How do you think it feels
to feel like a wolf and foxy
How do you think it feels
To always make love by proxy
how do you think it feels
And when do you think it stops
when do you think it stops
(Lou Reed, from: How Do You Think It Feels; Berlin, 1973)
Hello dee,
Told you i'd be back to your Linguistics. I sincerely hope you don't mind - and this will be a long one, my minimum one job of the day. I think i have something to say... and i certainly have a long list of points to make (check my signature line). Which reminds me...
I hope you don't mind me "dee-ing" you. I realize the subject of names and nicknames, and by extension names of endearment, can be touchy in the auti community... hm yes in too ;]]. Outside, in real life, these are just another fact of life, and i am not even sure if i would have it any other way... We do tend to see affront in almost any foreign approach. We can't keep hiding behind this debatable lack of humour we and the world are said is part of our even diagnosis. And it is clearly untrue. I decided soon enough when i found myself on this site, it was precisely 'our' somewhat hidden, somewhat dark, somewhat afflicted, our definitely different... 'sense' even (it really is such an interesting word, both in dutch and english) of humour, and better: irony. In a way, i believe we ARE irony.
With that on the back-burner, I realize not every Margaret likes to be called Mags, not every fierce Elizabeth, or Elisabeth of course, appreciates being called a dizzy miss lizzy, however thin she be... Or Lissy, nor does every Lissy like her name spelled Lissie... but i think i am quite safe in that respect (o be present here, you very first, you originally spirited thee).
There may be one other reason for deeing... i have not found a way to address your -inverno. Oblio too, found himself in a dark woods, not even in the midst yet of our lives. And so did Dante. And yes, you provide me with one more useful point of reference... I would not have been able to leave him out, though.
Meanwhile... i love using that turn of phrase... right from the moment i first sang it along with Mick Jagger's rendition of Little Queenie (o my how appropriate a find in the mere act of writing) on Get Yer Ya Ya's Out (which quite some years later was the album i used in the garage to teach myself to play the drums), so there,
meanwhile, i was (still) thinking... Oh... how to sing Go go go Little Queenie you Rebel Rebel, tell me then Sweetest of Janes, how to sing and what to sing when all your love appears in vain, when the blue light is my blues... and the red light is my brain???
Meanwhile then, call me what you will. I was an umpire, what you call field hockey, i did well... which in itself is a compliment to the players most of all. I was a players' umpire as it is called in England. And i was weird... i had somehow reread the rule book, and had found support in there for... innovations in decision making. My regional boss was so worried when i debuted in an exchange program in the Utrecht (west) region in the deciding stages of the competition, with a view to get promoted to the national level, that he had appointed himself to be my colleague for that match. In the break he came to me, he might have really been shaking his head, but the smile said it all too - "I don't understand your decisions, Robert, but you seem to get away with it..." And yes, i was promoted.
I always considered i was being paid (still just expenses, mind, but that allows for some fiddling, aren't we all guilty?) paid for being called much worse than a blind bastard, as long as it was spontaneous. I am very patient, and extremely thick-skinned... most of the time. And i do understand, when i am the original, underlying cause of someone else's... transgression.
O this if funny by the way. Hockey umpires were among the first to be armed, or tooled, with coloured cards. We have a green one (official warning)(i think things have slightly changed recently, there might already be a short sending off in case this concerned a physical violation)(i think); a yellow one, temporary sending off, was 5 minutes, now variable, depending on...; and a red one.
All very nice, and colourful, and pretty effective in terms of communication with... anyone involved, anyone who sees.
I am still at a loss as to whyever they were also: the green one is a triangle, the yellow one a square, the red one a circle. And they wonder why at post-competition social festival play i show up umpiring with a blind man's cane?
O, if only i had known then i had this thing called autism... i would have managed both my exceptional gifts and weaknesses so much more sensibly. Were i of right age now, i think i would try for football (soccer) - there is pretty decent money in that.
So, dear dee, call me what you will, but bear in mind: Oblio is not oblio.
Someone else shouts what Oblio shows: A point in every direction is the same as no point at all.
Some people are marching together and some on their own, quite alone, others are running, the smaller ones crawl
But some sit in silence, they're just older children... that's all, after all
And so, in his observatree in the Pointless Forest, oblio just sits quietly, wondering: or is it?
Meh... long long.... This was supposed to get to language..., words, meanings, semantics.
I have found, as i have always found elsewhere, but in autism much more so than in any other specific discourse.., i have found so much waste of time, and so much effort of thought and debate and whatnot (remember what i said about "&c") goes spent in debates that are simply based on...disagreement over meaning.
I am not happy with calling whatever it is ToM, Theory of Mind is not the problem... it hides the problem. I am sure (thus i am not) that "we" can have, or develop a 'theory' of mind, on the basis of understanding 'othermind'. Understanding is not sympathy, nor is it condoning... it is just that... understanding. I think NTs have SoM - an actual physical SENSE of Mind.
Stimming... simply means the exact opposite, anyone can work that out for themselves. Our stimming is no nervous ticsing... stimming movements and other stuff i think related to stimming, it's not meant to "stimulate" into action or at least attention... it is to soothe our overworked sensory system, as if slowly rubbing a hit spot, it's aimed at numbing down, softening, comforting, easing - de-stimulating even to the extent of trancelike experience.
Autism, the word itself. Sure, authos... but that is truly as empty a reference as you can get. IN, within itself - not any other application down that long auto-list, not of itself, not by itself just within itself. And now don't look down the auto-list, look up, just before auto, just below aut.
So back now to my opening quote. How do you think it feels...
Alexithymia was my starting point towards discovering my autism. The dutch magazine Psychology headlined this word on its cover. I was waiting for the late train home in Utrecht still, or had i already moved back to Hattem, from Amsterdam South-East, the old so-called Bijlmer project, where i taught Dutch for some extra support to the local non-indigenous population. Most were poorly educated, still dutch speakers from Surinam(e). I was paid no more than a royal expenses reimbursement. I decided i remained of the opinion that this magazine was mainly superficial and not worth the investment. But i needed to know what they meant by this word, alexithymia... So i scanned the introduction, and there was the train.
I did as i always do. I pondered. I don't like at the start of something new to be tied down to too much information. I didn't start reading up seriously on autism, until after the first confirmation. By then, also having been proven right about my own instincts about my self, i felt sufficiently armed theoretically to with some confidence pick and choose which of the scientists made sense, if at all.
It's like Freud really, and so many other things... the initial analysis, maybe even at a deeper level than the genius realizes, maybe not the content of the insight as much as the STRUCTURE, that is where the genius is found... the very moment the same genius start interpreting... is the end of reliability. But by then they are so motivated to believe their nonsense... penis envy... gosh... how does one come up with it...
Alexithymia, the way i got it, is not so much a diagnostic conclusion, some condition or other, it's a diagnostic tool. As such, it might just as well have no basis in reality - as long as the tool works... It's just a word to describe a certain something in the behaviour of any ... well... it's a diagnostic tool in the context of medicine, the behaviour therefore of patients. It's a symptom.
What does the word mean?: no-words-(for)-feeling(s). Lexi (check lexicon) is word, a is the negation thereof.
I could do something with that idea... very poetic thought too... to be lost for words... to be lost for feelings... rich very rich in options, romantic images dawn on the poet mind... Libraries have been written around such wordings...
But the self-interested observer-writer in me... could he work with that? How did this apply in my life, if at all?
Welllllllllllll...... hm
I have always had this maybe better these... no back... this sense of a lack of contact with indeed my self. I have a way to temporarily overcome this... music... actively partake in (some of my) music - it can reach depths in me that i have always found beyond words. I have written about it, too. But always in that more romantic mindset of the wordsmith poet. It refers to what i call my mystical side, on the basis of which, i can actually appreciate religious, and 'spiritual' expression. To be clear, i am a strictly materialistically darwinist anti-theist thinker, but reality, history, realism and honesty dictate us to appreciate how there is more than we can see. Just doesn't mean we will not one day be able to see. But the religious emotion must be fact, whether or not that impulse is correctly called religious.
It was time to do some proper research into the matter. I found i was largely right. I was not surprised i did not find anything i could easily relate to myself, but to my utter surprise there was this description of a case somewhat different than earlier ones... A woman, who for some reason had come to see a psychiatrist. Certainly not because she was ill, or that there was something wrong. Maybe a friend had convinced, maybe her job required her to go see the man, but she simply had no idea of there being anything wrong. And there clearly was. Lack of a social life, lack of this, lack of that...
I remember once my one then-girlfriend asking me if i took a look at our life as if watching some serious psychological movie, what would i see... The fact alone that she came up with the question, and sooooo indirect a way to address the problem at all...
This case, however different, was a blow by blow description of my mother.
When i moved back to my old teenage room in mother's house in Hattem, i soon reported to a new g.p. just to acquaint him with the new patient. I did mention how i came to have returned, and yes, i did observe a general mental problem i had had no answer for, and yes i did mention how i was puzzling over this concept of alexithymia. It was later found in his notes, when, just over a year later, i asked him to seek evaluation on the basis of assumed possible Schizoid Personality Disorder, or Schizotypal PD (as i had indeed once or twice noted something in me that had just this little scent of a breakdown in the connection with real reality).
You see... i still had no idea i just had to read the next chapter of DSM-IV. Who would have ever thought that this communactive would be at all autistic...
Then, awaiting the start of the take-in, with my mother watching some documentary on the television about asperger's, i had this sudden idea... i googled asperger / alexithymia..., then searched again for autism/asperger's under DSM-IV, and simply couldn't help clicking the WP logo... This... this was it, i had found home...
Obviously, dear dee, i have once again said way too much without coming to the point... Partly, that is the point. There is so much more to the subject of autism and language... just need to start somewhere. It's a good time to call this one a day, i guess i might just be back ;]
Robert
i am so not gonna preview, i am so not gonna edit...
it's just too hot today... meh
In my mythical mental world there are not many deities
_________________
a point in every direction is the same as no point at all - or is it
may your god forgive you
29 Jun 2015, 7:51 pm
