I'm always hearing about this "white male privelege". It sounds really great--where do I sign up for it? I seem to have been missing out.

 

Hoo-ah. Amen, brother. The world needs more Arabs like this. The world needs more men like this.

An answer to the gender identity crisis:

Take your clothes off. Look down. What do you see? That's what you are.

 I don't think so. The world has had a great deal too much of that already, thank you.

I very rarely get political here. In fact, I don't think I ever have. But things in the world are going in a very concerning direction, and I feel it's time to choose sides. 

I am with Israel. 

And if you're a spineless, gutless, whimpering, cowardly liberal who supports the terrorists and hates Israel, then I have no more patience with you. And while we're at it, the same goes if you are a spoiled, privileged, self-loathing, fashionably guilty liberal who spouts Marxist propaganda while living the good life on the proceeds of capitalism and the blood of the soldiers you so despise. 

Liberals are such hypocrites. They're supposed to be all anti-racist, yet they always support the filthy, foul, disgusting, loathesome, pig, terrorist, murdering, raping jihadis who openly profess to want to exterminate all Jews, over the people of Israel who have been the targets of more racism, persecution, and violence than every other race combined. What the hell? I mean, seriously--what the hell?

Remember last time gutless liberals stood by, appeased, and wet themselves like cocker spaniels while someone spouted anti-semitism and followed it up with action?

And if you are a filthy, foul, disgusting, loathesome, pig, terrorist, murdering, raping jihadi (God curse you) here in America, and take offense at my words, then feel free to drop by my house and we'll have a nice talk about it.

Also, I am with Ukraine and Taiwan, while I'm on a rant. I have been seriously wishing that I were healthy enough to go and volunteer. 

It's really starting to look like World War III might actually, finally be coming. "The third Russian empire will last a thousand years!" Why does that sound familiar? Wasn't there another guy who said something like that not so long ago?

Ein Mann wird allein geboren. Er lebt allein. Und er stirbt allein.

 -- Erich Maria Remarque

Some quotes from other autistic people:

"Be Honest: Autistic vs Neurotypical Honesty

I’ve learned a lot recently after asking allistic people on twitter what they truly want to hear from other people when allistic people say “be honest.” In short, most of them want a very specific “type” of honesty. At least, neurotypical people may consider this honesty.

Neurotypical Honesty

Depending on the context, a neurotypical person may want the sugar-coated truth. Other times, they may want more honesty or honesty without the sugarcoating if you’re a close friend. Other times, they want to be supported and encouraged, or reassured about a choice they made.

I’ve learned that most of the time, neurotypical people don’t really want honesty. They want curated honesty. They don’t want the first thoughts that come into your head. They want a rephrased “nice” version, which to me, changes the interpretation of those real thoughts. So to me that’s not honesty.

To allistic people: If you don’t want non-sugarcoated honesty – do not say “be honest” because that’s clearly not what you want. Just tell us what you want, with your words. You can utilize phrases such as “Be supportive please” or “be gentle,” and honestly, it’s a lot more honest!

Even while discussing this topic with allistic people, they act as if there is some clearly stated, obvious boundary of what is “offensive” or what is “brutally honest” and what is a better version of honesty. This notion of clear boundaries between those things can be thrown out the window entirely due to allistic people’s negative interpretations of autistic body language and tone of voice.

We, autistic people, don’t get the benefit of the doubt when we say the same exact words an allistic person says, because our body language may be interpreted negatively. To tell autistic people just to “not say anything offensive” is like asking a cat to do advanced calculus. The idea that we know what will be interpreted as offensive by non-autistic people is laughable."

I don't know if "allistic" is a real term, but it's used by some people to mean non-autistic or neurotypical.

 

"I grew up in a home where you said what you meant and you meant what you said. It was awesome! I later discovered that not everyone likes or is prepared to hear this kind of strong honesty. Most people seem to like to be let down gently rather than told things as they are. It interests me. If I am upsetting a person I would much rather they tell me  what I did than what usually happens which is that they distance themselves and I never see them again. I am left puzzled by this and deeply hurt.

I like autistic honesty. It is sensible and I think it is more respectful to be honest. I know how to mask and do small talk but my preference is not to. The honesty thing can be seen as a fundamental difference between autistic people and neurotypical people. It seems that it doesn’t occur to the neurotypical folks to say things honestly the way autistics do. Working on several levels at once and telling people what they want to hear is very different to what autistics do. We  tend to operate on one level at a time and what we say is what we mean.

I have met many neurotypical people who are partners to an autistic person saying how refreshing our honesty is. What interests me is that they think it is a choice! In fact honesty for autistic people is more like a default setting. We are not deliberately being honest we are just being ourselves. Honesty doesn’t just extend to verbal or written conversations either. It also relates to body language and eye contact. As an autistic person I have no way of knowing what my eyes or body are conveying. I am not aware of body language and eye contact in myself or in others. I definitely cannot intentionally adjust my body language or eye contact to convey something I don’t actually mean or believe. A few years ago I was working in a lovely team in Human Resources, My senior manager said something which was a bit sensitive about a colleague. He looked at me and said ‘That’s the right eye contact Yenn!’ It was like he thought I was intentionally doing the appropriate thing with my eyes. In reality my eyes were being honest – they only know how to be honest! Luckily my intent was positive!

There are a lot of misinterpretations in this space. Autistic people are so often called rude or disrespectful because our honesty makes people think we are intentionally being unpleasant. It is one of those cultural type differences between autistic people and neurotypicals. We are (metaphorically) speaking a different language which is rarely recognised or understood by the neurotypical folks in our lives. So instead of thinking we are different and our intentions and approach are different they assume we have the same meaning with our words and actions that they would if they said or did those things."

 

"From what I understand, neurotypical people communicate largely by subtext. There are words, but the tone of voice, facial expression, and body language convey the bulk of the meaning.

With neurodivergent people, the words themselves are the most important. Unfortunately, since NT culture is so used to looking for subtext, those words are often lost behind ‘blank’ facial expressions and ‘flat’ vocal tones."

This is so precisely my lifelong experience that I can hardly overstate it. It pretty much explains everything. My whole life has been one misunderstanding after another: I say something, meaning one thing, and the other person hears something totally different, interpreting my meaning through the filters of this baffling (to me) multi-level normative communication; they (ok, let's be honest, usually she) get offended, angry, and hostile, and start attacking me, or worse yet, they keep acting nice but then begin a campaign of defamation, character assasination, and gossip behind my back, which I have NO CLUE about. Eventually, I pick up on the fact that something is wrong, and so I go and try to fix it directly, being completely honest, sincere, and vulnerable; they either take it as some kind of scheme or elaborate triple-reverse insult or whatever, or they're already so vengeful, or vindictive, or hysterical, or whatever that they aren't willing to try and fix it; and then...well, you know the rest of the story. Over and over. All my life. Since I was old enough to start interacting with people other than my family. It happens with strangers. It happens with acquaintances. It happens in friendships. It happens in relationships. It happens at jobs. It happens at school. It happens at church. And all because I'm autistic. And because I never knew it. If I'd at least known, I could have learned to adapt, and could have explained to people how I'm different. Not that that would have worked with everyone, or in every situation, but it could have saved me a lot of pain.

This clip is from a movie about an autistic young man who's venturing out into the world for the first time.

This is exactly how the world seems to me. Like I'm an alien, observing from outside. Like I'm speaking a different language from everyone else--a language whose words sound the same but have different meanings. Like everyone else is playing a game to which I don't know the rules. Like I'm not part of their species. Just pain. Just horrible pain.

 I bought a new house! Well, I bought an old house.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1533-N-East-Side-Hwy-Elkton-VA-22827/108047013_zpid/

"To die is nothing, but it is terrible not to live."

-- Victor Hugo

 

You know that awkward feeling, when you walk into a medieval church and find a thousand-year-old picture of yourself in the stained glass? 

I had forgotten this song existed until I heard it the other day on Pandora. God, how appropriate it would have been a few years ago. Still beautiful, though.

 

Heroes often fail.

I can't stop listening to this. I've been playing it over and over again for weeks. That one climactic note....

It so bewitched me, that I had to look up who the violinist is: it's Hilary Hahn, which explains why it's so good.

I was surprised to learn that Hilary plays a Vuillaume rather than a Stradivarius or Guarneri. I guess whatever the secret is, Vuillaume figured it out too.

The last piece of the puzzle of my mind has finally been put into place. My daughter, the therapist (who also has the benefit of having known me her whole life), actually put me on the right track. It's a high-functioning form of autism. Along the same lines as Asperger's. 

So, it sounds like a lot: ADD, Tourette's, and ASD (autism spectrum disorder), as it's called these days. But the thing is, there is a very high comorbidity rate between all three: they seem to be somehow related. Perhaps (this is purely speculation) they're all actually manifestations of some deeper neurological developmental disorder.

I've spent my whole life wondering what's wrong with me. But now it all makes perfect sense. It all fits. I can't describe what a relief that is. 

Of course, there's the thought, "What if someone had correctly identified and treated this when I was a child?" Maybe everything could have been different. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't have been able to do a lot of the things I've done (or at least attempted to do) if I'd had that label put on me at an early age.

But that doesn't really matter anymore. Nothing I can do about it anyway. What I can do, is start to take control of and order my life with a much clearer understanding of who I am and what I need. And maybe begin to free myself from this constant guilt and self-judgment over why I'm not "doing more" with my life. Really, I couldn't have. It's so clear now.

I had the first actual procedure in my back. It's supposed to take six to eight weeks to take full effect, but I'm already feeling an enormous degree of relief. Not only from the constant, incessant, unrelenting pain, but it turns out that my insomnia was also neurological. I never had it until just after my accident, and then ever since. But both after the test blocks, and now as the permanent one takes effect, it's just disappearing. Those damaged nerves must have been sending continual distress signals that triggered an anxiety response in my brain, and never let me sleep properly. I was going to say two birds with one stone, but it's more like two dragons. That's one hell of a stone.

And here's something I've been dreaming about my whole life--a wish that I never thought would come true. I've located (if the genealogy I found is correct), the castle which was my ancestral home. And it's still standing. It's in use as a wedding and event venue.

Or, rather, castles:

Apparently, they had...erm...huge...tracts of land in the area between the Rhone river and the Italian and Swiss borders, east and west, and between Marseille and Lyon, north and south. But I believe the first one was their real home, as they are for generations listed as having been born in Pereins.

So, here's my new plan:

1) Start hiking again, and get back in shape, as spring comes and my back hurts less, and the medications improve my emotional state.

2) Go back for more treatments, higher up in my neck and lower down in my back.

3) Keep working with my therapy and medications, and the new knowledge of what's actually the problem, to find ways to live.

4) Save some more money, so I don't have to spend everything I've got on numbers 5 and 6.

5) Go to France. Visit these castles. See where my ancestors lived, and where I came from. Also, while I'm nearby and doing medieval-themed things, visit Carcassone and Toulouse. 

6) Walk the Camino de Santiago. What I'd really like to do is start at the chateau on the top and walk to the Camino from there, as if I were going on a medieval pilgrimage from my home.

7) Meet a French or Spanish girl. 

8) Never come back.

"As the rich rise in social esteem, the virtuous sink....the natural end of democracy is despotism."

-- Plato

We had to do two diagnostic test blocks before proceeding to the permanent ablation. Some kind of procedural requirement. After the first one, when the raging pain on the right side was gone for a while, I noticed the pain on the left side. Apparently, the other was drowning it out. So when I went back, he did both sides, and I spent a night and a day freer of pain than I can remember, or could have imagined was possible. I also slept much better. I hadn't fully realized how frequently I wake up and have to shift positions to try to relieve the pain in my neck. 

With both sides muted, I felt a strange pain in my shoulder, but it felt muscular: I think maybe I've had it clenched for 26 years.

The prospect of feeling this way permanently is exciting. And a little bit scary, which is weird. I guess it's similar to how people feel when they're getting out of prison after a long time, or leaving their beds after a very long illness. 

 

Yes, I can. It's this "notice", and the bias, censorship, and propaganda that underlies it.

Silencing dissent is the halfway marker on the road to totalitarianism and tyranny. 

"Fixing the human heart is like fixing an automobile. You have to tear everything apart, and see what's important. Then you can put it all back together."

Heard that in a movie somewhere and it stuck with me.

C. S. Lewis - On the Reading of Old Books