I started my day worried about my iPad. Actually it started in my dreams. It’s one of the first ever to be made. First models, not first ever. I was actually behind the times and by the time I got mine a second was what everyone wanted. The iPad2. Mine was bigger. I wrote in it, had music and books. But it’s from another life. Not a past life. Yes, a past life. A place I once was and am not anymore. The place that got me to here.
I don’t remember if I loaded books, will they be there with no internet or will my music still be there. I don’t even remember what books I would have liked then. Is it the same as now? Will my pictures be there? Will I be able to handle seeing them? I can google these questions. Will I be able to have enough control of myself to seek the single answer I need? Should I ask someone? It’s fun to see others use their minds? Or do they also just google it?
I don’t know about clouds and drives and places to back up things. So they could be floating around lost between here and there. I have things not stored in too many places. And stored in too many places. Photos in so many places that aren’t a Tupperware container or shoe box they feel lost and in between two places. Lost between what was and what is. My photos. My memories. My life.
I know the feeling, photos. I’ve been stuck between what’s here and there. Not properly backed up and stored in a place. I lack my own cloud my own google drive, all neat and tidy of files. Mine was messy. Is messy? It’s less messy. Some of the drawers are closed. But they are closed like a file cabinet stuffed too full and not quite holding papers stacked neatly. Some are giant papers. Folded up kindergarten posters and cut out flowers and things from kids. Some are too small and stuck below the stacks. Drawer shut, it is bent, from trying to be kicked closed for years.
I can hear this noise all day long. Banging around of memories being tumbled uselessly trying to soften the edges. Trying to solve them, remember them.
for me, letting go, means forgetting.
If you are anything like me you have tumbled rocks. When I was little I tumbled rocks. Mostly driveway gravel. Driveway gravel makes the weirdest smooth rocks. Some of it just tumbled to nothing. I still have a rock tumbler. I haven’t tumbled rocks for years. I have no driveway gravel anymore. I could tumble rocks I’ve found but I love the feel of the rough edges and character of them being naturally moved around in the world. Holes all the way through from water pushing through something so tough. If I tumbled these rocks what would happen to these holes?
That’s how my mind works. It tumbles.That’s why I can’t listen. I can hear but I have so much background noise I can’t listen. The quieter I can get this the more I can listen. That’s as calm as I can get. A rock tumbler on the smooth grit. Softened edges, but still tumbling.
I can talk to myself with more clarity. I talk to to myself anyway I just can hear it finally.
Maybe for the first time? Or I’m remembering?
I would love to go back in time and tell my algebra teacher this news. Tell her I wasn’t ignoring her, daydreaming. Staring into space. Dreaming of being outside. I didn’t watch you because all you did was talk. While I was. It’s rude. To interrupt. I was listening to myself. I was busy telling myself not move, not to talk, not to cry, not to be upset I couldn’t understand you because you would not draw on the board behind you to show me what you meant. You talked about numbers I couldn’t keep still inside my head. 2+2=4. Yes but mine are busy moving. My numbers danced around.
If I were really going to go back in time I wouldn’t actually waste it on someone who didn’t understand someone who didn’t understand themselves. Or maybe all along I did and what I see now is that’s what matters. I would go back and ask some serious questions to some serious people who invented seriously cool things. Like electricity. Or maybe even the person who decided to create algebra. Explorers and scientists and inventors and famous musicians. Or Eleanor Roosevelt. Or maybe where I put my iPad.
I couldn’t find my iPad. Then I couldn’t find the cord. It’s the flat longer one with two sensitive prongs that quit sending power when dirty and wet. I always worried about snapping the prongs off in it, which would force me to need to see if I could remove this stuck prong, making me likely to have an iPad torn open somehow. A very very disabled iPad. I’m not even sure if you can buy this one anymore unless found at an antique mall. Someday our antique stores will be full of gadgets and our home will be full of love again. Worn crates and doilies, Plants and puzzles and magazines. Memories.
Then when I find my iPad and charger it says. “iPad Disabled.”
What? Now I want to take it apart.
Why? When did this happen? Did I once power it up and do this? I will have to do a process to able it? I’ll have to now google how to able it? Can it be? No way I have passwords remembered? Did Apple disable it or me? Why would they? Lack of use? Is there someone who sits and monitors iPad use? I was an activer curser and then went lost out into space? Lost in translation? Lost in the woods? Lost inside my head? They needed more room for other users? More active, in control users. People who know how to be able users.
I wish a blog could be handwritten. That I could use all the flowing fluid movements that come from handwriting. From cursive, keeping the letters all together to make one. It requires some thought to spell, to connect, to form thoughtful sentences. It slows down the chaos of what to say. You can erase. You can get very little lead that makes really nice writing. You can carry a pencil. Always have something to write with. It needs no power. You can sharpen them with knives.
When I type I can type so fast it is broken thoughts. I was a speed typer. I took too many years of typing in school because it was easier than Spanish and English. Easier than math. Easier than thinking through anything to make it come out solved.
My typing teacher loved shower curtains and shower curtain shopping. She walked around saying “asdfjkl:” “Aaa space, lll space.DDD space kkk space.” I just typed kkk and for no reason other than it’s opposite from the location of the d on the keyboard when properly holding your hands on the row. Now I typed it twice in fear of needing to explain why i typed it and could easily backspace the entire thing and no one would know I was so afraid.
I’m worried the google drives and clouds will run out of space. Who manages them? Who will decide what’s important to store for all the people who don’t want to or can’t or have no time to store things for themselves. The people who leave memories floating on clouds and not deep inside their minds. The memories that when I close my eyes I see playing out for me on the insides of my eyelids. Like a movie. I store them. I don’t not trust other places to do this for me. I want to trust myself to be able to first.
Like love? How can I expect someone to know how to love me if I didn’t know first. What I don’t like, do like.Trust myself. Love myself. Accept myself.
I’m slowing realizing trusting myself is trusting the universe. They are one and the same. It’s new. This concept. I’m not religious. I’ve been looking for a very close relationship to something. That something. What is it? Who is it? Where is it? I wonder and wonder and wander? Yes that’s spelled correct the third time. I’ve looked and looked and walked and walked and then I wore myself out. So I quit. Quit looking. I thought I was giving up.
I think I was looking for something to hold onto. To feel with my hands. Like my rocks I look for. Something to touch. So I can see with my eyes. So I can feel with my heart. I say it a lot. Let me touch it, hold it, pet it, so I can feel it. Let me see it so I can hear it.
Like when the waiter says “would you like to hear the specials?”
I say.”Yup, do you have any pictures?”
My senses are either all disconnected or extremely connected. They depend on each other to make each other work.
I was looking for a specific artifact to say “here it is!! That thing you were looking for to make it all make sense. It was right there all along.”
“Right where?” I would say confused. Looking for it.
Here. You can’t see it. You can’t hear it. You can’t touch it.
You feel it.
Trust it.
Trust you. You are right here.
Oh, here I am.
This had so little to do with my iPad. Other than it is what motivated me to begin a new kind of journey into self discovery.
My iPad is just another artifact I own that is no longer of use. I’ll get a new one. Or I won’t. I write free style, that’s code for not typing. I can’t dictate that writing into a format to share. It’s unsharable. I have writings I’ve buried underground. They are safe. I don’t need to go find them. Somethings don’t need to be shared or found. Just felt. And remembered.
I can’t get the old things from my iPad for a solid reason. They are stored there. Safe in my disabled iPad.
Aspenleaf 