as small as a world and as large as alone

8:55pm February 26, 2012

[My eyes going all over the place and blinking randomly for some reason. With loud chaotic people noises.]

Has this eye thing happened to anyone else?

I just got back from a heavily overloading art opening. I only noticed something was up with my eyes when people started touching me to show they were there like they’d been doing to the blind woman next to me. It continued on and off until I finally got out of there. And I have no idea what it is or if it’s happened before. It seems vaguely familiar but my visual perception can be awful even without my eyes doing that so my first clue was how people responded to me.

(If I were nondisabled, I’d say it went really well. Lots of people stopped and talked to me and seemed to genuinely like my painting. But I’m not, so I was freaked out the entire time that people were talking to me. It got worse as the evening went on because I was less and less able to respond. And as you can hear on the video it was really fucking chaotic. They actually had a room for overstimulated artists to get out of the noise – they went way beyond expectation with nearly all aspects of accessibility – terps, audio description, quiet area, wheelchair access, etc. But my brain was too trashed to remember I could go to the room. Oh another area they did well, according to one disabled guy, is when they chose artwork they only discussed the art instead of going on and on about how disabled we were and stuff. He said it’s the first show where that’s been the case that he’s seen.)

Anyway while this was going on I obviously couldn’t make out my surroundings very well. But that’s kind of the norm in unfamiliar places. When I walked more often I’d often hold one end of a sock or belt with someone else on the other. So they could guide me without either of us touching, and so if my body veered off in the wrong direction I’d get a non-word-based cue to move back where I was trying to go. It worked really well, if anyone with sufficient movement and visual processing issues wants to try it.

Anyway my friend’s guess is that I got way too overloaded and my brain started trying to take in all the parts at once or something and succeeded in getting none of them. But neither of us is sure. She’s never seen me do this before. So if anyone has any clue I’d be curious.

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