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5:00am
December 14, 2014
![My Father’s Hats
[I’m using Swype so expect weird typos. It keeps rendering ”people” as “penile” or “peyote”.]
I’m in extreme luck and more than a little awe. My father’s old hats decided unanimously to allow me to photograph them. As long as they were together. And as long as the decision to be photographed on top of my head, individually, was left to the discretion of the particular hat in question. So here are my father’s hats. Some of them are very old. Older than me, maybe even older than my oldest brother (born 1966) but not sure.
They are fiercely loyal to my father, and as a Hufflepuff I can understand that and her been trying to give them space to adjust. The person who was their strongest material attachment. Who it was their job to protect from the weather, and objects made for a purpose tend to take that purpose very seriously, because whether they know it or not, the designers and builders and manufacturers and assembly line workers and quality control and everything else, all their intent and understanding of the purpose of the object, gets woven seamlessly into the object until the object absorbs all those qualities itself.
Then, the object gets sent out to an owner, and that begins a whole new relationship. At its worst, the object is not used and becomes more and more uncomfortable with its owner. Sensing the discomfort (yet reading it as coming entirely from emotions within themself(*)), the person avoids the object, and the object becomes more and more uncomfortable, and the cycle continues. At its best, the person treats the object with respect. Sie tests it how it is meant to be tested and uses it for the purposes that all those people have crafted and woven into it without necessarily knowing. It responda by working it’s hardest to do what it was meant for. It becomes a cherished belonging, an object-friend.
That’s what my father’s hats are like. They are extremely loyal to him because he treated them with respect and loyalty. And through him and his cultural background the hats acquired even further uses. He’d bought them to keep the sun and rain of his face, and bought especially Australian hats because they had the widest brims and were made to be very high quality. But he also used them in ways that are ingrained in my memory as incredibly important, to this day.
Whenever there was an important meeting. At work. At his children’s schools. At the psychiatric facilities (both short and long term by the standards of the day) I was spending ever-increasing amounts of time in. He would go to the door. And with great deliberation, he would stare at his hat rack, pull down his favorite hat, and slower, carefully set it on his head in a one handed motion that became very familiar to me over the years. He would wear the hat for the whole meeting.
I don’t think any of his bosses, or any of my teachers and therapists, or any of my brothers’ teachers and therapists for that matter since I know my brother was in an early intervention sort of program right next to, but unconnected with, the crappy school I would go to later when I was dumped into special ed. I don’t think any of them realized the significance of the hat.
Because at the risk of sounding cheesy?. The hat was full of meaning. It meant armor protecting him. It meant staying true to his cultural roots, in meetings that were certain to be unaware of those roots at best and hostile to them at worst. It meant saying “This is who I am.” It meant “I am taking you seriously, now please take me seriously.” It was a reminder to himself of the seriousness of the occasion. It was a show of respect. It may have been a reminder of all the rough times the hats had helped him through in the mountains on a practical level, and that if he got through that he could get through this too. It meant all kinds of things that could never be put into words but are still some of the most important things in the world.
All those things are also why the hats are so loyal to him. They weren’t just functional for keeping out rain and sun. They acquired layers of cultural and symbolic meaning. And they responded to that by becoming fiercely loyal to him. Which is why I’m surprised that they are already okay with being photographed. And one of them (probably not coincidentally the only straw hat in that bunch of otherwise plain brown hats) was even okay being photographed on me. They must know he intended them for me. And they do know me. I grew up with them. So it’s bit like I’m unfamiliar. It’s his absence that is unfamiliar. And objects have a habit of becoming very accustomed to routines, habits, places, and people. They need time to acclimate.
TL;DR: My late father’s hats are becoming accustomed to me faster than I expected, and didn’t mind being photographed today. I discuss lots of stuff regarding relationships with inanimate objects and how different people treat and think about them differently. And a footnote that starts off one place and rambles in many directions. I feel lucky to have grown up in a family where it was okay to see objects as friends.
_____________________
FOOTNOTES (or where I put one topic so it wouldn’t take over the hat talk)
(*) In societies that don’t understand our relationship with the world around us is reciprocal, especially” inanimate” objects… I still feel horrible that so many people in the world are brought up to believe that the world around them is dead. Or dead is the best word I have for it. I move through a world where everything is alive in its own way. I think I was neurologically destined to hold such views regardless of culture. Because I’m not good at looking something straight in the eye and being told “You don’t see that, it’s not there, or at least, please pretend it’s not there because that’s what the rest of us do. Failure to comply may result in prescription megadoses of neuroleptics, which may give you a few seizures a minute and will make you feel cut off from everything you hold dear, but at least it will keep you quiet about the things that the rest of us obedient souls are willing and able to shut out of our awareness on command”. I can’t do it. I can’t shut things out of my awareness when they’re blaring like a megaphone causing visual, auditory, tactile, empathic and emotional overload.
And that is why so many autistic people — not all, but numbers that would surprise you, unless you witnessed our occasional “drive-by conversations” on the matter. Msny autistic people who do experience these things will go so far as to denounce thorn in public. Which is why you really would be shocked at some of the people who secretly believe objects are alive and possible tho interact with. Or many other beliefs we are supposed to either outgrow, or never have in the first place.
[If you want, you can stop reading the footnote here. It succumbs to late night writer’s ramble after awhile. But there’s interesting stuff further down.]
Read Autism and Sensing: the Unlost Instinct fire by Donna Williams for more information on some of the experiences some but by no means allautistic people have that we are not supposed to talk about our acknowledge, even though for some they form the core feature that defines us as autistic. Also be aware this extends further than autism. I had met many highly sensing people who have intellectual disabilities, specific learning difficulties, severe intractable epilepsy, cerebral paisley, brain damage, stroke, and dementia, among other things. There are also people who straddle between sensing and other modes of being, switching back and forth at will (often little with ADHD or specific learning difficulties) and Donna calls them Gadoodleborgers. All this being true, Donna wanted to name her book The System of Sensing: the Unlost Instinct. Leaving autism out out the central role in the book, because it’s not the only thing that causes people to end up in the system if sending. However, her publishers decided that autism would sell more books, so they put autism inn the title and wouldn’t take no for an answer. They did this with one or two of her other books as well. (Possibly Autism: An Inside Out Approach, or The Jumbled Jigsaw: An Insider’s Approach to the Treatment of Autistic Spectrum ‘Fruit Salads’, but I’m inclined to suspect the former, I just don’t remember where she said it so I can’t look it up).
So be aware, if you’re not autistic, you’re sure you’re not autistic, and you’re sure she’s describing your experiences with uncanny detail, she’s just as aware as you are that these things can happen in nonautistic people. Her publishers just aren’t always that sensitive to the effects of what they’re doing. To them it’s about marketing. It reminds me off the time I approached a man, who had helped people with autism make films about their lives or human rights. I really looked up to this guy and told him I wanted to make a documentary about the developmental disability self-advocacy movement. In a certain specific style I found engaging and stereotype-busting st once.
Know what he told me? “You need to make it about autism only. Right now autism is the big thing. Nobody wants to see a movie about people with CP, childhood brain injury, severe epilepsy, or intellectual disabilities working for systemic change and getting it. They’d rather see autistic people. That’s where their interest lies.
Never mind you can’t tell that without first masking the film and seeing how it does. Never mind that apathy to all DD people except autistic profile is bigotry, and pandering to bigotry only reinforces it. Unfortunately I find real time conversation extremely difficult at the best of times (i memorize scripts for everything), and giving me novel, unexpected and offensive responses kids not the best of times. I had really looked up to this guy and he’s telling me go with autism because it sells. I’ve never seen a group of autistic people shut down an institution outside olives like the DD self-advocacy movement. I wanted to interview the People First group who did that in Tennessee, including by starting a People First chapter inside the institution, because they knew how important it is for people to be involved in their own liberation. To this day, when I tell the story, parent advocates who think themselves ultra progressive tell me “You mean a parent advocacy group did this and some DD, people helped a little.” How offensive is that? People First enlisted hello when they needed it but they made all the decisions (including ones few parent advocates would even consider feasible) and they got it shut down and the inmates moved into their surrounding communities.
Anyway this footnote has drifted on stream of consciousness long enough, I’m gonna get back to writing about hats.](http://36.media.tumblr.com/959da212c8cb693ea9f8684d5dd733a2/tumblr_ngkh5en2qh1qdmvbuo1_500.jpg)
My Father’s Hats
[I’m using Swype so expect weird typos. It keeps rendering ”people” as “penile” or “peyote”.]
I’m in extreme luck and more than a little awe. My father’s old hats decided unanimously to allow me to photograph them. As long as they were together. And as long as the decision to be photographed on top of my head, individually, was left to the discretion of the particular hat in question. So here are my father’s hats. Some of them are very old. Older than me, maybe even older than my oldest brother (born 1966) but not sure.
They are fiercely loyal to my father, and as a Hufflepuff I can understand that and her been trying to give them space to adjust. The person who was their strongest material attachment. Who it was their job to protect from the weather, and objects made for a purpose tend to take that purpose very seriously, because whether they know it or not, the designers and builders and manufacturers and assembly line workers and quality control and everything else, all their intent and understanding of the purpose of the object, gets woven seamlessly into the object until the object absorbs all those qualities itself.
Then, the object gets sent out to an owner, and that begins a whole new relationship. At its worst, the object is not used and becomes more and more uncomfortable with its owner. Sensing the discomfort (yet reading it as coming entirely from emotions within themself(*)), the person avoids the object, and the object becomes more and more uncomfortable, and the cycle continues. At its best, the person treats the object with respect. Sie tests it how it is meant to be tested and uses it for the purposes that all those people have crafted and woven into it without necessarily knowing. It responda by working it’s hardest to do what it was meant for. It becomes a cherished belonging, an object-friend.
That’s what my father’s hats are like. They are extremely loyal to him because he treated them with respect and loyalty. And through him and his cultural background the hats acquired even further uses. He’d bought them to keep the sun and rain of his face, and bought especially Australian hats because they had the widest brims and were made to be very high quality. But he also used them in ways that are ingrained in my memory as incredibly important, to this day.
Whenever there was an important meeting. At work. At his children’s schools. At the psychiatric facilities (both short and long term by the standards of the day) I was spending ever-increasing amounts of time in. He would go to the door. And with great deliberation, he would stare at his hat rack, pull down his favorite hat, and slower, carefully set it on his head in a one handed motion that became very familiar to me over the years. He would wear the hat for the whole meeting.
I don’t think any of his bosses, or any of my teachers and therapists, or any of my brothers’ teachers and therapists for that matter since I know my brother was in an early intervention sort of program right next to, but unconnected with, the crappy school I would go to later when I was dumped into special ed. I don’t think any of them realized the significance of the hat.
Because at the risk of sounding cheesy?. The hat was full of meaning. It meant armor protecting him. It meant staying true to his cultural roots, in meetings that were certain to be unaware of those roots at best and hostile to them at worst. It meant saying “This is who I am.” It meant “I am taking you seriously, now please take me seriously.” It was a reminder to himself of the seriousness of the occasion. It was a show of respect. It may have been a reminder of all the rough times the hats had helped him through in the mountains on a practical level, and that if he got through that he could get through this too. It meant all kinds of things that could never be put into words but are still some of the most important things in the world.
All those things are also why the hats are so loyal to him. They weren’t just functional for keeping out rain and sun. They acquired layers of cultural and symbolic meaning. And they responded to that by becoming fiercely loyal to him. Which is why I’m surprised that they are already okay with being photographed. And one of them (probably not coincidentally the only straw hat in that bunch of otherwise plain brown hats) was even okay being photographed on me. They must know he intended them for me. And they do know me. I grew up with them. So it’s bit like I’m unfamiliar. It’s his absence that is unfamiliar. And objects have a habit of becoming very accustomed to routines, habits, places, and people. They need time to acclimate.
TL;DR: My late father’s hats are becoming accustomed to me faster than I expected, and didn’t mind being photographed today. I discuss lots of stuff regarding relationships with inanimate objects and how different people treat and think about them differently. And a footnote that starts off one place and rambles in many directions. I feel lucky to have grown up in a family where it was okay to see objects as friends.
_____________________
FOOTNOTES (or where I put one topic so it wouldn’t take over the hat talk)
(*) In societies that don’t understand our relationship with the world around us is reciprocal, especially” inanimate” objects… I still feel horrible that so many people in the world are brought up to believe that the world around them is dead. Or dead is the best word I have for it. I move through a world where everything is alive in its own way. I think I was neurologically destined to hold such views regardless of culture. Because I’m not good at looking something straight in the eye and being told “You don’t see that, it’s not there, or at least, please pretend it’s not there because that’s what the rest of us do. Failure to comply may result in prescription megadoses of neuroleptics, which may give you a few seizures a minute and will make you feel cut off from everything you hold dear, but at least it will keep you quiet about the things that the rest of us obedient souls are willing and able to shut out of our awareness on command”. I can’t do it. I can’t shut things out of my awareness when they’re blaring like a megaphone causing visual, auditory, tactile, empathic and emotional overload.
And that is why so many autistic people — not all, but numbers that would surprise you, unless you witnessed our occasional “drive-by conversations” on the matter. Msny autistic people who do experience these things will go so far as to denounce thorn in public. Which is why you really would be shocked at some of the people who secretly believe objects are alive and possible tho interact with. Or many other beliefs we are supposed to either outgrow, or never have in the first place.
[If you want, you can stop reading the footnote here. It succumbs to late night writer’s ramble after awhile. But there’s interesting stuff further down.]
Read Autism and Sensing: the Unlost Instinct fire by Donna Williams for more information on some of the experiences some but by no means allautistic people have that we are not supposed to talk about our acknowledge, even though for some they form the core feature that defines us as autistic. Also be aware this extends further than autism. I had met many highly sensing people who have intellectual disabilities, specific learning difficulties, severe intractable epilepsy, cerebral paisley, brain damage, stroke, and dementia, among other things. There are also people who straddle between sensing and other modes of being, switching back and forth at will (often little with ADHD or specific learning difficulties) and Donna calls them Gadoodleborgers. All this being true, Donna wanted to name her book The System of Sensing: the Unlost Instinct. Leaving autism out out the central role in the book, because it’s not the only thing that causes people to end up in the system if sending. However, her publishers decided that autism would sell more books, so they put autism inn the title and wouldn’t take no for an answer. They did this with one or two of her other books as well. (Possibly Autism: An Inside Out Approach, or The Jumbled Jigsaw: An Insider’s Approach to the Treatment of Autistic Spectrum ‘Fruit Salads’, but I’m inclined to suspect the former, I just don’t remember where she said it so I can’t look it up).
So be aware, if you’re not autistic, you’re sure you’re not autistic, and you’re sure she’s describing your experiences with uncanny detail, she’s just as aware as you are that these things can happen in nonautistic people. Her publishers just aren’t always that sensitive to the effects of what they’re doing. To them it’s about marketing. It reminds me off the time I approached a man, who had helped people with autism make films about their lives or human rights. I really looked up to this guy and told him I wanted to make a documentary about the developmental disability self-advocacy movement. In a certain specific style I found engaging and stereotype-busting st once.
Know what he told me? “You need to make it about autism only. Right now autism is the big thing. Nobody wants to see a movie about people with CP, childhood brain injury, severe epilepsy, or intellectual disabilities working for systemic change and getting it. They’d rather see autistic people. That’s where their interest lies.
Never mind you can’t tell that without first masking the film and seeing how it does. Never mind that apathy to all DD people except autistic profile is bigotry, and pandering to bigotry only reinforces it. Unfortunately I find real time conversation extremely difficult at the best of times (i memorize scripts for everything), and giving me novel, unexpected and offensive responses kids not the best of times. I had really looked up to this guy and he’s telling me go with autism because it sells. I’ve never seen a group of autistic people shut down an institution outside olives like the DD self-advocacy movement. I wanted to interview the People First group who did that in Tennessee, including by starting a People First chapter inside the institution, because they knew how important it is for people to be involved in their own liberation. To this day, when I tell the story, parent advocates who think themselves ultra progressive tell me “You mean a parent advocacy group did this and some DD, people helped a little.” How offensive is that? People First enlisted hello when they needed it but they made all the decisions (including ones few parent advocates would even consider feasible) and they got it shut down and the inmates moved into their surrounding communities.
Anyway this footnote has drifted on stream of consciousness long enough, I’m gonna get back to writing about hats.
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psychicchristine said: Shared and beautiful. Very emotional.- psychicchristine reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
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