A bit raspy, bordering on sharp
like the edge of a knife
wanting to cut
that which caused another rosy veil
of trust to fall
{attempting to word indescribables in hopes of getting over expressive aphasia. Perhaps it is also part of why some people (I..I) have an artist’s block}
I know transliteration means converting text from one script to another, but for want of a better word (and if you look closer, the logic is not too different), transliteration as a word will do, I think, to make my point.
Check out this example.
“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place. ~ Rumi”
If you replace the word sorrow with ‘pain’ and joy with ‘growth,’ it would read ‘Pain prepares you for growth. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new growth can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever pain shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
My point? Change a few words here and there and the same message gets shifted from an emotional discipline to a somatic discipline. Both disciplines would have their own reasons for why their respective message is correct. Change the intensity of the words within their respective disciplines and see how the argument gets more intense. If one side has a more intense word than the other, the supporting context-based argument gets stronger and then one side gets more correct than the other! Try transliteration between science and religion as 2 disciplines. Use words like ‘science’ itself for science as a discipline and ‘God’ for religion in the above sentence. Oh! and change the words ‘your heart’ to something more factual (like, a tree) for science and retain it as ‘your heart’ for religion, and then see how the argument sits.
Try different contexts, instead of the same above-mentioned sentence. How about quantum physics for science and omnipresence/omnipotence for religion? (!) Can you see anything common between the 2 phrases of the 2 disciplines? Transliteration possible? Have fun! (says she with an impish grin).
..is where it is still safe to play out thoughts and examine things and put two and two together in all quirky ways and see what happens. It is not so much like in the presence of an intelligence as much as in the space where such activity could be done and be ok without bouncing off an opinion or judgment – that will be there later, but before that a space to figure things out, to let imagination have its playtime.
I have heard a person labelled with Autism say ‘people think I am weird; I think I am fine and other people are weird.’
It is nice sometimes to be regarded crazy, which I think usually means ‘cannot understand and hence categorized into a box that is akin to miscellaneous’ because the brain is always trying to fit what it comes across into boxes to be able to understand and make sense of things, and it has a box for everything and every box has a label; it is just an easy way to organize things up in the attic, a sort of filing system. Now, the label of Autistic Spectrum disorder gives an interesting space; the disorder bit can be done without because that suggests ‘not ok and/or something wrong’ and it is not great to be in the ‘something wrong (with me!!) space.’ The Autistic Spectrum alone (for convenience I shall call it AS) is a label that takes away the stigma of being ‘crazy’ and yet gives space for being ‘whatever and whoever’, in short, a little laboratory space to play it out in the real world. Every person is unique without question because the circumstances in which birth happened is nuanced differently, the growing conditions are different for each, interpretation of what happens is different and called ‘subjective,’ cultural/socioeconomic backgrounds are different, and the experience of living in the midst of soo many variables gives rise to unique entities that may never have been formed before; there may be similar combinations but not exactly that combination, and that means that that combination of a person can do what only that combination of characteristics/traits can do, which may be something so totally different than any predictions because such a combination has never existed before, and there needs to be a space for that combination of a person to play out (or express) his/her uniqueness for which the label of Autism Spectrum offers the freedom to do so. Ok, I grant it that the acceptance of the word Autism Spectrum as it is getting more accepted to be today (versus an unaccepted label like HIV or mad, which has negative connotations) allows for the mind to try out the opportunity offered by the space of the label more than ever before (just as the freedom offered by the label ‘gay’ may offer to a person who is confined/restricted in the ‘conservative’ and hence an opportunity to be a rebel of the system perhaps. I am guessing that could be the reason why we have more ‘gay’ people ‘coming out in the open’ these days than ever before – because of the freedom from the confining space of the ‘norm’ represented by the word (apart from the actual psychosomatic reference to the term, that is). It can be stiffling to be ‘normal,’ especially when ‘normal’ is not clearly defined and is subject to interpretation. So, am I categorizable in the ASD box? I dont know but it sure is fun to be the quirky me as I try out this new robe. hehe.
