Far Removed

It's almost Halloween.  I don't care about holidays.  Though predictability comforts me, I get nothing from ritual.  The list of things that I want to do is very small, likewise the lists of ways I want to do those things.  Holiday celebrations generally involve socializing, which is something I don't want to do.  And they involve what seems to me to be feigned seriousness.   People decorate for many holidays.  The decorations are unimportant to me but they're predictable and I like that well enough.  But then people go from demonstrably ignoring whatever thing a particular holiday is supposed to be about to apparently pretending to care about that thing.  Sometimes the pretense is very transparent.  This is also predictable but I don't like it because it's disorienting.  It makes people seem mercurial.  Capricious in what they value.  I don't understand the change - or the pretense of change.  And I don't und...

I do not feel that I expressed myself very well in this post. I have been trying to get disability.  It's a fight.  The process seems meant to be demoralizing.  For fear of malingerers the system resists helping.  That's how it appears to me anyway, and I know naught of the politics at work.  I have been denied twice.  Now a man from a law firm is helping me.  He said that he believes my case is good because of my seizure disorder.  PTSD, social anxiety disorder, and autism spectrum disorder are not enough to make a case, it appears. I have to prove to the government that I am unable to work because of my conditions.  This is difficult.  And the SSA already disbelieves me on principle.  Or perhaps even by necessity.  The thought of pleading to them is daunting because it seems to me that they're disinclined to help from the beginning.  I picture the SSA arbiters as austere figures with crossed arms and deep frowns. I...

In an episode of Parts Unknown , Anthony Bourdain asks a group of young women about their hopes and dreams.  One of them begins to answer by saying, "I want to be satisfied with myself." Am I satisfied with myself?  I'm not sure I know what that means.  I'm thinking about it literally.  If I am in a position to evaluate myself, then whatever of me is doing the evaluating could also be evaluated.  If I decide that I am dissatisfied with myself, then I could also be dissatisfied with being dissatisfied and decide upon reevaluation that I am satisfied after all.  Perhaps I might be dissatisfied with my inability to evaluate myself as satisfactory.  What part of me evaluates me but is not identical to the part that is being evaluated? The idea falls apart.  I overthink it because I don't understand it.  It becomes too heavy and collapses.  I am bad at understanding this kind of language.  I don't know what myself  definitely is...

I think about my identity.  Sexuality, gender, race.  What does any description of my experience of selfhood amount to?  What defines me?  What bricks are in the wall of who I am? It seems to be important to many people that they be able to identify themselves with or as something and that they present to others pieces in their daily lives that are probative of a gestalt self-definition.  I am fascinated by philosophical explorations of personal identity and I've thought about myself in this context for a long time.  But I've never been able to muster any enthusiasm for the idea of arriving at one stable self-definition.  I don't care who I am, or even if I am definitely anyone.  This is an innate disinterest.  I'm not talking about self-annihilation here.  I'm describing weak propriate agnosticism.  I don't care what I mean by me or what relation I bear only to myself . I trust my senses as much as I must to get anything done....

Sometimes I write little things.  I'm going to put them here sometimes. === A sentinel bird, black with long, motionless wings, rocking in flight.  Alone at first and then others joined it to make a vertical flotilla.  The sky a phthalocyanine sea for cloud islands, cloud continents.  Storms coming seen far away.   The birds circling off those heaped shores watched for death like they knew.  Mim thought about knowing.  Minds couldn't be trusted to describe the world.  They left things out.  The circling birds perceived something Mim couldn't.  What was it like when the wind caressed your remiges or to smell a dead fox from high enough in the air that you looked like nothing but a crooked line? Mim only knew what she needed, only wondered about things that interested her.  She could grow up to be a bird studier and she could learn about what birds knew and maybe even how to describe a bird's whole life start to finish with...

I live near a liquor store.  I considered inquiring there about a job.  I thought about the people and situations I might encounter there.  I almost called the place but I didn't have the nerve.  I imagined an old man with a gruff voice and a strong regional accent answering the phone and I couldn't call. My personality is small, neat, and spare.  My diction is precise, my disposition is robotically polite, and I am shy.  I am disinclined to socialize and there is a litany of reasons why.  Among them are social anxiety disorder and Asperger's.  When I am forced to interact with others, I feel stiff doing so.  I proceed with no grace or confidence.  I am aware that people can often tell when someone is nervous or uncomfortable.  They must notice me then.  Though I can't tell whether they do or not. Sometimes people objectify me.  They think the ways that I talk and act are funny.  I seem to them like a milquetoast...

I'm as convinced as I can be that there's another world which is either separate but connected to this one or an extension of this one but invisible or at least resistant to perception.  I can feel the Other World sometimes.  Often in fact.  And I have since I was a little boy.  Either part of it is in me or part of me is in it or I'm close to it in some other way. I don't know the nature of the Other World.  It's not an afterlife.  It feels wild, dangerous, and even scary.  Feeling it around me is at once frightening and fascinating.  Like when I saw wild vultures up close while camping.  I imagine that the Other World has deciduous forests like my home state but I don't know.  I've never seen it or even dreamed about it.  I can imagine anything but I don't want to imagine this.  I want to be as close to the Other World as I can without fantasizing.  Music helps sometimes.  And portal fiction.  My strong priv...

I am different.  I would like for the ways in which I am different to be unimportant.  But deviation from the norm in the eyes of many demands explanation.  And sometimes it wins pity.  I am conflicted about pity.  Occasionally pity means I get treated the way everyone should be treated all time.  I'm convinced that humans by and large do not like each other.  We fill our lives with enemies.  Either our own enemies or people who are united with us in being the enemies of others.  Different people The word "outsider" implies that it is possible to be outside.  Outside what?  The wall of the normal or the territory of the Good Gang.  Humans don't form clans.  They form gangs.  I am not in any gang.  Part of this is by my design.  But part of it isn't.  I am not even part of the autistic community.  Maybe I should be but I'm honestly not interested in communing with anyone at this point in my life...

Looking into other people and seeing them exactly how they are is confounding because either I can't see anything recognizable or I see something that is alien and disturbing. An interaction.  Names changed. Me : Plover says the gathering is at his and Sparrow's place. Finch : Their place? Me : Yes.  How do you feel about that? Finch : I don't have any definite feeling about that. Me : I heard you say "Their place?" And I thought you meant "It's bad that the gathering is at their place."  And then I heard you say that you had no definite feeling about that and I thought you meant that you do have a definite feeling about that. Finch : Well I just think it's funny that Plover would call Sparrow's place his place too when he just got back in town from months abroad and may not even be staying permanently. Me : I'm confused because you didn't offer that opinion at first and it seemed to me that I had to coax it out of you.  Wha...

I am analytical.  I can seem emotionless.  I'm not preoccupied with emotion.  There are more interesting things to think about than how I feel. My approach to emotion is practical.  I have thought about it a lot.  Emotions have a narrow range of functions.  The most important ones are to support our social structures and to motivate us toward necessary resolutions.  Beyond all that, I find that my private feelings can usually be ignored.  Emotion isn't very useful for analysis.  Feelings can obstruct reason.  It's natural and easy for me to think like this.  Any intellectualizing I do about how my emotions work is unnecessary for them to work that way. I do have strong emotions.  I don't  consciously suppress my feelings.  I often feel lonely and I have anxiety problems that significantly affect my ability to function.  I'm too sensitive to criticism  and I am also fearful. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed....