What can NTs know about autistic experience? / Following Singularity's interests

I know that many people with autism really love water. Looking at water. Touching water. Playing with water. Being in water. 

But why? Is it the way waves form in it? The way light is refracted? The way things sound underwater? The pressure of water on the skin? The feeling of floating? 

I can't really know, and anyway the answer is probably different for each person. But this week I had an experience of seeing the world a different way that might shed light, in a small way, on some of these questions.

As I was pouring tea from the pot into my favorite Joan Miro mug, I noticed that air bubbles formed on the surface. They completely covered the the surface, with the smallest bubbles in the middle and the largest on the edges. Then the center bubble popped, and the bubbles receded from the center out to the edges. 

It was beautiful.

There was also an audible aspect to the experience. When I was pouring the tea, of course there was the sound of the stream hitting the surface, like a waterfall. But there was also the sound of the bursting bubbles. It was very faint at first, crescendoing as the bursting bubbles became larger and more numerous. 

The experience was transcendent, going beyond the mundane experience of pouring a cup of tea. 

Is this the kind of paying attention that is more accessible to people with autism than it is to us neurotypicals?

The pattern of the bubbles didn't turn out very well in this picture. It might be because the tea in my original "'vision" was at room temperature, and the tea in the re-enactment was hot. Or maybe I just poured it off-center to the mug. Now I'm going to have to experiment -- cursed analytical mind!

This experience also got my visual memory going. It reminded me of some kind of fractal pattern, such as occurs in Romanesco broccoli:

We are still very interested in geometry at our house, so it also reminds me of this: 

This is called the Apollonian Net. I found a really interesting blog post on it at ErkDemon (Erik Baird) - The Other Side of Science. 

Singularity has a deep understanding of solid geometry, which I think was bolstered by playing working with Buckyballs. Two years ago, my mother gave Klailklop a set, which Klailklop enjoyed. And then Singularity saw them. He loved them so much that we had to get a second set, so that the two of them could play work with them together. 

I should hasten to mention that we are well aware that these strong rare-earth magnets can be hazardous. If more than one is swallowed, they can cause ruptures in internal organs. The Consumer Product Safety Commission was able to get the company to stop manufacturing them. They were never recommended for use by children, but we do let Singularity use them, because he uses them in an adult way. 

He had already learned about cubes and tetrahedra at school, but he quickly learned how to build docecahedra and icosahedra out of the Buckyballs. And then he discovered that Wikipedia is an amazing resource for learning about solid geometry. Fast forward, and now he is enjoying learning about things like the small snub icosicosidodecahedron (just the name of this polyhedron has become an inside joke between Singularity and Klailklop), geometric duals, etc. 

I do apologize for once again trying the patience of the non-mathematically inclined reader. But this is Singularity's passion. As an autism mom, I so want to connect with Singularity and understand what he is going on about that I do my best to follow along. Fortunately, I have been able to so far. I am sure that he is going to surpass my ability soon. 

I will leave you with an image of a cheat sheet I had to create for my own understanding. Singularity just knows all of these things and explained it to me verbally as I was writing. I should note that he corrected my spelling in approximately 5 places. His is a beautiful mind.