NOTES

I've always charted and mapped to help visualize what's going on--graphing health, investments, even dream recall. Spirography was my first try at mapping my whole life on one page. Putting a linear timeline on a two dimensional surface, you get problems of scale; you need to fold or coil it somehow. I chose the Fibonacci spiral because I just LIKE spirals better than boxes...and because it seemed to me that major changes in my life come neither randomly nor at fixed intervals; each interval's about 1.4 (square root of 2?) times the previous one (rather like planetary orbits, or the seed-pattern in the heart of a sunflower). Roughly ages 1,2,3,5,7,10,15,22,33,45... The Fibonacci series, where each number is the sum of the two previous in the series (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,22,35...) comes close. And life IS Fibonacci-ish. You have to digest the experiences of the last couple of revelations and filter them out to see what new revelation is staring you in the face.

A NOTE TWENTY YEARS LATER

The spiral extended! A new revelation every few years--though I'm wondering now if the intervals are more fixed than Fibonacci. A big change every four-five years...

• Health (1): I decided to test the other relied-on figures in my life. Doctors had tested and assured me my chronic flulike illness was psychosomatic not food allergies. A few months of charting proved them dead wrong. I turned my pain on & off like a light switch just by eating gluten or not. My health improved sharply.
• Health (2): With the painful gut-attacks out of the way, I still had recurring attacks of fever, night sweats and joint pains. Again doctors were unhelpful. I tested the hypothesis it was just what it felt like--an unknown infection and through trial and error (charting my condition daily for five years) worked out a roster of nonprescription herbs to control it.
• Sex/love: Two rather patient girlfriends undid a lot of the gender-guilt and -dysphoria my mom had instilled; she went beyond feminism into reverse sexism--Men Are Scum. I also learned that while I prefer love to solitude, loneliness is another word for elbow room. And preferable to the company of idiots.
• Autism: slowly, over a decade, I faced that I wasn't just nerdy or borderline; I'm clinically autistic. Brains and ESP both run in my family, and they'd hidden autism's severity, let me use weird work-arounds to function where many couldn't. But my sensory world is PROFOUNDLY nonhuman--I have at least seven senses, two of which I can't easily describe, while other basic functions are missing, like human-face recognition. I understand animals better than humans.
• Money/career: I was told I'd always be poor. Now I'm rich. Art's my life-task, but my subject matter is too far out to commercialize. And linking art and money constrains the art! So at last I quit trying either to convince neurotypicals to hire me (fat chance) or to make money off art; now I let Autistic Me make long-term social investments (online, where the Suits can't see me rocking and avoiding their eyes--staring's a threat display for us wild animals, you know) and support myself on that...and do my art for free.

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