Christopher Boone

When I first read Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time two years ago, I was enthralled by it, amazed at how much the narrator, Christopher John Francis Boone, reminded me of myself. Re-reading it last year, the novelty was no longer there, so I was able to notice that there were also many ways in which we were quite different.

I've just finished reading it for a third time. It remains one of my favourite books; I still see quite a lot of similarities and quite a few dissimilarities between Christopher and myself; but there were also two things about him which troubled me. First, his propensity to use violence against people who (physically) touch him: I deplore violence except under very extreme circumstances (I always preferred flighting to fighting, although some might argue that's just my bodily weakness and my cowardice). But then, it may just be an instinctive reaction he has no control of.

More importantly, I was troubled by his obsession with sitting a particular maths exam. When he's told, towards the end of the book, that he'll have to wait for a year before that would be possible, he becomes comletely petulant. And it seems to me that this doesn't stem directly from his being autistic, but from his having been (on account of his autism) pampered all his life by those close to him. In other words, it doesn't feel like an autistic, but like a spoilt-child behaviour. After all, it's nothing vital, just a bloody certificate.

Naturally, that doesn't mean I stopped liking him. My real-life best friends tend to have one or two character traits that I highly disapprove of as well. Come to think of it, so do I.

Rinn mi e

Tha fios gun robh mi caran nearbach, mar as àbhaist dhomh, ach cha do dhàilich mi e: chaidh mi dhan oifis agus thuirt mi dhaibh gum bithinn fàgail an àite. Agus cha robh iad a' coimhead mì-thoilichte idir; gu dearbh, mhol an tè mi airson 's nach robh mi ag iarraidh fàgail roimhe na trì mìosan a-rèir a' chùmhnant. Rud eile a chur iognadh orm 's e nach robh ùidh aca, nach do dh'fhaighnich iad, carson a bha mi ag iarraid falbh, gun luaidh air càit' a rachainn.

Knoxplex works

When the doc told me this mornig the tumour was smaller but not yet operable, so we'd wait for another three months before another CT scan and a consequent decision about futher steps, it looked just too good to be true - cancer regressing and three months' holidays before me. So I immediately began worrying what bad luck I was in for.

Turned out the bad luck was all about my sick pay. I haven't got a penny for after 17 December, and I seem unable to find a way of making some administrator do what they're paid to do instead of telling me that it's another administrator's job and can you please call this number sir?

I made some half a dozen calls today, which for me is the equivalent of acting for a few hours as an interpreter between two foreign speakers after just a five-day beginner's course in each of the foreign languages. I was more knackered than after a full shift as a factory operative; and yet I only got to a stage when I could temporarily make no further step, not to actually resolving the matter.

So maybe I have before me three nice months off most duties, maybe three months of arguing with bureaucrats and worrying about ending up hungering on the street - and not because of boozing. Every now and then I have a new reason (new in particularities, the generalities are familiar by now) to hate this country.

À nouveau dans la cuisine

Je n'ai pas entrée la cuisine en commun de l'hôtel presque depuis j'ai déménagé ici, bien que l'on ne puisse pas cuisiner dans sa chambre sauf avec une bouilloire électrique.

Mais il y a deux semaine, en revenant de l'hôpital, j'ai désiré des pommes de terre assez pour me faire acheter une boîte de conserve de goulasch de pommes de terre aux saucisses viennoises.

À vrai dire, enfin je n'ai pas osé utilisé la cuisine ce jour-là ; mais j'y suis allé, après deux jours, pour cuisiner une boîte de conserve différente (saucisses fummées aux haricots blancs (mais pas à la sauce tomate)), et hier soir, finalement, pour le goulasch.

Je conjecture que ce n'était pas ma dernière fois dans la cuisine ...

James Thurber: The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze

 

Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.

(Mr Kirk in One Is a Wanderer)

Much better than the 'established' version mentioning only two and three - especially if for the best part of your life you've been one / a wanderer yourself.

 

 

 

 

The Dutch

I've mentioned here already my soft spot for the Dutch, which even made me try to learn the language - an attempt I had to temporarily give up on due to lack of time. After having read Ben Coates's Why the Dutch Are Different I scrapped the idea altogether. I still think the language sounds beautiful, still admire the Dutch for their tolerant attitudes towards gays and drugs, like their Golden Age landscapes and so on. But I can't really love a country that flat, a country that overcrowded, and a nation that indifferent to the concepts of privacy and solitude. Of course, the book must exaggerate a bit, otherwise the Netherlands would have no autistic adults - they would all commit suicide well before adulthood - but still ....

James Robertson: The Testament of Gideon Mack

This task of ordering my thoughts and writing them down is doing me good. It brings me ever closer to a conclusion.

(Gideon Mack, p 35) 

One of the great things about writing is that by turning one's thoughts into written words one is forced to phrase them carefully, maybe even reconsider them. That's why I was writing short 'texts', afterwards buried in my desk's drawer, even in those bygone days when a pen and paper were the usual tools; that's why I'm blogging now even though I don't expect anybody else to read my posts.

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I dissembled, as ever.

(Gideon Mack, p 94) 

A gay growing up in a 70s/80s small town, I developed dissembling into such a second nature that I couldn't (still can't) shed it when it became unnecessary, even unhelpful.

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I have no objection to ferries or newspapers or play-park swings or television on the Sabbath, but I understand where the impulse to ban such things comes from. Sundays for too many people have become noisy, unrestful days. I like quiet Sundays, Sundays of thought and reflection, churchgoing, family lunches for those who have families, long walks, long naps in front of old movies on the box; Sundays without supermarkets and traffic, loud neighbours and trouble in the streets.

(Gideon Mack, p 95)

I would list slightly different sets of activities, but heartily agree with the general drift. Unfortunately where I live even DIY is considered a perfect Sunday pursuit, and half the population seems to think that making a lot of noise is imperative for feeling good.

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On 1st March 1979, a referendum had been held, asking the Scots whether they wanted a devolved Assembly in Edinburgh. The result was a resounding maybe.

(Gideon Mack, p 122)

The best summary of that particular public vote I've ever read.

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Everything in my life seemed to be in the past.

(Gideon Mack, p 159)

Since I went into self-imposed exile almost five years ago it feels like however long I may yet be here, nothing really important can happen, because it already has.

Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (Il barone rampamte)

I recognized his usual manner of rejecting anything that forced him to emerge from his world.

(p 239)

One might say that the more determined he was to stay hidden up in his branches, the greater the need he felt to create new relations with the human race.

(p 267)

(both by the narrator, Biagio, about his brother, Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò)

I suspect I'm a lot like that. Where I live is neither attractive nor interesting to me, so I have little to talk about with the locals. I live in my own world of books, music, websites and so on, and if anybody tries to drag me out of my shell I instinctively recoil. On the other hand I'm constantly looking for ways of meeting people with similar interests via the internet. I do enjoy communicating with people ... but only with some people, in some languages, and preferably in writing (which for me is an easier way of expressing myself than speech is, but that's a topic for another post).

True listening

"A person cannot give full attention to what is being said to them at the same time as assessing it and framing a reply. I cannot do this, and neither can anyone else I have ever met. Therefore, true listening rarely occurs."

(Rachel Pinney: Creative Listening, as quoted in Jim Pym: Listening to the Light)

I think this is true about any conversation in which one is supposed to react immediately after the previous speaker has finished talking. But it reminded me most of two features of my rehab stay.

One, of how rarely I spoke during the speech-therapy-based sessions, because before I properly pondered what had been said and what could be said in response, somebody else would already be replying; in fact, often the very topic would have changed to another by the time I had a reply phrased well enough to consider it worth uttering.

And two, how during those sessions at which it was compulsory to give a short summary of one's views formed on what had been said, I would often stop paying proper attention as early as mid-session, trying to inwardly formulate (and not forget) said summary in time for when it was my turn to give it.

Third time unlucky

When I was 35 and giving my notice to my then employer, I had three reasons, the second most important of which was no longer being able to stand the commercial radio blaring there.

A few jobs later, when I was 43 and giving my notice to my then employer, I had two equally important reasons, one of which was no longer being able to stand the commercial radio blaring there.

Several more jobs later, now I’m 51, I gave the other day my notice to my employer, primarily because I was no longer able to stand the commercial radio blaring there.

Of course, there were other reasons. I couldn’t properly get to grips with the machine they’d moved me to from my initial one; the jobs at the new one meant being all the time either frustrated by glitches or bored when there were none; I had to be on my feet all the time in the factory’s uncomfortable shoes; there was even a nascent guilt from half the time producing plastic products; . . .

. . . but at the end of the day it was the radio which one day turned into the last straw. Maybe the next time I should ask whether radio’s permitted on the premises before I even accept a job.


(originally posted probably on WordPress)

Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim

This ride, unlike most of the things that happened to him, was something he’d rather have than not have. He’d got something he wanted, and whatever the cost in future embarrassment he was ready to meet it. He reflected that the Arab proverb urging this kind of policy was incomplete: to ‘take what you want and pay for it’ it should add ‘which is better than being forced to take what you don’t want and paying for that’.

The other day my sister asked me why I liked the book so much and I replied that it was on account of its cynicism, later enhanced by the fact that it was one of the first books I've read in the English original. A few weeks later another important reason occurred to me, however: Jim, like me, finds mere coping with life so demanding (in particular as regards social intercourse), that he has no energy left for ambition. This theme, without being expressly stated, runs throught he whole story. Whenever he achieves something, it's usually largely by simple good luck.

It's amazing how distractions one wouldn't have noticed in one's early days become absolutely shattering when one … grows older.

I've known - and loved - the novel since adolescence, and read it several times since then. It's interesting how the older I am, the more compassionate I feel for Professor Welch, because the more he reminds me of myself. Including the growing slowness in thinking, in reacting.

(originally posted probably on WordPress)

Mark Haddon: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

(All by the narrator, Christopher John Francis Boon.)


I decided to leave him alone because when I am sad I want to be left alone.

(p 21)

It takes me a long time to get used to people I do not know.

(p 35)

I don’t like swimming because I don’t like taking my clothes off.

(p 77)

I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.

(p 103)

And then I Formulated a Plan. And that made me feel better because there was something in my head that had an order and a pattern and I just had to follow the instructions one after the other.

(p 132)

And then the countryside started and there were fields and cows and horses and a bridge and a farm and more houses and lots of little roads with cars on. And that made me think that there must be millions of miles of train track in the world and they all go past houses and roads and rivers and fields, and that made me think how many people must be in the world and they all have houses and roads to travel on and cars and pets and clothes and all eat lunch and go to bed and have names and this made my head hurt, too.

(p 161)

These are just the best ones, there very many more which made me think “yes, that’s precise”!



(originally posted on Tumblr or WordPress)

Silence is golden

Of course, there are always other problems to trouble one. But at least the bastard who’d lived next door for a month and had the TV on almost 24 hours a day (except when he was talking to someone or other, and that even louder) has apparently left a fortnight ago. So far nobody else has moved in, so at least I can relish comparatively quiet nights, even days. So far …


(originally posted on Tumblr)