My walls are crumbling. As the hours pass, I am losing my anxiety that is so deeply rooted and my innards are exposing themselves. It feels so swell. I have been more present, and that is what allowed me to dive for so many low discs in the freshly mown grass as thrown by Ben, mowed by Just, just this morning. The grass is so supportive, and I always roll out a couple times round my hips. For gratuitous good measure. So we got mad sweaty, and then went to the quarry. Me, Ben, and Emily. "Clothing optional." I kept my pants on, because I am a boy, and can bare my chest. When we went out to toss, one of the salsa dancers was "sun-dipping-skinny-bathing" as Ben described it. I jokingly made a comment along the lines of "she wants you" and surprise of all surprises, Ben took off his shirt and said "bring it on!" heh. well. what a lookcomer. After throwing and cutting and laying out and general bliss, we winded down, and went to the quarry for a swim. Which i mentioned. Above.
Another instance of crumbling inhibitions:
I wandered into the kitchen where chocolate chip cookies were being made. Keren spontaneously danced, and so did I , and so did Just. I could describe it in detail, but I don't want to. You want to. Maybe I should consider this lifestyle. Maybe I shoulld consider more fads, like Obama.
Tuesday 25 August 2009
Autism and nature.
This is an excerpt from an email I just wrote to the father of one of the kids I tend to/teach/ hang with.
I've been feeling like there has to be more similarities between me, and the other people here (inasmuch as we have communicated these enlightened and mutually understood feelings) and people with autism. I don't know what is different between us, but someone who acts in such a bizarre way as Alex does, must have something ese going on. I don't think it's a quanitity issue, but rather a difference in flavor, or even language. But the difference from an actual language, is that thus far, the various "autistic languages" have not been thoroughly uncovered.
Time for lunch and a staff meeting in a house made of twigs. Here is the excerpt:
"anyway it has me thinking, about alex. Mainly prompted because the head chef has been playing that bob marley album when he makes the meals, and ive been helping him. So it's really different here, obviously it's the wilderness. I think it is worth a try for Alex, as much or little as anything else, and it might even be less costly than some pie-in-he-sky medical treatment (im not meaning to discount anything, just to paint what i am saying in a positive light.)
I mean, you can see stars here. And when it is dark, it is so dark that you cant see even the darkness. It's thick. I'm sure you have felt it sometime. And there is so much less stimulation, and distraction. I mean, there is the inside, where it is simple, and we cook the food. And the outside, where there is grass and trees and woods and a quarry (water). I guess I have 2 ideas about why this might be good for alex : the obvious, calming, meditative, therapeutic of being in nature and away from all the things that are simulated in the city. I mean, let's face it - Alex acts pretty primal. The inhibitions just aren't on his radar, and things are more like that here. I'm not saying we eat with our hands caked in mud, but there are readily available reasons for doing everything we do, and none of them are related to disipline, or chastising for being physical with someone else (that said, there is respect and this is a dancey-yoga-ish place, but im thinking that maybe there wo
uld be less stimuli for Alex's meltdowns over here, since there is less stimuli to begin with.
2nd point: It is humbling, deafening, and beilttling. I feel beittled being around all this nature,because i am reduced to being a thing / creature of nature as well. especially at night, with the stars - it is scary, but because it is "the way it is" - there is nobody to go to to request a light be turned on. When I let that notion sink in, then it becomes more calming than scary, because it is just howthe world is supposed to be. I don't think that everyday life for a kid in the city, especially an autistic kid, is anything how life is 'spposed to be'. I mean, everyone has to be able to wait in lines, but where there are naturally fewer people, there are fewer lines. That is just a tiny example. I also read this book where this teacher/mentor went camping with an autistic nonverbal boy for a week and didn't feed him until the boy made the correct hand signs for the food, and other neccesities. I am not saying that you should dump Alex on a wagon with some gluten free pretz
els and a chew toy and call it a vacation week, but as far as a real transformation happening, it might be beneficial, or at least worth trying, a huge environmental change. Arguably, the insides cannot change no matter how much environmental altering and enhancement goes on. But the try. At the very least, he will be aware of his limits in relation to the greater natural forces out there.
I've been feeling like there has to be more similarities between me, and the other people here (inasmuch as we have communicated these enlightened and mutually understood feelings) and people with autism. I don't know what is different between us, but someone who acts in such a bizarre way as Alex does, must have something ese going on. I don't think it's a quanitity issue, but rather a difference in flavor, or even language. But the difference from an actual language, is that thus far, the various "autistic languages" have not been thoroughly uncovered.
Time for lunch and a staff meeting in a house made of twigs. Here is the excerpt:
"anyway it has me thinking, about alex. Mainly prompted because the head chef has been playing that bob marley album when he makes the meals, and ive been helping him. So it's really different here, obviously it's the wilderness. I think it is worth a try for Alex, as much or little as anything else, and it might even be less costly than some pie-in-he-sky medical treatment (im not meaning to discount anything, just to paint what i am saying in a positive light.)
I mean, you can see stars here. And when it is dark, it is so dark that you cant see even the darkness. It's thick. I'm sure you have felt it sometime. And there is so much less stimulation, and distraction. I mean, there is the inside, where it is simple, and we cook the food. And the outside, where there is grass and trees and woods and a quarry (water). I guess I have 2 ideas about why this might be good for alex : the obvious, calming, meditative, therapeutic of being in nature and away from all the things that are simulated in the city. I mean, let's face it - Alex acts pretty primal. The inhibitions just aren't on his radar, and things are more like that here. I'm not saying we eat with our hands caked in mud, but there are readily available reasons for doing everything we do, and none of them are related to disipline, or chastising for being physical with someone else (that said, there is respect and this is a dancey-yoga-ish place, but im thinking that maybe there wo
uld be less stimuli for Alex's meltdowns over here, since there is less stimuli to begin with.
2nd point: It is humbling, deafening, and beilttling. I feel beittled being around all this nature,because i am reduced to being a thing / creature of nature as well. especially at night, with the stars - it is scary, but because it is "the way it is" - there is nobody to go to to request a light be turned on. When I let that notion sink in, then it becomes more calming than scary, because it is just howthe world is supposed to be. I don't think that everyday life for a kid in the city, especially an autistic kid, is anything how life is 'spposed to be'. I mean, everyone has to be able to wait in lines, but where there are naturally fewer people, there are fewer lines. That is just a tiny example. I also read this book where this teacher/mentor went camping with an autistic nonverbal boy for a week and didn't feed him until the boy made the correct hand signs for the food, and other neccesities. I am not saying that you should dump Alex on a wagon with some gluten free pretz
els and a chew toy and call it a vacation week, but as far as a real transformation happening, it might be beneficial, or at least worth trying, a huge environmental change. Arguably, the insides cannot change no matter how much environmental altering and enhancement goes on. But the try. At the very least, he will be aware of his limits in relation to the greater natural forces out there.
EarthDance
I am spending a week at earth dance. earthdance.net. It is 45 minute drive away from the nearest town (Northampton) and thus it is different from anything I have ever done. I am not really doing it. I mean, I am doing it. I just went to the creamery. a little shoppe. down the road, a lot of miles. we picked up an order of yogurt from sidehill farm in vermont, where we get our yogurt [apparently.]
This week is different from most weeks here at Earthdance - its salsa camp/week/ convention. 50 women are here from all over the world (I know this because a handful of them don't speak English, and I can't understand when they try to request butter knives or spare towels or jugs of water, or an amalgam of the 3.) So I am a staff member here, and that entitles me to be here. I have a shift or 2 or 3 a day, cleaning, sweeping, taking out the trash, cursory bathroom cleaning (obligatory grimace) and burning the burnables! In every bathroom there is a bin for burnables. It means burnable things. Like toilet paper rolls or paper towels used to dry off your hands. No bodily fluids, please! Those are NOT burnable here. So this morning, Ben (head honcho-type) and I headed off through the woods to the furnace/sauna / quarry place and lit some fire in a fireplace-type-place and kept stuffing the burnables in and watched their edges curl in iridiescent orange flamules, as they became ash and char, making way for the rest of the burnables to burn.
I have been asking a ton of questions here, becuase I am not afraid to ask, and I have questions. Nothing that goes on here is typical of the supposed world that I was brought up into. I helpedCalyan, the head chef, make dinner last night. from 4-7 pm I chopped, peeled, diced 'n' sliced veggies, and then stir fried them in a wok, which all resulted in a sore arm and fingers, and a small sliver of skin sliced off of my left middle finger, and a hot splash of safflower oil on my wrist. But all is well, and we created a mean meal for 65 people. 50 salsa dancing women and 10 staffers. Fish chowder, Sweet potato Lentil stew, kale, veggie stirfry, and some other stuff that I can't remember right now. Everything is made in these huge bowls. Late last night Calyan came into the kitchen and made granola from scratch. I watched him make it. I don't think he is terribly fond of me, as I was asking him lots of questions and every time he said something to me I had to say "what?" because it was hard to hear his soft lyrical voice over the bellowing vocals of the tribal celtic / what-have you alternativish music blasting from his arcane laptop perched directly about the 10-burner oven. So calyan made granola. So much granola. We ate it for breakfast this morning. I had it with milk and maple syrup and cinnamon. Heavenly. I want to do some intense outdoor manual labor and frisbee today. I was teaching this woman who is bou 34 years old but certainly feels more like a 12 year old jumping around in a freeing new world, how to throw a flick. I was kind of impressed at my frisbee throwing knowledge, I suppose in comparison to the layperson. We got sweaty, we cut for each other, we climbed trees. There's a guy here, he made a commitment to live here for a year - he is the "buildings and grounds" guy, his name is Justin, but people call him "Just" or "Just one". Yesterday I pulled out weeds with him around this apple tree for an hour and a half, and we had a nice, albeit a bit forced, chat. He told me he has a younger sister who is 28 with special needs, and about a place he has been considering for her to live once their mother is no longer able to care for her. It's called ploughshare farms, and apparently its a self- sustainable community based heavily on the tenet that it is a bunch of people living together, and not in a hierarchical way - the people who need the support of the neurotypical "Staff" are meant to feel equal to said helpers. Would I maybe want to spend sometime working and living in a place like that? Maybe.
The more I think about it, or allow myself to submit to the different way of life here, the more I realize that I don't always have to be busy. I just wrote "busty" - I also don't always have to be busty, but that is less in my control than my business. It is quite a frightening sentiment, to have free time, and be in a rural place, as I have been used to the opposite for so long. This summer went pretty much like this for me:
Take care of kids, fret about various issues surrounding the respective babysitting jobs, play sports, think about the sports and the pickups and the people and myself in relation to everything else going on, take lots of subways, and play more sports on weekends, and spend time with friends. Oh, and fend off / appease the family. But I must say, my nephews and neice are definitely the sweetest, cutest babies ever. Albeit every baby is the sweetest and cutest. Well, every white baby. (!!) But really, the soft skin, the undifferentiated eyeball pigment, the wispy thin short hairs, the barely shaped nose, the limbs that flail arbitrarily and get more padded week by week from suckling just milk. It is all of those things but also, and most key-ly, the idea of a baby that is so powerful. The whole responsibility, extension of self, amalgamation of 2 people in love (sometimes), the we-made-this-life, or God-made-this-life-through-us thing... kind of makes someone with an ounce of sense just shut their mouths. Not me though. I can't shut my mine, apparently. It is time for me to do a cursory cleaning of the bathrooms here in the main Earthdance Farmhouse.
Needless to say, I am proud of myself.
This week is different from most weeks here at Earthdance - its salsa camp/week/ convention. 50 women are here from all over the world (I know this because a handful of them don't speak English, and I can't understand when they try to request butter knives or spare towels or jugs of water, or an amalgam of the 3.) So I am a staff member here, and that entitles me to be here. I have a shift or 2 or 3 a day, cleaning, sweeping, taking out the trash, cursory bathroom cleaning (obligatory grimace) and burning the burnables! In every bathroom there is a bin for burnables. It means burnable things. Like toilet paper rolls or paper towels used to dry off your hands. No bodily fluids, please! Those are NOT burnable here. So this morning, Ben (head honcho-type) and I headed off through the woods to the furnace/sauna / quarry place and lit some fire in a fireplace-type-place and kept stuffing the burnables in and watched their edges curl in iridiescent orange flamules, as they became ash and char, making way for the rest of the burnables to burn.
I have been asking a ton of questions here, becuase I am not afraid to ask, and I have questions. Nothing that goes on here is typical of the supposed world that I was brought up into. I helpedCalyan, the head chef, make dinner last night. from 4-7 pm I chopped, peeled, diced 'n' sliced veggies, and then stir fried them in a wok, which all resulted in a sore arm and fingers, and a small sliver of skin sliced off of my left middle finger, and a hot splash of safflower oil on my wrist. But all is well, and we created a mean meal for 65 people. 50 salsa dancing women and 10 staffers. Fish chowder, Sweet potato Lentil stew, kale, veggie stirfry, and some other stuff that I can't remember right now. Everything is made in these huge bowls. Late last night Calyan came into the kitchen and made granola from scratch. I watched him make it. I don't think he is terribly fond of me, as I was asking him lots of questions and every time he said something to me I had to say "what?" because it was hard to hear his soft lyrical voice over the bellowing vocals of the tribal celtic / what-have you alternativish music blasting from his arcane laptop perched directly about the 10-burner oven. So calyan made granola. So much granola. We ate it for breakfast this morning. I had it with milk and maple syrup and cinnamon. Heavenly. I want to do some intense outdoor manual labor and frisbee today. I was teaching this woman who is bou 34 years old but certainly feels more like a 12 year old jumping around in a freeing new world, how to throw a flick. I was kind of impressed at my frisbee throwing knowledge, I suppose in comparison to the layperson. We got sweaty, we cut for each other, we climbed trees. There's a guy here, he made a commitment to live here for a year - he is the "buildings and grounds" guy, his name is Justin, but people call him "Just" or "Just one". Yesterday I pulled out weeds with him around this apple tree for an hour and a half, and we had a nice, albeit a bit forced, chat. He told me he has a younger sister who is 28 with special needs, and about a place he has been considering for her to live once their mother is no longer able to care for her. It's called ploughshare farms, and apparently its a self- sustainable community based heavily on the tenet that it is a bunch of people living together, and not in a hierarchical way - the people who need the support of the neurotypical "Staff" are meant to feel equal to said helpers. Would I maybe want to spend sometime working and living in a place like that? Maybe.
The more I think about it, or allow myself to submit to the different way of life here, the more I realize that I don't always have to be busy. I just wrote "busty" - I also don't always have to be busty, but that is less in my control than my business. It is quite a frightening sentiment, to have free time, and be in a rural place, as I have been used to the opposite for so long. This summer went pretty much like this for me:
Take care of kids, fret about various issues surrounding the respective babysitting jobs, play sports, think about the sports and the pickups and the people and myself in relation to everything else going on, take lots of subways, and play more sports on weekends, and spend time with friends. Oh, and fend off / appease the family. But I must say, my nephews and neice are definitely the sweetest, cutest babies ever. Albeit every baby is the sweetest and cutest. Well, every white baby. (!!) But really, the soft skin, the undifferentiated eyeball pigment, the wispy thin short hairs, the barely shaped nose, the limbs that flail arbitrarily and get more padded week by week from suckling just milk. It is all of those things but also, and most key-ly, the idea of a baby that is so powerful. The whole responsibility, extension of self, amalgamation of 2 people in love (sometimes), the we-made-this-life, or God-made-this-life-through-us thing... kind of makes someone with an ounce of sense just shut their mouths. Not me though. I can't shut my mine, apparently. It is time for me to do a cursory cleaning of the bathrooms here in the main Earthdance Farmhouse.
Needless to say, I am proud of myself.
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