Page Five
Sat 27 June 2009 Greenfield
Nobody Nowhere is the title of a book by Donna Williams, a book about autism. Someone recommended it to me this morning, and I’ve asked the library to get it for me. (here to my Asperger’s blog)
And nobody is who I feel like without my animals; a bigger nobody than I’ve ever been before. On my blogspot blog, I used the name “nemo,’” which means no one in latin. After fifty-five years of having and taking care of animals, having it all torn away left me, in my own heart and mind, as nobody. And I’m going nowhere, because there’s nowhere I want to go without them. 
Martin Heidegger talks about being toward death, and it’s something I’ve been doing for years, without ever knowing about Heidegger. We are all going to die, and so we are all living in the shadow of death. What the existentialists say (esp. Heidegger), is that we must choose what has meaning for us and live meaningfully in this shadow of death. That’s what I was doing all my life with animals. That’s where I found my greatest sense of meaning and purpose. And neurotypical people took it all away. They did so because they couldn’t find any way to let me just be the odd creature that I am with Aspergers and depression and anxiety and PTSD. They couldn’t just leave me alone and let me be odd. They had to attack. They had to destroy the oddball world of my own that kept me going.
~~~~~ website ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
part of the book Being Toward Death
