A Gong-Tormented Sea

Posted on May 10, 2004 in Childhood Identity

Marbles of the dancing floor

Break bitter furies of complexity,

Those images that yet

Fresh images beget,

That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

  – W.B. Yeats

I’m going through some difficult exercises in a workbook at the moment. Remembering things that I prefer to forget. I’m not making what I found public, not explicitly except some things are making sense.

I might sum up the problems of my childhood — as compounded by the family’s denial of my depression and, perhaps, a mild case of autism — as symptoms of three conflicts:

• The stress of being the youngest child in a family of first born children. My parents and my brother carried the attitude that the youngest child must be a liar and a manipulator.
  
• The stress of being Gifted.
  
• The stress of being taller than most kids my age.

Autism may be a reason why I have had a life filled with difficulties relating to others. Since following Kimber’s website, I’ve seen more and more of myself in her son, Ian. Perhaps seeing me write this will give Kimber some hope that her son will grow to a semi-functional adulthood.

That wasn’t the theme I intended at the start of this article, but here I suddenly am. I have managed to function — survive — despite everything that life threw at me. It is not difficult for me to visualize the world. My photography might be judged as an expression of how I see things. I am as apt to see fragments as I am a whole view. Writing and poetry* have been for me a means to take these visions that I cannot photograph and put them out where others can see them.

There’s always been a nonemotional element to my conversation. While frustration boils in my head, I can also look at things dispassionately.

Then there is that weird linking back which occurs when I see something from my past. Because so many of my memories are painful, I’ve struggled very hard to minimize this effect. Temple Grandin writes about how words turn into pictures for her:

I realize that the word “key” can also be used metaphorically, when we say, “the key to success is positive thinking.” When I think about that phrase, I see Norman Vincent Peale’s book, The Power of Positive Thinking, and I see myself back at my aunt’s ranch reading it. I then see a stage where a person is getting an award and I see a large cardboard key. Even in this situation, the key still unlocks the door to success. The ability to form categories is the beginning of the ability to form concepts. Keys in their physical form open physical locks but abstract keys can open many things, such as a scientific discovery or career success.

Yes, I did that and I still do it.

Math bored me because I could rarely put it into pictures. Geometry was my best subject, but I have never been able to penetrate calculus because the shapes of the symbols get in my way. Reading, on the other hand, stimulated me. I can understand principles of physics expressed as parables. I’ve read heavily in particle physics, freezing up only when the authors bring out the math. Math, they say, is the language of beauty, but I can’t get beyond the numbers**.

I’ve fought these tendencies all my life and been ashamed of having them. I’ve faced people who say that I don’t have a clue when it comes to the feelings of others. Yet this excerpt from an editorial that Kimber posted, written by a University of Wisconsin psychology professor echoes:

Have you — like my son and me — ever heard parents say how learning that their child was autistic was like experiencing a death in their family? Have you ever been at the playground when a mother classifies her children, standing right there beside her, as this one who is autistic but these other two who are — thank goodness — perfectly normal?

They say that autism entails difficulty taking another person’s perspective, appreciating how another person might feel. But when I read or hear such hate speech I wonder: Exactly who has a problem taking another person’s perspective? Who can’t appreciate the feelings of others?

There are other signs: empathy with animals, a tendency to view life as pictures, a desire to be a recluse, dislike of the telephone, poor motor coordination evidenced by my poor performance in sports, moments of panic when I am in large groups, difficulty with body language, etc. I look over a list of famous people who might have had autism and I find several of my favorite authors and composers (as well as a few freaks who are well beyond me such as Oliver Heaviside), people who when they speak register immediately. And I’ve known people to be wrong, so very wrong about my motives and my feelings because they don’t know how to read my face.

All my life, as I’ve moved in an agonized trance among you, I’ve heard you say “Joel, you have to consider other people’s feelings. You have to consider other people’s feelings.” And inside that message, I hear another: “we have to eradicate this inseparable part of you. We will not accept you as you are.”

That gong keeps beating and breaking my heart through my ear.

---

*Consider my poetry. I focus a lot on pictures. My favorite poet is W.B. Yeats, who an Irish psychiatrist thinks may have had Asperger’s Syndrome:

“WB Yeats for example did very poorly at school. He failed to get into Trinity College and was described by his teachers as ‘pedestrian and demoralised’. His parents were told he would never amount to anything”, said Professor Fitzgerald.

This, he added, is typical of people with Asperger’s syndrome. They do not fit in as they do not relate to others. They are often seen as odd or eccentric and may be bullied at school as a result.

Fits me to a T.

**I remember telephone numbers by how they look. Sometimes I confuse 3s with 8s, 5s with 6s.

---

Some blogs by autists and their family members.

• Garoo
  
• Autistic Behavior
  
• Schafer’s Autism Blog
  
• Steven’s Mom Autism Blog
  
• bloggg
  
• InterNet Mental Health Page on Autism
  
• What is it?: Autism Association of Ireland