Self-Portrait

I am a San Francisco autist, engineer, conservative, artist, philosopher…

I see strong rivers of color corresponding to my emotions. Red, clear, cutting—breaking the old, shaping the new, creating the world in my image. Blue as heavy, weighty melancholy—how do we ponder, lost before questions we do not even know to ask. Yellow as optimism, friendship—how we can live and love and laugh, and open up before others…

I hear constant stimulation, like the “buzz” of a crowded restaurants, patrons chatting, eating, sharing, cooks tossing onions and stirring broths, the faint sizzling smells, everything blending together in marvelous proportion—but, there is no restaurant, and I am alone, and they are the “voices in my head,” perhaps.

The doctors said schizophrenia, and I shrugged my shoulders, “fine, be it as God wills,” and it is indeed true I am politically isolated, red as a brick wall, waves of blue washing, lapping up to my surface, but it should take years and years for myself to wear down—too firm, too sturdy—what can I say? But, I do not vote, out of courtesy for my friends and family, nor do I judge a man, for how can he be wrong?, and his reality is as real to him, as mine to me.

Everything I do is the same—and it is one to me, whether I write, or create poetry, or design a new artistic piece, or model for it, or design a system, or write code, or exercise, or cook—and everything is one, and we are one, as humanity, and how different can I be, so different in fact, that I am the same?

And ultimately, it is for the sake of philosophy, if anything, the “love of wisdom”—and man is born to think, and Descartes, perhaps said it wrong! My version, “Sum, Ergo Cogito”—I am, therefore I think. In any case, all the same…

Do I find it difficult to “think in people”? Yes, it is in our blood as San Francisco engineers, “a sprinkle of autism,” and unfortunately for myself, I want a life and a family. But does a woman who accept the autist like the conservative?—or vice versa?—and on top of that, I am perhaps synesthetic, schizophrenic, problems for our next generation.

Towards myself, then, do I work, that I may gently shrug my shoulders, “I am as I am,” too proud to make an excuse, or apology, let the world be as it is, just as the crowded restaurant, all of my various pieces blending together, in proportion as God shall decide…