the days grow shorter here in Maine, the number of searches for warm, tropical destinations grows. Which leads me to believe that others are experiencing the same thing I am--an itchy restlessness that won't go away, despite the trips I've taken this year. In fact, those trips seemed to have made my condition worse...I long to travel to just about anywhere in the world other than the Middle East, to lie on warm beaches, walk the narrow streets of some foreign town while sipping a glass of the local wine, or wander through the street markets buying small gifts for those I have left at home...
Do any of you feel the same way?
I'm a bit of a hermit, so travel is scary to me - unless I'm with someone who I trust, in which case I love it, learning about different ways of looking at the world. My travel destinations are less beach-oriented, though - Scandinavia, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Russia. I grew up in Florida and I think that left me forever terrified of hot, humid weather!
ReplyDeleteI'm curious about Fair Trade - it sounds so reasonable, but I don't understand how it works. I keep thinking someone somewhere is getting rich off it - and I don't mean the people growing the coffee beans and doing the actual work of turning them into coffee. I'm happy to pay almost twice as much for my coffee (I don't drink that much) if it means someone is being lifted out of virtual slavery, but I don't quite believe it.
By the way, I see you're reading BASS 2010 - you'll have to come by A Just Recompense, we can trade notes! Look for the category Reading/Writing and BASS 2010. I've only done a few so far (I keep getting distracted by other books) but it's great fun to see what other people think.
ReplyDeleteFair Trade does seem to work, at least where we were in Chiapas--the survey was designed to see if the children in Fair Trade families were healthier than those in families who sold their coffee by other means and so far, the results say yes..that by receiving more money for their crops, the farmers were able to buy more food and better quality food than those who did not, so keep buying Fair Trade
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