Pale Blue Dot

I watched this video made by an autistic woman about how it is to be autistic and why she feels compelled to do all the weird stuff she does - like touch things repetitively and that sort of thing. She said she was interacting with the objects around her by touching them - like she was talking to them and they were talking back. Sometimes I wish I had a mental disorder so that I might be able to access certain parts of being human that other people couldn't. In this instance, I really wish I could interact with inanimate objects around me the way autistics do. I do connect with inanimate objects sometimes though. I was sitting outside just now touching this big leafy plant and it really did feel like a conversation. I touched it, like playing a piano, I was making a message with my fingers, and the plant was touching me in a way that was kindof like talking. And then I thought about all the ways we talk and interact with all the things around us, like how food feels in my mouth and how air feels in my lungs - we're all talking to one another.

I hate that people use air conditioning so much in the summer. I mean it's nice when you've been outside for forever I guess, but it's kindof like anesthesia during surgery. I hate when you're about to go into surgery and they tell you you won't feel a thing. It seems so unnatural to me. I was expecting pain. Aren't you supposed to feel pain when someone's cutting into you with a scalpel? Maybe I was even looking forward to it and had already accepted it on some level and now I'm not going to feel anything. How unhuman to not feel a thing. Summertime is supposed to be hot. So why does my room and the dining room and every indoor place I go feel wintery fucking cold?

Hey have ya'll ever checked out Google Sky? http://www.google.com/sky/ Eeep! This is one of my favorite new things. Doesn't it excite you how many worlds there are to explore? I mean there's the interpersonal world, like your world and my world and how we interact, and then there's pond water, those amoebas and protists have their own world going on, you can check it out under a microscope. You can travel to different countries, experiencing different cultures can certainly be other-worldly. Or, you can look through a telescope and think about the array of other worlds going on everywhere else. Between the stars you could see before, now you see even more stars, and more stars between those. Galaxies among more galaxies. Jesus Christ in a jumpsuit! Sometimes I get real hopped up just being alive.

And while we're talking about intense inspirational things that make Lauren cry like a baby in a stupid happy way about how beautiful it all is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw