Charles has taken to coloring much more than he used to. The last couple of days he’s been much more aggressive about getting out markers and then demanding paper. He opens up the drawer that we keep the Magic Color Change Markers and gets out the markers. Then he locates Dad and drags him over to the cabinet where the paper is. Mostly he draws by himself but sometimes he makes Dad contribute something to to the drawing. Charles tends towards either monochromatic works or highly variegated ones. His color mixing doesn’t follow any particular pattern. Sometimes the separation of colors is clear, as Charles tries to express the disconnectedness of being a non-verbal person in a world of talkers. Other times Charles seems to be reaching out to attempt to unite with The Other by blending the colors in a tight multi-layered conglomeration. This shows through as well when The Other (as represented by Dad) is asked to directly participate. I just hope that as Charles grows into his art that I will be able to keep up with his technique. Even now I struggle to understand why the sun that I drew with the tree and stream for him was so wrong that he had to immediately scribble it out. Did my use of standard symbolism subvert the emerging transgressive gestalt of the piece? I tried to ask but Charles responded only with “Bah bah bah bah dootz!”