greenstorm (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greenstorm) wrote2022-04-17 10:49 am
greenstorm) wrote2022-04-17 10:49 am
Lived experience
A friend of mine wrote this:
could this body be a wilderness
instead of a garden?
could it thrive, grow mysterious & intriguing,
develop shadows & secrets
and wild glens where herbs sprawl green
on the banks of burbling streams, and
aspens shiver gently in soft breezes,
their clean straight stems welcoming sun and wind.
could i be filled with endless summer sun
and the passionate torment of monsoon rains?
could i freeze hard in winter and come
to a complete stop
just breathing?
We played around in the comments a little, and eventually I added this:
could these humans be a garden
instead of a wilderness?
could they thrive, grow gracious and perceptive,
develop tolerance & knowing,
and walled rooms where creatures sprawl safe
in the murmurs of shared conversations, and
bodies melt in sympathetic support,
their nerves and muscles welcoming desired contact.
could i be filled with challenge and answer
and the passionate torment of empathy's exploration?
could i shed my armour in society and come
to a complete stop
just breathing?
She is yarrowkat / Kat Heatherington and you can find more of her here, her work is excellent: https://www.patreon.com/yarrowkat
But I want to talk about the process for a minute, because this felt really important to me.
I'm different from other people. That's really been the crux of this whole autism/PDA/whatever thing: it's that my experiences are just not the same as other folks, even given the same events. It makes folks very uncomfortable to know that my experiences are different from theirs so I spend most of my energy smoothing that over in various ways: highlighting the overlaps, shrugging off statements about "universal" or my own experiences, denying my own senses and the reality of my own thoughts.
A lot of folks don't seem to feel like people can be different from each other, so when I assert my experience they argue with me: no, I must have actually thought/felt some other thing. Or, if they accept that difference, they feel like then stating their own experiences somehow challenges the existence of mine, so they get real quiet. The concept of neurodiversity helps me put this into context. These folks don't believe in neurodiversity.
When someone states an experience around something I'm interested in, I want to find it fascinating. I want to dig in and compare. I want to both know their experience and share my own. Through this process I feel like I am both acknowledging/legitimizing this new experience and building knowledge about my own. So many folks view this as an adversarial invalidation, though, that I don't do it often. It's viewed as contrarian.
(I'm a little bitter: I grew up with "celebrate our differences" slogans and then when I go to do it folks feel attacked)
So when Kat wrote this poem (there's a bunch more to it) I kind of played with some of the lines. She identifies as a human, she is within the social and human sphere, and in the poem she's experiencing wilderness as external. I identify as a piece of nature, I guess, outside of the human sphere but interacting with it, and I identify wilderness as internal and humans as external.
In the comments of the poem we went back and forth: she'd write something, I'd use her formality of thought and her structure to invert her writing and gain a better understanding of myself, by using her lens. It was tremendously valuable. The exchange also reads as if I'm contradicting or challenging her. So for instance she'd write: "the wilderness is what doesn't fit. outside the comfort, the sunlight, the fence itself, it is what lies nameless and unknowable and necessary" and I'd write "humans are what doesn't fit. outside the intuition, the body, nature herself, they are what trade words for truth and congealed facts for certainty and busyness for the work of living and dying"
And through this process we built a thing, I learned a lot, and I also felt like I was allowed to exist as my actual self in the world: like making statements about myself didn't harm or challenge someone else. It was a precious experience for me. PDA never lets me just accept things, it always makes me assess them on their own merits (well, usually, I definitely have blind spots) and this leads to a worldview that's just... different. I got to play in that difference with another person, and I liked that.
Not quite sure where I'm going with this but I wanted to put the poem up there and to mark this. Notice what you like, so you can steer towards more of it if you see it around.
could this body be a wilderness
instead of a garden?
could it thrive, grow mysterious & intriguing,
develop shadows & secrets
and wild glens where herbs sprawl green
on the banks of burbling streams, and
aspens shiver gently in soft breezes,
their clean straight stems welcoming sun and wind.
could i be filled with endless summer sun
and the passionate torment of monsoon rains?
could i freeze hard in winter and come
to a complete stop
just breathing?
We played around in the comments a little, and eventually I added this:
could these humans be a garden
instead of a wilderness?
could they thrive, grow gracious and perceptive,
develop tolerance & knowing,
and walled rooms where creatures sprawl safe
in the murmurs of shared conversations, and
bodies melt in sympathetic support,
their nerves and muscles welcoming desired contact.
could i be filled with challenge and answer
and the passionate torment of empathy's exploration?
could i shed my armour in society and come
to a complete stop
just breathing?
She is yarrowkat / Kat Heatherington and you can find more of her here, her work is excellent: https://www.patreon.com/yarrowkat
But I want to talk about the process for a minute, because this felt really important to me.
I'm different from other people. That's really been the crux of this whole autism/PDA/whatever thing: it's that my experiences are just not the same as other folks, even given the same events. It makes folks very uncomfortable to know that my experiences are different from theirs so I spend most of my energy smoothing that over in various ways: highlighting the overlaps, shrugging off statements about "universal" or my own experiences, denying my own senses and the reality of my own thoughts.
A lot of folks don't seem to feel like people can be different from each other, so when I assert my experience they argue with me: no, I must have actually thought/felt some other thing. Or, if they accept that difference, they feel like then stating their own experiences somehow challenges the existence of mine, so they get real quiet. The concept of neurodiversity helps me put this into context. These folks don't believe in neurodiversity.
When someone states an experience around something I'm interested in, I want to find it fascinating. I want to dig in and compare. I want to both know their experience and share my own. Through this process I feel like I am both acknowledging/legitimizing this new experience and building knowledge about my own. So many folks view this as an adversarial invalidation, though, that I don't do it often. It's viewed as contrarian.
(I'm a little bitter: I grew up with "celebrate our differences" slogans and then when I go to do it folks feel attacked)
So when Kat wrote this poem (there's a bunch more to it) I kind of played with some of the lines. She identifies as a human, she is within the social and human sphere, and in the poem she's experiencing wilderness as external. I identify as a piece of nature, I guess, outside of the human sphere but interacting with it, and I identify wilderness as internal and humans as external.
In the comments of the poem we went back and forth: she'd write something, I'd use her formality of thought and her structure to invert her writing and gain a better understanding of myself, by using her lens. It was tremendously valuable. The exchange also reads as if I'm contradicting or challenging her. So for instance she'd write: "the wilderness is what doesn't fit. outside the comfort, the sunlight, the fence itself, it is what lies nameless and unknowable and necessary" and I'd write "humans are what doesn't fit. outside the intuition, the body, nature herself, they are what trade words for truth and congealed facts for certainty and busyness for the work of living and dying"
And through this process we built a thing, I learned a lot, and I also felt like I was allowed to exist as my actual self in the world: like making statements about myself didn't harm or challenge someone else. It was a precious experience for me. PDA never lets me just accept things, it always makes me assess them on their own merits (well, usually, I definitely have blind spots) and this leads to a worldview that's just... different. I got to play in that difference with another person, and I liked that.
Not quite sure where I'm going with this but I wanted to put the poem up there and to mark this. Notice what you like, so you can steer towards more of it if you see it around.
no subject
how did i get into Tantra. i am an initate of a wiccan tradition that gives a person the opportunity to dedicate oneself to a particular deity. i chose Aphrodite, because of my relationship to the concept and practice of Love as a healer, explorer, and guide. as a dedicant to Aphrodite, i found my relationship to those things deepening, and i started wanting a more structured, and much deeper, guide into that practice than i could find in the pagan community. a friend who is a sex worker pointed me toward some books, including Reclaiming Eros. that book was hugely influential for me. it is a book of interviews of & essays by people in the School of Body Electric and similar erotic/somatic practice.
around the same time i was reading this and related works, i met Dillon, who came to my farm to be a volunteer for a week - fresh from a BE 5-day workhop in the Jemez. it was one of those amazing synchronicities that are so good it doesn't even feel real. Dillon agreed to tell me in detail about the intro workshops, and with that information under me, i took a huge risk and flew to Seattle (where i knew no one - i had never in my life flown somewhere where i knew no one) to take a Celebrating the Body Erotic workshop.
my friend/mentor in this community, Zed, calls the work "educational erotic experiencing" and that about sums it up. it was exactly what i was looking for; it was more than i was looking for; it gave my life a hard left turn that i desperately needed. i not only stuck with it, i dove deeper.
over the years, BE & its spinoff queer Tantra organization, Body Trust, have absolutely changed my life, and given me tools to keep changing it. i miss it like crazy; the pandemic of course changed everything. from 2012 to 2017, i attended the 5-day intensive every year. in 2017 i had a rocky experience; in 2018 i took a break, and then the event took a break, and then the pandemic happened. now the organization is something new - https://erosomatics.com/about/ - when they start having workshops again, i'll have to see if it fits where i'm at right now and whether it makes sense to attend. i am hoping it does.