Pathologically Genuine: Reflection on a Poem, Turtles, Evolution, Teaching, and Autism

soaring in a small dome of safe, starless heaven

If you read my short post https://jcoleman1960.substack.com/p/braiding-sweetgrass-inner-peace-terrapin about Braiding Sweetgrass, Terrapin Station, turtles and inner peace, you would most likely assume that I feel a connection with turtles.

My guess is, albeit I don’t know the research other than a one point anecdote (me) that a relatively high percentage of autistic people identify with turtles. I mean I think because of my autism there are so many times I wish I could pull my head inside my chest into a quiet, protected, and comfortably dark place where I didn’t have to interact and be confused by people.

On another but related note, if you read other information about me, you might correctly assume that I am a biologist impassioned by orgranisms and their evolution. I love to teach evolution and transmit my passion for organismal biology to any student who will listen, even pre-med students.

And, on another note, I was lucky when I was Dean of College of Humanities and Sciences at VCU to recruit the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Claudia Emerson, into an amazing creative writing program.

Claudia wrote several poems that truly resonated with me.

One of these poems is Biology Lesson. It connects things that are important in my life: turtles, evolution, teaching, and being autistic.

Biology Lesson

(Emerson, Claudia. 2005. Late Wife: Poems (Southern Messenger Poets), Louisiana State University Press.)

It seems impossible that there could be
any anscestral link between the turtle—

plodding, benevolent creature they keep
in a glass terrairium—and any bird,

but once the teacher suggests it, they begin to see—
in the blunt beak stained with mulberry juice,

the low brow, the scales on its legs—certain,
if, at first, strained resemblance. Then, even

in its poor posture, they are convinced of another
sky into which it withdraws, not to become

invisible, but to soar, fearless, inside
itself—small dome of safe, starless heaven.

Unless you are very literal, you can probably get why this poem resonates so much for me. It might not resonate with you, but if you don’t find the evolution of reptiles and birds from dinosaurs to be utterly awesome, then you might want to wake the f*ck up!

As an autistic person, I resonate with the idea of withdrawing not to be invisible (I generally felt invisible for most of my teenage years without needing to withdraw). Yet the idea of finding a place where I could soar fearlessly inside myself in a small dome of safe, starless heaven would have seemed ethereal.

Like a turtle, I need to withdraw inside myself quite often to be safe from the bright, loud, and confusing neurotypical world. Perhaps this is the inner peace hinted at in the Grateful Dead’s song Terrapin Station.

Long live turtles, particularly the one named in my honor, “Colemanite” whose story is told in the Braiding Sweetgrass post