I have always enjoyed being nicknamed, maybe also as i cannot remember ever liking my name, or at least being called by my name... I never did, the feeling it calls forth inside me is ... jolty, and very reminiscent of the emotional feeling running through the chest when meeting eye to eye.

Nicknames... i will present a listing under the things i am really good at, coping that is, dealing with it, surviving... public judgment

The title however is merely self-made-up one, which i regard strictly against the rules: as Nina Simone sang, a name is not what one chooses to call oneself, it is what one is called. The list i intend to draw up of private things i am willing to own up to shall contain at least one instance of, well, not making up my own nickname, but i was responsible (very subtly) for my favourite nickname getting belated migrationary status upon having moved from (field)hockeyclub A to BMHC: 'Struik'
- best translated by Shrub - those were the days when my mother occasionally and not totally beside the mark referred to me as Louis XIV. And yes, bashfully, i did look a bit like was it Flo wozzit Eddie in the Zappa outfit...

Which brings me back to a nice bridge by the small pond in my mother's garden. For i have lost weight. Lots of it. Of late... ever since... it had set in earlier, but 2007 to me was a good year only in retrospect.., though WHEN living through most of it, i discovered all sorts of positive qualities in me, i WAS surviving, i was actually CAPABLE of survival in dire straits but My way, no social compromise, and still accepted on the basis of quality of performance - as a mere construction-clearer - general house-keeping at one particular construction works.

Different story, elsetime related. That year however is remembered by me as the year of the frog, with obvious reference (gotto check some of that) and poetic licence. In reality, there was one, the smallest ever toadlet to provide a very touching insight into my gentle nature (gosh, i can amuse myself, noted) at same construction site, and then there was the little pond in the middle of the main, south not 10x5 m part of my mother's garden, sort of a B-sagged-out-of-shape and leaving one wishing the plastic surgeon had done a better job matching the top-breast (from the window of my room that is). Total let's say 2X1 m. The garden itself is filled with bottom growth, but there are tiles around the plastic rim of the pond, which will host around ten frogs.

2006 had seen the final stages of commercial decline, and I had nothing. I had been unable to come up not only with regular payment of rent. In effect, i had no health insurance, as i quit paying the monthly dues when realizing i wasnt sure i was gonna be able to come up with it two or three months later. I can assure you, there is ALWAYS more in these sad cases. It is NEVER just no longer opening of mail.

If i had then mentally been capable of surprise, it would have surprised me it had taken them so long to get me evicted. Then again, it's quite surprising how i managed to survive so long, too.

Anyway, and this skips some, i had no choice, still managed to salvage whatever was packageable and solo-mobile - and get it into boxes and then storage. I miss my books! My pc went awol somewhere at a dutch-teaching job in Amsterdam SE, which also means i am gonna have to rework all my industrial safety textbooks if i would ever get to teach that again... i used my own text books, and sold them separately from the course income... which could provide some extra future if i cared to... Of course, the pc held more, but i do think i managed to salvage most of my creative stuff (my 'notes') in hard copy - i am indeed from the wrong generation and never got used to computing at all - still feel so totally out of my water...

Amsterdam ended due to legal-administrative constraints plus the small matter of my steeply risen travel expenses. The debtors were no longer avoidable by march and i got myself into nightshift; later moved to the construction site. I had my room boxed up and a bed, and a chair by the eating table in mother's living room, more or less owning which also sat me at her old, old, Windows ME laptop. When not working, that's where i sat, when i did not sleep. I worked hard, very hard, lost well over twenty kg by just physical work without bothering to break. I worked like a machine, and learned new things, about myself. And when the weather, when ever the weather was fine enough, and it was, i just sat quietly by the small pond, still as possible, and had no doubt, if the indians would have seen me there, as they regarded Robert Redford dancing, they would have certainly called me Sits With Frogs.

I hate the french. And yes, i always found Kermit's 'I'm Green' very apt.

Anyway, again, i moved back into my old teenage room, not leaving mother very much option (i had few and this was the most logical one)

about a week ago i attempted to 'honour' whom i had then not yet dubbed Lucy (and i find one more useful reference to that particular name, albeit not hers - o luce you will so brite to me!)

i desired not only to 'honour' her by including her presence where at least emotionally i felt she had right of mention, i also wanted to become more truthfully represented right here

AAM-24 NO, i forget my brother... now that i am cheating time, i might as well do it in a manner to suit me best, albeit symbolically only. April 24 must be the date and therefore the number of my late brother.

AAM-23 then, shall be, shall have to be dedicated to honesty - the subject is one of METHOD to me, and therefore essential - i assume it will relate best with the keywords Mission, and i intend to test my honesty by means of the most private thingS i am willing to state in 'that', my new profile... Ah, Damocles, there thou art...

Lucy then, i shall define as my significant unsignificant 'other' - but all three words separately are ambiguous if not worse and on their own, let alone in whichever of the remaining eleven nine combinations. She approached me for advice. She got it. We both got more than we bargained for; given the somewhat complicated and fragile context - things just Never happen in splendid isolation - i find myself waiting... well, since over a month now really, for that one final message ... although she did not know it yet... but it was visible, it just was, in what she did not allow herself to address when IM-ing with me. And yes, i have been waiting, for the ball is still in her court, and it MUST be her decision - but what can i say, there was none, and then there was, a third party, and with the advice given - it turned out to be me...

one does think of Roxanna, but more perplexing than that - and even then, i confess, with appreciation of Nabokov's reflection, simple age is and always was the guide of my moral and ethical imperative(s) in this only virtual, never carnal matter-which-was-never-intended-to-matter...

Anyway, who was it said 'Life is what happens to you when you were making different plans.'..?

Ladies, please accept: Lucy does not affect my availability on neither meat nor meet market (am i loving all these - effectively very in-effective - negatives or whot!), and i was honest all the while - she never did;
but she will by no means EVER be insignificant to me - intimate spontaneous thought was shared, individual souls met for a couple of moments, not even ships crossing courses - whether or not we will ever meet - we have touched - and she does now hold an everpresent draw and bias to my compass reading.

[[What I’m doing with my life]]
This is the main question of my profile, and i assume it will be my main question for the rest of my life. It has to be... [[Being here...]]
(Sellers-reference included, note ALL context implied by ALL syntactical ambiguIttiness)
... or does it?

So what am i doing here? Simple really, creating a life, my life. I have a place where i am physically 'live' - i cannot call it my home, and it is only with some perseverence from any third party that this is the place i am best addressed

'Een plek om te leven', if i remember correctly, is the title of a report on the living-accomodation requirements of people with autism, and then specifically with a view to later life. In terms of organized assistance, whether or not provided for 'freely' by 'the system', there is little available for the 'auti' or 'aspie' at the age when independence is normally supposed to (have) set in. So it's title is certainly apt enough: a place to live.

It is not what i am looking for, i seek more, i seek a place to become. In that, i am indeed remarkably free - i have been forced by life to learn and accept that i believe buddhist lesson of freedom being found in the release of earthly possession. What can i say, luckily i have never been all that 'materialistic', but i have found it somewhat tiresome in the end, life without the long-term security of even an abode.

Real life (RL) holds little for me. That is not some poetic complaint - it is merely a statement of fact, or rather, inevitable logical&practical conclusion upon first&thorough investigation of a number of simple facts. For instance: to make any money more than i am presently guaranteed, will benefit no one really, and certainly least of all myself, as a matter of law and the workings of the social security system.

This situation will not be remedied for at least the next five years, which means i can START tackling my financial future age 58. I am not a good prospect, girls, i simply am NOT.



As said in AAM-27, or at least intimated... i will be writing a work in progress, and it will be bin bit and pieces; to be edited and addited: time for a break, but i'll post anyway - comments & questions welcome

53,000 today, the first day of My Annum 53,
there's a lot ffffs in this sixth decade, the more so at -three, when being one's age with my health coverage leaves one frontal top-jaw tooth quite squarely bermuda-triangulated offoff&away -
aptly so, this is the logic of luck that i seek:

it is my birthday today, and I AM fifty-FREE

just posting this to anyone interested, if any at all, be welcome -
i'll be doing some more posting, preparing a profile overhaul, taking notes, feel free to join and suggest i am always open for & to jest - according to my Skype landline number i am from ManJester - o the lovely co-incidence that litters my life

I have little on offer but sharp conversation, and tender if need be, and with tender comes sad... -

for although i do gratefully... so gratefully... acknowledge today that i do, finally, have very much to live FOR, and that i KNOW how i will be doing it... i owe a great deal of this to one who shall have to remain ... the

'one, unappeared still, breathlessly awaited' ... the
'one, not yet decided to be' ...

? no more, quoth the raven - Lucy Ne'ermore

well i am gonna have to call her Lucy, for the time being ... and i am meanwhile waiting for this newfound light in this newly webbed life of mine... to enter with me in what will be, i all frightful likelihood... our farewell conversation

so sharp in conversation i can do, but smarting i will do

i have coffee of offer, there is tea, i could hunt the house for other stuff but to what purpose - amidst the boxes i have been sorting and repacking - what remain beached from a former life - one bottle pure pot stilled Redbreast irish whiskey

welcome then, come bearing gifts of token comfort hugging - but please please do me the honour, the respect, the diginity... of poking lots of sticky flacky phun at me - BYTE me ;]]]

I have not yet decided if i am going to write the in between AAM's, in fact i have sort of given up on that idea - forced by a couple of things of more pressing nature.

Once more then, have i succeeded in elevating procrastination from the the depths of essential 'symptom' or 'occasion of complaint' straight to the heights of art and philosophy...

'Once', i would have noted about myself that i knew nobody who could WORK so hard and so long BECAUSE i was lazy - i long for 'having nothing to do'.

It also very much depends on the season. I am extremely sensitive to change of weather, and season. Come december, in the words of the immortal Adrian Borland, 'i wish a could sleep, one hundred days'. I need the warmth of late march, april, to vitalize me until somewhere in the second half of may things turn summer...

And there it was, suddenly, late easter warm easter, somehow always is. April is MY month. And yes there it was, and i became active, and things happened, and again - i had not quite been ready - even though it is hight time to get going: as said in march: i have no more time, and no excuses.

I dont need to apologize to anyone but myself: my mission is self-imposed, partly due to what life has had in store for me so far -
not only that, but suddenly there is so much more, and i HAVE been doing so much stuff the needed doing as well, and i have gotten myself organized, unpacked and repacked almost all the boxes left from when i got myself evicted a couple of years ago, leaving me in such a total mess...

i need to get to grips with all that, and i have started doing it - and i AM finding the form that suits me - i am still restlessly procrastinating, indeed:

again i have succeeded in posting a post that did not quite come to the point... or did it?

(now post this and check its formatting)[yessir!]
and now i am talking to myself again, as well...

Have to get into a number of basics anyway. So let's talk autism. I had deliberately avoided the 'official' literature so as to keep my mind as open as possible, and more importantly: untainted by professional prejudice.

i had spent a month in ... paradigm change is the only word ... i had never felt as if i had ever had found The answer to so many questions always in my mind to provide at the very least... understanding for my ... inexplicable ... failure ... at ... all things ... life
there were sufficient explanations, none of 'm ever clicked

meanwhile... this last.fm thingy is well... gosh... Wont You Tell Me: Where Have All The Good Times Gone? jeez what have i been missing... since when have i been missing..?

let's say i quit uni with just the final paper to go, at... 33 - 1989 then maybe a year earlier - no wonder my scores on these nineties quizzes

i sort of held out independently with positions that held some kind of promise of ... future? which never materialized, despite always producing satisfactory results - i guess i am the ideal sub but never truly part of the team

but that is not a basis to build one's life on, there is a time when there has to be no more temping, and, without a regular job, i found myself, in 1994, with my brother Peter, at the Chamber of Commerce, each registering his very own 'one-man-enterprise' as the term free-lancer holds no administrative value - so i was a business man now?

i dont know if i ever did pay normal taxes, nah, did manage once or twice to break the dontbothertopayVAT limit. Peter's untimely but long expected death in 2002 was no cause for my caving in thereafter; it was just that, with Peter, i had now really lost the only 'witness' of my existence - and i the circumstances of his final year were, well, not gotten into right now

i lost my place in 2006 - that at least provides a structure of voids under reconstruction
because i NEED to understand, to make sense of what happened, nor that i did see THAT LIGHT

EVERYTHING makes SENSE suddenly, it just all too much to even take in, even over a period; totally surprisingly unexpected details suddenly appear on the surface in a completely logical fashion... oh i see, of course

so what did i see... and that is precisely it - how to create a paradigm change in the mind of the reader, when s/he needs to redefine almost every single word

- autism is not a disease and is not curable, it is a neurological CONDITION, the 'traits' of which (if cumbersome) can be dealt with, by various means

- as a condition, the diagnosis should be made by a neurologist; there is however no objective 'marker' to positively and uniquely determine its 'presence'

- as a result, diagnosis can only occur on the basis of (at best inter-)subjective interpretation of behavioural 'traits'

the DSM-IV(R) provides the most widely recognized criteria for diagnosis, listed in three groupings of what are suddenly no longer 'traits' but symptoms (as we have now moved to the psychiatrists office - and as we all know: a shrink 'treats' the mentally 'in/un-sane'):

A. 'impaired' social interaction
B. 'impaired' communication (verbal & non-verbal)
C. 'restricted repetitive and stereotyped' 'patterns' of behaviour, activities and interests

i need to take a break, but anyone reading meanwhile:
WHAT QUESTIONS AM I ASKING MYSELF when pondering ABC?

So i decide a week ago, considering why I am still here on OkC and planning to remain for the while with various good reason, to start one of the things I am planning to do with the rest of my life. Which involves writing about autism from a new perspective, and as fully in public view as possible.

Too soon, I am just not ready, but whenever is one? And yesterday was international (UN) Autism Day (the one day then to autistically not to have done one's self-assigned homework) -
which in itself has little to do with the fact that April (since last year) is also considered Autism Awareness Month. To me... no excuses. But how to do so when there are so many ways and none of them to be traveled without map, or a decent set of linguistic machetes - I am not Graham Greene, this is not Liberia, you are not my aunt

But something like dating is @ The Heart of The Matter

So why not introduce you to the women in my life. There's not many. At the moment there is one women specifically NOT in my life (and this is totally off-topic anyway); there are my two nieces who for related reasons I don't get to see often enough; there is someone online but that is quite another situation again, and off-limits in any number of ways (which leaves a meaningful possible lifetime virtual friendship that presumably will never be shared in real life); there is my mother, in whose house I found myself forced to return upon losing my place in Utrecht was it four years ago...? And of course there is a small number of women and girls NO MORE in my life, but remembered, and that's where it gets interesting.

First though, I feel I might as well introduce you to Emelie. I am not quite sure of her age, but I guess she would be in her late forties, or even a touch closer to me. She should be not the One but The one woman in my life, for the rest of my life. AND, at least she understands me, or rather 'where I'm coming from' as the awful phrase has it, and is prepared to follow me on my thought-experiments with the occasional... moderating remark, although, and this is the case right from the first observation she made when we first met early January 6, 2008; if my thought on the matter are to be taken seriously, I am in the process of undermining much of what she has been taught about her profession. I can only be grateful with her openness of mind

I am not sure of a lot of things about Emelie. For one thing, which is sooooh auti I have come to see, I Do believe in coincidence, or maybe rather co-incidence. In Dutch, it is translated 'toeval', but that particular word carries in its wake the medical meaning 'insult' (as in epilepsy, which in not overly unrecent olden days was also referred to as the 'sacred' affliction. When I first discovered around 30 I may have what has been called 'non-convulsive' epilepsy (there is an EEG to confirm it), it was my eager self-mocking irony that immediately decided from thenonforever I should officially declare to be a Believer in Sacred Coincidence - hyphen or no. Emelie knows epilepsy by a daughter so severely afflicted that the co-morbid autism is a non-issue, albeit the original motivation for career switching into paediatrics. Apart from her own small private practice and consulting mainly at kindergarten and primary school level, suddenly, there is me - who is for another occasion, why i contacted her has little to do with her.

Emelie, again a very autistic consideration, but there you have it, these things remain in the fore of the mind when unaddressed ... I had never heard the name quite like that and immediately verified its spelling. My mother's name is French Emily but the E is only ever noticed by the mail she receives; Emma is my favourite name for a girl. The M is one of my favourite letters, also because of its three 'legs' in medieval cursory script. And all that still has little to do with [pronounce;] 'Aymely'. I get upset by mispronounciations and mis/s/spellings when clearly the result of lack of respectful attention. One has the inalienable right to go by one's name. It is simply not on to say [English:] 'Em(m)elie' - that is someone else; my officially designated social worker is incapable of ever getting it right - where it truly requires naught but attentive listening or reading PLUS a bit of unbiased imitation - which is how every human being starts learning, anything, from birth of before. Is is too much to ask people for at least being human?

However, all that is in my mind from the moment I called her with a relevant question but really not quite intent on avoiding the real occasion of myself having self-identified as an auti (however a-typical), and in need of confirmation a.s.a.p. Two weeks later I had just finished my introductory paragraph(s) and reached out to take my cup of coffee, when she just asked me: 'How about the eyes?'

[[expect ADDIT here, next break]]

I should ask more often, but I get a bit full of myself, which she knows is necessarily part of me, but which - as she does not quite know as well as she should by now - is mainly due to the nature of our relationship. I am her job-to-be, and should have been since last summer, when I was officially deemed entitled to an x-amount of 'activating guidance' per week. It is my only socio-medical entitlement as an 'HFA' (high-functioning autist; politically correct: person with autism).

I am taking a break, the one thing about posting in journal rather than forum is that it allows for on-going editing...

which is also essential to me as i am a total loss in pc-land, and am totally inapt if working wysiwyg: my main sensorial problem as an auti is that i simply CANNOT 'picture' what is not there, not in my mind I cannot, I MUST be able to SEE

and for the very good reader amongst you..: yes!
you may take this structurally and apply it to my mental state generally, i am not ashamed to have to admit, for it is my sad autistic personal reality:
OUT OF SIGHT IS OUT OF MIND (which breaks the heart)

AAM-01 april: AUTISM AWARENESS MONTH
When procrastination is a disease - anyone up for a TEMP-job?

[re-formatted copy of post in Forum In-life Advice]

A little over a year ago I met Emelie for the first time. We had only spoken over the telephone, about my recent self-identification as an 'aspie', which I was now hoping to get confirmed as soon as possible. When she had heard the basics of my story, of how I had totally failed, or should I say 'succeeded in not succeeding' in ALL departments of life, and how I had suddenly ..... 'Executive Dysfunction' was all she said. And I felt... yes... and I felt... well, eh... okay?

And an hour later, the moment I closed the door behind me and got back into the car - yes, I drive, and well, although I haven't been able to afford any car for the last five years - in the car I felt ... damn.. NO. ED? Me? No bloody way...

She, Emelie, my then found 'autism-consultant', and I, yours apiciously, we were both right. That is what I aim to show for maybe the rest of my life. That is also how I got here, and why I have decided to remain: the testing first, but the social experiment has become much more important to me.

And then, there is my new 'mission' in life, ever since my self-identification was confirmed by official diagnosis: I have Asperger's Syndrome, which is just another name for HFA, High Functioning Autism.

As far as ED goes, especially in the context of a dating site, there is NO blue pill to cure this kind of EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTION. The is no cure for autism, it is in fact not an illness: it is a condition, and a fact of life.

At present, there are three 'established' explaining theories on autism. The 'weak Planning & Executive Function' theory is one of them. I will spend the rest of my life disproving the Executive Dysfunction-theory of autism, inasmuch as its validity as an explanatory model of autism. It's simply not logical, and if I shall not be able to prove that, I can make a pretty darn convincing argument for my case.

I would very much like to, BUT I NEED HELP because I do SUFFER from this Executive Dysfunction - as a 'person with autism' (the politically correct way of saying it), this ED is the only problem I have in my daily life.

All the other autistic stuff, no problems and in fact: just as many things that can be called talent as much as trait.

Executive Dysfunction explains nothing, but it rules my life - all the same and NEVERtheless. This month, no April joke, is Autism Awareness Month. In fact, April 2 has been designated UN World Autism Awareness Day following the adoption of a 2007 Qatari resolution.


I would very much like to get started on all the things i am doing here: more testing, some dating (i do beg, ha!), but most of all: start writing, one piece a day, for Autism Awareness Month.

All I am asking: is there ANYONE out there to help me, and comment, and ask serious and critical questions, someone to steer me and to drive me, because these are things my brain does not possess: will someone be interested enough, to keep me going for just a month -

a daily little e-mail will do the job (mehopes...)


aspiciously yours, Robert

nothing better to do maybe than experiment a bit & have a look around... for Treasures

- over the years, one would have expected, OkC might have hung on to much more that did not quite make it to the public annals -

anyway, i could not care less, nor see the 'humour' of the Stinky Feet, but the Fat Project was a very nice read, and reminded me of one of the best films i ever saw (quite moving actually, in all departments *he pictures*): La Grande Bouffe

anyway; for experiment sake:
- will i get someone suggesting me a director?
- will the OkC staff be so forthcoming as to provide me and other future readers with let's say a bi-annual update on how they are doing..?

i do hope Nicole managed to lose some, but certainly not all the weight gained; i think the pictures made me realize i may not even really like skinny - seeing how she turned really attractive at some point -
i might have to rethink a number of questions...

again...

INTRO i guess my first post wont have to be some winge, pomming over why i skip so many questions: in need for my openness meeting your correct understanding in my light
.
many of my answers cannot be understood without specific context added - due to simply another way of thought:
i guess i shall soon have to accept the WTF-award, o well...
.
autism (ASD, AS) is very much about language and perceiving the world by means of an underdeveloped system of 'self'
.
SIDELINE on a site like this methought this & its perspective on love&loving best tackled straight from the top, in my profile, but then, whyever not.., in this my first post:
by way of thanks for all of these wonderful tests
.
INTERMEZZO i prefer 'aspie' for term of endearment, but feel obligated to have stated once it is the same:
an aspie is an auti (although not every auti is an aspie)
.
us aspies then, have a problem with the imagination, which will be different than usual, and i believe more passive, less actively creating-out-of-the-blue - more re-creating, patterning, eclectically shaping what some other hath before created
.
GET.TO.THE.POINT.robert:
please therefore, sexy ladies who desire to be roleplayed, pass me by, or help: i shall sincerely attempt to dance but it shall never come naturally, and thou shalt have to lead - or
[voice Elvis Costello:] there will be noooo dancing

if us aspies are silent: ask us please, directly, straight, we might not even be capable of spontaneously thinking of asking at all, let alone one particular question at that
(o, was i expected to tell her i love more than once in a lifetime? gosh, who would have thought...)
.
so these tests are a taste of paradise to me THANKS
.
ON TOPIC, PLEASE aspies & love
The 'How Do You Love' Test, Questions 20, 21, 22 > Yes/No
20. 'Love is a canvas furnished by Nature, and embroidered by imagination.' 21. 'Love doesn't grow [from] trees like apples in Eden - it's something you have to make. And you must use your imagination too.'

-Q20-YES i agree, but no canvas to embroider my art onto
-Q21-YES i agree, but what with no trees on barren plains
.
what if the functionality of loving has not been enabled
due to an underdeveloped sense of self: [voice: Dear Henry:]
there's a w/hole in the bucket, dear Lisa, dear Lisa...


LESSON: Q22. 'Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal.'
YES YES YES

[voice Elvis Costello:] Allison, my aim is true