Let Moss Grow Over Your Mouth

when to speak and when to stay silent

I’m trying to write a book. I keep thinking: what if there’s no story here? Because there isn’t, really, except one I make up.

Even looking round on Substack I’m exhausted: all these fingers pointing to the moon.

The book is supposed to be about claiming an autistic identity in midlife. And it’s supposed to be about living free of any fixed identity—learning how to do that. I’m so sick of making up stories. I’m sick of making up a self. But if I stop, how will I make sense?

I once heard a monk give a formal talk. He gave it in the monastery dining room. The folding tables had been folded and moved back, the chairs arranged in semicircles. Monks and laypeople sat in a radiating pattern, as if we were vibrations created by his voice. I don’t remember anything he said. Afterwards another monk, a woman, asked: ‘what about letting moss grow over your mouth?’

I never forgot that. At the time I thought she was irritated. I thought she meant: stop being so pleased with the sound of your own voice, stop explaining. Now I think, perhaps they were friends. Perhaps she loved him like a brother. Perhaps she was trying to help him.

I sit in the cool forest so long moss grows up my legs and torso. It creeps over my shoulders and my neck. I’m made of stone. I couldn’t move now, even if I wanted.

Did you know that, when the Buddha was getting enlightened, the snails crawled up onto his bald head to protect him from the sun? That the whole universe conspired to help him? That’s what those knotty looking things are on the heads of Buddha statues. Neat rows of snails.

The trouble is, I have a distracted, neurodivergent brain. The trouble is, I have an interest-based nervous system. It’s no wonder writing feels like a slog, now the dopamine hit of getting started has worn off. No wonder I’m wriggling on this hook.

And then there’s the demand avoidance, also common in autistic people. I see it in my son. Anything he thinks he’s meant to do, he doesn’t want to do. I’m careful how I phrase things now.

‘Do you fancy having a look at that new book? We don’t have to.’

‘Will we go to the play park this afternoon, or will we not? I don’t mind either way.’

I’m the same. The moment I have time to write, I have a sudden, pressing need to make a batch of flapjacks.

‘That’s your demand avoidance,’ Nick says.  

And it is.

Probably if I had time to sit still in a forest long enough for moss to grow, I wouldn’t want to do that either.

When I was a young woman wanting to be ‘a writer’ there was a thing people (and when I say people, I mean older men) used to ask. ‘But do you have something to say?’ they would say. I haven’t heard this lately. Maybe nobody says it any more. Maybe they don’t say it to me. Because I’m older. Because I don’t take as much shit as I used to.

It reminds me of one of my favourite essay titles of all time: Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Men Explain Things To Me’. I did once read the essay, and the book it came from, but only the title comes back to me now. (Is this how memory is going to work from now on, just these dribs and drabs, these isolated images and phrases? Still, even the title is a comfort.)

Do I have anything to say? I still don’t know. If I wait until I know for sure, I might never speak again. I might never write another word. I have to say, right now I like the sound of that.

Another day. Another monastic talk. This tale is an echo of the first. It’s a man speaking. Afterwards, a woman asks a question. (Do I keep making up the same story, over and over, so I can keep railing against it?) There are two new lion statues in the grounds of the monastery, no moss on them yet. The female lion has a paw on a ball meant to represent the world. The male lion is roaring. That’s what the talk is about, as I remember: the roaring.

She asks: ‘why isn’t the female lion roaring?’

‘She isn’t roaring,’ he says. ‘But she has the whole world under her paw.’

I hear there’s no separation between the world ‘out there’ and the way it lands ‘in here.’ When I am fearful, the world scares me. When I’m angry I look for something, or someone, to blame. We have it the wrong way round. We make up our lives and call it reality.

Stone lions roar. Moss grows over my mouth.

I’m writing these words but I’m not sure I believe them.

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