In My Skin: the Sliding Universe of Autism
I paint because I am a high-functioning autistic (HFA). And I’m a maniac for science, (especially geology and cosmology) because I am a high-functioning autistic. My autism is a sliding universe; and my universe courses alongside your universe. Who I am and the work I do is born out of my sliding universe; and this universe is a crystalline mind palace made out of the eternal silence of Time, of Color and Light, and the elemental science of God. When surviving in your universe as an HFA becomes too painful, or boring, I default (escape) to the timeless wonder of my gift. My sliding universe nurtures my inner world, my studies, and my colossal productivity; it does not offer instructions about the interface I need to thrive in your world.
As an infant, my first memories, (hmm, yes, I do, in fact, remember that far back), are of sound, color, light, and silence. In every sense, from the beginning, I remember the feeling that my head was not physically attached to my body. (Btw: this is a normal (!) state of affairs for us, and it is easily understood as ”disembodiment.”) Besides the problem of my head not being attached to my body, I clearly recall the sensory memory that my brain was completely exposed on the deafening white-noise-screechy surface of my body – in other words, my brain seemed to be my skin. Therefore, almost all sounds in Manhattan as a young person ranged from mildly to extremely unpleasant. In stark contrast to sound, silence was always a welcome friend. (Best of friends, silence was, (and still is), very much loud enough to block out the trauma surrounding my social relations with your social world.) Ancient micaceous shist boulders in New York City’s parks were my first primary source of much-needed silence. Back as far as I can remember, the mica in the rocks seemed to be made of the same things as our sky, or the light in the trees. And what of the whole body of the rock, the part in the ground, what about all that super-silence?
As a small person, viewed face-on, the flower stands on the streets of New York City were encountered as liquid color devouring my entire body. The Persian carpet in my parent’s apartment was, again, a cosmic world of geometry and color experienced more as a cave surrounding me on all sides than a flat surface.
To escape from this dual-dislocation the only way for me to survive has been to develop a creative discipline for artistic and intellectual exploration. As a child with virtually no communicative skills, I found the natural world to be both a laboratory and a potential carrier of the only medicine I needed to retain physical form. That medicine was color and light, silence and Time.
As I grew into adulthood, I maintained little abiding interest in my fellows. The minds and souls I was most enraptured by were dead yet, of course, still alive in books. Result: feverish engulfing isolation was the norm. At the critical time to seriously learn how to develop allies and supporters for my work, through communication, I did not. Learn to communicate. Instead, I focused upon the many great contributions made before me in both science and art. I developed my own distinct, eventually visionary, disciplines, and techniques.
Still now, today, all this remains true. To nurture and heal my autism the primary tool continues to be color and light; sentient (living) radionic color like that in a flower or landscape. And, equally important, the non-sentient forms, such as the mineral and crystalline world, or the color and light from the stellar world, all this that irradiates us whether we see it , or not. There is pure color, color that breathes life, which is light. There is the pure science of perception, and the truth of discovery in color. For instance, our universe is “in color”, not black and white. Even if we were not here to perceive our world and our universe, would it not still be colored? And then what about the Mother of the Universe, before Time began; is that source colored, or black and white, giving birth to a colored universe?
This meaning: color is not just for us, it is universal. Color remains for me the ultimate glory of the gift of life, and of death. I live to see the promise and the mercy of color. For this HFA, all Color is our living God, and the Color of God is eternal, it in us. We are living color, and divinely colored.
Today the many different kinds of work I do are being developed into projects that the public can utilize as healing tools to enhance their own lives and vision for the future. The gift of being an HFA is the massive productivity that sets me apart from my peers. Using science, art, and cosmology, my individual paintings, and all 4 of my projects, inspire and hopefully enhance the viewer/participant’s understanding of the magnitude of our universe, our lives, our humanity, and our divinity. A new universal centering cosmology is the primary goal of MAGNITUDE, GOD PARTICLES ‘n US, The Dakini Project, and the GOD WARS Memorial project.
Thankfully the same cosmology continues to embolden my often discouraging attempts to sustain myself financially and psychically. With this higher motivation I survive the torpor of ordinary society and, particularly, the newness of the American culture. As an HFA, my interface with a world that moves much too slowly, is painful at best. However, in older cultures like Europe, my work was handsomely used and applauded for its true purpose. European perception of time and cultural growth yielded a solo museum retrospective of my work hailed as “Art that Heals…” Ingrained in the psyche of Europeans, instilled in their educational systems and passed down through generations, is the context that great art is a gift, not a demonstration of purposeful individuality.
I live and work, however, in the United States. Here, in a culture of maximized individuality and personality that works for the “promotion of Self”, my sliding universe is perhaps too generous. As a high-functioning autistic, the virtual impossibility of ME successfully marketing myself, my art, and my projects is tempered by the notion that I am 10 to 20 years ahead of time. So, I am told, quite often. So, there’s some extra time to work on a “theory of self” that might possibly interface with your universe! Or there’s extra time to find those who might beinspired to participate in the Holographic Heart Foundation, that body that is parenting the 4 projects.
Perhaps my sliding universe will eventually intersect with your universe? Can’t wait!
© Jennet Inglis, June 12, 2017 Staunton, Virginia
