Archive for September, 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

Reflections on Being Jewish and Autistic: Different Minorities, Same Critique

For almost two years now, I've become increasingly aware of how other people regard autistics.  As you all know, the news is not altogether good.  As I’ve waded my way through all manner of err...[Read More]

on 09/30/10 | 5 Comments | Read More

Stand Your Ground

If I may be forgiven a bit of motherly bragging, I'm quite proud of the mature way my daughter handled a recent social situation.  As I mentioned in a previous post, she is a college freshman still a...[Read More]

on 09/29/10 | 3 Comments | Read More

Wearing Masks, or, Thoughts on Foxes

Last October I wrote a short little blurb on passing, using the mythos of the kitsune as an allegory.  Mark e-mailed me back in April about his newest essay on the Uncanny Valley.  Long e-mail now s...[Read More]

on 09/28/10 | No Comments | Read More

Opportunity, Possibility, and Community

I've been given an incredible opportunity.  It's been two weeks since the opportunity was presented to me, and I'm still reeling from the possibilities it holds. I've already told you that Bud's ...[Read More]

on 09/27/10 | No Comments | Read More

A Year Ago at Shift Journal

For all its charms, the weblog platform does also bury older content for no better reason than that newer material has come along.  While we all like to feel we’re improving, whether you are writin...[Read More]

on 09/27/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

“Autism” the Word, as Glimpsed in the Wild

The autism wars will likely continue, I predict, for some time after the larger culture has rendered its own decision and moved on.  Or so has run my thinking, anyway, since I stumbled onto Mom-NOS�...[Read More]

on 09/23/10 | 7 Comments | Read More

Autism as Adverb

As I've mentioned, I'm currently reading Lev Grossman's latest book, The Magicians.  I'm bringing it up again because in the last couple of chapters, I've twice come upon adverbs that made me stop re...[Read More]

on 09/23/10 | 5 Comments | Read More

The Illusion of Typicality

The cypress trees of Louisiana's bayous (to continue Shift Journal's venerable landscape metaphor tradition) are very well adapted to their natural habitat.  They can get along just fine with most of...[Read More]

on 09/22/10 | 3 Comments | Read More

A Year Ago at Shift Journal

For all its charms, the weblog platform does also bury older content for no better reason than that newer material has come along.  While we all like to feel we’re improving, whether you are wri...[Read More]

on 09/20/10 | No Comments | Read More

The Unbroken Spectrum: The Shared Closet

Inveterate list maker Lili Marlene has carved out another instructive subset from her still growing referenced list of now “... 174 famous or important people diagnosed with an autism spectrum condi...[Read More]

on 09/17/10 | 1 Comment | Read More

Choosing How We View the World and Our Place In It

Here, in West Texas, the heat's still on.  It's fair week here, so we've had the typical showers that everyone associates with fair week(never mind that we always forget when it doesn't rain).  We a...[Read More]

on 09/16/10 | No Comments | Read More

Prickly Ponderings

Although the song "America the Beautiful" praises amber waves of grain, when I was a little girl I wasn't much impressed by that image and would have preferred a field of blooming thistles instead, wi...[Read More]

on 09/15/10 | 3 Comments | Read More

Why We Fear Passion

"We fear it. We fear passion, and laugh at too much love and those who love too much. And still we long to feel.” -- Jeanette Winterson We long to feel.  This is the irony of a child l...[Read More]

on 09/14/10 | 1 Comment | Read More

A Year Ago at Shift Journal

For all its charms, the weblog platform does also bury older content for no better reason than that newer material has come along.  While we all like to feel we’re improving, whether you are writi...[Read More]

on 09/13/10 | No Comments | Read More

What’s Fair Is Fair

As those of her generation are able to do, my mother the other day—with just the slightest stern shake of her head—remarked at “How much has changed,” since I was a child, and even more since ...[Read More]

on 09/10/10 | No Comments | Read More

Horse-Assisted Therapy and Eye Contact

In the past couple of months, I’ve begun horse-assisted therapy at Miracles in Motion in Keene, NH.  I decided to begin the work after reading about the story of Jaycee Lee Dugard, the California w...[Read More]

on 09/9/10 | No Comments | Read More

On the Border

My daughter, the newly minted freshman, came home from college over Labor Day weekend.  The first thing she did when she got back here Friday evening was to go out to the high school football game wi...[Read More]

on 09/8/10 | No Comments | Read More

Comments Policy (and Contributor Guidelines)

It is not an easy thing to turn down the burner on a successful alchemical setup, an opus contra naturam which has been known to actually produce gold out of base metals.  Shift Journal has contribut...[Read More]

on 09/6/10 | 1 Comment | Read More

Shift Journal at One Year

Imagine, just as an exercise, that beyond the one percent of the population diagnosable with autism, there is another four percent whose cognitive style is describable under the less rigorous category...[Read More]

on 09/3/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

The Disappearance of Mystery

Modern medical science, despite having some areas in which it could stand considerable improvement, is still quite amazing when contrasted with how little our ancestors knew about the workings of the ...[Read More]

on 09/1/10 | 3 Comments | Read More