(This is a continuation from yesterday’s post: Day 230 Tornado )
From the backseat of a dented sedan, amongst a cluttering of mismatched suitcases, I drew in my breath through my nostrils and lowered my head in doleful resignation. There, outside my car window atop a plateau, slept a muddy-brown structure—most of its windows draped in faded tangerine sheets.
“There it is,” Ben said, curling his lips into a satisfied grin and tapping his hands on the steering wheel to the beat of the song Sexual Healing.
The car engine stopped. The music stopped. And Ben started. “Just take a look,” he said with an easy stroke to Mother’s sleeveless shoulder. “It’s just like I told you. Look!”
Glancing forward and to the left a bit, I followed Ben’s rounded back up, and then across and down the length of his burly arm to his stubby finger which pointed through the window to a pathetic dwelling; which alas, to my deep disappointment, appeared to be the worst house on the best street in town. Not only was the house in desperate need of paint and the yard weeping with neglect, but the mailbox itself was a rusted clump of sadness. My soon to be new home, this place I would slumber and eat, shower and dress, and partake in life in general, was ironically misplaced, set out in front of the world in its worst garment and accessories.
Knowing what to do, almost instinctively, I narrowed my eyes into a half-squint and scanned the surface alternating the image of the house from blurry to clear and back again to blurry. I’d looked at my reflection in the mirror in the same way, after discovering by blurring my reverse-self I was momentarily able to erase all visible flaws.
I have this person inside of me who is a judge, a stern judge, who questions and
reasons continually. He or she, or whatever it be, is relentless in their
search for truth, even when I plead that there is no truth. This entity
scrutinizes everything and everyone, even as I sit back from behind and shout
for him to stop. It as if he must dissect and find connections to
make sense of what he sees. As if my world is not enough and must be recreated
and categorized.
Nothing is easy for him. Nothing simple. Nothing plain. All is
complex. Even the eyes of a stranger are a deep hollow tunnel to dive into and
explore, to be lost from a near glance, and come out unquenched, only to dive
in again and again, to find nothing but the same. To feel depleted at every
turn because the answers don’t come readily, and when they do come they lead to
more questions.
It is an exhausting ride with no end. There is no coming up
without diving back down. There is no stopping. My mind is that rollercoaster
where the hands are up and you are screaming in glee, and then the turn comes
that makes you queasy, or the fear sets in, or the wheel make the sound that
pierces the ears, and you want to get off, you don’t want to ride again and again,
but you can’t get off, not because the belt is buckled, not because the wind is
fast and you face is slapping against it, only because you have forgotten you
are on the ride, and keep spinning round and upside down with no way to leave
what you don’t know you are on.
I can’t explain it. It is too complex and deep, and a mystery to me. I can see a forest, and getting lost in a forest, only to
awake and see that you are in a forest fast asleep dreaming of another forest,
but you are standing watching yourself sleep. It is a complexity so intense
that I am lost in my own world.
I don’t understand why others don’t see things
as I do, at least most others. How they can round a corner and think of nothing
but rounding a corner. How they can focus in a conversation and not feel and hear
and sense the thousand other things happening. What of the dust particles in
the air. The ticking clock. The grime on the couch. The fibers of the carpet
bent. The voice in the head rambling about woes. The tingling of skin. The
thoughts of the next word, and how the word carries a thousand different
meanings.
How can you talk to me and use these words when each word carries
this potential energy and meaning. Don’t you worry that I don’t understand you
exactly? Can’t you see we are not even communicating, really. That what you
sense and experience is not what you are conveying directly with words. That
what you are, whom you are is this huge collaboration of the way your body
moves, the way your eyes search, the sound of your voice, the pitch, the volume,
the breath, the sigh, the everything. How can I sit and be with you, when you
are communicating to me a fleet of ships in just one syllable, and all you
think I see is a row boat on the shore. No, you are a myriad of images.
I am a
vessel that collects, with every sound spoken and every thought unspoken, I
sense you with a sense I cannot pinpoint. I know you more than you think,
perhaps more than you know yourself. I can sense your sorrow, your insecurity,
your worry, your lies—the way you lie to yourself and corner yourself. I can
understand the depths of you while you remain on the outskirts in the shallow,
I swim in your deep.
And thusly, I do the same with me. I dance inside myself,
but not with joy, but in this tangled intertwined string, all twisted and
distorted, unable to tell one feeling from the other, because I am bombarded
all at once with experience upon experience.
To you a doorbell is a doorbell. A sound. An announcement. A door to be opened. To me a doorbell is a lion. A
ringing warning of what’s beyond, the thousand upon thousand possibilities of
one sound, one notion, one voice.
No, when you speak to me I do not hear your
words, I see your journey, I see your past, I feel your pain, I feel your joy. You come carrying the grand gift of you, wrapped and rewrapped, and hidden, and
haunted with ghosts, and you expect me to sit and take the crumb of you, the
one piece, when I see the monster lurching behind, the one that guards your
secrets. And he sees me. And he hungers after me, because he knows I can see
your treasures and truth. And out he comes to attack, to protect, to steal my
gifts. For he is fear’s gatekeeper, and I am fear’s mistress joy, and I wish
nothing but to help you see the beauty within.
I am stung by the wasps of you.
I am stung each time we talk, each time our eyes meet. For I can see you swarming
with truths you dare not whisper. I can see the bees behind you. Each carrying
a part of you, and yet you present yourself as single flower, and want me to
simply sniff and be gone.
How can I walk in this world when everywhere are
these bees, this noise, this stinging, whilst everyone pretends the flowers are
falling from the sky. How can I show you what I see when your eyes can only
reach to the horizon, and mine dig deep into the ocean sky, and swim beyond the
universe into you. I sense your depth. I sense your deep. I know you so well,
as reflection of me.
I know where demons hide and shadows and dark. I know
where light dances. I know the journey within the journey, but I am left to
smile shallow and speak a whisper. To bypass all the stories you carry and
wonder if by chance we shall meet again and you will let me swallow what is you,
so I may feed off of your loneliness and become one with myself.
Can you not see
we dance in isolation, this game of communication? Can you not see me standing
at the wall waiting for your hand? Can you not see we do not have this time,
this patience, this waiting. Now is now, and if you do not bleed for me, if you
do not purge yourself and throw up upon me, then I am left to drown in your
mire, fending for myself, while you walk blindly to your ways.
You bombard me
without knowing. You crush me. You crash upon me with your energy. You paint me
with your past, your future, your present, and your worries. You feed off of
me. You eat what you want and leave, all the while thinking you have merely
said Hello.
Look into your eyes and count the specks. What sparkles in you, sparkles in all, endlessly.
How true this vision depends on the bandage.
How long you lay rest these eyes in darkness.
To let them see, what they do not see.
What sees is not these two balls made as one—some scope of evaluation and knowledge.
What sees in truth cannot have appendages, attachment, blood, fibrous tangles.
Instead, what truly sees is much beyond, as much as forward, in balance and in truth.
For once the bandages are removed from eyes, and eyes made restful, then all is made light.
All shines, not through eyes, yet through vision.
The truth in symbols, sound.
Embrace the gratitude of silence. The ears thus see—the heart, the mind.
This soul you lock away with bolt and key.
Lay rest the eyes, least the soul seeks to escape a prison self-created, intensely real and manufactured in painful callings of long forgotten desires.
Seek not this empty space buried deep beneath the earth any longer.
Come out, come forward.
A true vision of living light.
A walking truth for all to breathe from.
To recognize, to reaffirm, and at last remember as you are, so are they.
At last, as always, true and effervescent beauty.
Photos taken by Sam Craft at Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California. July 2012. Words by Sam Craft.
Photographs of State Park in Washington (July 2012)
I am lost for words today. A woman in a forest of thoughts and mystery, both intrigued and frightened by her own mind.
I am between two rivers, two streams of thought, of how I am to be and what I want to be.
I question my every need, my every desire, my unyielding passion. And yet I know I am pure. I know I am enough. But I wonder where to turn in my mind. Where to stop. Where the boundaries are…when thoughts are exhausted and nothing else exists.
I only want to be loved. I only long to give love. But why do I long? Where does the longing rise from? Where is the switch? This knowing? This intensity? Where is this me that calls from beneath the shadows?
I measure everything. I place abstractness on scales. My actions are spared, as my thoughts have been filtered through and through, weighed out, analyzed, scrutinized…my actions don’t have a chance…they are absent…missing…vapors evaporating before they breathe.
Where do I travel? Where do I go? Why am I a lone wanderer on a planet that does not feel familiar and in a body and form I do not recognize? Why can I see others more clearly than my own self? And where do I stand? If I do not follow and do not lead, then where is my place in line?
Where is my reflection? Where do I find me. I cannot see me except through the eyes of another, and still this perception is so broken and shattered. And in my own mirror, I do not know this me. Everything in physical is not me. Every angle different and obscure. If I am not what I see and not what another sees, then what am I?
Am I my words? These symbols? These sounds? Am I energy? Am I flesh? Am I this still beating heart? Or am I more so this ache, this deep and unreachable ache. Yes, I am this ache. I am in totality this intense ache.
So where to put me, this angst, this invisible pull that spins me into unwanted need and unneeded want. Where to put me?
Perhaps to the moon. Fly me to the moon, so I may be made whole. So that I may exist as an unmistakable mass dancing in empty space. My purpose only to move and stir. Paste me there. My image melted into one form. This searching ended. Paste me to the moon, so that I may watch from above and you may watch from below; and then we can both, from where we exist, imagine the world of the image before us.
I’m a SUPER FREAK this morning. I am pretty sure my youngest has restless leg syndrome. And he definitely talks, moans, and moves a whole lot in his sleep. Oh, yes…..traveling once again, and so very much reminded of my human condition. This time an eleven hour drive to California with my three boys, ages ten, thirteen, and fourteen…..oh boy! Literally!
Just pulled this writing up from early May 2012. Today, again, having slept in a hotel (sigh) I am dealing with much overload, lack of sleep, exhaustion, and grumpiness. Hope to have a happier disposition tomorrow after a decent night’s sleep. If you see a woman having a meltdown on the side of Highway 5 in California…that would be super freak me!
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On the first day of our trip to the Island of Maui, I was reminded of my over sensitive system. I hadn’t imagined the plane fight would be such an unpleasant experience. I’d forgotten, or more likely, I’d hoped for change.
Many people with Aspergers, if not all, are extremely sensitive. They feel emotions and feelings in great depth. Likewise, their senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell are very acute. Often, a person experiences sensory overload when he or she is outside his everyday environment. In some cases, home or perhaps nature, are the only places that are tolerable to the senses. Outside of the comfort zone, a person with Aspergers can likely feel an overwhelming degree of agitation, pain, and misery. This is one of the reasons I prefer to spend more time at home than in public places. Sensory overload can lead to meltdowns—which are akin to adult tantrums—a screaming out for help, when one does not know how to help one’s self.
In considering sound, where many people can block out background noise and focus without distraction, people with sensory sensitivities hear everything at once. There is no mute button. And there is no making the noise stop, beyond earplugs and escape.
The other senses work the same. Textures irritate. Smells overwhelm and overtake. Sights hurt. And even the taste of air is unpleasant.
It appears there is something about the Asperger’s sensory and processing system that cause people to sense things in the environment in segmented over-exaggerated parts, instead of whole. Instead of looking upon a crowd and seeing a crowd, one looks upon a multitude of bombarding shapes and sizes, each movement as uncomfortable to view as the next.
People with sensory sensitivities are acutely aware of everything happening in their environment and everything seems to be occurring all at once. There isn’t release. What would be a soft unnoticeable hum to one becomes a piercing roar to the other. It is as if someone has turned up the volume of every single sensory organ.
There is no relaxation, only the constant stream of shards—parts of chatter, parts of the ticking clock, parts of the rattling and hum. There are parts of smells, all sorted out and classified, not mingled, not forgotten. There are parts of tastes—the breath, the air, the fragrances, the poisons chemicals. Sights are in parts. Fragmented pieces that attempt to make a whole, but fail. A face not remembered except as shape of wrinkled wide nose and color of dark narrow eyes. Even the mind is in parts, continually breaking down wholes to subsections. Whole to parts is easy. Parts to whole is hard. Nothing is as it appears. Everything is in parts. It is the parts that bring agony, the endless parts that bring with them the impossibility of finding retreat in the whole.
With my sensory sensitivities, the six-hour ride in the airplane to Maui was torturous. No mind control, mantras, visualization, or distractions could stop the parts. And lacking the ability to help myself, sank me into self-blame. I sat in misery wishing to time travel into sweet oblivion. I became depleted, agitated, and depressed. Meltdown was avoided, but angry eyes prevailed.
The worst was the piercing babies’ cries. There were at least ten babies on the plane. There wasn’t a time when one wasn’t screaming.
I did find refuge. I had my words. I could write. I could escape through the process of creating images, feelings, and thoughts into story. Words were my parachute and freedom, a passport away from the screaming shards.
Everyday Asperger's 