Category: Autobiography

Autobiography

Peel

Ruby PipesLeave a comment

"Pomegranate" © Klearchos Kapoutsis, 2010. CC BY 2.0.
“Pomegranate” © Klearchos Kapoutsis, 2010. CC BY 2.0.
We’ve always admired great thinkers. Creators. Innovators. People lost in their own heads. Scrawling on whiteboards, filling notebooks, building things. They ignite fires. When your brain is full of tangibility it’s something worthy of applause. You are solving problems. It’s a different kind of process than rumination, than introspection, than exploration.

People love to tell me I think too much. Explain how much simpler my life would be if I shut down my constant probing. Fishing for the whys and hows of everything I do. A switch I can flip and stop being reflective. I can’t find the line, though. Where we distinguish between the thoughts that occupy other thinkers and the thoughts that occupy me. We’ve become inoculated with the idea everything directed inward is dangerous. Shut it down. Shut it down. Continue reading →

Autobiography

Attachments

Ruby Pipes5 Comments

"Empty Room, Window" © Tim Samoff, 2005. CC BY-ND 2.0.
“Empty Room, Window” © Tim Samoff, 2005. CC BY-ND 2.0.
I don’t keep things. Journals get discarded when filled. My photo collection gets whittled down over and over again. My mind remembers the way old friends formed their letters. The dots of their i’s, the curve of their a’s. But I’ll never uncover intricately folded pieces of notebook paper containing their secrets.

Sometimes I remember an old picture I wish I still had. I catch myself hoping that someone held on to a copy and it will resurface someday. Show up in the mail with no return address as a reminder we used to be different people. Existence used to mean something else. Continue reading →

Autobiography

Instincts

Ruby Pipes1 Comment

"Fire." © Matteo Paciotti, 2011. CC BY 2.0.
“Fire.” © Matteo Paciotti, 2011. CC BY 2.0.
There’s a disconnect between the things I want to do and the things I think I should be doing. Expectations that I make up to project on other people. A constant disbelief doing what I care about—what makes me happy—is enough for those around me. The obvious flaw is that even if it wasn’t good enough for them, why should that matter to me? I don’t light fires in my heart to keep you warm. I do that for me. Don’t I?

I find myself regularly doing the things I think other people want me to do. Constantly hearing things that aren’t being said, picking up on cues they never meant to send. My whole life becomes wrapped up in doing what I think would make people comfortable. What would make them able to breathe easy. I can make myself satisfied in the process, yes. But it will always be only satisfactory. It’s lacking heart.  Continue reading →