i'm reading a memoir by an autistic animal scientist, temple grandin (she has designed one third of all the livestock-handling facilities in the united states), called Thinking In Pictures. her reliance on visual (as opposed to verbal) thinking is so pronounced that when she was younger, grandin was only able to understand abstract concepts when she could find visual symbols or equivalents for them in the outside world. for instance, she prepared for both her high school and her college graduations by finding a special door (one was in her dormitory, the other on the roof of the library) and "rehearsing" for the transition by moving through it. she says she never had a concept for what it meant to "get along with people" until she got trapped in the gap between two sliding glass doors while washing them and realized that the delicate movements it took for her to unjam a glass door without shattering it were equivalent to the tact and care that it took to maintain human relationships.
"Throughout my life, door and window symbols have enabled me to make progress and connections that are unheard of for some people with autism" (37).
now i don't know how much someone *needs* an abstract concept of human relationships to form and maintain them, and she doesn't really explain what results her discovery had in terms of specific friendships. but i'm struck by this idea she seems to have that a transition in her life could not occur until she'd found a preexisting material object or scene that could carry its meaning to term like a womb carries a child...
i also imagine the young temple grandin as a medieval knight on a series of heroic quests for these magical objects that can unfreeze her life, which each time has been stilled again by a wicked sorcerer.
now i want to ask all my friends if they have a symbol that causes progress in their lives...
there's a hole in my only pair of wearable pants
ahhhhhhhhhhhghghghghghhhh!
last night you gave yourself a pat on the back, whitey. remember? tears of joy and pride were dripping into your free starbucks latte, and somewhere in the background, faintly, 'we are the champions' was playing on the loudspeakers of a true american patriot. you ran out into the streets and chest-bumped your bros and shouted the sacred foreign-sounding name at each other like it was a new esperanto that would unite us all. this is what your mom must have felt like when she protested the war in vietnam. high five!!!