In 1951, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein informed a friend that his later work should carry the motto that comes from Shakespeare’s King Lear: “I’ll teach you differences.” I can’t pretend to be able to teach you differences, but I can certainly tell you of differences. Today (September 2021) I received the diagnosis of ASC. From my own perspective, it was never in doubt. As soon as my doctor, having listened and probed my complaints of ‘social anxiety,’ ‘suggested’ tactfully the possibility of AS on my part, I have known the explanation of my life-long struggles.
I see – and hear - EVERYTHING AT ONCE, loud and large, without filters and without editors. I have no brakes and no boundaries. This can be the source of great creativity as I seek to establish connections and make leaps that others can’t see. Maybe my concern to see patterns everywhere, and discern the underlying meanings and purposes at work in reality, causes me to see things that don’t exist. But my intuitions fit the idea of interconnection which many support. I also go further than the objective world and its physical processes to examine the subjective world of human relationships, the interpersonal world of phenomenal experience. The latter is the hardest world of all to understand. There are many people who affirm the unity of subjectivity and objectivity only to make the subjectivity they offer as insome way a function or epiphenomenon of the objectivity that is their main, indeed almost exclusive, focus. Scrutinize such a view in any depth and you soon see it as a more sophisticated version of the old dualism, with the accent placed heavily on an objectivity as a truth and reality that human ‘subjects’ must subordinate themselves to and obey. That is no subjectivity at all. There is no sense of human beings as conscious and creative moral agents playing a proactive role in the ceaselessly creative universe, responding to the call to be ‘God’s partners in Creation.’ If 'freedom is the appreciation of necessity,' then the most important term here is not the ‘necessity’ that is the base reality nor the 'freedom' that is to be attained, but the ‘appreciation’ that mediates the relation between the two. This 'appreciation' pertains to the practical engagement, the dialogue, the interchange, the praxis, will, and consciousness as it apprehends reality. And that process is far more difficult to grasp than identifying and stating the facts of physical existence. Some people have a pronounced tendency to identify truth and the real world with objective facts and processes for the simple reason that it is easy and offers the certainty they seek. I deal with the hard stuff, the complicated, messy creatures that human beings are. It is so much easier to dismiss the myriad phenomena of human thought, belief, will, desire, dream, and deed as mere illusion, secondary to a true reality which one simply has to accept as truth. But that view of reality is crude and one-dimensional, a flatland, what Blake denounced as ‘single vision.’ It is reality with the complex areas left out. It is easy to denigrate human beings as creatures with a tendency to get things wrong and mess things up. But stating the certainties of the objective world doesn't remotely solve the problem, merely evades it.
I note the tendencies of very many with AS to seek a domain of certainty beyond the vagaries and visissitudes of the human social world. Temple Grandin does this repeatedly in her book 'Thinking in Pictures.' There, she writes at length on Einstein and his yearning for something unchanging and certain outside of the human realm. I, possibly, have expressed precisely that same yearning in my work on transcendent standards, 'rational freedom,' and on Dante. But, in my concern that these transcendent truths be incarnated in time and space I came to develop a keen interest in the realm of practical reason - human beings and how they act and behave in light of knowledge, and how they in turn generate knowledge as moral agents within a ceaselessly creative and participatory universe. That is something that is so much more than objectivity and constitutes my 'special interest.'
I work in the complex zone. I know the world to be complex, even chaotic and disordered. And I know human beings to be messy, difficult, wilful, and contrary. The unchanging symbols and objective certainties that some seek pertain to a world of icy and inert forms, yielding a view that is doomed to remaining other-worldly. It was not a mistake that Dante made. He journey to the Empyrean Heaven in order to bring its standards down to Earth, to be assimilated by human beings and incorporated into their practices. How else are such truths to be realized? Subordination and submission via authoritarian imposition? What, then, becomes of freedom, presuming that anyone things anything of freedom? Dante emphasised free will as God's 'greatest gift' for a very good reason with respect to the incarnation of the transcendent. Recourse to surrogacy here is diversion and perversion rather than realisation.
There are two views here.
We can take the simple and easy route to reality and dismiss free will as a delusion. That way lies elitism, irrelevance, and endless lamentation. It is premised on an anthropological - and democratic - pessimism, taking elitist stances on truth and reality that are destined to be ignored on account of being utterly divorced from the motivational economy of very real human beings. Hence the tendency of those who hold such views to advocate authoritarian modes of imposition. Such people tend not to have much time for politics, limiting the role of poltiics to the acceptance of pre-political truths. That view is a dead-end, either being ignored or, worse, realised, only to be swallowed up in the dynamics of power, its pursuit and retention.
Or we can take free will seriously as ‘God’s greatest gift.’ My provocative statement of the alternatives here is quite deliberate. Because I know fine well that the liveliest minds of the age have repudiated God and religion and will run a mile from the second option, nce they have been revived with smelling salts. Less provocatively, I note the tendency to scotomize will and consciousness insofar as these things cannot be reduced to and read-off from science, usually the latest neurononsense that continues to peddle the promise of discarding ethics and moral codes as 'made up.'. That promise is not merely empty, it is an evasion. Basically, there are very many people who are leery of having their personal choices of the good – likes and dislikes - bound or constrained by a supra-individual moral code or law, but are willing (which is in itself an exercise of free will in its denial) to accept some external imposition of reality via ‘Nature’ or ‘science.’ This is a statement of unwarranted authority, the attempt to impose an authoritative standard by pure reification. And I vehemently reject it in favour of an explicitly moral stance. Morality is the embodiment of human moral agency at a degree of (creative) independence from physical existence. That is the complex terrain I work in. It is the terrain that many persist in denouncing as secondary at best, a delusion at worst. I see them as forever stranded in their half-worlds, realities without personalities. The presumption seems to be that once the truth about reality is objectively stated, people will come running in obedience and subservience. That they don’t acts only as a cue for lamentation, and thinly veiled demands and threats with respect to authoritarian imposition upon the recalcitrant material that is the human world. Either this, or the external and involuntary imposition of necessity via 'Nature.' Living in a world of chaos, uncertainty, and insecurity I crave order. But not any order and not at any price. I crave true order. And I vehemently reject the taste for an engineered and imposed certainty in the name of ‘necessity.’ The 'Nature' that such people propose is no more than en empty signifier, 'Nature' as revealed through the reified voice of science within prevailing social and historical relations.
Hence when I say that I work in the field of interconnection, I mean precisely that – not just the physical processes, which are the easiest things of all to map, but most especially the human processes, which are by far and away the most difficult. Too many focus on the former thinking that such work will do the job of politics and ethics. In their reasoning they presume that the field of practical reason - politics and ethics – is secondary to physics. This is crude, simplistic, and plain wrong and has political consequences which are debilitating when not plain authoritarian. The trick is not to oppose physics to politics and ethics, claiming the priority or superiority of the one over the other, but to bring the two in relation. The dualism that pits one reality against the other is precisely the problem which causes us to lose sight of and purchase on the whole integral reality.
But I am straying from my main concern here. The point is that in my head, all things are interconnected. One idea quickly becomes a thousand, with an immediacy that is difficult to control. I suspect that one reason that my views have not become more influential is the sheer volume of words with which I express them. The seemingly endless words that I write come from my sense of interconnection, but exhaust the limited resources of others.
I speculate that my condition makes it easier for me to grasp the infinity that is God, God as a never-ending Love Story. ‘Where is the evidence?’ is the constant challenge from sceptics. The same question arises with respect to my condition of AS. It is an invisible disability, so people don’t see it. People struggle to see the intangibles, let alone understand these are the deepest reality of all. They don’t see them, therefore they consider that they don’t exist. I know that I exist and I know that my condition is real, even if most others fail to see it. Even with a diagnosis of AS, I expect to be called upon constantly to provide proof and evidence on demand. And I anticipate that I will still not be understood.
I have needed numbers to enable me to go direct to reality and the truth about reality. But I struggle with numbers. I struggle with many things. I can't drive. I worked for over ten years in distribution and would have loved to have been a postman. But you need a driving licence to work for the Royal Mail now. In fact, you need a driving licence for most jobs, it seems, from hospital porter to street cleaning. The solution, then, is obvious – learn to drive! People really do think problems with respect to ASC are solved as easily as that. Explain that you struggle with left and right, can’t read roads, suffer sensory overload, and blank out as a result of receiving too much stimulus, and they will accuse you of raising barriers. I had the misfortune of falling into the hands of A4E, where precisely that accusation was levelled at one and all - the objective world outside can't be changed, so you have to change yourselves, by which was meant lowering job expectations and standards to accept whatever was available. For all of the apparent 'apoliticism' of that approach, in assuming the unchangeability of existing socio-economic arrangements, it was a decidedly political view, personalising what needed to be socialised and politicised. The faults that lay within existing policy commitments and social relations were deemed to lie within the victims of those arrangements and their consequences. Hence I bristle at claims at necessity, seeing them in the main to be false fixities in the cause of preserving iniquitous power relations. These claims were mere echoes of Margaret Thatcher's 'there is no alternative,' 'you cannot buck the market.' 'The market' is not God and neither is 'Nature.' The nature of necessity is always a mediated one. Mediation must always take place, and that is a matter of identifying precise social forms, relations, and practices. And agents with the structural and organisational capacity and motivation to act. If you have nothing to say on mediation, then you have nothing to say.
I can give a million other similar examples of where my expectations have been out of step with society. Hence I have spent a lifetime in explanation and self-validation. And it is exhausting. It has, I am certain, played a part in visiting not one but two chronic health conditions upon me. I need to pull away from encounter simply to protect my mental and physical health.
I can't ride a bike. I can't tie shoelaces so that they remain tied. (I still say it's the materials of the laces that are at fault here, though). I carried the coffin at my father’s funeral. The procession was halted before it had even started on ccount of my laces being undone. They were tied by the funeral director lest some unfortunate accident take place on the church steps. It wouldn't have been the first time. Of course the laces were undone. I struggle to tell left from right, too.
And then there are the things I can do. In fact, there are things I can do very well, and much better than most people. I am ill-adjusted to the 'normal' world, and have spent a lifetime resisting attempts at my re-adjustment. I've seen the problem as being one that lies in the outside world than in me. The fact that I struggle to function in a dysfunctional society strikes me more as a virtue than a vice. It has been a problem in social life, though, leading to economically straitened circumstances on my part, despite always working, despite a wealth of qualifications and skills. But looking at it, I don't think my condition is too bad. I think I am healthier than the world that I am expected to fit myself to. In her desperation, my careers advisor contemplated the academic route out of the word of work, but soon abandoned the idea: ‘I would suggest A levels but I think they would be too much for you,’ she said. I went on to hit grade A distinction at A level at another school’s sixth form college. But how could she have seen that potential in me? I had spent five years at this senior school and they had seen nothing by way of academic promise in me. After going through every job in her portfolio, once she had taken her head out of her hands in despair, she smiled and declared me "a round peg in a square world." And with that she stopped trying to seduce me with all her attractive employment opportunities and bid me on my way to who knows where.
I liked that description. I didn’t have the first idea what it meant at the time, other than I was free from the impossible expectations and demands others were piling on me and that I had fairly acceptable differences. Whether that acceptance came as a matter of reason or resignation is a mute point. I was released to make my own way, to swim or sink. People with AS, of course, are the archetypal square pegs, pegs that ‘society’ and its minions insist on hammering into round holes. I don’t mind round holes. I do mind being hammered. It damages well-being. The world may be rigid, linear, mechanical, square, but I am rounded in a very specific way. To be brutally honest here, I am so decidedly square that I came out at 0% hippie in one of those super-scientific Internet tests. Even Hitler scored higher than that. I'm so different that I need order, stability, certainty, routine, and regularity. I live always in the unknown, the chaotic, in the inflation of ceaseless creation and unfolding interconnection. And yet, in my written work, I am a huge critic of those who would establish unchanging order and certainty over against the changeable, contrarian beings that humans are.
I was pretty average at school, somewhat middling in the second stream, doing just enough to avoid plummeting to the very bottom of the class. I was usually on the brink of the abyss in scientific subjects, and high in English, French, and History. But average in the main. I didn’t work hard in subjects that bored me, which were many. I had a 'so what?' attitude towards physical processes. They may be the necessary conditions of life on Earth, but what human beings did within those conditions struck me as being far more interesting. I have never lost that attitude. Years later I warmed to Albert Camus' question that if we were to have complete knowledge of physical existence, what would change. Human beings are always acting in light of knowledge. We can never have complete knowledge in a ceaselessly creative universe of emergent properties. Always, the nature of the acting and its reason why is what is decisive. I didn't do well in science subjects for the simple reason that they never interested me. Oddly, for someone with ASC, it was people that interested me rather than things. People in the abstract, of course, people I could observe in their doings and interactions from the outside. I enjoyed being the spectator of all time and existence; I didn't make much effort by way of participation.
So my school record was uneven. Occasionally good, which fellow pupils ignored, mainly average, which put me in the pack, and often bad, which everyone noticed. The thing that really drew the attention of others, though, was the fact that I learned in a different way to everyone else. To them, I appeared slow to learn, uncomprehending, even. I felt the sting of the abuse that came my way for being different as in stupid. I wished for the day I would be top and, when I learned how it could be done, I worked hard at it. Everyone has to work hard at passing exams, of course. But I swear I worked harder, making efforts that went well above and beyond the norm. I made a point of memorizing everything. I found that I had a remarkable facility for doing this. And the more I memorized things, the more confident I became in advancing critical comments and views of my own. I felt that I knew enough to be able to trust my judgement. As the years went by, and as I moved on to higher levels, I noticed that the more I did this, the better my marks became. I had found my way of making inroads into the world around me. But that lay in the future.
I seem to have learned to do what most others had been doing from the first. And as a result I started to make my way to the top in certain subjects, the subjects that interested me. I stumbled somehow into A levels, despite having passed only two O levels (with another two as the CSE 1 equivalent). But I had done well enough in those subject to justify my acceptance in the sixth form of another school.
I passed in French, where I was taught by the woman I consider to have been my best ever teacher. She may or may not have been the best teacher. All I know is that her teaching style fitted my learning needs - and personal character - perfectly, and I responded accordingly. She was one of a mere handful of female teachers in rough and tough all-boys school. She imposed an iron grip on us from the first year and never let go. This suited me perfectly. I hated chaos and couldn't process the information coming my way in noisy classes. She provided a structured environment in which communication was strictly controlled. In shutting the noisy class members up, she created the time and space I needed to grow. I flourished knowing that I wouldn’t be spoken over or shouted down. I’m not sure it led to genuine conversation and interaction in French, mind, which I presume is the entire point. I learned the language but didn’t bother with the communication. I like to write things down, memorize them, and repeat at length. I do less well with spontaneity.
I also passed in History, which was my best subject by a considerable distance. I took it to university level and attained top honours with a range of high marks across all subjects. I can now be heard frequently boasting that ‘I am a historian by training.’ Because I am and it is an honourable profession. I am rather proud of being a historian. I know the past and I know people as they are and have been, not as idealists and moralists would like them to be. If you would like to know about life, politics, and the process of change, then study history. If you want to know what can be done, then study what has been done. It’s all there in history, the testing bench of all our dreams, visions, and ideals: fact, reality, and experience. History is a treasure trove of experiences and examples to learn from, both positive and negative. My history teacher was my form tutor for my final three years. He seemed to have a genuine concern for my many travails in school and I responded to his promptings. He was also the only teacher to take the time to show me how to organize my materials. It took him a while, mind. I still have my old history homework books and can read his comments in red: ‘disjointed and fragmented,’ ‘if only you could just follow the order in your notebooks, it would be so much easier!’ ‘read that first page again and see if it makes sense’ etc etc. I wrote in one immense stream of thought, not so much a continuous flow as a flood. All the materials were present to me AT ONCE, leaving me not so much writing in a considered and structured manner as jotting down as much information as I could before departed. He took me to one side and showed me how to take just five minutes to write an essay plan, putting all the materials in my head into that plan, then referring back as I proceeded to write. My memory was good, too good in fact. I had no trouble remembering everything. My problems came in structure, order, and organisation. With those things in place, it was no problem at all for me to select the materials in my head as I wrote. I immediately rocketed to being in the top three in class and, in the very final exam, the O level itself, to the very top slot. I beat my best friend, whose entire family it seems took pride in being the best at history, with degrees and who knows what to their credit. He felt duty bound to live up to the family name, and I took the top spot he had held throughout the five years at senior chool from him. I never let him forget, either. He told me, years later, how utterly irritating I had been over the course of the next three or four years, with every conversation involving a reminder from me to him that ‘I beat you in History.’ I remember singing this line to him, often. In fact, it is likely I would have carried on reminding him, had he not departed for university. I wonder if he went so far away just to get out of earshot. I think he took his defeat badly.
I also passed English, where I was taught by a teacher who himself didn’t have the English O level. He wouldn't be allowed to teach now. But he was a great teacher. He knew the class and its interests. He knew how to motivate pupils by appealing to what interested them. That showed superb insight on his part. He lived locally and was ‘one of us.’ He gave us Steinbeck, books which resonated with us. And, horror to lovers of literature, he gave us potted versions of the obligatory Shakespeare. He knew that those well practised with the activities that went on in the local park would have had little time for all that 'wherefore out thou' Raquel rubbish.
I remember a few weeks before the final exams. He told us that his record with a class was 23 top grades, and that he felt this class could surpass that total. It did. That made my own achievement less remarkable, of course. But I count it as an achievement all the same. Two O levels and two O level equivalents (English Language and English Literature CSE 1). Not brilliant. Below average, in fact. But the History performance showed signs of real academic potential.
With those results, I should have been looking at resits, particularly in Maths. On receiving my exam results, my Maths teacher snatched my slip out of my hand, and then shoved it back at me and moved on without a word. I had failed Maths by a grade. For him, if there is one subject you need to pass, then it was Maths. But he had never, in all my years of struggle, shown me where I was going wrong. Instead, I was allowed to keep going wrong for five years. In explanation, he would bang his fist on the blackboard as he stated each step, until going purple in the face. I never understood Maths.
But I wasn’t in resit mode. I followed my two best school friends over to the sixth form college at West Park/De La Salle. They were both big on Maths. And Further Maths. And science. They hit top grades in these subjects. They signed up for A levels. I suspect that the deputy head who was doing all the signing on expected me to be of a similarly high calibre to my friends. I ended up signing on for History and French at A level, doing Maths and, by yet more confusion, English as a resit. I also enrolled for Geometrical and Engineering Drawing, but for the life of me don’t know why or how. I had failed miserably at this subject at the previous school – CSE 4 – and hated the sight and sound of it. But it was a new class being offered and they seemed keen on adding someone who had done the subject before (however badly) to the two students who had enrolled. It was, predictably, a disaster. The two novices coped with the demands of the subject far more than I did, despite having studied it for five years. Maths was worse. I don’t know if we were studying a different syllabus or I was simply clueless, but I scored a series of remarkable U’s for Unclassified followed by F for Fail, when I simply didn’t show up, despite my parents paying their hard earned money for my privilege. I was also struggling with the French A level. This is where communication and spontaneity became more important, and I was hopeless at it. For quite a while, it seemed that my old careers advisor had been right and that A levels were indeed beyond me. I was holding my own in History, mind, placing somewhere near the top. So I came up with the wizard idea of dropping French and switching to another A level. I had no idea which one. Geology was offered? What is it? It sounded too much like the Geography I had failed miserably at (CSE 4). I had zero interest in inanimate objects. I was interested in people, however much they baffled me. Economics? What is it? Money makes the world go round. People make it, take it, spend it. Practical history and philosophy! I signed up.
What could possibly go wrong? Everything really. But ignorance is bliss. I wasn’t allowed to drop French, seeing as consultations with my former teacher revealed me to be far more talented than I had been showing. That woman rated my abilities far higher than I did! I just needed to be "more confident" and work harder. She knew my anxieties and uncertainties, and had known how to coax the best out of me. But she was no longer around. My new French teachers insisted that I 'work harder,' never seeing how hard I was actually working. I had gone into consultation with the deputy head to drop one A level and instead left doing an extra one. And I still had to do Maths. How my friends roared with laughter in the Common Room when I told them.
I was out of my depth and I knew it. But no one was listening. I soon got out of Maths. I simply stopped working and, after everyone in the class but me had passed, was simply ignored. It took another one and a half years to get out of French. I was slated to return to it at a later date, but I never did. I have ¾ of a French A level. Which isn’t bad at all. I know all about the past historic tense. Not many people do. And I read Moliere in the original French.
And I hit grade "A" distinction at what was left at "A" level. It was a struggle. And I did it all in a roundabout way. But I had it on paper – grade “A.” After yet more struggle, two years back and forth in search of the right course and college, I finally took off and flew at university level. It was an almighty struggle. I still have my extensive notes, all colour coded, with headings in red and green on either side of the A4 sheets of paper so that I could access everything in tutorials. I had created my own mini-Google in front of my eyes. It was a nonsense, and horrendously expensive in terms of time and energy. I have a prodigious memory. The problem is that the memory ceases to work whenever you feel pressured. And with ASC you always feel pressured. Plus there is the ever-present problem of EVERYTHING being present to the senses with an immediacy that is hard to control. So I have spent a lifetime imposing checks and balances, ordering and controlling in a conscious sense. The price to be paid for success on these terms was far too high. All my time and energy was absorbed in getting high marks and grades. I remained aloof from fellow students in the main. Which is tragic, really, since my odd encounter with them revealed them to be genial company. And the females seemed to like me, in turn. I mean, what is the opportunity cost of an extra two percentage points on a Hegel paper in relation to an evening with LS the Charlotte Rampling lookalike?
With every wish there comes a curse. You can be ever "on." Forever preparing. Forever proving. Forever justifying. Forever explaining. Forever seeking validation. That endless cycle is the story of my life. In conversation, I continually respond to challenges with the statement ‘I can prove it,’ citing documents and papers that I have stored away in drawers and boxes to buttress an unbelievable truth. I have been told that people don't normally do this. Which is to say that I am not normal. Like that's news.
You are forever up against the inability of others to understand. They have no way of coming close to grasping your excess and overflow. In face of their incomprehension, you feel the need to produce evidence.
I stormed out of some terrible office within which I had been confined with others in Liverpool in 2010. The building shook in my rage. I was invited back, but with the caution "you should watch that sensitive nature of yours." I can't. And I don't think I want to. I told the nice lady issuing the caution that I wear my heart on my sleeve and always will. For good and ill. She welcomed me back, worrying what her superiors might think as she gave me the leeway to be ‘different’ all over again. In truth, I think her caution was concerned more with its potential effects on my mental and physical well-being than with the efficient functioning of the office. I’ll never lose that sensitive nature. Because there is such a thing as an emotional intelligence. Any lack and deficiency going on here goes right to the withered heart of the horrible mechanarchy that I see the world descending into. I'm staying sensitive. I can do no other. And I don’t think I would want to suppress my responsiveness. I'm staying in touch with the anarchic excess that is beyond naming and framing. But then, I've always been a realist rather than a nominalist. I don’t care for hammering pegs into endlessly shifting sands in an attempt to control the tides of the limitless seas.
And I think I know the way to curb inflation:
‘He makes wars to cease to the end of the Earth; He breaks the bow and cuts the spear asunder; He burns the chariots with fire. "Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the Earth.”’
- Psalm 46:9-10
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.
I like the Taoist principle of wu-wei, which describes a non-action in which whatever needs to be done comes to be done without striving, and what remains undone is left undone as not worthy of being done in the first place.
"Word, return to music."
- Osip Mandelstam, "Silentium"
I shall be going through the information I have been given with respect to ASC. I am now able to access a wealth of resources, something which promises to open a lot of doors for me. It has been a long and hard journey for me to get where I am today. I am a master of evasion and procrastination. I always have work to be doing, endless projects consuming my time. I am a world-class avoider and evader. But life-threatening health problems have made me confront reality directly and track my problems to sources. This has baffled me from the first. I have faced the turmoil of physical problems whilst seemingly being as fit as a fiddle and able to fly up mountain sides. OK I exaggerate slightly here, I’ve flown down the odd mountain side when I have fallen, but never actually flown up one. I read that those with AS can have a tendency to be oblivious to danger and to deny reality. That sounds like me coming down the mountain side in California as though the laws of gravity had ceased to exist, or just didn't apply to me. A goat could possibly have managed the feat I was attempting. But the idea to stand up and run down a mountain side was not the greatest one I have ever had. By the time I was turning head over heels just before hitting the rocks in the San Antonio Creek I had an inkling that I might be in a little trouble. I read AS people can show a tendency to be oblivious to pain. As it happened, I didn’t break any bones. My insides ached. I had internal bruising. Which can make things very uncomfortable in bed. But I was fit enough to go to town the night of my fall and win the darts match in the English pub.
That’s me, the Sean Bean of the AS world! I tried to impress people with this story at a friend’s birthday party a week later, only to find that the tough mountain guys in California had all broken bones and had things fall off in the past without crying. I sounded like a real wuss complaining of internal bruising that no-one could see but really, really hurt. So I filed that episode with all my other encounters with the invisible and the intangible. My issues couldn't be see and therefore didn't exist.
The issues are elsewhere than physical health, and always were. Struck down with physical illness, rushed to hospital by ambulance December 2018, I determined to get to the causes of my problems once and for all. I was already fairly fit, symptoms of heart attack notwithstanding, and I determined to get myself fitter still. I hit the exercise bike with a vengeance, I hiked, I lifted weights, I ate well. I hiked at altitude in the mountains of California. And I passed the physical tests with flying colours (or as much as someone diagnosed with chronic illness can). I went to my doctor complaining of ‘psycho-social anxiety’ as the cause. Thus was the path opened to the diagnosis of ASC.
The spiritually healthy aren’t made for this mad monstrous mechanarchy and I resisted the attempt to mould me made at school. I was being bullied and bribed to fit my expectations to The Machine, and I resisted. In one sense, my continuation in the education system over the years, despite a poor beginning, was an unconscious attempt on my part never to leave school. Like Oskar in Gunther Grass’ The Tin Drum. I had seen what was out there and it didn't remotely appeal. You had to exchange what you had in order to obtain what they had. I liked what I had and didn't like what they had. I just didn't have a drum.
At my best, when I succeed in riding the scree, and am not engulfed by the flood, I have a beautiful flow that is all wrapped in compassion.
Being both in and against the world is something I have always struggled with. As a person with ASC, I am supposed to be ‘object-centred’ and 'people-averse.' This may well be true. I am certainly very bookish. I like the people I encounter in books. I apprehend people indirectly. But at the heart of my obsessive concern is not objectivity and certainly not impersonalism but the Highest Love that enfolds, nourishes, moves, and sustains all things. It is a religious notion, grounded in a belief in the personal God, the God of love and personal relations. I establish connections and make heart leaps everywhere. I hold that there is such thing as an emotional intelligence and, whatever the difficulties I may have had in fitting myself to this world, I cleave to this intelligence. It often seems that the price of adaptation exacted of people is the sacrifice of sensitivity. I never acquired the habit of sacrificing to false gods and necessities. The awkward nature I nurtured at school has stood me in good stead in that respect.
I've given up on tying shoelaces. I no longer see it as an issue. I still say it's the materials these modern laces are made out of. And then have to get down and tie the laces again.
I do need to focus more, and be more economical with my time, because the things I am good at I am very good at, and can thus tend to become obsessive. I should have guessed this a long, long time ago. I've always been ... different. Lots of people make the claim that they are different and do not conform. I look at them and don’t see them as different at all. I come across these people often. They take the easiest of stands and express agreement around the most unutterable banalities and inanities. But it would be rude for me to point it out to them. It is unwise to take people by their own self-image. When I first mentioned the possibility of having AS I had people tell me that they too, like 'everyone,' were 'on the spectrum,' that they, too, were different and had never conformed. I know these people. I hate to speak unkindly. But I’m afraid that all they know about difference is the way to spell the word. They fit, they are conformed, and they are decidedly ill-at-ease with genuine members of the awkward squad such as I. I find them conformist to the core, utterly predictable, supporters of every passing fad and fashion, which they tend to see as something new and radical. They are surface level people, the people of the shallows. Such people tend to make the mistake of equating ignorance, self-indulgence, and self-obsession with difference. I make no apologies for my rudeness here. I have learned not to express myself so bluntly (honestly) in social situations. But I have never lost my impatience for the myriad hypocrisies of the world. I hate to speak out of turn, but their ‘non-conformity’ is as easy as falling off a log in these days when solipsism holds all the trump cards. They are not different at all, but the same as the greater numbers. They would consider me impolite for saying so. I make zero apology. I am awkward, I am different. And I have the knowledge and they don't. To have my revelation of AS met by people who own houses, have jobs, are happily married with families, and are decidedly normal in all areas saying that they too are on the spectrum inspires only biting contempt in me at the staggering incomprehension of people. I have to bite my lip.
There is a serious point here, beyond the peculiarities of my irascible nature. Becuase such a response can also be seen as an attempt, however unwitting, to deny the truly different of their voice, to devalue their experience, to submerge the truly unique in the morasse of 'everyone.' As soon as the different voice is heard for once, it comes to be drowned out by the dominant voices of the conformed and the complacent, all claiming that difference for themselves 'too.' You have to be joking! Not. Even. Close.
But you have to humour or ignore such people, lest you get embroiled in an argument out of which you emerge as a cantankerosity whose problems are self-inflicted. That’s the way it goes. The same old story. I should know, having been down that route many times before. So I treat the observations of the uncomprehending with a silent contempt now. And lash out in my own space (here). And I have learned not to make public revelations and statements which invite the response of clueless and uncomprehending others.
I could write a best seller on the staggeringly unusual difficulty that is involved in being different. I have experienced difficulty in this respect everywhere. In research, my poor long suffering Director of Studies didn't know whether I had read everything and misunderstood it all or whether I was a genuine "one-off," inhabiting and recycling the thoughts of others in my own unique way. He eventually came to the conclusion that I was the latter after two years of worry and let me do my own thing. I did. I would have done my own thing in any case. I can do no other. But I was truly blessed to have had such a man in charge of my research studies. Most others would have interfered and destroyed my creative processes. The poor man must have read a million of my words over the seven years we were in contact. He thanked me and said it was a real education. I smiled thinking he was joking. But I should have known that he was not being insincere; in fact, he was being deadly serious. And I had worked hard, read widely and deeply, and written an awful lot. Had the world gone the way of 'rational freedom,' we would not be in the mess we are in now. I saw the origins of 'woke' and cultural self-cancellation as they emerged in post-structuralism and postmodernism, saw where this would end, and did my level best to call a halt. I knew that I was swimming against the intellectual and cultural tides. But those tides were leading nowhere. Such swimming is second nature to me. I've never been one for following trends, fashions, and crowds.
But I should have known. I did the Belbin’s team roles test in Liverpool 2010 to find out exactly what role I should have in the team. The issue was in some doubt, not least in the minds of the other members of the team. I came out overwhelmingly, by a million miles, as a "Plant." I distinctly remember the terms used to describe a Plant: “genius,”“intellect,” “imagination,” “unorthodox,” "individualist." That’ll do for me, I thought. It sums me up to a T. As I started to express my agreement in suitably sober terms (punching the air and whooping very loudly), the woman in charge declared sardonically that “we’ve had a few geniuses here over the years.” She’d seen them all come and go without trace. I'm sure they all remember me, though.
I immediately set to work turning what the test had identified as my “acceptable weaknesses” into essential strengths: “tendency to have head in the clouds” and “tendency to disregard protocol.” Of course I have these tendencies! I’m a game-changer, I said, and you can only change the game by refusing to play the game that everyone is currently playing. Obviously! I am outside the normal routines and patterns. Further, I argued, the ideas I generate don’t stay in the clouds, they come down to Earth and change the world for the better. I also insisted that a Plant is a maverick and should be allowed to come and go as he or she pleases. I should be allowed free rein in the office, I demanded, waving my test results as justification. I’d chip in every now and then if I had any good ideas to offer. In the meantime, it was for the others to get on doing the work. I found out that such licence was not allowed, not even for geniuses/mavericks/ne’er-do-wells. That’s when I looked to get out.
Plant for Hire, then. I’m very reasonable, for the most part. And when I’m not reasonable, I am at my very best.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonableone persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
I try not to do talks. In fact, I have now quit doing them. I hate them; I always did. I hated being in class, too, either as student or in taking a lesson. Apart from the sheer terror of addressing an audience of people always likely to disagree and ask impertinent questions, there is always the clash between expectations and delivery. I’ll explain it this way, there is this book of knowledge that people learn from and constantly refer back to. I have that book and have learned its lessons. But I deviate from it regularly, coming away from it at a slight angle; I inhabit thoughts and thinkers in order to turn them in other ways. That strikes those who persist in doing it by the book as an error on my part, and they raise objections. I should take the opportunity to clarify, of course. Instead, I lose my flow, lose the connections that were being developed in my head, and the daemon goes away. And I get irritated. I return to the book, just to prove, for the umpteenth time, that I know its contents. But it is a waste of time, merely repeating what is already known. “Whoa! That’s got to be wrong!” one smart fellow shouted at me as I delivered a talk, before delivering a lecture on how neurons pack and fire. I hadn’t even mentioned neurons, although I was talking about consciousness. It was a plain hi-jack which was intended to make it clear that science trumps philosophy when it comes to knowledge. The issues I was discussing had nothing to do with knowledge and science. But for those who adhere to ‘scientism,’ ‘science is everything’ (to quote this character). And anything that lay outside the province of science was of no consequence. There followed a lengthy and perfectly unenlightening debate along the theme of “nothing buttery,” and I ended up a million miles away from where I wanted to be, in both thought and in place. I’d have given anything to have been back on the building sites instead of engaging in such pointless intellectualizing. I then went away and wrote a text on neurons. Which wasn’t very enlightening either, merely draining. It was all done to settle in my head that I was right and this character not so much wrong as way beside the point (and dull and boring to boot). Neurons pack and fire, wonderful. And how exactly does this explain qualitative experience? I don't think such people even understand the question.
Whatever that episode describes, it doesn’t fit the bill for an academic career. I get invites, and I keep postponing, waiting for the day when circumstances change. I’m always conscious of saying things that don’t quite fit expectations. I should have more confidence in my arguments. I do in print. I don’t in person. In person, I always seem to end up being dragged back into the foothills, despite having set out with my sights on the summit. People like the familiarity of base camp. And I join them through feeling the need to prove that I know what I’m talking about, a proof which is delivered by repetition of the known and the easy and the boring. By the book. I shall put it down to always being behind at school, the butt of others’ jokes, with a headmaster who let it be known that any place that would have me would be just looking to ‘fill up places.’ I think I was miles ahead of them all. But to prove it, I have always to return from the frontiers and then take the obvious paths leading from base camp. It gets me nowhere and resolves nothing.
A statement which issues personal demands like this merely begs a very social question – where are the significant others whom an individual may join in living in accordance with theright standards of the true order? People should voluntarily conform themselves to the right standards of the true order rather than being involuntarily conformed to them by external consequences. If they can, that is, recognizing that notions of a true order and its standards are supra-individual and hence beyond the voluntarism of the individual will. That’s the essence of my argument on ‘rational freedom.’
These days, it no longer makes sense to me to feel as though I am on the threshold of life. That’s how I have always felt in my life. When issues of the adult world have cropped up, I have continually postponed them to a later date, to have one last mad dash at promising youth, on the assumption that when the time does finally come to do such things, they will all somehow be done. These things will arrive in the post, gift wrapped. Little did I realize that the mere fact that these issues – of employment, independence, relationships – were now arising indicated precisely that their time had come. I hadn’t arrived. Frankly, somewhere in the past, I had gone past the threshold without noticing. Until very recently I have acted as though I am preparing for the big breakthrough into the next stage of life. It’s a very anomalous feeling. It seems that my subconscious mind has been preparing me for the recognition that the important dates in my life’s diary have been and gone, and that I am acting in tacit recognition of the fact that the time for my great dreams has also come and gone. Life is here, and it will be gone sooner than you think if you don’t catch it when it shows itself. When you reach this stage, you come to realize that there is nothing left but acceptance and resignation. It's no wonder that my favourite female singer by far is Françoise Hardy. I have been reading the autobiographical material in her various books. They are incredibly revealing. You read of her suffering with respect to dashed hopes and neglect in personal life as it unfolds over the decades. And then you see her reach the point where she accepts that this state of unfulfilled desire is destined to be her lot and she falls into resignation for the rest of her life. It's an incredibly sad tale, and the sadness is can be seen in her lyrics and heard in her voice. I took to her the very first time I heard her. In vision, she is the archetypal 'pretty girl'; in sound, she is the epitome of melancholy and despair. But not heavy in her depression. There is an acceptance that will sooth the broken, and content them with the illusion of healing for a little while.
Françoise Hardy's voice lightens the weight in a way that other singers of despairing themes do not. I am a huge admirer of Nick Drake, but don't listen to him to anything like the extent I listen to her. He is seriously gloomy and can trap you in his gloom. I don't care to go that way. But respect where respect is due, all the same.
On the night I received the diagnosis of ASC I issued a cryptic statement in public. I had learned my lesson the hard way when making a direct public statement in 2019. People, in the main, won't understand and will say the wrong thing. It is futile and unfair to blame people for that, for how could they know to do better? So I merely posted the epitaph “and now we rise, and we are everywhere.” This was obviously open to be understood in many ways, and misunderstood in many more. To some, it looked like praise of worldwide climate rebellion, to others a celebration of the permanent revolution of 'woke,' and to yet more others a Christian revivalism. It had people clicking the link and listening to the Nick Drake song 'From the Morning.' As to the significance of that song in light of the above identities, people were mystified. It's just a beautiful song. But it did have a signficance for me. It all depends on who the ‘we’ are, of course. The ‘we’ here was the ‘me’ writ large – the quiet people that Susan Cain writes about, and who are routinely ignored in a loud world of extroverts. Nick Drake is one of the quiet people. And so am I. So clarification was called for. I savour the irony with a smile. I had tried so hard to keep it simple and not write too much as I normally do. But when I keep it short, I inspire all manner of interpretations, few of which I agree with, thus dragging me into controversies I would prefer to steer well clear of. So I had no option but to add a comment:
"And now we rise, and we are everywhere." This is the epitaph of the wonderful Nick Drake, poor lost soul who met with an early death, but left us with a number of incredibly beautiful songs. The words come from the song "From the Morning," a song which delivers a message of hope for the hopeless. Poor Nick Drake was a gentle soul, a huge but neglected talent who went to an early grave, unhailed and unheralded. His voice lives on and is heard by all the lost souls of our days. He speaks to all who feel lost in this hectic world.
I trust that the Nicks of this world will have their day one day. As the truthful, the honest, and the innocent deserve. The song contains the hope that one day we will come to live in a world where such qualities could come to be not merely tolerated, but warmly embraced, beyond the lips to the core of our being. Nick wrote many fine songs in his short life. This is one of his most hopeful. The song contains the promise that lost travellers will one day find a home and a resting place, a "place to be" as another of his songs puts it.
I trust, also, that the genuine goodness of people will come to the fore and flourish one day, should truth and honesty come not merely to be tolerated, but sought and loved. Such is the restoration of our connection to the things we learned in the morning of our lives. Such is the message of my Dante book, "Dante's Politics of Love" (should I ever finish it). I should also emphasise the extent to which that message of hope transcends my life’s experience. Not to put too fine a point on it, although I have known the goodness of people, particularly of the people close to me, I have too often been on the receiving end of the worst of others, knowing abuse, both physical and verbal, callousness, indifference, ignorance, you name it. I long ago learned not to ask for help, on account of the fact that I became accustomed to such pleas being taken as expressions of weakness on my part and hence as invitations to further attack.
I didn’t reveal my diagnosis in my Nick Drake post. Instead, I tagged a link to an article I wrote on Nick Drake a couple of years ago. At the bottom of that article is speculation on my part as to whether Nick Drake had AS. I left it for people to make the connection with my own personal experience.
https://pcritchley2.wixsite.com/beingandplace/post/2019/07/08/solid-air-or-the-soul-of-romantic-melodies
So I am hiding and hinting when it comes to declarations of ASC. The potentials for misunderstanding on the part of others are immense. I also didn’t want to invite the words of those who, in being keen to express their sympathies (and exhibit their virtues in public), insist that they 'too' are 'on the spectrum,' as indeed are most people. Such people have no idea how that observation diminishes the unique experiences of people like me. It deprives us of our voice in the very moment of our finding it after a lifetime's silence. The implication of that is that I have no problem, no issue, and no worry that others do not have, and that I am the same as everyone else. Which is actually a definition of 'normal.' Which is precisely how I don’t feel and precisely what my past experience contradicts. People can think it is simply a matter of ticking the AS boxes. The difference, as was explained to me in the assessment, is that those with ASC tick more of these boxes and do so ‘above and beyond’ the normal. I don’t need to be arguing these points, certainly not on social media.
I feel myself on the cusp of a period of immense change. Where it may lead is anyone's guess. It has been two decades now since I earned the PhDthat took me seven years to earn (1995-2001). That’s a quarter of a century out of one’s life. The whole period merely seems like an enormous first hurdle to be cleared, like doing national service in a never-ending war. A rite of passage shouldn’t take long. If it does, you have failed. Add to that the three years it took me to find an institution prepared to accept my thesis proposal (1992-1995), and the three years solid reading alone I had done before that (1990-92), and that’s an awful big chunk out of anyone’s life. Add also the three years earning my first degree (1985-88), and the year I spent in night school as a foundation for entry into higher education (1983-4), and it appears that I have spent an entire life as an apprentice novice… I never left school, merely extended its leaving date indefinitely. Like my life. I never fancied my chances in ‘the real world.’ That world looked mad to me. It still does. I can see Oskar’s point.
In my younger days I had thought that earning the big academic letters before and after my name would serve as a game-changer and life-changer. It made no difference to anything, for the simple reason that my character - and predicament - remained unchanged. If anything, the qualifications and the time out I took to earn them hardened my charactertraits and made me even more ill-fitted to the world. And postponed my day of delivery. Because my underlying condition remained undiagnosed. Academic success deterred any search for underlying problems. On the surface, things looked fine and well. I didn't even set my ambitions high. I attempted to find jobs in libraries at assistant level. I had interviews to be a shelver. These were all unsuccesful. I still have the letter of rejection I received from the University of Liverpool in 2007. I also met with rejection when applying for work in public libraries. The official, polite, reason for rejection that I received in feedback was that I was considered to be overqualified and somewhat academic in manner. The subtext of those words was that I was felt to be cold, aloof, unapproachable, haughty, superior, intimidating. I distinctly remember one interview when the senior library assistant, the woman who would effectively be my boss, could barely raise her head to look at me in the face, and lowered her eyes, speaking with a whisper when she had to address me. I was very aware that my presence made her nervous in some way. I didn’t make everyone interviewing me as nervous as that, but I always detected a certain awkwardness on the part of others, even and especially in the attempts on the part of people not to be awkward. I didn’t fit. I felt it immediately. The chemistry wasn’t there.
In the meantime I attempted to recover from the intense process of reading, thinking, and writing that had gone into my thesis and its publication and defence by, well, doing even more reading, thinking, and writing. I was incorrigible. I worked intensely hard between 2001 and 2004 to produce a book entitled "The City of Reason" that extended to 1200 pages spread out over four volumes. Think of it as four PhD theses. That project began as part of the Urban Renaissance masters' course I enrolled upon at Liverpool Hope University. It seemed like a good idea at the time, undertaking a course that had a practical and professional significance with respect to a career. The problem was that I couldn’t take to being a student again. I had never liked being a student first time round, but now found it insufferable and pointless. I recoiled in horror from the prospect of giving presentations; I didn’t know how to use the new computers with their pesky meeces and didn't want to say so, lest I invited all manner of perplexed reactions from people who knew I had just qualified as a PhD. My inabilities with respect to ICT put a definite question mark against the nature of the research I had been doing for the past decade. I hated the continued uncertainty. I therefore left the course to return to ‘research.’
In other words, when faced with the demands of joining the real world, I quickly retreated back into my own reality. In terms of life and career-choices, that was not evidence of smartness. It meant more years that would be taken out of my life, more years working alone and being alone, without contact and interaction with others. If it is true that a person needs others in order to be himself or herself, then I have been and remain much less than myself. It led to a long book, "The City of Reason." There is some exceptional material in that book, and some very pertinent arguments with respect to the urban environment. But at 1200 pages long I doubt that many people have had the nerve let alone the nous to read it. It's a fine work for all that. But that period from 2001 to 2004 was final proof that I was hiding from the world. I was seeking endless confirmation in written work. I no longer had a rationale – excuse – in that I had earned the PhD. This ‘research’ was simply a refusal to leave my comfort zone, however uncomfortably hard it was writing extended texts.
The obsession with writing continues with me to this day. I always have a number of ongoing projects to complete, with vast numbers of words already written, and more planned. No sooner do I put these vast tomes out than I have other work to finish. I currently have folders on Dante, Gerrard Winstanley, Rousseau, and an odd piece on philosophy as projection that may well remain unpublished on account of its swerve into overtly sexual themes (Is philosophy really born of male projection in denial of female origins? I examine the question at length and conclude no. So I am not sure that there is any great point to the work). That must be a couple of million words.
I have calculated that since 1995 I have written and published in one form or another some 20 million words at least. I have filled my years with words, and have started, at last, to find the effort exhausting. Finally, I am running out of energy. Reasons of mental and physical health are now telling me, loud and clear, that I need a change of pace and direction in my life. I need to find the right balance between the things I love to do and the things I need to do; I need to eliminate the things I have been doing merely to postpone essential life decisions and escape the social world. Do I need to compromise with others to the extent of becoming complicit in the things I don’t like? Is that giving in or growing up? What’s so good about the world out there? What's so good about the world in here? And what is the basis of a trade-off that is mutually beneficial?
I made a similar statement to this in 2017, in the aftermath of a near fatal heart attack. I then went on to write over three million words in the next three years. I seem to be embarked on a journey beyond infinity.
‘Always do what will cost you the most.’
‘Do not be accomplices … Do not lie, do not remain blind’ in front of ‘the machine’ that, finally, ‘will function according to its own laws untilit breaks down’; ‘strive always to do for yourself … devote yourself, if necessary, to many years of silence .. but do not teach!’
These are the words of Simone Weil. I have an affinity for Simone Weil. She is another of life's awkward squad. I have a feeling that she may have had AS. But I shall support my speculation in this regard elsewhere, in my autistobiography.
I wrote the following words in June 2019:
‘I shall continue to write, just not as intensively and obsessively. I shall be severely curtailing my activities on the internet. The accumulation of a lot of low-level activity does not sum to high level, high quality work of any great substance, just an awful mass of low-level activity that the world ignores as it turns to the latest release. It’s your time and your life you are saying goodbye to with such activity. It’s as productive as masturbation, only with the pathetic illusion of reality to depress you in place of a sometimes entertaining and uplifting fantasy. Use your time productively, be productive, and ensure your activities have a benefit in terms of health and happiness. That seems to be good advice, both socially and sexually. Be sparing in your sacrifices. The day may come when people and the world really will need you to be around to make a contribution that makes a big difference. Be around and be ready for that day. There will, then, be a drastic reduction in my writing activities.’
I am now sitting on a folder containing one million words on Dante. I wrote 300,000 plus words in just two months, January and February, 2021, in an attempt to meet a deadline. My eyes turned red in the process. I continued writing with one eye closed. Lunacy.
To be fair, a lot of the time I was writing for my own future reference, making arguments that I intended to return to and polish in the future. So there is no radical break here, merely a determination to shift into the next phase of my life, cultivating a new relationship with my creative daimon. Most of all, though, I want to curtail the excess and nourish the deficient, hoping that the diminution of the former will be accompanied by the enlargement of the latter. There are things in my life that have been starved of attention. Such things need regular watering in order to grow. I want to slow down to ensure that being is able to catch up with doing and, once convergence is achieved, ensure that they never part company again. Word, return to music – this is me, after a lifetime of speed and noise, coming back to silence and stillness.
These are my primary reasons for my commitment to leave behind the endless philosophizing I have been engaged in. Back in the day, I was drawn to philosophy because I thought it had all the answers to life’s mysteries. I learned plenty with respect to how much philosophy could do. Philosophy doesn't relly give you answers, only deeper questions. Most of all I learned that philosophy can go only so far but no further. It can clear out error and nonsense. But the questions that were of most concern to me remained unanswered. Such questions that are without answers are considered to be non-questions by the more austere schools of philosophy. I have learned the value of asking unanswerable questions. Such questions take us further through deep contemplation. I learned that philosophical reason ultimately undercuts itself and that everything, beyond logic and maths, requires a leap of faith. I learned that life is more than logic and maths. That doesn’t mean that philosophy or any of the other intellectual disciplines are unimportant and irrelevant, far from it. The more reason, evidence, and knowledge that you can marshal in support of your claims, the less of a leap you will have to make. I would say that you have more chance of successfully leaping a small brook than you have of the Grand Canyon. But there are two sides to this question of line and length: a lot depends on the size and scale of your ambitions. If you have a lot of reason and evidence and only meagre ambitions, then you will no doubt be able to safely land on the other side when you jump. But it hardly seems worth the effort. And without a meaningful will, you will likely fail, too. In the end, successful living is about more than proof and evidence. That’s what I like about Kierkegaard. The maxim is: reason as far as reason will go, then faith. But you will at some point need to make that leap of faith. Leaping comes easy to me. Every day of my life has involved a leap of faith on my part. Many of the facts of life that I have been confronted with I have known to be against me. What appear to be small brooks to others have seemed to me to be canyons. But I made it nonetheless. And now I wish finally come home to that resting place I have always sought. A world ever closer to home, close to my heart. It’s all a heart leap in the end.
