LIving a Spectrumite Life in an En-Ty World

Some of my peers choose humorous ways to talk about living as a member of the Aspergers/Autism "spectrum", such as John Elder Robison's self-created title as a "Free-range Aspergian". That has a bit of whimsy, of "cuteness" to it, doesn't it? Mr. Robison and Temple Grandin (another noted Autistic/"Spectrumite") even make the point both in their books and their lecture appearances that they wouldn't want to change anything about themselves or their presence "on the spectrum". They're comfortable being who and what they are. They feel of those of us with Autism/Aspergers ... conditions? ... have also been given enough advantages over "Neuro-Typicals" that they prefer life on the spectrum. Or, as I call it, being a "Spectrumite" versus being an "En-Ty".

For me, learning about my own hardwired limitations as a Spectrumite these last couple years has been brutal. Just as brutal as living on that spectrum has been for lo these 58 years. Yes, I finally have some understanding of how and why interpersonal communications and relations for my entire life have been ... "odd". For both myself and everyone around me, as I'm very aware that I do continually cause confusion and discomfort in others. I understand why some people react so strongly, so negatively,  on just being in a room with me. Why so many attempts at simple conversations go so ... uncomfortable. In three sentences or less.

But for all those years before "understanding" attacked, I kept up an optimism that someday, somehow, I'd figure out how to blend in with most people. How to get along, have "normal" conversations at parties and professional meetings; even how to relate with people without seeing the faces of this or that person simply cringe upon seeing me for the first time, and before I've even said a word to them. Because, yes, I've always seen this happen, and yes, it has always hurt. Not everyone reacts to me with such dismay, and yes, I have managed a few friends over the years. But I've not seen my friends and acquaintances receive such reactions ever. I do.

As someone who'd been a Secondary-Education/English Lit major in college, and an acquaintance of people with Autistic/Aspergers kids, I knew of the existence of the "Spectrum". But it was out there, of course, not ... here. Then a few years back, in short succession I had both a 5-year old son and a 26 year old daughter (a grad-school  student in a Lutheran Seminary) diagnosed as "on the spectrum". For him, the diagnosis was high-functioning Autism; for her, Aspergers.

For an involved dad like myself, this was quite a jolt. As a very active parent, I set out to learn the differences, the determining factors, of being "on the spectrum" as opposed to being "normal", with my typically intense ability to focus and absorb. What did this mean in REAL terms, and ... how does one mitigate the known problems? What do you do after the diagnosis?

During those studies, with the focus and passion that (I would soon learn) those of us on that spectrum are so often capable of, and with the firm (if unappreciated!) nudge of a close friend, I came to the inevitable if startlingly uncomfortable conclusion: two of my children, my self, and my late father all existed on that same spectrum. I didn't like the conclusion one little bit. But ... I am an analysis whiz. It is one of the few things I'm hot at. And once I started looking at the possibility of my own 'existence' as a Spectrumite, I couldn't find any missing pieces. All I found was supportive evidence. Solid supportive evidence. A lot of solid, supportive evidence.

When I first mentioned this idea (of my "inclusion") during a meeting with our son's teachers and specialists they had no reaction at all. Or rather, not verbally. They just looked sideways at each other, and ... the meeting moved on. It seemed it had been obvious to them earlier in our 'relationship'. Checking in with a couple of them later ... well, yes ... they had all noticed the rather obvious link, and had even discussed it among themselves long before it had occurred to me.

Would a test be useful, I mused? (Note: I was still looking for an "out", a possibility that my conclusion was wrong.) The response was disheartening: Um ... well ... no, not really, it would mostly be a waste of time and money; I was certainly welcome to go get tested, but ... the direct answer was that while I may not look and seem to most people to be "obviously suffering" from Autism/Aspergers, to someone who works in the field ... I light up the indicator lights all over the board. Bluntly, if this is a game of tag, I'm "it".

As I noted at the beginning, both John Robison Elder and Temple Grandin are comfortable with (or actually prefer) being a Spectrumite to being an En-Ty. At the present time, I can't join them "there". Maybe someday. I've been so aware my whole life of the difficulties I have both in business and personal situations, of some interference with my ability to communicate specific meanings and ideas on a predictable, solid basis to other humans, that finding out that there really is no solution to my problem isn't ... comforting. I've struggled mightily with the loss of hope. I've have many damn rough days and nights.

I've had to realize that for all it's prowess and capabilities, my brain doesn't use language quite like any of the En-Ty's I know or work with. Not even my wife and closest friends. This limits everything I try to do to such an extent that at times I wonder why I even bother trying anything. Having learned it's a permanent hard-wiring problem, I keep looking for the equivalent of a software "patch". Some way to actually get my thoughts out "there" such that others can understand the depth and width of what I try to communicate.

I'm not having any luck. Knowing the cause hasn't provided (at least yet) any assistance at amelioration. There has been a ton of new emotional baggage to work through, not least of which is the realization that ... this is permanent. There may be no fix for my communication/interpersonal struggles.

The supposed definition of insanity is trying the same action over and over and expecting a different outcome. But all I've got left is to keep trying to improve my ability to communicate with the En-Ty world I live in, and hope that eventually I'll find a way to maybe double the percentage of accurate  'content' I manage to get across. Someday, someway, I'll maybe hit a 4% -transmission of ideas to someone. It ain't much ... but it would be better than I'm getting now. It would be ... something.

It would bring so much hope back ...

Always re-newing ...

The Brits talk of repairing things differently than we ... well, actually, they talk about EVERYTHING differently than we do. One of their verbiage "intriguities" that I love, is when they replace a part on a car motor for instance, they don't "replace" it, they "re-new" it. As in, "Anytime one removes the cylindre-head, one must re-new the gaskets before replacing the cylindre-head upon the motor-block."

Besides the cool "re" endings rather than our "er" spelling, "re-newing" has such a gentle, loving touch-sound to it. You're not junking an old part, you're lovingly re-creating or fondly improving the ... device? ... at hand.

And so these days, I am constantly re-newing so much ... from software to websites to even the way a professional views their business 'model' ... and my website has been getting a LOT of attention from me over the last few days.

My site is not only my personal professional presence on the web, it's also the test bed for the Haugen's Galleri brand that the wife and I share. I started it once upon a time, but it's nearly completely identified with Miriam these days. It's her home for her 'tribe', as she's discovering, built upon "mothering". Our "tribes" are so different, yet ... my experiments in web presence can be applied to bring hers along as well.

I've not completed all the changes I'm in the midst of trotting out on my Showit-based current site, yet I'm already working on the replacement for it. The 'nex-gen' sites we have will be based on WordPress. I'll be able to add a seamless connection to SmugMug galleries and online preview/sales that we will use for certain clients and events. It's a continual process, never ending.

Ah yes, re-newing my business model, web presence, and view of Life on a continual basis ...and the accompanying image is of model Kailey Glodt, one of my favorite subjects to photograph.
Neil

I can't hold back Spring ...

Or Life either. For all I love Winter, it is the ... pause ... that is most dear. The quietude. The peacefulness, actually ... the now. Yes, I love watching the storms roll in and barrel their way across the landscape from the windows, but note, it is watching the storms that I love. Observing. Seeing. The marvelous and ever-changing view neither requires nor asks any action on my part.

Especially if the weather outside is frightful, I sit inside and simply enjoy the view and the passing of time. A most delicious day is one spent by the fireplace with good music and good books and a view of the roiling storms passing through, expending their fury on the lands surrounding. A good companion or two make the passing time even more enjoyable, and these are the moments that are most wondrous for me. Comforting and satisfying to my soul.

The world and the weather simply move on by, and unless I need to repair damage to something, I am unaffected by them except for the pleasure they provide me. Add a glass of fine liquid, say fresh coffee mixed to my taste, a single-malt Scotch, or glass of Merlot and the passing of time is heavenly. And again, peaceful.

But now, Spring comes. And with it, Busy-ness. Hecticity. Action. Things need doing. So many things need doing ... there's Growth everywhere, much of which needs controlling, like the grass and the fruit trees wanting to sprout new limbs EVERYWHERE ... and so much action is required of me. I can't merely sit and watch, as to keep my lands and buildings looking well and being well I must become very active. There's so much to do.

Life is so busy. So not-peaceful. So exuberant and un-controlled and so often, un-expected. Spring flings us into the pell-mell rush of summer, with all its excesses. Its newness. Just as I get comfortable with the now it is gone, never to come again. It bounces me back and forth and forces me to venture OUT.

THERE. Where the unexpected and the new play and frolic while awaiting their favorite game, the ambush of the quietude and the peace of the pause.

I can't hold back Spring, of course, any more than I can hold back Life. Why all this rush to the future? What's wrong with ... now? Ever must I steel myself for the ongoing rush of Life when Spring comes a'calling. It's that time again ... to put away the joy and comfort of Peace, and brace myself for the brash bruising that is Spring and Summer. For another year.

For the Love of January ...

I'm noticing right now, how totally BUMMED I am that it is already February ... and it's made me think a bit. Why is it so much a downer for me? This isn't at all in jest, for this is what I do feel most sincerely, and with every fiber of my being. And so I've been pondering this for the whole month of January: why do I feel most at home and in-balance with the world around me in a month most others seem to dread?

I love the "feel" of December: I'm a total Advent junkie, hooked and NEVER looking for a "cure". I find myself only wishing December was twice as long as it is every year. Still, that doesn't say anything about January. As I thought and puzzled about my love of January, I noted to myself how odd it was because nothing happens in January, really. And I found the answer within that statement. Hercule Poirot loves to have the ever-factual and direct Captain Hastings about while he is solving crimes as Captain Hastings will always make the most obvious and seeming-less useless observation of something. Yet in that statement, some little fact pops up that stirs Poirot's famous little grey cells of brain-matter to connect other seemingly un-related dots. Voila, we learn something!

And so the understanding came from within that observation to myself that it's strange to love January (as I must do). The obvious following thought is this: nothing really happens during the month, so how could one "love" ... nothing? As with Poirot and his Hastings', right there in the obvious I found my answer. I realized that I love the peaceful-ness of January, the pause in the year, when it seems every thing "stops". Nothing's growing, we stay in-doors and hunker down of an evening by the fire with a good book, some music, a movie or so on the television/dvd player.
Me, the person who always wanted to be out and about when younger ... wants little more than a quiet evening at home, a fire, and a few loved ones close by. What a change from the "Neil" of thirty years ago!

By the end of February buds and shoots and the first bulb-flowers are appearing, and the pace gets dizzyingly faster week by week. LIFE just gets very busy, hecticity abounds, and off we go for another roller-coaster ride through the year. I watch others as they THRILL to this, the "coming-alive" of the world around us, as I've heard it described, and I note how different I am. How different I am from even what *I* used to be.

I now love the pause, the contemplative time, the inward-ness of January. I love the storms outside and the fire inside, the sense of snugging down to let the world go by. To think unfettered by the need to "do" whatever it is that needs done today. To feel, to sense, and to float in the pool of the Quiet of Now.
I do get my month of that each year, but it's never enough. And as I get older, I find I want that month to be longer.
Robert Neil Haugen,
1 February, 2010

We had a wonderful visit with Joass, Rachel, Glory, and little Gabriel on Sunday evening, and I even got to hold him for quite a while, though he was asleep the entire time we were there. He smiled in his sleep while I was holding him, and we saw this cute dimple in his left cheek when he smiled! So, they're adjusting though Gabriel isn't as cooperative as he could be, so far insisting on sleeping all day and being awake much of the night.

I've always loved little ones, the newborns and toddlers and all ... but as I get older I find them not just a joy but a necessity of life. They help ground me as more and more of my precious friends and acquaintances reach the other ends of their lives. Glory and Gabriel do more for me than they realize, nor will be able to understand for many years yet.

Thanks, little ones!

Welcome Little Gabriel!

Oh joy and rapture! Our very close friends, Joass and Rachel Lyatuu, have just had their second child, little Gabriel. He joins his big sister Glory (my beloved God-child) and all are doing well and quite excited. Unfortunately for Joass, the birth came the day before he started a new job "here" in Salem, so he felt he HAD to go to work rather than call in on his first day. He is so eager to get back to the hospital and see his wife and baby!

In moments like these, I'm reminded of what I thought and would tell people through all of "our" pregnancies ... to the question, "What do you want?" All I wanted was ten little toes and ten little fingers, appropriately placed and functioning, and two bright little eyes looking back at us. Boy, girl, long, short, thick, thin, screaming, calm ... were of no serious matter to me. Just a healthy little baby.

So MUCH of life is like that. It is SO easy to get caught up in wanting all sorts of things that really are just details, and not that important. But we all need these reminders, and it seems, quite often.

Gabriel, welcome to the world, and little one, I sincerely hope that I may play some little part in introducing you to the joys of life as you grow up within that wonderful family who welcomes you with such love and joy. You are blessed and lucky, little one!

Voice and Human Potential update!

I find ... constantly ... that the most important bit of information needed to understand a concept or complete a task, or that one really necessary step in a process on the computer, was not listed nor mentioned by those writing or giving the instructions. It can be frustrating, but then, it's just like real life, isn't it? Sometimes the lack of that one thing is simply an oversight on the part of the instructor. Sometimes it is because they do that one thing so naturally it never occurs to them that for someone else struggling to learn this ... whatever it is ... that one little self-obvious step is instead something totally hidden in the fog of confusion and darkness.

But how many of the really important lessons of life can you learning by hearing someone talk? We seem to need the pain of failure, the disappointment of hopes and dreams, before we completely internalize and live by a lesson. Though why this should be true of computer program instructions I do not understand! Ah well, maybe I've not learned that lesson yet?

In this week's voice lesson, I had another major "A-ha!" moment. We are taking me ever higher in pitch, and as a tenor, that is where I need to learn to "live" vocally. Yet I have always felt pressure build up in my head as the pitch gets well up there, and it forces me to strain against it, to force the sound somewhere. But no forcing is allowed in vocal production, as tension always causes even more strain upon the listener than the singer! So, I've been working with trying various methods of avoiding the buildup of back-pressure in the head on higher pitches.

Along the way, of course, I made the most gorsh-awful squawks and squeaks. And what seemed to work, to be the answer, worried me. We've been working so hard at getting the sound out in front, and not swallowed inside me. But what seemed to work involved letting the resonance, the vibrating pulse of the sound, stay inside the center of my head, and go right up through the center of my head to my skull. It was just so wrong from everything I've been working on with Jackie and Kevin!

So, as we worked on scales and vowels into the passagio (passage into head-voice) and head voice (that bizarre area that isn't "regular" chest voice nor falsetto where tenors and sopranos go to get high), I talked of the process and findings I'd achieved, and noted my concerns that I'd been going down the wrong road. Yet as I was singing, she was very impressed with the reduction in tension and improvement in sound quality up high. And we spent some time there.

And then, she just sort of absent-mindedly noted that while the pitch resonance needed to go up through a pipe through the center of the head clear to the top of the skull (as I'd noted it felt it was doing), the vowel resonance (where in the head or mouth of the singer the vowel "feels" to be) needed to keep coming forward in (or even out front of) the mouth.

Whoa, we gotta stop and talk here!

All along, over all these years of singing in choirs and taking lessons, EVERYONE has always said the upper parts of the voice are produced quite similar to the lower parts, and should be as unified as possible. Now I'm being told that above a certain point, the pitch sensation goes one direction and the vowel another ... at a perpendicular angle, getting farther from each other as I go up. This is ... WRONG.

Isn't it?

Jackie sat there very quietly for a moment, and just looked at me while thinking through something with her hand over her mouth. No, she said after a long minute's thought, it isn't wrong, it is correct. The sensation of pitch resonance goes right up to the top of the head for tenors and sopranos ... as the vowel comes farther and farther forward. They start out very similar in "feel" but begin to diverge somewhere on the path to higher pitches.

And it was so natural for her that she had never thought of mentioning it. In fact, neither of us could think of ever hearing or seeing anyone talk about this. Which seems bizarre, as it is one of the MOST needed bits of understanding to gain access to a beautiful and easy sound while singing those high notes!

It was amazing, as we worked at adopting the mental and then the physical applications of this realization, how quickly I could sing my high scales, repeatably, and with vastly reduced tension. And at such altitude! We've worked up to the "tenor" high Bb before, though it was produced with enough tension to sound quite strained. We went to Bb, softened and lightened the vowels and got them forward, then to B, then to C. The tenor top "C". Stable, on command, and repeatable. Not at all "pretty" yet, but then, I was up there fairly easily, and now we can work on learning how to sing pretty up there over time.

So, how much of LIFE is like that? We struggle, we fight to gain an inch of progress, we feel stupid as we just can't find a way to do or be what seems so easy for others ... and then, we find that one little thing that isn't what we'd thought it must be. Suddenly, what was such a great struggle to get even close to doing is doable with only a reasonable bit of effort and attention. Soon, it will be a natural motion, an easy step, an effortless process.

And after a short period of enjoying the new-found ability, it starts all over again. Welcome to the world!