I am a Braggart

September 5, 1986

Today, I was sitting out on the porch watching the traffic and a man (who reminded me of my oldest brother) started off the curb (walking it) with a bicycle. As soon as the back wheel hit the street one of the pedals fell off - not just the pedal but the entire crank! He picked it up and attempted to ride the disabled bike. I shouted out - twice before he heard me - "Do you need some tools?" He said he might need a screwdriver so I ran upstairs to get my trusty bicycle repair kit (the tool box with bike tools).

He tried to fix it with a screwdriver but it fell off immediately. I asked to see. I observed that it had a nut that needed to be tightened. He busted off the cap covering it (later we found that we could have been unscrewed). He fixed it with a socket wrench and asked if he could repay me in any way. I told him just to have a great day and he went on his way.

I was am always still the braggart. I love to tout my good deeds, my unusual adventures. Maybe this in itself is not unusual by any means, but I brag because I am trying to fit in. I have observed "good
Samaritans" in action - in real life, in books, on the big screen, etc. I imitate them. It is EASY for me to interact with others if I have a purpose. If I have a purpose, I don't have to feel uneasy about what is required of me - there is a script to follow. 

While looking for some back-up information about Asperger's Disorder, I came across this poem at Tony Attwood's website. It describes how I feel - except I am never mistaken for "shy". I am mistaken for "disinterested". Oh, and I am not emotionally "barren", although I lack subtle emotions. I have big swings of feelings - my feelings are all physical - I can feel the adrenaline, the hormones release, the quickening of my heart, the catch in my throat, the tears in my eyes.


INTROSPECTION - by Adrian Flynn

Locked in a body that knows how to function,
This mind knows the rules, but not how to speak.
Rehearsed interaction is laboured, but managed,
Learning language and actions, but still feeling meek.

Fragments of knowledge are processed and filtered,
To sift out the right way to smile and to cry.
Emotionally barren and socially awkward,
Avoiding eye contact, mistaken for shy.

Hang on to a pattern, a routine, a ritual,
To feel safe with existence, to know how to live.
Avoid changing backgrounds and unknown encounters,
From anxious to full fearful panics, they give.

All manner of subjects researched infinitum.
Obsessive behaviour is par for the course.
First one then another thing learned to its limits,
All referenced and noted to every last source.

First learning then working, to the exclusion of friendship.
One minded and narrow, to a depth never seen.
A gulf holds me far from the mind of all others.
Confused where I fit in; somewhere in between.

I still don't understand...

May 26, 1987

Many things have happened. I don't know what I wrote last time or when but I decided not to look back. I bought this book I think in January this year and now half way through the year I have bought another! Fancy that - my last book took me from September 1981 until December 1987 - most of Aja's life. Well it goes to show you what influence people have over the lives of others. Here's Phebe Hanson telling me to write. I resisted and the pressure was there, she never even was phased. She just was so calm. I write now because of this, because of her patience and understanding , because she is wonderful.

I have learned so much lately. I still don't understand the cause of the heaviness on my heart. I don't understand the weird dreams of killing the kids that I drew in my visual journal. The decapitated heads floating down the creek. The blown away faces on thin, small bodies, and more. I sense I must have dreamt more. I feel it right now, a heaviness on my heart. weighing me down, foreboding something. Who knows?

Driving down the highway on the way to Bayport on Saturday or was it Sunday, I thought of how if we were all to die here, not by nuclear means or anything, but if our civilization was to pass away now, gradually dwindle into nothing, and still survivors elsewhere, and our cities would become lost and overgrown. Highways would begin to crack and trees would crack them further and houses would be lost to one another by the trees and brush and it would be untouched until thousands of years from now people would rediscover this place and wonder about us. Tell stories. Write romantic books about our lives. Make assumptions such as we do about the importance of such things as peoples who lived eons and eons ago. Egyptians, Sumerians, Greeks, Mongolians, Aborigines, Mayans, everyone. It would be all wonderful to discover such a place but it is lost to us. We plunder and can not leave well enough alone. We cannot look and not plunder, to set aside some discoveries for the future inhabitants. It is so stupid that we don't even think about this sort of thing. This is another a priori of man (A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience - I had to look it up. I am not sure what I meant when I used this term). That the idea of us looking into the future is inevitable because it has been done and we can do nothing to change this within us now.

June 3, 1987

Cris and I went to the library downtown today. I had never been there before. Cindy watched Harrison and ianthe so we could be free without children running around.

We both got a whole bunch of books. I got books on Love and addiction, Ed Gein the murderer, schizophrenia and tried to get a book on self-hypnosis but couldn't find one. That library was very larger. We went out to eat at the Lotus afterward. That was nice.

We seem to not be able to talk while eating. Weird problem. I think the television must be moved out of the kitchen to remedy the situation. We look at each other occasionally but we don't talk.

A few weeks of silence should help us learn to talk while eating again.

That's it. I'll try to move it tomorrow. I think everyone will go into shock. Oh my god! What about WKRP? Oh well, sacrifices, sacrifices!

The Ethics of Secrecy

I came across this entry dated June 1988. In my journals, I see a common theme of trying to work out logically what I was feeling or how I was supposed to feel or react to others around me. I believed research helped me as I tried to figure out the "rules" of society that I could not understand.

The conflicts we experience when it comes to choosing when to keep a secret or reveal it or to pry into someone else's secrets or to leave them be are rooted in the experience of what it means to be human: needing both to share and to hide, both to seek out and to beware of the unknown.

By studying how one learns to deal with secrecy you can discover the path you can take to become aware of one's self among others.

Let's define secrecy:

a) An intentional concealment (to keep a secret) Hiding or Concealment is the defining trait of secrecy. Secrets are set apart from non-secrets in the keeper's mind. There are several other traits also present in secrecy (not always present all the time) they are...sacredness, intimacy, privacy, silence, prohibition, furtiveness, deception. These influence how we think about secrecy.

b) Also a neutral definition of secrecy. If the secret and the sacred are too closely linked in one's mind all secrecy will be seen as inherently valuable and to keep them is one's duty. Negative views of secrecy stem from beliefs that...

1. Why conceal something you're not afraid to have known?
2. Secrecy means impropriety (There's no place for secrecy in a democracy)
3. People conceal what is shameful or undesirable.

To view secrecy with any degree of neutrality we must assume that a degree of concealment or openness accompanies all that humans do or say. We must evaluate circumstances rather than an initial evaluative stance.

How can we differentiate between secrecy and privacy?

If secrecy is intentional concealment then we can say privacy is the condition of being protected from unwanted access by others - physically, mentally, spiritually. Privacy is a claim to control access to one's own personal domain.

Privacy and secrecy overlap when efforts to control access rely on hiding. But privacy need not hide and secrecy hides much more than what is private.

How do people protect their privacy?

1. Physical Space (Territory) differs culturally.

2. Information about personal matters and attention to them or to one's person - if medical history were published in local paper or if you were under constant surveillance by satellite.

Secrecy guards against others coming too near, learning too much, observing too closely. It guards the central aspects of identity and, if necessary, plans and property. It serves as an additional shield should protection of privacy fail or break down.

There is a need for secrecy just as there is a need for fire. It is like fire can enhance and protect life yet both can stifle, lay waste, spread out of all control. Each can also be used against itself, both can guard and invade, nurture and consume.

Conflicts over secrecy are conflicts over power: the power that comes through controlling the flow of information.

Power Struggle

To be able to hold back some information about oneself - or - to channel it - and thus - influence how one is seen by others gives power.

Also - the capacity to penetrate similar defenses and strategies when used by others.

Power requires not only knowledge but the capacity to put knowledge to use, but without knowledge there is no chance to exercise power.

To have no secrecy is to be out of control over how others see oneself. It leaves you open to coercion.

To have no insight into what overs conceal is to lack power as well.

If you lose control over your own secrecy, you would not be able to flourish. In psychosis, your secrets flow out like water over a broken dam and if you are isolated, it leads to painful self-exploration.

Four claims in defense of secrecy for human autonomy

In seeking control over secrecy and openness a person attempts to promote their sanity/survival:

1. IDENTITY Control of secrecy and openness needed in order to protect identity: The sense we identify ourselves with, as and though. Secrecy protects vulnerable beliefs or feelings, inwardness and the sense of being set apart including memories and dreams; of being someone who is more and is capable of more than meets the eyes in the future.

Without perceiving the sacredness in human identity, individuals are out of touch with the depth they might feel in themselves and respond to in others.

2. CHANGES/PLANS Growth or Decay. Progress or Backsliding. This could be an instance such as pregnancy. A secret at first and told to an increasing circle of people.

3. ACTION Such as a surprise party or as in a chess game.

4. PROPERTY Hiding valuables and personal documents.