Lydia Schoch

So I’m currently reading The Reason I Jump, a book written several years ago by a thirteen year old boy named Naoki Higashida about what it’s like to be autistic.  I’ve always assumed that people whose autism is as serious as Naoki’s are so involved in their own world that they’re not at all interested in other people.

Here is his answer to the question, “do you prefer to be on your own?”

‘Ah, don’t worry about him – he’d rather be on his own.’

How many times have we heard this? I can’t believe that anyone born as a human being really wants to be left all on their own, not really. No, for people with autism, what we’re anxious about is that we’re causing trouble for the rest of you, or even getting on your nerves. This is why it is hard for us to stay around other people. This is why we often end up being left on our own.

The truth is, we’d love to be around other people. But because things never, ever go right, we end up getting used to being alone, without even noticing this is happening. Whenever I overhear how much I prefer being on my own, it makes me feel desperately lonely. It’s as if they’re deliberately giving me the cold-shoulder treatment.

As far as I can tell there haven’t been any reports that this book is a fraud or a forgery. I sincerely hope these are really Naoki’s words because he has such an interesting point of view, but I will admit to being skeptical at a few different places in the book as to whether or not the opinions of the people around him bled into his work.

I sincerely hope this isn’t the case, though, and I do recommend checking this book out. It’s quite thought-provoking.

Photo by Oscarpanther.

Just tuning in? Start here.

“It’s ok! Flapjack loves people.”

Daphne stared at the disgruntled burro slowly flicking his ears as Sean adjusted the straps on his back. The plan was for Daphne to ride Flapjack to Salt River. She had slowly been increasing the distances she travelled away from home in an effort to discover the flexibility of her new mobility limits, but Daphne had no illusions about her ability to walk several miles over rugged terrain at a brisk pace.

Most burros weren’t strong or large enough to carry an adult. Since Flapjack was a little bigger than the average burro and Daphne was a few inches shorter than her peers, though, Sean thought it just might work.

Now if they could only get Flapjack to agree with his human’s prediction. He didn’t seem to mind it when Daphne climbed onto his back the first time to make sure her knee would allow her to ride him comfortably. The scratchy wool blanket Sean used as a makeshift saddle was briefly surprising, but once Flapjack adjusted to the occasional brush of fabric against his legs he accepted that change as well.

What really bothered him were the straps under his belly that were meant to keep the blanket in place and the harness Sean kept trying to pull over the irritated burro’s head. Every time Sean pulled the straps into a snug fit or attempted to use the harness Flapjack froze, glared at his human, and refused to budge until he was released. It didn’t help that Lemon was barking with excitement and straining at his leash. As much as Daphne would miss him today she was glad her furry companion was staying home. Every time the dog barked the muscles in Flapjack’s neck tensed up and his ears flew back against his head.

Paige and the children were staying home today, too, as Sean only had one burro capable of carrying an adult and the council needed Daphne to witness what was about to occur.

“What if you ride him bareback?” Ephraim asked.

“I don’t know if I could,” Daphne said. Truth be told she’d only ridden one other animal – a mule – as an adult, and that was nearly fifteen years ago when she was too pregnant to walk long distances any longer. Few families owned  mules or burros large enough to carry humans, and those that did tended to shy away from loaning them out. Carrying the handful of items they regularly traded with other communities was a far more valuable use of that energy.

“You might as well give it a try. It doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere the traditional way.” Isaac said as he hung back from the group. Daphne had not been pleased to learn that so much of the food she had preserved had fed MacArthur’s family over the summer. She knew their food supplies had been stolen and their land hijacked by the invaders, but she felt that her first responsibility was to keep her own family safe. Under different circumstances she would have been happy to share, but as it was she honestly didn’t have enough food for the folks she’d already assumed responsibility for.

Daphne sighed and nodded as Sean reluctantly removed the blanket, harness, and ropes. It wouldn’t be a very comfortable ride, but it was the best they could do. Sean helped her climb onto Flapjack’s back. The burro shook his head, flicked his ears, and took a hesitant step in the wrong direction.

Photo by Bernard Gagnon.

“This way, Jacky,” Sean said as Lemon pranced at the edge of his lease. Slowly but surely Flapjack followed his human companions to Salt River.

Salt River shrunk to about two-thirds of its original size each summer, but it was still the largest above ground body of water anyone in the Mingus Valley area had ever seen. Daphne and her companions were among the first Mingus people to arrive at the river that morning. Mariposa, one of the newly elected ombudsmen of Peoria, had arrived an hour earlier to make sure that their neighbours would have a friendly welcoming committee.

“Mariposa!” Sean shouted as his cousin stood up and shook the dust off of her pants. It had been nearly a year since their last meeting and despite the serious nature of this event he looked forward to hearing the latest news from the Peoria branch of his family tree. If nothing else it would serve as a welcomed respite from the inevitable conflicts that were  on their way.

When Gerald’s father was a young man the two communities had fought bitterly over water rights during an unusually severe drought that nearly wiped both of them out of existence. The treaty that ended that battle held fast for over 20 years, but when a shorter drought hit when Gerald was a young man the two communities briefly went back to raiding one another’s property in retribution.

It was during one of these skirmishes that Gerald lost two fingers on his left hand. He had always been a peaceful young man, and when his wounds healed he volunteered to serve on the council in the hope that peaceful resolutions to water rights would prevent his children from sustaining similar injuries when they came of age.

As the small crowd slowly coalesced, Gerald – who had just arrived – began handing out fishing poles and nets. With any luck they’d catch a few fish while they hashed out what each community knew about their sudden invaders and decided what should be done about it. After all of the supplies had been handed out and the lines cast the group began to talk.

Mariposa was surprised to hear that the soldiers had been so violent in Mingus. Her community had also been visited by them, but once everyone was vaccinated and all of the houses were thoroughly searched the soldiers paid little attention to what they did or where they went unless they wandered too close to Salt River.

She frowned as Gerald described the destruction of the Everson’s home and what happened when Aunt Lucy’s vaccine fell out.

“What I really don’t understand is why the soldiers didn’t vaccinate themselves,” she said. “Several days ago they stopped making courtesy calls on us, and when I sent a few scouts to check up on their encampment we realized that quite a few of them have that fever that was going around this summer.”

Isaac’s stomach lurched as he remembered what Alvarez had whispered to Rey Bryant after performing Isaac’s health scan a few weeks earlier.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, comics, photographs, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Amazing Minimalist Photography via KenKaminsky. These pictures speak for themselves. Wow!

Determining the Fate of Frozen Embryos. I’d never really thought about what couples who have been through fertility treatments do with their leftover embryos before. While it’s never a decision I’ll have to make it was interesting to read how the author and his wife came to the decision they eventually made about their leftover embryos.

Stars Bursting in the Night Sky. An incredible collection of long-exposure shots of the sky by Australian photographer Lincoln Harris.

“Hey, Let’s Go Do Something Fun!”  The truth about getting offended over stuff you find online.

In Defence of the Disney Princesses. So I actually haven’t decided what I think about Disney princesses. Figuring out if they’re good role models or reinforcers of sexist tropes and the patriarchy isn’t very high on my to do list. (Well, other than the fact that “Beauty and the Beast” is an incredibly creepy story if you think about it for too long). My friend Jenna makes some excellent points, though.

From Grasped Hands via SpitToonsSaloon:

On a steaming hot afternoon

of risotto thick air, a man sat on

on a park bench with time on

his hands and stared at his

ticking palms.

From Why Dead Malls Comfort Me:

I think I love dead malls because I am a Midwesterner, a born-and-bred Kansas City man who has lived most of his life within flyover country. I will never belong anywhere else. I can identify with a place that was once great, a place where you look up and realize that the great herd of humanity has moved on. To spend a morning in a dead mall, where the shops are closed and your favorite restaurant is boarded up, feels like the world I know. It is, increasingly, the Midwestern mode of existence.

The author of The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating forged an unusual relationship with a wild snail after a mysterious virus left her bedridden. Too weak to do anything but read and observe, she spent hours watching her “pet” snail move around the terrarium and investigating the behaviours she witnessed.

I knew nothing about snails before reading this book. As interesting as it was to learn about how the author spent her days when her energy was so extremely limited, I loved hearing her observations of how snails live. There is an ecosystem at our feet at the vast majority of us have never stopped to observe. It made me want to go to the park, lie flat on my belly, and watch ants, snails, spiders and other small creatures scurry about.

What have you been reading?

Just tuning in? Start here.

“How would our strategy change if we knew more about them?” Daphne asked. “We already know they have better weapons than we do and that not everything they say is true.” The vaccination program was invaluable, but Daphne could think of little else they’d done to improve the lives of the people in Mingus valley. She fell quiet as the debate continued.

“We could figure out how they’re receiving orders and what kind of schedules they keep,” Daniel said.

“They’re not very organized,” Gerald said. “Most of their recruits are new and poorly trained.”

“That’s all the more reason to act now!”

“Under whose orders? With what supplies? We don’t have the authority to make these decisions, and if the strangers are keeping as close tabs on us as you think they’ll know what we’re doing before we do.”

“My larder is almost empty and I don’t know why,” Daphne said finally as the debate grew more divided. “How much food do you have left?” One by one the men confirmed that their food supplies were low as well. None of them had noticed declines as steep as the one in Daphne’s house, but she decided to try solving that particular mystery later.

“We need to go fishing. I heard Salt River is the best place to fish.” It wasn’t really, but any sort of catch would help tide over their dwindling food supplies until the autumn rainy season brought an end to the hungry time of year. Sparrow Creek was closer to home and therefore more useful for filling water jugs, but the largest river within walking distance of the community was much more likely to sustain a healthy population of fish.

Sean cocked his head and stared at Daphne with a puzzled expression on his face. Daniel opened his mouth as if he were about to vehemently disagree with her, then closed it again and furrowed his brow.

“We’ll need a lot of strong, young people to organize the effort,” Gerald said, corners of his wrinkled mouth twitching as he slowly realized which settlement was located on the other side of the river.”Fish spoils quickly, so if we catch enough to share we’ll need a way to distribute it to everyone as quickly as possible.”

“Of course we should see if Peoria wants to join us. Technically half of the river belongs to them, and we might need to cross into their territory if one of our nets or poles gets swept downstream. Is two days enough time to organize this?” Daphne was nothing if not neighbourly.

“Yes. I have a cousin who lives there,” Sean said. “I’ll walk over tomorrow morning and alert her. Daniel, can you round up volunteers in the west on your way home?”

Daniel nodded, still not sure what was happening. Somehow everyone had come to agree with him without actually doing what he expected of them. How had he won the debate so quickly?

***

The other members of the council left as soon as their plans were solidified.

Now to solve the mystery of her missing ingredients. The children weren’t old enough to cook dried food much less hide the evidence. Lemon might have eaten cheese if there was any left and if he was alone in the house long enough to devour it, but it had been weeks since that particular delicacy was eaten up.  Paige barely showed interest in eating these days. Cooking food and hiding it from everyone else didn’t seem likely for a woman whose joints had only grown more stiff and appetite less regular over the summer.

Assuming she could rule out thieves from other households that left Isaac and Ephraim. Ephraim’s time away from home was mostly accounted for. When he wasn’t gathering water or repairing tools he sat in the front yard copying the small, leather book he’d borrowed from the doctor who apprenticed him last year. Some treatments were so rare that it was likely he wouldn’t need to use them until long after his formal education had ended, but writing down what other doctors had learned was a good way to begin memorizing less common cures.

Isaac was a different story. After his meagre chores were finished he disappeared almost every day. Sometimes he took his brother with him, but more often he travelled alone. At first Daphne had believed her younger son when he said he needed to find the right materials with which to build a chair or practice repairing the roof, but over the long, hot summer few examples of his work has surfaced in Daphne’s house. She knew her son craved peace and quiet even more than she did, but it was difficult to explain why that desire prompted him to head out alone on even the hottest afternoons.

Asking Ephraim where his brother really went off to produced a quiet grunt but little more.  Daphne could only hope that her younger son would be more communicative when he returned. The boys had left together today.  She found it odd that they would come home separately several hours apart as they normally came back at about the same time. Daphne banked the fire, slowly lowered herself into a chair, and stroked Lemon’s marginally cleaner fur as she waited for answers.

The rest of the household had turned in to bed by the time Isaac arrived home that evening as dusty and dishevelled as had become his new normal. Isaac’s formerly pale complexion had developed a deep tan over the summer, testament to the hours he spent outdoors over the long holiday.

“Welcome home,” she said as he quietly crept into the house. “Where have you been?”

“Looking for supplies.” He began taking off his coat. It might be hot during the day, but the desert could become surprisingly cool after dark even in August.

“You never seem to find any.”

“It’s hard to find the right materials. You can only walk so far in this heat.”

A pause in the conversation. Daphne lit another lamp and slowly stood up, bracing her arm against the table to spare her bad knee.

“Isaac, our supplies are running low. Do you know what happened to them?”

“Mom, I – ”

As Isaac peeled his coat off his left arm a handful of beans tumbled out of the pocket and onto the recently swept hearth.

“Who have you been sharing our food with?”

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, comics, videos, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Meaningless via SMBCComics. Ack, everything I want to say about this comic strip gives away too many spoilers. 🙂

Something Strange Happened at McDonalds. And here I thought I was the only one who tidies up after strangers in public! I’ve never gone this far, though.

Questions for Sighted People. This video was made by a man who was born blind. Among other questions, he wants to know what it’s like to go somewhere alone and how we remember what everyone else’s faces look like. I loved his sense of humour and hope questions for ____ people becomes a meme.

My Gender Identity via tmamone. As someone who has never questioned my gender identity I find Travis’ journey to be really interesting. I hope this is the beginning of a series on the topic.

Love Letters from a Scientist. This particular page is work safe. The rest of the site may not be.

Telescopic Droppings via Bluestocking. One of the (dis?)advantages of moving far away from the communities I grew up in is that I rarely hear the latest news about who died, or more likely at this stage in my life who got married or had a baby. While I absolutely relish the privacy of city life I can see the advantages of occasionally popping your head back into the loop to see what the latest community news might be.

From What Boys Become: Modesty Culture and Learned Irresponsibility:

This is the primary sin of modesty culture – it teaches irresponsibility and blaming others, but masks it as sexual purity. It teaches men to dispose of women who don’t fit their mold, under the guise of “keeping themselves pure.” It teaches men that women exist on a spectrum of worth determined by their clothing and that it is their right as men to determine which women are worth more – and yet, modesty culture masks it as “keeping away from sexual sin.” It teaches men irresponsibility and plays it off as “integrity.”

An Intimate Life is the autobiography of a sexual surrogate. The author works with clients who are disabled or who need help with some aspect of their sexual life. She sleeps with some – but not all – of her clients in order to teach them skills that are extremely difficult to learn by reading a book.

I loved the author’s descriptions of the people she has helped over the years, especially the professional relationship she develops with a man named Mark who became severely disabled after contracting polio as a child. Some passages are sexually explicit, but they are in no way intended to be titillating.

This is a book about the importance of connecting with others. As far as I know none of my readers are sexual surrogates ( 😉 ), but I think all of us can benefit from slowing down and getting to know people we might ordinarily breeze past without a second thought.

What have you been reading?

Painting by Édouard Chimot.

Just tuning in? Start here.

From an early age Daniel Hart was confident he knew more about death than Death himself.

The very old and very young were bound to this world by such tenuous strings that it was sad but wholly expected for them to slip away. Nonny, his mother, never shielded Daniel from the harsh realities of Arizonian life. As the community’s only doctor she was responsible for the well being of every man, woman, and child in Mingus. Once Daniel was old enough to sit quietly in the corner while she cleaned a wound or delivered a baby he accompanied her on her rounds.

Nonny held vague notions of apprenticing her oldest child  to her line of work so he could serve one of the several surrounding communities that limped along with occasional visits from nearby doctors in an emergency. One day perhaps Daniel or one of his future children would come back and take over her practice for her. She was still a fairly young woman, but locking eyes with Death so often had whittled her hopes for the future into wholly practical ones. The valley would always need a doctor.

What she wasn’t counting on was locking eyes with Death while her son was away studying. Daniel would have understood if her close contact with sick patients made her ill. It had happened to their last doctor after all, and his absence was a sore spot until Nonny was assigned to the community. He never expected to lose his mother in a drowning accident, though, and his bitter resignation at coming home to take over the farm and raise his younger siblings seeped into the ensuing decades.

In certain ways Daphne reminded him of his mother. Both women were headstrong but quick to change their minds with new evidence, and neither one had ever enjoyed being the centre of attention. Nonny begrudgingly accepted the status that came with being a healer, but she was even less comfortable being counted on to make decisions for the community than Daphne seemed to be at the handful of city council meetings where he had seen her. Even as he harrumphed his way through the vote on the water rights he obviously should have been able to keep for himself from wells that he built and maintained Daniel quietly appreciated Daphne’s desire to protect everyone in the community. Had he been unlucky enough to have a dry well he would have just as loudly insisted that his neighbours share their water with him. It was for these reasons he sought her out on a hot August afternoon.

Daphne felt a familiar tickle of anxiety in her stomach as Daniel entered the backyard. He had been in court enough times to avoid the angry outbursts he’d once been known for, but the withering glare he shot at her when the verdict of his water rights case was announced didn’t make her eager to see him again.

“You need another ombudsmen,” he said matter-of-factly after everyone exchanged pleasantries. “The charter requires there to be at least four of you, and I want to volunteer for the job.” Word about Aunt Lucy’s illness had spread fast, and even if she survived the council needed someone else to vote in her place while she recovered.” Daphne had expected to hear a complaint to be honest – Daniel was very good at sharing those – but Daphne was a little surprised by his offer. Daniel rarely engaged himself in community business unless it directly affected his property. He had a small circle of friends, but he’d never been known as a particularly sociable person even when he was a boy. Sitting in the corner and observing everyone else was much more likely to be his style.

“We appreciate that. Come inside and I’ll get you caught up on what’s been happening lately,” Gerald said when he realized Daphne wasn’t responding. While it was true that they needed another member on their panel Daphne had no idea how the four of them would reach a consensus on anything. Thinking about the logistics of getting four very different people to agree on was enough to bring back one of her skull splitting headaches.

After Gerald briefed Daniel on the scattered stories he had collected the four of them gathered around her dining room table once again to decide how they should respond to the intruders.

“We need to start fighting back,” Daniel said. “They have more manpower, but most of us have lived here our entire lives. We know the terrain better than their machines ever could, and if we move quietly we can cause a lot of chaos in their camps at night.”

“I agree,” Sean said. “If enough of their machines are damaged they’ll have to go home for repairs.”

“We need more information,” Gerald said. “How is it that they know where we are? What do they want from us? Will the gods be angry if we fight back too hard?”

“You make a good point,” Sean said. “We should send up an offering and wait for a sign.” Daphne bit the end of her tongue to prevent a sigh from escaping her lips. Sean’s peacemaking nature and willingness to see things from every point of view was an asset in court, but she wondered if he was going to agree with everything everyone said today. They couldn’t possibly use everyone’s suggestions.

“But we’ve already waited long enough,” Daniel said. “The time to act is now when they least expect it.”

“We don’t know what we’re fighting for or who we’re fighting against.” Gerald was one of the few former soldiers left in the valley. He rarely spoke about the skirmish that cost him a few fingers, but Daphne wondered if he was speaking from experience.

“We know they’re using land that doesn’t belong to them and practicing medicine that does more harm than good. Isn’t that enough? Do you want to be their next target?”

“I think you both make valid points,” Sean said. “We can pray about it and send armed scouts to gather more information.”

“What do you think, Daphne?”

Three heads turned toward the oldest member of the council to see what she had to say about their options.

Try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.

– Rainer Marie Rilke, 1903.

From Letters to a Young Poet, 1927.

This quote tumbled around my mind as I wrote the chapter of After the Storm that will be published tomorrow.