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most grown-ups know that having expectations leads almost directly to disappointment. Having no expectations leads to pleasant surprise. Human life is short. I mean some animal lives are really short like can you believe octopus only lives for up to 10 years? Your very best friends, dogs and cats won’t go past 20? The expectation to figure out everything in this lifetime is unrealistic. I’m grateful for how far I’ve gotten. And I’m sorry for the ignorance and shitty things I’ve done. I’ve done tons and tons of shitty stupid things. But I’ve also always done my best in that moment. One thing I always knew I could never expect is for my mom to take care of herself. I could count on my dad to take care of her. And even my sisters. And I knew she might take care of herself after all how did she get to almost ¾ of a century without making positive decisions. I could focus more on all the things I love about her. Loving my mom is loving myself because we’re so much alike. But I did always wish that she would actually take care of yourself enough to offer the freedom of care to others so that it didn’t arrive in a bitter package, the help. So that she didn’t seem so frail and selectively confused and even frightening just like grandpa. There’s not going back into the past, that’s fine, but if only you would be confident for one full day. Show me what that’s like. Show me what it’s like to take responsibility for yourself rather than trying to help people with the same problems that you also have yourself. Ask a question and then listen to the answer and comprehend it. There’s no doubt she’s a genius to me. There’s no doubt about her intelligence, but her presence is highly dubitable. It’s the anxiety and the ADHD and you just never really get through past that. It’s like someone in a coma who sometimes comes awake. Well, not that bad. And also not that good or simple. Like a vampire that sometimes comes awake.

infinite seconds of humanity

this might be pathetic but one of the things i appreciate about being an aide or teacher or nurse is the moments you get while the client or patient goes potty. there are at least 30 seconds (could be more, if a bowel is going to move), that you must just STAND THERE. as i am, i don’t want to do much more than stand there. i crave moments of standing there. i might stretch. i might take a deep breath. i might hold my breath and get a little head rush as i breathe out. i might do a “wall sit.” i might stretch my calves, or quads, or chest by spreading my arms out against the wall behind me. these are the things i need to do the most. and in that moment, i get paid to do them. then my clients asks for a wipe, and i wipe their butt while wearing a glove. then it’s back to work. but this break is more worthwhile than the “potty break” itself that employees try to utilize to get a little tiny bit of time back. Shitting on the clock is what we’d call it. this lady told me she’d take naps in the stall. other people go on their phones and communicate with their real lives. it’s like having to go to the bathroom is the ONLY TIME you’re allowed to have a little privacy during the work day. even at lunch, people don’t relax. i learned to eat while helping others eat. i feed Will with my left hand and myself with the right hand. i hate the smell of shit, just like anyone else. but at least it’s a small price to pay for tiny moments back from the Master Gobbler of Time (your boss).

What weapon will you use When they come for you and yours? Lenin said everyone must be armed, he said each person, that means us. We don’t have a militia to join, but we should still pick a weapon. For some reason I think of the tricky, shooting needles that burst from the sleeves of assassins in Dune, the famous sci-fi book, which I read. The needles were crazy. Very low likelihood that I could get those to use. More likely it needs to be various household objects. But then you need to picture them, and picture yourself using them, to bash your attacker’s head in, or slice their arteries, or achilles, or ACL, or foot/feet. You’ll have to do it, if you wait. We have to do it if we have for them to come. There’s a choice is going to meet the advancing enemy army, sneaking up on them, sabotage and subterfuge. That’s one option we have. It requires meeting the right people, and a hell of a lot of luck. You can call it the Mandate of Heaven, if you want. To lead an army of hackers onward, or be in that army, in the dark, the high guard that goes beyond our lines, and into their territory, teasing them and leaving them clues to shit their pants about. If you’re going to be a sneaky fellow, leave a witty message, that’s for sure. They have no idea what we can do, if we all wake up, or even if a lot of us wake up. If we can fully discard the HYPER-NORMALIZATION of “They come for other people in the day and in the night, but they’re not coming for us.” EVER? or NOT RIGHT NOW? They’ll come, though, and what then. What will you use? They’ll use gas, bombs, and guns. What will we use? Or will we run? And if so, where? Will it be easy to tell, or hard to tell, when the move is worth the risk of death, or even suffering, to someone you love more than yourself?

Curtis

Occasionally, Curtis appears in dreamworld, where he’s the plug for drugs. When we were kids, we didn’t do drugs, but he was a bad boy and while sweet at heart, bad news for all girls unless they wanted to get pregnant fast and then again until he’d move on. I used to to talk to him on the cord phone in mom and dad’s bedroom and he’d tell me about all kinds of things I couldn’t imagine, gangs, people getting curb stomped, drama at 1st Avenue, which had all-ages dance parties on Sundays in downtown Minneapolis in the 90’s. Curtis was the first boy who shoved his whole tongue down my throat when I “kissed” him and grabbed both sides of my booty, while standing up wearing cut off shorts in the alley down the block from my house, in summer, I probably sneaked away. Curtis was my best friend’s cousin, that’s how we met. She lived on 38th and 11th. Me on 10th. Curtis lived in a home for delinquent boys on Chicago ave past the cemetery and McCray Park, where we ate free lunch in the summer times. I snuck out and met up with Curtis in the graveyard one afternoon (he sneaked out from the home for bad boys). As we walked in the graveyard, I thought both that it was PERFECT to do a gothic thing as a date, and also unsure about my next move. There was this idea that Curtis was going to buy me a Raiders Starter jacket (like I said, this was the 90’s). I know I wanted that jacket but also wasn’t sure if I’d really get it. Curtis climbed the side of our household wall to suprise me at the bedroom window. This isn’t going where you think, though. He just jumped back off, laughing. I really liked Curtis voice on the phone, but physically he was scary like a monster. He was light skinned with gap teeth (like me) and huge blue eyes (like me) and blond, black-people’s hair (mixed). The blue eyes were clearly malevolent and insane. Which he was. But also nicey nice, outgoing, confident. I didn’t choose Curtis to take me over the virgin bridge, but another hack, similarly young, mixed, but a much more smirky, amused face with normal and warm brown eyes. Blue eyes always scared me. I have blue eyes, which look normal on me. But Curtis never had a chance to pass for normal with those pale psychotic eyes. I saw once again in like 1999, as adults, he was genial and friendly. He actually didn’t turn out scary at all. But was a menacing 14 year old he was! And now I dream that he’s the plug for my drug hookup. And then last night I dreamed his old face appeared before me, like a 75 year old face, not 50 or so, his actual age, like an old man face (repeating myself). And it was hard to find him in it, actually looked nothing like him, but it was. And then I dreamed I kissed a black man (I probably kissed hundreds of boys in the 90’s), and it was vivid. When lips are softer, larger, and warmer than your own. And you kind of hate yourself for being inadequate.

At some point before we were born, we may have agreed with the powers that be to live in this time period, with the pros and cons being arguably complex, but most of all agreeing to bear and then act on the knowledge that climate science experts were right from at least 50 years ago to today, and that extinction is the most likely future (ashes), as a FACT. Seeing leaders in 2026 barrel ahead toward the worst, most depressing possible ending with the most possible suffering, nothing at all to hope for. And then as a white person making a choice to know about the history of slavery worldwide (its possible for them to avoid and “not-know” it), and see the threads that make it into the current international fabric of war, fossil fuel with its rape-filled, relentless death, poverty through the microscope, environmental catastrophe, not to mention prisons growing as fat as caterpillars, including throughout starvation, to know that we’re e not on a flotilla with the sacrifice, and cry for the dying history in tents and see the ashes of libraries, museums, temples, cathedrals, monuments, villages, cavernous appetite for erasure by the robot class, that will be 2020, the median point in your years, with the ultimate agreement (so said the fortune teller lady): we agreed to bear it and very likely to also act on it (it looked easier from far away).

When I started studying special education, I realized, everyone is special. i also realized how special I am, and how there will be no accommodations for the handicap of Humanity. When I learned about neurodivergence, I realized, or I already knew that everyone is neurodivergent. People are in different states or levels of sleeping or awake.

Whether I spend 3 and a half or 7 and a half hours with Will, it feels timeless. It feels long, but also tolerable. This job fits with my broken down state of depression. I don’t have to plan, organize, promote, or try to sell anything.
I don’t have to pretend I’m professional, bourgeoisie, cultured, or motivated. The main crisis in teaching for me arose by realizing that like the students in my class, I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to set fake goals for them, and monitor their goal progress. I don’t want to plan lessons. I don’t have anything fun or cute in mind. I don’t have any school spirit. I don’t care about holidays. I don’t even care about technical birthdays. Every day is the same to me.

Any day can be Christmas. Christmas isn’t real. Any day can be Halloween or Easter, just pick the right kind of candy. I’ll buy candy for kids. I’ll buy them shit, but I won’t be on the board of PBIS or plan or attend special events.

Every day is the same to me, and I want it that way, partially to match the kids, the people with Autism, for whom nearly every minute is the same, or could be, or should be, and age ain’t nothin’ but a number, like Aaliyah sang.

For the first hour or two I spent with Will today, we watched kids songs with “movement.” I forced myself to sing softly, do the motions, and get in the “fun kid mode” with him. I started thinking, Is this what everything’s come to? Me dancing to Elmo? But I know that on every basic level, I need to breathe deeper and move my body. So this makes me do that. So I told myself, tomorrow isn’t real. No one knows if civilization will last even 10 more minutes. Just be present, breathe, move your body, use your intuitive-communication with Will. Make today real for him, or with him, because tomorrow is a black hole or a bright neon light to him and always will be.

So I sang as many nursery rhymes as I could. But negative thoughts pestered. I remembered my repeater dreams where friends from high school point out that I can’t sing beautifully anymore. And I thought, I bet even Will’s parent noticed that I sound like a smoker. I keep coughing. They’ll pretend to believe me if I say it’s a cold or allergies, but they’re very smart people.

I helped Will eat (I fed him, fork to mouth, or fingers to mouth). He floated in and out of scripted worlds. But later he created novel sentences (nonsensical on the surface) which means they weren’t from any tv show or song. He talked about CHERRY TREES. It turned into a Berenstain Bears script, but at first, it was novel.

I think it had to do with his happiness that someone’s finally washing his parts. I’m serious. He’s never used his hands to wash anything other than the left hand washes the right one, with a mechanical squishing sound, as he scripts into the mirror. My flatmate also makes that horrible sound while washing her hands. Hers is a little different, it’s fast and slimy.

Nobody has ever washed Will’s parts, which means, they’ve never been washed other than with the swishing of bath water. For a few reasons, his presentation has no sexuality, but puberty inflated his size and covered him with hair. I cleaned out his belly button, full of lint.

I use the soapy washcloth to get in the folds of things at the mid-range. And I can tell Will anticipates it with positive nervousness, and says like “woah!” and then starts jumping happily (once he’s out of the bath). I scrub him down with the towel (also no one’s done that for him). They usually just dress him while he’s still half wet. I have enough sensory issues that I’m almost incapable of doing that to him. It seems cruel. And I’m paranoid about all kinds of mold and the smells that result.

So I scrub him down with the big towel (that kind of stinks… I’m not in charge of the laundry but would like to be), especially his big, hairy legs. But I also scrub his hairy chest and belly and the patch of hair over his area, which is still pretty new to his body.

Then he likes to walk to his room naked and jump in place or in the mirror, scripting from movies and tv shows and saying, “Will. AT THE MIRROR!” And smiling and saying, “That’s a great one” or “1, 2, 3, Say cheeeeese.” These are favorite scripts. I’ve probably done 1, 2, 3, Cheese over a hundred times (at least) with him.

The skill I have really boils down to mimicry. I can translate other’s mimicry and perform it. When I thought I was a great, child singer, no one said to me: You’re just a good mimic. Which is good because that would have been rude. It takes decades to put sorrow into your voice, and to know what you do and don’t believe.

One time at an economics summer camp that I attended in the 11th grade of high school at a local MN college, for some reason (probably my bragging) I was singing His Eye is On The Sparrow for a group of peers in our “cabin,” and while I tended painstakingly to technique, at the end of the plain looking girls asked me, “And do you believe that?” Or, “Do you believe that?” (his eye is on the sparrow)?

I forgot my answer but she definitely called me out. I would throw all that paternal individualistic religion hoo-ha in the compost bin. There’s no individual, invisible, male spirit with his “eye on me.” The only thing with its eye on me is my superior-self, the dream-self that negotates meaning between the sleeping, dead, past, the present (hopes and fears, plus sensory and mental blossoming), and even knows the future based on trajectory, memory of past lives, and intuition. The manager of the house, my body, my behavior, the one who secretly loves me unconditionally.

Jobs I don’t mind:

This is factual record, not poem:

Washing hair, sweeping, dusting, washing humans, trimming skin and nails, narration of events, shrinking concepts to the smallest word container, and vice versa. Painting after thoroughly cleaning the walls. Reading aloud to people. Singing or dancing with people. Sitting in silence with my eyeballs and ears open watching someone to make sure they don’t have a seizure or try to kill theirselves or anything, summarizing speeches, making people laugh at horrific jokes, removing dead skin, cutting hair and trimming facial hair, plucking stray hairs, feeding people based on the other person’s rhythmic attention (not shoving food down their throats). That’s it.

ALL PARTIES

I was attracted to Bill, yet scared of those potentially soft-bougie politics. Snotty behavior, which reminds me to provide soft tissues for a soft thanks. Mostly, I want to talk or listen, to practice it not hurting and/or make sure it still doesn’t hurt. They tried to laugh, but it got not funny, death as fear. People said nasty things. People remembered things differently. Some people sold themselves. Some simply reported on this. But shit well nothing worked out, really for anyone. All parties were happening on the wrong tracks.

The Tyranny of Hands and Verbalism

When I imagine how it feels to have severe Autism, with other “isms” like ADHD and IDD, I imagine lacking the urge, will, and ability to use my hands in a functional way, or any way, or like in a nightmare, the hands won’t dial 911, open a door, wave as if I'm a frozen statue, and then my hands don’t grow muscles at all, they’re soft, like a cookie dough star, a spongy sea urchin, but dry, and warm, but for everything that needs to be done, the hands don’t respond.

It’s similar with words. Nothing with words is easy or makes immediate sense. People talk so fast, with so many words, about things one can’t connect with, abstract, just sounds really, at various pitches and tongue movements. Imagine mimicking it, but never finding fluency.

Never finding it natural. As if an alien culture landed and informed language using humans that from now on, we will communicate through puffing our cheeks out (the aliens have cheek-gills, so this adds nuance and a visual, essential aspect to their semi-audial communication style).

Cheek gills, have they. And we don’t. We don’t even have working gills! We do all the oxygen exchange through our smelly, putrid mouths with our banana colored teeth and like dogs, really, panting, don’t utilize our cheeks at all, much less our cheek gills.

But suddenly, you’re born into a family that DOES have cheek-gills, and it’s easy for them to use them. But you don’t. But you love your family and they love you. So they try to accommodate your needs to not be forgotten like yesterday’s trash. But mostly they wish you could do the thing that’s so EASY for them. Flaring their cheek-gills in short, red-slice of light-flashing message amongst themselves.

That’s just a metaphor for the frustration and isolation kids without narrative language concept (severe “nonverbal” Autism) feel not intuitively grasping NARRATIVE LANGUAGE CONCEPT.

time IS NOT the same for them. “FIRST, NEXT, THEN, LAST” is a lesson 4-5 special education teachers will teach this child (you, imagine it) at least on a weekly basis for at least 6 years. They will NEVER care about it, and most will actively refuse it FOREVER.

“Now” is their reality. Give me the thing I want or need now. I’m not interested in later and I’ll fight you for it unless you bribe me sufficiently.

People with severe Autism are direct in a beautiful way. I love working with Will, though. He’s my friend in a way, we’re friends. I’m an old, unbalanced lady and he’s a young, unbalanced man, a forever-7-year old, in an ivory tower, held by his mother, the peasant Queen, just like Diana.

And then what about the hands? The small, soft, pale hands, the little starfish hands, that don’t listen to the need of the times. You’re needed, hands! One of the hands raises 3 inches of the lap. But the hand won’t do it's job, because it’ll fall back on the lap, rather than grabbing food and putting it in the mouth. He can’t use fingers in a way like humans or raccoons- like to DO STUFF. Can’t or won’t, hates it.

I’m the hands, I’m the voice-prompter. It’s a huge responsibility, but I can do it this way— only teaching one at a time. The main job is to imagine it. The secondary jobs are to be there when his brain is too tired for all the cheek-gill-flapping and gills in the cheeks everywhere he turns. It’s too hard. School is hard. Bus is hard. Life is hard— so much gill flapping, and I try to puff out my cheeks like everybody else, but my cheeks are too tired right now, too. I’ll feed you then. Fly away, little alien, speak your alien language, I’ll fly away too, free from reason, time, narrative of first, next, then, last. Just kidding, I can’t. It’s my job to be sober as a clock.

The Sun Being Bad

In 2026, summer started in mid-May. School didn’t get out early or anything, but the sun came ready to bake, shake, and quiver To take our winter’s water back to the moon. It was 90 in mid-May, but then it snowed again, with tears With sleet, with despair, and mother tried to kill us. She’ll say she didn’t and she burned the books that told us this, the diaries, saying I cannot mother anymore, I’ll bake them in the oven, in some forest, in some cabin, decorated with candy. I’ll throw them off the Sears tower once and for all. Right down on Chicago Avenue, splat, in front of Robert's Shoes where I got my first Converse, black high-tops, fitted properly, with dad. And 1988 was one of my last with dad before he turned on me instead of his wife, whom he feared, whereas me, he snickered at. Even you fear the sun. In 1988, summer was still arriving on time as per the old norms, and we went shopping. Goodbye mom and dad, goodbye Robert's Shoes, goodbye Chicago Avenue, fare thee well, 1988. Goodbye Earth and solar system. I’m sorry, but we’re early and unpredictable. And now it’s shooting stars and flashing lights. It was 90 in mid-May, but then it snowed again, with tears With sleet, with despair, when our parents tried to kill us.