Archive for July, 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

Autism’s Overton Window

I don’t think any of us would call it a game, but I’ve noticed a number of people who write or comment on autism sites seem to approach the issue of defining autism as a “zero-sum game,” in th...[Read More]

on 07/30/10 | 11 Comments | Read More

The End of Workplace Bias

As we transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, those who find themselves out of work are disproportionately men.  The historical male advantage of physical strength has become al...[Read More]

on 07/28/10 | No Comments | Read More

The Value of Ideas and the Willingness to Let Go of Certainty

I've been thinking about the value of ideas today.  I've been thinking about how we parse language, how we see the world in ways that confirm our belief systems. We look for connections, for exp...[Read More]

on 07/27/10 | No Comments | Read More

Exploring The Social Model: Introduction & Groundwork

The biggest problem I can identify in the conversation about autism today, the issue to which everything seems to boil down to, is the seeming refusal to acknowledge autism as a dis/ability—not a di...[Read More]

on 07/26/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

We Are the People Who …

One of the struggles autistic people have begun to join over the last decade or so is over who is to be allowed to define autism, and on what terms.  Is it to be defined from the outside, by those wh...[Read More]

on 07/23/10 | 8 Comments | Read More

Embracing the Social Model of Disability

In my last article for The Commons, I wrote about the distance I often feel from the non-autistic world, saying “[I]f you are a typically abled person, we live worlds apart.  You see, I am auti...[Read More]

on 07/22/10 | No Comments | Read More

Autistic Imagination: Nothing Is Impossible

Research on creativity has shown that autistic children, when asked to draw a person or thing that could not exist, find it very difficult to do so.  Creating more realistic images, however, does not...[Read More]

on 07/21/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Working, Working … In Which I Make Progress

See that gap between the second and third mulberries?  That right there, my friends, is progress.  It better be progress as it took a couple hours yesterday to do. I am currently fortifying mys...[Read More]

on 07/20/10 | No Comments | Read More

Missing The Point

So let's talk about the two, interconnected, obligatory buzzwords in the “autistic community” today: “neurodiversity,” and “cure”--specifically, a “cure” for autism.  Also addressed w...[Read More]

on 07/19/10 | 3 Comments | Read More

Autistic Grit

First, obsessions.  Dr. Michael Burry, according to the profile of him woven into Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, is a man of serial obsessions. His Aspergers diagnosis was arrived at during the cour...[Read More]

on 07/16/10 | 5 Comments | Read More

Differences (moving past a deficit-based model of Autism)

I’ve been doing some reading, on Amanda Baggs’ site, various articles linked to from Neurodiversity, and other random internet ramblings.  I’ve been trying to give my internet explorations some...[Read More]

on 07/15/10 | No Comments | Read More

Morning Symphony

The vertical blinds that cover my kitchen's sliding glass door are closed against the glare to the east.  On this clear July morning, the heat already has started to build.  The air conditioner thru...[Read More]

on 07/14/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Shrink on the Box

When Lili Marlene finds time to watch the tube in the daytime, she doesn’t waste a moment on tripe like Oprah or Dr. Phil or that other rot on the commercial stations.  I tuned in to the National P...[Read More]

on 07/13/10 | 1 Comment | Read More

No More Disorders: Debriefing from DSM Diagnoses

Over the past few months, I’ve found myself moving further and further away from the mental health profession and its view of the world.  It’s always difficult to know how these things begin, esp...[Read More]

on 07/12/10 | 1 Comment | Read More

Big Trucks and the Work that Needs Doing

Years ago, before the coming of the cell phone, I was the driver of a Freightliner FLD 120, an imposing, long-nosed boat of a semi tractor that crisscrossed the United States and parts of Canada with ...[Read More]

on 07/9/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Alexithymia, Autism, and the Many Pagan Deities in the Details

One trait commonly associated with autism in the research literature is alexithymia, which refers to difficulty expressing feelings in words.  Although many people have had occasional experiences of ...[Read More]

on 07/7/10 | 4 Comments | Read More

“But You Seem So Normal!”

If there’s one statement that makes my head hurt and my skin feel weird, it’s this:  I say something along the lines of, “By the way, I have Asperger’s Syndrome.” They say, “Really? I can...[Read More]

on 07/5/10 | No Comments | Read More

Color, Space, and Spectrum

The ridiculously named and sublimely informative BoingBoing last Sunday posted an article about the interplay of language and visual perception as it affects how we see and speak about color and space...[Read More]

on 07/2/10 | No Comments | Read More