#324 Movement- Nancy Fulda
This is a fantastic and touching story about the thoughts
of a girl that has been diagnosed with temporal autism. Although, she herself
thinks the autism part is false. In many ways her brain works in an advanced
ways, but in others she is unable to partake in normal human activities. Her
parents are debating whether of not to go ahead with a procedure to “fix” her
condition.
“It’s a matter of trade-offs…the brain cannot be optimized
for everything at once.”
She is ultra aware of her surroundings, she can perform
high-level numeric function, conceptualize her own connection to time and
space, but it takes her weeks sometimes to formulate a verbal response to a
question posed to her directly. Its not that she doesn’t want to answer, just
nobody is willing to, or understands that they should wait that long for a
response.
“Words are such fleeting indefinite things. They slip
through the spaces between my thoughts and are lost.”
While pondering whether she would actual want the procedure
that would make her “normal,” she watches a flytrap plant that has evolved with
a larger blossom then the others, one too big for its current stem to hold. She
roots for the plant’s development and watches to see if it will survive.
“I wonder, if the plant had been offered the certainty of
mediocrity rather than the chance of greatness, would it have accepted.”
Notable Passage: “It should not be surprising that, on the
way from what we are to what we are becoming, there should be friction and false
starts along the way. Noise is intrinsic to change. Progression is inherently
chaotic.”
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