TOTEM

Freud explores the concept of the totem as a symbol, often representing an animal, that is revered by a tribe or clan. The totem is regarded as the mythical ancestor and the protector of that group.

The totem might have been our last umbilical cord to nature. I don’t know exactly when we finally severed it—maybe two or three centuries ago.

Where have our totems gone? A house dog? A show cat? A four-fingered mouse with a high-pitched voice? A safari in Africa? 

The human world, unmoored from its animal nature, has lost its memory, has become lost in its own imagination. Our mothers raised us this way, sheltered in our homes of concrete, glass, and dead wood. We even put it in God’s mouth: “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Children, look up, come back to earth. Reinvent the totems. Reinvent the words of the drunken God.

_ Milena Carbone