#communication through objects

Orange is the color of Autism Acceptance Month. Because it’s the opposite of blue, and blue is the color that everyone is told to wear for Autism Awareness Month. Which kind of sucks because my favorite colors, and nearly all of my clothes, are brown and blue. And I used to really hate orange. Sometimes I hate the term Autism Acceptance, too — I like the idea behind it, but I don’t like the way the term has become a meaningless buzzword in some people’s mouths. Whether it’s parent groups who throw the word ‘autism acceptance’ around to sound current but don’t actually accept the slightest thing about their autistic children, or whether it’s autistic people who’ve fallen in love with the words and forgotten the meaning. Either way, I like it as a concept but not as a buzzword.

Anyway, I hated orange.

I just did a poem that involved some of it.  Two people placing rocks in certain locations.  Each rock contains embedded within it all sorts of information about the rock and other things about the world as well.  Each person places the rock where it goes best with the other rocks.  The rocks form a pattern that is bigger than the sum of its parts, and contains elements of the rocks and the people who made it.  Some people will be able to see that, other people will just see rocks, other people will see something in between.

http://youneedacat.tumblr.com/post/96421049215/for-my-friend

I want to hand you a lapis lazuli ball

So you can lose yourself in the deep blue

And be dazzled by the gold specks.

I want you to roll it over and over in your hand

Gently nose it to feel its texture

And weigh it in your hand.

I want to hand you my black tourmaline egg

So you can feel that unique texture

I want you to hold it while you sleep

And wake up to it, warm and slick in your hand

I want to hand you my amber ring

So you can watch the sunlight turn it into fire

And watch the sun set inside it glittering red, orange, and yellow

I want to do these things

So that I can say

We share these sensory experiences

And nothing can take that away

I want to hand things back and forth

And clack them together to hear their sounds

And rub them on our cheeks

And brush them against our fingertips

Then I want to hand you things too big to pick up:

The warmth and smell of a granite mountainside as the sun heats it up all day long.

The liquid sunlight melting across the coat of a cat who embodies sunlight well.

The whole cycle of life that takes place in the soil of a redwood forest.  And the smell of that soil.

The deep rumbling sound of the Mother Tree when you’re curled up against it, surrounded by its invisible amethyst glow.

The feeling of lying in bed, but at the same time, being surrounded by a deep, glowing blue sky, as if pre-dawn or post-dusk. And listening to the music of the forest.  Listening with my skin, listening with my eyes, listening with my fingertips, listening with my nose.  Listening with everything more than my ears.  Being wrapped in the song of the forest and the stars and the trees and the soil and the fungus, all singing, all singing inside me.

I know you can feel the layers of sensory experience.  The layers of meaning that come before the meaning of mind.  The things we were meant to forget, when we learned to think their way.  The things we didn’t forget, the things that we retained no matter what we were told to forget.  The stillness, the silence.  The music in the silence, the growth and death and birth cycling endlessly.