LITERARY INSPIRATION #9

BOOK - MOON OVER MANIFEST by Clare Vanderpool

 ‘I thought I knew a thing or two about people.  Even had my list of universals.  But I wondered.  Maybe the world wasn’t made of universals that could be summed up in neat little packages.  Maybe there were just people.  People who were tired and hurt and lonely and kind in their own way and their own time.

Once again, I felt off balance, as if I was playing tug-of-war and the person I was tugging against let go.’

‘They talked of their common experiences of travelling to America on ships filled with immigrants, tears of emotion welling up as they recounted their first sightings of the Statue of Liberty, and the joy and fear of arriving at Ellis Island.

“I was so afraid I would be turned back,” said Mrs Cybulskis, wiping her brow with the back of her hand.  “The way they examined everyone for disease and malady.”  The women nodded in agreement.  They had all experienced the fear of being labelled unfit to enter America.  A simple chalk mark drawn by the medical examiner on one’s clothes could have a person barred from entering his newly adopted country.  An E for eye problems, an L for lameness, an H for heart problems.  They would have to board another boat and go back to wherever they’d come from no matter how long a journey they had just travelled.’

My experience with buying and reading recently published children’s books has been a bit hit and miss - I prefer older books, which I have found are generally (though not always) much better written.  But occasionally I’ve stumbled upon some good newer ones, this being one of those.  

I really loved this book, and it made me cry (though that isn’t to say that it is one of those awful, gloomy books, designed to manipulate your emotions - I read one of those a few months back, and I was so angry with it I gave it away: I couldn’t bear to have it in my home, it pissed me off so much).  It’s bitter-sweet, and so beautiful.

As you can see from the second quote above, it is also extremely relevant to what is going on in the world today, with the “immigrant crisis”.  And yet the book, published in 2010, switches between a dual timeline of 1917/18, and 1936, and is describing how immigrants were treated back when they were fleeing Europe and the devastation of the First World War.  

So nothing much has changed, then.  Immigrants are still as unwelcome as they’ve always been, it seems.  And yet the irony in this is the fact that most of us are either immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants (whether in the recent or long distant past), but so many people don’t realise, or choose to forget, that fact.  No matter how you try to look at it, “All is One” and, therefore, we are all part of the whole.

Peace to all.  Namaste.

Kindling Hope

Kindle – to inflame (eg the passions); to provoke, incite; to be roused

Does the phrase “lose yourself in a book” mean anything to you?  Well it surely does to me, and in the very literal sense.  I believe that the actual saying is “lose yourself in a good book”, but I’m not choosy.  I can lose myself completely in anything - all sense of who I am, what I believe in, what I feel.  And not just for an hour or so, while I temporarily drift off into a fantasy world, and get caught up in the story, and someone else’s life.  When I return to reality (IF I return) then it doesn’t stop there. 

The book may have ended, but the story persists...  at least in my mind it does, where the characters continue to exist as real people.  So, not only have I lost myself but, in return, I have breathed life into a bunch of ostensibly fictional individuals – my life for theirs.  I still exist, but that’s about all I’m doing, while they thrive and grow: and I come to resemble the living dead.

And I could have been mistaken for a zombie, just lately - all because of my love of reading.  Or, more accurately, because of my resistance to being chained to this thing called reality.  And then there’s that other peculiar characteristic I have of becoming emotionally attached to objects.  Books and words, in this instance.  E-books, to be precise.  On a Kindle, to be even more specific.

Yes, I recently joined the multitudinous ranks of Kindle owners.  And, just as quickly, I became a disowner: though, hopefully, this state of affairs is only temporary, until I learn to become a responsible owner who doesn’t abuse their Kindle mercilessly!

It was given to me for my birthday in July, the shortest-lived present I’ve probably ever had.  By August I had to give it back, for safekeeping.  Safekeeping from me, that is.  In that short span of time I managed to download nearly a hundred and fifty books (possibly more, with the ones I had read and removed before The Great Purge), most of them free, and chosen from the romantic fantasy section, which encompasses countless sub-genres (like steampunk; urban fantasy; historical; vampires and the rest of the undead, etc) – my taste is nothing if not eclectic.  And I’m not picky.  Well, not about books, anyway.  Unfortunately.  It is this regrettable lack of discernment, when it comes to reading matter, which has got me into trouble.  Yet again.

Before the Kindle, it was reading ebooks on the computer.  It was for this reason that my friend bought it for me, in order to save my eyesight from the strain it was suffering, due to the all-day reading marathons it was being forced to endure.  And in the hope, perhaps, that my compulsive reading would be found to be directly attributable to the stimulating effect that the computer seems to have on my brain: and that it would, therefore, dissipate when confronted with the non back-lit screen of an e-reader, which more closely resembles the experience of reading a real book.  No such luck. 

It is an unmitigated fact that I have been having trouble with reading since long before I acquired a computer.  Libraries and bookshops used to be my favourite places in which to hang out.  I would spend hours loitering with intent: so much so that on one occasion, whilst lingering in the local bookstore yet again, I was accosted by the slightly disgruntled salesperson, who seemed to take offence to my habit of flicking through the pages of the books during my weekly visits, but never actually buying anything.  I didn’t have any money, and I just couldn’t stay away from the shop, but I couldn’t explain that to her.  I just loved being around books – rows and rows of lovely books.  Heaven!  And, in the library particularly, I felt safe: it was a haven of peace amidst the clamour of the world, a home away from home.  In fact, it was often preferable.  And now I’ve discovered I can recreate the same experience, hanging around the virtual bookshop that is Amazon’s Kindle store!

 

The truth is I love reading.  I always have, and I have always had a prodigious talent for it.  In books I found not only a source of information, entertainment, and stimulation for my brain, but also a means to escape the realities of life.  And it is my use of it with the latter intent that now causes me grief, especially when combined with my lack of sagacity and discrimination in my choice of reading material.  In short, I don’t care what I feed my mind, just as long as it serves my purpose.  And my purpose has always erred a little on the side of the nebulous. 

Back then there was good reason for wanting a bolthole - living, as I did, a drab, mundane, limited existence, imbued with fear, anxiety, and an ever-increasing sense of hopelessness and confusion.   But that was back then.  The value of that particular reason for reading is now defunct, and yet I continue to employ it.  What once was habit has turned into compulsion – a driving force that resists all logical reasoning to assuage it.  

And so to the present, bypassing my sundry attempts to control my progressively intractable obsession (including giving it up entirely for a while).  And the advent of that amazing reading device, which allows access to hundreds of books instantaneously, without ever having to leave the comfort of one’s home.  What a marvellous invention - when used responsibly.  I guess that would be the bit that I've been missing, then, yes?

As a consequence, my life has been put on hold whilst my compulsion has raged free and unabated, until it has become necessary to make a choice – a real life, or a fantasy?  Living my own life, or reading about someone else’s, while I slowly slip into a spiritual, mental, and emotional coma – the body still functions, but that’s about all that’s happening.  There’s a light on, but everyone’s vacated the premises in favour of the Kindle store.

Therefore, having placed my Kindle in the safe custody of my friend, until such time as I have been restored to some semblance of sanity with regard to my reading behaviour (and my dubious choice of literature), I am sticking to reading my ‘real’ books for now: the kind I used to read, which engaged my mind, lifted my spirit, and imparted words of wisdom, often from unexpected sources (have you read A A Milne’s Winnie the Pooh?  Or The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett?)

This is in preference to employing my classic manoeuvre of going from one extreme to the other, and deciding that I’m not meant to read anything at all.  Instead, I’ve come to the long-overdue conclusion that it’s not the fact that I read that is the problem, but rather what and how – much the same as with food.  When I read the literary equivalent of junk food, I get the same result that I do with food – I set off the compulsion for more.  I have never yet found myself driven beyond reason, and sanity, to keep reading Winnie the Pooh, or The Chronicles of Narnia.  Nor will you ever find me bingeing on broccoli, mung beans, or rice.  Somehow they just lack that certain je ne sais quoi.

And so, having been de-Kindled, I find that hope, and the possibilities for change, have been rekindled.

Twitter Ye Not

I fear I may have inadvertently become an internet stalker. 

I’ll try to keep this short and tweet. 

What began as a bit of loitering, has gradually progressed into lurking, only to finally evolve  into stalking.  I am talking here about having discovered the world of social networking – Twitter, in particular.

 As I may have mentioned before, I have this ‘thing’ with the internet.  ‘Thing’ being a mild way to describe the driving desire I experience when I come on here without strict guidelines and a specific goal in mind.  Otherwise it’s akin to sending a lone child off into a sweet shop, with a credit card – don’t expect me back any time soon, or without having bought or eaten everything in sight.   

Apart from my insatiable desire for seeking out information on any topic which randomly distracts my mind, I have a particular ‘interest’ in reading ebooks – an extension of my love of reading the real thing.  This unfortunate turn of events came about as the result of acquiring an iPod Touch a while ago, when I was suddenly catapulted into the world of apps. And, being of limited imagination when it comes to using technology, my attention was drawn to the familiar and comforting world of books – available instantaneously on my iPod.  Oh joy!  I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.    

Then, oh double joy, I found that they were also accessible to me on my computer.  All this time and I hadn’t known I’d got an instant library at my fingertips.  Out of my mind went the tiny detail about why I had given up going to the real library (because it’s full of books, and I would bring as many of them home as possible, and promptly get lost in reading them all, whilst neglecting other areas of my life – like sleeping, eating properly, getting dressed, and suchlike.  You know, the trivial details). 

So I failed to make the obvious connection between an internet library and the real thing, but instead made up for what I’d been missing out on, promptly going berserk, reading round the clock, and probably doing untold damage to my eyesight, and my brain, in the process.  All attempts at controlling it didn’t work, due in part to the fact that I couldn’t think of anything else to use the iPod for, other than to listen to music (which was the original purpose for buying it).

In the end I did the only sensible thing – I got rid of it.  However, a monster had been unleashed, and now demanded to be kept fed - the love of on-line reading.  I’ve always been a voracious reader, and here I’d found another way of doing it, with access to a whole world of literature I’d never have otherwise encountered, or wanted to pay for.  Or wanted to be seen in the company of.  This way I could have access to books which I would not consider checking out of a library, or buying from a bookshop, because of the embarrassment.  I have my image to maintain, don’t you know.

In the process I discovered a particular author whose books I found I liked.  That would not have been so bad had I not also discovered that she has a blog, which I proceeded to follow.  And then I found ‘THE LINKS’ – yes, there they were, sitting innocently on the page, under the heading ‘Want to get social?’  And, of course, the social butterfly in me (yeah, right – she sits alongside the maths genius, the computer geek, and the musical maestro), she piped up and insisted that yes, she did, that she’d like to stretch her wings a little, and that it would be okay just to have a little look.  Really, it would only be a peek.

And the rest, as is so often the case, is history: meaning a repetition of the same old thing, with the inevitable conclusion - I am now a Twitter obsessive.

However, this does not mean that I have joined the ranks of the Twitterers, and am now gaily interacting with the inhabitants of that strange on-line world.  On the contrary, I merely sit on the sidelines, reading tweets, feeling a familiar sense of detachment, whilst being fascinated with the conversations taking place.  It actually feels like I’m reading a book, or watching television (another medium which I had to rid myself of, ‘cos it was sucking the life out of me).  I begin to live vicariously, whilst my own life gradually fades into the background, eventually almost ceasing to exist. 

I have gone so far as to calculate the time difference between the countries of said author and myself, in order to be able to work out when I can next expect new tweets to appear.  This is on account of the fact that I initially spent a great deal of time checking and re-checking every few minutes, only to be frustrated to find there was nothing new to read: until I realised that it was the middle of the night in America when I was doing most of my twalking (a new word for tweet stalking).  Yes, it’s got that bad.  If I carry on like this, I’ll be plotting out her day!

I feel a bit like a voyeur, which is faintly disturbing, even though there’s nothing sexual in what I’m doing.  But then our world has become quite voyeuristic, the way we are able to read about or watch what’s happening in other peoples’ lives, via the news or reality television, newspapers and magazines, and the internet.  Me, I find myself strangely fascinated and enthralled by the way people discourse with each other.  I imagine this is how an alien would feel, peering through a microscope at an entirely different species, studying how it works.  

Or perhaps it’s ‘cos it’s a bloody effective way of avoiding my daily routine!

Whatever the reason, the fact is that Tweeting is bad for my health, and I think I should leave it to the people who can do it without abandoning the rest of their lives.  And to the birds.  Tweet tweet.

"I'll Link To That!"

I mentioned, did I not, in my previous post ‘Critical Art Bypass’ that I had been wandering on the web again just recently, looking for watercolour painting sites to help me improve my technique (which translates to mean ‘to help me change the way I paint so that I can stop painting like me, and paint like all the artists whose work I like.’  Bloody well trying to copy, again, aren’t I?!  Bane of my life).

The thing is this is only half true.  Or a quarter.  Or even a third.  Yes, I started out on my web-trawl with the intention of specifically looking for the above information.  Yes, I set out without telling anyone where I was going.  Or why I thought I was going.  So yes, as always when I undertake one of these misguided missions into the murky depths of cyberspace, I ended up wandering around the web for hours, battered and bewildered, wondering bemusedly how I’d gotten from art to armpits.  You read that right – armpits.  Namely, how to make your own deodorant, using only natural ingredients.  And how to make your own shampoo.  And your own perfume.  And your own toothpaste.  And your own...  The list, as I discovered, is endless.  As are the links.

Links?  Yes, links.  You know, those things liberally peppered around websites, enticing you to click and go... off into who-knows-what alternate universe.  They say things like, “If you liked this, then you might want to read...,” or, “What other people are reading,” or, “Related topics.”  Plus, there are the ones that are just the odd word or sentence, usually embedded within the body of the main text, which light up when you place your cursor over them.  Oh, how I love the words that light up – mirroring what my mind does when it catches sight of all those lovely distractions!  And, of course, you just HAVE to click on them.  You do.  Don’t you?

Well, according to my sane and sensible friend (who’s about as autistic as a plastic bag), no you don’t.  Apparently, other people don’t come on the web looking for one thing and, twelve hours later (that's NOT an exaggeration), find themselves still on here, completely lost, not able to recall what they were originally searching for, and having been led by the nose along a trail that’s taken them from the sublime to the ridiculous. 

I mean, who goes from looking up autism to celebrity gossip – especially when they don’t even own a television, don’t listen to the radio, and don’t read newspapers or magazines?  So what relevance does it have to my life?  None.  But in that moment of compulsive madness it becomes the most important thing in the world to catch up on everything I’ve missed out on in the last six months, or however long it’s been since my last trawl took me to this region of web-space; and I find my life inextricably linked (pause for ironic laughter) to that of Britney Spears, Rhianna, the cast of the new Bond movie, or whomever I happen to stumble upon as I blindly click my way to another bout of autistic obsessive/compulsive insanity.

This is what my best friend means when she says that the web is not designed for me.  I don’t do surfing – you know, skimming lightly over the surface, riding the waves of information ‘til I find what I want, blithely leaving behind that which isn’t relevant, and not getting bogged down in the troughs.  I do deep-sea diving, without enough oxygen to sustain me, ‘cos I’m not good at planning, and I never intend to be down that long.  So I end up feeling dizzy and disoriented from the lack of air, and the pressure of all that information pushing down on my head.  And there I get stuck, plodding along in the darkest depths, dredging the ocean floor to make sure I don’t miss anything, and collecting all the crap that other people would leave behind.  Hell, half of it is probably the crap that people have dumped there in the first place. 

Which is how come I end up reading twenty-five different web-sites about the same thing, in case one of the others has a different answer, a better answer, the RIGHT answer.  Not that this does me much good when I haven’t got a clue what the right answer is: so how I would recognise it even if I did happen to fall over it in my manic, skim-reading frenzy is beyond me.  But I keep trying.  Oh, how I do keep trying.  It’s as if I imagine that I’m going to have a “Eureka!” moment the instant I find what I’ve been searching for.  I have lots of them away from the web (usually very short-lived, and frequently duds), but I don’t think I’ve ever had one on-line.  I tend to come off here feeling more baffled than before I came on, having flooded myself with too much information, most of which bears no relevance to my original search query.

“Why do I keep doing it?”  Why does the sun come up every morning?  Why does the earth keep turning?  Buggered if I know.  What I think I know is that I love reading, and I love accumulating information (though I don’t quite know what to do with it once I’ve acquired it), and I get to do both on a massive scale on the web – unfortunately, without restrictions.  I haven’t yet learned to do discernment.  I think it’s a grand idea, but put me in front of a computer, or in a library, or in front of a television, and I will read or watch anything that catches my interest.  And my interest is easily caught.  It’s not picky, and would probably be the equivalent of a cheap date.  I am an internet tart – I get around a lot, especially as my interest is just as easily lost. 

I also have a trigger-happy finger which just itches to click those links.  And I spend the whole of my time with my hand clasped around the mouse in a death-grip (in case it runs away, perhaps, and gets mauled by a cat), which explains why I have recently started experiencing aches in my wrist, which are probably repetitive strain injuries.  My answer to that?  I just use my left hand instead of my right.  That way I get to have RSIs in both hands – but it means I get to keep on clicking.  As you can see, I was born with an abundance of common sense.

So, having admitted to my linking problem, I guess it’s probably time I tried to do something about it.  Controlled linking, perhaps?     

Mouthing The Words

"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.

"And he has Brain."

"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything."

(Excerpt from 'The House At Pooh Corner', by AA Milne)

Sometimes I wonder whether being intelligent and literate is a hindrance rather than an asset. There’s a joke in AA (that’s Alcoholics Anonymous, NOT the Automobile Association!) that the people with the most intelligence are actually the dumbest when it comes to trying to follow the 12 Step Programme. They tie themselves in knots complicating everything, when it’s really very simple. I have to concede to being one of them, though I now have the “excuse” of being autistic to explain why it took me so long to get it. Not to mention having been labouring under the illusion that I was just one of your average, non-autistic brand of alcoholics, whose main block to recovery was a big brain coupled with a massive ego.

It’s true, I do have these in abundance too. But I also have a ‘little something extra’ that makes a massive difference – I don’t understand the words. Unfortunately this problem is compounded by me believing that I do: which means it never occurs to me to ask for help. After all, if you already think you know why would you ask someone to explain it?

When I say that I don’t understand the words, this is where it gets a little tricky to define. You see, the fact is that I do understand the literal meaning of a vast number of individual words. I even understand the general meaning of a large number of words when they are strung together. I am capable of understanding certain nuances, and double entendres, and of employing such techniques within my own writing. I am not so literal that I cannot work out that being asked to take a seat means sit down, and not that I am being requested to pick up a chair and remove it to some other, unspecified, vicinity.

The problem, as I see it (and I could be seeing it all wrong – it has been known!), appears to be twofold. On the one hand, as an autistic, I seem to use words differently to the way that non-autistics do. For me the literal meaning of each word is retained when it is placed within the context of a sentence.

Yes, I am able to be figurative and metaphorical: but I sometimes struggle to recognise it in what other people write or say, or to work out whether what is being conveyed is meant to be taken at face value, or if there is some hidden meaning that requires a shovel in order to dig below the surface. And, I have to say, I’m not that great at digging. It tends to give me a headache, largely because I can become obsessed with it, but also due to my propensity for trying to dig in the wrong place – concrete, mainly. I can find deep, symbolic meaning where there is none, and nothing but surface where a great underground cavern full of riches waits to be unearthed. Give me a book to read which employs extended metaphor, and I’ll show you an autistic on the verge of having a brain haemorrhage!

But then add to that the added impediment of my not fully understanding the definition of some words at all, especially those which have more than one interpretation (which is a large proportion). I struggle to take on board more than one meaning, so will often only latch onto one part of a dictionary definition – and that’s if I even bother looking up a word. Having managed for forty-four years to acquire an understanding of the English language that has got me by, it’s rather difficult to accept the need to look up words that I assume I know the meaning of – much like being told you need to learn to walk again, when you’re already an adult and thought you were doing okay. I often find that even in conversations with my friend Dee we can end up talking at cross-purposes simply because we have a completely different take on a particular word, or words – only we don’t realise that we have.

I also hate having to stop reading in order to check the dictionary: it upsets my flow, especially as I read so fast, and I basically skim-read everything, probably on account of having ADHD, and being compulsive. It’s like I don’t actually want to digest the words (I haven’t got the time), I just want to gobble them up – the way I used to do with food, as a compulsive overeater/bulimic!

Disconcertingly for me, I am finding out that I understand less than I thought I did, and I am more literal than I ever imagined, despite my apparent mastery of the English language. I even looked up the word ‘literal’, just to be certain that I hadn’t misunderstood that too, and found that it describes perfectly what it is that I do: “inclined to use or understand words in a matter-of-fact sense.” Yep. That’s what I do. And even when I employ metaphor, I have to try to quell (frequently unsuccessfully) the overwhelming urge to explain what I mean by it because I imagine that everyone else is as literal as I am.

So then you string all of these words together to make sentences and, hey presto, you get total confusion (as if you weren’t confused enough already)! In the non-autistic world the fact is that individual words almost inevitably change their meaning the minute they are combined - sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly, but undeniably clouding the issue even more. But that’s not the worst of it. Not only is their meaning altered, but there are numerous ways to interpret the whole – which confounds any ideas about simply learning this stuff by rote. At least not if you wish to have any kind of meaningful conversation with someone.

Of course, if you don’t want to you could always just mouth the words like a parrot, and hope that no-one ever asks you what you mean exactly when you say, “Pieces of eight, pieces of eight,” in a squawky voice, whilst standing on the shoulder of a one-legged man!

Einstein Rules!

"I used to have a handle on life but it fell off!”

I read this somewhere ages ago and thought it was very funny. Now I also find that it is totally appropriate to where I am!

Life is confusing. Aspergers is confusing. Put them together and all I get is a lot of confusion. I sometimes feel like a kitten all tangled up in a ball of wool, not able to find the beginning or the end, and when I do manage to find one or the other the only place it leads to is back into the tangled mass!

I remember reading a book called ‘A Short History Of Nearly Everything’ by Bill Bryson. It was really good, and brought science to life and made it interesting, mainly because he wrote a lot about the people as well as the science itself, putting it into historical context. It’s never been a subject I’ve been particularly interested in, but after reading that I acquired yet another obsession, and would go to the library (my most favourite place on the planet!) and get out more books on the subject. It didn’t last for very long: there aren’t that many books of a similar nature to Bryson’s, and there weren’t that many science books (or any other kind!) in my local library, and I soon got bored, not to mention totally perplexed by it all. But it did give me yet another excuse for getting out more books to read!

I can’t remember most of it, though I do have my own copy, but the one relevant bit that has always stuck with me is to do with Einstein. I didn’t know at the time that I had aspergers, nor that he is supposed to have had it too, but even then I felt a sense of identification with his desire to understand and explain the universe, to put it in a neat little box with a rigid set of rules (or laws), and set down a definitive answer that no-one could refute. And for a while it worked: until some bastard came along and threw a spanner in the works, saying that his General Theory of Relativity didn’t apply to everything in the universe – namely atoms! They untidied the universe, and came up with a separate set of laws called Quantum Theory, and Einstein then apparently spent the rest of his life trying to find yet another definitive answer to the whole lot because he didn’t like there being two different sets of rules. It didn’t make sense to him, and it upset his need for rigid order, I expect.

I can understand his being upset, and then being driven by his obsessive need to tidy it all back up again. I’ve had theories of my own. Granted they are nothing so grand as explaining the nature of gravity (and, in so doing, apparently coming up with the single greatest scientific discovery of all time); and they are nothing to do with science, nor will they ever change the world: but, nonetheless, they’ve been very dear to me in explaining the inexplicable, mainly to do with human nature, and they have given me a firm anchor – until, of course, some bastard comes along and blow-torches their way through the chain, leaving me cast adrift once again!

So now I’m trying to give up theorising and setting everything in concrete: it has a tendency to set on me in the wrong place, usually while I’m at sea, and I end up nearly drowning myself in my own theories! (All of this, by the way, is not to be taken literally, you understand?!) It’s difficult to do, though, especially after a lifetime of practice, and the little problem of it being part and parcel of the aspergers. But I persist, knowing that it may take a while, but also trusting that it is possible for me to change. It’s just knowing what bits can be changed that’s the other problem: I have a tendency to try to change what I can’t, and then get frustrated when nothing happens. And, ironically, my main obsession at the moment is with the idea that I can stop being obsessive! Ah well, back to the drawing board (as Einstein might say!)

The Wee Whimper

This is my blog. I wanted to start with a bang, but I fear it will probably be more of a whimper! I’m not even sure what the purpose of this is going to be for me, other than a vague hope that perhaps I might find my own voice, and it might help to re-ignite my enthusiasm for writing. Oh, and that maybe there will be someone out there with aspergers whom it might help. You never know.

I am already having problems writing this because of my difficulty with spontaneity. I am trying to attempt what could be the impossible for me ie to not keep on editing and re-editing everything I write, in an attempt to get it right, and to make sure that no-one can possibly misunderstand any word I’ve written! I love words, and I love writing. I will read absolutely ANYTHING if left to my own devices – menu lists from the local Chinese takeaway (I don’t eat takeaway food!), leaflets about things I have absolutely no interest in whatsoever, the blurb that’s written on labels on anything I buy, etc, etc! I devour them, like the compulsive overeater that I am (it’s in remission).

They distract my attention, and as a child I could barely get my nose out of a book once I’d started reading it: I would read whilst walking to school. It served the useful purpose of giving me something to focus on other than the confusion of the world around me, and how to integrate with it. After all what do you do when there’s someone walking towards you on the same pavement? Where do you look? Do you smile? Do you make eye contact? Is that rude? Will they smack you in the face if you happen to look at them “the wrong way”? What is “the wrong way” to look at someone?! What happens if they smile at you, but you miss your cue and you don’t smile back? Will they think you’re being sullen or rude? Will they say something cutting? And then, of course, what happens if you ever see them again?!

All this, and more, going on within the space of about five minutes (because I’ve already started thinking the moment I spotted them on the pavement in front of me, half a mile up the road!) Ah, what a joy to have/be aspergers! And to think I used to believe that everyone went through this same protracted, and frankly gut-wrenching, exercise whenever they came into contact with another human being: or even when they just thought about having to interact with anyone else!

So this is my first blog entry. Not what I had planned to write at all, so hey, look at that – I did the impossible, and wrote spontaneously!! Now the plan is to try to write from my heart: that could be really difficult considering that we apparently don’t have one (at least not according to some sources!!)