Konfirmation systemizing: Revaluing Autistic Thinking – Autism Research Centre residency

‘Just having a conversation really helps’

Cambridge: January 22nd

Woken at 5:27am – makes a change – snooze fighting back literal dreams

TV – Endless news proclaims Cambridge as being the coldest place in the UK at minus 12 – Look out of window at snow covered landscape odd in non-moon-light – green bamboo bowing to all their surroundings set to one side – no footprints to mar the view – just a frozen fountain.

Up

breakfast – no biscuits

2 toast

Grapefruit Juice

Tea x2

Egg

Bacon x2

tomato half – conversation

Pack for day – Head downstairs – decide to get taxi as pavement frozen solid – conversation

I would walk but I know I will fall over – no balance sense when its cold – wait – take sweet as fossil – read map on wall from 1995 – start to get hot – taxi here – conversation

Arrive at Autism Research Centre and let in – Welcomed – sort pass no 6 – settle down – meet – conversation

Sort space – sort cards – meet – conversation

Hand in forms – explain – conversation

Sit in allotted office – computer on and watch snow fall from the trees while I work – listening I spotting the differences – this is my system I am creating – wet and dry LFO – feed in segments – play – repeat – play repeat – action – lunch invite – lunch conversations – explain work so far including the desire for no repeats within the repeats – listen – river rowing – visits home.

Return and continue

repeat

action

outcome

new action

new repeat

play – repeat – learn – tidy

news from home – chemical spill in France smelt on south coast – last time it was earthquake when I was away. Miss the fun.

Leave and walk – slush avoidance strategy – carefully maneuvering between the drive entrances – manhole covers always clear – stepping stones – foot holds – slow – shops – food gathering – think – choices – tea – hold back tears by the whiskers cat food. Disturbed by way woman throws my choices into the bag with flick of practiced wrist. Who is she?

In – unpack the food – systemize the food – organized – 4 packed lunches for rest of week – attempt bath without mocking shower cap – fail – ignore wall stimulation – fail as the defiant patterns object to my slight.

First cup of tea – with real milk hidden on window ledge

Work again

Spell check misdemeanors

Halibut to Halifax

Blog to bog

Beatrix to vomit

Second cup of tea – retrieved without falling

headphones on

Shut my eyes and watch the snow fall from the tree

Littoral literally

Cambridge: January 21st

Wake at 5am and listen to radio – endless news about the weather reminding me – taunting me not to worry. Wear hat for first time this year – Two University meetings – aspergers student project and REF – meet twitter follower for real

Lost lottery ticket sticks out of snow bank:13 14 21 34 35 03 06

Home – cat fed – wait – wait –wait – rush – food fuss – forget things – Restricted timetable – leave.

Journey – long – cold – therefore painful – but the trains worked – evidently not for all that many people – I feel rare. Lost

Sky darkening – listen to Different Trains on the train – we keep stopping which spoils the effect – Elastic band abandoned – trolley passes at speed ignoring me as have tell tale homemade sandwich in hand – wanted tea.

lost boot chain seen on platform edge at Waterloo

Underground busy – feel invisible as people walk directly at me – timed this wrong – change at Warren Street but have to let 3 trains pass in as many minutes as they are too full to allow any semblance of personal space. Forth train slightly less full so give it a go – breathe its 2 stops only.

Arrival as the train splits in two – slush – walk in road as unfrozen – here.

Unpacked sort systemize ‘stuff’

Small tea

TV

Bath

As I lay back I see rhythm written in the walls – wash – dry – camera out – pictures taken – battery warning – fail realization as left charger at home – take frustration out by mocking the shower cap

TV Incas each stone interlocks – second cup of tea

Turn back on endless news – third cup of tea

Fill in form I had forgotten to do – on own so takes the equivalent of the Triassic Period to read

Subtitles on – ‘Germans pour into Poland’ pour? How literalism eats away at my imagination

Grinling Gibbons

Limewood – first cup of coffee

Gilded sculptures -undercuts

Switch off please – can I?

No

22 hour day – I didn’t put that in the application

‘At the third stroke it will be Five twenty three and fourteen seconds’

Portsmouth: 18th January

Wake

breathe and collect

as usual

5:23am

Look out of window – no snow

r e w a k e a t 7:47 – snowing hard – cat is disturbed and cant grasp – wash and dress

I choose to leave

I choose to guess

I choose to attempt walking on the hidden grass rather than – risk – the ice compressed paths – pedestrian off roading amidst a twenty minute white out – wait – wait wait but no meetings everyone else seems to have stayed at home – dual purpose day – artwork to be sorted – preparing for return and exhibition – glad postcard 3 was completed in advance.

warm

I have artwork

completed

Warm

I think about home

returning

on the grass

then

accidentally page turning

find

new word to add

(take)

(claim)

concatenation

read

eat

follow the instructions

to reveal its meanings

an d take

a great joy

in misspelling

as outside

sky darker

it starts to snow

harder

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Missing Dangerous Animals card number 19 of 48 – ‘The electric eel’

Portsmouth: January 15th

Collected fear at 5:32am

I have always collected – not because of values or imposed hierarchies represented by the objects – but just because they are interesting.

We collect what we are interested in or curious about – rough fragments for us to polish – define the missing – explore – the science of geology would never have gotten out the ground had it not been for curios and curiosity.

curiosity – what happens if – as a child its what encouraged me to bypass the dyslexia and learn – an over active sense of curiosity also drove this desire – answers in detail please.

I remember as a child a trip to Malta – the stones – caves – goats in trees – heat and landscape – the history – early catalysts for my aspergers drive to answer questions what – where – why – how – never who which was an important but supplemental question – secondary

I didn’t want to know all the answers though – you need mystery to keep on asking questions – as important as the answers – as a child collecting confectionary or tea cards – 1-48 – missing 6, 9, 34 and 47 – finding sets drove me on but as soon as it was complete the desire left and all you had was an archive – fixed in number – paper and print – unexpandable – unevolvable

while looking there was hope of finding the unexpected and asking another question?

question the world around you

question yourself

stimulate interface

ask

what

what if

what if I

what if I do

what if I do this

what will be the outcome

234,534 times a day

• 
• 

‘He is on his way so turn left on to the A146’

Portsmouth: January 13th

Awake un

surprisingly

at

4:27

with jolt

c l o c k w e r k

regularity re starts

I would

rather

FOR

go

away

systemic infiltrations

its so

hard to put

one word

in front

of

another

so i will go and draw

instead

s low

frequency

oscillation’s

win

my day

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