As for the obligatory quotation from Dawn Prince-Hughes's book, here it is (although I'm a little sad nobody felt moved by the Guided by Voices quote...oh, well):
Gorillas, like autistic people, are misunderstood. They are seen as ugly, as caricatures of fully formed humanity, as unfinished or trapped in an anachronistic world that has no value. Prejudices about what it means to be a person necessarily exclude those who are not bright on the stage of common action; those who do not welcome the glare of shining, blinding smiles, who do not lean closer to hear the roar and macram of shouted words, who do not cut themselves and mold their flesh and spirit to fit the narrow human path, funneling upwards without looking back. Autistic people can be left behind, hunted and haunted, looking through an often opaque glass.
I remember hearing once when I was young that glass is actually a liquid, moving imperceptibly like some ancient sea that separates here from there. You can look through it and not realize that its moving, but all the time the view one has through it is slowly changing. I now know that this isnt actually true, that glass is solid, but I think that autistic people and gorillas know some deeper truth about this. I am always aware of a moving sort of glass between me and the world, my present and my heritage, what is seen and what is not seen and only felt. My glass is not like the wall that other people seem to have, a wall that divides and gives no view. The gorillas know this too about their own glass. They see what is beyond it. There are human people there, that is true, but the glass is also a window to their past and their future. I watch them, these slow-moving gorilla people, and they seem to intuit that if they move slowly enough, the glass will stop and show its hidden holes. Perhaps they believe they will find some kind of passage that others dont see; perhaps they feel that this way they can go home.
Gorillas, like autistic people, are misunderstood. They are seen as ugly, as caricatures of fully formed humanity, as unfinished or trapped in an anachronistic world that has no value. Prejudices about what it means to be a person necessarily exclude those who are not bright on the stage of common action; those who do not welcome the glare of shining, blinding smiles, who do not lean closer to hear the roar and macram of shouted words, who do not cut themselves and mold their flesh and spirit to fit the narrow human path, funneling upwards without looking back. Autistic people can be left behind, hunted and haunted, looking through an often opaque glass.
I remember hearing once when I was young that glass is actually a liquid, moving imperceptibly like some ancient sea that separates here from there. You can look through it and not realize that its moving, but all the time the view one has through it is slowly changing. I now know that this isnt actually true, that glass is solid, but I think that autistic people and gorillas know some deeper truth about this. I am always aware of a moving sort of glass between me and the world, my present and my heritage, what is seen and what is not seen and only felt. My glass is not like the wall that other people seem to have, a wall that divides and gives no view. The gorillas know this too about their own glass. They see what is beyond it. There are human people there, that is true, but the glass is also a window to their past and their future. I watch them, these slow-moving gorilla people, and they seem to intuit that if they move slowly enough, the glass will stop and show its hidden holes. Perhaps they believe they will find some kind of passage that others dont see; perhaps they feel that this way they can go home.
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I'd love that Post-it. I'd stick it on my nads if I could!