Archive for October, 2009

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

Autism Is As Autism Does

While the notion of Everyday Autism Everywhere is still in the air around here (welcome, William Stillman readers), I’d like to further expand some of the ideas Mr. Stillman and I have been floating...[Read More]

on 10/30/09 | No Comments | Read More

Minnesota Somali Autism

When I was a kid, my sisters and I would place a marble in the middle of the dining room linoleum floor and watch it begin rolling toward the hallway. Quickly, it would pick up speed, pass through the...[Read More]

on 10/29/09 | 51 Comments | Read More

Dancing Theory

A couple entries ago, I proposed a predictable display of variation of the physical features in the children of a family over time as a mother’s testosterone level slowly rose with age. This predict...[Read More]

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

Idea Drawing

Georges Cuvier was an early French biologist, a contemporary of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck, unfortunately, died before Cuvier and ended up vilified in a famous eulogy by his younger, very influent...[Read More]

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

Legitimacy

There was a cascade of insights and epiphanies that was set off for me from coming to the knowledge, at the age of 36, that both myself and a 7-year-old girl who later became my stepdaughter occupied ...[Read More]

on 10/23/09 | No Comments | Read More

Autism Family History

It could be said that it all begins in the womb. It is even deeper and more subtle than that. Autism researchers such as Simon Baron-Cohen are coming to the conclusion that a mother’s testosterone l...[Read More]

on 10/22/09 | No Comments | Read More

Road Map

Autism expert Simon Baron-Cohen has a theory that the autistic male shows evidence of a brain that is too male for his own good, the autistic personality being male to the extreme, evidencing exaggera...[Read More]

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

Legends in Our Own Minds

There is a tribe of males more than a little infatuated with themselves and their own ideas. We’re often described as narcissists. Upon discovering I fit into this group, I was appalled, and pre...[Read More]

on 10/19/09 | 6 Comments | Read More

Grandma, They’re Not Santa Claus!

There’s a comic on XM Radio’s Canadian Comedy Channel who’s gotten good mileage out of his grandmother having told him that she does not believe in gay people.  He recounts going around and aro...[Read More]

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

Brains and Testicles

When I was exploring the possibility of a human genetic precursor that was random-handed with a larger brain encouraged by a song-and-dance-based matrifocal culture, I hypothesized that if representat...[Read More]

on 10/14/09 | 2 Comments | Read More

How to Speak Drakk

NightStorm is a 23-year-old Asperger-diagnosed autist, a watercolor artist and writer of original and fan fiction, a blogger and a lover of storytelling and role play. Like so very many others then, ...[Read More]

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

Notes on Three Dursleys

I THINK IN PICTURES. Words are like a second language to me.  I translate both spoken and written words into full-color movies, complete with sound, which run like a VCR tape in my head.  When som...[Read More]

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

Lefties

Four out of five of our last presidents were left-handers. Researcher Marian Annett hypothesizes that there is a gene for being right-handed and a gene for being nonhanded or random-handed. One cou...[Read More]

on 10/8/09 | 1 Comment | Read More

Politics and the Environment: Cause of Autism #3

A child exhibits characteristics from both parents. The parents’ features in their children can complement each other in ways that reinforce and even encourage specific maturational trajectories. Fo...[Read More]

on 10/7/09 | No Comments | Read More

Time Machine: Cause of Autism #2

Though little discussed, the ability to send our children back in time is an ability all of us have. This ability has to do with how we choose a mate. It has been estimated that our lineage of homo...[Read More]

on 10/5/09 | 1 Comment | Read More

Still a Crowded Room

“Stick to the image” is perhaps the most concise advice one can come away with from James Hillman’s archetypal psychology.  When trying to see through to what is happening in a dream, or in an ...[Read More]

on 10/2/09 | 1 Comment | Read More

Revenge of the Nerd: Cause of Autism #1

There are many ways to kill a dragon. I counted several hundred strong-man dragon interventions in the almost one hundred books I read when I was snake-charmed by the subject. Courage, strength an...[Read More]

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