Narrative and intellectual disability

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit. Then they went on, and I went along the fence. Luster came away from the flower tree and we went along the fence and they stopped and we stopped and I looked through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass.




Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack: the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.


Questions, always questions. They didn’t wait for the answers, either. They rushed on, piling questions on questions, covering every moment with questions, blocking off every sensation but the thorn stab of questions....

Dr. Fornum, crisp and professional, raises an eyebrow and shakes her head not quite imperceptibly. Autistic persons do not understand these signals; the book says so. I have read the book, so I know what it is I do not understand.
What I haven’t figured out is the range of things they don’t understand. The normals. The reals. The ones who have the degrees and sit behind the desks in comfortable chairs....
She doesn’t want to know what I mean. She wants me to say what other people say. “Good morning, Dr. Fornum.” “Yes, I’m fine, thank you.” “Yes, I can wait. I don’t mind.”




there were signs saying Great Western and cold beers and lagers and CAUTION WET FLOOR and Your 50p will keep a premature baby alive for 1.8 seconds and transforming travel and Refreshingly Different and IT’S DELICIOUS IT’S CREAMY AND IT’S ONLY £1.30 HOT CHOC DELUXE and 0870 777 7676 and The Lemon Tree and No Smoking and FINE TEAS




Jack Bohlen, too, was a dead sack, teeming with gubbish. The outside that fooled almost everyone, it was painted pretty and smelled good, bent down over Miss Anderton, and he saw that; he saw it wanting her in an awful fashion. It poured its wet, sticky self to her and the dead bug words popped from its mouth.
“I love Mozart,” Mr. Kott was saying. “I’ll put this tape on.” (157)
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Jack Bohlen, too, was a dead sack, teeming with gubbish. The outside that fooled almost everyone, it was painted pretty and smelled good, bent down over Miss Anderton, and he saw that; he saw it wanting her in a filthy fashion. It poured its wet, sticky self nearer and nearer to her and the dead bug words popped from its mouth and fell on her. The dead bug words scampered off into the folds of her clothing, and some squeezed into her skin and entered her body.
“I love Mozart,” Mr. Kott said. “I’ll put this tape on.” (167)





A hideous racket of screeches and shrieks issued from the speakers, like the convulsions of corpses. Mr. Kott shut off the tape transport. (148)
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A hideous racket of screeches and shrieks issued from the speakers, like the convulsions of corpses. He shut off the tape transport. (157)
*
A hideous racket of screeches and shrieks issued from somewhere in the room, and after a time she realized that it was her; she was convulsed from within, all the corpse-things in her were heaving and crawling, struggling out into the light of the room. God, how could she stop them? They emerged from her pores and scuttled off, dropping from strands of gummy web onto the floor, to disappear into the cracks between the boards. (168)
*
A hideous racket of screeches and shrieks issued from the speakers. Noises like the convulsions of the dead, Arnie thought in horror. He ran to shut off the tape transport. (195) He had sat, he realized, in Arnie Kott’s living room again and again, experiencing that evening before it arrived; and then, when at last it had taken place in actuality, he had bypassed it. The fundamental disturbance in time-sense, which Dr. Glaub believed was the basis for schizophrenia, was now harassing him.




That evening at Arnie’s had taken place, and had existed for him ... but out of sequence. The child married to a husband who did not speak Chinese translated for him, “Now she’s saying that I’m taking a machine off the shelf and that I’m attaching two metal spiders to it. And she’s saying the spiders are spinning with legs intertwined and beating the eggs electrically. Now she says I’m hunting for something in the refrigerator and– ha!–I’ve found it. I’m taking out butter–‘cow oil.’ ‘They eat a lot of cow oil,’ she saying.”



A flock of birds, each one burning. Stars swoop down to bullets. Hot red specks take flesh, nest there, a body part, part body.
Lasts forever: no change to measure.
Flock of fiery cinders. When grey pain of them thins, then always water. Flattest width so slow it fails as liquid. Nothing in the end but flow. Nextless stream, lowest thing above knowing. A thing itself the cold and so can’t feel it.



Rises up in flooded fields. There is a wave, a rocking in the reeds. Pain again, then nothing.
When sense returns, he is drowning. Father teaching him to swim. Current in his limbs. Four years old, and his father floating him. Flying, then flailing, then falling. His father grabbing his leg, pulling him under. (18-19)