“I worry about fixing these bodies that are beginning to experiment ..when we have fixed the human race the human race can no longer evolve.
We think of ourselves as a climatic species but we are living in dynamic environments that are shifting that we will need to glitch out and become disabled in order to inhabit and so I worry about fixing these bodies that are beginning to experiment at the very edges of the eco tones of what is supposed to be materially appropriate. So somebody’s body that could be fixed I wonder if it should be fixed.” -Sophie Strand
this is the space I find myself occupying now. im sitting in wander. wandering lines, that are not set with a concrete direction or goal orientated destination, i already know that there will be no real answers to the questions that i am asking here. there will be no ending or certainanty, to be looked forward to. it will not be completed with yet another DSM5 diagnosis and a full stop. no, that is not the way of the wandering lines.
when I speak of wandering lines i am thinking away from what we think we know about autism, mental health, stability, what it means to be well. i cannot tentatively hold myself completely to notions of how the world interacts and responds to these things so much anymore. i have cautious steps now. i have learned to not trust the narrative. i have ventured in my thinking of things from wilder places.
It’s in the glitching out, its in the disability, its in the diaschronic. Its in the place that we loose eloquence that God comes in.
Bayo Aklomofe
instead i find myself trusting something that cannot be named, that is innately inherent, and who’s guidance has never wavered over the years. my faith in these unknowable spaces have always shown me the way, where to place my next step, or they have laid before my very feet the guidance i am seeking. these Gods have always traveled beside me, even in the times when i wasn’t able to hold space for them.
The void isn’t empty. The gods are everywhere. We are swimming in dynamic, animated, tentacular territories and there is no escaping that, there is no removing ourselves from that. We are always in conversation with these bio field signals.
Bayo Aklomofe
my son’s story is unfolding in wildish uncertain and sometimes uncomfortable ways. when he moves, it is through space time, through universes and galaxies and inconceivable notions of more than we can comprehend. i’m sure its not really new to him now, i think he has always occupied these wide places of existence. maybe what’s new is he is somewhat more aware now of this traveling self he inhibits and it is beginning to ruffle him. it has become obvious that he is not contained or limited in his thinking or do i dare assume knowing, to any preconceived ideas of how we exist in the here and now. he moves from spaces much wider than that.
i as a mother of this young human, and my ‘i’ in this is small i know, for i don’t think he has ever been a child, especially one for me to call my own, he belongs to something much greater than that. nevertheless, i wonder where i am to stand in the witnessing of this unfolding of self and other. i wonder where my place is, if it’s really relevant at all, from such expansive unknowable landscapes.
i have borrowed a notion, of’ beings as wild alters.’ Bayo Alomofe tells of a story of his beloved wife Ej and her philosophy towards caring for their son in the unknowable times of trouble. i have listened to this story many times over and it always brings me to tears, it reminds me of all the times i too have fallen to the ground to be beside my son in the face of the unknowable storm. Ej invites us to hold our children as alters, as a wild place where the subject is not to cure or to fix them into sanity, instead the object is to worship, to stay in the trouble of the yelps and screaming. this resonates in me, it makes sense to not move in these times, but rather lay down in the face of the fire. for, we can never be sure of where the fire has arrived from or where it is on its way to, we can never be certain of what it means to have such things move through and captivate the bodies of our children. there is no real language for these places, perhaps we are not meant to bring them out of the turmoil, or lead them away or quieten them down, we don’t know what they are moving in the heat of the storm.
St GEORGIA & Boo 