Prepare to enter the wild and wooly world of an adult with Aspergers Syndrome, a form of autism characterized by intellignce, quirks, social difficulties and downright strange and oddish behaviours.

People with Aspergers generally are high functioning in everyday life but have great difficulty connecting with others due to the inability to read faces, body language and subtle verbal clues. They also tend to take words literally and have a hard time multi-tasking.

Oversensitivity to touch (clothing has to be soft and often the tags removed), light (do not leave home without the sunglasses), sound (loud noises and noisey places are avoided), taste (many Aspies have quite a limited diet and are frequently very picky eaters) and smells makes the everyday existence more of a challenge.

Fasten your seatbelts and come on in...
To find out more about what Aspergers is..please check out my earliest blog entries

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

The Giver movie review

Today turned into a truly crazy day. One highlight, that seemed to ground me was when my therapist asked me what I thought of the movie, I recently watched, The Giver.
I really enjoyed this movie, which is something that rarely happens. In helping myself find a little interesting subject matter, I figured I'd write my thoughts regarding the movie.
In a nutshell, The Giver is a surreal, futuristic film, kind of a cross between Pleasantville and 1984. It's set in a society that has been modified to eliminate the majority of emotion and any speck of uniqueness, passion and creativity. All behaviors are monitored according to rigid rules.
Yes, everyone is, well, pleasant with a certain degree of blasé, and no one questions the rules. The environment is sterile and drab.
Spoiler Alert
Except... there is the main character, Jonas, who frequently gets glimpses of another dimension, visions that he has no words for and no one else experiences.
I readily related to Jonas as he could perceive things the rest of society could not.
There is only one other person, in this quasi-Utopian world, that understands what Jonas is going through, The Giver.
Jonas and Giver start meeting so that the Giver can pass along the wisdom of past memories, before the mental sterilization of the rest of the population.
The movie really picks up when the two get together and the "giving" of information takes place . To see Jonas start experiencing...sensations and feelings, made my heart sing. Lol, right away he can't contain himself and breaks the "law" of not sharing this new ingirmation.
He got a taste of..freedom and immediately wanted to share it. And no one else could.
Two individuals that connected on such an...intimate level. Being understood. The sharing and trust between them. Two against the world.
The frustration of not being able to express feelings, thoughts and ideas...and sincerely wanting everyone else to share in this newfound, warm wisdom.
  Being autistic, I feel that the majority of humans live a similar, ho hum, dull existence that revolves around surpressing feelings and trivial, mundane days. People don't question..they just follow, repeating the patterns the same as their parents did. There is no questioning, no searching for deeper meaning and exploring oneself and the unseen universe.
A stunted society, is my view. If I'm fortunate, I find one or two others that share my footsteps, the path that meanders far away from the routine.
                          *
  There were a couple of scenes, scenarios that almost bothered me. Let's just say that you can train a human to do amoral, highly cruel acts as long as the human is taught that it is acceptable and approved. I understood and could watch these scenes unfold as they laid great context to the overall story of how far you can turn a human into a non-thinking, non-questioning autobot.
  I found myself riveted and curious as to how the movie would play out and eventually end.
It is definitely thought provoking and full of wisdom. I can relate.