I went to New Iberia today.
I got down below 182 pounds yesterday. My weight-loss efforts have stalled in the mid 180-lb range.
Yesterday, I took my first afternoon walk in a long time. Part of my problem is that, even though I have been really busy in the mornings, I have been quite sedentary in afternoons lately, because I am trying to take just one shower per day and taking it at midday.
I brought the disk with pictures to Peartree’s house. There was a third automobile at his house, and I realized that there’s an LSU football game happening, which I remembered only then, and that Peartree likes that stuff.
I saw locomotive UP 1426 at New Iberia; apparently, it is the power for this weekend’s Union Pacific Railroad New Iberia Turn.
So, I went to the PX event.
The event was great.
Well, there were two problems with and at the event: my encounter with Bruce, and the loudness of the music after the speeches, which caused me to have to leave.
Seeing Bruce was very frustrating, and it was frustrating for the reasons of about the only words that he said to me: “your Momma and your Daddy”, “your Momma and your Daddy”.
I am scared that he is going to tell certain people that I was at this event.
It was a frustrating experience, because he said almost nothing to me other than that, and I didn’t want to say anything to him, because that would alert him about why I was there and possibly blow my cover.
It helped me realize that one of the reasons that I fetishize the part of my life from mid 2005 to mid 2010, when my greatest professional success was and my greatest sense of accomplishments was, was also, for the very same reason, the period in my life in which I was, as much as one could possibly be, my own man. The people who regarded me highly then didn’t know anyone in my family. I was judged solely off of my own performance, and that was it.
Just seeing Bruce at all, even before he saw me, upset me. Up until he showed up, I felt like I was there being seen as my own man. Here I am 75-100 miles from home against my will, and I am still not seen as my own. It would be different if I had voluntarily moved out here. This is why I was so into UBI.
It’s a hallmark of autism that the need to earn a living, the need to jump through hoops for other people, makes life way worse for us than it does for non-autistic people. Even a neurotypical very-poorly-paid migrant laborer who harvests vegetables and fruits for our consumption has an advantage that I don’t have, and that is the ability to thrive within a community.
As an autistic person in a society hostile to autistic people, I need class privileges in order to survive. I would never make it as a poor autistic person, with noise and smells. I may have died already, either by my own hands or by the hands of someone else with whom I get in an argument. I just saw an article about a guy who got shot and killed for complaining to someone about noise. That’s why I have such ill feelings toward the Townleys. I am not talking about kids playing and kids screaming. I am talking about stuff like the loud bass.
In pretty much every apartment where I have lived, I have had that problem. I remember that jerk in Harvey. I hate the neurotypical people who don’t complain, because they put people like me in danger.
It’s the same dynamic with immunocompromised people who feel abandoned by society, how these people are not intrinsically oppositional. What society has done to them has made them oppositional. It’s a pathology of society, not the pathology of the oppositional person.
It’s why I want to connect with students from that time, because they saw a side of me that nobody has ever seen, that I wish that other people could see. It’s that analogy of David Lee Roth turning 30 years of age. I had a teaching style that was very much “energetic twenty-something guy”. There was more weight in the chest and shoulders than there was in the belly, and it was of different forms.
So, after the speeches at the event were concluded, painfully loud music started to play, and I had no choice but to leave. The event was not accessible.
I got out of the event and went by the track and saw this BNSF Railway locomotive parked next to the Louisiana & Delta Railroad by the depot.
I guess that it was there due to the derailment west of town a few weeks ago? I guess that this locomotive was involved in the derailment.
I know how I felt driving around in Georgia some years ago, on the one hand, enjoying the trip, and, on the other hand, feeling quite empty and lonely. I know how I felt the next school year started. I was doing well at school, but I was coasting.
Oh, well.
Jim
