Tag: #autism

step change

down for pinting up the soft and pleasant hues of bath time 

step change, ladders direct, 

get a price on a dark moneypiece

what about pantries is it that brings me to tears?

meltdown quietly, astir all night, 

we each start new two chapters

wind our stories together

inky pupils blotting out, 

another lost doppelgänger 

i learned that a moneypiece is a way of dying hair, and bought the wrong ladders and returned them for smaller ladders. then i had a horrible shut down / panic attack thing on an insomniac evening and felt really weird.

excoriated content

i just realised i am probably autistic

sign up to my only fans for more excoriated content

my natural selection is intensive introspection

medley relay, amazed, amazed 

that butterfly is a cromulent procedure

sour jam and feta pancakes, likewise sensational

the funny thing was that people had said to me in the past that i was autistic and i just thought they didn’t get me. after i finished sorting through all my emails last year, i thought, i wonder if i should read all my text messages. i curiously looked at my earliest messages and found ‘you are autistic’ from an unknown number. 3 july 2010. i remember a guy i found weird telling i had aspergers at a temp job in like 2003 or 2004. clearly i didn’t look further into it.

socrates in shit

i read about his suicide on teletext in the 90s
a poet tortured, bill teller of the apple orchard
never socrates unsatisfied nor pig in shit:
we are socrates in pig shit, always and 4 real.

i was at the climbing gym the other day, i like to run over there, i put my climbing shoes in a wee run bag, it takes about 20 minutes if i go slow, sometimes i race back, anyway, this is all besides the point, so, i arrive at the gym, decide to go pee, in the disabled loo as it was closest, i’m there, nearly flowing, but the pan is full of unused female sanitary products, like a couple of pads and three inserts, all still in the plastic, so i’m like well i can’t pee on that, but i’m also like, if i leave now the next person is going to think i’m a mentalist who fills the toilet with sanitary products.

so i fished them out with my hands as a public service and put them in the bin and i hated it but i suppose this is just what its like to be an adult. and that reminded me a bit of the poetry above i suppose.

a common question asked by philosophers is, ‘how does one live a good life.’ which leads to the question: is it better to, like socrates, live an ‘examined life’ – and probably be constantly unsatisfied as a result. is it perhaps better to be a pig rolling in shit, just living?

but i find that often life forces us to be socrates in the toilet, actively disliking what you are doing, and thinking a lot about it.

and while i’m here, the first two lines were references to elliott smith and william burroughs, the death of the first by a somewhat suspicious suicide, and the killing of burroughs’s wife, joan vollmer, by burroughs, in a drunken ‘game of william tell’.

the universal now

we live in the spur of the moment
and we can protest or conform, it
is a choice we make from minute
to minute within a limit and maybe within it
there’s a justice extinct clink.
am-me-sia, a daily battle with with my lived reality
and it’s not reckless to travel vulnerably
not if it’s premeditated….

the experience of living in the universal now is common to folk with audhd – that is, both autism and adhd. a combination that was, until fairly recently, thought impossible. a diagnosis of one meant you couldn’t have the other. i have only been diagnosed with autism, but i relate quite strongly to audhd people. my favourite podcast at the moment is ‘audhd flourishing’, presented very ably by mattia mauree. the other day she mentioned that for her there are only two times, now and not-now. i have a fundamental sort of inability to imagine the future. i have no visual imagination at all, a neurodivergence known as aphantasia.

in another life i was an award winning criminal law student. so the last lines are a reference to the two mens reas of murder in scots law, intention (to kill) or wicked recklessness – a sort of wilful recklessness, a behaviour so thoughtless and dangerous that death is an inevitable outcome.

britain used to be famous for its liberalism. but there has always been an authoritarian streak, and in recent years the government has clamped down hard on peaceful but ‘nuisance causing’ protests. so we live in a world were poor wee crusty hippies spend serious time in jail for trying to make the world a better place. whether we agree with protestors or not, a healthy society should be able to argue its case without resorting to violence.

it’s jagged timbre

as long as a hand and as tall as a long finger
there’s comfort in it’s jagged timbre
no banks but thorny river banks and building societies
deep section diversion, shrine and a cuppa tea
on the juliet, the wind cries mary jane
jesus christ, socialist, there is no pope in heaven
romeo, no devil below, no hell but earth we know
this exact moment is the only thing happening in your life right now
and it’s a powerful thing to be loved, regardless
regardless of anything you ever have or have not done

the first line refers to the size of my wireless radio, which i was contemplating taking on holiday. i think in the end i just took the ipad for my music and podcast need. i like to always own a battered old wireless though. the current on uses rechargeable aa batteries. the aerial is snapped in half and the battery enclosure is broken and long lost. the only station saved in the presents is radio 4.

i used to listen to radio 4 more or less 24 hours a day. i would leave it on as i slept. then i moved in with a girlfriend about 13 years ago and this was one of the things i had to give up. now i tend to have my noise cancelling headphones on and a podcast on. i don’t even know what i’m listening to right now. turns out it is the financial times ‘economics show’. but really its just some predictable radio friendly voices talking calmly in my ear.

it’s a powerful thing to be the recipient of unconditional love. i speak from experience. i felt deeply unworthy of this love as a teenager. i was only diagnosed as autistic as an adult and i wonder how helpful that information might have been as i struggled all my life to understand myself, all my contradictions and struggles. i’m not 100% per cent convinced it would have been a better story. but it might have kept me out of a few scrapes.

chaos vikings marchin’ under summer’s radiation

space tunnel violinist, what did we do to you?
reflect on convalescence’s end, my reaction improved

i’d just finished a period of convalescence. a period of autistic burnout. had processed some things, felt a bit better about them, had some regrets, but by and large i was starting to feel a bit better after a rough stretch.

meanwhile, my girlfriend was off running one of her scandinavian marathons. fortunately this activity doesn’t involve me. i love to run but 42 km seems like too much of a good thing. i ran 10km yesterday and spent a few hours working on a song and i’m absolutely beat this morning. we all have different energy i suppose.

i am perhaps the space tunnel’s biggest fan. it is a tunnel (through space) that connects the scottish events campus to the exhibition centre railway station. not sure why they didn’t rename the railway station when they renamed the exhibition centre 🤷‍♂️ anyway, not sure what the violist wanted revenge for, but he set about it mercilessly.

have you tried the toblerone, feckless bairn? / it’s abysmally pricey, but so is everything else

it was a year ago that i wrote this. the inflation rate may be lower now, but the gap between what things cost and what we feel like they should cost seems to have been made permanent. its hard not to feel anxious about the state of the economy. so much uncertainty. war. tariffs. irrational, illogical people in positions of power.

this isn’t a cover up, the red rose, the guerilla’s fist

trigger warning: self harm

well it was a cover up really. i had a bit of a mental health crisis when i was younger, in my late teens. one result of that was self harm scars on my arms. i know realise i was going through a period of autistic burnout on the transition from high school to the new expectations of early adulthood. an experience a lot of austic people go through.

i don’t know why it took me so long to realise i could tattoo over the scars. maybe i just wasn’t ready to move on. but then suddenly i needed to. to make them a polished part of my story. i love my arms now. until very recently, i guess i preferred just not to think about them. and the message they sent out about me, and my mental health.

but are some things unforgivable? / let’s hope good souls can hold a grudge with compassion.

i’m so sleepy today. i had a busy few days. i did a big cycle. i climbed a mountain. i saw old friends, drank negroni and was merry.

i often have ‘low power’ days. if i don’t schedule some quiet time, my body enforces it. is it autism? a delayed hangover? is my immune system battling an infection? who knows. i’m gonna take it easy anyway. read a good book. make a loaf of bread. try to avoid talking.

are some things unforgivable though? i want to say no, that there is always the possibility of redemption. but i fear it may not be true. some crimes are so great that it’s hard to believer the perpetrators could have souls. and i’m too tired to want to think about this today.

but considering the crimes and trespasses that have been committed against me – no, there is nothing i can’t or won’t forgive.