My time doesn’t pass. It feels. School bells, factory whistles, and day planners be damned.
Cold Open
In my 70s, every ticking second is a countdown to some duty, obligation, deadline… death…
No. That’s a lie.
Reality? Hours of numbness… obsessively flicking through screens… frightened to look away and notice the time of day… the season.
Leading to days of dull semi-awareness… punctuated by bathroom trips to pee between delivered pizzas.
Procrastination… The Black Hole I Hide in
Where’s the waitress…??? A plaintive cry in my head.
I glance at the watch on my wrist. Again.
That paper was due a WEEK ago…
I’m in Albany. Spring 2000. Sitting on a pizza joint chair. Oldskool tubular steel and fiberglass. Dirty, glaringly orange, butt killer. The kind grade schools stacked against walls… back before Kennedy was shot.
Fuck. I wanted a pizza cuz I thought it’d be fast…
I’m checking the clock robotically every few minutes. It’s like 9 at night. The prof believed in me. He knew I needed an A for my cume average.
He had promised he wouldn’t mark me down for lateness…
IF it was my usual quality.
AND I get my 10 pages in… before class.
Tomorrow. 10 am.
He taps his watch, “No excuses.”
I had a great topic. Choice buzzwords. “Challenges of Cognitive Therapy for Middle-Old Senior Clients.” BUT I couldn’t make it come. Hadn’t even started. I paced for hours in my apartment. Nothing. Zip. NADA.
So, my bright idea?
I know, walk a couple blocks, grab a quick slice. Kill two birds. Get my blood pumping. Get dinner outta the way. I’ll write all night if I gotta… When I get home.
BUT… an hour and a half later, after waitress delays, problems with the credit card, bumping into a classmate I can’t duck… I gotta make a new plan.
Um, I’ll get up at 5. Pump out a page an hour… I’ve done that under pressure before. He’ll take it if I skate into class at the last minute.
Um, right. I guess that was just one straw too many.
Couple weeks later… I get The Letter.
…after careful consideration by the full Committee… blah-blah-blah-de-BLAH… effective immediately discontinue your enrollment in the Graduate program and cease issuing your stipend.
But… Pizza. Save time. Prioritize. Every link in my logic made so much sense… at the time.
It always does.
Every time.
’Til I look back.
And feel stupid.
Every.
Single.
God-damned time.
In my life.
I can never be certain of any commitment I make… no matter how heavily they weigh on me. Even broken commitments that kill paychecks. Kill careers.
Weirdly, especially the most dear ones that I make to myself. Just another burden I can’t bear.
How much does a dream weigh? Enough to slump shoulders. And strangely? Even more as each dies…
Every clock is a handgun pointed at my head
III
Every clock is a handgun pointed at my head
Every tick, tick… fucking tick
Tolling Fear, Doom… dread
Click. Slide. Cock… click.
Every night a mantra echoes through my head
TV static… a crazy-making hum
Singing Dream, Dreamt… dead…
Not done. Not done. Not done… undone.
10, 9, 8… Dread
7, 6, 5… Fear
4, 3, 2… BEEP.
Shoot the moon… or the country next door
Countdown. Deadline. Bow down… dead.
Bound behind doors, bound in my head
Pace, paces, pacing… paced
Every BEEP.
Of the phone.
Stops…
my heart.
.
.
.
I crash out with a scream for escape
II
Woods
Deep woods
Deepest woods
My ears fly
from bird song
to bird song.
A raptor circles then spirals
Crossing lines now dead
Wind steals my breath
Taking words never said
This skin bag of atmosphere
Breathes new air
When the sun rises
First it is cool
Then it gets warm
The day passes
Clouds above my head.
Shaped by wind
Outside my body
The same wind
Inside my body
The
same
wind
Yet…
I
10, 9, 8… Dread
7, 6, 5… Fear
4, 3, 2… BEEP.
Shoot the moon… or the country next door
Countdown. Deadline. Bow down… dead.
Every clock is a handgun pointed at my head
zero
.
In My Autistic Time
Just two things almost kept me out of kindergarten. Sure, the Tying Shoe Laces Gotchya. Still a struggle in my 70s. But hours of maternally mandated practice got me past that requirement. On the second try.
But omfg learning to read a clock?
My mother gets up from the table to adjust the hands on her kitchen clock. This is April 1958. Two months til my 5th birthday. Five months before I’m supposed to start school.
She sits down wearily. “Okay. What time does it say now? Try.” Sighs. “Remember… short hand, long hand. Try harder.”
I stare. I stare harder. Harder yet.
“10:15…?”
“No.” Her jaw line tightens. “No. You know better. Long hand, short hand. Try… again.”
I got nothing. Those hands crawling around those Roman numerals… had nothing to do with my time. Long or short. I try to read her face, looking for clues. Then I notice that one hand isn’t quite to the “III.” I don’t notice it’s the short one. My bad.
I quietly try, “10:13?”
“No… 10 to 3.” She slumps back. “You do realize if you can’t tell time you’ll be held back, don’t you.”
It made no sense to me. Some thing on the wall… “telling” me time.
Not good time, like me building dams in the street after it rains. Not bad time, like me getting sent to my room to “settle down.” Just stupid numbers. But not really numbers at all.
Letters that mean numbers. No matter how much we worked on it. It wasn’t my time.
She jumps up. “I have things to do. I can’t do this now. We’ll have to work again later. You have got to get this. Or get held back.” Then her kill shot. “With the younger kids.”
It seems as if most humans measure time event by event.
At least the ones I ever met.
What happened.
How often.
When.
But I don’t timestamp events. I live the depth of feeling and its quality as events unfold.
Time doesn’t pass. It feels.
It’s like most humans experience time and space the way Newton would. In precisely measurable dimensions… filled with matter, energy, and consumable products.
Choose your poison: Imperial OR metric units. They both make perfect sense… if you’re punching out widgets in a world organized like factories. With guys hovering and lurking in the shadows… counting our pieces per hour.
Every bit of that modern industrial world makes sense.
Fast food.
Convenience packaging.
Low monthly payments.
Superhighways.
This season’s fashions.
Time-limited sales.
Slip on shoes.
No-iron shirts.
“Skip ad” buttons…
But it’s like I’m stuck in some quantum world with weird dimensions… like “spin” & “charm.” Dimensions you can’t measure on a factory floor.
Time doesn’t flow smoothly for me. Like a river that races on the straightaways, but crawls around curves. From highs of joy to depths of chronic torment.
If I’m interested in what you’re saying, what I’m reading… hours fly by. In fact, if I’m really into my passion… painting, cooking, whatev… time has no meaning. I’m outside of time. For me, indistinguishable from… joy.
But boredom?
Like a slow, annoying
hands-and-knees crawl
across wooden schoolroom floorboards…
taking secret, furtive
over-the-shoulder glances
at a secondhand
stubbornly
sweeping.
So, depression, anxiety… or DEADLINES? Time grinds second by agonizing second in your gut.
My very definition of… Dread.
Civilized time requires commitment…
Plans, deadlines, goals, milestones… production.
My wife Kimmie wants to plan for dinner in the 21st Century. Drops me a Facebook message. I dutifully text back.
“Sure, hon, I’ll make dinner tonight! That fake rice-a-roni thing I do takes 14 minutes to boil. I’ll see ya in about 20.”
But of course… I got just one thing to finish before I close my laptop… Or maybe I was working on a guitar lick… I forget.
I’m focused… on my passion.
Sure, I effortlessly monitor
fractions of a second…
to hit precisely…
the right hesitation…
of that one…
musical note…
Or maybe I was hunting
the perfect combo…
of word choice…
and white space…
that
makes
the phrase…
Then that damned Facebook notification bell goes off. I whip out my Android, flip through the screen, fingerprint, and passcode obstacles, and then…
The text? One solitary, annoyed emoji…
🤬
My fingers stumble all over the tiny screen keyboard, “Oh, my g-d! Never takes this long. BRT.”
Yet another dinner that begins with a graceless Grace. Me mumbling some variation of “I have no freaking clue how so much time could have passed… um, again.”
Civilized time is beyond me.
Let’s say I’ve burned through dozens of jobs… average span less than 6 months.
At least 6 careers… average span a couple years.
Marriages… 3, and let’s not go into those particular time frames…
My autistic time in your punch-clock world.
In my 70s, every ticking second is a countdown to some duty, obligation, deadline… death…
No. That’s a lie.
Reality? Hours of numbness… obsessively flicking through screens… frightened to look away and notice the time of day… the season.
Leading to days of dull semi-awareness… punctuated by bathroom trips to pee between delivered pizzas.
And moments of terror when despite my best dim-witted efforts, I see 9:27 out of the corner of my eye.
And the sun screams, “Hey, it’s morning. You gotta get going. You got stuff to do.”
Or maybe it’s 3:19 am. So the moon shames me with, “Well, there goes another day you didn’t meet expectations.”
Every timepiece I can remember like a prison guard’s gun… the real power enforcing order.
The calendar that told the doctor that 2 weeks late is too long… so he forced my delivery with forceps.
Or the school bell that announced precisely when I must be silent… or pee.
The alarms shrieking at the factory door.
Punch clock measuring the distance to starvation.
Calendars til the next vacation, parental promotion… or move to a new town.
Report cards.
Standardized tests.
Bank clocks and clock towers counting down seconds to disaster.
Now, weirdly, any time period much longer than a day?
All kinda melts together. I can forget to send in a vital Social Security Form, thinking, “I just got it yesterday. Still got time…” Weeks later. Months later.
Or pick up a conversation in mid-sentence when I see a friend. From the last time I saw him. Two jobs ago… and a career ago.
Like I have one button on my clock, “NOW.” And for bonus points, its alarm function has no mega-freaking clue…
How long it takes to complete any task invented by any human.
At any time in history.
Or any space we’ve ever occupied.
But mebbe you think you can help me out. Say, give me a time limit? A gentle reminder?
My brain freezes. My heart follows. Ass remains firmly implanted in front of some screen or other.
Planning? Keeping commitments? Deadlines? Family life? Education? Jobs? CAREERS…?
The Spin-Charm of My Emotional Experience
But this time-centered agony is not my natural state. The New Zealand Māori dictionary names who I am. How I am.
Takiwātanga, in my own time and space. A dictionary definition born out of love.
This is what I’ve come to believe:
In the environment I was built for… pre-industrial.
In the life I was meant to live… before Henry Ford’s punchclock…
In the world I was born for
you don’t need a watch,
an alarm,
a daily planner
not even a self-help book…
or scholar’s study
to know
when the sun rises
when to eat
when to sleep
when to pick berries on the fence row.
You just need to know what you feel. And act accordingly.
Why in Name of Whatever’s Holy, would you design an animal any other way?
- If this excerpt grabbed you… more here: The Book: Frag by Frag.
This is Fragment 11 of my upcoming autobiography, Autistic Noir, arriving Fall 2026.
I’m building a book out loud. Frag by frag. Just like I lived it.
The Next Act
Don’t trust a corporate algorithm’s decision about whether you get to see the next excerpt or not.
Join my Substack for free… and the next fragment comes straight to your inbox. And you get a free digital download of my complete poetry chapbook.
Why I Write My Autobiography
I’m only an expert on my own life. Born 1953, diagnosed at 63. Your mileage will vary.
Individual marginalized voices speaking truth out loud? They build bridges to mainstream readers. Think Malcolm X. Think Maya Angelou. Think Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness.
This Fall, I hope to deliver that kind of impact, that power with Autistic Noir: My Autistic Life is My Art. For our neurodivergent community.
Since 2019 I’ve published a quarter of a million words. Over half the size of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Gotta be a pony somewhere in that shit.
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