25 October 2004: Thread

Busy. Many classes. Much homework.

Happy. My life is good.

Learning.

The current Paratheatrical Research lab is awesome and beautiful, and very different from all previous ones. We lost one person early on, so now there are ten of us, six women and four men. The youngest (female) is 24, and the oldest (also female) is 83. A dramatic shift from the predominance of young male energy in the Initiations lab. In the Initiations lab, I was an elder; in this lab, I'm the youngest male and the third-youngest participant. Loops, the second-youngest, is the only fellow-particpant close enough to my age to properly qualify as a member of my generation. I still feel like an elder, given the amount of the Work (paratheatrical and otherwise) that I've done, but in this lab there are many elders.

Everyone else in the lab is working with a melody drawn from the land and culture of their genetic ancestors, exploring the ancestral resonances in themselves. I'm working with an Autistic melody, exploring the genetic thread of Autism and its resonances in myself. The thread of Autism is woven through the tapestry of human genetics, surfacing in every culture on every continent. In my ritual interactions with the other participants, I can sense this sometimes: yes, my kind have been among your people... perhaps in your monastaries or synagogues, devoting lifetimes to charting the sacred mathematics embedded in your holy texts; perhaps wandering the streets as village idiots; perhaps designing your cathedrals; perhaps being burned as witches and devil-children; perhaps locked away in madhouses and attics; perhaps creating your arts and sciences.

Autism researcher Lorna Wing has put forth the theory that ancient European legends of "changeling" children, in which Faeries steal human babies and leave Faerie children in thier place, are early references to Autism.

I have a lot of writing to do, about Autism and other things. In response to my to entries at the beginning of this month, Ace sent me an email with some very interesting questions about my views on Autism, which merit in-depth answers. Old Cutter John sent me an email a month ago with some musings about Asperger Syndrome and its relation to the ability to grasp locality of context, to which I also plan to respond at length in this journal. I've got a glacially-paced ongoing email dialogue going with fellow-Aspie Doctor Jones that will need to be excerpted here eventually as well.

Most of that stuff will probably show up here in December, whenever I've finished the last of my assignments for the semester.

This coming Saturday morning, my fellow ritual lab participants and I embark on a paratheatrical field trip, to spend three days doing our ritual work in the wilderness of Pinnacles State Park. I can't think of a better way to spend Halloween. We'll be back sometime Tuesday, after the Election Day terrorist attacks are over, but in time for the beginning of the post-election riots and martial law.

Before martial law is declared, rush out and see I Heart Huckabees, which contains some helpful reminders about karma and reality, and is very, very funny.