it’s not in belief that faith succeeds, but in being moved by beings one sees are being moved by faithful arcs: the sun and moon are proved faithful in their arcs. are we agreeing?
who is moving in these faithful arcs? whose business is in preparing to meet the moon? who is leaving breakfast far too soon, to move some dollars to some oligarchs?
being moved by faith, one moves more slowly; responds more quickly to the moment’s need– without a thought of whether the need is holy, or whether one is doing a holy deed.
faith’s beyond belief: and being wholly present frees the faithful to succeed.
should i attune myself so that I see a single moon, and continue seeing one moon?
or is my gift to see three moons, and continue seeing a multiplicity of moons?
or is my gift the gift of inner blindness, that doesn’t see a thing, but instead describes it?
calm yourself, child. the busy world is too busy to calm you.
let whatever moon, or multiplicity of moons that might appear, appear, and let them calm you. let the rhythm of the moon appear, and in appearing, calm you.
appearances are just appearances: one two three, coming and going.
calm yourself in the rhythms of coming and going.
favor the coming and going of the moon-or-moons over the rhythms of the busy world.
whether one or three, the moon is calm, and calling for you.
calm yourself, child. the world’s too busy to do it for you.
calm yourself, child, in whatever rhythms you entrain to.
We’re living in a world where we’re all witnessing the same symphony, with all of its nuances and variations and development of themes and variations of timbre and tone and iterations of rhythm and rhyming ends of lines,
and some of us are only hearing the pitch and timbre and tone and rhythm range of the violins,
and some of us are tuned into different specific frequency ranges, and timbral ranges, and rhythm changes, and tonal shifts and spectral bumps and thumps and squeaks and squawks and beeps and thunks,
and some of us are hearing the full spectrum of sound, and the spaces between the sounds (the spaces between are not just beautiful–they contain the beauty) and timbres and pitches and rhythms and iterations of rhythms,
and when we gather, after the symphony, and describe our experiences, some of us are being told that the nuances we heard don’t exist, and that we’re weird for hearing them.
Imagine, if you can imagine, (or at least make friends with someone who imagines, if you can’t imagine), being told that hearing basses and oboes and piccolos and triangles and tympani and glockenspiels and bassoons and trumpets and trombones is weird (to be fair, glockenspiels is a weird word, if English is your only language and you can’t hear the music in it).
That’s what people “on the spectrum” are up against. We’re weird for hearing the whole symphony, or a specific part of the symphonic fabric, and not just the violins, and trying to describe our wonderful spectral experiences to our peers, when we gather, after witnessing the symphony.
And sometimes we just give up. Or selectively give up. Because trying and trying is trying on our ability to describe, so we may appear to have a disability. I’ll tell you: it’s not a disability to witness the symphony. It’s a disability to get our experience across to those who are acculturated to violins.
Something weird’s going on, indeed–I’ll give you that.
Imagine, if you can imagine (or make friends with someone who imagines if you can’t imagine) a world where our experience of the symphony is better together, when we combine our described experiences, rather than excluding ones that are different from our own by calling them weird or saying they don’t exist at all.
Or maybe one wants to live in a world of violins…
As a person who plays both bass and piccolo, I shudder to think of it. It sounds like a violin world, indeed.
A shout out to all my relations, especially the ones who have called me out for the ways I have spoken of we, (or written of we, more precisely, as written and spoken are mostly the same for me–I feel safer, mostly, in writing, but they are mostly the same for me). (I’ve come to a place where I love being called out, because it causes me to see things differently, and I feel that that’s what we’re here about: hearing and seeing and feeling and smelling and tasting and thinking and emoting about things differently).
As I speak about me and we and neurodiversity, it’s easy to think I’m suggesting that all people labeled as on the spectrum will see themselves in the same ways that I see me.
I don’t think that at all. The things that I speak of are just a suggestion.
It’s not about me, even though I’m speaking about me. In sharing my process, I’m simply sharing a process that processes differently from how we’ve been taught a healthy person is supposed to process.
The process of learning about me in the context of neurodiversity is a process of seeing myself, and seeing myself reveals that I have certain blindnesses–to time, to inner pictures, to fast-moving emotions, to a certain range of facial expression where many people meet.
And I have been reminded of these blindnesses, often.
Believe me, it’s a whole process.
But every blindness opens another window–the blind see differently. And having recognized my blindnesses, and the windows that they open, I hope that in sharing and celebrating these differences, then having differences in the first place becomes normalized (if anyone’s reading this, normal or not). The we I speak of is simply the subset of people who have been reminded often of their blindnesses, but rarely celebrated for the windows these blindnesses open, because these windows are mostly invisible to most people, (because invisibility is the nature of windows), so most people don’t meet us there, and not being met there, there may not be a lot of conversation there to make people’s windows feel seen through.
But I have a language specialty, because of my blindness, which describes the world I cannot see inside. It sounds made up, but if you look up aphantasia, you’ll see that there are a lot of languagers among us. It’s just our specialty. We make symbolic words for the spaces in us that we don’t see. It’s just a brain thing. It’s special, but also nothing special. Sometimes the way we use language is referred to as visionary, and that makes perfect sense, considering it is simply the way our visual process is rerouted through language. The ways our brains are wired are weird, sometimes. But also nothing special. It’s just the way we work.
My blindness to time opens a window through which I see how people operate, and how they spend their time, and sometimes seeing how people spend their time and energy is alarming to me, and so I sound an alarm to the community about spending less time on productivity and more time on being we, in all of the ways that we can be we, outside of productivity. Because productivity is not really serving us well, honestly. It would serve us well to be a little less productive and a little more connective and present. That’s just what makes sense to the ways that my brains are wired to make sense of things. It’s weird, and also nothing special. It’s a present.
And my blindness to my own fast-moving emotions allows me to see the fast-moving emotions of the whole world, frankly, and frankly, that’s more than a bit unnerving as well, and so my nervous system sounds an alarm. So sometimes, if I sound like I’m sounding an alarm, or being alarmist, it’s because, instead of my own emotions, to which I am blind, my nervous system is feeling the fast moving emotions of the whole wide world.
And frankly, that whole wide world is terrifying. I wouldn’t really wish it on anyone. Being terrified is one of my specialties. Being terrified is not weird–it’s just terrifying. If you’re a specialist in being terrified, my heart goes out to you, because it’s terrifying af. fr. I feel you.
And that being said, because my face is blind to expression, my face doesn’t reveal that I am terrified inside. Believe me, I am mostly terrified inside. But people have often told me that my face is kind of a safe public space. Maybe my blindness creates a blank canvas that is safe to project on, and maybe they are projecting. That’s mostly been ok, but sometimes people’s projections are ouchy and dangerous, and add to the terror I feel inside.
Being terrified inside, there are few spaces where I feel truly safe. And so I spend a lot of my time trying to cultivate safe spaces. It’s nothing special. It’s just the product of my specialties. It’s just what makes sense for a person with my sensibilities to spend my time doing. And I notice that in creating safe spaces for my self to just be itself, many in my community feel safer to be themselves as well in those spaces. Or at least that is what they are telling me. I’m not always sure, but that is what I believe they are telling me. That is what inspires my advocacy.
In advocating for myself, I am advocating for my community, with all of their various and variegated specialties that are different from my specialties, but equally special.
When I was a kid, they used to call the class for autistic and neurodivergent and differently abled kids the special class, and the bus for autistic and neurodivergent and differently abled kids the special bus.
Isn’t that special?
Actually, it seems like a way of excluding what’s special. But maybe it was just a special place for the special folks to be special. I’m not sure. I wasn’t included.
I am full of spaces inside of me that are not sure, and where I don’t feel included, even inside of me. It’s a whole process. It can be exhausting. Even though it’s exhausting, it kind of makes sense, even though the sense it makes is kind of a drag.
I never felt included in the normal class or the normal bus. It was kind of a drag. I wonder if I would have felt included in the special class or the special bus. My particular specialties cause me to experience that we all share the same classes and the same buses, and that those classes and buses are inclusive, even if only metaphorically. I know, that’s a whole metaphorical can of worms, but that’s how I feel. I feel inclusive, and that’s why I use the word we the way I do a lot. It’s just what makes sense to my sensibilities.
That being said, I don’t speak about the facial expression space. Faces are public spaces, and highly personal, and speaking about them is terrifying to me, because it’s so easy to speak about them in ways that are different from how people speak about themselves, inside. So I don’t speak about them. But I feel about them, and the way that I feel about them is like a fun secret, because I secretly love everyone’s faces. And I notice that people’s faces light up in spaces where they feel safe to have their faces light up. So instead of speaking about people’s faces, I try to make safe public spaces for people’s faces to light up. It just makes sense to do so, for someone of my sensibilities.
So no, I recognize that my blindnesses are just my invisible windows to seeing the whole world differently, and I don’t imagine that every neurodiverse person sees things in the ways that I see them (or is blind to things in the ways that I am blind to them, or that their invisible windows are the same as mine). And I’m having a hard time imagining a person who imagines a world that completely includes all of the things we all see through all of our invisible windows. Maybe that person exists – wouldn’t that be weird? I wonder what they would look like…
So no, I don’t imagine that everyone’s specialty is just like my specialty, or that anyone will see themselves in the ways that I see myself, but just that everyone’s specific specialty is something special, and everyone’s self is a self that is worthy of being seen. And being that language is my specialty, I advocate for specialty in general, which doesn’t always look like me, but which is nonetheless special and sensible and real. We each really have our own specific and sensible specialty, which is worthy of being seen and appreciated.
So that’s the we I mean when I speak about we. Being special speaks to me. We’re special, you and me. Really!
To be an autistic person is to be a person with something valuable inside you but to rarely find the right environment where your value is recognized as valuable by people around you.
This is me, speaking from the heart of an autistic person.
If you’ve been following my neurodiversity journey–as I articulate the experience of a person with autism, ADHD, aphantasia, and proprioception hyposensitivity from the inside, along with the other ways i share myself–and you’ve found that the insights I’ve shared connect with your experience, or contextualize something you suspected, realize that sharing these insights is one of the ways I care for my community.
And realize that, as a person with no degrees or qualifications as an advocate other than my lived experience and my inborn gifts, what I share makes no sense in the context of capitalism.
If you find that a person like me is a valuable part of the community, and worthy of support, realize that, within the context of 21st century American capitalism, there’s not much support for people like me, or for the people I advocate for, who often don’t have the gift for articulation that I share with my community.
I could institutionalize myself: pursue an advanced degree that legitimizes my advocacy in the context of capitalism, and in doing so, would need to unplug myself from the community that I move through, and in doing so, become another victim of capitalism – saddled with huge debt, and most likely unable to find an official advocacy position that would pay off that debt in my lifetime.
I choose, instead, to move through my community in the ways I’ve been moving, because my community moves me to do so, and that’s how I show up. That’s how I care.
If you find this valuable, I’m asking to be allowed to continue advocating for your sensory and cognitive gifts, to continue recontextualizing valuable predispositions that have been pathologized. I’m asking to be adopted. I’m asking for your care. I’m asking for your support.
In asking for your support, I’m not asking to be the CEO of Spotify, or Starbucks, or Paramount+, or Ridwell, or any of the other services that folks find valuable and subscribe to. I’m asking for just enough care to be allowed to live and continue to do the work that I do. If you subscribe to even a little bit of the philosophy I share, consider subscribing to me, so I can continue caring for my community in the ways that I do.
Thanks for all you do, and thank you for being you.
The care economy is an emerging model for supporting people, things, and processes we’d like to see more of in the world. It is about recognizing the things in our experience that bring us joy, that give us a [wow] or a [yes], and responding to these moments in a supportive way. It’s actually just, well, practicing care, and that’s not new at all. But the language of commerce is transactional, rather than responsive.
I recognize that I love the work that I do with people so much that I would offer it for free if I was supported–if all of my needs were met. But traditional models don’t allow for that type of responsiveness. I would like to try to move toward a more responsive system, built on trust. Why not?
People who know me can decide if they trust the work I do, and they can choose to support me so that I can do that work, or not. In doing so, they are allowing me to be more myself, and guiding me toward their own needs. I’m the product, in a sense, but since our relationship is based on trust, I’m allowed to do the work I believe, adjusting to the needs that arise, as they align with those who trust me.
This simple shift makes the difference between the transactional and the responsive. But it’s kind of vulnerable and scary. I have to trust those that are responding. Will I be supported? Will enough people believe in the work? If I am being truly responsive to their needs, then perhaps. I think it’s worth a try.
I see a difference between commitment and obligation. Commitment is a responsive engagement, where we meet the needs of the moment as it arises. Obligation can keep us stuck supporting processes that actually hinder our ability to respond to the moment.
So, I see a possibility emerging to do things in a more responsive way, and in seeing how obligation often thwarts connection, I would like to avoid transactions that create a sense of obligation, and nurture ones that give one a sense of [wow] or [yes].
So, think about our interactions in the spaces we share. If our conversations seem to be taking us in good directions, let’s continue the conversation. If helping to support me gives you a sense of [wow] or [yes], then you are participating in the care economy. Thank you for recognizing your own power to support, and if our goals align, thank you for your support.
My autistic traits are nothing to be afraid of. They are highly effective strategies in the environments for which they are adapted. If you spend time with me in these environments, a little of these traits may rub off on you, and your movement through these environments may be eased.
I have come to never doubt this.
I have also come to never doubt that people with autistic traits are not to be feared–whether we are nonverbal or highly talkative, highly energetic or profoundly still, highly organized or seemingly chaotic, hermetic or super social. If you recognize the environments for which we are adapted, and move through these environments with us, we often rub off on you in ways that make these environments easier for you to navigate.
We are connected to something, which sometimes makes us appear disconnected to you. If you connect with us, you connect to something, too.
We connect directly, which can sometimes seem off-putting, since we are not putting off connection or putting on appearances. Yes, we will likely rub off on you, but this rubbing off may actually make your way appear easier.
Please: recognize us. Recognize the environments for which we are adapted. Move through these environments with us. Let us rub off on you.
Despite appearances, it’s way easier than you think.
May all beings recognize their true nature. Every day is neurodiversity awareness day.
