Last night I had a dream, don’t fully remember, etc.
I was in the Harry Potter universe, I guess as Harry Potter but this isn’t readily apparent. Further complicating things, my wife Jasmine was in it, but I think she was also Hermione.
Hagrid needed help for some reason, I think he was injured? Jasmine looked at her phone and did mysterious calculations, quickly determining where Hagrid’s assailant might be. We went out to some public area and I saw Barty Crouch Jr. standing next to a wall, his head tilted up with closed eyes as if enjoying nonexistent rain.
As in many dreams I remember, I had out-of-universe foreknowledge of things, and thus I knew that Barty Crouch Jr. was the villain and was about to get away by going through an illusory wall, but for some reason I couldn’t say this outright. So instead, I pointed him out and said that he looked suspicious and we should watch him. The three of us then slowly walked by, surreptitiously keeping an eye on him as he walked into the wall. Somehow, this act was proof enough of his guilt, and Hagrid went back and grabbed him, able to overpower him despite failing to do so before.
After I woke up and wrote some cursory notes about the dream, I thought to myself how interesting it would be for there to be a mystery show set in the Harry Potter universe, wherein a Sherlockian auror or something investigates magical crimes.
I remember my mom telling me that I have Asberger's some number of years ago. Asperger's, also known as Asperger syndrome, is a mild "autism spectrum disorder", which means that its subjects(?) are a bit atypical but can generally function in normal society. My mom had also told me I was autistic in general at various points in my life, and I would either disregard this or determine that if I was autistic I was not very high on the spectrum. Her reasoning for my autism, from what I remember, was that, as a child, I would meticulously arrange my toy cars in rows. There might've been more to what she believed about it but this is what stuck with me. I was also a weird and nerdy kid, spent a lot of time drawing or reading or playing video games and very little doing outside stuff or playing with other kids, and generally lacked social skills. Even so, I tended to think of myself as simply "weird". Later on I decided I probably am somewhere on the autism spectrum, but I didn't think any further than that.
Earlier this year, Jasmine showed me something. I don't remember if it was a video or article, but something in this piece of media set me down on a train of thought that led to me thinking more about how some things in my life make a lot of sense if you consider me to be autistic. Specifically, the thing I realized was that I have trouble listening to people, especially when there are other people talking. Whenever Jasmine and I were at a party or social thing with more than a few people (by the way, she's the one with almost all the friends in our relationship), I would pretty much never be able to understand the entirety of a conversation I'm ostensibly participating in. I say ostensibly because I very rarely can think of anything to say in a given conversation. If the music or background crowd is loud enough, I'm essentially just sitting there watching people move their mouths at each other. I chalked this up to me having bad hearing, as I would also have trouble sleeping because of tinnitus, but after I saw an ear doctor and got my ears cleaned, I realized that I still had trouble listening to people.
Not liking crowds is an oft-cited symptom of autism, and I certainly at least fit that. When I'm around a lot of people, I feel extremely anxious, and it's not just because I can't understand what people are saying, but I can't articulate the feeling without experiencing it (and even then I'm not sure if I could). This anxiety, coupled with me not having anything to say and not always understanding people, led me to generally avoid social situations whenever possible as I was growing up. I should note, however, that I don't think it was the sole reason.
I learned to be self-conscious about a lot of things as a kid: being quiet, being skinny, being smart, and being of Asian descent (I'm also partly Hispanic, but pretty much no one could tell). The worst physical bullying I endured in school was someone pushing me to the ground--I never got beat up or anything--but I got teased and made fun of a lot up until high school for the reasons I mentioned. For a long time I assumed that this, as well as my abusive father, was the reason I ended up the way I am. Now I think that that's only part of it.
In high school I attended a "highly gifted magnet" program, which required that the students do some intelligence test I don't remember. I had always found that I didn't really fit in in elementary and middle school, and it seemed that the same was true of high school. People were generally friendly to me, at least at first, and I liked that they were more mature than the middle schoolers I was used to, but I still didn't really make friends. I hung out with them when they formed their little groups, almost never saying anything and rarely really understanding what they were talking about. This, I determined, was because I had built up a vast reservoir of ignorance in my middle school years. You see, I went to four different middle schools because my family was moving around in that period, and none of them were magnet schools. So when I suddenly jumped into this program, I had a lot of catching up to do.
So I was, from my perspective of their perspective, the ignorant new guy (I also entered my first year there late) who just creepily stood at the edge of social groups and sometimes wrote funny things they said. And that's fair, I was pretty creepy I think, but it didn't quite explain a few things I noticed in years-later retrospect. Namely that people assumed I wouldn't understand things.
I remember several instances of someone avoiding telling me a joke or explaining what their shirt meant, because I "wouldn't get it". But I would later hear the joke from a distance, or realize what the shirt meant, and I would get it just fine. After that point earlier this year when I thought about me being autistic, I reflected back on these moments in high school and thought to myself, "Did they think I was autistic (or more autistic than I really am)?" Because years later, I think I probably am to some degree, and I wonder if that was already the conclusion those high schoolers came to back then.
Of course, I should point out that Jasmine, my wife, was someone I met in high school, and she never intimated to me that she thought I was autistic to any obvious degree. When I came to that conclusion earlier this year, what she said basically had the impact of, "Oh, maybe, but if you are it's just a little." Jasmine's also pretty weird, so maybe my weirdness only ever struck her as a little weird. But probably those high schoolers just didn't like me.
So essentially what I concluded is I'm probably a little autistic, because a lot of little things in my life make sense with that in mind--the most notable being: auditory processing issues, sensitivity to clothes tags/buttons/embroidery, weak social intelligence, atypical interests, and a frustrating tendency to just do things wrong.
Today is the eleventh anniversary of (Jasmine and I)’s relationship. We were going to go out to dinner to celebrate, but we have a prior engagement, so we’ll have to do that later, perhaps the weekend.
Rather than write about that though, I wanted to write about what we did last weekend, which was go to the county fair. Jasmine had previously acquired tickets, and we planned to go on Saturday, but she felt really unwell and we decided to wait for Sunday. We went on Sunday, and both came to conclusion that the county fair was really not as great as we remembered (when we went last time). There were art galleries, which were interesting, and occasional animals, which were good, but otherwise the amount of people and the hot sun just made it a bit yucky. So we left after only a few hours and Jasmine resolved not to go again.
Anyway click the link below to see the animals (mammals, reptiles, and birds).
I just saw Erin’s latest thisisalsoyou comic and thought "Oh, is that like the mushroomization effect (wherein the affected character has a mushroom growing out of their head and sometimes disobeys commands) in Earthbound?". I remembered then that Erin’s fond of putting flowers on heads in her art (go through all of her art you’ll see what I mean), which I always thought was just a cute detail. But then I thought, “Hey, what if the mushroomization effect in Earthbound is based on those parasitic fungi that control ants and slugs and such?”. And then, “Oh, what if Erin’s flowers are the same thing? A parasitic mind-controlling flower!” I mean look at that comic I linked, it sure looks like that cou
In conclusion, please make sure you water your hair and give it plenty of sunlight.
Today marks the first anniversary of Jasmine and I getting married.
For the longest time, we considered marriage superfluous, since we’d already been together for so long (as of last July, it’s been ten years). But getting married was also nice. That Jasmine wanted to be married on Halloween partially exemplifies why I love her. But only partially. It’s almost certainly a cliché at this point that “words cannot express” how strongly I feel about her, but it’s true.
I often reflect on how fortunate I was to find the love of my life. There is no such thing as “true love” or “perfect matches” or “soulmates”--one can only hope that their initial infatuation with a person healthily progresses into mutual love. And I don’t have any way to explain how that works or give advice on it--it either happens or it doesn’t.
But it really is wonderful when it does happen.
Anyway of course not much has changed since we’ve been married. Now I’m on Jasmine’s insurances and we both wear rings and people don’t ask us when we’re getting married. But like I said, it’s nice. We didn’t have a fancy ceremony or anything, we only got legally married in a courthouse. The marriage was attended by only five other people who happened to be free that day, and there was no reception. We had initially planned to have a kind of reception-esque party this year--specifically today--but as time went on we decided against it. For now.
Last night I had a dream. As in every dream I remember, I don't remember all of it. In fact, I only ever seem to remember a tiny fragment of the dream as a whole. It's a little infuriating how dreams are so easy to forget.
Anyway, the scene I remember with the most vividness is Venus. In the sky. Now I don't mean the morning star or the evening star, though it was twilight, I mean Venus, the planet, was right there, hanging somewhere between the zenith and horizon, over ten times the apparent size of the moon. If this scenario were in real life, I imagine it would be a massive extinction event because of the gravitational effects of planets being in such close proximity. Another anomalous attribute of Venus was the fact that it was spinning very fast, like a basketball spun on a finger, and in the dream the spinning made a sound that I no longer remember. Now, of course, sound does not travel through space, and also of course Venus is a planet that actually spins very slowly, but that's how the dream was. I remember being very scared of this too-close and too-spinny Venus.
After that, we're in an Ant-Man movie. I'm not sure if I'm Ant-Man or just observing him, but we're also with some faceless friend of Ant-Man. I should also point out that it isn't clear that Ant-Man is in fact Ant-Man, since he is not wearing the suit, but I'll stick with the moniker because that's what the dream dictated. We were in a space station, as far as I know unrelated to the previous scenario since I don't remember seeing Venus from there. Ant-Man gets some magnetic boots and tests them, then we're running from an undefined villain who's also in the space station. We go outside, into space, and climb alongside the structure using handholds. At this point, I'm the last one out (either as Ant-Man or as an observer, it doesn't seem to matter anymore), and the villain climbs out after us. Before he can reach one of the handholds, I knock his hand away, and he floats away into space.
For some reason, we decide that we have to go down to Earth now, and we can't go back in the space station. So I prepare myself and launch myself out toward Earth. I'm pretty sure I can survive the fall, because I can do magic suddenly--specifically, I know how to use the "arresto momentum" spell from the Harry Potter universe. But I'm still worried about burning up in the atmosphere.
Alexocution: I got friends in high places, I get out for free
There are two kinds of flying that occasionally feature in my dreams. The first is essentially a glorified kind of jumping, wherein I jump impossibly high before falling back down at a nonlethal velocity. The second kind of starts like the first, with jumping, but when I reach the apex of the jump I can sort of “swim” in the air and fly if I fall the right way--but only sometimes. Last night I had a dream with the latter type of flying. I wrote down the parts that I remembered.
The first thing I remember is that there were three Millennium Falcons (you know, from Star Wars) scattered around the area I was in, which was essentially a really big park with buildings sometimes in it. I was trying to fly high enough to take a picture of all three of them at once with my phone, but I kept messing up because flying is hard I guess. I don’t think I succeeded.
Another part I remember is when I was going from some kind of school to my apartment. This apartment was not, as far as I can tell, directly based on any apartment I’ve ever lived in, because I was living there alone (I’ve always either lived with my family or Jasmine) and it was several floors up. In the building, I believe I was trying to run away from some people, even though I could still fly, and I stopped when I came across a book on the floor. It featured someone’s Tumblr icon, and I knew, in-dream, that it was a book of art by @sclors. There was like a biography on the back, which stated a fake real name (since I don’t know what it is in reality), and I thought something along the lines of “huh, that’s an interesting name”.
Finally I was outside again, talking to a grandfather that I guess was based on both my real grandfathers. He was telling me something important, but I don’t remember what it was, and I started jumping away to fly again. I looked back and saw him staring at me, very surprised at this. I believe I was being chased again after that, but I’m not entirely certain. In my half-asleep state after waking, I wrote down in my vague notes about the dream “Fama following”. I have no idea what I meant by that. Anyway at the end I was swim-flying away while a couple of onlookers commented, amazed that I was flying. I found that I was also accompanied by several people flying beside me in wheelchairs, and I felt guilty that I was using their power when I wasn’t crippled.
Imagine you belong to a religion, let’s call it Granfalloonery. You didn’t choose your religion, you were raised in it, because your parents were both also Granfallooners, because their parents were, and so on. In fact, everyone you know is a Granfallooner, and everyone they know, and so on.
You don’t particularly like Granfalloonery. Every day you have to participate in repetitive rituals and donate to the temple, hoping that you’ll be recognized and elevated above your station as a lowly acolyte. Not that you'd enjoy being a priest, because then you’d have even more responsibilities to deal with, and you’d slowly realize that the prestige you gained didn’t make up for it at all, so you’d hope to be elevated again. Not that you’d enjoy being a high priest. And so on. Basically, no one is happy in your religion.
So why not just leave? Why doesn’t everyone leave? Well, the problem there is that Granfallooners are prohibited from being anything but Granfallooners. If someone decides to leave Granfalloonery, it is the obligation of their friends and family to immediately murder the infidel. If their friends and family decide to aid the infidel, they are automatically infidels as well, and it is the obligation of their friends and family to immediately murder them. And so on. So it isn’t in any particular Granfallooner’s best interests to leave the religion, as there is a very real danger of being killed for doing so.
So you stay a Granfallooner, even though you don’t want to be, because everyone else is a Granfallooner, even though they don’t want to be.
And this is some kind of metaphor for society or something.
