Archive for January, 2010

your dreams will be reduced down to breathing, and you will be grateful

The thing about not-being-a-person is: They will say those people and the price of being a person is to nod and agree that yes, those people aren’t people at all. They will have no idea who they are talking to. You yourself will start to forget, too. They will say a million small things that sow the seeds for violence done against you, and you will smile and let them. You will do math, constantly. How much do I want to be a person today? How much do I want this project to succeed? How much honesty can I afford? How much dishonesty will kill me? What is the cost of coming out? Is there a way to delay, soften, transmute? How long can I survive as half a person? Ever since the world ended ... I don't go out as much. People that I once befriended, just don't bother to stay in touch. Things that used to seem so splendid, don't really matter today. It's just as well the world ended -- it wasn't working anyway. Your dreams will be reduced down to breathing. [Read More]

on 03/5/12 | 2 Comments | Read More

Mashup: Time, Death, and Ballastexistenz

There have been two significant deaths to me recently. My grandfather died just before Christmas.  And Judi Chamberlin … died this weekend. And yet again I am coming up against my instinctive re...[Read More]

on 01/29/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Becoming Human…

The other day, on "Cat in a Dog's World", Sarah takes to task the originator of "The Neanderthal Theory", Leif Ekblad.  His theory is the result of his desire to justify his ideas of Aspie Suprem...[Read More]

on 01/27/10 | 7 Comments | Read More

Ghost Dance

The Native American tribes of the Northern Plains, forced onto reservations and near starving in 1890, were drawn in large numbers to a new religion called the Ghost Dance. Led by the shaman Wovoka, t...[Read More]

on 01/25/10 | No Comments | Read More

Autism and the Hacker Manifesto

Late last year I posted an entry which included a quick list of people and ideas my wife and I found heartening or helpful back before we fell out of active involvement with autism as a topic of publi...[Read More]

on 01/22/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Autism, Mysticism, and the Natural Self

There is a common phrase that “there is a fine line between genius and insanity.”  I think that line is just the lines imposed by the extreme sensitivity of unorthodox people.  Specifically, I a...[Read More]

on 01/20/10 | 5 Comments | Read More

Social Media and Environmental Integration

I saw this piece appear in March:  Too Much Facebook could cause Autism in Children.  A doctor in the UK suggested that social networking applications were encouraging dissociation, making it mo...[Read More]

on 01/19/10 | No Comments | Read More

Estrogen, Puberty and Autism

Consider that those female children with low estrogen levels as they cross over into their teens may find themselves experiencing delayed puberty.  This may manifest delayed testosterone surges pruni...[Read More]

on 01/18/10 | 11 Comments | Read More

Good Manners Reconsidered

“Good manners applied without regard for differences are in fact bad manners.”  Those words, wherever it was I found them maybe two decades ago, struck me as so apt, so applicable to what I had l...[Read More]

on 01/15/10 | 5 Comments | Read More

Ouroboros, Autism and Future Past

I’m starting to consider that the highly ritualized environment of aboriginal matrifocal societies, along with the ways children are raised and what they are fed, are preventing the further left...[Read More]

on 01/14/10 | No Comments | Read More

What We Find Funny

Like most people I know, I had a somewhat odd childhood.  I started talking when I was three.  I remember spending a lot of time confused by adult communication.  Speech therapy accompanied my ...[Read More]

on 01/13/10 | 1 Comment | Read More

The Tao of the Alarm Clock

Before the housing bubble burst, my husband and I were among those who built a house in an expensive subdivision, on the theory that it was just as good an investment as the stock market and—yay!—...[Read More]

on 01/11/10 | No Comments | Read More

An Autistic Ethos: It’s All About Respect

I have been privy to conversation among sexually active librarians in which catalogers, above all other sub-specialties of librarianship, were identified—with good humor but still in earnest—as be...[Read More]

on 01/8/10 | No Comments | Read More

Neurodiversity, Primary Process and Theory of Mind

Imagine that ten years from now autism and Asperger’s are still on the rise.  It is discovered that aboriginal matrifocal societies often exhibit what Gregory Bateson described as primary proce...[Read More]

on 01/7/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Autism and Aboriginal Society

Bouncing around Pub Med looking for patterns connecting handedness, ethnicity, disease, conditions characterized by maturational delay such as autism and social structure, it seems pretty clear that m...[Read More]

on 01/5/10 | 1 Comment | Read More

Autism as a Secret Society

The idea that autism is humankind's oldest and largest secret society is one I've suggested on this site more than once; here I'd like to explicitly make the case for that idea. Members of secret soc...[Read More]

on 01/1/10 | 1 Comment | Read More