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]

:)

The thing that stood out most to me was when he fell off briefly and didn't care. When I was climbing, the whole way up I was thinking along the lines of "I just need to make sure I don't fall, that would be really scary". I'm a perfectionist and I don't like falling. When I was at the top of the slanted wall and thought I was stuck and wanted to go back down, it was because I thought there were no more moves I could make that didn't have the possibility of me slipping off of them. That's the main thing he talked me through and got me to try anyway. And then he goes so fast he falls off the dang wall and he doesn't care. XD He thought it was funny. When I got back down and fully switched back I actually had a bit of a delayed-reaction "omg we fell off, scary!" adrenaline rush moment.

My arms are sore this morning. XD

[jimnightmare.livejournal.com]

Damnit, Daria, why did you tell him only halfway up the palm tree? Just a little more uza....

XD! Well you did what you said.

I dunno if uza can beat us still being a noodly person. It was like our arms just kinds stopped working there and wouldn't move anymore. But we've got this big freaking exercise machine at home now that looks like a dinosaur and I totally want to try using it now!

[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

[yonjuunana.livejournal.com]

When we got back, we took the bus home at night and passed by the REI climbing rock, and they had it all lit up with orange lights. XD The thing is meant for you.

Somebody should make a climbing rock shaped like a colossus.

lee likes to go back to old entries when he meets new people; and so, this.

[aubergine-pilot.livejournal.com]

So we followed you back over here.

This -

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?

?

It made Lief cry out incoherently and grab at the monitor. FINALLY! SOMEONE ELSE ASKING THOSE QUESTIONS! was what I could translate out of the jumble of emotions that collapsed on my head in the process. He gets frustrated by a lot of things here, and I think that's one of the biggest, the way this place just... rolls over people and doesn't teach them how to live.

(Seriously, what kind of world does do that to people?)