When are you leaving

As an Asperger I spend some time trying to understand interactions with other people. Other people tend to use verbal conversation in important ways. I do my best to participate as well as possible. Yet sometimes the verbal stuff possibly is laced into a situation in ways I don’t see at the time.

It is not that I don’t have ability to utilize words, but in writing instead of in talking. It is different. For example, I do this blog and have written technical papers of my concepts, and have written novels, eight of which are in self-published print, which several people have told me they enjoy the novels, sometimes even unable to put them down until finished reading them. So I seem to write words OK. It is the out-loud, in your face, verbal conversation that can have even magical aspects, I think, an example of which is the focus of this blog post.

About 1958 my parents bought a nice house in Albuquerque, NM. I visited there at times, and at times I sought work in the area, as my parents had a bedroom there for me to stay economically. My dad made special effort to show me the maintenance of the property, particularly how to get up on the roof and service the swamp cooler, an annual routine. He clearly intended for me to live in the house after they had passed away; I, however, was not really able to comprehend them as ever passing away. But I was assured I would have this nice house some day; I had no siblings so it would all be mine, no question.

Yet I ended up without the home, and the family heirlooms, most of the furniture and most of my large collection of things I had cherished and saved from childhood. The home all gone. And in my dim Asperger’s way I now puzzle, how did I lose all that, and instead stay in small rathole apartments, never thinking of going to stay with my parents and live in the room they had for me there? And then the house was sold after Dad passed away, gone,
In my profession as an electronics engineering technician, the average duration of employment on any job was said to be two years before a RIF. So especially in the last two decades of my employed years, I would sometimes go visit my parents for a couple days, as well as I would come there sometimes on holidays or vacations. There even were several times I was in between jobs desperate for work and almost homeless, yet I did not even think of coming to stay at my parents home, while I looked for a job. I did not even think of it. Why?

Clearly there was a strong mental block that brought it about. I still struggle sometimes with these out-of-sight mental-blocks that interfere with me getting things done, very troublesome and very hard to get past. Strange stuff. Yet I need to comprehend the lessons of the past, or as it is said, one has to learn the lesson all over again until it finally gets learned. So, what happened re the loss of what there had been no question of, that I would live in and own the nice family home there in Albuquerque?

Clearly it was something in my thinking that cost me the family home and most of the collected family belongings in it (after Dad passed away Mother managed to get some things moved and into my possession, such as the furniture that Dad had built and is now in my home here.) So, what messed up my thinking? Thinking back to the home, there on the street in Albuquerque, it seems that oddly there is like a bubble of invisibility enveloping the lot and house inside it. Kind of like imagining a rounded big silver-colored bubble. Never saw anything like that before, best I remember.

As my Asperger’s mind puzzles over complex things – that has enabled me to create very nice technological concepts in the past, but it also works on trying to assemble somewhat meaningful patterns of my life experiences too. And as I was awakening this morning, another piece of the puzzle came back to me – I had remembered it several times in the past only to forget it again – and it is a strange but consistent thing that oddly fits much too well. I got up this morning with intent to get it written down as a blog post, before once again it goes pffft gone out of consciousness again.

In the over half dozen times in later years I visited at my parents home, long after my wife divorced me, and I endlessly hoped to find a woman to love, I was a young man who was instinctively attracted to nice looking women, although few were ever to be seen. I had a favorite TV show, the Dinah Shore Show I think it was called, and Dinah was so very nice, tall, thin and straight, vibrant smiling and kind. I mention that as pattern background in my mind, normally unconscious.

Anyway, my Asperger’s puzzling seeking meaningful patterning re the loss of my family home long ago, has found a match. It surely has multiple lessons for me, too, if I can understand them correctly.

It involves the woman who lived next door to my parents home there. I rarely saw her over the decades my parents lived in Albuquerque, but I knew she was attractive, ever perfectly looking and was a high socialite in the community, and she had two attractive daughters that I could never seem to meet, in my lonely life.

There was a repeating pattern, most exactly repeating each time, as I think about it, although spanning many years between repeats.

I would be visiting at my parent’s home there, out in the yard doing something, and I would suddenly see the neighbor woman – lets call her Mrs Maureen, since supposedly one is not supposed to use real names in writings about others – “Dinah Shore Image” AKA Mrs Maureen would be standing there relaxed looking at me with a small smile on her face, she perfectly attired and hair perfectly done. Clearly she wanted to talk with me. I would quickly stop what I was doing and go over to stand in front of her, I said hello.

She would each time be standing in the same place, on the edge of where their lawn ended and ours began, next to the pine tree that I had planted long ago. The small smile never left her face as she seemed to look past me at the window of my bedroom, and without a hello back, would nicely say “When are you leaving?”

Sometimes expecting a hello back, I would just say “Huh?” and she would exactly repeat the standing there looking so nice and with the small smile on her face looking in the direction of me and the window to my room in the house, and pleasantly repeat exactly “When are you leaving?” still wearing the pleasant smile. I would have to reset my thoughts and figure out when I was to end my visit there, usually in a couple of days, and I would struggle to verbalize the day I was to leave there, as she stood there with the small smile on her face sort of looking in my direction but at the house too. I expected her to continue the conversation, but each time she would then simply turn her back to me without even a goodbye and walk away back toward her house.

I would be left standing there, wondering what all that was about. The attractive very socially functional woman had clearly urged me over to greet her yet all she did was say “When are you leaving?” and then turn and walk away as soon as I had said when I was to leave. The attractive smiling woman with the two attractive daughters apparently only wanted to get me to think about when I was leaving, then she would walk away.

This kind of thing happened identically several times over the span of over a decade or two. Thinking back, she always was standing in the same spot when i suddenly noticed her there looking in my direction with an inviting smile; that the spot she stood was directly across from my room in my parents home, standing directly north of the window so I had to stand with my back to the window to talk with her, now seems part of the pattern.

So I now puzzle over this rather peculiar piece of the puzzle of what cost me my home that my parents had long prepared for me to live in, their only offspring. There surely is a lesson or two for me other than mentally grousing at myself as being a goof-up; the past is past and cannot be done better, but apparently something is in that long ago repeating scenario that I need to know for my present and near future life situations.

Clearly it is not a lesson taught in the school classes or in my reading about stuff over the ages. It seems to be a pattern even with a clearly “magical” aspect as part of it. The socialite neighbor woman clearly was an expert in manipulating people – much as was my former wife. What if when she arranged those quick face-to-face meetings with me there standing on the lawn across from my room in my parents’ home, looking so nice and yet she had only one interest and that was to know when I would no longer be there, planting that thought in my mind, and now I hypothesize that she was also mentally picturing that my house was in a bubble of invisibility to me, the house not existing there for me; that strange idea would explain the “silver bubble” imagined around the property as I think back to those times now. And yes over the years I have often read of a thing where people would mentally picture something happening strongly, and then it would happen; possibly it was used for more than having a perfect parking spot suddenly open up for them in a totally filled parking area.

Why would the neighbor woman, who would never introduce me to her daughters, want me to not live there next door? I was not a bad person; I tried desperately to be accepted by people, despite my Aspergers struggle to do so. That worked well on the job and often kept me working when others were laid off before I was. But in the wider world of people’s doings, it rapidly got really complicated striving to make everybody pleased since people often had opposite wants re me, for example.

Anyway, the puzzle pieces now sort of seen, part of the puzzle piece seems to involve me struggling to make the smiling attractive woman next door happy by me being gone from the place. The place that obviously would have been my inheritance, too, as they gave their all for me, their only offspring. Apparently my striving to please an attractive woman is not always a wise thing to do.

Well, I think I have now gotten it written down here, helped a bit by first sips of morning coffee. I think I saw some patterns: the attractive neighbor lady getting my attention while she always stood in exactly the same place in front of the window to my room in my family house, getting me over there to just ask “When are you leaving?” and stand there smiling while I shifted gears to answer the question, then she simply turned and walked away.

Well, there must be some lessons in all that, but they seem vague and right now I don’t see where it fits in with my present situation, although some neighbors around me seem to always have resented me living here, despite my not being a nuisance to them. Yet I must learn the lessons or else have to repeat them the hard way. I have my own home now, far from Albuquerque and a very tiny house of far poorer quality than my parents’ home was, but this is my house, although only as long as I keep up the mortgage payments; unlike the house I would have inherited from my parents, which probably was paid for by then.

Life’s lessons. OK so I know I now know am an Asperger’s also with attention problems that cancel out the Asperger’s strengths. That wheat damage to my physiology has contributed to the early mercury damage again getting loose as a young adult, and has had a crippling effect on all my life since, is part of explanations, ought to help comprehension. But in this case, apparently it was some other person’s intention that I lose my home, was a key part of it all, is thought-provoking right now.

I am long gone from there in place and time now. So why do I so clearly see in my mind, the attractive woman smiling at me and has only to ask of me “When are you leaving?” Is there something that my subconscious is warning me to deal with, and if so, what is it?
Aargh, people-stuff is complicated. And, maybe it is true that “you can’t get there from here.” But what is it now that I need to understand?

To squabble internally or externally is the question

Correctly describing a problem is well known to be a pre-requisite activity to resolving the problem. This post is an effort to do that.

And since it involves people, there are those who resist correct solutions, and thus strive to obscure the problem. And the need for drama makes the people-stuff not just super-complicated but also can get overly dynamic.

Apparently often through history rulers have struggled with the problem of how to keep their population from getting too squabbling amongst each other, and have utilized the mechanism of arranging war. War seems to get all the squabbling brothers to stop beating up on each other, to instead be working alongside each other to repel imagined invaders by going over and beating up on the neighbors, thus requiring the population to shift from internal squabbling to cooperative interaction against external foes.

It is not just the continuing sectarian violence in the middle-eastern countries that show the problem. It seems a worldwide problem, and apparently has existed throughout history. The Roman Empire used "bread and circus" to mollify its many subjects far and wide. The brutal coliseum violence sports perhaps another type for those closer to home. Here in the US, the sports teams traveling to each others' towns sports arenas to do mock battle between football teams, for example, has long been needed to satisfy some urges among people; not just for the players, but also for the men in the stadium whooping it up rooting for their home team, but also for their women who get into the excitement too, although probably with somewhat different urges involved that also excite the men.

I have often associated it all with my conjectured basic need for "drama," but there may be another force active in the craving for team assaults with each other, on the soccer field or with tanks and airplanes on the battlefield.

America is winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I think the population is getting restless and there is much stirring of internal squabbling long seething and suppressed in the need to unite to confront the external foe.

The media's focus on the NSA as the villain has recently kept it from doing the part of its job to monitor the many groups of "organized stalkers" operating in America. Thus as it is said "when the cat's away the mice will play" and the organized-stalkers seem to be getting ready to more publicly make the daring moves that satisfy their egos and cover their own misdoings.

Allowing myself only a brief bit of anger at people choosing to squabble and group-assault instead of being responsible to their world and constructive for their civilization, I write this blog post. But I doubt that it will be allowed to be heard, as there are some heavy-duty public opinion spin-masters getting into the game, I sense.

Some kinds of people prefer to engage in games or serious conflicts so as to demonstrate who is superior; another kind of people prefer to engage in building things as their teamwork activity.

The conflict-craving types seem to be needing more visibility in recent times, bread-and-circus not enough for them anymore. The focus on the lone high achiever, predominant such as up through the 1950's in America, has been beaten back by the urge for the teams to take the forefront. The schoolyard bullies that gather their following by setting the example of beating up on the lone high achiever, gets tamed a bit as less violent techniques to stay at the front of a group's attention. When this kind of activity gets controlled in a corporation to have a management chain to produce a fine product or service, it seems about an optimum activity for teams.

However, as America's business-political mode has changed enormously since the 1950's, too often businesses teams will discover that they are more interested in making money than in making a fine product for the consumer. Investors who only look at the bottom-line return on their investment, and do not care what means are used to make that maximum money, increasingly business has found that it is far more efficient to seek out and overwhelm upcoming competition and destroy it, than to invest in better internal R&D to make better products for the customers.

Tripping up the rivals is hardly new, as a means to "win." Spot someone else's fine work being completed, is arranged to be destroyed leaving only one's lesser accomplishment the remaining finest thing. However, although sometimes like the stadiums full of howling fans, where the tripping up of the "other people" is publicly accepted and even required as part of the sport, in business dealings it is generally more frowned upon; therefore using more subtle techniques need to be employed. Those who engage in this kind of thing can be lumped into a general category of "organized stalkers."

These organized-stalkers apparently enjoy the companionship and adventure involved, as motivation, providing membership belonging and status in these semi-secret sub-organizations, that seem to be quite common and hardly new.

With the internet's fairly open communications, some of those who have discovered the increasingly unlikely occurrence of specific kinds of events as they go about their daily life, if they are lucky they learn about this organized-stalker phenomenon which apparently is now stalking them. To hide the originating source of the command to stalk particular individuals, there is said to be a "list" passed around among the many groups of organized-stalkers, and once a person is on that "list" it is a lifelong thing, no way to get off the list. (The implied threat of getting put on that list probably also keeps their members in line, fearing what would happen to them if they choose to not do some particularly nefarious dirty-work for the organized-stalkers.)

One kind of person that finds themselves as apparently on that "list" is the potentially innovative but now unemployed engineer, who might come up with an idea for a technology that could compete with some corporation's products and thus reduce their profits for their investors. Keeping those loose-cannon engineers down in the trenches by increasingly obvious organized-stalking and concurrent intrusion into their residences to do document theft, and by spreading nasty rumors among the people the engineer might connect with like neighbors, are said to be common protocols for the organized-stalkers.

I suppose it must be big fun for the members of the organized-stalker vigillanties in their fantasies of the monsters they are united in harassing, to be great heroes among the teams; quite unaware of what they are actually doing to their targets, that ultimately will come around to lower the standard of living for everybody including the organized-stalkers themselves. No matter; the fun and drama of team belonging and fantasied doing drama, is going on. Staying in the herd is a place of safety even among wild mammal groups, and driving out some member, normally a male, feeds the predators and thus protects those who are in the herd for awhile longer. These instincts still lurk among humans, and sometimes find expression, such as in the teams of organized-stalkers.

So at this point, I somewhat suspect that America is once again at that tipping point where focus against a common "enemy" outside the country, fades away enough so that the possible need for those stalked engineers to get re-hired to produce means to succeed against the nation-external enemy, becomes much less than the urge to snuff out the potentially business-disruptive innovative engineers and scientists, and so the long-prepared triumphant dramas of accusatory courtroom or scared run street chases, gets the go signal.

Part of this nearly overwhelmingly complex people-stuff, is the mode among ostensibly dignified members of society and corporations, to "get something on" the others, and this apparently enables some people to feel secure in their jobs, with the implied threat of the misdoings of those other dignitaries being revealed, if the job is lost. I was quite surprised when I learned about this phenomenon many decades ago. The "getting something on" can also be deliberately arranged by such groups too, even if there is no real adequately severe mistake or misdoing having been done by the individual. The need for a high-achieving Asperger to be accepted in the apparently fun things the groups are doing, often gets them put in the position of being deliberately "left holding the bag" to take the blame for the mischief of the group, the Asperger unable to comprehend all of what is going on among people. Someone who has stumbled into "knowing too much" is at high risk for being such a target, even if not wanting to be involved. Thus there is this mass of all the things "gotten on" each other, as part of the seething people-stuff stewing.

Now, is the declaring of war or doing the equivalent, to punish some outside nation, worth doing to prevent the nation-internal fracas from getting really nasty? Hardly seems fair to me, even though I too have long been one of those technological mavericks potentially too business-disruptive with better technologies than the existing corporations employ, and thus would likely would go down in one of the first internal skirmishes. Although that does not appeal to me at all, the sacrificing of thousands of foreigners in a distracting war, is just not a rightful thing to do to prevent it.

What people do do

In my endless Asperger's effort to understand what people are doing, and why and how, so as to better interact with them, occasionally I get a brief insight of how maybe to approach the task.

But this time it is with a bit of more exasperation than my usual, focusing mostly on the antics and mischief going on over government financing (and thus limiting their ability to do their job well,) monetary hoarding of the nation's wealth by a few expert game players, job enabling efforts, and Norway's version of the mischief drama.

So the thought I had was merely to give the task a title: "What people do do," to illustrate the focus on what they actually do, as contrasted to what they only say they do.

And the double meaning of the title is only partially deliberate. But it illustrates my opinion, at the moment, of much of what has been going on lately.

Yet people also do quite honorable things too, at times. And that title might obscure that civilization-enhancing component field a bit. Thus, just this post. At least for now.

Aspie musings abut bugs and bags

Other people talk of taking on a life challenge to do one thing to make themselves better in some particular way; but it seems that I can't remember a time when my life was not like a bug splattered on the windshield, ever trying to pull myself a bit more back together and where are the pieces, what were they.

Remembering down in LA, when I would sometimes ride my bicycle over to a park, Fallbrook Park I think it was called - and lie down on the grass and rest in the sunshine, my hands on my bicycle and daypack so they would not vanish while my eyes were closed. Quite often there would be a bunch of teenagers nearby who would play on their boombox loudly a song popular in that time, which angrily shouted as a group "We will, we will ROB YOU! We will, we will ROB YOU!" as I lay there dreamily trying to recouperate from the daily stresses. It seems their proclamations got written onto me somehow. Goes along with the bug on the windshield feeling. At least when it was time to get up and bicycle back home, I still had a bicycle and daypack.

Apparently building on the "We will, we will ROB YOU!" theme, now focusing on the archetypal Aspie scene called "left holding the bag" where an Aspie, ever seeking some fun game that others will finally allow him to play too, and sensing such a game going on per the exciting energy around it, comes across bank robbers busy hauling bags of money out. The Aspie enjoys all the excitement and asks if he can join in on the fun too, and he gets handed one of the money bags and is told the way to play is when those flashing lights get closer, carry the bag into that open door over there, while we go hide. Overjoyed at the invitation to actually join in on the fun, and of course unable to immediately comprehend all the nuances of the situation, the Aspie obediently waits until the flashing red lights and sirens are about to arrive and then goes toward the bank door, as the cops arrive on the scene, and catch him holding the bag. Apparently it is part of really intelligent gangs to do a setup such that some Aspie will take the rap for the gang's nasties, as part of the preparation and follow through of their gang's big capers.

I wonder what my subconscious is trying to tell me.

EFT amazingly provides forgiveness in pure form that immediately brings the peace that passes all understanding

EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, an emotional stress level connected strategic tapping protocol, can be considered part of one's daily emotional hygiene, like washing one's face and brushing teeth.

EFT amazingly provides the bible's instruction of forgiveness in pure form that immediately brings the peace that passes all understanding.

Of course, as is also taught in the bible, one can choose to continue to hang on to something grievous so as to torment - and be tormented by - any traumatic experience. The hidden question remains: Isn't pain and suffering required to learn proper behavior, to learn right from wrong, to learn the rules of life by pain avoidance? This might need some accurate research to find out for sure, but my guess is that the question itself is from a hostile entity that pops up at times, that wants to rule us through inflicting suffering: the ultimate bully.

EFT seems to provide much of what Jesus spoke of and possibly even healed by. And the bible tells of how the opposition eventually destroyed him in terrible grief, embarrassment and pain in public, "proving" that it still ruled. EFT brings back, after 2,000 years, some of what this insight suggests are healing's that Jesus taught, saying that we can do them too, and more.

EFT does not change the memory of cause & effect of what was experienced, in fact clarifies them some, by removing the emotional disruption component of the experience, a disruption that causes erroneous performance subsequently, not improved performance. But, EFT does not work unless it is performed, like most anything else it needs to be done to have usefulness.

There is an increasing amount of info on EFT to be found on the internet, such as on its founder's site emofree.com; and on tapping.com and tryitoneverything.com/how_to_tap.html which all have disclaimers of course, and the latter two seem to be more business focused than helping focused, yet have useful info too. I have been experimenting with EFT for many months, and has helped me a lot, even in the social struggles of an Asperger person by clearing out much of the stored disruptions from the myriad social interaction tries that failed and were baffling as to why, leaving only internal disruption in their wake. Processing those traumatic memories one at a time, increasingly clears out the chaos leaving the orderliness ever more apparent in the mess, which increasingly looks less formidable.

Again, EFT amazingly provides forgiveness in pure form that immediately brings the peace that passes all understanding.