this is a collection of off-topic material.
gathering the midnight wool
A day from 2008:
Frequently Asked Questions (that I made up)
I wanted to put together a list of Frequently Asked Questions. The problem is that no one really asks me anything. Mostly when people ask things, it’s the same question, usually from depressives who want to know how I survived depression. Since the honest answer is “therapy”, it makes for an abrupt and disappointing back and forth.
That just leaves me with questions I either get infrequently or not at all. Mostly the latter. Anyway, here’s my mostly-fraudulent version of a FAQ post.
the lightest of alkali metals
“All the world’s a stage.”- let’s use that. For the sake of convenience (and the fun kind of negligent over-simplification), let’s call human reality The Stage.
So:
digging up the willow roots
This is a sleep history.
10 Autism Interviews: a collection
I recently guest-posted two interviews at Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism. I thought I would share links to those here, along with every interview/conversation I’ve been part of over the years. The topics all converge around autism, but I’m grateful for the huge variety of insights and perspectives these discussions made possible.
sketching aether
I.
Every now and then, when I was very young, I could sense this shape coalescing within my thoughts. I would find myself…not so much visualizing it, as feeling it.
Autism in Brazil: a conversation with Alexia Klein
Alexia Klein is a Brazilian translator and author of the blog O autismo em traducao (“autism in translation”). After her son was diagnosed with autism, she decided to use her translating skills to share English-language posts about the spectrum and neurodiversity with readers in her home country (where Portuguese is the official language).
She recently reached out to discuss translating posts from Invisible Strings, so I took the opportunity to learn more about her efforts. We spoke via email about her blog, her translating work and the current state of autism awareness in Brazil.
A Spectrum Christmas
(re-posting from a few years ago, for the holidays.)
Oubliette
I.
When I was in elementary school, my social struggles developed into an intense fear of other people.
I sought out friendships, connections, but lacked the basic communication skills necessary to traverse the social world. I didn’t know that I lacked body language; I didn’t know that my mind was unable to catch the nuances of non-verbal communication. Needing people, interested in others, I repeatedly jumped into interactions, only to stumble for reasons I had no way of understanding.