consciousness

(via pvidyasagar dot wordpress dot com)

don't need this noun.

the ego is a matter of boundaries drawn, some of them more permeable than others. it is possible to "sit back" & watch things happen, even in the innermost citadel; to disown one's voice. then what remains? the habit of description. cliches of conceptuality. the old binary pairs, starting with "inside" & "outside".

we know that perception occurs, in the beings that live & whose lives depend on being elusive. sometimes our instruments correlate, such as photometers, to the point where we can declare that "light" is something both "internal" & "external". to the instruments: photons. to the mind: brightness. but what explanations are good for, lies elsewhere. we can perfect a machine that turns light into data; we can sharpen our senses, too. what kind of story could we tell, that would make the brightness collapse into one thing, light? is it enough to measure that reaction begins before the advent of willing it? then we are (meat-) robots who believe we are free. that still leaves us wondering why we do so, how belief works, & what robots are, that they should have such pretensions.

on the other hand, as Roethke said: "Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries."

Durable Balloons

     sonnet in -gry

Finding again my haggard heart fang-hungry
after a gram of psychotic pottingry
i wonder if i can mask with wonted rungry
grin like a choice Manhattan-fetching aggry.

Helmet i patch & this time, wrap the puggry;
questioning all, i'm yet of dreams the bowgry.
Where will i go? in public or in skugry
seek out a dragon-task not over-angry?

Truly we're hot to make the Double Ulgry
whether it's growth-enhancing, or in malgry:
let me forget that here i glister meagry...
Everyone's heaped like hares in a conygry!

So much have i tried to sundrily hide from vergry,
stodgeful's this box. Bring on the higry pigry.

(12 13 89 /publ Feb 91 Word Ways)

Lojban Quran Diary: i have decided to document my thoughts towards translating the Quran (via Pickthall's English & Chiussi's Esperanto translations) into Lojban.

Poisonous Nonsense

So, a youth emailed my wife this purported commencement speech by Boortz. I am sorry to say i actually read it to the end. Even though i generally approve of mythography, when its results are a net increase in human misery, i'm afraid i prefer the truth. And the truth is that this cartoon view has nothing to do with actual Republikan positions on climate change, polluting the environment, equal rights for minorities, freedom of abortion, quality education, or welfare for the very rich. But P T Barnum was right, & this email will be forwarded a million times before i finish typing my blog entry.

theism, theists

theism itself is oppressive. god everywhere, watching & keeping track.

theists can be nice people, or not so nice. i think the world's real problem is selfishness--though being self-deluded with a sense of religious righteousness tends to exacerbate this, for sure. same with political zealotry. i suppose any ideology can produce its torturers.

but i've gone from toleration, because everyone is entitled to their opinions, to active dislike, because it seems so much of the active harm people do, comes from trying to impose their beliefs on others--to an understanding that it's really about structuring your emotional life. everyone has symbols, rituals, & a feeling of relatedness to the world. even alienation is a feeling. i don't think these are all interchangeable, or equivalent, consequently; but i'm not going to try to argue another person out of it.

what the world needs is more cosmopolitanism--live & let live.
and solidarity. so i won't count people out, just because we don't have the same symbols in our heads.

(or because we experience the world differently, either.)

the social being

i am a lifelong nonconformist. as a kid i was even rebellious; fortunately, i was too smart not to see how dangerous this could become.

but eventually i came not to despise the existence of social conditioning in itself. just as there are conditions for me which render life infinitely more bearable, though idiosyncratic ones, i realize that it is as if all these others were one single being that sought to harmonize itself in the same way that i try to maintain my own environment. if i prefer silence, it prefers noise. if i choose my own path, it takes the path of the majority or least resistance. it doesn't, after all, require very much camouflage on my part; & in the place where i live, there isn't even hazard in slight nonconformity. sometimes i feel sad that the great social being cannot manage to preserve itself, over the long run, but will eventually fall apart--if it doesn't destroy all life on the planet first--: it's not aware of its actions like i am, nor of the farther reaches of causality. i say then, that i don't know where the social being came from, & maybe because it is so much larger than me, i am not in a good position to judge if this is part of its normal cycle, to be created & then to be destroyed, or part of an evolution into something that will become stable in time, one or more cycles hence.

i pretend at times that i can tell.

to read

somehow i just picked it up by looking over my mother's shoulder as she read to my brother, who was just one year older; this was prior to school age. so it was awhile before i came to anything there that i didn't already know.
i started going to the branch library regularly. i got tired of kid's books pretty early because for me they ended too soon. so i started on the adult science fiction--at the beginning of the alphabet. by sometime in jr. high, i had read all of these. but after that i had found particular interests & i read more & more nonfiction & started going to the central library downtown. i'd come out with a huge stack of books i could barely manage, & by the time i got home i'd have read half of one.
i remember the year they introduced a sort of color-coded ranked reading system where you read a text & then answered questions about it. i went through the whole thing in a single day. this was the time when they figured i could read about 1200 words per minute (i wouldn't read anywhere near that today: i like the sounds of words too much).
the thing i regret most about adulthood is i have so little time anymore for that kind of voracious reading. now i just buy books i might like & it can take a couple of years before i get around to opening them. in college i would sit on the floor between the stacks & read a book in a few hours if i found one i liked. these days i still try to get into one big book every year (last summer it was War and Peace). i'm about 3 Pynchons behind...

drawing

drawing for me falls into distinct phases. i remember being very visual as a child & how, at some point, i realized i was becoming less so. when i read a book, i really didn't experience the words as words but as a dim set of imagery, something like a movie i was making up as it went along. i had a sense of loss after i began only reading words, the sense & sound of the words becoming something i was afterwards conscious of noticing.

in the earlier part of my life, i drew constantly. i liked to use pencil, ballpoint, felt-tip pens. i must have started by drawing monsters. then i entered a long period where i only drew cars.
in both these periods i used elements of things i had seen, but much else i had never seen. at the end of my car period, i could draw much of the underlying structural detail of the cars from memory. style had become as important as the quality of detail.

taking an art class in high school, after i had more or less reached a static point in my drawing, was a revelation. i fell in love with color & abstract art. although before this i had gone through a short phase of painting impressionistic landscapes in watercolor on dampened paper (a technique i discovered for myself), this was a new kind of art for me.

i eventually studied oil painting in great depth--without great commercial success. (the effects i was striving for were too idiosyncratic, for the most part.) on the other hand, i began to avoid a "too-studied" look to my drawing, & to prefer the "wild" look of children's & naive artists'. to achieve this end, i stopped drawing with my right hand, & took up drawing with my left exclusively.

that's where i am today.

quirks

i've gotten used to myself by this point in my life, so it's hard to pick out specific things unless someone (like my wife) picks up on them.
let's see. i don't drive on the freeway. (but i will the interstate--in a city this size that means driving 10 miles to the edge of town & then finding an onramp.)
my sack lunch has slowly evolved but it's not that different from when i first started doing that, in 1986 i guess it was. enough crunchy & chewy things that it takes me 30 minutes to eat it. i always read while i eat, with my shoes off if this is possible.
i always carry two folded sheets of paper in my shirt pocket & 3 pens in different colors, so i can note down any thoughts i have worth preserving. i alternate colors, & when i cross something off (since this includes practical lists as well) i use a contrasting color. i used to have a system whereby i transferred these when they got full, to a categorized set of notebooks. i don't have time for that anymore, but i do keep the old notesheets with a faint hope of going back & catching up someday.
my fashion defiance has gone so far as to include socks with sandals & wearing contrasting plaids. (these effects i actually like.) i don't remember when i started fixing my own clothes when they got holes in them. sometimes i just use 2 or 3 safety pins, instead of sewing it.
for a long time i wore a black wool cape in cold weather. i still have it.
i read several books at once. for example, at work i read 30 minutes of one book, then 30 minutes of another. at home i alternate, but with a little more leeway. i try to be reading 2 contrasting eras, or subjects, or styles. once during my college days i remember i was reading Plato & Mein Kampf at the same time.
i like to make synthesizer music while in a semitrance state; also drumming, though neither one of these resembles ordinary music very closely. i've never been able to play in a real band, though, because i never do things the same way twice.
sometimes in my poetry i will use madeup words, or words of phrases from several languages, or no syntax English--not to be confusing but because this is the only way i know how to follow what my thought becomes.
i collect esoteric symbols & scraps of religions, ktp, not for what they mean but what they suggest to me. it's kind of like a magpie mythology, without stories or characters, & everything i create has a part in it, as well as everything significant that has happened to me.
(oh well, that part is just like any other artist isn't it?)
when i was young, in idleness i used to be constantly drawing with my eyes, tracing out shapes, arbitrary though they were. later i became more verbal, & i think there is an analogous verbal activity constantly going on--all apart from my actual thoughts & perceptions--like a subterranean current i can draw on at will.
what interests me is like sticking your hand out a car window at speed, feeling the air like a liquid. that's what i write about. interacting with that current.

counting nickels, counting words

Part of my job involves counting coins: nickels & dimes two at a time, quarters four at a
time, pennies five. Not just reducing “chaos” (the uncounted) to “order” (one count in an
array of counts), for each integer is the name of a sum & bears its own identity.

Integers are as distinct as colors, as words. (3334 no more resembles 3324 than “cult”
does “c**t”.) Making a count is the birth of another instantiation of some integer.
It connects in a family way with all the other sums of counted things in the world,
regardless of what they happen to be (jellybeans? nuclear warheads?). That number has
oddness or evenness, which in numbers is like their gender. And sometimes it’s prime,
which is the chief specialness of counted things.

I like counting nickels best—they are just the right weight & thickness, & a better metal
than quarters IMHO. A prime sum of nickels is better than a birthday.

Thus I like to count syllables in writing a poem. Almost always it’s an odd number,
most often seven, to a line. I oscillate between same-length lines & lines that go longer
& shorter. These correspond to kinds of moods. When I really want more number in
my poetry, I resort to “rhime”: that is to say, by adding up the letters of a word (A=1,
B=2…Z=26), so that any two words with the same sum are pairable, exactly like a sound-
rhyme. I find that with enough practice I remember some of the words that go together; &
this for me forms a completely new matrix of order within the existing system of English
words.

I will never count all the words, so that matrix has mystery.

good smells

woodsmoke, yes.
the smell of rain on the wind (which i have named "jairce").
frankincense.
coffee, especially when i haven't had any.
old books, especially a room full of them.
my wife has a perfume called Secret of Venus (now no longer manufactured) which was the best artificial scent i'd ever smelled.
a wheat field at dawn.
myrrh, too.
new records fresh out of the shrinkwrap.
linseed oil.
sage smoke.
cooking potatos.
olive oil being heated.
crayolas.

rituals

there are quite a lot of complicated bits to my routine, & other things i don't do except at odd intervals.

making turkish coffee on the stove, for me is nearly as enjoyable as drinking it. i bring it to nearly boiling three times, just like you're supposed to. i think it's either the holy trinity or else this custom was invented by an aspie.

i also have numerous rituals associated with writing poems. e. g. taking a line & using only anagrams of that line for each of the following lines (this may take awhile). but my favorite here must be the composition of a poembook. i choose the total number of poems so it equals a square number, number them chronologically, then sort them according to the places of a magic square. e. g. 4-9-2-3-5-7-8-1-6 if i had only nine poems. the one i wrote earliest would be in eighth place.

not only does this satisfy my sense of hidden order, it always creates interesting juxtapositions i never would have thought of.

fear & acceptance

more distinctions need to be made here. it seems to be that, while a majority of NTs are the sort that wants to be like other people & likes other people to be like them, a smaller but significant proportion prefers to be different from other people & appreciates difference in others. i have almost always found tolerance, & often support, among the latter, who tend to be alienated just as much in their own way (cf the first group i mentioned). conformity in our pseudo-individualistic age is a serious problem, true. but it does not help anyone to look at this in an alarmist way.

the first thing that comes to mind, is the fact that the group of like-minded (i associate these with Myers-Briggs dominant Sensing, mostly Extraverted Sensing types--but this pattern is not limited to those) is susceptible to what they are told; & if they are told there is a new minority among them that needs to be respected, eventually they will raise their kids to respect them & it will not always be prejudicial to grow up as one of that minority.

another point, is that there are what might be termed healthfear-crazes, or hot topics that sweep through society, by the same media, influencing people's insecurities into taking irrational & sometimes drastic action. maybe profit lies behind these, maybe they just happen & charlatans latch onto them. the thing about childhood immunization falls under this head. basically, put the facts out & discredit the fearmongers, is the way to proceed.

finally, i have come to understand that resistance to difference is not all the same even in those who are like-minded; & autism-spectrum affects them more viscereally even than skin color or physical deformity. this may be because they cannot imagine a mind that is otherwise & not inimical. or else maybe it is not even that close to being a thought.

this last may be beyond remedy; hence the need to write protection explicitly into our laws.

religion

i have learned from Platonism, the Christian mystics, Samkhya philosophy, Buddhism, Neopaganism, Existentialism, Sufism, Lurianic Qabbalah, & modern science. what is useful to me i keep. i'm better at imagining than at believing.

i don't think any gods explain our time better than H P Lovecraft's Mythos--but that's just as a metaphor. i seriously doubt the Old Ones will be interested in eating us, when they do return.

i could be wrong.



"Flags and creeds are parasites on humanity; parasites which cause derangement."

--The Theory and Practice of Oligarchic Collectivism

chess

i took to it immediately i guess it was the year of Bobby Fischer; i was an unformed pre-adolescent & it gave me, for the first time, an area outside of school i could excel at.

i played passionately at the local chess club for a number of years, with a little bit of monetary success, & a lots of success for my ego. almost managed a master's rating, but not consistently (too many sensitivities, things that could throw me off my stride. my one out-of-town tournament was a total fiasco...)

i still play online a bit, after a long layoff in which i tried to concentrate at things i was good at that also mattered. well, i found out that talent can only get you so far, & the rest is politics. what's that, & how do i learn it?

so, i still regard chess as a kind of platonic ideal of human interaction. all the rules are there.

Socially Awkward Penguin

Until i compose a few of my own...

another map of empathy

Other people's feelings.

Neurotypical: knows and cares.
Autistic-spectrum: doesn't know, but still cares.
Narcissist: knows but doesn't care.
Sociopath: doesn't know and doesn't care.

Which brings us to the question: what is it to know?

23 Vulcan words

a'rie'mnu: passion's mastery

awek'es: solitude, privacy

besau: to map

fusik: bashful, shy

it-fam: blunt, tactless

kla-lil: research (n)

koh-nar: cultural fear of emotional vulnerability

let'theiri: peace of mind-serenity

mnu: mastery

nel-dath: pattern

nenat-su'us: prime number

nirsh-saktra: neurotypical

ri'a'gra: singleminded

rilokavik starun: deceptive/misleading speech

riolozhikaikaik: highly illogical

limuk patalan: face detection

saktra: autistic

shi'dunap: library

telvan: reading

terish: the art of combining

trau'es: honesty

tsatik- secret (aj)

vakh-hal-tor: to go boldly

......................genius............................

Word denoting what, highest accolades? Earth-shaking? All-around handy? Incomprehensible, but--? Word used to aggravate me. I felt as rebuke. I never wanted to be a quiz kid: i couldn't help it. How was test-taking not part & parcel of the regimentation around me i so deeply abhorred? If they had rewarded me with freedom it might have meant something. They didn't.

You don't have to be supernaturally endowed to grok that this society is a game or rather, a whole set of interlocking games in which the actual solving of problems, say, nilpertains what the game calls "a good move"... In the pantheon of game-heroes you may scan names that once belonged to some of the luckier contestants. Now they're the wrapper, the advertizing.

In actual fact, on occasion one's contributions will be gladly acknowledged; more often, they're bitterly opposed at first then factions contest them for years. Ultimately it's forgotten even that there was a way to do things otherwise. That's society's last joke on the creative.

If you study game-history you learn of contributions scorned, just as worthy, & maybe you'll cherish names that no one else remembers. Do this for long, you'll begin to forget the solitary bitterness of not being acknowledged. It would be enough, wouldn't it, simply to notice & remember.

This is not in the game. Work at it.

maps

i have always loved maps & atlases of all sorts; one of the few good memories of my earlier schooling is the elaborately decorated maps i made for my Texas history class--i colored each of the counties in a different pattern--& did it differently every time.

i especially like atlases published between 1922 & 1943 that show the country of Tannu Tuva, famed for its throat-singing.

historical atlases--from classical times, ktp. these explain a lot about current events, actually (e.g. the Ottoman Empire)...

i even like imaginary maps. for instance, i treasure a book from the early 70's that predicted California would fall into the ocean--& printed a helpful chart of what the new coastline would look like.

also images of the earth after the polar caps melt. i think about this one a lot.

i have made my own maps in a limited way (the underground tunnel system downtown, a creek near my house).

sometimes i think of all my other work as map-making, only in places you can't walk.

self-awareness

i was a reader of science fiction from early on. when i finished all the kids' scifi i started in on the adults'.

i had already decided what i was.

i was a mutant.

coordination

when i was growing up, i wasn't very coordinated; i couldn't throw, or run, or fight like a good kid was supposed to.

after sleeping on a futon for 10 years, my posture, breathing & coordination improved markedly.
(i have read that the japanese, by sleeping on the floor, stay limber into old age.)

oh--but i'm still a terrible dancer.

functioning: low, high

i would just like to point out something that seems to me is not often enough examined: by employing the LINEAR concept of "low"--"high" we are obviating the palpable impact of circumstances & surroundings--indeed, i believe these are greater determinants of response than one's place on the "spectrum".

when my wife & i are with people i don't know, i notice she apologizes for me not saying much (or anything) & says, "he does talk"; when i am with people i trust & know well i can be actually quite verbose. likewise for spaces that are comfortable (close, familiar, not intensely loud or bright)--things i know about & can to some degree compensate for, but it takes an effort (occasionally an extreme effort) to overcome--versus, say, WalMart, an amusement park, or airports.

having a clear purpose, like a thread in the labyrinth.

and the whole sequence is important also. if i have had to drive in heavy traffic for an hour, even reaching a comfortable destination doesn't do me much good at first, & for some time thereafter.
i learned to travel early to the site of job interviews, & wait leisurely at a separate location to calm down. or the thought of having to leave on a similar journey, at a preordained time: this also jangles.

so you see that tests performed in a "lab" environment, travelled to from home, in themselves create a distortion-effect that is not considered part of the result.

i believe most people with whatever degree of aut-spectrum impairment could function in a society that granted them the possibility of secure spaces wherever they went, & peaceful transit thereto; even those whose are practically nonverbal.

but this is too utopian. it would be enough, just to take away the BLAME.

toleration, activism

it seems to be that, while a majority of NTs are the sort that wants to be like other people & likes other people to be like them, a smaller but significant proportion prefers to be different from other people & appreciates difference in others. i have almost always found tolerance, & often support, among the latter, who tend to be alienated just as much in their own way (cf the first group i mentioned). conformity in our pseudo-individualistic age is a serious problem, true. but it does not help anyone to look at this in an alarmist way.

the first thing that comes to mind, is the fact that the group of like-minded (i associate these with Myers-Briggs dominant Sensing, mostly Extraverted Sensing types--but this pattern is not limited to those) is susceptible to what they are told; & if they are told there is a new minority among them that needs to be respected, eventually they will raise their kids to respect them & it will not always be prejudicial to grow up as one of that minority.

another point, is that there are what might be termed healthfear-crazes, or hot topics that sweep through society, by the same media, influencing people's insecurities into taking irrational & sometimes drastic action. maybe profit lies behind these, maybe they just happen & charlatans latch onto them. the thing about childhood immunization falls under this head. basically, put the facts out & discredit the fearmongers, is the way to proceed.

finally, i have come to understand that resistance to difference is not all the same even in those who are like-minded; & autism-spectrum affects them more viscereally even than skin color or physical deformity. this may be because they cannot imagine a mind that is otherwise & not inimical. or else maybe it is not even that close to being a thought.

this last may be beyond remedy; hence the need to write protection explicitly into our laws.

on being truthful

It is rather a judgment against society, than the reverse, that a superior truthfulness should prove so unhandy. In almost every given situation it is better to lie; & this gives a distinct advantage to those who are able to lie convincingly, & in fact find it their most graspable tactic.

The only thing that still surprises, then, is how truthfulness (insofar as it has) has received the approbation of the sages & the sanction of several bromides. Perhaps that counsel to be truthful was only another form of misdirection: the truth is, YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH.

opsimath

--or "late bloomer" although this is so at odds with my scholastic prowess as to be an easy secret to keep (mostly). for example, i taught myself to read by looking over my mother's shoulder as she read out loud to my year-older brother (the "average", "normal" one). i always made straight A's & picked things up so readily that my study practice became to simply read the textbook at the beginning of the year cover to cover, & never open it again.

but in fact i was otherwise backwards, & felt it keenly. i had the most intense awkwardness with girls, finally learned to swim myself the summer i was 21, having only gotten my driver's license the year before; lived at home (with one short exception) until i was 28 (the year i got my first full-time job); & married at 41 (younger than Yeats, at any rate, but many of my contemporaries were already divorced or raising families by that time).

i couldn't explain it, even to myself, but i finally did come to accept that there is no universal timetable for humans, & the time for me was the right time for me if i was going to at all.

"I have had to learn the simplest things
last. Which made for difficulties."

--Charles Olson

aspie in the house of love

Long-suffering Aspies of the present day might reflect that in a large scale mercantile society such as ours, the proportion of discrete, impersonal &/or mediated transactions can be a hefty one; whilst in a venue such as the Court of Versailles of Louis Quatorze & the like, without explicit rules but burdened by innumerable nuances of mores, mass media being entirely replaced by gossip & innuendo--their disadvantages might have proven insurmountable. But in one respect, at least, we are still at that redoubtable Court--& on trial, it often feels, for our very lives.

In other words, the Court of Love. Our Super Powers fail us. Each clinker leaves its scar. Interviews, they say, are decided in the first 15 seconds (or whatever)--like science fiction nuclear wars--surely romantic interviews fare little better. If it were up to natural procreation to reproduce our kind, alas, i think we would not ever have managed to become known.

The services offered by modern communications, particularly online dating, but defer the issue. (My idea of speed-dating is growing up with the Girl Next Door.) Fortunately, by whatever mechanism, both males & females are found in this as in every scarce moiety & the unique channels by which heart is revealed to heart are capable of being discovered by those whose patience is not limited to bus stop vigils.

The one thing we might try to remember is that, even for those of the likelier persuasions, lasting love has never been common, cheap or easily available--only its counterfeits.

on being uncommon

Over the years, people i have known of various acknowledged minorities i have made common cause with, would sooner or later reach a point where they had to acknowledge (or rather, avow) how THEY had experienced a quality of majority-oppressiveness that i, as a straight white anglo male, could only know vicariously at best. I was on their side, plainly: but i could have chosen otherwise.

Deep down i disagreed. I knew it would only be worse, seem more arrogant, to protest. Later i was able to explain to myself: not every minority is visible or has a name. What minority was i? A minority given to finding patterns not always obvious or accepted--such as seeing how there is not THIS prejudice against skin color, THAT prejudice against sexual orientation, ANOTHER prejudice against gender, & STILL MORE prejudices wherever fences are erected & walls made strong.

There is only one injustice, born of the failure of reciprocity, & not a single human on earth has missed being made the recipient of it, sometime in their lives.

Hatred of the Other.

on becoming a dodo

Historiography, needless to say, belongs to the triumphant; although there was a Cato to declare, "The victor pleased the Gods, but the loser pleased me," it was not until very recently that underdogs as a class could be said to have had actual advocates, & their claims granted merit. We are only now feeling the loss of the Dodo, the Great Auk, & the Passenger Pigeon, which worried nobody earlier (when it was preventable). With that in mind i can start to contemplate sundry human & human-caused extinctions. Perhaps some of them even include my own--such as the case of left-handed children forced to indite with their other hand ("parasinistral" i say): when my generation of benighted helpfulness passes, there will come no more.

Prenatal testing, & its consequent effect on what would otherwise be a natural incidence of numerous SOCIALLY-DISFAVORED genetic anomalies, proceeds apace. It is not hard to foresee the absolute eclipse of, say, non-telegenic looks, in the fullness of time. Why not autism-spectrum? How is that not like having crooked teeth?

Seeds of all the earth's varieties are being saved, stored in a sort of library of genotypes, against ultimate oblivion (otherwise known as agribusiness monoculture): & we whose brains function, only not in the way our peers expect, might envy that scientific solicitude. Are there rare viewpoints, ways of life, preferences & even exceptional talents going to fall by the wayside; & will the regrets (there are always regrets) arrive just a tad too late? Oh, the Aspies & the Auties, they did not darken the sky like the Passenger Pigeon, but they left us with a few good licks, Special Relativity maybe; collections of bottlecaps for sure.

on patterns

Aspies are often described as pattern-seeking, but i have a different take on this. I think i have a taste for textures, & to me a pattern is first & foremost a texture. (The absence of texture i sometimes--but not always--find repugnant.) The more intricately textured something is, the more i delight in it.

Now, to me there is not an unbridgeable gulf between more-orderly textures (called patterns, e.g. everything from basic checks to repeating "wallpaper" surfaces) & less-orderly, such as nature produces in great abundance. (This includes prime numbers, BTW.) What matters to me is the density of information. I like grotesques, the baroque in art, crunchy food, rough or ornate clothing. I even enjoy uneven ground--looking at it, & walking (or climbing) across it. Which does not feel different from reading a richly-varied narrative. For, textures are full of incidents.

Nothing has pleased me more in the march of cybernetics than the invention of fractals. At last the banality of simplistic human design has succumbed to its absolute origins in an order beyond our finite understanding; & from that time, our artificial worlds have become increasingly habitable for those like me who cannot abide plainness & empty space.

some Wittgenstein quotes

from Philosophical Investigations (Anscombe transl.):

I.
207. Let us imagine that the people in that country carried on the usual human activities and in the course of them employed, apparently, an articulate language. If we watch their behaviour we find it intelligible, it seems 'logical'. But when we try to learn their language we find it impossible to do so. For there is no regular connexion between what they say, the sounds they make, and their actions...

293. If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means--must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the [i]one[/i] case so irresponsibly? ...Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box. and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at [i]his[/i] beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language?...

II.
xi. ...Could there be human beings lacking in the capacity to see something [i]as something[/i]--and what would that be like? What sort of consequences would it have? --Would this defect be comparable to colour-blindness or to not having absolute pitch? --We will call it "aspect-blindness"...The 'aspect-blind' will have an altogether different relationship to pictures from ours.

...We also say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however, important as regards this observation that one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country's language....

"I cannot understand what is going on in him" is above all a [i]picture[/i]. It is the convincing expression of a conviction. It does not give the reasons for the conviction. [i]They[/i] are not readily accessible.

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

Is there such a thing as 'expert judgment' about the genuineness of expressions of feeling? --Even here, there are those whose judgment is 'better' and those whose judgment is 'worse'. ...Can one learn this knowledge? Yes; some can. Not, however, by taking a course in it...

uncharismatic

the majority of people, who like to be like others & to have others be like them, are often repelled; a lesser proportion, that likes to be different & appreciates difference in others, will sometimes welcome me as another misfit. but i really don't fit in with them either.

it's useful to be reminded, however, by stepping outside the outsiders' ghetto, just how easy it is to become hated.

empathy

i think true empathy is a talent, & a rather uncommon one. (i learned this from becoming close friends with a highly empathic person: her life was filled with people telling her their troubles, from friends to total strangers; in another society she might have become a counselor, or a witch doctor.)

what passes for empathy is often simply a social demand that we react in a certain way. it is fundamentally no different from the demands that people look & dress within a certain range.

what i have always had is an instinct for justice; & anger when i see justice denied. (i think this is related to truthfulness, which i plan to cover as a separate topic on my aspie blog.)

there is something related which i have experienced, invariably when i spend a lot of time around a person. i start to involuntarily absorb an impression of their personality. it is not a fast process, & i don't even know how accurate an impression it is that i receive, but it feels like i am becoming that person to a small degree. i don't know how they are going to react in any situation, but i somehow imagine i understand a little bit what it is to be them.

i also experience this sometimes when i have read a good biography, or watched a movie which i identify with strongly. (in this case i am more willing to call it an illusion, since both of those artifacts contain only personality-simulations, created for a single purpose.)

i think this is a deep subject, & needs to be considered in several dimensions, rather than assuming that by giving it a name & then treating the name like a feature with binary dimensions, it has been comprehended.

i will end by admitting in casual encounters, i only intellectually understand other people have feelings; & i can be shockingly callous, if i'm not careful. (in 52 years, i have learned a thing or two, i guess.)

the name

even though it is in some ways useful to have a pedigreed scientific designation like "Asperger's Syndrome"--i just don't like the sound of it.

the sounds of words are important to me. i would prefer to substitute the words opsablepsia & opsablepsian (or opsablepsiast). (By synecdoche.)

it's a lot of syllables, i know, but they are beautiful syllables.

El Desdichado

The Desperado

I am the bereaved, the widower, the shadowy,
the Cathar prince of the devastated citadel:
my guiding star is snuffed, my galactic lute
carries Melancholy's sable pentacle.

You who consoled me in the ark of the sepulcher,
give me back Posilipo & the Mediterranean,
the fragrance that enchanted my sere despair,
& that arbor where the rose & grape are intimate!

Am I Cupid or Apollo? ...Poe or Byron?
The kiss of some dread queen still stains my brow;
I have dreamed in the grotto where the siren plashes...
& twice have I crossed Acheron victorious:

practicing in turn on the lyre of Orpheus
moans of a mystic, sobs of a dying elf.

--Gérard de Nerval (my tr.)

by way of a preface

these songs of freedom
are all I ever had...
redemption songs

Bob Marley