not all of us can live in fantasy 100% the time like i see some people on here do and it's refreshing to learn something new. its been philosophy, essays, and history for me and i feel much more at home on planet Earth for it knowing that people have been struggling and wishing similarly for millenia.
its not that fiction doesnt have its place, its important and healthy to exercise the imagination, but non-fiction can do so much to boost and supplement that. if not for yourself, for your art or for the people you're around
this version of the post doesnt seem to be getting much traction but this is arguably the most important reason why we should be reading nonfiction in addition to fiction
The thing about the moon is maybe you don’t need to write a poem about the moon. The moon’s been done, we’ve discussed it. It’s a coin a mirror an eye a lantern in the darkness. It’s a rock in space. It’s the dang moon we’ve all seen it! Is there something you can notice that’s is more surprising than the moon???
“Nobody’s going to want to sit on high-speed rail for fifteen hours to get from New York City to LA.”
Me. I will sit on high-speed rail for fifteen hours. I’ll sit on it for days. I’ll write and read and nap and eat and then do it all over again. I’ll stare out the windows and see America from ground level and not have to drive. I’ll see the Rockies and the deserts and cornfields and the Mississippi River and your house and yours and yours too. I’ll make up stories in my head about the small towns I see as we go along. I’ll see the states I’ve yet to see because driving or flying there is a fucking slog and expensive to boot. I’ll enjoy the ride as much as the destination. And then I’ll do it all over again to come the fuck home.
one of the things that makes autism a disability (and why some of us choose to label it as such rather than an “alternate neurotype”) is the stress.
part of autism is just being incredibly stressed. overstimulation? stress. holding a conversation? stress. something happening to our schedule? stress. people talk about how often autism is recognized and diagnosed via our stress responses (like meltdowns) because it is just so common to see autistic people stressed because of lack of accommodations to how our brains work.
and this matters because stress kills. stress causes a lot of health issues, or it can trigger pre-existing ones by making certain chronic conditions flare up. i once had a psychiatrist very unhelpfully tell me i “just need to manage my stress” when the stress i was describing was things i could not avoid in neurotypical society and can’t “just get over”. i can do “self care” all i like but i cannot at the very base level change the way my brain inputs information and reacts accordingly.
i only learned this year that loud noises aren’t physically painful for other people. i have lived 34 years in a world in which my friends and family regularly physically hurt me at random just by shouting, and i thought everyone else just thought i was kind of a wimp for not dealing with the pain as well as they did.
like. loud noises physically hurt. it’s like a static shock from my ears to my spine that doesn’t stop until the volume goes back down. i thought we all agreed that ‘that’s too loud!’ and covering our ears meant ‘ouch!’. turns out i’ve been dealing with a stressor almost no one else has, my whole life, alone.
autistic people have to keep functioning through debilitating levels of stress that no one else in their life acknowledges or helps them with. it’s no wonder that their most visible ‘tells’ are breakdowns.
Your tree has been visited by the Flying Tree Doctor and diagnosed with Infested. He has removed the Unauthorized Fucking Thing. Praise be to Flying Tree Doctor.