Soma

"I'm all by myself

as i've always been

i'll betray myself,

to anyone, lost, anyone but you."

Time keeps on crawling towards me, and i keep on shoving my mind into a box of puzzles to avoid it.

Not even avoid it. It's not a refusal to acknowledge the entropy, the gradually inevitable dimming of the star, the decay of this once vibrant bright powerful thing that i was.

It's just that engaging with that reality brings me nowhere.

It does not bring me joy, or new forms of enlightenment. It does not resolve the puzzle in a novel way, it does not create some ephemeral moment that will help me transcend the soulful sadness that is the decline.

Not even just the decline. I have always felt this soulful sadness. It has been my worn weary traveling companion since i can begin to remember myself. As a boy, rejected by his peers, as a young man, briefly spellbinding and star lit before alienating everyone once again, and again as a man, alone in small rooms while those i imagined as my friends went to name brand university's and i went to community college out of sheer desperate to answer the question,

"what can i do to survive for the rest of this life alone?"

I never got the answer i wanted. I wanted to find something i was good enough at to be able to live and die alone, as was prophesied for all those who are truly strange, autistic, poor, disabled AND gifted. Ruined and luminous.

The answer i got was that i CAN'T survive alone. Never could really. I could handle the mental strain, the loneliness, but i couldn't endure the mask, the grind, the lying, the suppression, the things one has to do to work a job with normal people with the majority of your free time. I tried my heart out, never knowing why i was failing, always formulating an idea and trying again, only to fail in a similar way, with just enough things changed that i thought it was a new problem.

The problem was always me. I was always too different to be in the world, and i tried. i really tried at everything. I even tried to die, several times, but doctors brought me back. The world brought me back. A undiscovered compartment in my heart opened up, hardened the exterior and made a declaration.

"You will not let them win. You will not pack up your shit and leave. You will be incompressible. You will remain a monument to yourself, for yourself, and fuck everyone else."

That is how i lived for many many many years. I sometimes still feel that i live that way now. That my safe place is self belief, in a world full of people that never believed in me.

Suicidal ideation they call it. Disassociation sometimes. Mine usually took the form of fantasizing about dying. Falling off a cliff. Being hit by a car. Being caught in a cross fire. Rarely did i think enough about it to make a plan, and when i did i knew that i needed to do something.

Nothing ever really helped though. Not meds, not talk therapy, not joy.

I always felt like a burden to those around me, and embarrassed at my inability to weather the mundane world of work the way everyone else could.

I had thought of myself as this tough, unkillable warrior motherfucker. I beat death, I fought back against overwhelming odds as a person and in my real life. I fought bullies with superior numbers, i fought the system that wanted to see me die. I always won. Eventually. And i always had the stamina to drag myself for the long starving months it took to get from the fallow times to the finish line.

I could OUTLAST everyone else.

Like a cockroach. Living in the trash and dim light, Skittering on the margins of society in my dead mans clothes with unshakable wide shoulders. The power of my mind to buoy my frail body.

IN HERE I AM STRONG.

IN HERE I AM WORTHWHILE.

IN HERE I AM INDESTRUCTIBLE.

Out there, i was a bum, unable to work, unable to earn, unable to get a job with 3 degrees from my shitty community college education. Unable to be normal, unable to talk to girls unless they talked to me first, like everything, pinned down and passive, waiting for others to validate me before trying to do anything at all.

I was a shitty vocalist in high school. But i sang in a band and had fun, and we were pretty good. I was probably a shitty poet to. But i read in quiet moldy rooms of people much older than me and was encouraged, congratulated, and told i had a gift. Told i was worthwhile. Told to keep writing.

It never made me any money. I could never do it to support myself. I was never going to be famous or known. That was my gift. The gift of knowing that i could not keep myself afloat, but beneath a hail of arrows, i could keep walking, no matter what.

And i did keep writing. Maybe not in the way i was supposed to. Maybe not in a way that could make me money. But at least in a way that keeps the legend of that once great warrior alive in my mind, for me to remember when i am looking down from a bridge as a walk to think,

"Not today. I have too much left in me to say."

What is intelligence?

 Intelligence is not easily demonstrated.

It is not demonstrated by sterile memorization and recitation of dry facts and figures.

It is not learning the names of all the element, completing a rubix cube, knowing your multiplication tables or naming every state. 

Intelligence is ADAPTIVE.  It is the ability to find understanding and pursue exigence in the face of minimal information or compounding and confounding inputs that are muddy,  unclear, inexact elements and data points. 

Intelligence is solving a novel problem, in a novel way. 

When intelligence is unavailable people often fall into patternicity,  a term invented by Michael Shermer.  This term describes what often occurs in the minds of simpler people,  where they struggle to produce understanding from sources they cannot derive understanding from and that causes them to SEE patterns where there are none.  In a desperate attempt to MAKE SENSE out of what may indeed be senseless they CREATE truth out of gibberish,  signal out of noise, and this is all done in service to ego.

The human ego DEMANDS this make sense, DAMNIT.  and if it doesn't, then i will MAKE SENSE OUT OF IT.  If i cannot, that must mean i'm stupid, and i can't live with that truth. 

No one wants to be stupid.  No parent wants their child to be stupid.  At one point in social being stupid really was that proverbial scarlet S that no person could bear the shame of.

That time is gone. 

You see, patternicity is common in conspiracy theorists.  That makes it useful to despotes  and propagandists.  That makes the simple minded effective tools for spreading misinformation, nonsense and imagined signs and signals from the sea of random noise.  

Intelligence is suspecting your source could be wrong or compromised.  Knowing that that data could change as new information is discovered.  

Intelligence is knowing that you cannot, do not, will not, EVER know everything.  

and having the lack of ego and the wealth of understanding to be confident enough to live with that. 

No one cries for the man on stage.

 I would like to be different.  I would like to FEEL different.  I am tired.  so tired of all of these patterns that funnel downward.  Each time i briefly think, "well, i tried everything i could.  i was honest, i was sincere,  i can't control how other people respond to that."  

And that might be true a few times, for a few people in your life.  Everyone has conflicts, if you don't, your a pushover or a people pleaser and likely spent much of your life being taken advantage of by others you want the approval of.  

I understand that.  I've struggled as an autistic man to know what the right road to travel is, should i mask, keep all my connections to others very shallow and surface depth, or should i unmask, and be my sincere entire self and hope it does kill them?

see, i knew in my 20's for certain i was not like others,  and came to think of myself as radioactive.  People would ask me for my insight and i would warn them not to ask me.  If they kept it up i would tell them. I would tell them all i saw about them, about the issue they had, answer their questions.  Most of the time that would just cause them to break.  I was a mirrored surface reflecting the deepest fears and insecurities they had, and now they knew that i saw them.  Tears usually followed, or brash flailing attempts at strength, a defensive reaction,  "Who the fuck are you anyways?  What the fuck do you know?!"  I'd heard that response so many times it became a running joke for me.  Not a funny one mind you, just  another dagger sticking out of the flesh.  I'd become accustomed to being abused, being kicked, being bullied, being shit on.  I walked through my landscapes like something scarred and mangled survivor protagonist from mad max.   There's so much more to tell but you get the jist.  

Radioactive.  Or gravity warping.  Those in my presence for too long tended to get poisoned or crushed.  They had to flee for their own safety.  

It's still the same today.  

I meet people, get invited into a group briefly, get comfortable, keep the mask up, and underneath it's disguise i am cool, confident, charming, interesting, a sparkling stone and gifted conversationalist, a gem, and standout, i breath life into things.  When the mask slips, things turn. I can't really explain to you in a way that does it justice, honestly.  It's happened so many times and in the same way that i can't even really understand it anymore.  I've come through the entire thing and out the other side in such a way that the data stream makes perfect sense and then becomes gibberish again. 

They love the mask.  The Thing that lurks underneath,  not so much.

You see eventually, this creature that i keep in writing, infinite lives in millions of lines of text have poured out of me like endless rains for decades.  The man i AM comes out in these words, but remains a glinting shadow behind my heterochromic eyes.  Perhaps one hides my self, the other projects my mask outward.   Sometimes that man breaks free, and speaks.  He speaks his feeling in run on sentences that baffle and confuse.  He casually says things like: "It's as if the 3 fates decreed "whatever suspicions you harbor towards people will always come to pass"  and  I must sit alone for eternity under Cassandra's curse."

and people grow still.  The entire chat thread ends and never resumes.  People leave and start a new one with him.  The calls stop coming.  No one knows what happened, or why, but they are upset, they are disquieted.  They want it to stop.   My honesty, my vulnerability, causes unease, and confusion.  

Confused at the notion that THIS is what i really am.

Not cool. Not superhuman.  Not confident.  Not charming.

I am desperate. Lonely.  Alien.  Spilling out over the sides and scrambling to keep it all in.  Sadly, i am earnest.  

I always imagine some idealized scenario, wherein i am embraced, that the others will show empathy and find my honesty and vulnerability brave.  They simple find it tiresome.  They didn't want a feeling, breathing, living, thing, 

they wanted a bright shiny toy to impress them and their friends. 

Watch him astound with language and stories and singing and light, enjoy the show and go home to your comfortable life.

No one understands what it is like to be dehumanized quite as well as someone who can't only PASS as human for a few moments.  For someone who lives such a singular and strange life that no one can seem to muster the effort to attempt to relate.  They just take what they can, and move on.

"All eyes turned up to the hero
Worn out self-abusive circus freak
There's one thing that you might not know:

There'll be another messiah right here next week"  

I'm finally there everyone.

I just want to be normal. 

What do you want I.E. what IS a problem?

 

What is, or isn't a problem, is sometimes a question of perspective.

Not always, mind you. If you have an abscessed tooth, getting it fixed is not something you can practically reframe to reduce the discomfort you are experiencing.

However, if you want to have a lot of friends, and you have tried and failed, you might think of this, as a problem. What do we do with problems?

Well usually, if we are of sound mind, we try to devise ways to solve them. In doing so we are adopting the most logically course of action, right?

Problem---solution- resolution of problem yes?

Maybe. First ask yourself, WHY is this a problem?

Okay. So following the example, why is NOT having friends a problem? Well, you could conclude that you will be lonely without friends, that your employment opportunities are reduced without friends, that you feel left out of the world without friends.

However, what about the fact that you feel a reduction of self esteem from rejection as a result of attempts to make said friends? Or that most people you meet you find to be judgemental, dimwitted, self centered slack jawed cowards that are unable to express themselves with anything approaching sincerity due to social convention flatting the landscapes of communication into a series of "acceptable topics" that reveal little to nothing about anyone or anything?

See? Perspective.

Maybe you are chasing friends because the world you live in prizes them, and you live in the world so, you emulate the people in the world you live in and pursue the things they pursue. That is what we are taught to do as autistic people right?

Craft a mask by stitching together strands of normality from the world and people around you into some LESS ominous MORE normal facsimile of a human being. But if you have to don a mask to make friends, are you really even MAKING FRIENDS? Aren't you making people believe you are someone else?

Wow, who is that guy will all those friends?? Impressive right?

Again, Perspective.

Humans AND whatever i am share some common features. One is that perhaps we are bad at understanding what we want, and also bad at separating what we want, from what we really need.

Stoics, absurdists, nihilists, Buddhists, they are all searching for meaning with different language, but the same goal. One is why worry, everyone is fucked. Another is why worry? it won't change the outcome. Another still is why worry, we are on a fucking rock in space and everything is arbitrary and made up, lawl, and one more is why worry, how will that help you to help others and return to the great rushing stream that is everything?

There are choices,

they are vast,

The track you think you are on is in your imagination and you can get off of it,

whenever you want.

Waging War

 What a profoundly useless thing i am.

Bouncing back and forth from one distraction to the next, pausing only to attend to the attention demands of my cats as they randomly jump on me, swat at my leg, or trill directly at me from whatever frozen throne i currently occupy.

I try to fight time, you see. By splaying open my veins and letting it drink my blood, just enough for me to pass out and wake up somewhere else.

Sadly, again and again i must repeat this until there is no more blood to give, and i no longer wake up.

No one beats time, you see, but you can be quite clever about how you choose to war wage. I had chosen to lose, intentionally, to rush time to consume me, to win by being no more, as soon as possible.

Time is happy to oblige, but like the eternal villain it is, it is in no rush.

It knows it will win, like it always does, and will do me no favors. It will not indulge my gamesmanship.

I cannot find value in the time, in what i could produce or what i could do with it, it is just a barrier between me and the exit. While i wish i could turn passion into progress, i am magnetized to the ground and there will be no heroes ending for one so utterly tied down to the tracks of quantum causality. You see every THING, is tied to something ELSE, and those THINGS are threads, that stretch into infinite futures. Eventually you reach a point where they all coalesce, where they are pulling you in a definite direction, at a predefined rate. At that point, you are a victim of choices past, the things you did, and that were done to you, have put you inexorably on to this path, and struggle though you might, you will not extract yourself from this. You will have your eyes pried open and held wide as you watch the things you know must happen, unfold.

And no one,

will ever

believe you.

Thunk- an ode to not knowing how to stop

 When every thought has been thunk

and every ship has been sunk

I trace the lines on my face like a treasure map

Wondering where all the gold has gone.

-I can't help thinking everything has been thought, every fertile ground tilled, every hidden spring uncovered, tapped and bled dry.

For some reason that reduces things for me, it makes the thoughts less valuable, thinking they have already been expunged from the sacred halls of disorganized minds, danced elegantly upon parchment and spit hastily upon tape and the binary of the impermeant.

I want to be myself. I want to be One of One. I want to be irreducible even as i seek to package and label the ENTIRE UNIVERSE for my own gentle amusement.

For a mere snicker, for a half sigh preceding a laugh abandoned before completion.

I want to be THE one. For you. For me. For everyone. I want them to speak my name in hushed tones or in tones of revelry.

I do not want to be worshiped, merely KNOWN.

"That's the guy," they'll say.

"That's the guy that lives. The guy that is real. The subterranean creature that discovered a rare unknowable beautiful thing and who shares it with the world with wild unrestrainable abandon. He's is what we should all aim to be. For even in failing, we are wondrous and joyful. We are graceful like the licks of fires swaying as the tips of the flame disappear and falter. We are hope, and in trying we express our hopefulness dashing ourselves on the rocks of probability. As there is no fate so cruel as to be alive and resigned to never try again. "

This hurts.

For some people this is some kind of intellectual exercise. Some self aggrandizing flailing about calculated, measured, sanded by machines to a perfect roundness, cut with lasers into perfect edges and lines, no.. not for me.

For me to say something is for me to cry, and feel the channels cut into my face by the swollen tears and rolls down the craggy surface from my sunken eyes. Age has taken my smoothness, but it has not taken the sharpness from my blade. I must draw it to make ink, and mix it with these tears to swing madly at huge blank vistas.

They are worth nothing when i start,

and they will be worth nothing when i finish.

I'm not deluded, see i know the awful truth.

It's that nothing is awful. It's that the world doesn't owe you. It's that nothing is perfect.

It's worse AND better than that.

It's nothing. The world nothings you. As it nothings me. We are creatures designed to seek external cues to guide our internal light that are the only ones capable of creating meaning for ourselves.

The world doesn't hate you. The world doesn't love you.

The world doesn't even know you were born. Or that you died.

Or that i died, i came back, and that i am dying again.

Splattering myself on the fine lines of countless notebooks was never going to draw the EYE of the world, but if it made ME feel better,

if bleeding all that blood into ink made me feel stronger, smarter, more in control, less troubled,

than the price paid was worth it,

and i will pay that price again.