"Who Are You, Anyway?"

I've been trying to post this throughout the week; unfortunately, my connection is finally, rather than just being a pain, moving into the "semi-usable" category, and I haven't been vigilant enough to make it work right up to now.

Anyway, I said I would post my written work for the Artistic Spectrum event. Here it is, titled "Who Are You, Anyway?"

Quick Note: This actually is the first draft, rather than the final product I ended up reading. But it changed very little, so you're essentially reading the same thing with typos.
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They call me autistic. Perhaps you’re said to be normal, or it’s quite possible you’re called autistic, too, or similarly Asperger’s. Perhaps you’re titled ADHD, maybe dyslexic. Who knows? There are many words, often considered with little personal meaning.

Perhaps I shouldn’t care. After all, in the wrong company, they mean nothing beyond the surface, no more or less trivial than the food you eat and the car you drive. Poorly defined terms themselves, sometimes it seems that they just create more confusion, rather than help clarify as such terms should do. After all, isn’t that what words do?

Yet, I do care. For those the terms themselves a far cry from crystal clear, they provide another way to speak about ourselves, a different way to represent internal experience in a way. Indeed, it’s the very reason for language, else there would nothing that would be worth talking about. And yet that clearly isn’t true, is it? It seems obvious enough, just by the nature of questions themselves. Maybe they’re of minute, practical nature, perhaps questions of life experience, and several others far and in between. My favorite ones are the ones that truly ask about those they question because, despite my oft-reclusive behavior, I’d like to know you.

It’s a Saturday night, and I’ve had something of a long day. Tired, this time much a personal blessing, I go not to my bed, in a all of its perfect color and location, but to the upstairs couch, where I squish in between the cushions. As the brown and black fabric became more tightly pressed to my skin, I feel my body relax, allow many thoughts to slip away into the night.

What would you have felt?
A warm, friendly light floods a desert canyon, reflecting off of yellow sand in its brightness. I skirt and jump around many rocks and bushes, as if they didn’t exist, stepping quickly back onto the dirt road to avoid a boulder. Suddenly, a coming monstrosity shoots into my head, raking its claws down my skull. Only though sheet force of will do I step off the road, in time to avoid getting hit by a tractor.

What might have you heard instead?
I look at the vast array of images, exhibited individually, proud, bordering on pompous, on its own. Each image seems to be collected of various colors, shapes, and scenes, none of which are unique on their own; quite the opposite, they’re things that you would regularly see walking down the street. I fail to honestly differentiate it from the world I generally live in, aside from their placement.

Did you see something else?
It’s snowing outside, and I quietly leave my tiny room, wearing a black jacket and a pair of boots. The snowflakes are indeed pretty, but it is the memories they elicit that is truly wondrous, taking me back to when I was seven, when I enjoyed the sensation of the snowstorm without a jacket, to when I was ten, entrenched in a particularly intense snowball fight, and then to when I was thirteen, moving way too fast down a sledding hill and loving it. All of this happens in three seconds and yet so many more, all at the same time.

Where do the snowflakes take you?

I indulge in yet another Pad Thai noodle. The taste is intimately scarlet; that is, it carries a sense of mental discovery, excitement, and wonder. It isn’t the first such noodle I have, nor will it be the last, but the feeling stays strong. I smile, and prepare to eat another.

What, for you, is tied to such feelings?

Yawning, I reach over for my root beer, and look back at my computer screen. I’m writing yet again. This time I’m writing satire, basically in regards to some of the notions of intelligence and marginalization of others based on some of those definitions. I’m a little worried, though, as is usual when I’m writing satire. It’s more subtle than most satires, in such a way that the actual meaning of the piece might be missed, I think. And it’s quite possible that, considering where I am, that its actual meaning may not be well received, though perhaps this makes it all the better. Swallowing all of my objections, I write the piece anyway, just because I love the idea, and I think it is an important topic.

What might have you been thinking?

Alas, I will never know exactly what you are thinking. I can approximate using language, but those actual experiences will never be known to me, nor mine to you, even if I actually develop my writing skills more significantly. Perhaps this is a good thing, in the end; after all, coming fully to terms with contrary and differing senses of the same thing might be a maddening experience indeed. But I can’t help but wish that maybe I would really, truly, see through the eyes of another.

Since that isn’t likely to happen, it is still worthy, in my mind, to still ask questions, to observe, in order to try and understand that better. Language, though highly imperfect, and all the more so when in my hands, is essentially designed to help with that, to bring together two thoughts into the same realm. Perhaps I am being optimistic (I must be biased in this regard, having put so many hours into learning the stuff), but I think it helps a lot in remembering something of someone else.

So, who are you, anyway?