You'll blame me for this when it's over

I'm slipping through again. I don't know why, but I think it's my fault. Something I did, or something I'm doing.

A few days ago I smelled through time. I smelled something that it was completely impossible for me to be smelling at the time. I have an incredibly acute sense of smell, good enough to recognize places or people without much effort, and I know what I smelled. I can't say what. On second thought, smelling through time sounds silly. I might end up believing it anyway due to my delusional thought process, but I may just be trying to bridge a psychological feedback loop with my sensory input. Rewiring my brain to make me happy at the cost of my awareness of the world around me. And it worked, for a bit. For a moment I didn't need anything or anyone.

I've known that music enables psychological state-changes for awhile, for me anyway in many senses that I couldn't explain if I wanted to for want of language. I've been feeling a new one recently, I'm wishing there was a word that meant spiral, echo, resignation, and an emotion that there isn't a word for (asprisuum/ua comes to mind), to use to describe it. I like it, it's peaceful. It's something I would be happy to die feeling.

I don't want to kill myself, I wouldn't call myself depressed, and I actually quite enjoy living most of the time, simply because it's interesting. But I think I'd like to try dying.

I am still split in many ways, even if I have control for the most part. My hands still twitch from time to time. The problem is, I'm not sure if it's me doing it. I'm losing track of myself within this world: my thoughts, my actions, my presence. Anyway, the splitting and re-mending creates infinite contradictions in my being. The souls are trying to escape, both of them now, and they're going off in two different directions when they reach and desire.

My sense of touch is getting better/worse. I like it, but it may pose a problem.

I can feel how close I am, but I can also sense how much further I must go. I hope my goal is, in fact, achievable.

Erase

Fuck everything. Fuck words.

I know I just posted, and that I don't mind switching subjects in the middle of sentences, but this hit me like a truck hits a dachshund.

Now that that's out of the way... I'm so sick of hearing words that think they describe people. White, black, straight, gay, lesbian, bi, trans, rich, poor, married, single, autistic, and above all, normal. All of it should go rot. Every word in every page of every DSM ever printed ought to be burned through. And as much as I hate it when people toss labels like that onto me, cramming me into a box I don't belong in because they can identify single traits about me, I hate it much more when people describe themselves that way. I start from nothing and judge based on interaction. When you tell me you're straight or ADHD or whatever you happen to be the first time, I accept that you're just letting me know because you think it's helpful, and sometimes it is. But when you glorify it, or feel the need to reiterate it, or think you are defined by some individual, often unquantifiable trait you possess, I get irritated.

First off, no one needs to throw it in anyone else's face that they're different. Everyone's fucking different. If you can find me two perfectly identical people, in appearance, action, and neurological function, I swear to you, I will eat my computer, prepared however you please. Trying to show me that you're special is like trying to show me that you can speak. I don't mean to dismiss the beauty of each individual, but it's something I'm perfectly capable of discovering for myself. And frankly, it's less annoying and more fun to do so.

Second, I'm not going to treat you any different because your parents beat you or you're ADHD or you survived cancer. I hate being expected to treat people differently. Sure, there are people who I treat differently, but because of my experiences with them or their current state, and no other reason. Everyone is human.

Let me clarify; if, for example, you're uncomfortable around needles, when I do insulin I'll leave or warn you, but it's not because you're uncomfortable around needles, it's because you either asked me to do so or because you reacted badly when I did not. I'm not going to go around intentionally disrespecting or hurting other people. But I will learn for myself who you are and how to interact with you. Neither you, nor anyone else will tell me how.

You are not your diagnosis. You are not the color of your skin. You are not your grades. You are not your social standing. You are not your favorite sports team. You are not your hopes or fears. You are not the clothes you wear, the food you eat, or the car you drive. You are not your favorite TV show, your hi-tech computer, or the bands you listen to. You are not your friends, your degree, or your past.

You are a perfectly crafted, unique human being. I'm sick of people cheating themselves out of that. I want to experience you, not have you handed to me.

End rant. I honestly have no idea where that came from.

The stars suspend over the heavens, they don't seem so high.

I always forget whenever I start a new journal or blog or whatever. It doesn't matter, they're just meant to be extensions of my mind and memory, so as long as I can find them, it doesn't matter how many or where they are. Scattered fragments of my life and memory are all over the internet.

I'm coming back to this one though. I don't do that much. I don't know why I'm doing it now. I used to be a thinker, now I'm much more of a doer. I do because my actions make me real to the outside, whereas my thoughts make me real to me. I already know who I am.

The structure of reality is something that comes up so much in conversation for some reason. What constitutes real and the like. Truth is, each person is capable of total autonomous control of their reality, but few ever realize this, and those who do would be dismissed as insane, much unknown to themselves. Neurologically speaking, I don't see why it isn't theoretically possible to rewire one's brain to dismiss sensory information and construct a new system to feed the part of the brain that receives sensory input. I think it'd be more trouble than it's worth, anyway, and it cuts out any room for external interaction, so that your delusion continues until your moment of death (likely from starvation or dehydration).

But this idea is touched by people every day. In another part of my "external memory," I once commented that I maintain the delusion that tomorrow will always be better than today, because it makes my life happier to think so, and that I "manipulate" my perception and interpretation of reality to benefit myself or encourage particular actions or feelings.

Found it. This is what I wrote however long ago.

"People try to base their lives around order and certainty. They make plans, keep schedules, plot out their futures, all that junk. I've watched people around me do this for years now, and I've always thought about why. For a long time, I was satisfied that it was to provide some measure of certainty in their actions and lives, just a method of reducing the chaos in the system. Then I started to suspect that it was something more subliminal, that it was not the actual act of reducing chaos in the system of their lives, but the illusion that chaos was being suppressed, whether true or not. You see young girls picking out the dresses they want to wear to their weddings, then some older girls even start mock-planning weddings before so much as even having a boyfriend. Some claim that it's just an exercise of imagination, some are dead serious about every aspect, but all seek the same goal.

What I've come to is this: they need that assurance that there is order in a chaotic system, the pseudofalse truth that there is a controllable future ahead of them. It's a thing at the core that reduces to inherent meaning. There can be no inherent meaning in chaos, for chaos itself denies meaning; the very act of introducing threads of meaning tying together the advancing tide of chaos destroys the thing that makes it chaos. So they hide it behind plans and wedding dresses, just lock it away so they don't have to stare into it as they let it overtake them. When the chaos takes their dreams away, when these truths they keep seeing are destroyed over and over again as time marches on, people lose their hope and idealism, become overtly delusional, or lock themselves away behind books and televisions and computers. It's an act of self-preservation through the preservation of the meaning attached to an existential world.

Is a delusion a delusion if you know it's a delusion?

I maintain one true, consistent delusion: I believe, under any circumstances, that tomorrow, things will be better. Not that things are bad today, no, things are perfectly lovely today. I just believe that they will be better tomorrow, regardless of anything. I recognize that it's just a delusion I place upon myself to fight the fear of the unknown that tomorrow embodies, and to keep a positive outlook on life overall. You see, as I said before, you can't predict the future. I only plan loosely when others need me to be a part of a plan. I don't claim to know any more about what tomorrow will hold than anyone else; if anything, I claim to know less. I rationalized that if the future is unpredictable, than worrying or stressing over it can only worsen things right now, and maintaining positive feelings about tomorrow improves my state of being today. So I have this delusion set up, that everything will work out, and tomorrow will be better, and that there's no need to worry. I have created a delusion out of sheer rationality.

So why does it still work?

I do this in little bits on smaller scales all the time. I set up delusions and take them down all the time. I pose irrational beliefs on what the people around me are thinking or the outcome of a particular action all the time. Set 'em up, knock 'em down, just to make myself feel better, and I recognize it. In recognition, shouldn't the delusion shatter? Have I mastered the Orwellian concept of doublethink?"

Okay... what was I saying? Oh yeah, reality. Why do I blog like I'm talking out lout to myself?

Fundamental core: There is no determinable objective reality. Nothing exists outside of your head. I run with this because the mind exists independently of the world, or even the body, around it. I can't prove that there is no such thing as objective reality, but I can show that it's irrelevant what that reality is. Colorblindness, hallucination, any crippled or increased sensory ability in humans or animals destroys congruence between realities, hell, two people being in different places destroys that congruence. The old existential argument about automata can even be introduced, where you have no proof that anyone else can think for themselves because you can't perceive it. For all intents and purposes, the world may exists solely for you and solely in your head. This is personal reality, the sum of everything you are given and everything you grant yourself: thoughts, etc.

We then have perceptible reality. This is your input. Anything you can detect with your senses falls into this category. This is the world around you as far as you can perceive it. This is a sub-level of personal reality, and it is unique to you, since no one can be in your place and receive that same information. And, in theory, it can be obliterated, leaving only your mind.

The outermost level is interactive reality. This is the effect you have on the world around you. You need to draw some basic logical conclusions to have this function, like that when something falls off a table when you make contact with it, it is a result of your interaction with it. Or that other people can perceive you when they look your way or talk to you. This is the evidence that you aren't completely independent of the world around you (although theoretically it can be erased, just like perceptible reality). Specifically, it is any reaction to your existence that you can perceive.

Subjectivity Demands It has something to do with all that. I forget how. What a shame, I never wrote it down.

I wish The Fire Restart had never broken up. They barely released anything, but it's probably some of my favorite music of all time, and it's consistently been at the top of my list of favorites since I heard them. Something in their music calls to the most desperate pieces of what I feel is human, the need to be a part of destruction and creation, for the desire to be everything supernatural at once, to scream and let your soul escape your body. It's fundamentally human to want to be more than human, or at least more than you are.

How do you "want?"

Feel special, world

Today I'm going to return to a subject I can't help but return to: Autism.

I guess I should start by saying that I was diagnosed with Asperger's Disorder in my early teens. It's not terribly obvious to people who don't know what to look for in my behavior or speech, most people don't even notice. What it really boils down to, to me, is this: my brain doesn't work along the same lines and processes as the typical human brain, but I can make it work well enough to function well in a world of neurotypical people.

Today's story is meant to illustrate the importance of understanding the difference in brain function between a neurotypical and someone with autism/Asperger's, and on a larger scale, the connections that can be made between people of similar thought patterns. It's actually something that happened a while ago, it just came up in conversation recently.

I have a friend who works/worked (honestly not sure if this is still ongoing) with mentally disabled kids. The people at the place he worked had been having trouble making any sort of connection with one little boy in particular; he wouldn't talk to anyone. So, this friend brought it up to me one day, and I got curious about him and started asking about him: his habits, what he liked and didn't like, etc. He mentioned a few things, and one of them was that the kid loved to touch things. Not just touch them, but to feel them, to take in their texture. Almost immediately I had a thought, so I told it to him:

Bring him a piano.

A few days later I got a message back saying that it had worked, that the kid loved the piano. I'm not sure if he was actually learning how to play, but that's irrelevant both to him and to me. I knew, somehow, from a personal understanding the way the autistic brain works, that he would like it. Not even necessarily learning music, but the piano itself: the way it sounds, feels, the way the keys work, the way you can combine different keys to make new sounds, all of it.

Pause for a second and understand the magnitude of what I just said. I've never met this kid. I live fifty miles from him. And in some senses, I know him better than the people who spend almost every day with him.

I doubt I could do that with just any autistic kid. When my friend described him, I almost immediately thought of myself. All the little things about him were close to, if not just like the little quirks I have and had when I was younger. I knew what he'd like because I was dealing with me. I knew, from personal experience, how his brain worked, on a level that few other people can even approach.

I think it should be a requirement, maybe to graduate high school or college, or to live in any given community, or whatever, to help out in teaching a kindergarten class. Maybe once a month, maybe just once. Every class has problem students, the kind that the average teacher just can't connect with, no matter how hard they try. But there is probably someone, somewhere, that thinks along close enough lines to that kid to make a connection between what would help them and what would help the kid. This would just speed up figuring that out, and help establish an effective learning and teaching process, and more importantly, a connection between the kid and the rest of the world, a link bridging the gap between them and everyone else.

Because no one wants to feel alone.

Raised on ideals

I've been having this recurring idea lately. It's about movies. Movies and television and books. Anything with a story in it.

People--not everyone, but many people--have stories they like to "lose themselves" in, to just read or watch and analyze or project themselves onto the characters or what have you. Sometimes fictional, sometimes non-fictional, sometimes it's a favorite book series, or a movie you could watch on loop until the end of time. You love to watch the characters move through their lives, watch them change their worlds and their worlds change them. And then at some point, you turn off the TV or slide your plastic-encased, tasseled bookmark back between the pages and go on with your life.

It's a release. It's a break from reality. Some people just like to immerse themselves in a world not their own. Some want a story and a world where everything important is given to you, and every dilemma is always resolved. And of course, there are plenty of us who want to "become" the characters in their story. The problem comes in when you need to break from your break. Reality intrudes, and your world goes from running off a script and captivating you at every turn to... well, whatever you were getting away from in the first place.

I'm a part of a generation raised on Disney films, adventures, happy endings and leaving the real world behind. We're fed story after story where every moment is suspenseful,the couple always ends up together, the hero dies to save the world, and the villain dies alone. We're fantasy junkies. As we get older our fantasy worlds grow deeper and more complex, but it all runs off a preordained script, with all but the most interesting parts cut out. Everything is surreal, and everything is captivating. Comparatively, reality is a letdown. And once we finish growing up, after decades of being taunted by ideal worlds, we're thrust into our own boring, flawed, and plotless one.

So what happens when people stop coming back from the fantasy?

Just because it happens all around you doesn't make it real. What happens when we reach a critical mass of "story exposure" and start altering or rejecting the reality before our eyes, just to make it fit? The people who lose themselves in their stories find themselves so desperate to cling to them that their own psyches start altering the world they see. The people who look for resolution and meaning in their stories break down in a world where resolution is never a promise and meaning isn't handed to you. And somewhere on the edges of both are the people broken by the sheer weight of the contrast between reality and fantasy, who would kill themselves either to end the torture of their dreams always out of reach or to escape a world that they know will never satisfy them.

I talked to a friend briefly about this at lunch a few days ago. She thought it was at least plausible.

I started writing a short story once based on this exchange, between the two main characters on an apartment rooftop:

"Someday, I want to jump."

"Why would you do a stupid thing like that?"

"Because I know that someday I'll feel so wonderful, so beautiful... so fantastic that I know if I try, I'll be able to fly."

"Well, what happens if you can't?"

"Then I'm not sure I'd want to survive the fall."

Something like that anyway. It's an illustration of this idea. What our hearts seek is not always something the world can give us, and so we try our best either to live without it or to create it, even if no one else can know. The story was meant to illustrate subjectivity and to disillusion people about the idea of reality. Part of the way through the story, she does jump, for just that reason, and the fall kills her. But through the course of the story, the other character understands her point of view more and more, and through knowing her and his interactions with two other characters, he reaches the same point she did, and the story ends with his first step off the same edge. It's left for the reader to determine what happened next, and what it means, illustrating subjective reality even outside of the story itself.

I should finish it. I guess it's kind of ironic that I study physics, a subject that falls apart without an objective reality, or a frame underlying all that we see.

I'm writing this so that I can remember it. I don't know when I will or won't remember something very well, I've forgotten things seconds after writing them or doing them. My memory is... strange.

Well, goodbye. Field Theory isn't exactly going to do itself.