Climbing

[pyraxis]

We got to take jimnightmare and 47 (yonjuunana) climbing today.

:)

It was the biggest difference I got to see between them, or maybe the one we were most in tune with. Jim has his own voice but he can't really use it yet, and I get so fried out on verbal conversation anyway that I can't guide it well enough to lead him out.

But Daria was watching the whole time, amidst the shell of 47 and her awkward robot movements and autopilot, for the things she knows are there. And in the middle of this cavernous warehouse space, all beams and plywood and ropes and rock music - with Jim standing there in a climbing harness and his blue heart t-shirt - the only disorienting part of the picture was that his hair should have been black with a blue streak, not pale gold.

47 moves awkwardly, one step at a time, freezes up and dissolves into autopilot laughter just a few feet up the wall. But Jim launches himself right up, and if his robot body is clumsy, sheer speed catapults him through. If he hadn't burned out halfway, he would have hit the top of one of the tallest walls in the place.

(Damnit, Daria, why did you tell him only halfway up the palm tree? Just a little more uza....
Don't make me say it. It's condescending in any words.)

And that's the heart of it. What kind of watered-down place teaches people that trying hard is forbidden? It's girls, mostly, but some guys too, geeks and emos and what-have-you. What kind of messed up system puts kids through ten years of compulsory gym and still spits out people that don't know how to use their bodies, how to pace themselves, how to develop strength, how to stand confidently in it? Growing up autistic you get a rough-and-tumble education in endurance, burnout, overload, meltdown - all the parts of long-term sensory management. But you're working silently, with your own unique set of limitations that aren't even visible or comprehensible to people who rely on a conventional understanding of how eyes and ears and brain cells are supposed to operate. Why doesn't that confidence-through-experience translate into normal situations?

Comments

[yonjuunana.livejournal.com]

It's also really awesome and still a bizarre feeling to have somebody be able to look at me IRL and actually know what's going on inside my head. I keep coming back and reading this post over because it's fun. If you friendslocked it for my privacy, you don't have to, actually somewhat wish I could link to this.

My arms are still a bit sore today. XD

[pyraxis]

Okay, it's unlocked. :)

[yonjuunana.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

...

I think I might have left my bag with my toothbrush and stuff in your bathroom. *sigh* There's always something. XP If I did leave it, there is absolutely nothing in there that I particularly need or that can't be easily replaced, although it does have some earrings that I kinda like, so, er, send it if you are bored or happen to be at the post office, or hang onto it until one of us visits the other again, it doesn't really matter.

[pyraxis]

Wolf says we saw a roach the size of a mouse but there was no evidence that it had walked off with your toilet bag. But we killed it just in case. :P

I was actually watching cause I was worried you might forget it... it disappeared out of the bathroom the morning you left, and it's not in my room, so it must have gone with you in some form. But if it pops out of the ether somehow, I'll send it back in with a shove in your direction.

[yonjuunana.livejournal.com]

Oh, hahaha, I just found it! That makes life easier. I was worried I was going to forget it, too, and I couldn't find it this morning and realized I didn't remember getting out of the bathroom so I assumed I left it. But no, it was stuck at the bottom of one of my suitcase pockets. Yay.

Jim says he'd keep a roach the size of a mouse as a pet. :P

[jimnightmare.livejournal.com]

I'd take it for walks on a leash! :D