Another Example of Being Autisitc

I looked at the clock just now; it was 3:43 PM. 343, I said to myself. 7 x 7 x 7 is 343. But, I continued, the time 3:43 does not refer to the number three hundred and forty-three, because the first 3 means 3 x 60, not 3 x100. 3 x 60 minutes past noon or midnight, plus 43 more minutes. 3:43 on the clock  means 223 minutes past noon or midnight, past noon in this case.

Then I said to myself, wait -- is 223 a prime number? And I soon discovered that it was, because it not evenly divisible by any of the primes 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, or 13, and the square of the next-highest prime, 17, is higher than 223. It is 289. 

It took me about 10 seconds to do that math in my head, and to double- and triple-check my math, and to be certain that 223 is a prime number. Without a calculator, without pencil and paper. Not Rain Man. But above average. 

This is an example of why I got frustrated with people who couldn't do the math back in March 2016, when Obama, Rachael Maddow and I told them that Hillary had clinched the nomination. 

Also, I am autistic, and for 9 1/2 years I haven't been able to explain to a single person how it was that Barack, Rachel and I knew. I assume Barack and Rachel have both been able to explain it to at least a few people, because they both have far more people paying attention to them, and also because neither one of them is autistic: they're both much better at talking to people, at persuading people. 

Dover Books on Mathematics, at Amazon: https://amzn.to/40CvBwT 

Dream Log: Small-Town Politics and Autism

I dreamed I was in a small town on the west coast, in Oregon, Washington or British Columbia. The town's population couldn't have been as much as 50,000. It had many restaurants, bars, hotels and clubs which did a flourishing out-of -town business. Two men were among those struggling for control of the town's money and politics, one who looked and acted like Elon Musk and one who looked and acted like Mark Zuckerberg. 

 

But they weren't world-famous billionaires. Their business was concentrated in this small town. It was speculated that they both might be autistic.

Like the real Elon Musk, the local businessman who looked like him lied all the time, about absolutely everything, so that being autistic appeared to be just one more thing he was lying about. Like the real Mark Zuckerberg, the businessman who looked and acted like him really did seem to be autistic, and like Zuckerberg, and unlike, say, Daryl Hannah, he definitely could not be said to be glamorizing  the condition, except perhaps for hardcore Brent Spiner fans,

I was little-known in this town and wanted to stay that way, but video and audio of me looking and sounding strangely -- for example, I sing. Sometimes I sing intentionally badly, to amuse myself -- began showing up in the local media and on the Internet. This led to my becoming enmeshed in the business struggle between the liar who looked like Musk and the creepy dweeb who looked like Zuckerberg. I wasn't sure I trusted Not-Zuck, but he was definitely better than Not-Musk, so by default I ended up on Team Not-Zuck. (In the dream these two were called by their names, but I don't remember their names.)

Then the whole dream shifted to something resembling the TV series "Alias." Not-Musk now did the majority of his business  from local clubs, sending his minions out to physically fight with Not-Zuck's minions. 

At one point I and two other members of Team Not-Zuck were racing through town in an Audi e-tron at dusk, heading toward the beach. There was a Chase bank on the beach. One of the exterior walls of this small bank building was completely covered with video screens and neon stock tickers, and buried somewhere within all of that was the clue to our next move.

We slammed to a screeching stop in the parking lot, poured out of the car, and soon one of the other guys was howling with glee. "Chase is going to give me $225 to open an account," he yelled. 

This guy had ADD. We got his head back in the game, and eventually we found the time and place where Not-Musk and Not-Zuck could secretly meet, out of the eye of the extraordinarily-vigilant local business journalists.

At this point I made up my mind to face Not-Zuck, and tell him that I had had enough, that I was out.

Mysterious Sexuality

The only Franciscan friar I've known at all well personally told me very soon after we first met that he was gay. This was back in the 20th century. The way he said it gave me the impression that he was not at all uncomfortable with his orientation. In fact, he seemed so comfortable with it that I wondered whether he was sexually active. In fact, I have always wondered whether he was coming on to me.

I'm autistic. Because of this, I often have a very difficult time "reading" people. In some cases, I thought someone was sexually attracted to me, but they weren't. In other cases, after having known someone for a while I found out, to my great surprise, not having seen it at all and having assumed the opposite, that they were attracted to me. And then there are many other people in whose cases I haven't been able to tell, such as this young, very intelligent and personable friar. 

After a while, it became more difficult for me to see him. He just never seemed to be around when I visited the church, which was very disappointing to me, because I had greatly enjoyed our talks about history, philosophy, the arts and so forth. We both had more than a touch of what I once thought Saul Bellow had called the "Western civilization syndrome," although by now I think Bellow must have worded it differently, or I would have been able to find it via Google. And for decades I've wondered his disappearance had anything to do with sex. Of course, it may be that he really had suddenly become very busy, or that I coincidentally dropped by at the wrong time. 

But I've wondered: was he only friendly with me at first because he wanted to have sex with me, and then became unavailable for chats when it became clear that it wasn't going to happen? Or was he chaste in accordance with his vows, and stopped seeing me because he saw me as a temptation, because it wasn't clear to him that nothing was going to happen? Or were sexuality and orientations no part of the reason why he disappeared? Maybe he simply had been wasting too much of his time having long, interesting, Western-Civilization-themed discussions with me, which had been distracting him from an already crowded schedule of duties?

I've known people for decades, men and women, wondering the entire time whether they were uncomfortable with me because of something to do with sexuality, being afraid that there was no way to bring up the topic without making things much worse. 

Does this also happen frequently to neurologically-typical people? 

Am I correct in thinking that non-verbal communication plays a very frequent role in human sexuality, or is this just one more on the long, long list of things I have wrong?

Another question occurs to me: am I wrong in assuming that neurologically-typical people have an easier time "reading" each other on the subject of sex? But it is very hard for me to really believe that sexuality is as confusing to most people as it is to me. Confusing, often? Probably. But not as confusing, as often, as with me, or, surely, our species would have died out long ago from pure awkwardness.

Guns

I admit, I'm fascinated by guns, especially by contemporary double-action revolvers, I don't own a gun, I don't plan to acquire one, but I think about them a lot, daydream, even. For example, I have a recurring daydream of being a Sheriff in the southwestern US, somewhat like the character played by Tommy Lee Jones in No Country For Old Men. I've spent some time in stores looking at the revolvers in the display cases and talking about them with the people behind the counters. When I was a kid I upset my pacifist family by buying and carefully studying a few gun magazines. Shooting Times was the best one, in my opinion. There were also thick annual reference guides listing every sort of gun you could get; I think they were published by Shooting Times. My Mom wouldn't let me get those annual volumes. We couldn't even have toy guns.

I don't want to hurt anybody, much less shoot them. In the fantasies about being a Sheriff in some place like Arizona or semi-rural southern California, I sometimes have to resort to carrying a gun to protect the citizens whom I have sworn to protect from a bear or mountain lion. I imagine that some other government agency calls me and angrily tells me to stand down: they want to capture the animal and return it to a place more far away from people. I tell them that I hope they succeed in doing exactly that, but that I am still sworn to protect the people in the area, and if I get to the mountain lion or bear before they do, rather than risk a person being mauled and perhaps killed, I will shoot it. My office has a live satellite image of the animal, and we're glad to share it.

To those who have a zero-tolerance policy against shooting animals, whether by hunters or law enforcement, I ask whether they are vegetarian, or at least only eat meat which was raised free-range. I flunk that test, and I know that a lot of meat and poultry is raised under conditions much more cruel than anything anyone ever did when they were hunting.

I'm in favor of much stricter gun control. I think that people who show tendencies to violence or the potential toward violence or potentially violent mental instability should be separated from guns with all reasonable and unreasonable means.

And I'm autistic. And some people who've gone on mass-murdering shooting sprees may or may not have been autistic. So some people think that autistic people should be at or very near the top of the list of those who need to be kept away from guns.

I don't think autistic people are more likely than average to go on shooting sprees, in fact, I suspect that we're less likely, and that those shooters mentioned above may not actually have been autistic. I don't think I'm crazy. I don't think that autistic equals crazy, or dangerous, or mentally unstable. Autistic people may sometimes seem crazy or dangerous or unstable, but, for the most part, that's because we're different and difficult to understand, and if and when we are better understood, we reveal ourselves to be mostly quite gentle and harmless.

So this leaves me with the very uncomfortable question of how I should react when -- I think it will be when, not if -- greater gun control comes to the US at long last, and it includes restrictions applied to autistic people. On the one hand, gun control is needed, badly, and I shouldn't try to slow it down. On the other hand, if we autistic people are kept away from guns, because we're thought to be crazy, does that also mean that we'll be prevented from driving, or having bank accounts, or from holding certain professions for which we may be well-qualified?

Life is sloppy and imperfect, and in emergencies -- the lack of gun control in the US is a huge emergency, just in case it wasn't entirely clear that that is my opinion -- in emergencies, some people's rights and privileges tend to get stepped on. Wars have collateral damage. We try to minimize it.

Today on Facebook, someone sarcastically said: if it's too soon to talk about yesterday's school shooting in Florida, can we at least talk about Sandy Hook now? That made me wonder whether Smith & Wesson have a Facebook page, and whether yesterday's shooting was mentioned on it. They do, they have a very popular page, and yesterday's shooting is not mentioned on it. Weak. And, unfortunately, hardly surprising. In the 1990's, an executive at Colt mentioned in a magazine interview that he was not opposed to all forms of gun control, and the gun buyers' backlash and boycott to that was so severe that it very nearly put Colt out of business permanently. Much like the Republican party, in its relationship to the NRA and Trump and many other things, the gun industry has very few people with the guts to stand up against the nuts. And that's truly shameful.

Hollywood Autism: Vice News: "Autism Under the Lens" and The Accountant, Starring Ben Affleck

Last night's episode of "Vice News" on HBO was entitled "Autism: Under the Lens." "Vice News"' Executive Producer (its only Executive Producer, apparently, in an age where it's more and more common for movie and TV credits to have long lists of Executive Producers for every show) is Bill Maher, well-known for advocating anti-vaccination positions. Anti-vaxxers have promoted the thoroughly-discredited notion that vaccines cause autism, as well as the notion, which I certainly hope is in decline or at least being re-examined by a significant amount of people, that autism is, in anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy's words, a "horrible disease." (And seriously, what's up with calling all of these shows "Vice" in the first place? "Vice," "Vice News," and a whole "Viceland" network. Surely I can't be the only one who finds the name ridiculous.)

And so I was pleasantly amazed that vaccines were not even mentioned once in the entire episode, and that -- along with some researchers and therapists specializing in autism who referred to autism as a disorder as if there where no debate about that, and who might be inclined to refer to the condition as a "horrible disease" -- significant air time was also given to the point of view sometimes referred to as neurodiversity, which considers us autistic people as not disabled, but just different, as atypical. At least one autistic person on the episode referred to achievements of his as being possible because of his autism and not in spite of it.

Is this evidence that Bill Maher, unlike some of his anti-vax and New Atheist pals, can learn? Maybe not. Maybe all it means is that Bill's position as Executive Producer of "Vice News" does not include him paying any attention to the show. I would like to think that Bill is learning, and becoming more sophisticated on topics on which he has been led astray.

My one major criticism of the episode was the weight given to the belief that autism is becoming more common. It's true that diagnoses of autism are becoming more common. But I myself feel that this could be entirely explained simply by the fact that diagnosis is getting better and becoming more widespread. The term "autistic" is barely 1 century old. As recently as the 1970's, the vast majority of people, including the majority of physicians, had still never heard of autism, let alone understanding it well or diagnosing it. People in general are still just beginning to learn about autism. So of course the diagnosis of autism is becoming more common. People who believe that autism is becoming more widespread, and that it is a horrible disease, say: Oh no, oh no, it's a plague. People like me, who think that autism is about as common as it has always been, and that what's changing is that we're understanding it better, think that things are getting better. Understanding is key, and it's definitely happening: neurologically-typical people are understanding autistic people better, and we autistic people are understanding the rest of the population better. It's not a plague, it's a healing. That's how I see it.

In any case, this episode of "Vice News," along with other things such as the 2016 Ben Affleck movie The Accountant, whose title character, played by Ben, has been described as "the first autistic superhero," gives me hope that Hollywood in general is getting smarter about autism. (And of course, just like anyone else who is opposed to actual plagues, like plagues of measles and influenza, I hope they're becoming better informed about vaccines too.) I don't know whether the Accountant actually is the first autistic superhero, and The Accountant, although not a bad movie at all, is far from the masterpiece that The Dark Knight is: it copies some of The Dark Knight's style in cinematography and editing and music and the back-and-forth chronology of the plot, without giving you the same level of thrills and chills as the Batman movie. The Accountant does have some very nice moments: the montage at the end with Sean Rowe singing "To Leave Something Behind," for example, should leave you pleasantly verklemmt whether you're autistic or not, I should think, if you've been watching carefully up until then.

Although the superhero stuff in The Accountant is occasionally somewhat silly, the movie is very smart and realistic about autism. It doesn't say that autism will make a child grow up to be a superhero: the superhero part has more to do with Affleck's character having been intensively trained in various martial arts all during his childhood, and then someone close to him having been murdered by the Mafia. But when it comes to the characteristics and behaviors of autistic people, The Accountant does a better job than any other movie or fictional TV show I've seen with the exceptions of Rain Man and Temple Grandin with Claire Danes in the title role. The real-life Temple Grandin was a technical consultant on Rain Man and the Claire Danes film. I haven't been able to find out yet whether she also worked on The Accountant. I didn't see her name in the credits. Maybe, at last, Hollywood can portray autism realistically without Dr Grandin's help.

As far as I know, Ben Affleck has not been on Bill Maher's show "Real Time" since that particularly unpleasant (for Ben) episode in 2014, during which Sam Harris mocked Ben for asserting that Islamophobia exists and is related to racism. That was Ben's 7th appearance on the show, dating back to 2005.

I Do Not Know Much About Literary Theory

I still have two books I obtained during my last, quite unsuccessful year in grad school: Neue Literaturtheorien - Eine Einführung, edited by Klaus-Michael Bogdal, from its 1st printing in 1990, and Elemente der literarischen Rhetorik by Heinrich Lausberg, in its 9th printing from 1987. 2 books with covers which look like right-angled minimalist modern art on white backgrounds.

At this very minute, perhaps for the first time in a quarter-century, it occurs to me that perhaps I associate the 2 books with each other because of the spare designs of their white covers, and that perhaps the look of the covers and the fact that both of them baffle me is about the sum of what they have in common.

Amazon's German website says of the book edited by Bogdal: "Die Einführung in die neuen Literaturtheorien erfreut sich seit ihrem Erscheinen 1990 großen Zuspruchs." ("The Introduction to New Literary Theories has been in great demand since its first appearance in 1990.") That makes it sound like it's been a huge success and gone through many editions since 1990, but it's copied from the back cover of the 3rd edition of 1993, which is the newest edition I can find. Oops.

Yesterday I dug out my copy of this collection of pieces on literary theories which were new in 1990, edited by Klaus-Michael Bogdal, because the phrase "the text itself" came into my mind as I observed some people who were turned off by a new novel without having read it yet, because they felt it had been over-hyped, and I felt that that was an odd reaction, because whether the publisher behaved in an annoying or asinine way or not, it wasn't going to make the novel -- "the text itself" -- one bit better or worse than it was. So I thought, maybe, at last, I would find some way of understanding Bogdal's book by way of my attitudes toward "the text itself." But when I googled the phrase "the text itself," I found associations to something which had called itself the New Criticism in the mid-20th century, and I was not at all sure whether this New Criticism had anything at all to with Bogdal's late-20th-century new literary theories -- other than their both having to do with literature. I can't find any references to Eliot, Brooks or Tate, leaders of the often conservative-to-reactionary New Criticism, in Dr Bogdal index, which seems much farther to the left, with its many references to Foucault, Freud, Marx and Derrida.

Then again, despite grave Right-Left political differences, perhaps the New Criticism's attitude toward "the text itself" had been adopted by people like Foucault and Derrida? Perhaps it has become quite widely adopted since the mid-20th century?

I don't know. I can barely get through one sentence in Bogdal's book. "Obwohl beide, Derrida und de Man, eine prinzipielle Differenz zwischen philosophischen und literarischen Texten verneinen, bleibt als Frage, ob und inwiefern sich literarische und philosophische Texte zu ihrer textuellen Bestimmtheit unterschiedlich verhalten." What?! Ohhhh, my brain! My brain! Owwwwww!

Lausberg (1912-1992), in addition to his Elemente der literarischen Rhetorik, wrote a Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik, which contained about 6 times as many pages as the Elemente, and had a 4th printing in 2008. In the graduate class in which we used the Elemente, I'm pretty sure reference was made to the Handbuch, as something which some of us would surely want to look into sometime later in our careers.

That's about all I can tell you about literary rhetoric. I'm still not sure whether to classify it under literary theory. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that literary theory is to rhetoric as fruit is to wristwatch.

I. Don't. Know.

Just as it only now occurs to me that the greatest point of relationship between Bogdal's book and Lausberg's may be the designs of the covers,

so too have I only now begun to wonder whether my great difficulty with both of these books may be examples of something which up until now I assumed didn't exist: autism interfering with my comprehension of things taught in classrooms. I don't remember any of the other grad students reacting negatively to either of these books or appearing to panic in the grip of dire cluelessness.

You know, now that I've started to think about it, I think there have been a lot of items on that list -- the list of things taught in classrooms which I never understood because I'm autistic -- rather than zero. But this may have been -- this may continue to be -- one of the prime examples, one of the most difficult things.

Or two completely different extremely difficult things which I continue to erroneously associate with each other because of 2 coincidentally similar-looking book covers.

A quarter-century ago I was egregiously hostile toward Bogdal's book. I wonder how obvious it was to my fellow grad students and whoever was teaching the class where we used this book that I was lashing because subconsciously I was afraid because I was clueless? I'm not hostile to either of the books today. I enjoy holding them, uncomprehendingly, like a monkey. Especially since I covered their covers with scotch tape.

Being Autistic, Part 47

I used to wonder whether my life would have been better if I'd made a different decision in this or that situation. I no longer think that way: Now it's not a matter of "if," but of "how much, and in how many unsuspected ways." Of course my life could have been better if I'd made better decisions.

And I'm autistic, which compounds the whole thing. It means that I constantly misunderstand people. It means that they constantly misunderstand me. These misunderstandings can go on for years before they're straightened out. And of course that's not counting the misunderstandings which I never even notice. I sometimes notice a misunderstanding years after it happened. Who knows how many I've never noticed?

A very significant sub-category of these misunderstandings is humor. I think I do okay, generally speaking, in understanding humor having to do with 3rd parties. But when someone makes a joke about me, suddenly things become very mysterious. What is the intent of the joke? Is it friendly or unfriendly? Does it come from affection for me and mean to make me laugh, or from frustration with me, meant to make others laugh at me? There seem to be very frequent misunderstandings when I make a joke about someone else too. A group of us may be joking around and laughing our heads off, and then I chip in with a joke and suddenly no-one's laughing any more, and I'm all, Oh no, I did it again. And explaining that I was just trying to joke around, and really meant no harm, can be much easier said than done.

Maybe that's one of the reasons I'm so interested in history: no matter what I say about Julius Caesar or Charlemagne, I know that it's not going to bother them.

I know that there are a whole lot of things I understand as well as the average person or better. I realize that many misunderstandings happen all over the place all the time which wouldn't have happened to me, and wouldn't have happened to others if I been there to explain things. But then there's this other category of things, where most people are operating at a level of communication that's way over my head, and always will be.

All my life people have been talking about how intelligent I am. For most of my life it was very hard for me to believe that they meant it. Now I realize that they usually do. However, now I also realize that very often, the context in which people pay me these compliments is some situation or occurrence which has made it seem as if I'm pretty stupid. They're saying that I'm very intelligent in spite of something which would suggest that I'm not. And even more than that: now I realize that they may be referring to something of which I'm completely oblivious: for example, I may have just said something which seemed really stupid. And the person paying me a compliment is saying, implicitly -- sometimes just to me when no one else is around, sometimes to a third party: "Yes, if you'd just met Steven this minute, and were judging him just from that, you might reasonably conclude that he's an idiot -- but he's actually very intelligent." Except that they just say the last 4 words.

The rest of it, they say non-verbally. Maybe they implied it by clearing their throat and doing something with their eyebrows, or with the tone of their voice, or in some other non-verbal way which most of you never give much thought to, because for most of you it's all instinctive and it all works. And if they don't know me well, or if they don't know I'm autistic or understand very much about autism -- or even if they do -- they may have no idea that there's a very good chance that I will miss most or all of the non-verbal part of the statement.

The truth, the part of the truth which people seldom say to my face, is that I actually am an idiot. That's seldom said to anyone's face. The truth is that I'm brilliant part of the time and an idiot part of the time. That's how an autistic person can seem to most people. You might be confused because you've known me for just a little while and up until know I've seemed pretty smart, and now suddenly it seems like I'm 5 years old. Or maybe for most of the time you've known I've behaved like a 5 year old, and now you're confused because I've just said something which sounds very intelligent. That's autism. Some of the time, if you want me to understand something, you're going to have to explain it to me like I was 5 years old. And of course, that means that I'm just not going to be able to understand some things no mater how they're explained to me. Other times, I'm way ahead of you. And there's no clear set of signals to tell you whether you're dealing with the genius or the 5 year old at any given time. There's also no clear set of signals to tell you that I get what you're implying non-verbally. Maybe there's something going on which ordinarily you wouldn't have to spell out, and maybe spelling it out is extremely uncomfortable for you. But if you don't spell it out, maybe I'll never understand what the problem is. And it's exhausting for both of us sometimes, and I'm sorry.

Snaplaces For Autism?

I'm autistic, I'm 55 years old and I've been tying my own own shoes for well over half a century. Today a saw a thing called Snaplaces which claims it's good for autistic children and adults, because it "allows us to tie our own shoes!!!"

This is the first time I've had any indication that tying my shoes might be harder than it is for some other people as a result of my autism.

Should I be congratulated for overcoming this hurdle so well? Or did Snaplaces invent this hurdle because they're slimy hucksters?

Should I thank Snaplaces for being wonderful kind people, or tell them to kiss my great big autistic ass? I really don't know.

One thing does make me lean a little toward the latter, though: VELCRO! Freaking velcro has been used as an alternative to shoelaces for decades now, and it seems to me that it would be a lot easier to use than Snaplaces. IF people found regular old shoelaces to be difficult.

I'm truly sorry if I'm wrong, but my first impulse is to lean slightly in the direction of "slimy hucksters."

Dream Log: Social Awkwardness In Bonn

In real life I spent the 1989-90 academic year as a student at the University of Bonn. Other famous alumni of that university include Marx, Heine and Nietzsche, so it makes sense that I was a student there too. The former palace of the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne --

-- houses the humanities departments of the university, so when I was there I regarded it as pretty much the entire university. Turns out they've got a lot of other stuff going on in different buildings. The title of Elector signifies that the Archbishop was one of the 7 princes who elected the Holy Roman Emperor. The palace, built in the late 17th and early 18th century, looks pretty much the same on the outside as it always has; on the inside, very disappointingly, it looks exactly the same as a huge university building without big enough windows. Lots of concrete.

Last night I dreamed that I returned to Bonn. Just as in 1989-90, I moved into a student dormitory and spent little time or energy on academic things, concentrating on my social life instead. Some of the people I had met in Bonn as fellow students 27 years ago had also come back.

I felt that a lot of them were shunning me. I wasn't sure, but that's how it felt. That's how it feels being autistic a lot of the time: socially awkward, entirely unsure how welcome or unwelcome one is in a given social situation.

Someone I knew from 1989-90 was spending some of his time with a tight-knit group of younger students, students of a more typical age for college attendance. At one point I and my friend from back then and a small young man from the younger group were sitting at a long table in what may have been a university cafeteria. Whatever the building was used for, at that moment it was relatively empty. The younger guy was very energetically working at a large notebook, drawing things which looked liked artistic images and scientific diagrams and equations at the same time. The three of us were talking and to me the conversation felt rather strained. In the conversation, it came up that the young guy could do Rain Man-level arithmetic in his head. I was like, Oh yeah? and gave him pairs of numbers to multiply in his head. He fired products back at me right away, without slowing down his work in his large notebook. The problems were to large for me to do in my head, and I was a little annoyed with myself that I didn't write them down along with his answers so that I could check them later with a calculator. I was unsure whether he was calculating accurately or just messing with me. In any case, he knew enough that his answers had the correct numbers of digits and ended with the correct number. for example, if I'd asked him to multiply 563 times 477, his immediate answer had 6 digits and ended with 1.

I was completely uncertain, not just about the multiplication: I didn't know whether the work the young man was doing was art, math, science or all three simultaneously or something else; I didn't know whether he was doing this as schoolwork or for some other purpose; and I had no idea whatsoever whether my presence there was welcome, indifferent or unwelcome to the other two.

Then it was night and I was outside and it was cold. I saw a friend or acquaintance of mine (I didn't know how he would describe me to others) going into a house where a party was going on inside, and I slipped inside right behind him.

John Goodman, the actor who played Rosanne's husband and has appeared in many Coen Brothers movies, was sitting at a table just inside. In the dream, he was one of the people I knew from Bonn 1989-90. He saw me immediately, and rushed me straight back outside into the cold and started walking me briskly away from the house and the party. Sometimes it's clear to me that I haven't been welcome somewhere, and this was one of those times.

At the same time, though, John Goodman's attitude toward me was not clear. He said something to me about my being dressed all wrong for the party. I had no idea whether I really was unacceptably dressed for the party, or if I was unwelcome there for other reasons. I didn't know whether the problem was me specifically or if any party crasher would've been rushed right straight back outside. I tried to get some clarification from John about this, but I didn't get anywhere with that. He was talking to me a mile a minute, and I didn't understand what the problem was at all. Maybe John and the other people at that party never wanted to see me on any social occasion, and John's talk was intended to keep me from seeing this too clearly and becoming enraged over it. I didn't know whether John and/or others had heard that I was autistic, or if some of them equated "autistic" with "crazy" and "crazy" with "dangerous." (The truth is, I'm as harmless as a puppy.) Maybe there really was no problem here except that I was in jeans and a T-shirt and sweatshirt and hooded winter jacket instead of the somewhat slicker attire of the other guests: nice-looking button-down shirts and overcoats for the guys, skirts for many of the ladies, like that. Maybe that really was the only reason why John rushed me out. Maybe it was somewhere in between. I had no idea.

At this point, I just wanted to get away from John and from the party. John mumbled something about his having heard I'd been diagnosed with something, and asked what that was about. Again, I was completely unsure whether this was friendly concern, or an attempt to muddy some waters, or something else entirely. I yelled at John, "It's called autism! Millions of us have it! Google it! Good night!"

I'm Stupid, And I Want Help!

I don't have much to say -- why doesn't anybody believe that?! I'm pretty much in the dark. I don't know all that much. I don't know what I can help you out with. I don't know anything I can tell you now. I've got 7 guides to Germany and Austria here in front of me now, plus a map, that's all I can tell you. There's a green Michelin guide to West Germany and Berlin, from the mid-80's, and one to Austria and the Bavarian Alps, that one's from 1969. They're both in English. Then there's 2 Baedeckers in English from the 1980's, one for Cologne and the other for the Rhine.

The rest are in German. 2 Baedecker Autoresiefuehrers, Oesterreich, 1958, and Deutschland, 1960. Then a Baedecker Rheinlande from 1909. That just leaves the map. It's a Berlin Falkplan. I got it when I was in Berlin in 2004. It's got all of the folds. The folds confuse me. The map is hard for me to use -- because I'm stupid! And I'm not even in Europe! I just look at these maps and guides and pretend I'm there! What do you want from me?!

I didn't know life was going to be like this -- one thing after the other, on and on. People negotiate tough and deals close fast and sometimes, years later, I figure out what happened in front of my eyes, and in the meantime stuff has kept on going on, constantly, so even though I someone eventually figure out what some people were talking about, I still just get farther and farther behind.

The movies said there was something in it for me. Something on my own.

My own! Did you ever stop to consider that maybe I'd just rather you sent me off to to this, to do that, take care of some Micky Mouse dogwalking job! Send me to pick somebody up at the airport! That sort of thing maybe I could've handled! I know, I know, I screwed up that one pet-sitting job, and I'm really sorry. Those dogs deserved better. I just wasn't up to the task, it overwhelmed me.

Mom would've liked for me to've become an accountant. That the way she wanted it. But it ain't the way I wanted it! I can't handle things! I can't even get the damn squirrels out of my own crawlspaces! I'm dumb -- not like everyone says, like... smart! I'm DUMB, and I want help!

Tell you about the investigation?! What investigation?! There's an investigation?! See, this is what I'm trying to tell you, this is what happens when people think I'm smart, and they can leave me in charge of things and everything will be fine! How many times do I have to screw up before people realize that just because I ace some IQ test, it doesn't mean... anything! At all!

I've been looking for the Alexanderplatz on this Berlin Falkplan map for three days, and I just found it now, and I'm fluent in German! This is what I'm trying to tell you! I need help! What I just said a minute ago, about how people should send me to pick up someone at the airport -- no! No! I was just bragging! Don't give me a job like that, I'll screw it up! And like I said, with the pet sitting -- I screwed it up! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!

Went To Kroger's And There's Bright Sunshine -- (OVERSTIMULATION)

-- and I got an email confirmation that I can attend a hearing by phone and my lawn is shaggy and there are people doing lawnwork all up and down the block!!!

AND I HALF-ASSED MOWED MY LAWN! And half-assed is about as good as I can do unless I really stay on it all the time because I have a non-motorized mower and I haven't been staying on it all the time and people have been saying hello and I grimace back at them, I'm not annoyed at them, on the contrary, they're being nice and that's nice, but I worry that my attempts to smile back look more like grimaces cause they sure feel that way, cause I'm overstimulated and bright sunshine is so oppressive to me, most people if they're affected by the amount of sunshine get depressed in the winter time by the lack of sunlight, I'm the opposite, a little sunshine goes a long way for me, I go outside for jusr a little while and already I'm tanned and I'm DONE, BUT THE SUN KEEPS SHINING ARRRRGGG!!!! and I try to keep reminding myself that this kind of day is wonderful for most people, and to be glad for them, and that I have to try to be there for them in the winter when they're depressed from the lack of light and I'm fired up because it's my kind of weather.

So many people really are so nice and they understand when I talk about how I get all wound up and overstimulated like this, or even if they don't understand, they try too, and that's nice.

1) Keep reminding myself about all the nice people all over the place.

2) Keep trying to be one of them.

3) Try very, very hard to relax.

I Have This Strange Non-Talent --

-- I compose snatches of very bad music in my sleep. The closest I can remember to composing an entire very bad song in my sleep was when I dreamed about this aging metal band. They had huge handlebar moustaches and severe mullets. Some members of the band still wore black leather vests over bare torsos years after they should have stopped going shirtless. I can't recall the lyrics of the verses anymore, except that each verse was a rhyming couplet. Just one rhyming couplet. I haven't forgotten the chorus yet, but there's not that much to remember. Here's the whole chorus, set to a clanking, rumbling metal train that sounds as if could grind to a halt completely at any moment:

"Rollin'. Rollin'. Rollin'. Rollin'."

I'm pretty sure the verses all described people who were not rollin' down that road with the band, and were jealous. It was all very, very sad and unimpressive. Wait, I just remembered one of the verses!

"And you know that I love it/If they don't, they can shove it."

As I said -- very, very sad and unimpressive.

But recently I dreamed up a couple of bars' worth of a song, and although if I were objective I might see that it's as awful as anything I've composed while asleep, I can't be objective about it. I like it. The way that someone might take home the most pathetically-crippled dog or cat from the shelter, not to be noble, but because they really and truly fell in love with the poor thing. I keep singing it.

Here are the lyrics to my three-legged puppy of a dreamed few seconds' worth of music:

"Won't you help MEEEEEEEEEE/To unnerstan[...]"

That's right: not "understand," but "unnerstan." This music is too pathetic to have d's.

But very much unlike the tired clanking rumbling metal anthem about rollin' down that road and leaving the jealous haters behind,

"Won't you help MEEEEEEEEEE/To unnerstan[...]"

is about me. It's about my autism, and being baffled by the behavior of most people, and asking for help in tryin' to unnerstan everthing.

I don't really know how obvious it is to others that I'm "special." More obvious to some than to others, I guess. And some of those more perceptive ones have been very kind, and have done a lot to try to help meeeeeee to unnerstan. And I guess that those are the people that I'm talking to when I say things like "thnk yu verr mutch pleez, yur verr nice persun." Or: "Won't you help MEEEEEEEEEE/To unnerstan."

I haven't yet read an entire novel or story by David Foster Wallace, but recently I read a meme with a quote from him (I checked it out and it's really from him), in which, if I've understood him correctly, he says that perhaps being human means being

"unavoidably sentimental and naive and goo-prone and generally pathetic, [...] in some basic interior way forever infantile, some sort of not-quite-right-looking infant dragging itself anaclitically around the map, with big wet eyes and froggy-soft skin, huge skull, gooey drool"

And if Wallace is right about that -- assuming I'm right about what he's saying -- then it means that I'm not so different from the neurologically-typical as I sometimes think, because I'm most definitely -- all that, that Wallace said, there. Maybe the autism has to do more with expressing my essence in an unusual way, than with my essence being unusual. Maybe sometimes those verr nice persuns have not so much been taking pity on me, as responding to things they recognize within themselves. As one not-quite-right-looking infant to another.

Great Big Fat Guy, Day 140

Yesterday I had another big arugula salad, but I think I put too much proteins and fat into it.

And then late last night I ate an entire box of TGIF frozen mozarella sticks at one sitting. I didn't feel so great after that. And I said to myself: "I think I just ate a pound of cheese." This morning I went and looked at the information on the box, and, yes: net weight over 17 ounces and almost all of that was cheese, so, yeah, either a pound of cheese, or close to it.

If you want to lose weight you shouldn't go around eating a pound of cheese at one sitting.

And the mozzarella sticks weren't even very good. I think it's past time for me to stop trying to figure out what the whole excitement is about mozzarella sticks, and accept that I'm just one of those people who doesn't love them. I'm not crazy about chili cheese fries either, which makes me wonder whether I'm one of those people -- one of those rare people, to judge from what some say -- who wouldn't like poutine. [PS, 22. Oct 2020: Since writing this post I've had poutine and liked it very much -- but I had it at Zingerman's Roadhouse in Ann Arbor, and they're geniuses, so I'm still not at all sure whether I'd like just ANY old poutine.] And of course, none of this is bad news for someone who wants to lose weight.

I'll chalk up mozzarella sticks to experience, maybe spend a little more time looking at nutritional information before I eat something. Also, I'll keep in mind that the day before yesterday, after I ate that salad which was really a salad and not a big pile of fattening stuff mixed with arugula, I felt good. Then yesterday when I mixed too much fattening stuff into the arugula salad, afterwards I didn't feel great. And even less so after the 1300-calorie pound of cheese.

Also today I lost my temper and screamed at somebody on the phone who totally didn't deserve that. I don't know exactly how that's related to the rest of this post, except that I often hear people talk about a link between obesity and unresolved issues. I've often heard the phrase "eating your feelings." In any case, I can't go around screaming at people. I'm 54 years old, I should grow up.

The other day somebody on TV, I think it was an LA rapper on the Vice TV program "Noisey," said that getting rich and famous doesn't change you, it just makes you more like you are. Is he right? I plan on being a rich and famous writer very soon. Will that make me weigh 500 pounds? Or will it increase the part of me that exercises?

You know what, I don't really believe that. I think getting rich and famous will change a lot of things about me, for the better. I don't think it will destroy me. I think I'm going to lose weight and scream less at people who don't deserve it, because those are changes that I want which are within my control, and I want them enough that they'll happen, and I think those things will be unaffected by my financial circumstances and popularity. I think getting rich and famous will greatly improve my social life, because I'll be popular. I don't think I'll let a lot of fake friends ruin things for me or blow a fortune on Faberge eggs or make a drunken spectacle of myself. As far as making a spectacle of myself at all, that ship may have sailed when I was born autistic, but learning about my condition helps.

I don't think I use being autistic as an excuse for being an asshole. 2 different people have accused me of that. Those 2 people may know each other, but as far as I know, they don't, and they came up with that assessment of me independently. Unless it's some sort of slogan... *googling* Hm, yes, it does seem to be sort of a slogan, which makes it less of a coincidence that 2 different people accused me of it. Anyway, I don't think I do it. I'm aware that I'm an asshole sometimes -- that alone, of course, puts me ahead of some assholes -- and I'm not proud of it, and I'm not trying to get away with it, I'm trying to improve. Being autistic was no excuse for screaming on the phone today. There was no excuse for that.

Saying that i think those 2 people were wrong with their criticism doesn't mean that I ignore criticism. Before coming to the conclusion that those people were wrong about me using autism as an excuse, I thought about it quite a lot.

What if that rapper is exactly right, and the part of me that fame and fortune magnifies is the part that constantly wants to improve? That'd be pretty cool, as long as I watch out about getting a swelled head.

Free Your Mind... and Your Ass Will Follow. That's the title of Funkadelic's 2nd album, and maybe some fairly good advice as well.

Time for Katy:

Dream Log: Unexpressed Love From Long Ago

30 years ago in college I was in love with a woman and never did much about it. A few years later, during my grad school time, I was in love with another woman and actually touched her a lot, which was a very nice combination. And I told myself that this was the first time I had ever been in love. Then a few years after that I fell in love for a second time -- but let me revise that: for a third time. The woman in grad school was the second time. 30 years ago was the first time.

We were friends, she and I, or, at least, friends of friends. Groups of us got together now and then and drank some beer and ate some pizza, groups occasionally containing both she and I. During those get-togethers she and I did just a very little bit of snuggling. I don't think I ever kissed her, not once, and I don't think she ever kissed me. I think that if there had ever been so much as a kiss on the cheek given or received, I would've had shivers from the top of my head to the soles of my feet, and I would've thought about it every day for the last 30 years.

While we were both in college, she had some relationships with other men, relationships which, at least so it seemed to me, lasted for a long time. And I dated some women and it usually fizzled out very quickly. But even if I was going to wait until she was uninvolved before I tried to get something started with her, there was definitely at least one such window of opportunity when she was clearly unattached. A couple of times I started to make a bumbling pass at her, and both times I backed down in an even more bumbling manner, with my heart pounding.

I don't know how she felt about me. People make comments all the time and I don't know how to interpret them -- it's called autism. People also engage inn a great deal of non-verbal communication, most of which I miss entirely -- autism again. Back then, people did and said some things, and I've been wondering for 30 years what they meant.

Like a couple of those times when that group of us went out for beer and pizza. Once I massaged her shoulders for a little while, and people looked at the two of us and laughed, and someone commented, "You know that expression a cat gets on its face when it's being petted?" and a lot of people laughed. She had her back to me and I couldn't see the expression on her face at that moment. I'm not completely sure whether whoever was talking was talking about the expression on her face, or the expression on my face.

Another time with that group, people were talking about the shape of her head, and she said that the angle where the bridge of her nose met her forehead was "the perfect shape to do this," and she laid her head on my shoulder and the angle fit like a puzzle-piece on the corner of my shoulder. What should I have made of that? Nothing? Everything?

I don't know how she felt about me, or whether she gave me much thought at all, and I don't know how obvious it was that I adored her. Since being diagnosed as autistic in 2007, and having had some psychotherapy since 2010 with therapists specializing in autism, I've come to realize that for much of my life I've engaged in a very bad habit of pretending that I know what's going on in social situations. Starting long before the diagnosis, sometimes I considered saying to someone or other: "Look. I'm stupid. You may not have any idea how stupid. Please explain this to me like I'm 5 years old, because I have no idea what's going on."

For example, a friend of mine once got visibly frustrated with my moping -- visibly even to me -- and said that half of the women in the neighborhood wouldn't mind being with me. For 30 years I've been wondering what to make of that. Was he saying that this woman I was in love with was just waiting around for me to do something about it? Or that I should stop being miserable about her because plenty of other women were interested? Or was he angry because he secretly -- or maybe not so secretly, but just invisibly to me -- had feelings for the same woman, but thought my chances with her were better than his? For all I know, he might have been upset because he was in love with me. I have no idea how anybody felt about anybody.

At the time, I didn't put his remark together with this particular woman at all. And I'm not sure whether his remark had anything at all to do with her. I don't know whether he had any idea how I felt about her. It could have been obvious to a lot of people that I was in love with her, or maybe nobody had the slightest idea. Maybe she could see it and she returned the feelings, maybe she was flattered but uninterested, maybe she was appalled and really, really not interested, and let me rub her shoulders once in 4 years out of pity because she wasn't completely cold-hearted, and our group of friends easily saw right through me, and to them the two of us looked sweet and touching, like Esmeralda and Quasimodo.

Anyhow, the reason I realize now that I was in love with her back then is because I dreamed about her last night. I dreamed that there was a huge, very interesting-looking bookstore in my neighborhood which I had passed countless times, but for some reason I had never gone in. (I'm a real bookworm. In my entire life, there have been either few bookstores, or none, which I've walked past as many as 2 times without going in. Including newsstands at airports which sell books.) (Maybe going into the bookstore symbolizes expressing my emotions?) So in my dream, finally I went in -- and there she was, manning one of the store's many cash registers. Her register was by itself as opposed to being one in a row of registers. It was enclosed on 2 sides by walls covered with books and other merchandise.

She and I chatted pleasantly, and occasionally she rang people up. She seemed to have been doing this job for a while, she seemed to be in command of her turf. Once she chased a couple of men out of the store, twins in matching pinstriped suits and bowler hats, because she could tell, somehow, that they were pickpockets.

She had to go off to another part of the store. I waited by her station. A good-looking couple, a man in a suit and a woman in a dress, clearly not store staff, sat down in her station. He sat down in a swivel chair and she sat in his lap. I was a little indignant at them for invading her station. She reached for the phone next to the register, an old phone on a cord, held the receiver to her ear for a while, but didn't dial. I was about to confront them and chase them away, but shortly after the woman's strange behavior with the phone they got up and walked away. Only after they were gone to it occur to me that the woman's behavior with the phone might have been done to distract people from something else, like the man stuffing his pockets with merchandise.

There were 2 small steps leading up from the store floor to her station. I sat down on those steps. I decided that when she came back I was going to open up to her about my feelings for her. I got very nervous. I put my hands over my face and began to cry. Then I heard her voice. She was scolding and chasing away another would-be pickpocket. Then I woke up.

More On My Problems With Buddhism

Either Buddhism has been erroneously called a religion by very many people for a very, very long time, or it is a religion which recently has been very successfully marketed to atheists.

Just today in an online discussion, I was saying Yu-huh it is too a religion, and this other person, possibly a Buddhist, I don't know for sure, was saying no it's a philosophy, and I indicated that I was tired of the discussion, and the other person said Okay if you don't want to discuss religion...

*sigh* I pointed out that -- *sigh*

I'm so sick of them. "Buddhism is not a religion. We don't worship deities or preach any sort of metaphysics. Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for me to go to a temple and kneel in front of a statue of the Buddha alongside some Buddhist monks, and chant and meditate in my quest to attain eternal bliss."

This little tiff started off with a quote from the Dalai Lama: "I believe that the only true religion consists in having a good heart." I replied: "I don't think you need any religion to be a nice person."

The other person tossed me an LOL and said that that was exactly what the quote meant, because Buddhism isn't a religion, and we were off.

It's one thing if you think that the Dalai Lama is a great person and a powerful force for good in the world. Maybe he is. I admit that I can't really judge his personality or his effect on the world objectively, because all of this it's-not-a-religion sticks in my craw.

I happen to like Pope Francis very much. (I didn't right at first, as you can see by reading what I wrote about him in this blog immediately after he was elected Pope. But part of that, of course, was just my own personal disappointment because I hadn't been elected Pope.) I like him more and more.

I'm not sure whether I would like him if he and/or some of his followers started to claim that Catholicism is not a religion and never has been. If, for example, Catholics suddenly started to claim that the belief in the Resurrection isn't really a belief in the Resurrection and never was such a belief, the way that some Buddhists have suddenly begun to claim that Buddhists beliefs in reincarnation -- reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, for example -- are not actually beliefs in reincarnation and never have been.

If you're a Catholic and also an atheist, that's fine with me. Just don't try to tell me that no Catholics believe in anything supernatural and that none ever have.

If you're a Buddhist and you don't believe in reincarnation, I have no problem with that.

If you're trying to tell me that "Buddhists don't believe that the Dali Lama has been reincarnated, they believe that aspects of one Dali Lama are transferred to the next, because they all share one heart," and that I'm just silly for thinking this is a religion and not a philosophy, and for thinking that what you just said has anything to do with reincarnation, then I don't want to talk to you any more.

Not about Buddhism, not right now anyway.

Why? Because I'm always struggling to make sense, and that struggle is difficult for me under the best of conditions. Maybe it's actually much harder for me personally because I'm autistic. Perhaps if I were neurologically-typical I wouldn't loath theology so because it wouldn't pose such a threat to me. Perhaps if I were neurologically-typical and someone were to say to me: "Buddhists don't believe that the Dali Lama has been reincarnated per se, they believe that the ideals of the last Dali Lama have been transferred to the new one. The one who owns the heart," I'd find it fascinating, and we'd be able to discuss it all day and all night and I'd find it all ever so delightful. I seem to remember a line from a poem by Jack Kerouac about Buddhism being delightfully empty baloney any way you slice it. I'm sorry, I can't find that line right now. And often I remember lines completely wrong. (Is that also because I'm autistic?) But assuming that Kerouac did actually write something more or less like that -- is this a matter of some people finding a perfectly good and healthy sort of nonsense in religion?

Is it possible that it's similar to the wonderful stuff I find in Gertrude Stein, which so many people have had to explain so laboriously to each other but which no one ever had to explain to me, which I loved from the first instant?

Maybe. Or maybe I simply have a very good point here and I'm right to call some Buddhists on their nonsense.

[PS, 20. March 2016: Another thing has occurred to me lately: how seldom anyone seems to wonder whether the feats of archery described by Eugen Herrigel in his famous book Zen in the Art of Archery were faked. (Herrigel tells of a Zen master shooting an arrow at a faraway target in the dark and hitting the center of the bulls-eye, and then shooting a second arrow which splits the first one right up the middle.)]

Trying To Account For Differences Between Online And Offline Behavior

I'm an atheist, I've been an atheist for 40 years, I've never hidden it, and I've gotten along just fine with a lot of theists and rarely had any problems with them over differences in worldviews. That's been my meat-world experience. My cyber-experience of contact between atheists and theists could not be more starkly different. It has been mostly them fighting and being very rude to each other, and conversations on religious topics are constantly interrupted by verbal abuse from people on either side -- if, that is, there was anything resembling an attempt at discussion to begin with. I don't know what this means. Some possible explanations:

1) I may have been fortunate in the people I've met face-to-face over the course of my life.

2) I may have been unfortunate in the people I've met online over the course of the past 5 years who argue about religion.

3) The people I've met face-to-face and those I've met online may be very similar people, who behave very differently depending upon whether they're interacting face-to-face or in cyberspace.

I was raised by liberal Christians. There was never the slightest hint of my parents disowning me or wanting nothing more to do with me, because I was openly atheistic. A lot of the atheists I've met online were raised by fundamentalist Christians, and they have been disowned and shunned by their families. Over and over again this turns out to be the background of people supporting irreligious billboards and trying to have the 10 Commandments removed from public buildings, and other atheist efforts which I tend to find useless or worse. And these are the same atheists I see behaving very rudely online toward theists -- Christians, mostly -- who are behaving very rudely toward them. (Cousins, feudin' and fightin'?)

So it may just be that the people meet face to face are not those I meet online.

It may be that atheists who come from liberal backgrounds like mine are either hanging out in different places online than I am, or that they are not as vocal as I am about being atheists, or both.

Or it may be that many people's manners are much worse online than offline. Maybe the very same people I meet face-to-face, who seem to take my atheism so calmly in stride, are actually very upset with it, but hide their dismay from me, and take it to the Internet, where they unload in the manner I'm accustomed to seeing online.

Whatever the reasons, the contrast between the behavior I see offline and that I see online is very striking. Perhaps it's very autistic of me to find the difference striking, while the neurologically-typical see nothing strange about people behaving very differently in the 2 spheres.

Dream Log: The Delightful, Difficult Autistic-Human Interface

Last night I had a series of dreams which were about a previous night's series of dreams. Last night, I dreamed that the difficulties I had faced during the earlier night's dreams were due to my misunderstanding of the autistic-human interface, and that the solution was to understand the underlying human motivation whenever it is at odds with the ostensible reasons for the given event.

Get it? Got it? Good. It seemed like a big breakthrough while I was still asleep, but sometimes what seems like brilliance when I'm asleep turns out to be pretty much nothing when I wake up. We'll see whether or not I've actually had a breakthrough.

But first I should probably explain what I mean by the "autistic-human interface." We -- by which I mean we autistic people -- find you humans to be fascinating, lovable creatures -- and by "humans" I mean the 99% or so of you who are not autistic. We like you, but we often find it very difficult to care for you and provide healthy environments for you, conditions in which you can thrive to the utmost, because we don't understand how your brains work, and we very often do not understand what you are trying to communicate with your words and actions. To name just one example, there's the whole eye-contact thing. Boy, you humans really like to make a lot of eye contact! It's only been in the past several years, with the help of therapists specializing in aspects of the autistic-human interface, that I've noticed how much eye contact most of you consider to be normal. How much? Way too much for me in most circumstances, thank you very much! So don't take it personally if I don't look you in the eye nearly as much as you think I might. It doesn't have anything to do with me not liking you, or liking you too much and being all shy about that, or with me being a shifty coward instead of a "real" man -- no, it's just an aspect of the autistic-human interface. We may look the same and share a lot of the same DNA, but we autistic people are genetic mutants, and we're different from you humans. The eye contact issue is one of many, many examples.

So anyway, I don't remember much about the previous night's dreams except that in those dreams I was pondering the interface, as I do quite a lot in dreams and also while awake. Last night's dreams had to with improving the interface. First of all, I was in a very crowded mall with Matt LeBlanc (a movie star again). I often find crowds very stressful, as many autistic people do, but it helps if I'm with some other people and I'm involved with them either by conversation or by some shared task or by sharing an experience, like at a movie or sporting event. In the mall Matt and I, autistic and human united in a single purpose, were attempting to help some senior citizens shop. But it was so crowded and there was so much pushing and shoving in the crowd, and the senior citizens themselves were so energetic, running this way and that, that Matt and I had to agree that our efforts had met with only partial success, if that, but that we had gained some insight into the interface. We shook hands, and that was the end of the 1st dream. (Matt's hair wasn't grey.)

In the next dream I was outside in a Midwestern semi-urban environment. I and many other people were energetically running and jumping across the landscape, sometimes leaping from roof to roof in suburban subdivisions or leaping across narrow canyons, in a large-scale effort to do... something. If it was clear to me during the dream what all of us were doing, it's gone now, except that there were hundreds of us, too many to communicate with all of the rest in the midst of so much action and motion, and that we were all united in... something. Like maybe distributing bottled water to the populace, because the water supply had been contaminated, or the water-delivery system had been damaged. I mention this only as a possibility, because I don't remember what our shared purpose was, if I even ever knew it to begin with while I was dreaming.

A sub-group within the group of us, a couple dozen people, had paused in a parking lot to get organized for the next step. It was a parking lot but all of us were on foot. I had been given the task of explaining to this sub-group what we needed to do next, and how we were going to do it. The plan was very clear to me, it would have been very simple to communicate the plan to these several dozen people, except that every time that I began to speak, Mila Kunis (movie star!) and another young woman, sitting cross-legged on a blanket, began to talk to each other very loudly in a Slavic language. I stopped talking, and they stopped talking, and as soon I began again they began again. It seemed very clear that they were deliberately interfering with my prepping the group for the next action to be taken, although it was not all clear to me why they were doing it.

And that's when I had what seemed to me, while I was dreaming, like an epiphany about the autistic-human interface, which, now that I'm awake, seems like it might be be nothing. The possible epiphany is this: it's good for an autistic person, observing humans, to see the difference, if he or she can, between the explicit motivation for the event, and the implicit motivation for the behavior within the event which seems to contradict the event's explicit motivation.

For example: say that we were all there to get bottled water to people who needed it. That was the explicit motivation of the event which had brought us all together. I had the same explicit motivation in attempting to address the people in the parking lot. Now say that Mila and her friend were making a joke by repeatedly interrupting me in a Slavic language. That would mean that the implicit motivation of their repeated interruption was humor. Nothing wrong with humor in the midst of a day of hard, important work. Perhaps humans could easily see the implicit motivation of the actions of Mila and her friend. Perhaps, if I were human instead of autistic, I would know what to do. Perhaps a human would know exactly how to react, in a way which would make everyone laugh, and we were all tired and the laughter would re-energize all of us, and then it would be appropriate for me to continue sharing the plan for the next phase of action.

That's the possible epiphany: see something that at first looks to me like hostile disruption of the explicit purpose of the event, try to grasp the implicit motivation, see if maybe it's not hostile at all, react to the implicit motivation, rather than becoming angry at the disruption of the larger explicit purpose. Because perhaps Mila and her friend had no intention at all of hindering the explicit purpose, but just felt a need, not just on their parts, but on the part of the group -- maybe even on my part as well -- to blow off some steam for just a moment, before returning to the explicit purpose, the distribution of the bottled water.

Epiphany? Crap? Part-epiphany, part-crap? I don't know.

Coming To Grips With The Fact That I've Got Some Fundamental Problems Because I'm Autistic

In 2007, at the age of 45, I was first diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a diagnosis since confirmed by several other diagnosticians. Since 2007 I have begun to learn a little bit about this condition, and I have taken to referring to myself as autistic, not Asperger, because I believe that Asperger's is autism. Some people agree, some do not. Almost all would agree that Asperger's is on what is called the autistic spectrum.

Back in 2007 I did not really yet know how autism is generally perceived. To give you an example of how out of touch I was with the popular images of autism, after 2007 I actually applied for a few jobs by telling the hirers that I was autistic, assuming that they would take that to mean that I was quirky, but also an awesome genius who could do great things for their company or organization. And I don't think I was wrong in seeing myself as a quirky genius. But I know now that many people don't define "autistic" anywhere near that way. The job applications turned out to be extremely awkward and embarrassing, as I got a glimpse the huge difference between how I saw myself and how other people typically saw me if I wasn't trying hard to hide how I really am and blend in.

But just a glimpse, I think, because the difficulty in understanding goes both ways. In some basic ways, I can't understand most people. Never have been able to. I've guessed my way through encounters with other people, and I continue to do so.

I saw my neurological condition, and I still do, as a difference, a mutation away from the usual homo sapien neurology, resulting in some unusual abilities and some weaknesses compared to the average human mind, but that some of these weaknesses are just a matter of the two groups, neurologically typical people and autistic people, not understanding each other, and that greater understanding will lead to great improvements in the relationships between the groups.

But whether I'm right or wrong to be optimistic about great improvements coming due to neurologically-typical people understanding autistic people better and vice-versa, I can't deny that many great misunderstandings remain.

So whether you choose to look at autism as a disability or a disease (I don't), or as a difference from the typical brain which is not necessarily bad in and of itself (that's how I see it), the fact remains that, at least at the present time, it is often very difficult for autistic people to understand and deal with the majority of people, and it is often very difficult for that majority to understand and deal with us.

So. I hope I didn't offend any autistic people or relatives or friends of autistic people with the headline of this post. I'm not saying that there's necessarily anything wrong with me, I'm not saying I'm disabled in every sense of that term. I definitely do not want to be "cured." I definitely DO want the extraordinary abilities of autistic people to be more broadly recognized and appreciated. I think that some things have improved in the lives of autistic people in the past few decades, because of greater understanding on both sides, and I think that future improvements may well be immense.

But in the meantime, just the fact that I have this one big difference, a big difference and still poorly-understood, in the way my brain is put together, from 99% of the general population -- that is, at least for the present, a disability, in the sense that it presents me with obstacles, and presents others with obstacles if they have to deal with me. It's hard for us to understand each other. That's a big obstacle. Huge.

It's hard for me to admit that I constantly face these obstacles. I've really spent my whole life denying it. But I just can't deny it any more. And I'm sorry if it offends some other people, because they think I'm presenting a negative image of autism. But I have to, as Zimmy says, try my best to be just like I am.

Autism: X-Men Superhero Mutations!

I'm autistic. (BUT I AM NOT A SPOKESPERSON FOR AUTISTICS! I just assume they don't want me as such. I'm just a leeeetle bit much much much too zany and annoying for spokesperson-type positions.) I'm just curious about how many people have given much thought to the possibility that autism is not a horrible disease, and that difficulties faced by autistics and those around can be addressed by each side understanding the other better. Joyce wrote Finnegan's Wake. Wittgenstein wrote the tractatus logico-philosophicus. Einstein made huge advances in physics. Disease? I don't want to sound arrogant, but all that sounds more like X-Men mutant superpowers to me. (Yes, I assumed for the sake of argument that Joyce, Wittgenstein and Einstein were all autistic.) Temple Grandin completely revolutionized the design of slaughterhouses, there's not much doubt that she's autistic, and she says she was able to conceive of those new designs BECAUSE she was autistic.

We're like the mutants in the X-Men stories in the way that many of us strongly oppose the idea that we need to be "cured."

I can't yet bend metal or lift nuclear submarines with my mind, but I am an excellent driver!

I don't feel diseased. I feel that I'm different in a very significant way from 99% of the general population, and very similar to the other 1% in that same specific way.

I know that very many very intelligent people who have devoted a lot of time and study to this subject disagree with me and are sure that autism is a disorder. And I don't dismiss that, I consider it, I weigh it. I hope people will weigh what autistics are saying when they're saying what I'm saying now. (Saying it often in a much more dignified, less zany, more spokesperson-like way than I am capable of doing.)

All the "thank you verr much pleez, yr verr nice person" stuff -- that's autism too. (Was Gertrude Stain autistic?) I knew an autistic woman who, when she was in a good mood, liked to say things like "Lay down lay down lay down" and "Very well-paved" and "Kiss my Play-Do head!" and then she would bow her head so you could kiss her on the top of her head if you were so inclined. It was very sweet. At the moment I don't really know how to explain why some of us sometimes do things like that, and spinning and rocking wringing our hands and so forth and so on. Yes, it's all called "self-stimming" and you can look up the standard descriptions and explanations of it. But do those explanations explain anything? I don't really know. I can't point to objective benefits of this sort of thing, whether you choose to call it self-stimming or not, comparable to those of Einstein's and Grandin's work. But on the other hand it certainly does no one any harm, and if it comes along with extraordinary abilities, why should we hide it? (Thinking of the mutants from the X-Men stories again, sometimes hiding things like blue skin and hair, and sometimes refusing to hide.) The point I'm struggling here to express is something along the lines of: do we even need to explain unusual behavior which stems from our autism, if it makes sense to us and if it's harmless?

Consider this: lots and lots of things which the neurologically-typical majority of people do on an everyday basis, without thinking of it as bizarre, seems bizarre to us, and generally speaking, we just accept it. We don't bother you about it or shun you for it.

Over and over in this blog I have pled for people to consider that just possibly there's not a thing wrong with us. So please, please consider that possibility. Thank yu verr much pleez, yr verr nice person!

ASAN: An Autism Advocacy Group Actually Run By Autistic People

The nice lady at the cash register asked if I wanted to contribute to Autism Speaks. I replied by saying what many nice autistic people say when nice people ask if they want to contribute to Autism Speaks: "Uhhhh... Oh... Ahhhh..." After a moment I got a grip and said, in what I hope was a nice and friendly way, that I was autistic, and that I didn't support that organization, nor did one single other autistic person whom I know personally, and that I've heard the opinions of a great many autistic people on this.

Autism Speaks has been one of the major sources of the thoroughly-discredited belief that vaccines cause autism. As late as 2009, directors of Autism Speaks resigned because the organization refused to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus that there is no link between vaccination and autism.

Ironically, in view of its name, no members of the board of directors of Autism Speaks is autistic. This organization is not, as its name implies, autistic people speaking for themselves -- it's other people speaking for autistics, and getting a lot of things wrong.

Autism Speaks takes the positions that autism is a disease, and they are looking for a cure. I take the position that greater understanding will be of great benefit both to autistics and to those near to us -- greater understanding of autism on the part of the neurologically-typical, and vice-versa as well: greater understanding of the neurologically-typical on our part.

ASAN (Austistic Self Advocacy Network) is -- well, I can't improve upon the description on their webiste -- "a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization run by and for Autistic people. ASAN was created to serve as a national grassroots disability rights organization for the Autistic community, and does so by advocating for systems change and ensuring that the voices of Autistic people are heard in policy debates and the halls of power while working to educate communities and improve public perceptions of autism. ASAN’s members and supporters include Autistic adults and youth, cross-disability advocates, and non-autistic family members, professionals, educators and friends."

The next time Autism Speaks asks for your support -- and they seem to be everywhere these days -- please, look into ASAN instead.

And if you're still wondering just what exactly autism is -- again, I can't improve on ASAN. This page describes our condition very well.