aspergers

338: You Are The Block

| Aspergers Girls

Today I participated in being present.
I got in my van and drove where I felt drawn to go.
I found myself on the waterfront by the boat docks, and walked lightly along the pathway.
I felt grounded into the earth and protected, and very much loved.
I noticed the sky and all the sounds about me. I noticed many things that I hadn’t noticed before.
The sun paid a visit and peeked out from the clouds, and I was invited by this lovely block structure to lean and take in the sunlight on my face.
I closed my eyes and just let myself be.

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I thanked the block art.
I have always admired people who could be still and with themselves and find a gentle resonating connection to the earth and with their inner being.
Today I was one of those connecters.

I walked past a building that invited me in. And there I greeted a flyer about a movement class. I kept the paper and will reflect on the opportunity.

As I traveled back to my van, I practiced letting go of thoughts and took in many sounds and sensations.
When I was on the road again, I drove past a small bakery.
I treated myself to lunch there, the most sensational lunch.
I savored every bite with awareness and pleasure. The fork tickled me. The sautéed mushroom, bread, and egg saluted me. I found myself giggling inside at the images in the food. I found myself giving repeated thanks and gratitude.
I soaked in the goodness, and as I had done before, I kept repeating the words “Love, love, love.”

I was continually brought back to the present. Every movement and ever feeling inside of my body felt magical.

The world looks different now.
Wherein sensory stimuli could sometimes overwhelm me, now I am intrigued by all of the motion of the world.
As I ate, I smiled at the homeless man outside the window. I watched him eat on the bench. He had much food. I imagined we were eating together. When he was finished, and approached where I sat, a glass pane separating us, we locked eyes and smiled together.
We’d eaten together in my heart.

I took over a half of an hour to eat one sandwich. I wondered why I always ate so fast before, when every bite was an opportunity for acceptance and gratitude.
I listened to the sound of people and watched them move. I took in the pitch of voices and the color of clothes. With every thought I released all judgment.
I felt tremendous joy of being alive, and gave thanks for the ability to appreciate the moment and my life.
When I moved from my chair, I did so with gentle intention. No anxiety was in my psyche or my physical being. Everything about me radiated serenity.
A bakery worker moved towards me to collect my plate. We shared a sentence and our eyes smiled. I felt such warmth and human connection.

When I drove again, if any sorrow arose, manifested by an ache in my heart and gut, I imagined the sorrow, the shape of the sorrow. To me, the sorrow appeared a twisted colorless ribbon. I let the sorrow rise and then I held the sorrow.
When I held the sorrow, sorrow evaporated.
Each time the sorrow rose, I let the deep ache come to me.
I felt the intensity of suffering. I felt the tears of my soul, and then, through awareness and acceptance, I held the pain once more, and once more again.

Today I was happy despite my sorrow. Today I was sorrow-filled despite my happiness. And neither was the winner.
Moment after moment I returned back to the present, leaving the sorrow and happiness to the space of emptiness.
I see neither sorrow or happiness as my partner or friend, and neither as my foe.
I accept where I am at and let the river of peace flow through me.

I do not stand in judgment of myself, and with this freedom I do not stand in judgment of my passing neighbor.
I do not stand in judgment of my passing neighbor, and with this freedom I do not stand in judgment of my self.

I planned nothing. I thought not of the future, nor did I linger long in the past. I just was. I just am.

If ever there was joy to be found immeasurably, it was in the simplicity of my being.

Now as I sit here, I feel embraced.
I know not why or how or from where this love comes; I release; I release the source and I release the cause.
Nothing matters, while everything matters.

Today I am thankful, not for anything or anyone, not for a singular experience or emotion; today I am thankful because I recognize that with the release of attachment, I am at last releasing self into the ocean of life. I am a bird swimming in the blue. I am a fish flying through the sky. All is a reflection, one upon the other.
And everywhere I look is beauty.

I am looking at you now. Beautiful one. Special one. Dear one. Lovely lovely light-filled soul.
I am looking at you, and you are all.
You are the sunshine in my face. You are the sensation of pleasure dripping off of my fork. You are the homeless man smiling with his eyes. You are the earth smiling with your heart.
You are everything to me, as I am to you.
And I accept your love and grace.
I accept you just as you are right now. Just right where you are.
You are divinely perfect.
You are the block.
You are the art in the park.
The place where one can rest and lean and soak in the goodness of the world.
Thank you.

Photo on 3-7-13 at 3.47 PM

337: I Am What I Choose to Create

| Aspergers Girls

Photo on 3-6-13 at 2.49 PM

Here is a painting I shared earlier on this blog. I changed the bear a couple of times, as I didn’t like the “energy” of the bear. I could see images inside the fur that were dark and gloomy, e.g., a person eating at the heart, a boy screaming, a heart breaking. I tried to improve the bear to my liking, but I could not. The energy remained.

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Finally, I took the canvas off the wall and had at it. I erased the bear in totality, (with water and paper towel), and for two hours let the canvas speak.

In the end, the girl’s face, which I adore, remained, and she gained some wings!

I can now rest my eyes on this painting and feel at peace.

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But I missed my bear. I love my bear.

And so I brought him back to life. Not intentionally or on purpose; in the way the process transformed, the bear kind of just showed up!

I painted, (and processed), for five hours last night. So much so that I had zombie blue fingers. (I paint mostly with paper towels and my fingers.) The canvas transformed a dozen times. I erased and erased, painted and painted, and erased again.

Each time I thought I might be done, I knew I wasn’t, because I felt stagnant energy.

I know when my creation is done by the “feeling” I have in my heart and in my gut. Together the heart and gut tell me. I “feel” this freeing of energy, a release, and a recognition of completion.

I experience the same gut-and-heart-level feelings with people, places, events, words, and even the rhythm of words. I get a knowing, and just know.

At first the painting I created last night was a princess in a dress; then a woman dancing; then the image became a woman and two spirits at the river, and then, after several transitions, this lovely bear reappeared. And he was here to stay.

I went through several states of emotion as I painted, too, including envy, jealously, feelings of being caged in, disappointment, and agony. When an emotion surfaced I would paint the pain and then go over the pain with words like “love.” I would then recreate through adding more paint, designs, or through erasing with water.

In my painting I completed of the girl and bear last night, I can only find peaceful and tranquil images in the paint.

Before, with the first bear painting, I could find several dozen images. In this new painting there are only a few images I can detect. Here is one image that I found soothing. I see a lady resting on the bear’s head.

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All of this “energy” and “images” inside of my paintings got me thinking about the water crystal images, and how the crystals transform shapes based on a slip of paper with a written word. I was reminded once again how thoughts and the emotions we hold on to affect our world.

Today I said the word “love” to myself a lot. I kept filling the empty spaces in my mind with the word “love.”

I remembered, that like my painting, my intention, the energy of the person I am holding in thought, my thoughts themselves, the motion I choose, the drafts I recreate, all of these seemingly random things work together to produce my experience and perception.

The new painting with the bear.

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Today I am practicing letting myself observe my self without judgment.
I am letting myself be.
I am letting myself come forward from beneath the chaos of the canvas.
I am transforming and materializing through the swirls of multi-color and seemingly misplaced and random scatterings of occurrence.
I am letting myself become whole and present, free of emotional chains.
In many ways I am much this bear.
And I am this painting.
I am what I choose moment-by-moment to create.

336: I LOVE this man: Tony Attwood

| Aspergers Girls

Okay, this is unbelievable. I have had TWO good hair days in a row. Seriously, something is up with the stars! And just now, after thinking about Tony Attwood, I opened my email to find his message! Good hair and Attwood…. life is so good!

I have attended Mr. Attwood’s conference and met him briefly in person. Also, his books and audios were immensely helpful when my son was first diagnosed. This is his recent response to me. Yay!

Please hold Mr. Tony Attwood in healing light and love.

I thank him for the great works he does to bring a voice to Asperger’s Syndrome.

Part of today’s email:

“Your webpage is absolutely fascinating and I certainly enjoyed reading the information that you sent me. In your email you refer to my thoughts on whether you have indeed the characteristics of Asperger’s syndrome. I would say that, from what I have read, that that seems very likely as you have an insight into Asperger’s syndrome but especially the way that Asperger’s syndrome is expressed in girls. You certainly have an ability to communicate your thoughts in such an effective way…..

…you may be interested in the audio recordings of my radio interviews describing the characteristics of Asperger’s syndrome in girls. My own webpage is currently being updated and the links should be back on my webpage in the next week or so. You may be interested in listening to a radio interview I did for Brisbane 612 ABC Radio with Richard Fidler, http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/02/02/3421377.htm?site=brisbane.

Please do continue your work helping those with Asperger’s syndrome and those who love and support them and I look forward to reading more about your very important contribution to the understanding of Asperger’s syndrome in girls and women.”

I know, total coolness. :)))

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Photo on 3-5-13 at 12.22 PM

335: I Whisper Death

| Aspergers Girls

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I Whisper Death
3/4/13 Samantha Craft

Beneath the forest floor, where roots meet and entangle, I wait, my hands stretched out in the shape of destiny, each limb bent in the design of fate. My face shines there, in the bleeding darkness, the soil rich, the harvest collected thusly so and set down at the imagined feet of one.

Like dusk blending with dawn, the daylight hours disappear, and time spreads thin, one hour yielding to the next, and falling faster than the dying star. For death himself is here, beneath this earth, where this child rests her heart, a loving seed for one.

And near this death moves life, effervescent in her appearance, her gown golden-weaved in delight.

Though death be near, his shadow thick, his breath heavy, life—she dances in a play, a widowed partner pleading for Mercy to bring her mate. And how life sings, her voice the holes of flutes, both carrying and holding the beauty that comes with creation. She bows, her hands echoes’ shadow, her arches the very threshold of his coming.

In an instant she is here and then gone, and then returns again, a spinning image of self, reappearing with the turn of merry-go-round; lost and then found; lost and then found again. Unattainable she remains, her platform chance, her shape fortune.

Please come, I call out from below, my chariot less driven than wished upon. Please come, I call out again, the pleading heard by the chambers of my soul.

Though my voice be nothing in comparison to life, in all she offers.

I am but invisible, hidden like the worms that burrow forward to the core of something.

My voice unheard, my face unseen, I cry out and then cry in, calling on the very goddesses of fairytales past in hope of capturing the heart of one.

He doesn’t come. He doesn’t hear.

And if he does, if by chance my wishes scurried across the broken channels of connections, and voice he found, then voice alone is turned down and dissolved by his wanting naught.

Unfound, I weep.

Unfound, I turn.

And thusly I wander in the deepening depths of feverish want.

In dreams I ride the cloak of death, draped in his darkness, the sorrow and suffering removed. And there, from my own tombstone risen, fine seedling is spat forth.

To bloom again and touch the daylight with green.

For if it be death that must come, then death I call upon, to release me from this bitter-thorned suffering.

Cometh death to my bedside of garden. Unlike the soldier before, find me, your shadow seed, your princess, your warrior made choice breed.

I whisper. I whisper.

I whisper death.

Death rises, without desire. He drifts in with the victorious gait of one who knows defeat by scent and scent alone. And takes me from the grip of forbidden grounds, and shapes me down deeper, trumpeting his mark into me, a brander by trade.

And I am slaughtered, a sow made sweeter for the taking. Bled out to be made ready for sup and fed upon, one mouth upon the other. Until all parts vanquished, I am free. Spread verily thin, a rail to a speck.

How thankful then I be, the sum of my parts scattered and forgotten.

How thankful then I be, for the agony released.

Until I hear his name.

The one I claimed mine. The one I called, whom before never came.

Until I hear him call out to me, his lost maiden found.

Until I watch his search, this one, for my mystery. His dreams taking him not to me but to the essence of whom I might have been: the sun per chance, or at least the rays, the warmth captured by his tawny skin and creasing edges.

And a part remembers, from somewhere lost, that I am no longer here. A part remembers that instead I be a flower in disguise, reformed and taken by another. Burst out of the darkness to reclaim the sky, yet in the same making hopelessly hidden.

While in solid form he stands in promise, searching the fields for what was once true, when all about lost memory dances with death.

And life, she gently laughs then, her voice cascading through twin-windowed souls, bringing forth the blistering wake of nevermore.

334: I Am The River

| Aspergers Girls

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I am not sure where my head space is. Or where my head is for that matter. I tend to ascribe to the Buddhist teachings that we don’t exist, as we can’t see ourselves in totality… Ever! And so, like the rest of me, my head has mysteriously disappeared.

Lately, some part of “Me” has been noticing I am much more aware of my environment. It seems that for decades, until now, I have skid past life and missed much of what happens around me on a day-to-day basis. Kind of like a first time ice-skater skidding on her butt so fast and so far that when she stands she doesn’t reckon she notices anything, except the full-heated rush of blood to the face, the cold butt, bruises, and torn pants.

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Life seems like that for me, right now. Like I spent some four-decades plus skidding on my butt on the cold ice, only to just now discover that there are bleachers, chairs, and waiting areas, and even snack bars!

Today, everything is more clearer, as if, finally and at last, somehow I figured out I could step off of the ice, and even remove my ice skates. I cannot explain it any better.

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Just recently, I am beginning to notice things I never ever did before. Patterns for starters, like the patterns in puddles, and patterns found in the streaks on the road after it rains, and the patterns in the shapes leaves make after falling. I am starting to notice patterns everywhere. I somehow managed to spend years not recognizing things that are right in front of my face.

I am going through many ah!ha!, look-at-that!-moments; It is similar to how I never understood about how a flower only lasts so long and then dies, even if it is in a pot of soil. I used to think a flower would last forever. It wasn’t until my twenties that I made the connection. While all around me flowers were blooming and dying. I just couldn’t see it or comprehend the process.

I have discovered, that at like faces, I cannot remember scenery. I cannot grasp the completeness of my surroundings. I am in a way in some type of visible matrix, in the center of an ever-changing energetic playing arena.

I cannot remember the order of houses when I drive down streets, the order of streets, the order of trees; I can’t remember where I saw the fire hydrant or where that one street was I once turned down. I just can’t. I have this incredible mind, but it cannot grasp the simple things, or at least not hold onto them.

I am finding great comfort in painting. Well, truthfully comfort isn’t the appropriate word, as the painting process itself is excruciatingly emotionally. So much energy and purging comes up. I go through cycle upon cycle of feeling, and have sensations of intense energy, both beneficial and exhausting. And no matter how hard I concentrate, I do not know what the painting will look like until it, the painting itself, is done.

As I have said early, when I paint, I am waiting for what is inside of the canvas to emerge. I feel this presence there just waiting to be uncovered and discovered.

And that is how I am seeing life now: That behind everything and everyone is this universal light and love waiting to be recognized and recovered, waiting to be held for its beauty alone.

I am much like a young child in so many ways, in so many “good” ways, able to see the same street again and again with new eyes.

Everything is shifting. Like the image of me in the mirror, my world is not stagnant.

Life to me is a river of sorts, and I am carried daily.

Instead of thinking I have fallen and am endlessly sliding on the cold ice, I can see I am very much alive, awake, and full of newness, the same newness that exists everywhere.

Interestingly enough, when I first delved into painting a few months ago, my angels (Holy Spirit) spoke to me and said with a camera I would be able to see images (spirits and souls) in my paintings.

This is truly amazing for me, as I am finding more and more “messages” and “signs” in my paintings. On this post I have shared one of my most recent paintings. It went through hours of transitions.

I love this painting. I see this as a spiritual being, me, in which essence and energy attaches. I am able to look at this and find peace. This painting is how I see the world. What I take in shifts and changes depending on the angle, my mood, the people and events around me, and the energy of the moment.

There is a beautiful energy here.

Gratitude is immeasurable. I am gratitude.

I exist as joy and thankfulness. And I embrace all parts of me, however imperfect or fabulous they are deemed.

I know, that like the images I am creating, in my painting, and through the limited scope of my mind and eyes and senses, that everything is always changing and shifting. There is no need to pitch down a tent upon myself and force, or, better yet, try to force myself to be this way or that way for this purpose or for that purpose; because soon, none of what is now will exist.

I am a river. My life is a river. Silly to try to capture a river.

Blessings and Light,
Sam

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