Happy New Years.

The title about says it all. Nothing deep (except a track, maybe) or insightful.  Just wishing everyone a safe and sane night.

If this year was shit, may next year be better.  If this year kicked ass, may next year be better still.  If anyone is bored, I'll be behind the bar at Shooters from about 10 o' clock on.  See you then, or see you next year.

Reaching back to move forward, stay gold.

A few people...

I haven't seen in a long, long time.

When my father died, there were three things that I made a point of taking.

There was a small framed tapestry that had once belonged to his father.  My father kicked the living shit out of me, once, after I'd been fucking around in the house with a BB gun and cracked the glass on it.

There was a small framed print.  In the print, a decrepit old king sat upon a throne.  Bottles by his side.  Head wrapped in wraiths made of smoke from his hookah, as the imps and demons danced around him.  The caption read a slightly non-standard version of Proverbs 1:22 - "How long, O' Foolish One, will you love your foolish ways."  My father had given it to his father one of the times that his father had gone through rehab.  Rehab never quite stuck with my father.  If I'd ever gotten a tattoo, I think that this would be the image.  I'm told that there's a bit too much light-work in it to do it without completely blowing it up, though.

And the last was a copy of Micah's senior picture.  Not the graduation picture here, but the senior head shot. Ended up in a pretty large argument with my mother about that.  My mother insisted that as he was her son, any pictures of my brother were hers and hers alone.  Which is about as it ever was. Of the three, this is one that may still have made the moves.

He'd have turned 38 today.

's all a dream we dreamed one afternoon, long ago.

December.

Kind of a "meh" month all around.  Lots of rain.  Quite a few holidays that don't seem to mean much at all.  It's been a long December.  Been a pretty long year.  Can't say I'll be too unhappy to see any of it go...

It's been about 14 years since I moved to California, now.  I think I ended up in San Francisco the second week of December in '96.  If I recall correctly, that was a pretty wet year, too.   That winter was the highest recorded rainfall in San Francisco.  It was quite an introduction to the city.

I got off the bus at 4th and Market, checked into the first hotel I saw.  Decided to take a walk.  And promptly got lost in the Tenderloin.  It was a bit of an eye-opener for a 20 year old from Pennsylvania.

I'd spent a couple of weeks before moving to San Francisco crashing out on a friend's floor at his dorm at George Washington University in D.C.  Don't really recall much of those two weeks.Sitting at a Barnes & Noble and being exposed to Jean Genet for the first time (another eye-opener).  Hanging in Rich's dorm room and reading his syllabus for his Russian Lit. class.  Being dumbfounded that a city as large as D.C. effectively became a ghost town at 8pm.  Wandering through Georgetown and watching a small windstorm hold a plastic bag aloft in a flurry of leaves for five minutes and just watching in awe as it spun around and around.

It's been an odd decade and a half, to say the least.

One thing I do remember about that two weeks...  The Counting Crows had just released their second album, Recovering the Satellites, a month or two before.  We listened to that disc endlessly.  Can't say I've spent much time revisiting that in the past ten years.  At the time, it was a perfect fit.

I was recently tagged in one of those FaceBook notes, asking to list my 50 favorite tracks from 2010.  I'm not sure I could list five and know that they're from this year.  Music doesn't seem nearly as vital as it once did.  A lot of things don't.  I've been looking through a lot of the year end lists since then.  It seems that I'm not as far out of the loop as I'd assumed.  It just doesn't seem that any of it particularly resonated.

As I said, it's been "A Long December."

Maybe next year will be better than the last.

A question.

Do dishonest people know how transparent their dishonesty is?  Do they even care?  Is this some sort of M.C. Escher conversation about varying levels of consciousness?

This is actually a pretty serious question for me.   Is the basic impetus behind lying that the people that you lie to are idiots that won't understand that they're being lied to?   Or is it some idea that one can just wash one's hands and walk away if the lie doesn't work out?

I'm not sure how to phrase this any more concisely, but it's something that trips me up quite frequently.  I guess it kind of goes back to the story I'd related before about the coworker that fancied himself a player.  But talking to people often leads me to stare at the person I'm talking with and sit and think to myself - "Wow, you just managed to completely contradict yourself in the span of three minutes."

One of my favorite examples of this came from someone I was once pretty good friends with (or had thought at the time), though it took a bit longer than three minutes for his idiocy to be apparent.  I'd given this guy some ballet tickets and the keys to my house while I was in someone else's wedding rehearsal.

The guy had been acting pretty shady about who he'd be going with.  Evasive and dodgy and sketchy as all hell.  On the day of the wedding, as he made his way to the wedding, I'd asked him how he'd enjoyed the ballet the night before.  He told me it was great.  I asked him who he'd ended up going with.  "You don't want to know," he told me.

At which point I named the person he'd gone with, told him that I had no problems with him having gone with this person, and said that the fact that he'd lied to me about whom he was going with was more offensive than anything else.

Over a good chunk of time, he's offered any number of reasons behind his behavior.  Quite a few of you have heard this one before, but it's still something that completely baffles me.

He hadn't lied to me, he said, he just didn't tell me the truth.  And really, he didn't tell me the truth because he didn't want to hurt me.  And besides, he said, there was no way he could have know that what he was doing would be hurtful.  And anyway, he said, I couldn't be upset with him as I'd lied to him first.  (Mind you, there were a couple of interludes along the way here where he called me an asshole by way of apology.)

When asked what lie I had supposedly told him, I was informed that I had lied about being in the friend's wedding (another thing that really doesn't make sense to me.  Why would I lie to someone about the fact that I was in a wedding that they'd be attending?  What would be the point of doing that? It doesn't even seem to be a lie that would be particularly effective.  The wedding the next day kind of makes it obvious whether I'm lying or not.) 

When it was pointed out that he'd been given the keys to my house and ballet tickets to use while I attended the rehearsal dinner and that I'd asked him to come with me to pick up my tux, he then told me I had lied to him about the part that I was to play in the wedding (and given that I had no idea what part I was playing in the wedding and told him so, I don't see how that qualifies as a lie.)  But it basically seems that I was offered everything but the kitchen sink as a reason why he was a dishonest pile.  And I'm sure that if I'd continued the conversation, I would have gotten yet another excuse/reason.

My cousin and I normally shorten the conversation to "I never lied to you, and besides you lied to me first."

This is what I don't get, though.  At what level does even attempting any of that even make sense?

Being Strong-Willed.

I'd had a conversation a few months back with an acquaintance about another mutual acquaintance.  We were discussing the second person's priorities in choosing whom to date.  It seems that this woman is pretty driven.  She'd gone on a couple of dates with a guy that did social service work.  Didn't really think that anything would come of it, but decided to give the guy a chance anyway.   Or something like that.  The way it was explained to me, this woman was much more likely to date a guy that headed charities than to be with someone that worked for them.

As I said, this woman is pretty driven.  It was said that she was such a strong-willed, motivated person that she needs to find a mirror in the guy she's with.  She's afraid that if she dates someone who isn't a match for her will, she'd just end up walking all over him.

Which strikes me as a load of bullshit.

Any woman that would be that strong-willed surely wouldn't need a guy to keep her in check, no?  If this person were as strong-willed and motivated as she's said to be, one would have to assume that the discipline and motivation to treat others well would come from within her.  Obviously, this isn't the case.

Kind of seems that either she's really not that concerned with treating others well or she's really not that strong-willed.  The two things don't seem to work in conjunction, though.

And the whole going on a couple of dates with someone that you know you don't see yourself with?  Kind of asinine.  I'm sure you'd get some story about how she was giving the guy a chance.  Doesn't sound like much of a chance at all.  Letting him down easy?  Sounds more like getting someone's hopes up before you let them fall.  The guy asks for a chance and gets pity instead.  Doesn't seem to be much kind about that.

I was waiting on a twelve top once in San Francisco.  It was a birthday party for a woman at the table.   One of her friends started talking about a guy that had asked her out a couple of times.  She'd explained to him that she was going on vacation and wouldn't be around for a couple of months.  She hoped, she said, that he'd have move on by the time she came back.

If I were that guy, I'd probably spend a couple of months looking forward to a chance to spend time with someone I dug.  I mentioned that to her.  Received a couple of sighs from the table.  And then the woman told me that she didn't want the guy to think she was a bitch.   Something tells me that that won't work too well.  There's nothing polite about offering things you have no intention of proffering.

That's not politeness.

It's just passive-aggression.

Superficial.

Bougie Souliterre's "Superficial."

Naked Music's Nude Dimensions (Vol.'s 1 and 2 trump the 3rd, by far) series was the soundtrack to quite a bit of my earlier life.  This song fits me perfectly.

I once, when living in North Beach, asked someone I'd known for about seven years what he liked about living in the area.  He liked, he explained to me, being able to walk down the street and see forty people he knew.  He liked being able to walk into the local cafe and have his order started without being able to ask for it.  He liked the fact that everyone knew his name.  He liked, he said, the "illusion of having all of these friends."

"Walter," I asked, "does it bother you at all that you're talking about the illusion of friendship?"

"No," he said, "at least I'm smart enough to realise that these people really aren't my friends."

"Tell me, Walter," I said, "Are we friends or is that just an illusion?"

He was pretty mad that I would ask the question.  I'm not sure I've bumped into or talked to Walter since that conversation.  I doubt that Walter and I would end up having a conversation if we didn't bump into each other.  I'm not sure there's a conversation that sums my time in North Beach better.  (Though there might be a couple of close contenders.)

The illusion of friendship?  Not so much.  Don't really need it.  Doesn't do much for me.  Didn't feed me when I was broke.  Never offered me solace when I was in grief.

Superficial?  Can't say I really have much time for you.  I'm not big on superficial.  I'd much prefer deep.

Deep house.  Deep conversation.  Deep Friendship.  Deep love.  If I'm in the hand, odds are I'm looking for a piece of the board that's large enough to take down the whole pot.

I was talking to an acquaintance about some of this.  We were discussing books and literary theory.  She's been diagnosed with one of the anti-social personality disorders, if I recall correctly.  She's actually an extremely personable person.  She just doesn't do much with phatic communication.  She doesn't see much point.  Want to talk about the weather?  Might as well go somewhere else.  If you want to have a meaningful conversation, though, she's a wonderful person to talk to.  Engage her on a level that scratches the surface and delves into something deeper than social niceties and there's a beautiful mind to connect with. 

Superficial, though?

Not so much.

Gratitude.

I was talking to a friend of mine recently.  She'd been going through some rough times. Has struggled quite a bit for the past few years.  Has struggled quite a bit over many years.  She'd been out of work on disability for about a year as she struggled with some health issues relating to anxiety and depression and was having trouble making ends meet.

Her mother suggested that she come try to contact her father and ask for some help.  J. hadn't spoken to her father in about a decade.  He'd never been around much at all.  Left when she was four or five, I think.

She'd eventually given him a call.  Or he called her.  I forget how it went down, exactly.  Her mother put her in touch with her father.

He asked how she'd been.  When she started telling him, he asked her about her faith in God.  He expressed some surprise that she didn't believe in God and started telling her about the importance of faith.  I think this irked her a bit.  He also expressed some surprise that she'd been dealing with depression and anxiety issues.

"I guess if I'd called at some point," he said...

I think he ended up sending her a check for a hundred dollars.

I'd been talking to her mother about it a few months after.  Her mother thought that she was being most ungracious in accepting his help.  "She has to realise that he's trying," she said.

J. thinks that $100 is a pretty shitty take for 26 years.  I pretty much have to agree with her.

A lot of what people expect others to express gratitude for strikes me as behavior that's so baseline (or even so far below the baseline) that to expect to be thanked for it seems to be kind of nuts. 

Trying? Gratitude?  That's laughable.

A Playlist.

An acquaintance recently asked for some music suggestions.  Rather than throw up a track or two, I decided to play around a bit and throw together a full mix.  It's definitely not a complete success.  The site that I put it together on didn't have everything that I wanted to get on there.  It's a bit heavy on covers.  And it moves rather abruptly at times.  But I'll throw it out there anyway...

Here's a good chunk of what I'm listening to.

Anyone up for throwing up a playlist in response?

Scenes, Pt. II - Painted Birds

I used to pride myself on being the sort of people that would show up pretty much anywhere.  You know, just be willing to take people on their own terms.  Show up, respect the scene, take a look around, expand my own horizons.

When I was younger and living in San Francisco, I seemed to know a disproportionate number of people that were involved in San Francisco's goth scene (and for some odd reason, a disproportionate number of them seemed to be from Minneapolis).  My roommate at one point was the brother of the guy that started Information Society (and a touring member of the band), who was pretty heavy into the whole thing.  Leather boots, piercings, dyed dreads.  Kris was a pretty cool fucking guy. 

It's a sensibility I can definitely understand.  Jerzy Kosinski, in The Painted Bird, offers a wonderful metaphor for what it means to be an outsider.

Sometimes days passed and Stupid Ludmila did not appear in the forest. Lekh would become possessed by a silent rage. He would stare solemnly at the birds in the cages, mumbling something to himself. Finally, after prolonged scrutiny, he would choose the strongest bird, tie it to his wrist and prepare stinking paints of different colors which he mixed together from the most varied components. When the colors satisfied him, Lekh would turn the bird over and paint its wings, head, and breast in rainbow hues until it became more dappled and vivid than a bouquet of wildflowers.
     Then he would go into the thick of the forest. There Lekh took out the painted bird and ordered me to hold it in my hand and squeeze it lightly. The bird would begin to twitter and attract a flock of the same species which would fly nervously over our heads. Our prisoner, hearing them, strained toward them, warbling more loudly, its little heart, locked in its freshly painted breast, beating violently.
     When a sufficient number of birds gathered above our heads, Lekh would give me a sign to release the prisoner. It would soar, happy and free, a spot of rainbow against the backdrop of clouds, and then plunge into the waiting grown flock. For an instant the birds were confounded. The painted bird circled from one end of the flock to the other, vainly trying to convince its kin that it was one of them. But, dazzled by its brilliant colors, they flew around it unconvinced. The painted bird would be forced farther and farther away as it zealously tried to enter the ranks of the flock. We saw soon afterwards how one bird after another would peel off in a fierce attack. Shortly the many-hued shape lost its place in the sky and dropped to the ground. These incidents happened often. When we finally found the painted birds they were usually dead. Lekh keenly examined the number of blows which the birds had received. Blood seeped through their colored wings, diluting the paint and soiling Lekh's hands.

One is attacked for one's differences.  There are quite a few reactionary movements predicated on flaunting one's difference.  Siouxsie and the Banshees offer the concept as an anthem for a movement.  As a way of understanding the goth subculture, it's pretty spot on.  You want to judge us for our differences?  We will flaunt them.  We'll take everything that you say is freakish and carry it to an extreme.

As much as I knew a lot of goths in San Francisco, I never really spent that much time hanging around their scene.  I came to an enjoyment of industrial and post-punk later.  I did try popping my head in once or twice, just to look around.  One of the funnier times was the one where I stopped by Bondage-A-Go-Go once to visit an acquaintance that headed security for the club.

It was an interesting experience.  Some pretty cool music.  Lots of cute goth women dressed in black.  It was funny, though.  I, being me, pretty much just wore what I would have worn anywhere at the time.  I think it was a pair of Gap Khakis and a cashmere sweater.  Baby blue?  Black?  I don't specifically remember.

I was a pariah.  In the two hours I sat in the club, my friend Frances was the only person that even bothered to speak to me (or acknowledge my presence) aside from a bartender.  As a reaction to attacks for being different, I can definitely understand the idea of banding together with like-minded people.  Oddly enough, though, if you throw a bunch of painted birds together, it's just another flock.  I wasn't welcome in their scene, because I didn't do enough to blend in.

Welcome to the scene.

Counter-culture?  Sounds like just another culture.

Honesty. Or why I'm an asshole...

I've mentioned elsewhere that my philosophy may best be summed between two complementary ideas.  One, the idea that "Voices Carry."  The other, Audre Lorde's assertion that "Your silence does not protect you."

The essay that has done more to inform this sensibility than any other is feminist poet Adrienne Rich's "Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying."  It's ostensibly a piece that talks of the role of honesty as it pertains to women, but I believe that the central message, as with most ideas worth examining, carries much broader implications.  Voices carry.

Rich grounds the piece in her own experience.  Which is obviously that of a woman.  As I noted above, I believe the piece can be read with much broader implications.  It's a melange of epigrams (Hello, Mr. Markson.)  Some of those strike me as more cogent or forceful than others.  I'd like to run through some of my favorites...

To discover that one has been lied to in a personal relationship, however, leads one to feel a little crazy.

While I know the feeling, I'd actually argue that Ms. Rich doesn't take this quite far enough.  To lie to someone is to make them a little crazy.  It doesn't matter whether we speak of a subjective reality or an objective reality in this case.  If I tell you that a red light means that you should go forward, you'll have quite a bit of trouble functioning in the world as we shape it.  If I tell you that the sky is green and you believe me, this is insanity.  If your beliefs do not pertain to reality, you are considered psychotic.  To lie to someone is an act of violence.

Lying is done with words, and also with silence.

Silence is complicity.  If one does not offer one's voice as a corrective to a lie, one is an accomplice to the act.

In the struggle for survival we tell lies. To bosses, to prison guards, the police, men who have power over us, who legally own us and our children, lovers who need us as proof of their manhood.

Whether you're a woman or not, allowing someone else to define reality according to the prerogatives of power is to acquiesce to a lie.  Again, silence is a form of lying.  Assenting to a lie, whether by remaining silent or concurring with it vocally is an act of violence.

We take so much of the universe on trust. You tell me: "In 1950 I lived on the north side of Beacon Street in Somerville." You tell me: "She and I were lovers, but for months now we have only been good friends." You tell me: "It is sevent...y degrees outside and the sun is shining." Because I love you, because there is not even a question of lying between us, I take these accounts of the universe on trust: your address twenty-five years ago, your relationship with someone I know only by sight, this morning's weather. I fling unconscious tendrils of belief, like slender green threads, across statements such as these, statements made so unequivocally, which have no tone or shadow of tentativeness. I build them into the mosaic of my world. I allow my universe to change in minute, significant ways, on the basis of things you have said to me, of my trust in you.

Does it matter whether we speak of personal relationships or otherwise?  Is any act of speech private?  Speech is public.  Speech is meant, explicitly, to move beyond the individual.  All speech is a public act.  And if silence, too, is a form of communication (if we are complicit in lies by refusing to speak against them), then is not silence a public act also?

When we discover that someone we trusted can be trusted no longer, it forces us to reexamine the universe, to question the whole instinct and concept of trust. For a while, we are thrust back onto some bleak, jutting ledge, in a dark pierced by sheets of fire, swept by sheets of rain, in a world before kinship, or naming, or tenderness exist; we are brought close to formlessness.

 Again, to lie is an act of violence.

She may say, I didn't want to cause pain. What she really did not want is to have to deal with the other's pain. The lie is a short-cut through another's personality.

 I'm reminded of Billy Bragg's line from "New England"...

I don't feel bad about letting you go, I just feel sad about letting you know.

Bragg's quote is an interesting one.  Bragg's narrator doesn't express concern for the feelings of the person he's addressing.  He is only concerned with the discomfort that the action causes in himself.  It's an entirely selfish viewpoint. When I was in my early twenties, I'd tried dating a woman.  She led me on for six months.  Told me to call her if I needed to talk when my father died.  I spent two weeks calling her.  She answered her phone and told me never to call her again.  I asked her why she'd spent six months leading me on.  "I didn't want to seem like a bitch," she said.

Again, it's an entirely narcissistic worldview.  I lied so you would think me better than I am.  I don't take into account your feelings.  I'm only concerned with how I come off.  Oddly enough, lying didn't make her seem any less of a bitch.  It just made her seem a lying bitch.

And (s)he may also tell herself a lie: that she is concerned with the other's feelings, not with her own.

I throw the ()'s around that, again, because I don't think the trope is limited specifically to women. I think the idea that we lie to someone to spare their feelings is in and of itself a lie.  If my zipper's down, you can feel free to let me know.  I'd rather have the ability to correct that than roam around embarrassing myself in a state of ignorance.  I'd rather hear a truth, no matter how painful, than be misled with a lie.  You tell me any sort of lie, you're leading me astray.  You're not sparing my feelings, you're letting me dig myself deeper.

Here's the thing.  A lot of people tell me that I'm an asshole.  You know what?  I don't really care.  I'm not big on politeness.  I value kindness.  The two things are not equivalent in any sense.  A friend of mine was recently bemoaning the fact that too many people would be kind to his face (polite) and then talk shit behind his back.

That's not me at all.  I can mislead you with politeness.  As far as I can tell, that's just being passive aggressive, though.  It's refusing to take responsibility for what one truly feels. It's no less aggressive or offensive than being direct with you.  It's not being kind, it's hiding one's unkindness behind a veneer.

If I think you're being a jackass, odds are I'll let you know.  That's either respect or disrespect.  Either way, though, you have the information to make that choice yourself.  If that makes me an asshole in your eyes, that's your decision, too.

As far as I can tell, if I have to lie to you for me to like me, you don't like me.  You like a lie.

If I have to lie to you for you to think I'm a kind person, that just means that the idea that I'm a kind person is a lie. Am I going to be "nice" because I feel sorry for you?  No, pity is just condescension.  And I'm not that arrogant that I think you deserve my pity.

You may think that this makes me an asshole.  As far as I can tell, it's just respect.

For the both of us.

If you want to check out Rich's essay, you can find it contained here.

I definitely recommend it.

Pretty much.

Absolutely nothing to say at the moment.  Just sitting around trying to finally kick this cold and running to Hawaiian Gardens to play some cards.   If nothing else, I get cheap food at a decent price.  Yesterday wasn't all that great, money-wise. 

I pretty much sat and treaded water for six hours.  Never had the hammer hand.  And was pretty much card dead the whole way through.  I finished up.  Not by much though.  Basically enough to cover the travel and the food.  I think in the whole time I was there, I pulled one nut hand.  And maybe had face pairs twice.  It was a slow day.  Definitely not like going in the other day and pulling nine buy-ins out after four hours. 

There's a discount buy-in on a Saturday tourney with enough hours of table play, so at least I've got that under the belt.  And winning small is definitely better than losing at all.

I've watched a lot of dumbfoundingly bad play over the past 15 hours in the room, though.  People calling even odds with a 10% chance of taking down a pot.  Flushes betting into blatant boats (two pair on board and two other people in the hand) .  Low pairs calling obvious overs.  Trips betting into four-flushes.  Makes one sit and go, "huh?"  People astound me in their ability to assume that they're better than they are.

Words.

As I've noted before, some days words come more easily than others.  Today is another one of the other days.  But I'm going to force myself to sit and put something in, if only for the formation of the habit. 

It's kind of hard to express what I feel on days like today.  It's not a complete aphasia.  It's more like being lost in a sea of words.  As if all of the options are too much and it's impossible to find one's way amongst them.  Talk about this?  Talk about that?  Does this tie in here?  Or over there? 

When I was in my early teens, I'd been sitting at an Uncle's house watching the news with a couple of my cousins.  The weatherman had just announced that there was a 50% chance of snow the next day.  Two of my cousins started to argue about whether or not it would snow.  After a few minutes they turned to me and asked my opinion.  I just sort of shrugged. 

They didn't get that at all.  Told me that it was ridiculous to not have an opinion on the matter.  I still don't get their side of it.  How would I know?  Maybe it will snow.  Maybe it won't.  Why would I have an opinion on the matter?

Words can be like that for me.  Maybe.  Maybe not?  Who knows. 

I'm always kind of dumbfounded by how little of life we know.  And concurrently, how much of it passes us by in only the most glancing fashion.  You know, like that girl that you dated that one summer when your family went to the shore for the summer.  Or the person in college that you thought you'd be friends with forever.  Think of all of the books you've read.  All of the songs you've ever heard.  All of the movies you've ever seen.  All of the passing acquaintances that you've ever made.  All of the shit that you haven't even realised you'd forgotten about (a friend pointed me to some music that he'd put together with some others in the mid-90's.  Their band was called Green Lane.  I really don't think I've thought of Green Lane Reservoir Park in about a decade.  To the point that I didn't even realise that I hadn't thought about it in a decade.)

And then think of how small that is in comparison to what is out there. 

Everyone always likes to check their tastes and knowledge against those Top 100 lists.  Top 100 albums of all time.  The Greatest 100 books of the 20th century.  I normally post above average on those sorts of things.  But that's not even remotely close to touching the tip of the iceberg.  It's kind of dumbfounding how small we are in comparison to the world around us.  And the funny thing about those lists?  Almost no two of them will ever be the same.  You could probably get the same group of people to make the same list five years running, and have them change their minds.  I know any time I encounter one of those "notes" on FaceBook, it's a different list each time.  And not necessarily because we've decided that a new idea has knocked an old favorite off.

It's kind of funny to suppose that we know the world around us.  Very often, I'm not even sure I know myself.

Who knows? 

A Small Pet Peeve.

Kind of short on time, but wanted to throw something up just to keep the pace.

One of my least favorite things to hear, whether directed at me or at someone around me...   "You need to smile" or "You should cheer up."  I often hear that while sitting at work.  One patron will turn to another and tell them that they need to be happier.  Without taking the effort to find out the first thing about what is going on in someone else's life, they'll take it upon themselves to offer advice.

I don't know.  It just strikes me as rather presumptuous.  Who am I to tell someone else that they're too gloomy?  For all I know, that person just buried a family member.  Buried a cat.  Lost a job.   Discovered their mother has cancer.  What do I know?  Who am I to tell that person that they need to cheer up?  Who is anyone?  It's something I hear repeatedly and it makes me cringe every time.

What to say instead?  How about "How are you?"  Or "Hey, is everything ok?"

One would seem to dictate to another their feelings.  The other to allow them expression.   One forces another person into our mold.  The other respects the person next to us.

I'll tell you now, if you ever tell me that I need to smile, odds are I'm going to tell you to need to fuck off.  Don't be surprised when it happens.

Online Activism.

Yesterday I posted what I thought of a certain sort of online activism.  If you'd like to read further on the issue, there's a pretty good article in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell that discusses a lot of these issues.  You might be interested in checking it out.  I'm not sure if I agree completely with his assessment (I'm probably fonder of Shirky's worldview than Gladwell is), but it's an interesting read nonetheless.

Since I spent yesterday complaining, I'm going to contrast that with today's post about a project that I have a bit more respect for.  If you've paid any attention to me on FaceBook, or even caught one of the various news programs on which it's appeared, you've probably already heard of Seattle sex-advice columnist Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project.

Savage started the project after the suicide of Indiana teen Billy Lucas.  In Savage's own words -

I posted something to my blog about Billy Lucas — who might not have even been gay, he wasn't out if he was gay, and not all kids who experience anti-gay bullying are gay — but he was bullied for being gay. ... And I was reading about him and about Justin Aaberg in Minnesota, and the reaction as an openly gay adult, always, when you read these stories is, "I wish I could've talked to this kid for five minutes, so I could've told him it gets better" and it occurred to me, when I was really turning over the Billy Lucas case in my mind, that I could talk to these kids. ... I could use social media, I could go on YouTube, I could make a digital video and I could post it, and I could directly address them and tell them, "It gets better."

 
The project started with one video.   And went from there.  Not long after the project started a school administrator in Arkansas was caught on FaceBook saying that he'd wear purple (a gesture intended as showing solidarity with LGBT community in the wake of the teen suicides) when all "faggots" hung themselves.  Savage and many others then organised via FaceBook and other media to pressure the administrator to resign.

Here's the difference, though.  The IGBP offers action.  Email campaigns.  Phone calls.  Videos.  Support in the way of donations to The Trevor Project.  It's tied in to a campaign that aside from offering anemic "solidarity," is also offering concrete methods for making those improvements. 

There's a pretty cool little article that someone linked to on LibraryThing a few days back.  The most heartbreaking part about that for me is this -

Kevin Hines wishes someone like Ritchie was there the day he jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge in 2000. For 40 agonizing minutes, the then-19-year-old paced the bridge, weeping, and hoping someone would ask him what was wrong. One tourist finally approached - but simply asked him to take her picture. Moments later, he jumped. 

One person.  That would have been it.

There's a reason I "like" the It Gets Better Project's FaceBook page. It's a hell of a lot of people working for change.  I suggest that you like it, too.

There's a bit more action behind the words.

Childhood, Cartoons, Memories, Faces and Awareness...

Poker.

When I was in my early twenties, I used to be told quite frequently that I was too young to be as cynical or jaded as I was.  I don't know.  I guess child abuse, homelessness and death can have that effect on people.  I was never quite sure how to respond when people said that?  Don't worry, I'll grow into it?  Because really, at what age are you allowed to be cynical.

I play quite a bit of poker.  I could probably play for 16 hours a day and not get sick of it.  It's one of the few areas of life where you being cynical is not seen as a handicap (let's not confuse cynicism with timidity).  Think about it...

If you're at work and your boss starts touting some bullshit, what do you do?  In all likelihood, you mutter under your breath and go back to your desk.  Say yes, sir, will do.  Some flake says "Let's do lunch."  And you say, "Oh, of course, lunch would be wonderful."

What would happen if you told your boss he was full of shit?  There's a pretty good chance you'd be out of a job.  In all likelihood, your boss doesn't feel that he to follow the rules.  He makes the rules.  If the rules don't suit his hand, he might change them so he wins.

That person that you know you won't see for another nine months, if ever?  You have to play the game their way, or you're rude.  Doesn't matter that both of you know that means nothing. 

I'd posted in quite a few tournaments today.  Lost every single one of them.  Not even remotely close to hitting a bubble.  But the thing is, on all but one of the hands I bust on, I knew that I had the edge.  Even if my hands don't hold, I can look and see that I played well.  Playing good poker and losing money?  Is that frustrating?  Can be.  Not so much, though. 

With poker, it doesn't matter who you are when you sit at the table.  The rules are the same for everyone.  If you want to see the showdown, there's a good chance you might have to pay to do it.  The choice is up to you.  But at the end of the hand, that decision is up to you.  And at the end of the hand, all of the cards need to be on the table if you want to a chance to take the pot.  There's a directness about it.  There's not going to be anyone telling you that a straight now beats a flush because they happen to be holding one.  And if you really think someone is full of shit, you can call them out on it.

It's funny, but a lot of people think about poker and and the first thing that comes to mind is bluffing. 

The bluff is overrated.

I've been getting my ass kicked today.  Lost just about every coin toss.  Had a few pretty ugly beats on insane draws.  And you know what?  I really don't care.  I know my money's been going in when the odds are good.

Conversations.

I spent the better part of my early twenties wondering why people speak.  In a literal sense.  It was a question that I'd put directly to people.  "Why do people speak?"  I still spend an inordinate amount of time with the question.  But there's a certain type of conversation that I seem to have repeatedly that sums up a lot about NT behavior for me.  I'm really not sure how to go about explaining this, so I'll just offer an example.
 
When I worked at Bix in San Francisco, there was one server there who fancied himself a bit of a player.  He came into work one night talking about the girl he had taken out of his local watering hole right before it closed the night before.  Was talking about how hot she was.  Seems he'd struck up a conversation with her right before the bar had been about to close and decided to take her back to his place.  Had a great night, he said.  One of my coworkers asked him whether or not he'd gotten the girl's number.  You going to try to keep it going, Jon asked?

No, this guy replied, I don't want to know her.  I don't have any respect for the sort of person that would go to bed with someone that they've known for only twenty minutes.

What sort of respect do you have for yourself, then, I asked.

This is the sort of shit that trips me up on a regular basis.  

It's kind of like going to Vegas.  You walk down the strip in Vegas and they advertise losing odds.  Our slots pay out $0.97 on the dollar.  You know that $0.90 of that is going to one winner.  You know that it's a losing proposition, yet you play anyway.  And they make assloads off of those machines.  Vegas wouldn't exist but for the fact that if you're playing against the house, the odds are stacked against you.

There are exactly two games that one can play in Vegas where the player can have edge.  Poker and Blackjack.

In Blackjack, you can gain edge by counting cards.  The casinos will do everything in their power to make sure that you can't do that.  They do it by running six shoe decks.  And reshuffling when there are two decks left.  Even after that, if the casino suspects that you are still able to count the shoe, you are politely told that you are not welcome to be there or welcome to come back later.

In Poker, the only reason you can gain edge is because you are never playing against the house.  The house merely rents the table to you and provides a dealer.  They don't care who wins, because they make money on every hand.  You gain edge only if you have edge over the other players.


Despite this, do you know where the casinos generate their revenues?  Slots.

This idea (hope) that the standard rules don't apply to oneself is almost a defining characteristic of NT behavior for me.  The idea that I am exempt from my own standards (respect someone that goes home with someone after 15 minutes?)   But quite a few NT narratives seem to violate themselves.  And that's not something I'm very good at losing myself in.

Authority.

Around the time I was 10 or 12, I started to do poorly in school. My father, being my father, decided that the reason behind my poor performance in school was a general lack of discipline, respect for authority and self-control.

To counteract this, my father decided that he was enrolling me in a home-school boot camp. Basically, the idea was that for everything I did wrong, my father would effect some sort of punishment. Miss a question on a test? Do twenty push-ups. Talk back? Five lashes with a belt. Fail to turn in a homework assignment? 10 laps up and down the stairs of our house. I think you get the general idea.

This went on for about a month or so, when one day during my room inspection (bed made, floor vacuumed, no dust on shelves, etc.) my father pointed to a ruler that was sitting on my bookshelf. As the edge of the ruler was not perfectly parallel to the edge of the bookshelf, my father told me that I was to give him twenty push-ups. I thought that this was rather absurd. It had never been explained to me that the ruler was supposed to be parallel to the book case. He could offer me no clear reason as to how I should have known this, or why it should be the way it was. And I told him that. I told him it was absurd.

The purpose of this, my father explained, was so that I would learn that authority is absolute. Authority need not explain itself. Need not have a reason for doing what it was doing. My job was to submit to authority. Not to question authority, not to offer my take on what was going on. He then told me that I owed him forty, rather than twenty push-ups.

I believe that this is when I told him to go fuck himself. If I recall correctly, this is the point at which he removed his belt. (I'm not going to lie to you, my father used to say, this is going to hurt you more than it will hurt me.)

Our house at the time was a basic four-square set up. Four on the bottom floor, four on the second. The rooms on the ground floor each had a door leading in to either of the adjoining rooms. The second floor simply had a small hallway, mayhap six feet long, from which one could access any of the four rooms on the second floor.

My father's belt came off. I bolted.

There was a pretty good twenty to thirty minute period where my father chased me around the house (I mean this literally, we made quite a few laps around the ground floor.) You've got to bear in mind while reading this that my father was about thirty-six at the time. About sixty pounds overweight. Drank until he passed out whereever he happened to be four to five nights a week (and was probably pretty well inebriated as this was happening). Smoked a pack or two a day.

I'd been doing wind sprints on our stairs daily for the previous month.

Eventually, after a good half hour or so, I'd ended up in my parent's room. Entering their room, one directly faced the side of their bed. There was a small opening on the far side of the bed where the bed was separated from the wall by a night stand. Unlike the dining room, where I could simply run clockwise or counterclockwise around the table depending on which way my father came at me (You're going that way, I guess I'm obviously going the other way.  There was a nice Keystone Cops atmostphere to the dining room), once I was on the far side of my father's bed, I was pretty much hemmed in. We stood and faced off for a couple of minutes. Every time that he'd make a move to come around the bed I'd feint as if I were going to go over it. If he made to go over it, I'd start back around.

He finally commited to going around the bed. I scrambled over my mother who was in bed, reading. At this point, my mother finally opened her mouth and told my father to cut it out. Which pretty much ended boot camp.

My father and I had many disagreements while I was growing up. Most of them did not end nearly so luckily for me. It's kind of funny, though. We'd argue a lot. He'd beat the shit out of me. But for all of the arguments, and for all of the times I'd bleed myself to sleep at night, I never became any more convinced that my father was right, nor any less convinced that he was merely an asshole.

In the years since, I've told this story to a few people.  People have often asked me why I didn't just leave the house.  I'm not sure where an 11 year old would have gone.  Walk out the door and get picked up by the cops five hours or five days later?  I pretty much just bode my time and made a move.  I figured when the time was right, I'd get out of the house and into the real world.

As I see more of the real world, I tend to believe that my father was right, in some respects.  Most people view power as a form of authority.  They deserve respect for their ability to harm.  Regardless of how correct what they are saying is.  I still don't really think that's any more right or those people are any less of assholes.

Humor.

A FaceBook friend sent me this link yesterday.  I'd responded that the home page and second page strike me as pretty purely dead-on.  My friend's response to that was that "Certainly made me feel uncomfortable, which is probably the point. :)"

It's an interesting statement which can be read from a couple of angles.  

Do I think that the makers of this film intend to make you uncomfortable?  Are they rudely trying to take you to a place where you are made to feel that you don't belong?  No.


Are they trying to show you something of the daily discomfort faced by people who live their lives with ASD every day?  Yes.  Does that make you uncomfortable?  Welcome to my world.  Let's talk about empathy.


Tom Stoppard, in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, says -

"All your life you live so close to truth it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it's like being ambushed by a grotesque."

That's about as NT as NT gets in my book.  Truth?  Let's shove that to the corner of our eye.  We'll gloss it over.  Throw it to the periphery.  Do what we can to avoid facing it.  That woman with her face in the mashed potatoes?  What woman?  (Face is an interesting concept, on multiple levels.)

Oscar Wilde has said -

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

I've mentioned before that I think that he has this just about completely backwards.  As far as I can tell, if you want to make people laugh, you can simply tell them the truth.  Most people spend so much time avoiding the truth that if you put it in front of them, make them face it, nudge it into outline, they'll assume you must be joking.  I guess it's easier to make a joke of suffering than it is to face it.

One of my first encounters with the idea of ASD behaviors came in the mid-90's via a New York Times article.  In the article, there was mention of a man that was having workplace difficulties because of his Asperger's.  The article went on to relate an anecdote about the time the guy was in a meeting at work.  His boss put forth some numbers which were incorrect.  The guy corrected his boss.  This didn't go down too well.

After the meeting, it was said, the gentleman's co-workers took him aside, explained that he was correct, but told him not to do that in the future.  As a work around to the guy's disability, they'd worked out a simple set of clear signals (kick his foot under the table, something like that) to let the guy know when the truth is inappropriate.

That?  That's nuts.

Trust.

Still in a bit of a stupor, but I've been reading up a bit on the WikiLeaks release of U.S. Diplomatic cables.

It's a pretty fascinating story.  I think it highlights almost two entirely differing conceptions of the word "trust."  And I'm not sure how well I'll be able to articulate this, but I'll take a stab at it.

Is there a difference between placing information in trust (ie. I place this information in your trust, please use it wisely and judiciously) and placing trust in information (ie. We are speaking and I know that what I get from you is what there is.)?

They are both essentially ways in which you offer someone your trust.  But they're almost at perpendiculars.  What do you mean when you trust someone?  Do you trust them to be forthright and honest?  Or do you trust them to be sensitive and discreet?

Am I making any sense?  Or is this too much DayQuil talking?

Music.

Tends to be a very large part of my life.  I'm still in a NyQuil induced idiocy.  Once I resume my baseline, non-sick idiocy, I want to find a way to start throwing tracks up here.  Anyone have any familiarity with how one goes about doing that on a day-to-day basis? 

It appears that blogger allows me to upload videos, but it doesn't allow me to upload music files.  Is this all tied to pesky copyright laws?  For now, I think I'm just going to throw a link to a clip on YouTube.

I had some fun at the bar the other night.  You're much more likely to hear some Toby Keith, Social Distortion or Johnny Cash at Shooters than anything else.  If I never hear another Kid Rock song, I may wet myself with joy.  That Tenacious D song about how he wants to fuck you, I'll admit, I thought was kind of funny the first time I'd heard it five years ago.  Not so much on the fifth time in one night, though.  Buckcherry's "Crazy Bitch?"  It can be kind of like watching Beavis and Butthead with Beavis and Butthead.

I'll occasionally try to break the pace.  Throw out anything.  Anything to change it up.  Chuck Mangione.  Archie Bell and the Drells.  Gil Scott-Heron.  Nina Simone.  Alison Kraus.  P.I.L. Gang of Four.  The Pixies.  Whatever.

I threw about five dollars in the jukebox the other night and started with a house remix.  I was mocked.  Maxwell went over only slightly better.  It took about three to four songs before the comments about "fag music" ended.  Around the time Sheila E. and Chaka Khan made it in, they started moving.  By the time we made it to Eddie Grant's "Electric Avenue," they were rocking it.  Pop?  Trash?

I enjoyed myself.

It's funny, but the older I get the less I understand the concept of obscurity with respect to music.  Does that make sense?   Obscure?  Obscure to whom?

A quote.

Still sick, so just going to throw a quote up.  This excerpt would make me laugh if it didn't make me want to cry.

Indeed, for children with certain kinds of developmental disabilities, the inability to lie can be viewed as a symptom of the disorder. The best example is children with autism, a profound disability in which children exhibit language difficulties and such social deficits as the ability to respond to others' emotions.

Parents of children with autism often report that their children are simply incapable of lying. While at first glance unrelenting honesty might be seen as a virtue, in fact it is at the heart of the social difficulties children with autism experience. For instance, playing children's games becomes an impossibility if the games require children to engage in pretend play. Children with autism are thought to lack a theory of mind allowing them to understand that others have their own perspectives and emotions. In order for a child with autism to lie, they have to understand that two different perspectives are possible simultaneously: the true one ("I broke the lamp") and a false one ("Someone else broke it"). Not only are children with autism unable to imagine that false perspective, but they may be unable to understand that the perspective that others hold is different from their own. The inability to understand that multiple perspectives exist makes them feel that what's in their own mind ("I broke the lamp") is apparent to everyone else.

Consider the irony of the situation. Honesty in children with autism is viewed as a manifestation of their disorder. Subsequently, autistic children who were originally unfailingly honest but have begun to show signs of lying effectively are considered to be showing improvement in their condition.

From The Liar in you Life: The Way to Truthful Relationships.

So basically, autistics assume that you're smart enough to see through bullshit and so don't bother trying. Consider the irony of the situation? I think I'd rather not.

This reminds me of an incident that happened at a restaurant I was working at a couple of years ago.  It had been a slow night and I was breaking the place down with a coworker.  I noticed that a certain container was about half as full as it had been a few moments before.  Saw that the contents that had been in it was now splattered on a shelf to the side.  I mentioned it to my coworker.  Asked him when he'd spilled it.  He sat and denied that he'd had anything to do with it.  Said that it had been that empty the whole time.  I pointed out the mess that he'd missed, noted that there had only been the two of us in the restaurant for at least an hour, and said that I really didn't give a damn one way or the other.  It wasn't me, so that pretty much leaves you, I said.

Took him a good 5-10 minutes to drop the pretense.

Not really feeling it today...

But I'm going to try to make an effort to put at least a little something up every day.  As much to develop the habit and run the groove (rut?) as anything else...

I'm running a pretty nice cold and am in a medicated haze at the moment, so I'm not sure I have much of my own to offer at the moment.  So I'll step aside and throw a couple of links up tonight.  Just a couple of things that have caught my eye, caught my mind, recently.

For the first one, I'd like to introduce you to the Red Shirt Guy if you've not seen him before.   He showed up on the internet a few weeks back, maybe a month or two.  Something like that.  If you don't know what he's talking about, you're probably not alone.  He basically showed up at a gamers convention and called out the developers of the game for fucking up their own storyline.  And for doing so, was dubbed the nerd that out-nerded every nerd, ever.  There was a bit of a backlash when the video first circulated.

It was fairly obvious to a lot of the people that saw the clip that the Red Shirt Guy falls somewhere to the Asperger's end of the spectrum.  And quite a few voices started questioning whether it was okay to mock the kid for his disability.  The general tenor of their responses was one of condescending pity.  They felt sorry for the guy.

A few days after the initial video showed, the Red Shirt Guy posted a response, in which he confirms that he has Asperger's.  

You may look at the initial video and watch with a smug grin.   Or you might watch the second one and feel a sorrowful pity.

I don't think either of those responses are justified.  One of the things I love about talking to people on the spectrum...  It doesn't matter to them whether or not you think what they're doing is cool or hip or whatever.  You get their passion, regardless of what you or anyone else might think of it.  You get truth, regardless of the social acceptability of that.  And that's something I respect.  I say much props.

And as a secondary, I'll post a link to a piece that my friend Debi threw up on FaceBook today, where Jenny Browne argues that "We Should Dance While We Can."

That baby is 4 now, and we talk to her about my father, and about Wynn, knowing all she will remember are stories. We don’t talk about Scott tracing dead-end e-mail trails night after night, researching mental illness, raging at his lost brother and at me, digging futilely for answers.

We talk.  We don't talk.  We speak of.  We deny.  We acknowledge.  We ignore.

I can't help but think of Audre Lourde, saying "Your silence will not protect you."

Thanksgiving? Meh.

Holidays.

Meh.  Humbug.  Something like that.  No.  Really.

Holidays. Family. Friends. Friendship. Kindness. Honesty. Memory. Truth. Hope. Caring.

Like entering a dark room and banging your shin against hard wood.  I stumble over these words quite a bit.  I mentioned in the first post that you'll get a lot of words from me.  Thanksgiving's a day when I have a bit more time on my hands than most people, so you'll probably get even more than you normally would.

My family was never that into holidays in general.  My family wasn't that into family.  My memories of Thanksgiving as a kid were just about as screwy as every other day of the year.

One of my favorite Thanksgiving memories came when I was seventeen or so.  Mrs. Small, my brother's old homeroom teacher and my bio teacher, invited me to share dinner with her and her daughter, Laura.  We sat and ate and rocked it to Neil Diamond as we did the dishes. Which sounds about right.  Good memories with someone else's family. 

My family?  Not so much.  My parents would often use the holidays to piss each other off.  My mother would tell my brother and I that we were having dinner at my aunt's house at 1 pm.  So we'd go to my father's at 10 in the morning, not eat a thing, and then head over to my mother's side of the family.  And be told that we weren't eating until 6 and weren't allowed to have anything until dinner.

When my parents were together, it really wasn't much better.  I remember being ten or so and the dinner at our house.  Mom, dad, my brother.  Me.  Dad's dad.  And his second wife.  Pretty much every adult in the place was shitfaced.  About midway through the meal, Grandpop's wife took a nap.  At the table.  Head down.  Drooling.  I think she may have face-planted in her plate, though that may be an embellishment, a nice little flourish thrown on at the end.  I don't completely recall.

I do recall that we spent another half hour sitting around that table and acting as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening at all.  In a certain sense, there wasn't really anything out of the ordinary about what was happening at all.  You could use that as a metaphor for my childhood, but for the fact that metaphors are supposed to be about substituting one thing for another.  That was my childhood.

Most NT behavior strikes me as not much different.  An acquaintance on FB recently posted this video...

That bit that starts at about 3 minutes in is hilarious.  It also strikes me as almost paradigmatically NT behavior.  Because -

"All of a sudden shit gets real and you're like, blinders up. I didn't see shit. No. That's not my puppet. I don't know that puppet."

That woman passed out in the mashed potatoes?  What woman?  Not my puppet.  I don't know that puppet.

I repeat myself.  I often do.  I've mentioned on numerous occasions that I think that James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" is quite possibly my favorite short story ever.  There's an absolutely brilliant passage at the beginning of the piece.

I couldn't believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn't find any room for it anywhere inside me. I had kept it outside me for a long time. I hadn't wanted to know. I had had suspicions, but I didn't name them, I kept putting them away. I told myself that Sonny was wild, but he wasn't crazy. And he'd always been a good boy, he hadn't ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids can, so quick, so quick, especially in Harlem. I didn't want to believe that I'd ever see my brother going down, coming to nothing, all that light in his face gone out, in the condition I'd already seen so many others...

I kept it outside of me for a long time.  I hadn't wanted to know.   I didn't want to believe.  That's not my puppet.  I don't know that puppet.  I've been that puppet.

When I was 24, my father died.  His liver finally gave out.  My family did what my family did.  And I turned to my friends.  Only to find that quite a few of them weren't there at all.  (Eric Geyer is strongly exempted from this statement.)

I was told that I was a downer.  I couldn't expect people to want to have to think about such things.  People didn't want to have to think about what it would be like to have someone in their family die.  Admittedly, it was rather inconsiderate of me to have my father die.  I promise I won't let it happen again.  But it was "blinders up" and Jesse out.  The woman that I'd been trying to date (or be friends with) for six months prior to that told me never to call her again three weeks after my father died and two weeks after she told me that I should call her if I needed to talk.  I guess she hadn't wanted to know.  She'd been lying to me, she said, because she hadn't wanted to seem like a bitch.

One girl I knew literally crossed the street the first time she saw me coming.  I guess she wanted to keep it outside of her.

One guy I knew took it upon himself to end our friendship after a couple of conversations we'd had.  I had told him that my younger brother, Ryan, had been suspended from school after cursing at a teacher.  He told me that he thought anger was an absurd response to a death.  I didn't quite agree.  Still don't.  Oddly enough, he ended the friendship after I told him that we could talk about it after he'd gone through it.  Talk to me after you bury your father, I said.  Sam was Arabic.  I was told that in his culture, even speaking of such things was tantamount to wishing them upon him.  Sam seemed to think anger a justified response in that situation.  I guess he hadn't wanted to believe that it could happen.  Not his puppet, not his father, I guess.

Many of you know that I asked Jessica Joyner out a ways back.  And a lot of you have asked me why I'm still even talking about that.  As noted before, my mind doesn't really process information in the same way most of yours does.  I'm not sure I can express what it meant to me to ask her out.  Or how hard that was.  The first time I'd asked her out, she had asked me in what sense I wanted to go out.  I told her that I'd be up for hanging out in any sense she wanted to.  And I meant that.  I'd have been as up for a cup of coffee and conversation as anything.  She told me that she was already seeing someone, so I let it go at that.

One thing that puts me in an entirely different place than a lot of you.  I don't have much in the way of family.  My brother died when I was 16.  Father when I was 24.   Haven't spoken to my mother in about a decade.  And that's a longer story than I think I want to enter with this post.  But for the most part, I don't have a family.  I've got friends or I have nothing.  My friendship isn't something that I offer lightly.  My friendships are about all I have to sustain me.

When I'd heard that Jessica had broken up with her boyfriend, I waited a few months and asked again.  It's funny.  I looked at her and wanted to be a better person than I am.  Looked at her and thought that there would even be a point in trying.  Thought that with what kindness she had shown me in the past, there might be someone who would be willing to give me a chance/hand at doing that.  I hadn't realised that what I thought was kindness was really only politeness.  There's a reason I'd asked her to be direct when I asked her out the second time.  I wouldn't be able to understand her otherwise, I said.

She explained to me that she had just broken up with her boyfriend the previous week and wasn't really up for seeing anyone at the time.  Told me that I just needed to give myself a chance.  Said people might surprise me.  I had thought that that was what I'd been asking for.  A chance to try to surprise someone.  So much for chances. She said that she hoped we could still be friends.  And I, being me, didn't realise that that wasn't kindness, but politeness.  As I've noted before, my friendships are about all I have to go on.  Words and friendships.  She offered me hope.  She offered me friendship.  I didn't realise that she wasn't offering anything at all.  I didn't realise that what I was being shown wasn't caring, but pity.  And pity was not what I'd asked for at all.

I'd say that you could take that as a metaphor for a lot of what's happening in my life, but you know, a metaphor is about substituting one thing for another.

Hope isn't something that comes easily to me.  It's not something I often allow myself to feel, as it very often turns to out to be false.

I think that one of the ways that I tend to see things differently than most.  My "now" is pretty long.  Having an excellent memory can be as much a hindrance as a help.  I can remember a conversation from 10 years ago with startling accuracy.  But in a lot of ways, I carry things forward in ways that NT people don't.  Or maybe we all carry things forward.  It seems to me that we do.  Our lives are shaped by the interactions we have with other people.  We carry those forward.

We all continue the story.  Shape the narrative.  Carry on the conversation.  Some more than others.  I happen to carry it more heavily than the typical person.   Given the nature of my mind, I'm not sure how well I'm heard.  Or if what I'm hearing means what I think it means.  Regardless, I'd like to thank any of you who take the time to listen.  Baldwin tells us that there's no way not to suffer.  So much hatred, anger and love...  But Baldwin also tells us that we can find redemption.  We can offer redemption.  We do it by listening.  You can try to keep it outside of you (not my puppet) or you can find a way to listen.  If you're out there, thanks for listening.

Thanksgiving?

I'm thankful to Jessicca Clarke Schaeffer for reading what was an email that matched this post in length and taking the time to respond.  I'd also like to thank you for working at that soup kitchen.  I spent quite a bit of time eating in them when I was younger.  I'm not sure you know what it means to be on the other side of the counter.  Or how much it means to someone like me that people like you are willing to take the time to do that.

I'm thankful to my cousin, Jessica, for everything you've done over the past three years.  My mother might be too busy paying her mortgages to offer me support or help.  You were too busy with your mortgage, yet still found the time to offer help.

I'm thankful to Mike Jones, Krystle Mikolajczyk, James Caldera and Candice Lowell-Caldera for allowing me into your lives.  I look at the four of you and the relationships you have and hope for something similar myself one day.

Thank you to Ray McElroy, Nancy Sirvent, Kat Warren and Jean Heinsohn for all of the support over the past few years.  Support is often something that seems in short supply.

I would thank Kim Pennington, but she'll probably just let it go to her head.

Thanks to Mark Potter for offering a sane alternative to the OC.  Thanks to JJ and Chad and Alex for thinking of me when the game's about to start.

I will thank Munki, Armand and  Patti for keeping it real.  I know when I talk to you, odds are that what I'm told is exactly what is.  Even if it isn't always pretty.

To all of the LT, Readerville, BookBalloon and FaceBook peeps that listen to my ramblings.

Thanks to Eric Pierce for all of the help over the past six months.  To Yolanda Bishop for inviting me into your home.  To Kate Maloy for being the adopted mother I never had.  To Cody James for being as straight up compassionate as anyone I know.  To George and Kelly Alderman, Eric and Paula, for offering me a helping hand when I needed it.  To Debi Carey Harbuck for all of the comfort offered through the years.  To Thomas Howell and Larissa Humphrey, Jesse Depoy and Christina Castillo, Brennan Mulligan and Drew Meschter and Darren Clossin and Dallas Perez for taking the time to check in every now and again.  It always helps to know that someone is thinking of me. 

In short, I'd like to thank just about anyone that's taken the time to lend an ear or a hand or read a post.  Or who take the time to let me into your lives.  Who've offered friendship or kindness.

You give me hope.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

 

Reading.

Oddly enough, for as much I've read in the past, it's not something I do much at all anymore...

I spent the better part of my high school career doing extracurricular reading in class.  Class would be going on around me, I'd be sitting with a book hidden below my desktop.  Various teachers dealt with this in different ways.  Mr. Boyd, my 8th grade Algebra teacher (and one of my least favorite examples of the profession) dragged my desk (with me sitting in it) to the back of the room.  Told me that if I didn't want to participate in his class, I could sit by myself (ostracism is an interesting tactic).  I got a hell of a lot of reading done in his class.  I suppose I could thank him for that.

Mr. Gelman, who taught Psychology, once stopped the class about forty-five minutes in, and castigated me for not taking notes and reading instead.  He claimed that I was disrespecting him by giving him my undivided attention and having the courtesy to take notes.  I recapped his 45 minutes in three and pointed out that I had yet to get less than a 95% on any test that he had given.  He thought about it and let it go at that.

Ms. Zeigler, my Geometry teacher, used to ask me one question every class period, to make sure I had an inkling of what was being covered.  Every third or fourth day, she'd take a few minutes to come over and sit by me whilst everyone else was finishing whatever assignment they had.  She'd stop by, ask me what I was reading at the moment, talk it over with me briefly.  Towards the end of each marking period, she'd stop by with the sheet showing how she determined her grades (weightings of assignments, tests, notebook (the class notebook, handed in at the end of each marking period, may strike me as one of the most pointless ideas ever)) and a small sheet telling me how many of the homework assignments I hadn't done that I would need to complete in order to get various grades.  I loved Ms. Zeigler.

I spent the first couple of years out of high school hanging around a friend's dorm room reading his books.  (People are right, you can learn a lot at a college.)  Without having graduated from High School or having gone to college, I can still get about an 86% score on a literature specific GRE.  I'm guessing that this says less about me than it does about where the bar stands on the GRE.  I'm actually more proud of the time I gave all five questions to the Jeopardy round "South American Authors" without seeing the clues.

I had a good couple of years after my father died where I'd read a book or two a day.  I actively tried to read outside of whatever comfort-zone I thought I might have.  Forced myself to read things I would never have considered picking up in a million years.  Mitch Albom (a bit trite, but not so bad nonetheless), Paulo Coelho (Very trite, and now I know why I didn't want to read it), Ann Coulter, BDSM manuals, trash romance novels,self-help, math textbooks.  Anything.

I'd walk into a bookstore and pick a random person in the store and tell them to push a book on me.  Any book.

Not so much, anymore. 

And I'm really not so sure why that is.  I guess I've already heard too many words that haven't meant much of anything at all.  The older I get, the less convinced I am that many of them do mean much of anything.  I don't know.  I used to think that amongst those pages, I'd find some answers.  And in a lot of ways, I think I did.  The thing is, they're as contradictory and meandering and meaningful or meaningless as life itself.

One thing I have learned, though, it doesn't matter how "correct" a particular piece of knowledge or information is, if you are not around people who want to hear it in the first place.

Empathy.

One of the defining tropes in conversations regarding Autism is the inability of those displaying autistic tendencies to empathise with others.   Bluntly stated, I think that this is a load of shit.

If the standard neurotypical ("neurotypical" is a term for the "normal" mindset (and I can't even begin to tell you how much I dislike the word "normal")) individual can tell me what it's like to be autistic, I'll entertain the idea that NT's can empathise.  If autistics can't empathise with others, explain to me why such a thing as Autreat exists,  Because really, what is Autreat but a way for autistics to spend time around the people whom they understand and who understand them?

Let's talk about empathy.

Scenes.

The other day I, a DJ friend of mine from the Bay Area was talking to a friend of his on FaceBook about how "sick" a certain track was.  They were laughing about the fact that music that they like is often described as sick, disgusting, ill, fucked up, rude, etc.

It's interesting.  Back in the day, I used to go clubbing quite a bit.  You'll note that I didn't say that I'd go dancing.  I'm not the most physically adept person.  And there are very few things in this world that will make me more self-conscious more quickly than attempting to dance.  I'd normally just go out and soak up the music.  Watch the people.  Sit to the side and nod my head to the beat.  Occasionally try to find a way to strike up a conversation above the din.  I originally got into listening to house music specifically because it was a very mellow scene.  Didn't matter who you were, as long as you were up for some good music and a good time.  Black, white, straight, gay, Asian, Mexican, whatever...  It was always about respecting the music and the people around you.

I really don't think I realised how far from the mainstream San Francisco is until I left.  As I've noted before, I'd heard more racist comments, more homophobic comments, and more Def Leppard in the first six months in Orange County than in the previous decade in San Fran.  I'm not in Oz anymore.

The bar behind the place where I work recently reopened as a gay bar.  The owner, Nicco, insists that he's running it as a mixed club.  He's pretty much full of shit.  (Edit - Someone has told me that this is a bit harsh.  I don't mean it to be.  I wouldn't be stopping in to see the club and Nicco if I didn't like him and the space.  And I don't think there's a single business I've seen since coming to HB that I would love to see succeed more. It's not meant to be harsh, just honest.)

I'll normally poke my head in for at least five minutes each night, just to catch what's going and see what the DJ is throwing down.

Their resident is a gay guy that normally plays a lot of HiNRG Pop shit to satisfy the owner and his friends. I went in the other night to find a straight friend of mine swapping tracks with the DJ. They were just going head to head. Chris would lay down a track. Mike would throw down a response.

They weren't playing to a crowd, because there was no one in the place. They were playing to each other. It was literally just two people dropping respect (insane fucking track, brother) and knowledge (but have you heard this shit?) on each other. I've not used words like "sick" or "fucking disgusting" to describe a set in about a decade. This was all of that and then some.

Normally Chris, the resident,throws down tracks for the crowd. That night the two of them built a groove for the first time I've seen since the place opened. It was just two people playing off of each other and not giving a damn about their supposed differences. They just sat and traded love (that shit is disgusting) and respect (fucking gnarly track, brother). They built something larger than either of themselves by playing off their love for the music.

Call. Response. Response. Call. You hear me? I'm listening. You feel me? I'm right here with you.

It was hilarious. It's the best set I've heard since the place opened (arguably, the best set I've heard in a decade), and there wasn't much of anyone in the place to hear it.

Rude is just about right. Fuck gay bars. Fuck straight bars. Fuck black people. Fuck white people. I don't want to hear any of that. You want to play me some love and build a groove, I'll be listening. I'll be right there with you.

That may be crazy, but I'll take it.

I told you I don't normally dance, but I moved that night.

I was moved that night.


If anyone wants to throw me a track and drop some knowledge on me, I'm always more than up for listening,

Words.

Some days words come more easily than others.  Some days they don't come very easily at all.  Or maybe they just come so easily that I can't even delineate specific topics or write in a straightforward manner.  I always had problems with essay assignments in high school for this very reason.  I'm not good at limiting the context of my mind.  Today is not an easy day for words.

When I was 5 or 6 years old, one of my favorite books was Jean Lee Latham's Carry On, Mr. Bowditch.  I'd probably read it something like 30 times by the time I finished first grade.  There's a little snippet of the book that sums me in a lot of ways...

Mr. Ropes strolled back to Nat's desk.  "Nat, run over to my house, and look up Surveying in the Chambers Cyclopedia, will you? Hetty will show you where it is.  Write down what it says about the start of surveying.  You'll find everything you need on the desk."

Nat hurried over to Mr. Ropes' home.  A cyclopedia?  What in the world was that?  Well, Hetty would show him...

Soon he was sitting at the desk in the library, with four big books in front of him:  Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.  He turned the pages.   Everything was here!  Everything!   I'd like to begin at A, he thought, and read right through to Z!  But now he must find out about surveying. 

The Next thing Nat knew, Mr. Ropes was striding into the library, calling "Nat!  What in the name of sense happened to you?  Did you go to sleep?"

"No, sir.  I'm copying what it says about surveying.  But there's a good bit to look up.  It's a little hard to tell where the start of it is.  I've looked up trigonometry  - that's the kind of mathematics they use - And I've looked up theodolites - that's the kind of telescope they use.  Then there's something about finding your position by sighting a star, so I got into astronomy.  I can't tell yet where surveying starts - with astronomy, or trigonometry or the theodolite, or -"

"Nat Bowditch!" Mr. Ropes threw himself in a chair and laughed until he wiped his eyes.  "Where did it start?  In what country?  That's all I wanted to know!  Give me that book a moment! . . .See?  Right here!  It says that surveying probably began in Egypt! Right!"

Nat said, "Oh... that's all you wanted to know?"

 I can't begin to tell you how many times I've had that conversation.

"How are you?" 

Well, I'd like to start at A and work through to Z.  No, just fine, thank you.  And you?

As a small aside, I was thinking about the statement I'd made the other day about not being able to separate the chapters of my life.  Not being able to box off or compartmentalise my thoughts.  Blogger tells me that I should be throwing labels on my posts. I assume that that's the equivalent of tagging them.  Not a concept I'm very good at, so if anyone wants to suggest tags for specific posts, feel free.

One of the funnier conversations I've had recently.

I eat by working at a bar.  I can't state that any more simply or literally.  I help out at a local bar in order to have the cash in my hand on a daily basis to be able to put food in my stomach.  This may strike you as an odd choice of jobs for someone like me to have.  I'm not sure I could agree more.  Drinkers can be flaky, shallow and dishonest as all hell.  Irrational as motherfuckers, too.  It's not a trait-set that goes well with an autistic mindset.

Regardless, I had a conversation the other night that drives home a lot of how this world seems to me (my cousin says I speak in stories.  Stories encapsulate truth for me.)

One of the bartenders at the bar where I work is a surfer.  Pretty nice guy, for what it's worth. But A. was talking to a friend of his the other night about me.  A,'s friend is a surfer, too.  The friend was in town to paddle out after Andy Irons died.  But something about me happened to rub A's friend the wrong way.  I'm told that I can come off as rather brusque or aloof.  I'm about as far from a surfer as one can get.  If I'm laid back about something, I may as well not even be in the room.

A.'s friend decided that he was going to start bagging on me.  A. stepped in and told his friend to let it ride.  By way of explanation, he explained that I don't "have aloha."  As I mentioned earlier, I'm not a surfer.  I'm not even sure what it means to "have aloha."  (I had a pretty good idea what was meant by that when it was uttered.  I've spent enough time hanging around places where I'm out of place (read:  this world) to know when I'm being called an uptight peckerwood.)  But I didn't disagree with A. when he said this about me...

I turned to A. and told him that he was right.  I don't have aloha.  I don't know the first fucking thing about aloha spirit.  I'm a mildly autistic haole from the East Coast.  What the fuck would you expect me to know of aloha?

After this went on for a couple of minutes, I turned to A. and said "Hey, man, rather than complain that I don't know aloha, why not fill a brother in?"

A. told me that if I wanted to learn about aloha, I just needed to go hang out at the beach.  "You'll pick up some aloha down there," he said.

"That sounds like it could be cool," I said, "What say you run me down?  Take me over to the beach.  Introduce me to the scene. Start showing me the ropes."

"Fuck that," he said.

Explain to me again how this haole is supposed to know aloha.

Part of the reason I'm not sure I can pull this off...

I noted in the first post that I speak in hypertext.  I also noted that I'm not sure that I can even begin to describe what I meant when I said that.

One of the more common complaints amongst people on the spectrum (which is actually somewhat misleading.  We're all on the spectrum.  Some of us just fall further out than others) is that they continually forget for most people that "How are you?" is a question that isn't meant to be answered.  It's not a question that most autistic people would think to ask unless they wanted the answer.  The phatic formulation of that isn't something that makes sense to us.  There's a first-order meaning to the phrase (Tell me how you're doing) and a second-order meaning to the phrase (You are occupying the same space as me, so I must acknowledge your presence in order to be seen as polite.  Please, please, please don't tell me how you're doing.  Tell me things are great.)  That second order phrasing doesn't come naturally to me.  Does that make sense?

Discerning the difference between first order and second order phrasings is (I don't want to say "hard") but rather, odd, for me. There's an interesting post over at MOM - Not Otherwise Specified that speaks to some of this.  I really don't find that child's behavior as bizarre as most people would.  In some sense, it's what we (even you) all do (You may note that I often use the phrase "in some sense."  You may even feel I overuse it.  There's a reason for that formulation.  We all speak in context.  For some of us, context comes naturally.  For some of us, there's nothing but context.)   But we all follow scripts.

In a conversation with an acquaintance on FaceBook, recently, she explained to me that protocol (for which one can substitute "the rules which govern social interaction") is the "formalised pretense of caring."  It's a formulation that at once strikes me as utterly absurd and yet entirely spot-on.  Social protocol dictates the "correct" response by social context rather than by "truthfulness" of response.  "How are you?" dictates that one respond "Great. And you?" rather than "Shitty.  My cat just died."  (And I'm sure many of you would argue that depending on whom you're speaking, that second answer might even be appropriate.  I really don't feel like getting into that at the moment.)

Depending on who you are and who you are speaking to, you will alter the "script" that you follow (and if you want to substitute "protocol" for "script," I think that that might help you understand what I'm trying to get at.)  For me, it's not so much that I have problems because I'm stuck on one script, but rather that there are so many differing scripts and readings of any one conversation, that I try to collapse those to the most literal one possible, to make communication possible.  Reading something like Finnegan's Wake can actually render me somewhat aphasic or catatonic.  Because there's so much ambiguity or slipperiness in the use of language there, my mind goes into overdrive.  It turns into a computer stuck in an infinite loop.  Reading a single sentence of Finnegan's Wake can send me into a cascade of word associations (or Jesse disassociations) that I can get lost in for minutes, if not hours, at a time.  I'm trying to figure out a way to put this cogently.

In a recent conversation someone related a story to me (and this may be what my cousin means when she tells me that I "speak in stories"), a friend told me of the time that someone asked one of the children of one of the band members from the Grateful Dead how he felt being the child of a famous musician had made him different from other children.  He responded along the lines of "I don't know.  How would I know what it's like to have had a 'normal' childhood?"  I can get behind that.

Language, for me, is an almost entirely associative act.  You mention the word chicken and I might start thinking about El Pollo Loco, the time my father was so fucked up that he cooked dinner and mistook the call for 2 teaspoons of lemon juice in the recipe as a call for 2 cups (it was eaten, nonetheless, my father was nothing if not a man that would not waste a dime on anything that wasn't booze), the cliff scene in Rebel Without a Cause, memories of cooking pollo al mattone, some song that I'd gladly not hear again for another five years and so on and so on.   It's actually hard for me to stay first order. 

Or something like that.

You ask me "How are you?" and my natural inclination is to collapse that statement to the first order.  You open the lid on that box and everything will suddenly fly out.  Many of the other senses that it can be meant are too terrible to contemplate.  Unfortunately, this can often leave me out of sync with a conversation.) Feyman says that "Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry."  Language and memory function for me functions in much the same way.  Any word brings back the whole thing, if you only follow the thread.

In earlier times, I had a copy of a poem written not long after my brother died.  It was something that resonated very deeply with me.  Serendipitously, I met the poet a year or so later.   We became pretty close friends.  There was a line in the poem that went like this "Let another separate these chapters of my life."  This separation is not something that comes naturally to me.   This drawing of life into distinct bites or posts or capsules.  Language and memory are largely recursive for me.  They're resonant.  You say this and that rings a bell somewhere in my head about the time I was in band camp (well, I never went to band camp, but I think you get the idea.)  It's redundant and functions by accretion.  It's like playing a symphony with small variations on the theme.   Repeat the motif, change a note.  It's part of the reason I repeat myself and my stories so often.  These are all touchstones in the narrative that make me me.  These are all the function of my memory.   Some play larger parts than others.  But I'm not sure that I can impose an absolute order on them from above.

And I'm not necessarily sure that this is the right format to try to use to do that.