Me, the mime.
Trying to describe being on the spectrum of autism----
(in a nutshell)
and no, NO pun intended.
My daughter the mime.
multipart/alternative; boundary=
"MIMESTREAM''
=abc- 123" ...
My face is like others: , with muscle bands to make expressions. Like a friend's brother said to a little boy who was staring at me, when I-aged 16 was looking back at the little boy, 'Its okay, She's a human being too! Like us!'
?
I knew that, strangely enough he found it appropriate to tell the child that I too was of the race.
BUT
''make it'' (the face) respond to environmental cues? and stimuli, people and the like with the expressions others in society find necessary?
This is just beyond making me feel weird, exposed or embarrassed to write about. I'm over that. I'm wired differently. that's that. I'm certainly not wired WRONG. there is nothing wrong with how I'm wired. I am autistic.
Every thing I do, from the steps I take to what I tell the body, is told by a voice in me. When I was younger I figured all folks are doing that in their heads at all times. Move the feet. Swing the arms. (swing the arms came later, it became a social thing, something that society deemed practical looking and not really useful for functioning. But one stands out if one forgets.)
Yeah, even forgetting to move the mouth if something is slightly funny, but not quite makes one appear rude, standoffish, not quite there, I've heard it all. But I pay attention, and I may well be amused, as much as the next person.
_____________________
Some 'tips for getting on in the world?'
Go with the flow.
Follow the herd.
Flow with the crowd.
I refuse to conform for the most part. But if one can appear as part of the scenery, its easier to 'blend.' I'm going to stand out when I walk, speak or don't speak (pregnant pauses) so why not try to blend? Its less stress for me. I don't care that people think this or that negative thing...for the most part. But- should a deer where a bullseye chart?
In school, a new one -it was a game of: how long can I keep up appearances, before they guess.
I do declare here, and its a truth that isn't right- a lot of folks do judge on appearance. Her speech is too meek, or too fast or not there. Alas I'm no pushover! Her dress is not with-it. She is daft, we've seen her in mime, send the funny-farm folks to trap her. I can do anything! Sculpt, paint, poetst, write, mosaicst, cut down trees, build, run hospital equipment for my spouse, I am confident I can do research in a lab, dam! If I could drive I dam well would be! Dammit i would. So I'm tired of hearing
"You'd be alright if only:
you drove a car."
To the observer, Aspergers may *appear* mild. My oldest son in fact is dx'ed HF (high functioning) autistic. For me aspergers is not “mild”. Its not horrible either.
It should not be assumed I get a kick out of jumping on a bandwagon of "differents"...
The different was here from way back. Any family member who ever looked at me when I was just about mute can tell you I was always a different. For an aspergian or aspie, to shorten the matter, I am normal.
. . Being on the spectrum, the high functioning end, is different than High Functioning Autism or HFA, BUT like my son, we share some traits and there are some who would call it the same thing. In any case, Aspergers means fitting into the autistic spectrum, wherever that may be.....
i don't like change (understatement), i always have been sensitive to my environment.
As for preferring things to people, it hurts to admit that so I won't. I'll just say that I know what love is. I am selective in choosing FEW friends, keeping the circle of people small. And I absolutely LOVE the company of things. Houses, architecture, these things, both watching on tv and visiting places, be they museums or run-down shacks or stone foundations or stone walls with chips of pottery nearby- I love the company, the breathing almost animate beautiful rich company of certain colorful or aged historical or lovely things.
I want my living space MY way, full of my colors, scents and comforts. My senses are not gymnasts, they don't bend. The sense of smell is the only sense connected directly to the limbic system which of course controls cognitive function. Something to that.....
The newspaper, its an important source of information, a security, a routine, but more than that- the neverchanging of a thirst that's never satiated. A thirst I have for learning, be it documentaries, or reading nonfiction, memoirs, watching lectures on tv, and yes my daily newspaper. I am currently in the works of arranging the writing of two columns as I type this March 2005...For 2 very different papers.
ME: in a curled ball meditating away in a breakdown state, and repairing my self. It happens.
I have writing, music, painting, art, many escapes. I like to be alone. I gather I am marvelous company! When I am in full mime costume and make-up I *feel* like my self. Mimes annoy or amuse. This I relate to.
And they need not speak. I wanted to be a ballerina when I was small. I had two right feet and could not bring my pass-me-down tutu to a class that I imagined was too overwhelming so I refused to go. The tutu remained on an overly painted green pantry shelf behind a bag of charcoal, shimmering at me with pinky sequins every time I went through the entry hall. Winking with sarcasm at what I dared not attempt. Taunting little tutu.
I want to locate vintage Marcel Marceau white pants. Not his, heavens, no. But something I can wear similar to his style. He wore high-waisted pants, they were white and unnusual and I cannot find them anywhere, not even from Danskin.
A hurdle-----
The diagnosis of ALS (Lou Gehrigs Disease) dumped an arctic slush on us.... After hearing the news we were thrust into a crisp Autumn day, complete with a view of rolling hills surrounding the hospital marked "M.D." What right have you? we thought, to seduce us with such splendour... With those oranges and siennas. Such haughty exhibitionism on that day of days, a
day gone as flat as a New England postcard. And as he blew warm smoke into the air and fumbled for car keys; he said aloud, “I’m only thirty seven." That was five yrs. ago---A challenge for any family with three kids, a dog, and two cats. A rabbit, and two parakeets...(to update....)And a five year sentence.
A disease like that for which there is no cure. And i knew it was a matter of time before he’d be out of work. The kids had never known a time when I drove for instance.......... because I’d never driven. There was the time I did. My child’s words ring in my ears still: We're gonna die! Mommy's driving!
We're gonna die! ------I have a depth-perception condition, often confusing shadows for solid objects. At the Irlen Centre in California there are glasses that claim to correct such common problems in autistics, but they are very expensive.
A walk I went on with my beagle...... I was so alarmed by a crack in the road, I reared up like a startled horse; thinking it to be a chasm. Surely it was an earthquake and I would fall off the earth.
Imagine that, when I least expected it. Happened in Walmart too, those damned 3-D ads on the floor. I almost tripped, feeling they are real. And once-- the picnic table, It happened that I came round the corner of the house not recognizing its shapes, the 2 benches, disjointed, The top, a plank, right? No, more like- It was a jumbled Picasso heap. I stared. I did so not recognize it, for an eternity it seemed. I saw shapes. I didn;t even see it as wood, oddly. Just shapes, piled there upon the lawn not forming a cohesive structure that made any useful sense.
Then after the trick my eyes made with the shapes, I realized its familiarity. What to do but rebalance the laundry on my hip, blink, and shake slowly my head side to side, remembering the day I knew forever for the bizarro-ness of it. Grandeur Bizarro.
Good thing all groceries get delivered here to the home. Grocery stores have those food ads now too on the floor. Gosh gee, life ain't safe anywhere for autistics.
I learned to walk everywhere I needed to go after the ALS hit hard, and learned to feed my husband through a tube. Also how to do back percussions and use a suction machine at home, and give breathing treatments. It ain't rocket science. Anyway what IS rocket science? I'm sure I could learn at least some basics...
A high school drop-out-- I couldn't bear the school environment; I read about Einstein and Van Gogh and chaos factor in my spare time among other things...
My psychologist said I have an above college level vocabulary with a fifth grade math level education (“I carry a calculator!”) ...
Click here for one woman's description of being 'differently-brained.' I have always admired her clarity. Jane and I have stories in Women From Another Planet, avail. online at Barnes and Noble- purely a labor of love by all the women involved.
Stress can come in the form of sound, touch, sight, or anything that is overwhelming to the senses. Maybe many neurotypically brained people (NTs) do not realize that.Too much social activity and hoohaha going on in any condensed time slot.....equals go to hell everyone.
Example of:
When my spouse was hospitalized, neurotypicals, (NTs) seemed to think that I needed, absolutely needed NOT to be alone during the 13 day hospital stay. I stayed by his side on a cot because there was a chance he could pass away. People phoned up and said, 'are you alone? I'll be right over.' (to the hospital)
They made sure someone was there day to dusk. It was strange how folks thought I was not supposed to be alone, even after crisis passed- strange indeed. Finally I answered the question, "Yes, I am alone and well I prefer it that way.''
Oh this is how I get the rude rap.
Examples of great stims: Rocking, digging my nails into my palms, a light cube available at walmart(light therapy)gift from Clay...., meditation, humming, exercise (which releases natural endorphins; a feel-good chemical throughout the body), hairbrushing the arms by daughter and she seems to offer when I want it and don't know it!, deep massage, (Temple Grandin, an Aspie invented a hugging machine-surprisingly, never patented and made available to other autistics), a blanket and a dark room, reading, mosaicing, long intense projects without breaks or speaking, miming and not altering routine! . That means not answering phone y'all if I've been highly social, don't take it personally. I'll be around again, my charming self.
After the hospital stay I went through
most
of the above stims!!!
--I pretend like I am Genie sometimes when there's a mess in the kitchen. I put my hair in a pony tail, cross my arms, and wiggle my nose; blink my eyes once and twice. But predictably, this bit does not make little problems or big ones go away.
That day [diagnosis of Lou Gehrigs day for him] me and the spouse went out into the parking lot with the news and were slapped with the beauty of the perfect Autumn day... I’d thought,
“My meager attempts at pointillism do not surpass this display...But it could've been a piece of paper, that valley view laid out before us, filling me, inspiring me to dash home and paint one more matte page of a Fall scene. But maybe the trees knew more than we did. And I've since forgiven the trees. Painted a picture of said husband. It was a healthy “stim.”
The meat of the hand under the thumb, '''a biting place- a history of a not-so-healthy stim''' in times of stress. At least painting takes a long time, hours. One day I bought chipped old colorful plates from a flea market table... They were imperfect and silent and soon broken. I smashed 'em to bits with a hammer. Put the different pieces into groups. If one had a yellow fleck, into the 'yellow' container it went. If a shard had greens in it, into the 'green bits' container it went, etcetera...I saved out money, which was tight, for grout. I discovered I love(d)!!! the creamy grout, the tight, olive silver smell...
Soon I was doing mosaics on everything from remote control holders to plant pots. I learned from this that each broken piece was useful, no matter how small. And beautiful too... I suppose I used to feel like a piece broken off a person, and not a whole person at all.
I see the world's fragments and not its whole integrated mass. Seeing details is what prompts me to seek out minute flecks of mica glinting in a stone wall or dust motes swirling in beams at church. “Holy dust motes,” says me. Mosaics don’t occupy as much of my time as I’d like, but as I'm caring for my husband, I caress the broken pieces like jewels with my eyes. My eyes drink the finished mosaiced pieces like the feet might walk a labyrinth for peace.
“ I don't need to fit, like a puzzle piece, into society's preconceived slot for me.” k.t.
-----Hans Asperger, named the condition after himself .
-----Back in the 60’s autism was blamed on bad parenting. (thus the term, refrigerator mothers)
----------We can blame the movement called “refrigerator mothering” on Bettelheim, a man who decided that ‘cold’ mothers raised children with unreachable autistic-like behaviors. But even Bettelheim knew this theory was dead wrong. He ended up committing suicide.
Unfortunately, his early books are still available at libraries today. A mother with a child displaying signs of Aspergers, may walk into a library and pick up a book by Bettelheim and blame herself for her child’s condition. There is NO shame in having a child with Aspergers. Nor is there shame in having Aspergers.
When Aspie people learn through their parents’ example that they are worthwhile people capable of having a niche in the world that's not necessarily made to suit them, then
they have proved that they will fill that niche, with support. .
a poem
CROWS ANNOUNCE THE CHANGES
-by kim tucker-----
crows just aren't pretty even if they do glisten
in rainbow colors like oil slicks but this one! was almost graceful when it talked to me...
soon as I slammed the car door I looked skyward 'cause the sound in the grocery store lot of someone, something rolling its 'R's loud up overhead was startling -
i saw it lean into the air as if it were committing suicide off the top of the parking lot lamp with its beak wide open and that eerie sound krrrrrrolling out...
it fell forward my way into air -- but a second then ascended ---
After speaking to me it just rose up and was gone And I watched till it was a black speck in the grey sky. The second time a crow talked to me I was at one of those parks with loopy streams and graffiti'ed picnic tables, and hiking trails that wind through woods;
complete with footbridges over trickles of water that intercept the paths...I tied my jacket about my waist and paused to count crows - When it happened again!
I looked up. Right at it. A big inky thing hooked onto the utility pole with thick legs shimmering all purple and green in its feathers purposeful; making eye contact with me. I saw it. Caught it in the act. Moving its beak. Rolling its 'R's loud.
On garbage days, yes, I'd heard crows caw. Funny thing about 'em, is they got memory. They do. They arrive in droves packed in trees in my dead-end burb before the first Hefty bag hits the pavement. They know when its Thursday. But this! I never heard this before and now I was hearin' it twice.
I watched its beak moving working to make that rolling/clucking that wasn't a caw at all. No. Then it was gone. Didn't linger with its cronies in the grass tending to crows’ biz'. Didn't fly off to another pole top. It just FELL into the air then swooped Up and away.
I didn't watch till it was a dot in the sky this time. I made for the woods in a brisk jog not turning back to see it. My ass may as well have been on fire thinking 'Is that what Poe's raven did?' Not long after the crows talked to me we found out
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My father was a foreman at a factory that dyed patterns onto cloth! Sometimes he brought home 'flawed' material that the factory would only have disposed of. My father had his arms full with "bolts" of cloths with the so-called "misprints" on them. Who was the judge of flaws and mistakes?
I scanned them before they could disappear into the cellar with the rest. He was walking fast. Greyed-down colors where the dye had not saturated the cloth, zig zags that were not lightning sharp- but foggy instead, double struck anchors laid one upon another were humorous. ...
Teacups, cornucopias, vegetables... were struck over each other, overlapping where they weren't intended to overlap. My father made pattern and color when he left for work! how many fathers could do that?
I followed him under Eileen's hall staircase, where the indoor entrance to the cellar was. The bundles would be piled with the rest of the 'flawed' pieces. To me they were 'awed' pieces. I would follow him;
I wanted to see what we had in storage! My father's footfalls on the wooden steps were heavy and sure, and the staircase creaked in protest. I froze halfway down...
"What's that?" I asked him; knowing full well what “it” was that had leapt from one lopsided clothes barrel to another. "Just a rat, Booby. They're more afraid o' you than you are o' them." "I change my mind Daddy!"
I hightailed it back up to the dark linoleumed hall from which I'd come; listening to my father's hooting laughter follow him into the cellar...
I just love to look at vintage fabrics from the 60s 70s and earlier.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
...Here's a pretty good site.CLICK HERE for vintage fabrics, not remakes of old stuff.
Cottons, polyester, all sorts of mod patterns from Hawaiin to your mother's textiles. It'll remind you of your Grandma's curtains. Maybe something you want to own.
I made this 'curtain' and sewed 'jewels'
on it, for fun.
Its dishtowels.
A piece of vintage material, 60's I think, that
I sent away for, didn't really like the texture after
receiving it, but made small curtains anyway.
Ladies have fains, are kicking, and dancing
with gentlemen.
Someday I will have time to take time with curtains
I make. apparently the biological sister Wendy makes draperies for a living. I sew by hand, it shows.
These weird patterns are lovely tablecloths: 2 of them.
I love the mexican ones, the one on top here (valance).
You may see the cacti and Mexican people if you look.
They were definitely vintage, and can be pricey.
These were given to me when someone died, but had holes and stains. I would love love love to have an extensive collection. I don't go in much for the states/
themed tablecloths or the Florida ones.
In other themes-------
my parents hoped I would one day try a vegetable-.
Or juice. Or meat other than chicken. By the time I was sixteen I was so anemic I was not be able to lift a glass of milk without dropping it and took three iron pills a day for strength.
Staring spells and mutism… it was getting the attention of teachers. My need to control the cousins when I did play with them, a need for structure and routine, the fact that I was in grade school and my mother put me on the table and dressed me because I couldn’t do buttons....Today when a kid has a cluster of behaviorisms a trained professional should look at the overall picture.
epilepsy?
At 12, (one example) I can remember staring out my bedroom window which was on the second floor. Later , I don't know how long later but there's the fuzzy memory of my uncle (who lived downstairs) smiling weird from down there on the lawn. Had i been looking "through" him? A long time? and then he was walking away. Also a car with a woman in it was talking to him, after then she drove away.
After that I continued laying there and sometime that night it was recounted to my father a story from my uncle that the lady from Sanibelle, a dog grooming agency had knocked on the door (?) and also so had my uncle called up from the stairwell (?).Not only that he rang the phone(?) . I had forgotten that the lady was there to pick up my poodle as she did every month for her dog grooming appointment! (!)
I so looked forward to those appts. I had even asked the woman for a job opening but to no avail. Apparently, my uncle then stood below my window once he noticed me full awake staring out at the cornfield trying to get my attention (?) He says I looked right at him (?) but seemed not to know him(?) to look through him (?) A good fifteen minutes till he and the woman decided she should reshedule(?!)she left upset as I'd 'ignored her' and the uncle and she were puzzled.
I only recall a snippet, just a fuzzy edge when she's about ready to go. I do recall a strange man I recognize as a man but not as my uncle... but I don't know what acknowledging someone means if that makes sense. It means I was coming out of "it"-as for the rest-the knocking, my name being called, no not at all.
There have been other incidents as well.
==================================
As a child, in my little closet with spare elbow room and my metal green bureau of rocks- heaven! I spent hours closed in there with a flashlight and the rocks!
I had no idea that absorption in facts and study, and collecting so-called meaningless objects, and a do-the-right-thing-attitude, clumsiness, sensory issues and a preoccupation with troubles of the world are all Aspergerish traits…That word Asperger is thrown around a lot more now. Oh how I wish it were not. Because now theRapists -I mean therapists and the like have kooky and whacky and jackass ways to make us all automatons of good neurotypicals i.e. ways to cure of us of the way we innately are built.
Cognitive therapy, in where associative thinking is interfered with by a therapist, can be assistive to the autistic in that for example, if the autistic *feels* "I had a bad experience with the color green therefore anything green is bad." Then reassociation through cognitive therapy can be helpful for a more beneficial life.
But the folks who have had a lifelong knowing, can tell you more about autism than the so-called professionals. See Omicron's link. Unfortunately, many believe that the autistic, inso being autistic, does not an expert make.
...my room was ordered clutter, piled as curiously as Picasso’s art. I never saw the bottoms of the walls where they joined the floor but I assumed they were there. A challenge! In a feat akin to me as scaling Everest, I sometimes bruised my girl knees climbing the precariously positioned things that walled the valley path to my bed. Who knew when we might need a salvaged bicycle tire or a coat two sizes too big...
When I dared dig into the piles I usually started at the bottom and hoped against 'thingslides' and 'objectlanches.' I found mysterious outdated gadgets for which I assigned my own uses in the yard. Eggbeaters could be gas pumps for my bike with a jumprope attached...With 'things' in my company,
I never 'felt' bored or lonely. Aloneness yes but never loneliness. My mother volunteered as lunch lady at my school; went to all the PTA meetings, became my Girl Scout leader. She took me to her Tupperware and Dutchmaid and Artex parties…She enrolled me in Girl Scouts, in 4-H, catechism, even marched me down Main Street in a decorated truckbed at Christmas time and watched me wave mechanically to the people sitting on the curb.
She did her best to increase my social skills.To no avail. My eldest son exhibited signs early on of avoidance (self preservation) of situations that presented high stimuli, such as environments that were very social or posed sudden unexpected or unfamiliar social events or expectations from him which he found puzzling. This is not anxiety, its confusion. Its not panic. Not agorophobia. I love the out of doors. Its not social phobia either. get me on a subject I like and see!
My conscious ability to handle a lot going on at one time is nill. Think of a puppeteer with a limp marionette.I don't have the strings when the environment is CRAZY.
My senses don't DO crazy. Noise cannot be sorted. It simply is too varied. Music. Laughter rises and falls around the room like crashing waves on a beach. It threatens to carry me away with it.
My anthropologic interest steered me into collecting manageries of groups of peoples. I still stare. I know now, that I always will.
I have/had my wooden sailors, my African Americans, my Buddhas, ...
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The following text is an article from "Wired" -----click here----- I thought may be of interest. I did not like the bits about CAN. (cure autism now) Because I do not believe in it and did not want it on my page but you are free to view the entire article. The rest is case studies and such. If you do not know much about autism, the factual bits are good for you to read.
-----------------------------------------
COLOR:
Blue and white checks meant ‘mother.’
She chose the pattern for my curtains
and bed canopy.
From the
linoleum-lined floors to the bare light
bulbs on the ceiling, operated by strings
I couldn't reach, the grey house was a
neverending anthropolgist's exploration .
..If you clicked on the
shades of grey link from
planet vermont quarterly-
and read the story I wrote,
circa oh...2001 or thereabouts
when it was first published-
you should know that the little girl
in the photo that accompanied the story
was run by the editor. Its NOT me.
The editor decided to use the photo, but did not consult me to submit one, though I have a photograph of the actual porch. Its grainy, in my photo section. Of me and 3 cousins.
The original house by the highway is torn down, but I still have at least a few photos somewhere. The porch was MUCH more worn than the editor's chosen photo.
The floorboards were peeling, in my lifetime
-- with grey paint and weatherbeaten and also wider apart as (naturally) are older boards. We certainly didn't own iron furniture. We had some plant pots ...No that girl is not me.
************************************
Here is just my favorite cartoon of all time!!!
Marine Boy and his sidekick Neptina, classic anime from away back-Japanese stuff when I was little. Classic now, yes of course. When I was a kid, they didn't make a so-called action figure to go with every cartoon that came out. I had a Dennis the Menace doll that I pretended was my beloved
Learn to mime PANTOMIME !!!!!
Definition !!!:::::
mime noun 1 [U] when you use movements of your hands and body, and expressions on your face, without speech, to communicate emotions and actions or to tell a story: The first scene was performed in mime.
2 [C] a short play without speech Mime in it's basic form is "Acting without words." It's being able to use only your whole body to tell a story. No voice! No sounds! Just your body and your facial expressions.
For parents or teachers who want to tell kids what it is. Say,"It's just
like pretend, but with out the words."
(Jack Julius) Robert Rivest, ::::::click below:::::
Massachusetts School of Mime, Without make-up.
bravenet.com