National Poetry Writing Month Day 20 - Written on Day 21.
I'm catching up a day. It'll take a lot if I'm going to catch up on all the other days I missed. The day 20 prompt was to write a poem incorporating the vocabulary or imagery of a game.
Because that was challenging enough already I challenged myself more. I chose a game that I have never played. I chose a game for which I don't know the rules.
Why didn't I just stick to something I know well like chess? Or say that Sudoku isn't a puzzle - it's a brain game? No, not me. I have to pick on a game I don't know. A game containing lots of vocabulary that almost nobody would understand if I incorporated it. Do you know about semeai, tesuji and miai? Perhaps you do if you happen to know how to play Go.
I wrote something though. Based on the one word - apart from Go - that I know from the game of Go. That word is atari - a position in which your stone or group has one remaining move. You have to take it but after that you will be captured. If you're in atari you've lost - or at least lost that part of the game.
Picture taken from a BBC report here about an AI program beating the European Go champion. That only happened last year - compare that with how long ago it was the AIs started beating grand masters at chess.
The game of Go does appeal to me in many ways. There's no luck involved. The rules are very simple. The tactics are highly complex. It seems a very elegant game, a lot more so than chess. Perhaps one day I'll learn it. Perhaps too one day I'll return to chess. I was never great at chess but I was okay and for a while improved quickly in my use of forks, skewers and such skills.
Atari
You
said it was just a game. Told me we'd just play together In
black and white simplicity.
We
danced apart, eyed each other Our lines not yet
intersecting. Eventually, inevitably, we met. Lives colliding
on points as Possible turned to impossible. I didn't see your
truth. Only your beauty, The way your flame lit every room.
Your
smile near satanic, you showed false eyes. Laughed hideously as I
was forced To climb that first ladder, pushed aside Into a
corner where you broke a piece from me.
I
built walls. You cut them down. I sought escape. You captured
me. You pushed, squeezed, attacked, Never sacrificed the
smallest territory. I kept wanting to believe your
promises. Wouldn't leave the game. Couldn't leave go.
It's
almost over now. Knife to my throat. Gun to my heart. Just one
move to make. I want to run. There is no field left. Not even a
hole to hide, cowering alone. One move. Between survival and
annihilation. One last stone to place. All options gone. Liberty
stolen. Manipulated, massacred me.
You
look at me and grin, softly coax me And even now I want to
believe. You love me. You just want to play. I place the stone.
Plead with you to stop. You, triumphantly howling, make your
move. The ground of battle reverberates hollow. As you break me
one final time.
It's day twenty-one of National Poetry Writing Month.
A quickish effort this morning in haiku metre, finished just in time to get to a doctor's appointment about my mental health.
The poem is about something my dad used to say. If he ever said it. I know we believed he said it. Here's a photo of my dad taken forty years ago on the occasion our car ate him.
I have been struggling a lot with mental health. Unable to write. Yesterday I at least managed something. Hopefully today more will follow. Two short tries at poetry. One was written by my soft toy. I'm not sure he's written a poem before and he's very pleased with himself. The prompt - which I only half read - was about creation myths.
The photo, only marginally connected to the poems is of a monk in prayer. He lives at Hulne Abbey which I'll blog about soon if I can manage it.
My
Literalist Life
I
was there:
From
the moment at which light was spoken into being
To
the tranquil potential of a populated planet
Breathing
in silent anticipation as the seventh day dawned.
I
was one who found imprisoned joy in the story.
And
not just a story. A life, an unquestioned reality.
When
the garden was planted I watched, wide open eyes,
As
my three-in-one creator sowed full grown trees
And
with a wave of his hand lifted prairie grass to stand tall.
I
saw as dust became man, rib became woman.
Traced
my own lineage back through royalty to Eden.
With
horror I saw the serpent, cunning as politicians
Hiding
lies under truths, consequences under promises
And
their own damnation under press conferences.
I
witnessed the apple, the folly of the bite, Elohim's just wrath
And
felt the pain of inheritance, damned sin in my heart,
Then
walked with my parents as we were cast out of Eden
Only
to spend each waking hour trying to locate my paradise.
Two poems for National Poetry Writing Month, day seven.
Both based loosely on the same prompt - taken by the prompt author from a blog she kept for a year which is massively worth looking at if you want some interesting writing prompts to work with. There are 365 of them which is enough to keep anyone busy for a while.
One poem is autobiography. Apart from some changes. I am very fortunate in that I don't have to worry so much about the near future. Very fortunate that I know I'll have food next week without relying on the wonderful work done by food banks. Fortunate that my cash isn't going to run out. Others receiving a similar result and possibly going through some of the same difficulties I encounter may not be so fortunate. I'm screwed by the system. They are well passed being screwed and into a realm where adequate words are hard to find.
The tribunal was real though, as was the result. Apologies for the language in it - it's all from the heart.
The other poem is not autobiography.
The two photographs were taken December 2016 in Manchester's Northern Quarter.
Day 7. Witnessing a swarm.
In this case, the swarm of thoughts in
my head after a benefits tribunal this morning. (Kind of - I'm far
less worried than these lines would suggest.) It's not great writing.
It's a swarm. Dumped almost verbatim.
Christ, what am I going to do?
What the hell were they thinking?
Why didn't they listen?
I'm an idiot, couldn't explain.
Couldn't get my words out -
Just nodded my head in understanding
When I didn't have a bloody clue
What any of them were on about.
I couldn't process it, needed it
written.
And they kept talking, words, I think.
English words. But not to my brain
Could have been Spanish, or alien
invader.
Or the nonsense of some failed
Pentecostal tongue.
I wouldn't have known. And they think I
did.
I know I'm not alone among
The recently dispossessed masses,
The despairing disabled, their support
stolen.
But how the hell is that thought
Going to help me when my cash runs out?
Oh God, help me, perhaps only you can.
And posh people say to use a food bank.
Tell me it's some idyllic panacea,
Luxury living, permanent five star
cruise.
Be humble enough to be a charity case.
“Pop along there woman. You'll be
fine.”
And I would. I got no pride to lose
I'd be gladly grateful for the help.
But didn't they listen when I told them
My head explodes and implodes
Simultaneously, whenever I think about
food.
And twelve times a day besides.
Didn't understand when I tried to
express
How solidly screwed I can be
In a hundred different ways.
If only some of them matched up
With the holes in my D.I.Y. life
project.
So they cast me out on my ass
Disabled. But not quite enough.
Can we impeach the whole bloody
government
For this? For the rest too?
I didn't vote for them. And Mistress
May, dominatrix,
Sits there talking of protecting the
vulnerable
While taking more cash, more bloody
influence
For the greed of her Satanic comrades.
Our leader, claiming Christianity as
her inspiration
Watches as the great Sermon on The
Mount
Is trampled, torn, burned, and
forgotten.
As for the likes of us blessed poor,
We can't tear and burn Parliament.
We can't even be sure of our next meal.
This was the day the Tories fucked me
over.
Christ, what am I going to do?
Day 7b: Witness To The Swarm
Screaming.
Get 'em off me
They're everywhere
Can't breathe
Jackie! Get in here.
No. Don't.
Stay away
It hurts.
They hurt.
Noises
As glass bottles
Shatter on the floor
As I hear her flail
Arms on shelves
Legs beating
Into furniture.
Strangled shouts
Three points past panic
Why couldn't you
Have closed the window?
You've killed me.
Door unlocked. I walked in. Her fear
was real. The object of her fear too. A queen wasp on bathroom
window. Low, mean buzzing. She pushed me out. Told me it was for my
own good. Told me one of us should live. I returned as soon as I
could. Rolled up newspaper in hand. Smashed the bastard as hard as I
could.
In relieved realisation she fell to the
floor, knee cut on the glass.
The official National Poetry Writing Month prompt for day five was to write a poem based in the natural world. Preferable a part of it that the writer has experienced often. An idea formed in my head for this. A view that I saw many times throughout my childhood and my adult life too. There was a lot of natural - and cultivated - material in that view.
But my mind's eye focused on one point in that view. And the idea had to change.
The Tank
Cross Lavington valley
Eyes lifted to plain's edge.
Borderland of war games.
Again, our laughter: Full-groan
At an old familiar joke.
“I can see a tank, can you?”
We were safe in humour,
Knitting our family with
Threads of shared stories.
Thirty well-lived years of
Custard crumble, garden golf,
Of smiles poured from that first
teapot.
Of a choice of two unchanged
Walks to village store past
Recollections of the Noddy house,
Comments of kingfishers and
Staring again at the bubbling kettle
And then the child angel in the
graveyard.
All a little older. But still the same.
Then, the death of the favoured uncle.
The world shivered, became less safe
Without his smiled acceptance.
That was the year they removed
The water tank from the hill.
The joke passed away too into memory.
Only the angel remains now.
Watcher over that which was lost.
There's truth in the above. Also a bit of fiction and a bit of truth bending. Much still remains - the favoured aunt is there and if I manage to visit there will probably be custard and crumble. The bubbling kettle will still be there too and the walks into the village from her home on the hill. For anyone wondering, there's a YouTube video of the bubbling kettle, posted by lavingtoncurator. Posted therefore by the favoured uncle. Or possibly the favoured aunt. You may not be excited by this.
As for the Noddy House, that was demolished in 1984. The favoured uncle wrote something about it here: https://marketlavingtonmuseum.wordpress.com/tag/tudor/ I entered it once as a child when it was empty and probably not long before it was demolished.
The child angel is in St. Mary's churchyard in Market Lavington. On many visits to the village photographs would be taken with the angel. Here, last year, are my two soft toy friends enjoying the angel's company.
This is going to be a totally niche post and the first time I've posted something this year filled with photographs from a day out.
If you're not completely fascinated by the gateway to an empty cemetery look away now. Or read on anyway. Come to think of it that would be a decent writing prompt wouldn't it? The Gateway to an Empty Cemetery. Source of a thousand stories.
A couple of days ago, in a total fit of determination to not be ill anymore I went out walking, one of my little adventures to somewhere I've never been before. I'd had a very miserable weekend and on Sunday night decided. "Enough is enough. I'm going somewhere. Can't have another day of feeling like this." So I got out the local OS maps. Looked up to Alnwick. And there, just to the west I saw a name. Hulne Park. Obviously a private estate. No public footpaths marked anywhere on the copyright 2002 Landranger Map number 81. No public footpaths at all. But it was so close to Alnwick that it appealed as an easy enough place to get to. So I looked the place up online. Wonder of wonders! Joy of joys! There's public access to certain routes in the estate.
The park is part of the Northumberland Estates of the Dukes of Northumberland and is open most days from 11am. The estates offer a single page PDF map that shows the permitted walks. Without looking for a single picture of the estate I decided. I was going. I would walk the longest of the three routes and add on a bit so I could go and see this thing on the map called a tower.
I hadn't really got a clue what I'd see and I very nearly didn't see any of it. While my bus was approaching Alnwick I formulated an alternative plan. I was very close to using it. Plan B was to catch a bus to Alnmouth and walk up the coast to Craster - about 8 miles. I'm sure I'd have had a wonderful day by the sea. I've seen a small part of that route before. The paths pass through Howick where I was once taken by a friend. The very first photos taken on my old phone on a trip out were taken in Howick. That was a special day, the first day since moving here that I truly realised that I was blissfully at home in the middle of nowhere. I lay on a rock by the sea while my friend went off and did her thing - something related to being a witch - and I felt more peace than I'd felt in a very long time.
How quick I am to forget that I belong in some way under the open sky or in the woodland surrounded only by the nature sounds and the life of the earth.
How quick? Judge for yourself. This was the first day I've gone out somewhere new this year and walked in peacefulness.
The coast walk can wait until another day. Hulne Park awaited. I'll share more general photos soon of views, discuss the walk and share lots of pictures of Hulne Abbey which is the oldest Carmelite settlement in Britain dating to the 13th Century.
Today though I'm showing you pictures of a gate. In 2007 the Duchy of Northumberland established a new cemetery on their estate in the prettiest of spots. The Percy Family Memorial Garden. I'm told it's still empty which can only be good news for the family. I have to say that if I had any desire for my corpse to end up in an attractive place then I might choose such a spot, high on a hill and looking across open land to Cheviot and, I guess, a little bit of Scotland might be visible too. I'll show you the view next time. For now though, the gate:
Aren't they great? They were made by a blacksmith named Stephen Lunn although, as someone I talked to on Monday said, he's much more than a blacksmith. The gates were unveiled in 2008 and the cemetery beyond is planned to serve the family for the next 450 years.
The metal tree in the centre of the memorial garden, rooted to the rock.
For day five of National Poetry Writing month one of the prompts was based around a tragedy that took place in Boston in 1925. The ceiling of a dance club collapsed and forty-four people died. I wrote a not very good poem before getting out this morning in which someone is pleased to see God's will being done. Reading later I found that there were preachers who had said such things - just as there are preachers after every tragedy talking about God's will. It's awful that some have such a view of a God who is meant to be love.
And then I happened upon a long hymn. And realised it is in a book that still adorns my shelves. I wrote this before rushing out of the house to go and write some more:
In my Catholic days I was a big fan of
Saint Louis-Marie Grignon de Monfort, author of True Devotion to
Mary, Secret of the Rosary, and many other works. I made the act of
total consecration according to his way of doing things. I hold very
different beliefs now but still have his complete works on my
shelves, books that are a part of my history.
I wrote the
following lines this morning and then looked up to see if anyone
actually said things like this. There were Christians of the day
denouncing jazz. Of course there were, and evangelicalism and
fundamentalism were on the rise in the US. The papers and tracts
called “The Fundamentals” from where we get the word
fundamentalism were published the previous decade. In my
fundamentalist Protestant days I owned them too.
I quickly
found a hymn by Louis-Marie, reproduced on a Catholic forum I used to
be an part of. No, you can't have my forum name! Here's the
penultimate verse of his poetry:
God often severely
punishes Dancers with sudden death, In a moment vomiting Their
accursed souls. From balls and games, Suddenly they fall into
hell.
Yeah,
I'm God obsessed. Give me another ten years and I might have worked
the scars of my versions of faith out of my flesh.
I'm not
sure Louis-Marie would be very impressed by the music and dance
events held at St. Dominic's RC Church centre in Newcastle. I'm not
impressed by these lines. Head struggling again so I've constrained
myself to 5 syllable lines for no apparent reason!
Three short poems for day three of National Poetry Writing Month.
I'd love to have more energy to write something following one of the prompts. Never mind. It's been a great day. I decided I would be well and my decision worked well enough that I could go somewhere I've never been before, walk eight miles, and see some great things. I'll get all my photos onto the laptop soon and blog them. They won't be writing blogs but since I haven't managed to post on my other blog at all this year - and added all the old posts to this blog - I might as well post about my little adventures here.
For now though three poems. All based, loosely or tightly, on incidents that have affected me over the weekend. The first hit me. I never knew Amy Bleuel but her idea has helped many people including people I do know. I don't like tattoos at all really but even I've been half-tempted.
News of her death, by suicide, touched me more than I would have expected. And I think of myself too. For all the times I could have been a full stop. I am a semicolon and I continue. For that I count myself very fortunate indeed. And it's not something I ever want to take for granted.
Sad news. Very sad. As I type I am wanting to cry.
It's the second day of National Poetry Writing Month. A poem a day for a month. I am dreading it!
I'm still ill. Yesterday I couldn't focus on reading a prompt at all, let alone writing a poem. Today I've made an attempt. The official prompt was simply to write something inspired by a recipe. Marie, who runs the Writers' Cafe here is also producing prompts for every day of the month but today I chose the official one. Mainly because my processing skills weren't up to the unofficial prompt.
Writing very quickly this came out. I'd apologise for the horrible word but we really did have this recipe and my mum cooked it frequently. Those biscuits were gorgeous. Just a shame about the name.
I have searched for a picture of the biscuits. There were none. Here instead is a picture of a cake cooked by my mum. This one went a little bit wrong. I think too of the time she used self raising flour instead of icing sugar. And the memorable occasion when turmeric was replaced in a recipe by the same quantity of a hot chilli.
You too would not forget
If your tranquility was overthrown
By a piercing shout of
“Get the nignogs out of the oven.”
Nineteen eighty-one
Brixton was rioting
And deep-down we knew
It was wrong
To mould a dozen nignogs
Into acceptable form.
Baking them until their
Skin was crisp.
That's what the book called them.
Though we laughed at the name
We never thought to change
What was printed, black and white.
Didn't think it racist.
Not properly. It's just a name.
We thought we were free
From the ugly stains of hate.
And we were. Mostly.
At least, partly.
When it came to nignogs,
All we cared about
Was the way that crisp shell
Would break into softly hidden joys.
Sugary oats, magically transmogrified
Into biscuits: Pale, not black
beauties.
And our own sensory satisfaction
Purged what we knew of justice.
Until the shout.
My mother on the doorstep
Deeply held in agreeable conversation
With a family from our street.
Immigrants from South London estates.
From shock to shouting to shame.
To a change of name.
To an intentionally mislaid recipe
book.
To flapjack friendships.
I am told that my own voice always comes through in my writing. It's a compliment. But it got me thinking about my voice. I look at other people's poetry and I confess I sometimes compare. I shouldn't, but I do. They have so many interesting turns of phrase, use long words and imagery that I'm sure is rich. I struggle with all of those. As a writer but also as a listener.
I think it's because of the form my autism takes. Verbal processing can be very hard work for me. If you say something I have to put a lot of mental energy into understanding you. And the more complicated it is the harder it is.
In addition, though I know autistic people are meant to be extremely visual people, in many ways I'm not. We're all meant to be savants who can see a complex scene and draw it from memory. We're meant to see all our thoughts and have an inner life of pictures. That's the stereotype and there are autistic people for whom it's true. I'm not one of them. In other ways though I'm a bit stereotypical. I'm not good at metaphor (unless I invent it) so if someone else uses metaphor it takes me time to work out that I'm not meant to be taking them literally. I can be the same with idiom. When the metaphor or idiom is unfamiliar it will take me a lot longer.
What that means in practice for performance poetry is that I very often can't keep up. I just can't and it's possibly not a skill I will ever learn. Use combinations of long words and I'm lost. Use fantastic imagery and I'm lost.
If someone reads out their work I can still be trying to process the first line for meaning when they've finished their third line. Their work might be worthy of a dozen literary awards. But I'll have missed it. I hate it that I miss so much of what people read. Hate it that even if they repeated their performance I'd still miss it. Unless I had the words before me and had been able to prepare in advance by reading it myself over and over again.
All of which means that part of what is "my voice" is a result of lacking in verbal processing skills. My voice is simple. It's often conversational. It can be playful. And it will never contain the word "terpsichorean" instead of "dancer". In short, my written voice is often my spoken voice. It is me and I don't know how to be another. Nor do I want to. Except somehow I'll have to of course when crafting these characters for the eventual novel or perhaps for future excursions into acting.
I write as I would speak it. I write almost so I can speak it. I did the same when preaching. If I'd been ill and presented a fully written sermon to someone else to read out it would have sounded rubbish. But when I read it the words became a lively language and people felt them. I wonder if that'll be the case with poems too.
Today I sat for a while in a cafe. I'd gone into the city centre but hadn't made it there because I was not up to it. Mentally I was a knot of anxiety. Physically I wish I was well again. This evening I'm really not in great shape.
However, the cafe. While I was there I began a set of writing exercises given by the writer Ali Smith, who doesn't enjoy giving writing exercises. There are seven of them and I played with the first two. This blog post contains the results. Unedited. One day I will edit something.
I find that both of these results are almost autobiographical.
The triumph (for me) today is that I entered a writing competition. I have a marginally greater than zero chance of winning a prize for the three pieces of flash fiction I submitted. It doesn't matter that there are many better writers than me who will have entered the competition. What matters is that I enjoyed the writing.
The first exercise involved writing a few sentences and emotions in a particular way. The instruction then was to choose one sentence and write from it. This happened:
Separated from her peers, she could only watch each bubble as it burst into nothing at the surface of her drink. It was one of her bad days. A glass of coke was all her mind could process. Falling into herself, falling into an almost infinitesimal galaxy she fought with each heartbeat for her own survival, hoping the world beyond the glass would not intrude upon that centre of chaotic calm.
She shut out the people, the conversations. Shut out the music too. Initially she'd been enjoying listening. Jazz playing softly. For a while. Then it became like a broken cacophony, as if Stockhausen were playing a cruel joke on Schoenberg. She blocked it out, blocked it out, "I WILL not hear it" and shut down one mental and emotional faculty after another.
Now only the glass remained. One focus. One life. One eye in the hurricane. It was as though each single bubble sang one note of a song, sang the language of purpose, shining brightly as it burst. Consider the bubbles. They grow and die in a moment yet God arrays them with joy. She was content to watch. Content just to be with her drink, resisting all temptation to try to impose order, knowing the apparent patterns of popping were just illusions.
And then she realised. The bright light of the bubble was its unfettered death cry. The bubble only had purpose in her drink when it was nothing. The moment it birthed itself, called out its own vigorous shape, that was the moment it died too. Lost in the air they became a nothing of greater or lesser magnitude. She knew in that instant that death was life and life was death and that her bad day and her reduction of the world to bubbles was more real than each time she shouted her own importance to the world.
She wept. Weeping, she saw beyond the glass. Noticed again the cafe customers surrounding her. On her table, a single staple, half folded, and she considered where it might have come from. A staple, failing in purpose as the staper incorrectly stamped it into a government document. A staple, fallen from a magazine. A staple out of place and isolated on varnished wood. She convinced herself she was that staple. She wept again. She was wrong.
A hand on her shoulder. A face, radiating compassion. A query. "Are you okay? Can I help in any way?"
She wept again. Fiercely. A hug replaced the hand.
Bubbles continued to sing their joy.
Unobserved. It didn't matter.
_______________________
The second exercise was one of those "Here are some words. Choose three. Put them in a paragraph or story or poem." The difference here was that I don't know the meaning of most of the words. That didn't matter for the exercise. The words could mean nothing or be given new meanings.
"I can't do it. I just can't do it. I'm useless."
Jill looked at Lucy with tears in her eyes.
"You can. I promise. I know it's not easy for you but give it another try. You never know what might happen."
Jill tried to calm down, took deep breaths, and bravely picked up the cribble again.
"Okay, I'll try. If you tell me exactly what to do."
Lucy picked up her cribble and pressed it into the obovate.
"Look. Like this. Don't worry about how it comes out. Just treat it as a game."
Lucy pulled out the cribble and pressed it into the obovate again. Harder. So a bigger mark was made.
"Now you do it."
Gingerly, Jill pressed her cribble into the surface of her own obovate.
"This is so scary."
"I know it is. You're doing great. You can wiggle it if you like and swap colours too. Just have fun with it. Don't try to be a grandmaster."
Jill pulled the cribble out and looked at the mark it had made. A small pink circle, fading towards the edges.
"Hey, I'm going to do blue next. And wiggle it like you said."
By the end of the evening Jill was smiling. Her obovate was covered in colour. It didn't look like anything in particular but that didn't matter. It was still pretty and it was her own work.
As Jill was leaving, Lucy hugged her tightly and said, "I'm so proud of you. You're amazing. You thought you would never be able to incarnadine but you did it. That's pretty special."
Jill laughed as she said "And if I can incarnadine, what might I do next?"
[Note: All photos in this post are taken from the gratitude diary I kept throughout 2016. Note too that I pretty much free wrote the following. It's not an essay, struggled over for weeks.]
I am a great believer in gratitude.
It's no secret that I have plenty of hard days, that my mental health is sometimes shot to pieces in ways that make it hard to see the light.
Yet there is light. There is always light somewhere. Always awe, always wonder. Feeling the warmth of the sun in the day - or the strength of the storm when the sun is hidden. Watching the night sky and considering how far away each point of light is from us and from each other. Or smiling at the closer lights of Jupiter, Mars, and Venus, the glorious face of the moon, and the chance of spotting the International Space Station.
Sunrise, viewed from Cullercoats
Today I could be miserable. Mentally I'm finding today very tough. I am also anxious about something I can't change. My thought patterns run wild. I could be telling myself I have nothing much to celebrate. There was a time I couldn't find positives. I would sit for an hour with a piece of paper to write a list. Sometimes I only wrote one thing. Sometimes I wrote nothing.
Yes the positives were there and are here now. I sit on a comfortable sofa surrounded by soft toys and books. Music is playing and I had the freedom to choose to play it. In this room I have a guitar, a bubble gun, art materials, and many photograph albums covering my entire life. I have notebooks, a giant rosary on the wall (honest!), pictures on the walls - some drawn by a friend, blankets, a clarinet, and a window letting in light. Through that window I see a tree and the sky and I hear the singing of the birds.
Beyond this room I have family. I have friends too. Most of my friendships are recently formed. Because I have chosen to go out and meet people. Some are embryonic, some more full fledged. I can travel into the city centre and get involved with all kinds of things run by good people. And - as much as my health allows - I'm choosing to do that.
I refuse to not live. And I strive to be grateful for what I have, who I am, and the opportunities around me.
I began to learn more about the power of gratitude last year. I joined an online gratitude group. The idea was that each day members would post words or photos expressing gratitude for something in their lives. It didn't have to be a big thing. Whether it was a plate of beans on toast or a massive life changing event didn't matter. I posted in that group nearly every day - I missed ten over the course of the year. Focusing on the positive in that way helped me, one of many things last year that helped me. Seeing other people post their positives helped too. And for me it changed my life. There were plenty of days on which I would go out and seek positives and find previously unimagined things for which I could be grateful.
In short, I believe in gratitude. I don't believe in ignoring the horrible parts of life or pretending they don't exist. This isn't some method of positive thinking that loses sight of realism. I believe in acc-ent-u-ating the positive. But not e-lim-i-nating the negative.
Recently I decided I wanted to go further. I don't just want to be thankful. I want to act in thankfulness. If I am thankful for a person, to say so. If I am thankful for an organisation, to say so. If I'm thankful for the great cake at a cafe, to say so. Not just to myself. Not just in an online group. But to the person, organisation, cafe or whatever else I am grateful to and for.
As an intentional part of this process I have begun a little project. I wouldn't have thought of it without the suggestions of a friend who pretty much came up with the idea. Together we brainstormed - and I really hate that word! - and came up with a plan.
We, as autistic people, would seek to thank those people - especially but not exclusively the not-autistic people - who have helped us, supported us, and accepted us. There were events leading up to this decision. I don't need to recount them here. Let it just be said that on a recent occasion one of us was badly hurt and mentally wounded by a group of autistic people who treated us very badly and didn't accept our autistic needs. It was a group of not-autistic people who came to the rescue. They understood, accepted, and gave lots of support through what was an extremely difficult situation. We looked at this situation knowing there had been betrayal by our own community and acceptance outside it. The one of us who was hurt didn't behave badly and wasn't being mean to anyone.
Autistic Pride Wrist
As we talked together, that group of non-autistic people was the first thought of to be thanked. They really were marvelous.
But then my friend took it further. Why not thank other non-autistic (neurotypical, allistic) people and organisations? The ones whose actions and attitudes can be described as examples of good practice. The ones who believe in us and lift us up. The ones who encourage us to be the best versions of ourselves we can be. The ones who will sit with us in silence. The ones who will see us through meltdowns and shutdowns. The ones eager to learn and understand if they don't already. The inclusive ones. The ones for whom autism acceptance and appreciation is already a given. Why not thank them?
I'd been getting annoyed by some things I'd seen online in autistic communities. Particularly the way people can be treated if we perceive them not to be doing things just right. I might agree that the things aren't right. I'm no big fan of ABA or Autism Speaks and there are far worse things than either of those. But I'm less of a fan of the times that people who might like ABA are made out to be evil. They're not evil. They're doing their best and children given ABA or restricted diets or any of the rest of it have parents who love them and want the very best for their autistic children. While I might disagree about methods I'm not going to disagree about love.
I think there's a tendency online to find a bad particular situation and apply it broadly. Not just with autism. In every sphere. Take politics - hey, the UK is leaving the EU and there are many memes telling how the people who voted to leave are majorly racist. Some might be. But I firmly believe most are not. Of course they're not. Or Muslims get called terrorists. And all Christians get called homophobic bigots. The particular is applied too widely.
A woman wants to cure her child. That gets applied to many women until, in extreme cases, the "autism mums" are all seen as bad mothers who hate their children. In reality of course nearly all of them deeply love their children and may be desperate to get them the best support there is. Because they do need support - raising a severely autistic child isn't exactly easy. Sometimes desperation may lead to unwise paths. Sometimes. But not to unloving paths.
Then there's Julia. The new autistic character on Sesame Street. One of the most autism positive things I've ever seen, as least on a TV show. The puppeteer's son is autistic. The designer of Julia felt very strongly about things because of all the autistic children he's known. And the makers of the show have tried to do as good a job as they can having decided where on the spectrum Julia might be.
I have seen so many posts about how Julia is a terrible thing and how the makers of Sesame Street should be ashamed. I don't need to give the reasons I've read. Many of them were total rubbish. Perhaps the makers need to continue to learn. That's true and they say so themselves. Perhaps Julia isn't some totally perfect autistic character, perfectly portraying every aspect of the condition. It looks like she'll do a very good job though.
So I've been getting saddened when, especially online, the autistic community can sometimes [The word there is sometimes, not often. That's deliberate.] spend a lot more time and energy blasting things and not much time at all congratulating people and organisations for the good they do. We can get so stressed about whether we are autistic or have autism (and we can't agree on that ourselves) that we miss the picture of caring non-autistic people working their butts off for the sake of autistic people.
The Autistic Fringe Yurt, Edinburgh 2016
We decided we wanted to say thank you for the good. Not ignore the bad. But say thank you for the good. So my friend and I planned. I confess she was the instigator of the whole thing. Our planning didn't take long.
April is known as Autism Acceptance Month. It's a month in which many of us will campaign to be accepted. And I will be glad to campaign - as long as autistic children
suffer, while there aren't resources for brilliant child-centred early
intervention, while adult support can be almost nonexistent, while
people push for cures or in desperation use bleach solutions, while the
situation elsewhere may be far worse than in the UK, and so on. As long as there's
a need I am happy to campaign.
But my friend and I want to spend the month rejoicing over the places and people where we are already accepted. We want to rejoice over good practice. We want to rejoice that there are lots and lots of great people out there. Both of us know that there is much campaigning still to be done on many fronts. Here in the UK and across the world.
So what are we doing? My friend has bought cards and found out addresses. She is sending personal thank you cards to people throughout the month of April. "You've done this for me. I appreciate it and you. Thank you for your support/care/acceptance/creative compassion." Or something like that.
I have started a Facebook page. This one: https://www.facebook.com/AutisticThanks/
I plan to publicly thank someone each day in April and to let them know that they have been thanked. Sometimes I'll have to anonymise what I write on Facebook - but they'll know who they are because I will thank them privately.
We'll thank the people who behave like this for us.
My hope is that other autistic people will be a part of the page and thank those who have helped them, accepted them, loved them, supported them, in large ways and small. My hope is that autistic friends might join in the game and maybe some autistic strangers too. My hope is that the page will be a place filled with gratitude and positivity. I also hope that others might see the page, see what kind of things autistic people appreciate and seek to act along those lines.
It's a little daunting though. I have to find thirty people and groups to thank and I haven't made my list yet. I've also got the first thoughts of another project in mind that will take a lot more work than posting thirty things on a Facebook page.
Beyond that I don't know what will happen.
One of my soft toys enjoying Greenbelt festival.
We hope to bring smiles to ourselves and each other as we remember all the good people in our worlds.
We both hope that we can bring smiles to people and encourage them for what they're doing and being for us.
We hope that our simple thank yous will enrich the lives of those around us.
We hope too that saying thank you will not prove controversial. I've already been told that it is and I've had grumbles about we poor marginalised autistic people thanking privileged neurotypical people. Enough of that. Please. I know we could thank autistic people - for a start we could thank each other for acceptance. But this time, just this once, we're going to look outside the autistic community and hand out a whole load of gold stars and celebrate autism acceptance in our own possibly peculiar way.
Autism Acceptance Month begins in two days. This year I am looking forward to it.
