NO Chameleon

March 25, 1986
Writing as a 23 year old

Sometimes things don't turn out the way you wanted them to but it is good all the same.
Things become clear as time goes by.


(a poem)

Light,
walk, illuminate
zwooshhh...
car, headlight, tail
breeze.
whistle ear, hair
all but silence.
alone:
tap-tap-tap-tap;
sidewalk, shoe

I can imagine the apartment I lived in at this time. If the windows were open, I could hear everything going on outside. My bed - a futon - was in a large closet, that had a window that faced the street. I imagine that I was alone, kids asleep, windows open when I wrote this.

(another poem)

I've been deeply wounded
my heart was torn out
discarded
I've been hurt before
not like this
I am starting to heal
the pain, not as great
I am not changing
NO Chameleon

I like this poem. I like the tone of it. I like how I am feeling a little bit empowered. I am acknowledging my pain. I am refusing to change who I am. I especially like it in terms of stating that I was not a chameleon - I will not change according to the whims of those around me. That is actually pretty good insight. It surprises me.

 April 1, 1986

(a poem)

Thunderstorm party
cookies and Koolaid
the rain makes us new again.

Aja shut the windows
so the lightening
wouldn't get in and harm us.

Tornado
bring my trike downstairs
venture outside
to listen for rains.

My dad and I
looking forward to
our own destruction
in the storm clouds.

I see that my haiku for my short film at MCAD had it's beginning in this poem. How sweet to have celebrate a thunderstorm with my children. I tried hard as a parent to make sure that nothing scared my children. I had grown up so frightened by everything. Frightened of crowds, of meeting new people, of going new places - everything! I didn't know that that was the Aspergian in me. My children, two of whom are suspected Aspergians, did grow up fearless - of SOME things - not all. I did the best I could.

As a fingernail biter, I managed to raise three non-fingernail biters (one bites their cuticles - oh well)...

Tornados and Dreams

Haiku for Cell Animation

Tornado
bring the trike downstairs
venture outside
to listen for trains

My dad and I
Looking forward to
our own destruction
in the storm clouds

March 21, 1987

A Dream

Heaps of garbage and junk my partner picks up a flat basket. A shot is fired from within this war zone. I run safe outside the door. The soldier finds me later in the complex. He is going to kill me. I tell him that I could find the basket, but I can't find it. Lisa makes some really good food for him and his friend. He turns out to be a prince. He talks to one of my important friends (the belly dancer? Halle?) While I chat to the poor soldier about what is happening.

This place is all corridors which have multiple levels, elevators which will take you not only vertically but horizontally. The lower levels are very open - sometimes the ceiling is 3-4 levels up, as you get higher, the ceiling gets lower. The doors open up onto different environments: sometimes outdoors, sometimes shell-shocked neighborhoods or gyms or locker rooms, wherever.

There is this house, all glass front. Someone is telling me about the family in it. The mother comes home from work. The children pour out of the wood work - about 30 kids or so. I'm told she is kind of a saint. I have them over for dinner at my place - a boiler room type of place within the complex.

While we are eating, discussing the prince soldier, the ceiling begins to drip tofu-custard-water. Cris and I are making love on a dirt floor in my room. The ceiling drips on my knee. I grab a towel as the ceiling drips over my legs. The family is trying to help. The saint woman funnels the goop into a machine which was present and I didn't know the purpose of. It moves the stuff all over and if you mix in tahini, it makes a good dish - umm - weird...

At the movies, I take the elevator down to the Hobbit. The guy who dropped out of school is the elevator man. He gives me the Pepsi challenge on the way down. It is a trick. There is no Pepsi, only Coke. Coke products litter the floor of the elevator which is now moving sideways. We laugh. I ask him something. He starts talking about hanging out. I ditch him when the elevator door opens.

I am sure everyone has strange dreams that mean nothing. I have never been one to analyze my dreams, merely being amazed or terrified by them. I do not know why I am recording dreams. They don't make any sense to me. 

The haiku, on the other hand, is significant. I was making a cell animation. Drawing each cell with India ink. The 60 second animation was about tornadoes when I was a child. I remember when there was a tornado siren, my siblings and I would pile downstairs with our things. We had a large basement. We brought our trikes in and roller skates. We drew chalk traffic lines on the red concrete floor, so we would not crash into each other, as long as we obeyed the rules of the road.

If dad was home, he took me outside. I remember standing beside him. He was fearless. We looked to the West. He described what the clouds would look like, "The sky will turn green." He described what we would hear, "Tornadoes sound like trains, listen." 

I am convinced that my father was an Aspergian, like me. He died several years ago, so I can't be sure, only conjecture. He was a doctor. He had special interests: calculus, geology, photography, woodworking. He relied on my mother to tell him when it was time to leave a social function. He didn't have a lot of friends, the men he did associate with were husbands of my mother's friends, or they were people that he had went to school with at the U of MN. He was intensly interested in family. He wanted to keep us close. We were very loved, but I am not sure he ever told us.