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.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Friday, November 19, 2010
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.
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.
So not sure...
If I'll actually follow through with any of this, but I've been toying with the idea of setting up a blog for a bit of time now. The thing is, I'm not even sure I like the concept of blogging. It's too unidirectional.
When discussing things with people, I much prefer to have conversations (though I'm told that I often tend to not be responsive enough to anyone else's part of the conversation. I have many ideas, and not many ways to get them out.) Conversations don't always come easily to me. Most social interaction doesn't. Most of the ways that people socialise don't make much sense to me either. It seems to me that, very often, most people enjoy spending time around other people more than they enjoy spending time with other people.
If I do decide to follow through on the idea, this blog will probably be nothing more than my way to try to get the thoughts within my head outside of it. Much like the title, it may very well end by being the disjointed ramblings of a slightly disordered mind. Forgive me if it appears as such. Forgive me if it is such. This world doesn't always make sense to me. This will be my weak attempt to come to terms (in a literal sense) with the world around me. It will probably function more as an open journal than anything else. You can feel free to read along, free to ignore it. Or free to chime in as you see fit.
If you've interacted with me at all over the past five years, you'll know by now that I'm pretty sure I'm at least mildly autistic. I've never been properly diagnosed, nor do I have the resources to get a diagnosis at this time, but most of the signs seem to point that way. In a certain sense, as I've noted elsewhere, I think that this leaves me as something of the equivalent of a blind man in a world filled with those that can see. I have an entirely different set of capabilities than those that around me. I'm worse at some, better at others. It's often noted that those that are blind often developed heightened sensitivity in other senses. And in a certain sense, I think that this describes me very well. I don't understand non-verbal cues very well. I do have a strong affinity to sound and words and language (even the language of math) and rhythm and melody (even if I cannot replicate those things myself). These things are all variations on a theme for me. They are all forms of expression, all forms of language I can understand. Like a Stoppard character, words, words, they're all I have to go on. Sounds, sounds, they're all I have to understand.
What you'll get here? In all probability, quite a lot of words. When I say that I have an affinity for words, I'm not sure that I mean that in the same sense that most people do. I know I don't use them in the same way that most people do. I know that I often misconstrue the meanings of the words that other people use. Friendship, love, kindness, politeness, compassion, truth, honesty, acceptance, conversation, trust, family, forgiveness, suffering... These are all words that I stumble across every day. In a literal sense. Like entering a darkened room and bumping your shin on a chair, I stumble across these words as I move through this world.
My cousin tells me that I speak in stories. I'm not sure what that means. Someone else has told me that I speak in maths. I'm not sure I know what that means, either. For me, it often feels as if I speak in hypertext, slowly trying to elucidate the links between things, so that I might understand them better. And for the third time, I'm not sure I understand what that means. Or even if it is something that is possible to convey. And if it is possible to convey, I'm not sure that there's much of anyone out there that can be bothered to listen.
So if you're up for the ride, feel free to tag along. If you've spent any time with me over the past, you'll know that I may often repeat myself. If you've spent any time with me in the past, you've probably heard quite a few of these stories already. Forgive me if I repeat myself. You'll also note that I can be amazingly blunt. And I have a tendency towards words that most of polite society would say that we should not use. This may merely be my attempt to bring the truth within me to the outside light. As I stated at the opening, I'm not even sure I feel comfortable with the platform. If you wish to ask a question or offer commentary, feel free. It might make the space feel a bit more like home.
When discussing things with people, I much prefer to have conversations (though I'm told that I often tend to not be responsive enough to anyone else's part of the conversation. I have many ideas, and not many ways to get them out.) Conversations don't always come easily to me. Most social interaction doesn't. Most of the ways that people socialise don't make much sense to me either. It seems to me that, very often, most people enjoy spending time around other people more than they enjoy spending time with other people.
If I do decide to follow through on the idea, this blog will probably be nothing more than my way to try to get the thoughts within my head outside of it. Much like the title, it may very well end by being the disjointed ramblings of a slightly disordered mind. Forgive me if it appears as such. Forgive me if it is such. This world doesn't always make sense to me. This will be my weak attempt to come to terms (in a literal sense) with the world around me. It will probably function more as an open journal than anything else. You can feel free to read along, free to ignore it. Or free to chime in as you see fit.
If you've interacted with me at all over the past five years, you'll know by now that I'm pretty sure I'm at least mildly autistic. I've never been properly diagnosed, nor do I have the resources to get a diagnosis at this time, but most of the signs seem to point that way. In a certain sense, as I've noted elsewhere, I think that this leaves me as something of the equivalent of a blind man in a world filled with those that can see. I have an entirely different set of capabilities than those that around me. I'm worse at some, better at others. It's often noted that those that are blind often developed heightened sensitivity in other senses. And in a certain sense, I think that this describes me very well. I don't understand non-verbal cues very well. I do have a strong affinity to sound and words and language (even the language of math) and rhythm and melody (even if I cannot replicate those things myself). These things are all variations on a theme for me. They are all forms of expression, all forms of language I can understand. Like a Stoppard character, words, words, they're all I have to go on. Sounds, sounds, they're all I have to understand.
What you'll get here? In all probability, quite a lot of words. When I say that I have an affinity for words, I'm not sure that I mean that in the same sense that most people do. I know I don't use them in the same way that most people do. I know that I often misconstrue the meanings of the words that other people use. Friendship, love, kindness, politeness, compassion, truth, honesty, acceptance, conversation, trust, family, forgiveness, suffering... These are all words that I stumble across every day. In a literal sense. Like entering a darkened room and bumping your shin on a chair, I stumble across these words as I move through this world.
My cousin tells me that I speak in stories. I'm not sure what that means. Someone else has told me that I speak in maths. I'm not sure I know what that means, either. For me, it often feels as if I speak in hypertext, slowly trying to elucidate the links between things, so that I might understand them better. And for the third time, I'm not sure I understand what that means. Or even if it is something that is possible to convey. And if it is possible to convey, I'm not sure that there's much of anyone out there that can be bothered to listen.
So if you're up for the ride, feel free to tag along. If you've spent any time with me over the past, you'll know that I may often repeat myself. If you've spent any time with me in the past, you've probably heard quite a few of these stories already. Forgive me if I repeat myself. You'll also note that I can be amazingly blunt. And I have a tendency towards words that most of polite society would say that we should not use. This may merely be my attempt to bring the truth within me to the outside light. As I stated at the opening, I'm not even sure I feel comfortable with the platform. If you wish to ask a question or offer commentary, feel free. It might make the space feel a bit more like home.
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