Sensing The World Into Existence

What if Adam can sense the world? What if this sense, his intuitive sense even, is more robust than his other senses? In my conversations with Donna Williams, this seems plausible. I have been so focused on visual-spatial skills, but not of Adam’s other sensing mechanisms. As I was disorganized and literally sick to my stomach at temporarily losing some of my vision at the eye-doctor (see yesterday's post "Unfathomable Mind"), I realized how I have come to over-rely on my vision and hearing, and under-rely on my other kinesthetic and other sensing mechanisms. In essence, those of us that share the same faculties have come to view the world through a very narrow tunnel of vision – where other worlds can be experienced through different avenues of perception.

This led me to think about Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines, which I read years ago. The main character, Arkady, spends time with the Walbiri Aborigines of Alice Springs. The Walbiri sing the “world into existence.” Without having traversed the country, the world doesn’t exist.

“He liked Aboriginals. He liked their grit and tenacity and their artful ways of dealing with the white man. He had learnt, or half-learnt, a couple of their languages and had come away astonished by their intellectual vigour, their feats of memory and their capacity and will to survive. Arkady learned of the labyrinth of invisible pathways which meander all over Australia and are known by the Europeans as `Dreaming Tracks,’ or Songlines to the Aboriginals as `The Footprints of Ancestors’ or `The Way of the Law.’ Aboriginal Creation Myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wandered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path – birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes – and so singing the world into existence.” (Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines, p.2).

Does what we perceive really exist? If it exists does it exist in the same way for others? As I consider that a blind person perceives the world entirely different from the way I do, I can easily suggest that we each perceive the world differently. If we believe this, then we must believe that the way people with Autism perceive is differently from us, and even among themselves as a group labeled Autistic. If perception is different, then we must completely rethink the way we evaluate and teach people with Autism. ABA leaves little room for creativity, discovery, and kinesthetic exploration. We are dealing with a group of people who are simply human with a set of different sensing and perceptual mechanisms – entirely valuable, completely fascinating. As I consider this along with my own biases, perceptions and the layers of belief systems that I have inherited through an inflexible world, I am coming to appreciate Adam and his wonderful complexities.

Like the Walbiri tribe, I suggest that Adam is sensing his way into existence. His visual and touch senses, his intuition, his ability to feel rhythm and pattern may be his strategies for making sense of this world and finding himself within it. While we both make the journey to cross each other’s paths, as his parent, I am obliged to SEE him, his world, as much as I hope that he will continue to join me in mine.