My grandfather was a… complex man.
He slept beside an orderly nightstand.
Tucking Mein Kampf tight
In its tidy drawer every night.
And…
He used to take me sailing.
{Silence}
Content Note: This piece addresses troubling family history and inherited complexity.
Intro
I call this one…
Slouching Toward Montauk
… Let’s say… I’m in my 70s now. Happiest time of my autistic life.
Not too worried about some fabulous unachievable autistic Nirvana… These days…
Now, here’s that story.
My grandfather was a… complex man.
He slept beside an orderly nightstand.
Tucking Mein Kampf tight
In its tidy drawer every night.
And…
He used to take me sailing out to Montauk Point… a sea journey from Bay Shore, Long Island… at least as he sailed it on the ocean side… swinging out into the deep water…
In his telling, it was a fabulous place.
Where a sandstone lighthouse lit the waves, warning of danger.
Where the grass on the golf course grew sideways.
And every single damn tree bowed toward the West…
From the eternal wind blowing onshore.
His heaven on earth, he called it…
.
.
.
The wind carries all the sound away…
But its roar in my ears
creates a kind of hushed silence
inside me
.
.
I always experience high anxiety
as we lose sight of the shore.
Just sky, waves & constant rolling…
Disoriented.
Like a whiteout in a blizzard.
If you throw in some seasickness.
But after an hour or so, I make my way to the prow. And sit.
Wind on my face
Sun on my body
Salt breeze filling my chest…
Quieting my heart.
Anxiety? Disorientation?
I observe
The fixed lighthouse
In the far off dusk.
Splashing its light… bravely
Into the spray.
Knowing deep
In its soft
Native sandstone heart…
Time and tide wait for it.
.
.
.
I stop caring about the shoreline. And the anxious Hell waiting for me on the other side. For hours at a time.
.
.
.
.
Who cares about sailing toward Montauk
and its fabulous trees…
anymore…
Or… ever again?
I’m busy breathing in…
this
fabulous moment
here
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I’m an autistic poet and spoken word performer, diagnosed at 63. Now in my 70s. I’ve been publishing AutisticAF Out Loud since 2019… work that refuses to be packaged.
My spoken word piece , every clock is a handgun pointed at my head, was published in Wordgathering, a journal of disability poetry & literature. In 2022, I spoke at the UN World Autism Acceptance Day about my illustration work rooted in autism & ADHD.
I live in a rural Indiana trailer… across the courtyard from my wife’s trailer… with my 2 dogs & cat. Occasionally I shave… to face Walmart.
The algorithms hate me. I must be doing something right.
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