Spoken language is a blue sea. Everyone else is swimming, diving and
frolicking freely, while I'm alone, stuck in a tiny boat, swayed from
side to side. Rushing towards and around me are waves of sound.
Sometimes the swaying is gentle. Sometimes I'm thrown about and I have
to grip the boat with all my strength. If I'm thrown over board I'll
drown - a prospect so disturbing, so laden with despair, it can devour
me. At other times, however, even if I can't swim in the water, I gaze
at the play of light on the surface, delight at being afloat on it,
trail my hands and feet in the sea, and dream of jumping in with
everyone else. When I'm working on my alphabet grid or my computer, I
feel as if someone's cast a magic spell and turned me into a dolphin. I
dive down deep - then shoot back up, break the surface and surprise all
the swimmers. The process can feel so free, so effortless, that I almost
forget I was ever stuck in that boat.
Naoki Higashida, Fall down 7 times get up 8, a young man's voice from the silence of autism, p 97-98 (Sceptre 2017), translated by David Mitchell & Keiko Yoshida
