Memorial Day

A terrible bout of tears at 5 AM on Memorial Day when I should have been asleep.

The realization that I am "on the spectrum," so to speak, brings with it a lot answers to the questions of what a lot of "normal" people would -- and have -- judged as being an unhealthy relationship with my mother and an unhealthy reluctance to leave home.

But there was nothing Freudian about it. I had Asperger's. No one in the family had a name for it, but we all knew that something was wrong.

Mom was my Protector. Home was my Safe Haven in a world that I could not begin to understand.

How difficult, then, to suddenly have the roles reversed when, six years ago now, she had to have her right leg amputated due to diabetes, and I was suddenly thrust into the position of being the Support Person -- physically, emotionally, financially. . .

Coping, coping, coping, my life and hers became a landscape of dealing with things that were a horror to us both.

And still how much more difficult to lose her so suddenly, without significant (to me, anyway, although a neurotypical might have picked up on the signs more easily than I did) warning -- and then to be assaulted by my sister, entering My World and stealing from the estate, turning things upside down; by the legalities of death; by the auctioneers coming into my home and tearing it apart into a horror, a ruin, literally, for me, ripping my Reality into shreds, turning a rich world of organized clutter into a Depression-era state of Chaos --

A year ago today, we laid her remains to rest around the  old house. This was made necessary because Memorial Day was the only day that I could  get off from work. I was drunk, of course, as I am drunk now typing this at 5:30 AM, for the same reasons.

I gave everybody a chance to say what they wanted to say, and then I said my piece, and then in deference to my hypocrite sister, who wanted Jesus present in some form, I recited the following verse, the only verse that I know by heart, because it's from a favorite movie of mine, and as an Aspie I am good at remembering these things, even drunk --

My name is known: God and King

I am most in majesty in whom no beginning may be, and no end.

Highest in potency I am, and have been ever!

I have made the stars and the planets in their courses to go

I have made a moon for the night

And a sun to light the day also..

I have made Earth, where trees and grasses spring.

Beasts and fowl both great and small

All thrive, and have my liking

I have made All of Nothing for Man's sustenation.

And of this Pleasant Garden that I have Mostly Goodly Planted

I will make HIM gardener for his OWN re-creation.

There was a pause. Then my father said something along the lines of Amen -- and, I do not exaggerate, everyone RAN for their cars. ZOOM! There was dust in the air in the wake of their tires tearing up the driveway.

I was left alone.

I thought, Why did they all run away and leave me?

Then I went inside and poured another drink.

-- Freder.

Too many brains at the Breakfast Table

I'll be back with a real post before the holiday weekend is out, but for now I just wanted to type this interesting passage verbatim from the back end of Nick Dubin's book about Aspergers and anxiety. It comes as part of a conversation about aligning the head and the heart. Take it away, Nick:

In recent years, there has even been evidence to suggest parts of the body, other than the brain, register emotions the same way that the brain does. Dr. Paul Pearsall (1999), a respected psycho-neuroimmunologist, suggested the heart also thinks and feels like the brain. This seems like a radical notion, but he showed many of the same neural cells that are found in the brain are also found in the heart. In her 1997 book, A Change of Heart, Claire Sylvia described what happened to her after her heart transplant. According to Sylvia, after she received her new heart, she experienced a major change in her personality. Further, new memories and sensations surfaced out of nowhere. She ultimately sought out the family of the young man who had donated his heart. To her utter surprise, she found out she had seemingly acquired some of his personality traits. Even more surprising, her story is not unique. Apparently, reports of this phenomenon of a personality transfer are not uncommon among heart transplant recipients (Pearsall 1999).

Oh, great! Bad enough that all men have two brains, usually with conflicting desires -- now there's a third with a voice of its own! No wonder I always feel conflicted!

Later.

-- Freder.

Of Weeping Angels and Weeping Chefs

My two current televisual obsessions are Doctor Who (no surprise there) and Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (perhaps a little bit of a surprise?).

Of the latter, I go into it without delusions. I know what's going on. Every single frame of it is nothing more than a commercial for Gordon Ramsay, and I'm sure he wouldn't have it any other way. But its ostensible conceit -- the producers find restaurants that are on the verge of collapse, then bring Ramsay in to fix them over the course of four days, a process which usually involves fixing the owners as well -- is oddly compelling to me.

The foul-mouthed Ramsay generally finds disgusting food and even more disgusting kitchen conditions, on a level that make one think twice about setting foot in any restaurant, ever again. He also generally finds owners who are either apathetic, or deluded, or have lost their way in the daily grind. One, I would swear, was an undiagnosed Asperger's patient. He kept wandering around with a "deer in the headlights" look on his face, completely lost, while his father-in-law constantly berated and insulted him -- the opposite of a productive atmosphere. The show pays to have their kitchens cleaned and refurbished and the dining rooms redesigned, while Ramsay works over the menu, the chefs, and everyone else who gets in his way.

Except that sometimes he's been really nice. He seems to be a good judge of character, and a lot of what he does here is a combination of pyschotherapy and motivation. Sometimes the owners just need a good swift kick in the pants or a slap across the face, and he does not shy from delivering that. Other times they need support and a renewed sense of self-worth, and he delivers that as well, insofar as anyone could within the timespan allotted.

It doesn't always "take." Ramsay returned to a British Pub one year latter to find that the owner had reverted to his old ways and was alienating the staff and customers.

Regardless of the results, I can't seem to stop watching the damn thing. I keep seeing myself in the owners, and wishing that someone like Ramsay would come along and give me some motivation -- or a kick in the pants, or a sense of self-worth.

As for the Doctor, BBC America has been stripping the Russell T. Davies seasons at 5:00 PM weeknights, and I usually get home in time to catch most of it. It's a real mixed bag. Davies deserves kudos for getting the show back on the air, getting it a real budget, changing the format, transforming the show from a half-hour soap to a real prime-time contender. But also for hiring Stephen Moffat to write one story a season.

I don't like the Davies years well enough to spend $50 and up for the DVDs, but I have started going to Amazon, picking out the episodes that Moffat wrote and watching them full-screen on the new computer for just 98 cents a pop.

I've watched two of them now, and have been really blown away both times, actually applauding after last night's episode, "Blink." I'm sorry, but Davies isn't half the writer that Moffat is. I haven't seen writing this good on TV since the early days of Northern Exposure.

"The Girl in the Fireplace" is a virtual template for themes that Moffat would explore in greater depth when he took over the show. While checking out a seemingly abandoned spaceship, the doctor finds an 18th century fireplace that is actually a gateway into a little girl's bedroom. That little girl is being terrorized by clockwork automatons who scan her brain, declare that she's "not ready" and then leave. The automatons (and, now, The Doctor) reappear at various times throughout her life, and as the young girl grows to womanhood she finds herself falling in love with the curious stranger who reappears every time to protect her from the automatons. (and who never gets any older). As it turns out, she grows up to become France's Madame de Pompadour, and the automations want to use her adult brain to repair their ship. They've been building time portals into her life, and at last they've caught her at the ripe age. But if the Doctor closes down the time portals, he'll be stranded forever in 18th century France.

You see, it takes a long time to describe one of Moffat's plots.

If "The Girl in the Fireplace" is a thematic Statement of Principles, then "Blink" could well be the Pilot for Mofat's tenure on the show. It's remarkable in that the Doctor hardly appears at all. We're in the present day, while he's trapped in 1969 by  new series villains The Weeping Angels. This time, it's up to a girl from the present day who's never met the Doctor to get information to him in 1969 so that he -- get this -- can record a video that will one day be inserted as an easter egg onto 17 DVD titles; a video that will get information to the girl in the present day that will allow her to defeat The Weeping Angels and free up the Doctor's TARDIS.

Are you following this? Trust me, it doesn't even begin to cover all the wrinkles that Moffat gets into this story.

It is brilliant and clever and it takes the show to a whole new level. The original Doctor Who was not for everyone. It was cheaply made and eccentric and sometimes long-winded. I loved it without reserve in nearly all its incarnations, but could completely understand why lots of folks walked away.

This is different. If you've never seen the show, or if you've seen it in the old days and had enough, get your hands on a copy of "Blink" and start there. It's been many moons since I've seen something that made me want to grab people by the shoulders, push them into a chair and say, "Just sit down and Watch."

Blah-blah-blah, burble-burble-burble. Had enough? I don't blame you.

-- Freder.

Why So Serious?

On Moonlight Bay is just the sort of picture that my mother had in mind when she complained about modern movies back in the 'seventies and eighties as being so serious and self-important.

Back when she and her family went to the theater most every Friday night, the movies weren't about proving anything or making a point or even about exposing the dark underbelly of any damn thing. They were all about entertainment, and having a light, refreshing, relaxing time, and enjoying yourself for a couple of hours. They were about songs and color and Romance. You didn't go to the pictures to have the weight of the world thrown down on your shoulders -- you went to have it taken off.

On Moonlight Bay (which just aired on TCM) does all of that good stuff. As movies go, it's strawberry sherbet.

I must say that I love the way that directors and photographers used color in those days. On Moonlight Bay is a good deal more pastel than other Technicolor movies of its day, but it's still vibrant as an Easter basket full of eggs. You knew you wren't looking at black & white, and you knew you weren't looking at Reality.

I guess that's what my mother really meant by those comments, all those years ago. The movies she enjoyed weren't about Reality at all. They were about wafting you away on a dream: of a Reality that was close enough to touch, but so very far away.

For my part, it's hard not to like the Homey Charm of this picture (it was Beyond Nostalgic even in its day, and today it presents a completely Alien World through its shocking pink rose-colored glasses), and there are some real laugh-out-loud moments, and the songs are great fun, and the Art Direction really settles you back in your easy chair, especially if you have Quats to sit on you.

And that Doris Day! Va-va-va-VOOM! How long has it been since I saw a Doris Day movie?

Let's just say that my hormones had not yet kicked in, and at this point in my history they have not yet completely died off.

I liked Doris better as the Tomboy than as the lovesick gal (don't think anyone else could look better in an oversized sweatshirt and jeans), but I must admit that if a lovesick gal like that threw herself at me I'd roll over on my back and wag my tail (a line I steal now and then from Raymond Chandler).

After the picture, Robert Osborne's re-telling of a Vincente Minelli remark ("I knew Doris Day before she was a Virgin") really pointed up the dichotomy in her image, and probably in her personal life. I'm reminded of a song that I think was cut from the egregiously bad movie version of Grease:

Watch it, hey, I'm Doris Day

I was not brought up that way

Won't come across

Even Rock Hudson lost

His heart to Doris Day!

Anyway. It's been a few weeks since I curled up with an old movie, and this was a good one to curl up with. It's deceptive: because a lot of skill and craft was thrown at it from every which direction, but it wants nothing more than to please.

-- Freder.

Pick Your Metaphor

The four boys from Liverpool in their Sea of Holes.

Yes, I know that I typed just yesterday that my posts would be getting fewer and farther between and here I am today back again "just like a bloody great opera star always making her Positively Final Appearance" (I think that's from Fawlty Towers, but I could be wrong), but this is actually pretty big.

Call it a lightbulb or a road map. Call it anything you like.

I was reading last night about cognitive behavioural therapy as a means of helping control anxiety, and although I could understand the principle all right, it wasn't really connecting with me on an emotional level (which is how I need things to connect if I'm ever really going to fully comprehend them) until the author, who is a diagnosed Aspie, came out with a metaphor of his own.

Imagine if you had a smoke alarm that was going off all the time, even when there was no smoke.

That one dropped into my emotional understanding like a ten ton weight! Suddenly the constant morning anxieties I have had, especially in the last six or seven years of my life when I became responsible for absolutely everything, are comprehensible to me. I thought once again, as I have thought so often recently, Oh my god, that's me!

Friends and readers of this blog will know that I am emphatically not a morning person, never have been, never will be, and that it sometimes goes a lot deeper than that. Now I understand why.

My smoke alarm is going off. It's not overstating things to say that mornings are an assault on my senses at a time when I have not had a chance to gather myself and prepare for the onslaught.

I've learned to wake before the alarm rings, because it shatters me.

Even something as simple as taking a shower when I first get up can sometimes have me weeping and begging for mercy. The water beating on me, sometimes too cold, sometimes too hot, the necessary scrubbing, it all feels like I'm being worked over by two big orderlies. Now, I don't have a problem taking a shower in the afternoon or evening, or even a couple of hours after I've gotten up. But first thing in the morning it is a shock to the system, and as I go through my morning chores and think about the day to come it sometimes feels like shock after shock is being piled on, jolting through me when I am not adequately prepared to receive or cope with that input. In fact, I'm in a state of hypersensitivity.

Within an hour or sometimes 90 minutes, it starts to get better: I have been able to gather myself, calm down, my senses begin to dull somewhat.

This is THE REASON why I drank heavily in the mornings from the moment I got out of bed: it was my way of numbing my senses to a dull roar, to a point where I could cope with the onslaught of that damn smoke alarm going off constantly in my head!

See, I told you it was big.

This morning was better than normal, but, as usual for me, I started feeling a deep sense of panic and anxiety during the short drive to work. I started moaning. Then, for the very first time, I was able to think to myself: It's that damn smoke alarm going off again.


Look around you. Is there any smoke?


No. No smoke. No smoke at all.

I took a couple of deep breaths. The panic didn't go completely away, and I expect that it never will -- but the alarm turned off (or at least was reset for the next time) and I was able -- my god, as they say -- to feel like I was in control of it, not the other way 'round.

[Insert metaphor here]

-- Freder.

Here's to Stillness

I have much less to blog about now that life is becoming, thank goodness, less "interesting" -- as in the old Eastern curse "May you live in interesting times." Even though my disease sometimes causes me to dread what may be lurking, unknown, in the months ahead, it feels good to metaphorically bury the last twelve months. I'm going to try not to look back on it for at least a while.

This means my blog posts will most likely grow fewer and farther between as my focus shifts somewhat to things like reading and working on the new website. I'll still be here when I feel like Mister Ed and have something to say, but I'm not going to add to the internet's White Noise by just typing in search of a subject.

But I'll make an exception today.

*

The rain this week didn't just slant the skies with non-stop gloom: it created jungles of grass in the yards along W_______ Avenue, and probably frustrated the hell out of homeowners who care about this sort of thing. I hadn't mowed my yard in two weeks, so I can sense my neighbors seething and obsessing about the grass -- The grass! The GRASS!! It's two inches high! Must -- mow -- NOW!

Whatever the reason, on this Sunday morning when it would have been my pleasure to sleep in, instead the pent-up compulsion to mow that must have been building up in my neighbors over the past few days caused them to fire up their mowers on both sides of me at the ungodly hour of 8:30 in the morning, which in turn caused me to drag myself, rumpled and fuzzy-headed, to the computer and fire off an Indignant, venting post.

With no other option, I fed my cats and surrendered to the suburban mores and went out there to tackle my own lawn.

It seems so awkward and phony to smile widely, wave loudly back at my neighbors just because that's what they do to me. Especially when I am thinking such dark thoughts about them and their lawnmowers, usually something about throwing them under one. It's a part of the life-long game of "Let's Pretend" that I've had to play.

Another thing: Both couples on the two sides of me seem to spend a lot of time sitting on their porches or standing in their yards, talking to each other.

It seems to me that, if this is normal, it's probably the reason why I've never been able to sustain a relationship.

What can they find to say to each other? What can they be talking about for an hour? What language are they speaking?

I've always been pretty quiet and in my relationships I have been the listener. I never know what to say; if I do I never feel at ease saying it. First, I have to determine what she's really saying, or, if her words are clear to me, what she really means. Then I have to decide how I feel about it. Then I have to think about how to frame it back into understandable words. This can take a while. Sometimes, she has gotten indignant by then, and is saying something like, "Why can't you tell me what you're thinking?"

Well, I'm trying, but you're making it harder by stressing me out with your impatience for a quick response.

Oftentimes, whether I am with women or with my small circle of friends, the conversation moves on without me. I'm always finding the perfect words when the time for them has come and gone.

Shortly before she dumped me, my next-to-last girlfriend Lorna complained to me about our relationship. I could see that she was really upset, but I didn't know what to say to her about it. She said, "All we ever do is go to the movies and have sex!" -- as if that was a bad thing.

To me, she was describing the perfect relationship!

Looking at the normal couples that now bookend me on two sides, I begin to understand for the first time. Oh -- you have to be relaxed with each other, and you have to talk.

But those are the two things that I'm desperately bad at.

Looks like it's me and the quats, and my books and DVDs, for the indefinite future.

-- Freder.

The End is Nigh!

Ah, so tomorrow there is to be Rapture.

I didn't learn about any of this until just this afternoon. Yeh, it's true -- The Rapture is coming tomorrow and millions of Christian Bible Thumpers are going to be taken to Heaven, leaving the rest of us down here in an Apocalyptic setting to duke it out with the Devil and his Minions.

Who decided this?

I did a little (and I mean a little) research and discovered that it was decided by some evangelical cracker who plans on watching the whole thing tomorrow as entertainment on the telly.

Well, you know, if he's right, then I'm fine with that. In the year just past, the year that began for me on 14 May, my world has come to an end at least three times. There was losing Mom, then having the auctioneers come into my house over a period of three days and freakin' rape the place, then having it sold out from underneath me just when I was restoring some order.

So, you know, for me this would be just One More Thing.

In fact -- it would be good, because it would mean that I wouldn't have to make any more decisions about work, about the car, about the plumbing problem in my basement that I made worse by trying to fix it myself, about ANY damn thing. All I'd have to do is duke it out with Demons, and Baby, that is something I feel that I would excel at.

My message to God and the Devil at the End of the World would be, you guys have been feeding me shit for so long, and you expect me to go quietly into that not-so good night? You got a little bit of a surprise on your hands, you Cosmic Bullies! I've been bullied by the best of 'em, and you clowns have created a Right Angry Dude! Bring it on!

Unfortunately, the world is not going to come to an end tomorrow, and I'm going to have to focus and make some decisions sooner or later. I'm going to have to come to grips with the future and try to make a new life.

One of the posts that I haven't written, because I've been avoiding it, is titled "Gifts my Mother Keeps on Giving Me."

One of those gifts was a sign that she painted to hang outside our home at Turkey Hill Farm in Cape Elizabeth, all those years ago.

It was hung outdoors for a long time and is badly worn. It hangs inside my back entry hall now. It reads "D. Thornsjo" under a picture of a Phoenix being reborn. Of course the D. Thornsjo that she painted it for was my father, and she could never have imagined the significance that the sign would one day have for her then eight-year -old son.

There's a reason why the Phoenix is reborn in flame.

Starting over again hurts.

Thanks, Mom.

The end of the world? Been there, done that. Bring it on. I'm ready.

-- Freder.

The Lurking Fear

I was spending my second night in a row out on the couch on my porch, with Honey sitting on me and Pooky trying to, reading Asperger's Syndrome and Anxiety by Nick Dubin, and thinking, how could I possibly convey the deep connections and revelations that I'm seeing here without just quoting passages to the point of copyright infringement, when I suddenly had an insight.

Quoting, quoting, quoting. One of my biggest problems, first pointed out to me by an old ex-girlfriend, is that I'm almost incapable of expressing myself in normal conversation without quoting,

But, quoting someone who is not exactly a friend, but whom many of my oldest friends will recognize in the words:

I would bet you "Serious. Folding. Cash" that Charles Schulz, the lamentably late creator of Peanuts, was an Undiagnosed Aspie.

It's in almost every strip that he ever created for the series, and it's also in the sheer dedication of will whereby the strip was his life and his life was the strip, to the point that his first wife divorced him over it, to the point where the notion of anyone else taking it on or continuing it after his death was almost physically repellent to him.

It's especially in the classic strip, later adapted for one of the television specials, in which Lucy, below her sign reading "Psychiatric Help Five Cents," diagnoses Charlie Brown as having "The Fear of Everything" -- and Charlie Brown literally blows her over with his cry of:

"THAT'S IT!"

Furthermore, I would bet you that the number of adults walking around out there with undiagnosed Asperger's is potentially astounding.

It wasn't an accepted diagnosis until something like 1993 -- no one was making that diagnosis when I was a little kid, and it wasn't even a glimmer in Mr. Asperger's head until, I think, the early fifties. Something like that.

Peanuts could be a rallying cry that more attention needs to be brought to the diagnosis -- not just to improve the lives of children who suffer with Asperger's, but to explain the lives of some us who always knew that something was wrong -- but never had a word for it.

-- Freder.