eavesdropping notes, saturday, november third, 2007, noon.
costermonger
March 25, 2017
social as device
April, 2008.
I enter a bar, order a drink, sit at a corner table facing the wall. It’s more convenient to sit at the bar, but there are people there. Humans. I’m more of a wall-facing sort in places like this.
gathering the midnight wool
A day from 2008:
the indefinite, luminous curve
I don’t know. I suppose there is a theme here. Possibly.
I.
I’ve never been able to remember what I look like. I can look in a mirror and think, Oh yeah, that’s me. For a split second, it’s always kind of a shock to see my reflection, but then I understand, it’s just me.
Autism Discussion: Eye Contact, IEPs and Compliance
I’ve written a lot about my efforts to learn body language, and the fact that doing so often left me feeling more disconnected from people, not less. The problem is that having to consciously learn non-verbal communication can make a social interaction feel more like an obstacle course than a genuine exchange.
a night out (stories from the autism spectrum)
Being at a social event…it never feels like you’ve simply entered a space with other people. It feels more like waking up in another person’s dream…like being thrown there. You find yourself in an unfamiliar space. The context and reality are inscrutable, cryptic. Nothing works the way it’s supposed to. At a basic level, you don’t know how to be.
Rudolph: spectrum hero? Or part of the problem? (stories from the autism spectrum)
Re-posting from last year:
Growing up as a socially awkward spectrum kid, I always felt a kind of kinship with Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. But there’s a problem. His story ends in a way that strikes me as being counter-productive. I think it sends a pretty confusing message to kids.
Travel notes fom Spain
Getting lost in Seville is like getting lost in a dream. Especially at night.
Drifting by people and stone, steeped in the verbal footfall of echoing voices. Restaurants folded into impossibly small spaces, yet expelling, into the passageways, a rich bundle of sensory dregs: meal-scents, more voices and the ceaseless clinking of glass.
M vs. The Teeth Whiteners
Fall, 2011
I go to this seasonal/holiday event at a small auditorium. It ends and the crowd begins to disperse.
I see this couple there, vague acquaintances, and I cringe. I have to flee the scene. I’m desperate to avoid a conversation with them.