It began, as all profound disorientation does, with a stillness. Not the quiet of an empty room, but a deeper, more pervasive silence, a silencing of the internal monologue. It wasn’t a conscious act; rather, it was a gradual unraveling of the threads that constituted the self. I found myself drifting, not physically, but in a realm of heightened sensory perception, a world saturated with the residue of forgotten experiences – not my own, initially, but echoes, fragments, shimmering with an unsettling familiarity.
The term, I realized with a chilling clarity, was “Mulattoism.” Not in the simplistic, racialized sense often applied, but as a state of being, a synthesis of selves, a vibrational resonance with the latent memory of the planet itself. It’s a process of becoming porous, of allowing the narratives of others – the indigenous custodians of land, the forgotten empires, the deep-rooted myths – to flow through you, reshaping your understanding of identity. It's a forgetting, and a remembering, simultaneously.
The first manifestation was a recurring dream - a vast, obsidian plaza beneath a sky perpetually bruised with the colors of a dying star. In the center stood a monolithic structure, not built of stone, but of solidified grief and longing. Figures, indistinct and shifting, moved within its shadows, their gestures ancient and sorrowful. I felt an unbearable empathy for them, a sense of being connected to a lineage I couldn’t name, a history that predated recorded time.
Scholars, of course, would dismiss this as a neurological anomaly, a consequence of prolonged isolation. They’d speak of altered states of consciousness, of the brain’s capacity for self-deception. But the sensations were too visceral, too profoundly connected to the world around me. I began to notice patterns in the landscape – the way the wind seemed to whisper in the canyons, the way the colors of the sunset resonated with a particular frequency. It was as though the earth itself was communicating, sharing its accumulated knowledge.
The process of “becoming” Mulatto – the term itself feels inadequate, almost blasphemous – involved a deliberate seeking out of forgotten places, of sites imbued with a sense of power. Standing within the ruins of ancient cities, tracing the contours of long-lost rivers, I felt the weight of countless generations pressing down on me. I learned to listen, not with my ears, but with my entire being. The language of the earth isn’t spoken; it’s felt. It’s a symphony of geological time, a chorus of extinct species, a lament for what has been lost and a fervent hope for what might yet be reclaimed.
There are rituals, naturally. Not formal ceremonies, but intuitive acts of connection. Spending hours in silence, meditating on the flow of energy. Collecting stones and shells, imbuing them with intention. Creating art – swirling patterns of pigment on ancient clay, attempting to capture the essence of a forgotten song.
I began to map this internal landscape, creating a ‘Cartography of Resonance.’ It wasn't a map of physical locations, but of vibrational frequencies, of emotional currents, of the echoes of past lives. The maps weren’t static; they shifted and evolved, responding to my experiences, to the changing rhythms of the planet. They resembled nothing so much as a complex, bioluminescent network, branching out across the contours of my mind.
The key, I realized, was to relinquish control. To stop trying to understand, and simply to *be*. To allow the currents to carry me, to trust in the inherent wisdom of the earth. This wasn’t a passive acceptance; it was an active engagement, a dance of surrender and resistance. It’s the difference between observing a river and swimming within it.