it’s on it’s way …

they’ll arrive here tomorrow, I think,
to celebrate my sixtieth birthday

there’s, a poem coming …

there’s, a poem coming
two maybe; I’m not sure if they’re separate

it’s travelling north
out of London

travelling thirty two years
to arrive

back to beginnings, well
travelling anyway …

… but I’m not sure if it’s ended yet:
nothing has ever happened until after it has finished

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano

Tags

age, childhood, family, history, house, London, Michael J Redford, music, piano, reading, singing, sound, the Boats of Vallisneria, time, tone, walnut, World War

An Old Piano

It will not last much longer now, thought I as I gazed at our old piano standing proudly under a reproduction of ‘The Haywain’. Yes, despite its age it is still a proud instrument, even if it has lost one or two accoutrements such as the candle-sticks that were once hinged to the front panels and the tiny mother of pearl centre of a marquetry flower. Even so, it still stands firm and erect, defiant in its appearance of time. Of course it has been well looked after having been under constant attack from polish and duster and tuned with religious regularity ever since it came into our home.

The old walnut upright was bought for £6 just before the Second World War and although I was four or five years old at the time, I cannot recall its arrival in our midst. I can remember many things down to the age of three, but this piano for some reason had crept into my life so unobtrusively that it may well have been part of the family for generations. Mother had the ability to read music as easily as I can read a book, it was therefore a natural development that both my brother and I should undergo tuition. My brother was the first to sit scowling in concentration beside the music teacher every Thursday night, and I followed suit a couple of years later. Soon little hands were struggling stodgily through ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’ and ‘Minuet in G’, which was a great step forward from the time when my only contribution to the world of music came from putting the cat upon the keyboard.

One evening a year or so ago, while I was browsing through the keyboard discovery new chords and chord sequences, I hurled myself into an impressive arpeggio up the scale and finally landed on top E flat with a dull and toneless plunk. This had a most deflationary effect and I sat back in shocked silence. After composing myself, I explored the dark, humming interior of the piano and discovered a broken string that had coiled itself tightly around its neighbour in a final fit of frenzy, having succumbed at last to the continued battering of a felt-tipped hammer. Since then, the strings have been breaking at the rate of approximately one every three months. The pitch has dropped so much it cannot be brought up again, the tome has taken on a peculiar twang that is somewhat reminiscent of an Indian sitar and when the loud pedal condescends to operate (more often than not it seizes up completely), it does so in creaking protest which somehow doesn’t quite fit in with ‘La Mer’ or a nocturne in E minor.

It cannot last much longer now. This morning I lifted the lid softly and peeped in and saw that it needed re-felting, and in one dark corner was a tiny but ominous mound of sawdust. I do not know the age of our piano for it came into our possession second hand, therefore it may not be as old in years as I imagine. But even if it isn’t old in years, it is certainly old in use, for it has been played upon almost every single day for the past twenty five years. I will not, therefore, feel ashamed should a silent tear fall when that sad day of parting eventually arrives.

I have often toyed with the idea of keeping it even when every note has hammered its last, and retiring our faithful friend to the front room. But pianos are large instruments and I shall undoubtedly want another and there is certainly not enough room for more than one piano in this house. How is it that one can become so attached to an old piece of furniture? It is of course the associations and memories that bind them to us tighter than any cord, and what sort of memories can a piano bring but happy ones. Memories of distant family gatherings when no one thought of the inevitable days of parting to come; birthday parties that were once looked forward to; carols at Christmas. The piano on such occasions was the centre of all things, chairs, settees and stools were turned to face it and the congregation gathered around the walnut alter.

I remember the family gatherings twenty five years ago that brightened the dark, oppressive evenings of war. I hear father playing his banjo-uke and mother at the piano singing ‘Arm in Arm Together’ and reviving the then old songs ‘Chorus Gentlemen – Just Once More’ and ‘Shipmates O’ Mine. The strings of this old piano have vibrated to ‘Cornsilk’, through a feeble attempt at Rachmaninoff’s second to ‘Oo Bop Shebam’. During the war when this old instrument lived with us in London, the ceiling fell on it more than once and bombs showered it with glass from the windows. And yet it played on. It has been a wonderful friend but, like every member of the family, it has played its part and must soon leave us.

I feel kindly towards a house that has a piano for then a house becomes a home, but without a piano a house has an emptiness about it, to me it is incomplete. I know that this certainly holds true for my house, and each time I play upon its creaking frame, the increasing tenderness with which my fingers touch the keys must surely expose my feelings towards a dear friend who will very soon be gone.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

childhood wormhole: Batman: Oddysey
family wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
history wormhole: looking for the right exit
house & London wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
music wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
piano wormhole: weight of high sash windows – poewieview #33
reading wormhole: breakfast
sound & time wormhole: riders of the night

 

mlewisredford is EIGHT years old today – yayy

it wasn’t until after I’d launched the site that I realised it was my late Mum’s birthday today, and there was a strange sense of ‘fitting’ with the realisation; this site is infused with my Mum

thank you to everyone who stops by and reads a piece or two from here: you do an ageing writer good, even though he is only eight

blue sky high

Tags

'scape, 2019, 5*, blue, branches, breathing, grey, leaves, lime, sky

                blue sky high
                down to lime

                in between
                grey branches

                anticipating leaf
                to breathe

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

blue wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
branches wormhole: Sujātā
breathing wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
grey & leaves wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
lime wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
sky wormhole: at Kreukenhof

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley

Tags

beauty, bedroom, black, blue, bracken, brass, breakfast, brother, brown, clouds, colliery, cows, curtains, evacuation, eyes, faces, farm, fields, freedom, friends, grass, green, grey, hedge, hills, horizon, horses, house, identity, kitchen, London, loneliness, love, Michael J Redford, morning, mother, mountains, passing, ponies, rock, roof, rooks, running, sadness, sheep, sky, sleep, smell, sound, steam, stone, sun, the Boats of Vallisneria, time, travelling, valley, village, Wales, walls, waves, wind, windows, winter, World War, yellow

The Valley

My first memory of Wales is an aural one.   My brother and I were evacuated during the war and arrived late at night in Trelewis, a little mining village by the Rhonda Valley.   It was too dark to see anything of our surroundings, not that we cared much anyway for the winter’s journey had made us far too tired.

It was the sound of rocks that woke me early the following morning.   Having always lived in London, I had rarely heard their raucous tones, certainly not in such great numbers.   I could see from a narrow strip of sky between the curtains that the clouds of the previous day had been swept away.   At first I was undecided as to whether the colour of the sky was grey or a pale, misty blue, but as the minutes ticked by, it became evident that the heavens were clear.   I glanced across at my brother in the next bed.   He was still and fast asleep.   Without moving my head I took in the details of the room that had come to light.   There was a small wooden cross on the wall opposite and behind the door a small cupboard where, presumably, we were to keep our clothes and the few toys we had bought with us.   Beneath the window was a long wooden chest draped with a green satin runner, the secrets of which we were to discover later.   Apart from the two beds in which my brother and I were sleeping, there were no other items of furniture in the room.

I glanced at the bed beside me once more and again at the curtained window.   How desperate I was to see what lay beyond.   Should I wake my brother or should I let him sleep?   The minutes ticked slowly by.   Then slowly he turned over towards me.   His eyes were open – he too had been looking at the window.   Alan and I had always been very close as brothers, often both doing the same thing simultaneously, each seeming to know what the other is about to do.   Our eyes met for a brief second and without a word being spoken, we slid from our beds and crossed to the window.   Had an observer been looking at the rear of 9 Richards Terrace at seven o’clock that crisp winter’s morn, he would have seen the curtains slowly part and two small faces peer out with large apprehensive eyes.

We were almost on a level with the hills opposite.   In this part of the country the Welsh mountains do not present a dramatic outline to the sky; here, they are soft and rolling, rather like the South Downs on a much larger scale.   The hills were quite bare, void of trees, fields and hedgerows, and only one house stood there, square and lonely.   A paddock surrounded by a dry stone wall contained three ponies that tossed their heads in the early morning sun.   One wall of the paddock continued down into the valley to disappear behind a black, tower-like structure topped by two of the most enormous wheels I had ever seen.   From these, thick black cables ran down into a blackened building at the rear.   Everything was black.   The ground, over which ran a network of miniature railway lines and trucks was black; all buildings, shacks and huts dotted about were black; blackness was heaped everywhere.

Now we were conscious of other noises.   The distant rattle of shunting trucks and a continuous hissing sound of escaping steam.   Then the faint clip-clop of horses’ hooves became noticeable from the High Street below, and there appeared for a brief second between the houses a yellow float laden with clanking milk churns pulled by a big brown horse.   The bare hills, the colliery, the grey slate roofs of the village below and the screech of the rooks above, stirred within us a mixture of emotions, emotions that encompassed apprehension, expectation, excitement, loneliness, sadness; and even today, whenever I hear rooks calling on a winter’s morn, whenever I hear the rattle of the shunter’s yard or the sound of newly-shod hooves upon a hard road, I am back once more in Trelewis.   But no longer does loneliness feature in the memory now for I have many dear friends there.   No more apprehension or sadness, for the Welsh hills have afforded me much happiness and security, and beauty can now be seen in that which at one time appeared ugly.   Now, the memory is warm with affection for those sincere people and there is a longing to be among those stony, fern-covered hills once more.

As we descended the stairs later that morning for breakfast, the smell of polish was evident.   Everything shone.   The lino on the stairs had a shine so deep that I grasped the bannister tightly for support for fear that I should slip, and the brass fender in the living room glowed with the intensity of the sun.   The aroma of breakfast sizzling on the big black hob was wafted through the kitchen door together with the aroma of a hitherto unknown delicacy called a Welsh Cake.

The people in that remote little mining village threw open their doors and welcomed us into their houses.   Such was their nature that we, who could justly be called ‘foreigners’, became in a very short time, part of them and their community.   How many London mothers, I wonder, have cause to be grateful for the care and love lavished on their offspring by strangers in a far-off country.

The countryside behind the village differed from the great hills on the other side of the valley.   Here, there were dairy farms.   Hedgerows bound in small fields and cows grazed to the accompaniment of pure crystal streams that tumbled from the mountains further up the valley.   It is in these surroundings I feel sure, that I first became aware of the beauty around me.   I became conscious of a physical and mental freedom that could not exist in London.   Here, one could be alone, one could run and jump and roll in the grass without fear of reprisal, and high upon Wineberry Mountain on the other side of the valley, one could race the winds for miles before a fence or even a dry stone wall would be encountered.   Here on the heights, one can shout with full voice, yet it will be lost upon the wind.   Only a stray sheep will turn its head and the bracken will dip and ripple to the horizon like waves upon the sea.   Up here the ceaseless wind is the ethereal reincarnation of Dionysus, urging one to drink from him and become drunk with freedom.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

beauty & clouds & grey & hedge & passing & smell & valley wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain
bedroom wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
black & horizon wormhole: slight sneer
blue & faces wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
brown wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
curtains wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
eyes & love wormhole: light of all interaction
green wormhole: 10/22 by William Carlos Williams
hills wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
house wormhole: quietly in my quiet house
identity & wind wormhole: c’mon – keep up
kitchen wormhole: 10/28 ‘On hot days …’ by William Carlos Williams
London wormhole: {reading right to left}
morning & sky wormhole: then
mother wormhole: in deed
roof & windows wormhole: THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE: by William Carlos Williams
sleep & time wormhole: looking for the right exit
sound wormhole: window
stone & sun wormhole: boiled spangle with soft centre
travelling wormhole: travelling / back
walls wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
waves wormhole: Valentine’s Day 2019
yellow wormhole: 10/28 ‘in this strong light …’ by William Carlos Williams

 

Paternal Pride in Autistic Pride in Action

My lovely boy was born in 1984.   We grew together – father and son – enjoying word-sounds, rolling toy cars across the floor, playing ball in the garden in determined and complicated patterns and he fiddling my ear while he fell asleep and, later, while I read endless books to him and … whenever he needed reassurance.   He went to school, but there were accumulating difficulties with his routines, his outspokeness, his knowing a huge amount of detail about things far beyond the step-by-step build of education.   He received a diagnosis of Aspergers but still had to fit into a society that neither really understood what Aspergers (or, even, Autism) is (and still doesn’t, by the way) but whose media was nonetheless ready trigger-happy to name whenever someone went on a rampage with a gun.   He was mostly supported and accepted through primary school, but underwent a corresponding lack of understanding and (almost inevitable) bullying as his age-peers hit their adolescence and needed something against which to define how normally they were developing.   My innocent and pattern-seeing boy became hurt and angry as he grew through his education, completing with a degree in History.   He has learnt to become self-sufficient and self-determining despite all the lack of understanding he has had to live within.   In recent years he has become very involved with movements concerned with autistic advocacy and representation – groups engaged in convening autistic experience, in campaigning against misrepresentation of autistics, in creating a Neuro-diversity Manifesto for the Labour Party, in bringing together information and support groups for autistic people.   Especially, he has organised and run an Autistic Pride picnic in Hyde Park for the last five years – nothing more than a picnic where autistic people can meet and talk and be and relax and sing  and recite poetry and connect and express themselves – and everything because of that.   Joe gave a speech this year which moved me to recognise how much I love this 35 year old man who used to twiddle my ear when he was young.   He has given me permission to share it with you all (the emphases, italics and bulletted iterations within the speech I have kept in):

-~~~ “AP” ~~~-

Pride, as a concept applied to marginalised groups, originated from the black power and black pride movement that sprung up in the wake of the civil rights movement in early 1960’s America.   After the Stonewall riots in 1969, gay pride became a concept.    Both movements were reactions to the dominant cultures at the time, which saw black and LGBT people as subalterns rather than full citizens and human beings, whose role in life was to either hide, keep their heads down, or assimilate.   Both movements asserted the right to be conscious of your own dignity rather than look to wider society and its dominant White Anglo Saxon Protestant culture.   For their sense of identity, both movements looked to other sources of validation, African culture in the case of black pride, and other liberation movements in the case of LGBT pride, but they also looked to other black and LGBT people for a sense of identity, looking to each other to empower themselves.   Instead of assimilating and ‘keeping your head down’, both movements publicly asserted the right to be different, and emphasised this difference through dress, actions and many other ways.   From the beginning, ‘Pride’ has been a self-empowering and self-determining movement: it grows from those very individuals seeking to establish themselves in society, and it grows through those very individuals achieving their own place in society.

Over the decades other marginalised groups have applied the concept of pride to themselves.   Disability Pride came about in 1990, and Psychiatric Survivors Pride, which later evolved into Mad Pride, originated in Canada in 1993, which aimed, like the previous movements, to increase visibility and challenge the dominant narrative.   Mad Pride is probably the most direct precursor to Autistic Pride, as the initial aims of the movement were to reclaim the identity of being mad from a negative one to a positive one, and also to reclaim terms such as ‘mad’, ‘nutter’ or ‘psycho’ from pejoratives to positive words.   ‘Pride’ therefore seeks to:

• publically assert the right to be different by challenging society’s discriminatory laws and institutions (self-determination)
• publically assert individuality, visibility, identity etc. in the face of society’s prejudiced views (self-empowerment)

In 2005, a decision was taken on the internet forum ‘Aspies for Freedom’ run by Gwen and Amy Nelson, to bring the concept of Autistic Pride Day to the masses.   The date of June 18^th was picked because it was the birthday of the youngest member of the group at that time.  Initially it was celebrated online, but in 2006, Amy Nelson led a group of people into Hyde Park on Autistic Pride Day and had a picnic there.   This was quite a symbolic gesture and provided a template for public celebrations of Autistic Pride.   Hyde Park has been a centre of public life for hundreds of years, and many radical movements originated there.   Also, because it was in a park, people celebrating Autistic Pride were not cut off from the rest of society, autistic people were out there, in society, publicly and openly asserting ourselves, not hiding away either physically, or hiding ourselves from society, or each other.

I first came across the concept of Autistic Pride in 2007 when browsing on the internet, and was immediately inspired by this concept and the strapline “Acceptance, Not Cure”.   I was diagnosed with Aspergers at 11, and by my early 20s I had partially accepted my autistic nature.   While I had embraced some aspects of my autism – for example I was proud of my ability to memorise facts, my attention to detail, my strong and focused work ethic, my strong system of personal ethics, my ability to think for myself and not get swayed by group-think – if someone had asked if I was proud to be Autistic then, I’d have said yes.   But in reality I was more proud of doing things that people said I couldn’t do.   There were still parts of myself that I was ashamed of and wanted to hide and suppress.   I was ashamed that I wasn’t as verbally fluent as others, that I struggled with speech and handwriting, and that I could be very emotionally sensitive, at times, both about people and inanimate objects, that I would have unusual facial expressions or body postures, that I could get overwhelmed by complex social interaction and could easily be taken advantage of, and various other things that weren’t glamorous or exciting.   I tried to hide from the fact that these aspects of myself were also part of what I am and that they shape me just as much as my strengths.   I was trying to succeed and get ahead in life in spite of my autism and I was still trying to force myself to live up to a mainstream conception of the ‘rebellious eccentric’ that wasn’t necessarily who I was.   This is why coming across Autistic Pride meant a lot to me on various levels.   Autistic Pride unashamedly demands acceptance from wider society, but equally calls upon autistic people to accept ourselves and everything about us.   This is so important for both the self-determination and self-empowerment of autistic people.

The biggest factor that pushed me from supporting Autistic Pride to organising an event myself, was when I first went to Autscape in 2014.   This was nothing less than a life-changing experience.   For the first time in my life, I was in a physical space where autistic people were in the majority, and weren’t supervised by non-autistic people.   It was great being amongst a group of people with mannerisms, reactions and life experiences that were similar to my own.   I went away from it feeling a sense of belonging and relaxation that I had very rarely felt before, and I wanted to replicate this experience as much as possible.

In 2015 I eventually got around to organising an Autistic Pride event myself, and have done so every year since then, and will organise another one in Hyde Park on June 16^th this year.   Thanks to the efforts of Rachel Cotton in Reading, Kabie Brook in Inverness and many others, Autistic Pride has been brought to the attention of many more people.   Although the first event I ran in 2015 was hastily organised, it was a massive success.   About 20 people turned up.   While most people just relaxed and enjoyed themselves in this newly-created Autistic Space, some others spoke at Speakers Corner and others entertained the group with speeches or songs.   Being there, I got the same feeling that I did in Autscape in 2014.   Although it has been incredibly stressful to organise the picnic, there have been many highlights for me during these events:

• I have watched autistic people go to Speakers Corner– a loud, intimidating environment – and still speak about Autistic Pride: self-assertion
• I have seen passers-bywho are autistic themselves notice us and become aware of a wider autistic community, often these people have never spoken to another autistic before: offering a sense of being
• I have seen people who aren’t autistic approach us, but acknowledge that it is our spaceand are deferential and respectful to our ways of being, which is a big difference from how things normally are: a sense of place in society
• I have seen that, although hostility is expected from members of the public, it never materialisesand the events themselves tend to be very peaceful, self-regulating and naturally inclusive of all: an autistic society

Over the four years I’ve organised Autistic Pride events I’ve seen people gain the confidence to open up, and seen people visibly relax and settle into this new-created Autistic Space.   Over the years I have seen Autistic Pride develop a sense of self-determination and self-empowerment in these ways.

Autistic Pride has grown gradually over the years, but has expanded rapidly since last year: in 2017 there were 5 autistic pride picnics all over the country, but in 2018 there were 16, and I suspect there will be more this year.   These were from Inverness to Exeter, from Cardiff to Cambridge, ranging from large festivals such as this one, to small picnics involving a dozen people.   Autism Rights group Highland managed to fly their Autistic Pride Flag outside the Scottish government house on Autistic Pride Day last year.   After the NAS and Ambitious about Autism tried to co-opt Autistic Pride in June, a group of organisers clubbed together to form the Autistic Pride Alliance, in order to ensure that Autistic pride events remain something that is run and organised by autistic people, and to swap information and help each other organise events.   I’ll put up a link to Autistic Pride Alliance in the event page.

Every pride movement is different, and every Autistic Pride event is different and what works for Autistic people will be different to what works for other groups.   It’s a fundamental trait of many autistic people not to conform socially, so any movement that accurately reflects the autistic community needs to reflect the individuality of each autistic person.   Many of us struggle to travel long distances, many of us struggle with socialising, with crowds, with sounds and noises.   And for these reasons watching the movement grow over the last year, I think it’s great how every single Autistic Pride event:

• is different in character
• has a different flag
• has a different conceptionof what Autistic Pride is
• while most events are clustered around June18^th, some can be as early as April, while others can be as late as September.
• while some organisers have clubbed together, there is no centralised authority that directs Autistic Pride, and
• any attempts at gatekeeping are resisted.

Autistic Pride, as a whole, is a group that is all about self-determination.   For individuals, Autistic Pride doesn’t necessarily need to take the form of public events.   The organiser of Inverness Autistic Pride, Kabie Brook, told me that she celebrated Autistic Pride day by taking a walk in the park with her family.    And enjoying herself.

Autistic Pride, as a whole, is a group that is all about self-empowerment/self-expression.   At an Autistic Pride event you will find Autistic Pride in Action:

• Openly stimming, or vocalising or expressing yourself in your own body language is an example of Autistic Pride in Action.
• Standing up and passionately defending your own truth, regardless of convention or tone, or social dynamics even if it goes completely against the grain, or others consider it minor or pedantic, is Autistic Pride in Action.
• Seeking knowledge according to your own logic is Autistic Pride in Action
• Completely breaking social rules, if it doesn’t cause harm, is Autistic Pride in Action.
• Demanding to be treated with the same respect and dignity as others is Autistic Pride in Action.
• Walking away from something if you can’t handle it is Autistic Pride in Action.

In a world that in many ways encourages Autistic people to be ashamed of ourselves and in a world where we suffer greatly in many ways, then being happy and content with who you are, even if it is fleeting, is the most radical thing you can do, and the most challenging to the status quo.

Another thing I like about the Autistic Pride movement is everyone can get involved in it.   Not only does it try to be accessible to those who attend it, if done right it is also accessible to those who organise it.   And this is why I prefer that there are many events up and down the country, rather than a few large, centralised events.

Even though autistic people still have a lack of representation in wider society, some progress is being made, but Autistic Pride does not need to have a leader and a bureaucracy, and nor would it be beneficial to have them.   Within human history we find that the “great leader theory” is being debunked and discredited.   Activism based on a leader’s vision, or the charisma of a leader, or reliant on just one voice talking for the mass, cannot work for autism:

• having a leader will tend towards a larger organisation within which the activism can tend towards a unified message only, tokenism, and the individuality of the struggle become lost
• having a leader tends towards a hierarchy where people with better executive functioning accrue power such that the organisation will tend to meet the leader’s needs rather than retain its activist mandate
• leaders can easily become overstretched; having to assume leadership is a horrendous job to put on anyone’s shoulders (and for which only certain types of personality would be able to thrive), let alone someone with autism
• or the movement becomes over dependent and just collapses when an individual dies (Danda) (Mad Pride);
• it is not leaders who push open doors, individuals push open their own doors in their own lives
• leaders represent individuals, but don’t necessarily empower individuals within their individual lives

It is much more effective to have many autistics contribute their individual struggles to a cause than have someone do it on their behalf.   As we have seen.   When seeking to represent and advocate for ourselves we might borrow from the Big Issue slogan: ‘a hand up, not a handout’.   We might borrow from Gandhi’s ‘satyagraha’ movement, a ‘struggle for truth’ through (non-violent) non-cooperation with established political, economic or social institutions which it was up to individuals to wage, whether alone or in groups.   Gandhi resisted being the ‘leader’ beyond giving speeches about inequality and beyond simply inaugurating an action himself, which, because he was famous, meant that thousands joined in with him.   The idea of ‘leaderless activity’ denotes a picture of a ‘movement’ which engages – individually or in coagulating groups – in actions which challenge established political, economic or social institutions.   It would certainly be better and more inclusive for autistics if as many autistic people as possible owned a part of the whole struggle for Autistic rights and equality.

It is very exciting that this growth of activity of the last few years has happened.   In order for it to keep momentum to educate wider society and its political, economic or behavioural institutions, it is clear, especially for representation of autism, that the momentum must maintain its grass-roots, the coalescence of thousands of autistic people around similar ideas working to make them happen.   We need an Autistic Pride in every small town and village, as that way it will reach far more people, both autistic and non-autistic, and everyone who attends these events will play a role in shaping the character of the event.

Representation of autistic people needs to be done by autistic people, not representatives of those people.   Autistic Pride will continue to grow whenever autistic individuals act to represent themselves or to express themselves – more so if they act with another autistic, or with tens, or with hundreds, or with thousands:

• “light it up gold”
• “DVLA”
• “Keeping NAS away from Autistic Pride”
• “How Autscape’s participants make it what it is”
• ABA conference cancelled in Leeds

And on a smaller scale:

• sending letters to organisations
• vocalising or expressing yourself in your own body language
• expressing your own truth, regardless of convention or tone or even acceptance
• seeking knowledge according to your own logic and need
• demanding to be treated with respect and dignity

Autistic peoples’ strengths are not usually in their charisma, or in their ability to manipulate, but in spotting details and patterns and thinking outside the box, and this is how every autistic person can contribute to our own liberation.   The just mentioned events were successful because they were organised by autistics for autistics, and their success was that hundreds to thousands of autistics felt that they were legitimate and mattered and conveyed this to the wider society.

Out of all the points I have made in this talk, the one I’d like to emphasise the most from this is that each and every one of you here makes Autistic Pride what it is.    A successful event will empower everyone present, and give everyone present the platform and space in order to uplift themselves.   A failed event or movement will just reduce people to passive spectators of another person’s vision of what Autistic Pride should be.

Thank you all for coming to this event.   We all belong here.

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain

Tags

ash, beauty, bridge, clouds, consciousness, cottage, dawn, eyes, garden, gazing, gold, grass, grey, hedge, hill, land, leaves, light, memory, Michael J Redford, mist, morning, passing, petunia, quiet, radio, rain, reflection, river, roads, silence, silver, sky, skyline, smell, sound, speech, starlings, stillness, stone, summer, sun, sycamore, the Boats of Vallisneria, trees, valley, village, water, weather, willow, writing

Rain

“The morning will be overcast with frequent showers. They will be heavy at times in the south east but brighter weather will follow later from the west …”

Thus spake the oracle from the radio early one summer morning casting his own black cloud over the hearts of many.   I was a keen cyclist in my teens and at many a weekend my schoolmate and I would grease up our cycles and head for the open road.   Shoreham was our target this particular day but the voice of doom did not quell our enthusiasm.   The weather was kind to us on the way down with the sun occasionally breaking through the gloom above to splash a little watery light on the road ahead and we arrived on the outskirts of the village at around nine o’clock. Passing Samuel Palmer’s old cottage we came upon the bridge and dismounted.   After a strenuous exercise, it is a delight to lean upon a bridge and gaze upon the waters emerging from beneath one’s feet.   The flow catches the eye and lifts it slowly into the distance and the senses relax to the accompaniment of its music.   There weren’t many gnats and midges at that time of day, but those that were about were flying very low indeed.   Certainly there was rain about and it wasn’t very far off either for we could just detect the faint scent of it even above the mass of water at our feet.   Not wishing to miss any of its quiet charm, we walked our bicycles through the village, and as the sky grew heavy above us, my thoughts turned to my companion’s pet tortoise Horace who had been extremely active earlier that morning, this being a sure sign of approaching rain.   We turned down the hill past the Crown Hotel, on past the water mill which was then a tea house (I believe it is now a private dwelling) and out onto the banks of the Darenth.

A damp mist had filtered through the trees on the hill opposite and the grey light had transmuted the upturned leaves of ash and sycamore into flecks of silver that hung without movement in the stillness of the impending downpour.   An old weeping willow, pollarded of its crowning glory, leaned out from the bank across the water and as I peered into its dark reflection a crayfish, startled by the leviathan that reared above it, scuttled beneath the smooth stones. As I gazed, the picture was suddenly distorted.   A raindrop had followed immediately by another and yet another and soon I was no longer able to fathom the depths.   We donned our capes, drew up our knees and huddled against the tree like two diminutive bell tents.   Cozy in our little dry islands, the raindrops drummed upon our capes in anger and hissed at us from the river turning it into a boiling cauldron.   The mist that had settled among the trees on the hill opposite had drifted on making way for a great veil of rain that spanned the skyline in graceful folds – a grey but beautiful replica of the Aurora Borealis.

As the curtain drifted slowly by, the day grew appreciably lighter and the deluge eased to a steady drizzle.   Soon after, the clouds broke a little, and a shaft of pure gold struck the hills, becoming wider at its base as it raced swiftly down the valley.   Then the rain ceased as quickly as it had begun and silence, the ethereal beauty of which is always magnified when the rains are over, tumbled into the valley.   We sat in silence beside the bubbling waters and for several minutes we watched its breathless pursuit of the shaft of gold.

It is within such a quietude that I sit now jotting down these notes.   This morning was a grey but clean smelling morning upon which the hedgerow leaves quivered.   It had been raining all night but had stopped just as dawn broke, leaving behind a miscellany of drips and drops, musical and echoing.   Each blade of grass had its tip bent by a raindrop and the clothes line was a string of pearls waiting to be spilled upon the lawn by the quick grasp of a starling’s feet.   By mid-morning the low cloud had dispersed and great mountains of summer cumulus were heaped about the sky.   It was my intention this morning to tackle one or two gardening chores that had been neglected but due to a tiny and insignificant happening, these have yet to be done.   As I passed the petunia bed, I bent to pick up an old seed packet that had appeared and my sleeve touched a petunia leaf.   Upon this leaf there were three rain drops, and as the leaf was set in motion, the three tiny drops rushed towards one another and merged into one large globule that trembled precariously in the centre of the leaf before rolling off the edge and disappearing into the soil.   This tiny happening caused my mind to leap back across the years to remember once more a particular drop of water out of all the millions that must have fallen that day at Shoreham; a single drop of water that has long since been returned to Poseidon from whence it came. We were walking back through the village when we paused awhile beside a cottage garden to discuss our plans.   The clouds were now few and the sun was strong in the cleansed sky drawing out the sweet scent of purity from the land.   Suddenly, a spark of light leapt from the ground and pierced my eye.   So bright was it that it might well have been of solid substance, for it so dazzled the eye that it quite took the breath from me.   I stooped to discover the origin of this manifestation and there, within the cupped hands of a lupin leaf was a tiny trembling rain drop.   It was a perfect globe clearer than crystal; a gem that would have done justice to the diadem of the most illustrious of monarchs.

So it is that my gardening chores for today have once more been neglected.   A rain drop fell from a leaf and in that single drop a flood of memories, memories I felt I had to record, for – they had been pushed so far below the plane of consciousness, that I was afraid they would never have come to the fore again.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

beauty & dawn & rain & silence wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
bridge wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
clouds & passing wormhole: slight sneer
eyes wormhole: mandala offering
garden wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877
gold & grey & leaves & sun & trees wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
hedge wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
light & river wormhole: the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening
mist & morning & sound wormhole: 10/30 by William Carlos Williams
quiet wormhole: quietly in my quiet house
radio wormhole: within
reflection wormhole: in turgid reflection
roads & silver wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
sky & speech & writing wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
skyline wormhole: Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879
smell wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
stillness wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pigs
stone wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
water wormhole: Valentine’s Day 2019

 

Valentine’s Day 2019

Tags

2019, 5*, beach, Carol, circular poem, Lanzarote, love, painting, paper, sand, sea, shoes, Valentine's Day, walking, water, waves

 

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

beach wormhole: allowed all gain
Carol wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
circular poem wormhole: ‘ouch’
love wormhole: in deed
sea wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
walking wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
water & waves wormhole: mandala offering

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky

Tags

1967, afternoon, air, beauty, being, birdsong, black, breathing, camera, candle, church, clouds, colour, comet, consciousness, corridor, countryside, dance, dawn, depth, earth, elm, emotion, evening, eyes, fields, fire, gaze, gold, grey, heat, hills, horizon, identity, jade, leaves, life, light, mauve, Michael J Redford, mind, night, orbit, painting, photography, planet, rain, red, silence, silhouette, sky, space, spire, stars, storm, sun, sunset, the Boats of Vallisneria, thunder, trees, turquoise, valley, west

Sky

One evening about two years ago, there was, in my part of the country, one of the most magnificent sunsets that I have ever been privileged to witness.   Being a keen photographer (although not a very good one, for other peoples’ photographs always seem better than mine), I took my camera into the fields to capture the scene in colour.   It all began when the grey broken clouds, the ‘left overs’ of a stormy day, drifted slowly across the horizon, taking with them the tumult of the heavens.   It had been a somewhat dismal day with an atmosphere that clung like a warm damp blanket, enveloping all with an oppressive heat that made even the unconscious act of breathing an effort.   The day thus sulked its way through the hours, stifling the energy of life and suffocating the songs of birds until at long last, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, the sky, no longer able to contain its pent up emotions, savaged the countryside with a violent storm.   In fact three storms had tumbled into the valley that afternoon that gave rise to a continuous end-of-the-world -like thunder that reverberated about us for an hour and a half.   Fearful though the storms were, the rain felt good, the soil quenched its thirst and the air became cool, and when the storm had flung its final volley of anger contemptuously at us, I saw that the wilted leaves had renewed vigour and had turned their faces once more to the sky.   Suddenly, the late evening sun broke loose and shone low across the fields, igniting the treetops with a blaze of old gold and adorning the scene with the tint of an old master’s painting. Screwing tripod to camera, I raised it to my eye and squinted through the view-finder.   For some moments I indulged in a danse macabre around the field with the tripodial skeleton stiff within my embrace, searching for the most artistic composition to enter the field of view.   By now the sun was an enormous dull-red hemisphere reclining upon the distant hills, infusing the undersides of the remaining clouds above with a heavy mauve the deepened perceptively as I gazed.   The solar chord became shorter and shorter until finally the perimeter of the disc was extinguished suddenly by the horizon as one snuffs out the flame of a candle.   Then, in a most abrupt and startling manner, the populace of the heavens turned to fire.   The clouds appeared to radiate from a point somewhere below the horizon in the vicinity of the sun and spread out above and behind me, plumbing the very depths of space itself.   It was as if Earth had entered the tail of a super comet that had passed close by on its elliptical orbit about the sun.   Hurriedly I set the tripod firmly on the ground and framed the sunset between the jet-black silhouettes of two sentinel elms.

After taking the photograph, I packed the equipment in its case, stood up and looked once more through the elms.   My gaze passed by the silent trees, through the sunset and beyond into space, leaving the great orb of this planet at a tangent.   The moment developed into one of those rare intervals in time when an overwhelming consciousness of the beauty about one descends and becalms the mind.   Although my gaze flew past the elms at incomprehensible speed, I was aware of their crisp outlines against the sky, and as it passed on through the sky into the depths of space, I could see the fire shrinking before me like the glow of a lantern disappearing down a long, dark corridor.   My eyes were now being lifted by a power exterior to my own being.   Up, up they went until I was craning my neck and gazing out into the zenith of space.   I had always been conscious of the great depths of space about me, but could not help regarding the heavens as anything but a dome viewed from a central point, the stars being spattered over the surface of this invisible hemisphere, all equidistant from me.   But on this particular occasion, I became aware of the three dimensionality of space, each planet, star and nebula standing out in such relief from each other, that I felt I could lift my hand and pluck them from their ethereal settings.   Immediately above my right shoulder the crooked W of Cassiopeia pierced the depths with startling clarity and midway between this and the great square of Pegasus, there glowed faintly the spiral nebula of Andromeda, so far flung into the void as to make the magnificent gold and blue binary system of Gamma Andromeda appear but ten steps distant.

Becoming dizzy from the depths above me I turned and cast my eyes down to the eastern horizon.   The Pleiades had just shown itself above the distant trees and was discernible only by averted vision, but its presence was sufficient to tell me that within the hour Aldebaran, the red eye of Taurus, would begin its journey above the horizon to dissolve overhead in the light of tomorrow’s dawn.   But even before Antares had touched the distant church spire in the darkening west, the night air became chill and with a shudder I headed for home.

Some days later when I had the film processed, I discovered much to my dismay, that I had become so involved with the scene before me that I had forgotten to remove the dust-cap from the lens, consequently I have no visual proof to offer my friends of the glory I have witnessed.   Often I am accused of exaggeration when describing a scene that has made an impression on me, yet I experience difficulty in finding adjectives of sufficient depth, colour or subtlety to use in such instances.   How can one convey to others the emotions that rise to greet the song of a nightingale, or to what depths the heart yearns to fly with the swift and embrace all three dimensions.   How can one possibly convey through the medium of the written or spoken word the sight of an evening sky washed with the faint mauve streaks that herald a sunset, or describe the background tint of the sky that is somewhere between a shade of jade and turquoise?

My attempts at describing this beautiful sunset to a friend met with very little response.   Emotion is a very personal thing and that which gives rise to emotion in one, may leave another completely cold.   Even so, I was completely taken aback when my friend said, “what sunset?”

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

afternoon & grey & rain & red & sky wormhole: Pont Neuf, Paris, 1902
air & silence & trees wormhole: 10/30 by William Carlos Williams
beauty wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
being & black wormhole: in deed
breathing wormhole: there will be ovations
church & silhouette wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
clouds wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
dawn & storm wormhole: birth in the world
evening & life wormhole: threshold to behold
eyes wormhole: mandala offering
gold wormhole: Entry to the Village of Voisins, Yvelines, 1872
hills wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
horizon & sunset wormhole: in turgid reflection
identity wormhole: quietly in my quiet house
leaves wormhole: 10/28 ‘in this strong light …’ by William Carlos Williams
light & sun wormhole: Cours La Reine, Rouen, 1890
mauve wormhole: travelling / back
mind wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
night wormhole: Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879
space wormhole: the reach turned to love
stars wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
valley wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118