A Thing of Beauty
26 Sep 2007, 10:34 pm
The following is a quickly typed, yet carefully edited, opening for a book I've been working on for several years now. The story begins over a century into the future when a cure for autism has been discovered. Federal funding for special needs has been pulled from public schools, and to avoid submitting to the cure to recieve an education the major autistic rights organizations pool their money to set up their own schools. At first they mainly serve in the goal to integrate autistics into society, but over time developed into well-renowned centers of education where autistics are taught to respect their culture and heritage, having been awarded ethnic rights by the UN. The main character is in a pre-school program to prepare her for personal functioning in life, whereupon graduation she will move onto secondary school to learn interpersonal skills and normal scholastics.
Alise Satoru spent the first six years of her life as a deaf-mute. She was born as such, but ultimately it was her decision to remain in that state for as long as she did. Her parents had personally requested her to be screened at birth for infantile autism. They were delighted to receive the news that she shared the autistic neurotype that they both had.
Once the was old enough, her parents had her enrolled into one of the many pre-school programs for the development of low-functioning autistic children into social and capable beings. Those children would need to be prepared in the pre-school programs so they could more easily integrate into the secondary Autistic schools at the appropriate age.
Treatment consisted only of Applied Behavioral Conditioning (ABC) techniques, planned diet, and vitamin supplements. Alise’s parents elected not to allow use of any medication to treat either her autistic personality or her corollary symptoms of high anxiety, depression, etc. They did not support any synthetic means of altering the natural development of autistic personality.
Alise displayed symptoms of being a low-functioning autistic child. She hardly uttered more than a few words, noticed her teachers or peers, or explored. But all the time she was thinking. And watching. And most of all she absorbed what she watched and thought about.
In the solitude of her autistic mind, she grasped and learned many things an ordinary child would not. She swallowed oceans of knowledge from the books read to her, devoured the complex motives behind all things her eyes and ears could focus on. And even though she rarely understood the motivation behind the others around her at first, she eventually did through careful analysis.
It was through memory that she understood what she did. Rather than question an event as it happened or predict things to come, she remembered them later. All of the information she heard and saw in books and actions of others were saved until later when she could play them through her mind. Every miniscule detail had its turn under her mental scrutiny.
The causes and affects marched through her mind until understanding came over her. When she finished her inspection of the collected memories she changed them. The causes of conversations and actions were sometimes altered, or at other times the nuances that progressed the two were instead changed. Whatever it took to create a different outcome. The alternate results provided her with even more understanding then a simple replaying of things as they were ever could.
Out of all she absorbed, Alise found that language interested her the most. Words with many meanings quickly went through her mind to be dissected for purpose and functioning. The means of communication confused her at times, with the simple art forms many quick movements and expressions involved. But they were a part of the experience, she told herself, so she continued to examine them as much as the words.
Words could even be found on paper. Books and magazines and everything else printed on were a transfer of ideas without someone to do the transferring; just one to receive. This was just as confusing as the physical movements involved in verbal communication. But the printed words were good and useful. They came to her more easily, since without people in the way of things she could grasp the meanings more thoroughly.
But the question that ran its course through Alise’s mind nightly was the exact purpose of communication between two people. The solitude and deep thoughts in ones own mind were much more serene and intense. She couldn’t grasp why anyone would need to share a word or an idea when everything could be found out individually.
So she absorbed all the more intently the actions and words of others to answer her deep question. When she needed to she even pushed her social anxiety out of the way to move closer to her peers and teachers to experience more fine details in sound and expression. Perhaps the answer lies in the details, she thought. But still resolution eluded her.
Eventually she despaired that she might never grasp the purpose behind interpersonal communication, and fell into a deeper autistic trance. She would then look into herself to see if the answer was in her rather than in others.
Inside her mind she saw the intense framework of a vast living organism, with many different parts functioning in different ways to accomplish the means of the whole. Her thoughts were many little ants collecting any morsel of knowledge they could find to feed the Queen and make her fatter to produce more collecting ants. The organism was one, divided into many. Perhaps something was missing in that?
Still, she could not grasp the answer to her Question. Her autistic aloneness grew all the more powerful in its need for isolation, when she finally saw what she needed to know.
Several months into her sixth birthday, during the outdoors Motor-Skills Strengthening class, she noticed one of her instructors being called by another away from the group to the perimeter fence. Her instructor was a woman, which she understood because of the instructor’s subtle differences in communication and actions from her male-counterparts. The woman-instructor approached a man, whom Alise had seen several times before with her instructor. She assumed they had a relationship of some sort. They communicated just as usual, but this time things were different.
Maybe it was the many months of self-examination, or perhaps her more frenzied need to take in knowledge, but Alise noticed things she hadn’t before. Her instructor was very physically close to the man. They talked casually while making unconscious movements. Eventually the movements erupted into the pressing of their lips together and a tight embrace. Alise was stunned.
No boundaries were made between the two. No respect for isolation was made on either part. They simply exchanged words and actions, and ended with a pressing of lips. They walked away from each other with an aura of content warmth, and glanced back with a smile and a wave. It was in this that Alise understood what it was that drove two people to communicate. It was not always an exchange of ideas or meanings, but an exchange of beauty.
The two s had pulled each other close and shared their bodies in a small way, a way that was much more than anything academic. It was a joining of souls and self. A thing of beauty that Alise herself could never touch, nor understand fully, by remaining in an autistic trance. Perhaps there was need to discover this thing of beauty that hung out of her reach.
So Alise pulled all of her memories of her instructors’ careful behavioral conditioning methods and began to apply them to her own personality. The struggles to open Alise’s mind had sometimes been as difficult as trying to open a hard nut to get to the meaty prize inside, or at other times more personal like sunlight gently coaxing a flower to blossom.
But now the struggles ended. Alise opened her mind to a more interpersonal world, prepared to learn this thing of beauty that she so feared to touch. She cautiously chose the words she wanted to say and asked her instructor for a dictionary. There were more words she wanted to learn.
26 Sep 2007, 11:39 pm
I'm sorry, I should have remembered to clarify that. If you notice the next sentence, it states that she was under this condition by choice. her being a deaf-mute is a reference to Holden in The Catcher in the Rye, when he says "I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of them deaf-mutes." he says this when he is especially frustrated with others and feels that pretending to be a deaf-mute would be a surefire way to avoid communicating with others.
Any other comments?
