I love nature.
In nature I am teamed up with God, in a way.
I mean, I look around. I see beauty all around me, and I feel part of it. The illness is put aside because I see perfection in the really lovely sights.
Nature isn't neat or orderly. The grass is waving this way or that. The branches are crooked and gray and gnarled. The path is lopsided from rivers of rain and erosion. The plants grow in random places. I see no pattern, unlike a landscaped lawn.
I fit in so well. I am so at home in the messy beauty of nature. I relate to it. I see the system is messy, but it works and it is WOW. Not to be sort of simplifying it, but I see my illness this way. It's not pretty. It is messy. It has erosion and rivers of mud too. Ha ha.
But it is part of nature in the same way.
I am not a mistake, nor a sorry state of messy neurons. I accept my messy neurological system because it has given me a way of seeing life. I fit in with the path in the woods.
I am an autistic guy with a message. I spent the first half of my life completely trapped in silence. The second - on becoming a free soul. I had to fight to get an education. Now I am a regular education student. I communicate by typing on an iPad or a letter board. My book, "Ido in Autismland" is now available on Amazon. It is an autism diary, telling the story of my symptoms, education, and journey into communication. I hope to help other autistic people find a way out of their silence too.
This is beautiful prose! Keep writing because it helps us "neuro-typical" people understand just how unique, beautiful, intelligent, and complicated you are. I believe it is a gift to see the world as you do! Can't wait to read more.
ReplyDeleteA. Johnston
Hi Ido,
ReplyDeleteI met you at Janet's party yesterday, you told my boyfriend about your blog. This is a really insightful post. I'm studying landscape architecture in school, and so I've been thinking a lot lately about how people experience the natural world. The thing about nature is that, in its prime state, it is actually really ordered, but on a completely different scale than what we can experience as humans. I wonder how you would feel about that same forest if you view it from Google Earth? It's a completely different way of experiencing that space, and maybe from above you can see patterns of where plants are, where what seems like disorder and chaos reveals itself to be ordered.
I would love to hear more of your thoughts on nature.
-lily