A thought piece for Autism Month, reposted from Scheherazade’s Sea’s site, original title “Travelogue 4 – Gratitude”.

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Thanking the grass. I have begun this new habit, exulting in an enhanced awareness, a practice for which I want to thank Salzburg Global, because this genteel ‘revelation’ emerged from my week long experience immersed in the beauty of the Schloss Leopoldskron, while attending their exciting programme, “Creating Futures: Art of Narrative”.

Gratitude.

Over the last fifty years since, science began to realise that non-human animals possess not only intellectual prowess but rather sophisticated, refined sentience too. Apart from domestic pets like dogs and cats, there are the farmed animals like pigs, cows and sheep, then wildlife, like elephants, whales, dolphins, and even the brilliant octopi. Thus arose the strong vegan movement, which made perfect sense to me, on a more obvious and immediate level. Of course, the sentience of non-human animals were, to me, a foregone conclusion. However, I always felt the vegan movement, especially when based squarely on not wanting to kill and devour sentient animals, was too simplistic for me. One nagging issue continued to plague my mind for years: What about the trees? What about all other nature?

I felt vindicated at last, when I stumbled upon the work of Suzanne Simard, about the complex communication networks of trees, and other scientists engaging in studying alternative existential forms of the non-human realm. This exciting moment came fairly recently, while Lucy was still alive, but I did not accord it much depth of consideration because I was buried in the mire of basic survival — working on urgent human-centric things that took me away from what, to my soul and spirit, were far more fundamentally important — because, well, money makes the human world churn, heave and burn, doesn’t it? Thinkers, dreamers and creatives all die poor, unless they are well-funded, and some who manage to arrive at the glorious station in life (of not dying poor) have to prostitute part of themselves in order to get there. I have to say that that too is an art form, one which I have never been able to achieve. Whether the act of prostitution in itself is a good thing or bad, I have no judgment on this issue. It is, to me, an individual decision, and we all have to do whatever we feel we need to do.

Back to the trees. Simard’s work threw open the windows and doors of the by-now musty, dusty, dark, shuttered corners of my hidden mindscape, and brought me back to my childhood, when I wanted to dedicate my life to learning how to talk to animals and nature, adamant that it was absolutely possible. Thank you, Suzanne Simard and scientists of her ilk, for this vindication, although it is too late for me to embark on another PhD, much as I would love to, and nobody would fund me for a transdisciplinary art-science Postdoctorate Fellowship on such a topic anyway. I am almost 60, nearer the end than the beginning. I have to leave the rigours to the next generation, and I know they would do a far better job that I ever could, given my severely limited learning anyway. There are huge, empty, howling voids in my education experience that cannot be remedied anymore. I was born in that particular time and space… that was that. No going back.

But moving forward, hurtling and trundling, dancing and swaying, through what is “now” and “hereafter”, I am aware that more knowing brings more dilemma. Are the screams of vegetation different from the screams of puppies being culled? Of course they are. But is the difference only because of our human-dictated structure of sentience that causes us to be more empathic towards those who are closer to our human understanding of Beingness, those entities whose ‘voices’ we are more able to ‘hear’ and ‘sense’, and therefore identify and empathise with, as opposed to the more distant? We cannot hear plants screaming with our human auditory processing systems, but we can indeed hear mammals crying in pain. If you could hear the plants crying and see them cringing when being cut down, would you still think it is less cruel to eat them, compared to eating chicken or beef? Who has given humans the right to create human-based measurements for hierarchies of sentiences? We ourselves decided our paradigm is superior and so we must be correct in an absolute way. Just because we cannot hear or sense something, does it mean it does not exist?

Not too long ago, the neuronormative world pronounced Autistic existence as worthless, asserting that Autistic humans were less than human, that our Autistic world is “barren” and we are somehow trapped inside a vacuum of nothingness, and that of our own volition. One only needs to dig out some quotes from Ivaar Lovaas, the founder of Applied Behaviour Analysis, to read what he thought about Autistic people. Autistic history attests the the soul-crushing legacy of Lovaas’ ABA “correctional” therapy to “make Autistics human”, but the voices are of the Autistic, and they are still being ignored by the normative world.

In 2002, Bryna Siegel, then professor of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, was quoted as saying this about autistics:

“It’s as if they do not understand or are missing a core aspect of what it is to be human; to be and do like others and absorb their values.”… “Their worlds are more barren, their social world is very distorted, and they come out of their world not when you want them to, but when they want to.” – Bryna Siegel (Mike Falcon and Stephen A. Shoop, ‘Stars ‘CAN-do’ about defeating autism,’ USA Today, accessed April 16, 2016, and again 25 April 2025, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/spotlight/2002/04/10-autism.htm)

Siegel is not alone, and even to this very day, non-autistic self-styled ‘experts’ in autism, hold stolidly fast to this warped perspective, refusing to acknowledge that Autistic people do indeed possess our own unique sentience. In my own country, I have sat on committees and panels where famous, highly paid, senior ‘autism experts’ have described me in my face using outdated functioning labels, even when I tell them not to do so and explain the by now well researched reasons why, thus blatantly undermining my own years of autism research (I have a PhD, for goodness’ sake!) as well as lived-experience. Not to mention outright disrespect for my validity as a human. Autistic people are not the ones who are rude, really. Ironically, it is these types that manage to scramble up the professional ladders and draw high salaries out of our Autistic lives. Some even have Autistic children too. I shudder. Everyone is an expert in neurodiversity these days, even the otherwise disabled ‘experts’, except the actually neurodivergent, it seems. Neuronormative audacity, maybe? I would never dare to go out there and comment on any state of being that I do not know from lived-experience. But it seems the ‘thing’ now. An overwhelming legion of neuronormative – disabled or not – seem to be jumping onto the neurodiversity bandwagon these days. I shall not go into the wherefores. That is for another thought-piece, which I will probably not attempt in the near future anyway. Because I want to now focus on beautiful and inspiring things, not the ugly and unedifying.

Back to my musing about sentience then. If the majority of humans refuse to acknowledge the intricate wonderment of other human sentiences, parallel embodiments to their typical ones, then it should be no wonder that they have taken so long to even agree that non-human animals have consciousness. To make the huge paradigm leap into trees and flora may be too monumentally taxing to their limited percipience. I admit, it is not popular even among my fellow Autistics. Autistic Autism researchers are doing amazing work studying and uncovering Autistic humanity from the fields of sociology, psychology and education. Now, also medicine. And some in the arts, though less so. But these are all strongly human-focused. I am one of the disagreeable minority within an already marginalised minority, to wave the flag of the non-human realm. My views make even the Autistic majority-minority seem very mainstream. For now, perhaps.

I am too advanced in chronological years, confined within my own mortal form, to do much, even if I wanted to, and to be honest, I do not want to anymore.

The normative adult world crushed my dreams and dictated the course of my growing years. Although Lucy Like-a-Charm revived my primal spirit, brought me back to the purity of my childhood, inspired my best intellectual creative work, the PhD dissertation, and opened doors to opportunities, achievements and accolades that I never thought would visit upon me, she also showed me another gentler way (for me, specifically) to exist. She led by example and wordless instruction. I am a rookie still, being the obtuse human with a trauma-stunted sensory spirit, but I am discovering new paradigms every day, and the more I know, the more I realise the less I know. It is a perpetually moving, shifting, almost shimmery, iridescent state of Beingness that I am now becoming increasingly satisfied and at peace with. Ever dynamic, exciting, yet quiet and self-contained.

To Bryna Siegel and her ilk, yes, perhaps I do live in my own little world after all, but what is so attractive, welcoming and beautiful about YOUR big ‘un-little’ neuronormative world that would entice me to embrace it in exchange for the sheer wonderment of mine?

Walking around in the breathtaking beauty of the Schloss Leopoldskron recently, during my amazing week at the aforementioned Salzburg Global’s Fellowship programme, I found myself consciously and deliberately speaking aloud, albeit in a whisper, my grateful thanks to the rich luscious grass upon which I tread every day. I thanked the flowers too, and the trees, but I avoided trampling on the flowers as best as I could, and even in so doing, I knew I was making human-centric choices based on my human measurements of heirarchies, choosing not to hurt the flowers because they are more lovely and pleasing in my human esteem than the common grass forms. So firmly, basely, human I am, with my human-centric heirarchies, non?

Yet, I cannot help being human, whether I like it or not. Flaws and all. Just as Lucy could not help being canine. At least while in our restricted mortal states. Now, Lucy is no longer fettered by any of these confines, but I still am. For me, at present, I remain stuck inside my peculiar Autistic human existence (uncommon even among my neuro-kinfolk), a seemingly oxymoronic juxtaposition combining the intensely detail-focused monotropic mind with wide, expansive holographic sensing. I have no answers whatsoever to this mind-boggling existential conundrum. There are too many questions. One of which is: what are we going to eat, if we are not to kill and ingest any beings with sentience? Everything that has life has sentience. I know they do. It is a revelation which has brought me face to face with a whole new dimension, and the frightening need for a shattering, explosive paradigm shift. I doubt it would happen, the shift, that is, at least not in my lifetime, with the human world seeming to be in regression mode these days. Besides, human history itself has never presented much hope for me, anyway. We don’t seem to learn very well. There is nothing I can do about it, really. Nevertheless, I can and do choose Gratitude, a posture and disposition which stems from my sense of awe towards all Being states — the trees, grass, flowers and other natural and material entities, not just the non-human animals closer to us. And I find a depth of peaceful reconciliation in so doing, despite having no resolutions at hand. For my small part, I shall continue to thank the silent ones for the privilege of having them in my life, their quiet support for my human embodiment, and I shall endeavour to do so with as little ‘cruelty’ as I possibly can muster. Though I know that life and death are intertwined, and hence, so is devastation, in some form or other. Walking on grass is such an exquisite sensation, especially compared to concrete, is it not? It is a sensory pleasure, perhaps simply because I cannot hear their cries. This human is profoundly grateful. This Autistic neuroholographic human, no more, no less. Thank you. With all the conscious humility I can humanly embrace. Thank you.

(This thought-piece is an extension of my PhD dissertation on parallel embodiment and alternative empathies, the fundamental work that Lucy inspired and influenced, which continues to occupy my mind, soul and body. It is the premise upon which our magnum opus, “Scheherazade’s Sea: Wake Up in My Dreams”, our multimodal autobiography, is built upon. Will I live to complete it? I do not know. At the moment, funding is a huge challenge, and in this human world, without funding, creative endeavours of any sort are severely limited, especially in the arts, simply because paradigm shifts do not generate more wealth, and, of course, humans do not usually like to invest in what makes them uncomfortable. Nevertheless, this human will continue to keep on keeping on, for as long as she has mortal breath. Oh, thou Stubborn Autistic Dreamer!)

You can view more photos if you visit the original site here.