The two books are acquired, reviews coming soon

Images: Kit holding up Typed Words, Loud Voices, ed. Elizabeth Grace and Amy Sequenzia; and The Obsessive Joy of Autism, by Julia Bascom.

things i need to read

need to order Typed Words, Loud Voices... ed. Amy Sequenzia and Elizabeth J. Grace

and the Obsessive Joy of Autism by Julia Bascom.

I will order them soon.

moons in my fingers

There are moons in my fingers and

frosted glinted shattered crushed to dust (stardust)

at my feet.

you laugh and

stop and jolt n go conversations

about the solar system moon miranda which

swallowed itself like i feel i've

swallowed my tongue.

a fractured flying globe of a moon

that put itself back together –

i haven't yet, you would fault me for it.

our conversations hit like

the cosmic collision that flipped miranda's

planet with gravity upturned and farflung

sideways orbits.

and there are moons in my fingers, crescents in my arms.

with the fragile pines (poem)

i shake with the fragile pines 
and crouch on mounds of pine straw 
before rattling brick paths.

– but like esther greenwood
i am, i am, i am
because i shake with the 
emotions of being human
words sanded in my throat
coughed through the glass
roof of my mouth just
rounded enough by tumbling rain water
down the brick paths to 
not shatter me –

and i shake with the fragile pines
and the falling swirling green needles 
that bend, not break.

410 Directed Reading of Psychiatric & I/DD History Reflections: Kanner

*I am reading books and articles for a directed reading on the history of psychiatric, intellectual and developmental disabilities for my final semester of college.

As it turns out, I do not regret the life choice of reading Kanner so far, disturbing though the descriptions are. It's important to know this history.

Not that I agree with all the gross painting of autistic people as empty shells and tragedies. But I was reading these chapters and these kids' parents seemed autistic too. They just were ~people~ in society instead of ~unpeople~ and the expectations that only certain people could be autistic prevented them from being labeled as such. 

Kanner literally wrote at one point "One is tempted to think of them as successfully autistic adults, in the sense that they do a creditable job in their chosen occupations and quite a few have attained sufficient recognition to be listed in some of the Who's Who compliations" (Kanner, essay from 1954 republished in Childhood Psychosis: Initial Studies and New Insights in 1973, pg 74). 

It's a common theme that persists today, to be honest. Anyone who is considered successful by society's standards gets told they can't be autistic, that their professional or self diagnosis is wrong. 

(In my book, you don't have to be considered traditionally successful or independent to be worth advocating for, with, and to be respected and valued with human dignity). But people need to stop having such rigid definitions. and accept that like all people, autistic people are different from each other.

The blogger with their books

Have a picture:

[image is Kit balancing one book and holding two: Exile and Pride by Eli Clare, On Our Own by Judi Chamberlin, and Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking]

Exile and Pride pt. 3

This is the last one ascribed to a specific subsection, "Mountain." The posts will be fewer and describing more of her poetic aspects of it, unless I feel something warrants a post.

III. Home

The body is a home. She will never find home on the mountain. Disabled people will not find home on that mountain, that mountain that is booby-trapped into never reaching what people say they want us to reach. We have multiple mountains and none are homes.

She calls her body disabled, violated, white, queer, and describes them all as home.

The body is a home, but only if “understood that bodies are never singular” – we are shaped by people and our reactions and we “need the bodies of trees” – the trees that gave her refuge – queer bodies and disabled bodies – she could not live without them (Clare, 9). And we can't live without each other. We are disabled and we need each other.

The body is a home, only if it is “understood that place and community and culture burrow deep into our bones.” (Clare, 10). We are shaped by culture and community and we need culture and community. We need a disabled culture. Our bodies and minds are different, and we have a culture.

The body as home, only if it is understood that “language too lives under the skin” and can “mark between self-hatred and pride.” (Clare, 11) We can be called these things, we can be insulted for disability and queerness and what have you, but we can reclaim. We can call ourselves these things with pride, take it back.

The body as home, only if it is understood that it “can be stolen, fed lies and poison.” (Clare, 12) We can be told that we will not amount to anything, that our lives are not worth living, that we cannot live with our own sense of dignity and must ascribe to others' concept of our dignity.

The body as home, if it is understood that it can be stolen, but “reclaimed.” (Clare, 12) We can. We can reclaim. 

Exile and Pride pt 2

Part two of a series of thoughts on Eli Clare's Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation, divided into the sections Clare uses. 

II. A Supercrip Story

Definition of supercrip: the disabled person in inspiration porn who does something “remarkable” for their disability: “They turn individual disabled people, who are simply leading their lives, into symbols of their inspiration.” (Clare, 2)

Clare notes that no one ever wonders what are the conditions are that make the disabled people's achievements seem remarkable, in society.

The mountain is both physical and metaphorical supercrip story, different from physically running a race, but she uses a story of climbing a mountain as the basis for the metaphor.

Clare describes the shaking hands and not being able to do certain things, but “I am not asking for pity. I am telling you about impairment.” The difference between factual impairments and people feeling sorry for us is very large, and also the difference between impairment and disability. (Clare, 6)

I (Kit) can't do [x] thing, and get told that it's a shame. I have dyspraxic hands and only learned to type through years of the internet and wanting to write stories. I never learned from being taught in school. Now I type quickly, and it took years. But it used to be hard enough that I didn't want to. I can't tie shoelaces properly. I can't hold a sewing needle. I have impaired vision perception and crash into things all the time and almost no conceptual awareness of my body in space. I cannot functionally argue or articulate in real time, without taking a lot of time – to process language fast enough to argue effectively. I may talk quickly, but actual articulation takes a while.

Are those impairments? Maybe. Pity? No. Just make sure that if I'm in those situations, it's accessible and bear with me.

Disability: society's reactions to Clare writing slowly, failing timed tests due to teachers not allowing Clare time to finish, and everywhere she goes, they get stared at. “I am not asking for pity. I am

telling you about disability.” (Clare, 6)

(Note: Clare does note that people think she's stupid for her slurred speech. This is an ableist usage).

It is hard to separate disability and impairment – experience of impairment has been heavily shaped by disability – that I have “trouble separating the two” (Clare, 7)

She writes: “to believe that achievement contradicts disability is to pair helplessness with disability, a pairing for which crips pay an awful price... the price is incredibly high” (Clare, 8).

And it is. Society refuses to pay for supports to even help us reach potential (us being generally disabled people as I cannot reclaim a term for physical disability). We are denied supports on the basis that none of us either deserve it, or will do anything with it. Why does being productive matter so much? We need to make sure disabled people can live as independently as possible.

“On the other side of supercripdom lies pity, tragedy, and the nursing home. Disabled people know this, and internalize the crap.” (Clare, 8) Clare had wanted to overcome her CP, and no one told her she had made the right choice by turning around on the physical mountain, and “the mountain just won't let go.” (Clare, 9)

Exile and Pride pt. 1

Will be writing one post for each section within Eli Clare's sections of the book Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation 

I. “The Mountain”

Clare writes about “mountain as metaphor”:

“We've hit our head on glass ceilings... scrambled toward that phantom called normality”

The mountain is where mainline society calls down to us, telling us that we should go up there and be normal like them. Intersectionality tells me, personally, that it is hard to only have one mountain in your life and sometimes you end up with several.

Society wants us fixed. Clare calls it like it is, saying, “we... decide to continue climbing only to have the very people who told us how wonderful life is at the summit booby-trap the trail.”

Do these people at the top of our mountains want us there, to normalcy, or just close enough that we won't be an embarrassment, but never on the same level? Never on the same level of equity? It would not matter how hard we tried to be their normal. “Maybe we get to the summit, but probably not,” Clare goes on, “and the price we pay is huge.” Energy spent, never recovered.

(Clare, 1)

drawing

i draw with the whirls of the sun shining into my face, and the darkness of the shadows creeping in from the evening. they never take the form of anything concrete, just swirls and patterns and weaving tendrils and lines and flowery bursts.

i am an artist, but what do i draw? if i am an artist, how do i not know what i produce?

i never know what it'll look like until i'm finished and that's life.

beach glass (out of) love story

beach glass (out of) love story

by Kit Mead (originally posted on deviantART)

—

fragments of the shoreline wash up in my eyes,
beach glass and sand and the dying great barrier reef:
you tell me i’m pretty with sand in my face.
“i can’t see the lines anymore,” you say, not moving
to brush the scraping and scratching sand off my eyelids.
ocean brine and the salt water waves
burn the cuts traced over my face by your words
and not your former gentle touch.
“lines go on forever,” i say. “on and on – not like your
shallow wor(l)ds.” and i crunch beach glass when 
i leave, and shower off the sand
spitting your words back out like choking pebbles
replacing with my own:
“no more. no more.”
we are the great barrier reef, a dying, drowning, 
deluging crescendo wave of washed out coral hopes 
– with the exception that 
with us there are no external forces to 
draw out the lines in the sand and dying coral.