The bright red Mickey Mouse socks my kids gave me before the pandemic were now going pink and faded with holes opening at the heels. These socks, like so many things in my life, held small resonance. They meant something to me on a different level, as did the thought of going back to Disneyland as a kind of redo, to experience what I hadn’t the first time we went, when the kids gave me these socks.

I told my therapist I was considering another career change, moving industries for a second time, wanting to believe it wasn’t too late for me to do most anything. So I mentioned the mental health industry and she listed a few conventional career paths (life coach, chemical dependency counselor) but then a less conventional route, shamanism.

Shamanism? I was really shocked shamans still existed I said, like with websites and Twitter handles and so on. I had to laugh, “shamanism.” And we got to talking about Carlos Castaneda and this idea of cording: that our energy is connected to people or entities in ways that can become parasitic and even require a cord “cutting” to protect ourselves. That we can get overly attached to things so much it interferes with our lives.

That was maybe what happened to me the last time we went to Disneyland. Getting to the end of the day both days and at dinner talking with the family about what would come next, making plans to see the fireworks and ride more rides. Me, I just wanted to go back to the hotel and collapse I said, to take a bath, relax. But what I really wanted was a drink, or six, and to slip off—which is exactly how the family found me later with the lights still on, glasses bent on my face.

That’s what I did each night at Disney, and woke uncharacteristically hungover, three days in a row. Even took an unexpected, ad hoc telephone interview from the LA airport on our way out. And no idea what I said to convince them I was worth interviewing again but they did.

I don’t think my family knew I was hungover though it was the kind of hangover where you’re still basically drunk, and that’s how we started day one at the Magic Kingdom, arriving just as the park opened in hopes we could get on the new Star Wars ride but could not, instead opting for a water ride which had no line (for good reason, it being February, still a bit cool in the mornings).

So being hungover I thought it would make sense to sit in the front of the ride where I was guaranteed to get wet, and get wet I did, and remained so for many hours in that cold, clammy, wet way I thought I deserved.

And so we stood in the lines, me in that condition as the hangover bloomed into a more sickly state—and watched the same people slowly advance and change positions as the direction of the sun did the same, and I got to thinking about my next drink. Not really seeing my kids ride the rides, I mean somewhat, but that’s the thing about being overly attached like that: you’re there and not there at the same time. Your family gets just a part of you. And I was okay with that.

In fact I remember how I felt on the walk back from the park to my hotel, a spring in my stride as I entered the corner convenience store, where I’d befriended the Latino teenager working the cash register and plopped a few bottles of high octane beer on the counter, ran my card, and had him bag the bottles, clanking all the way back to my room, plopping into bed and pouring myself one.

I considered that idea of cording and even pictured an aquatic monster’s tendrils snaking their way through the park, luring me back to the beer shop and away from my family. But it’s that way with addiction isn’t it? You give yourself willingly to it even though you have the ability to stop. You actually lose that ability over time. It’s like the Tarot card for the Devil which shows the man and woman chained by his side, how the handcuffs are drawn loose around the wrists to show they could free themselves if they wanted to, but they can’t or won’t.

I found the idea of cording a bit crude but interesting. And remembered what I could from that Castaneda book, when he takes the mescaline or peyote with the witch doctor and starts tripping, he sees people in their spirit form as like glowing egg-shaped balls with cords coming out of them. It freaked me the eff out.

But the cording image works as a metaphor if you think about how we use electrical cords for devices or appliances, to direct power. Maybe shamans intervene when the power supply reverses, when the person becomes the source—and the cord starts drawing power away.

I see that role reversal with the power we give to phones, because on the surface they seem to give us so much—but why does it feel so freeing then, the rare times we leave them behind? And to think they’re “cordless,” but are they really?

I think the idea of cording applies to anything we’re overly attached to, to consider whether it’s giving us power or taking it away. For it seems the direction can change without us noticing, leaving us with less of ourselves to give to the people we love the most.

Categories: Memoir, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, identity, mindfulness, spirituality