Last night I dreamed that Mila Kunis and I were hanging out with a few mutual friends, in a building in a woods by a lake which looked as if it might have been a big empty upscale hotel, and figuring out that we liked each other as more than friends. (My social life lately has been spectacular while I've been asleep. While I've been awake it hasn't been as impressive. I haven't actually ever met Mila Kunis.) At first we would sneak away from the others now and then to hug and kiss for a moment. Then we decided to stop hiding it from the others.
Then there was an exchange in the presence of the others -- although nobody seemed to be paying much attention to the two of us -- in which we were both rather emotional, and I did my best to reassure her that I was sincere, and trying neither to manipulate her nor humiliate her, nor was I seeing anyone else. It felt difficult to reassure her, and simultaneously not to appear to belittle her feelings.
Then we had sustained eye contact for a period of more than a few seconds -- remember, I'm autistic, and continuously maintaining eye contact for more than about 1 second at a time does not come naturally to me -- and I was very moved because her eyes were gorgeous, and I hugged her and whispered in her ear that she was gorgeous and she made me very happy. And she whispered: "Is it only my looks?" And I whispered: "No, it's a lot more than that. But to be honest, you're also extremely good-looking, and that's very nice too." After I said that she hugged me tighter.
Then I was living with my brother in a house next to an Interstate exit and entrance. In real life I've never lived in such a location. The landscape was fairly flat, and dusty, and the sun was very bright although the weather outside was cool. The house was small and seemed flimsily-built. There was very little sound insulation, we had to raise our voices slightly to be heard over the roar of vehicles on the highway. Gradually, with the help of more clues, I figured out that the house was somewhere in west Texas. I've never lived in Texas, but I've passed through a few times, and a lot of people I know, relatives, friends, acquaintances, live in Texas or have lived there. Although more often in central or east Texas -- from Abilene to Louisiana -- than west Texas. When I figured out where the house was, I remarked to my brother, "I don't have any contacts near here." My brother nodded, but I couldn't tell if my lack of acquaintances unsettled him as it did me.
He and I walked across the road from our house to the local saloon, where we met a group of friendly and hard-drinking guys who clearly were led by a guy who looked somewhat like a younger Hank Williams, Jr, except bigger. He wore a Stetson and sunglasses indoors and out. He spoke with a slight Russian accent. He bought drinks for his buddies and also for me and my brother, although we had just met. He was disappointed that my bother and I weren't drinking faster, but he didn't make a big deal of it. He and I were standing at the bar and laughing about something when suddenly he stopped laughing. He was looking past me to the entrance of the saloon. I turned around and saw one of his crew standing by the entrance and looking very grim.
They all cleared out very quickly. The Hank-lookalike dropped some bills on the bar and apologized that my brother and I couldn't come with them. We heard several pickups outside start up and roar away, spitting gravel.
Shortly after that -- it was still mid-afternoon -- my brother and I were back in our house with a few friends, when someone started banging very hard on the front door. I opened the door and a very angry Texas Ranger barged into the living room, shoving me on the chest and shoulders and yelling for me to tell him where Sergei was. He was clearly convinced that I was only pretending not to know who Sergei was, and pretending not to be Russian. There were now several Rangers in our living room, and one of them barked at the angry one to shut up and go outside. Then he talked to me very calmly. I was wondering whether this was all a good-cop-bad-cop routine, or whether the first guy really was about to flip out because he was so angry. I thought, if this is just a routine, they're good at it, it's a very convincing routine. In any case, after the calm Ranger had spoken with me for a short while, I understood that the big Hank Williams-lookalike was Sergei, and the Rangers understood that none of us were Russian, and that none of us had seen Sergei before that afternoon in the saloon or had any idea where he and his crew were headed, and that they had barged into the wrong house. The calm cop made the angry one come back inside and apologize to everyone for the mistake. They all left, and none of us back in the house had the slightest idea why they were chasing Sergei.
Then I woke up.
Showing posts with label mila kunis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mila kunis. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Monday, October 5, 2015
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.
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.
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