Dogs and the Horizon

Love, pain, watchfulness, fear, despair, exhilaration, exhalation and wonder; these are the emotions of a parent. A single minute, no, a mere fleeting moment can run you through the whirling wheel that evokes each of these emotional states. The cascade happens regularly as you stand watching your child. You understand what he is feeling but you also understand so many things that he doesn’t yet. Still no matter how much every piece of your being wants to intercede and help make every situation work out well you have to let him live his life. A parent prays a great deal. Entreaties are made no matter whether you believe in God or nature. You pray earnestly that if your child should fall that the pain will be bearable.

Primus is my oldest son. He is a moose of a boy. His music camp is over. Both the double bass and the moose boy are squeezed into a tiny Prius for the trip home. After a week of food largely ignored because every morsel has been drenched in mayonnaise and other unappealing binding agents, the moose is ready to forage. As we peruse the menu at this drive-in, this last vestige of 1950s American car culture, he has made his choice. Now he looks out the other window away from the menu board. Suddenly smiling. Primus yells a loud greeting. He has just seen a camp cabin mate walk by our car. The shout out was absolutely nullified by the closed car window. Sitting at the drive in carefully considering this order of dogs and fries the air conditioning is on and the window is up. Hot summer this one.

Realizing how special a moment this is when he says “I have to go over to say hi to Sam”, Mom and I say in unison “Go”. With that Primus pushes the door open and strolls ‘aw shucks’ hands in pocket to where the boy in the other blue camp uniform is eating hot dogs with his family. We watch as drawing close Primus leans back against a wall and starts talking and gesturing in a warm and friendly way. The boy's posture mirrors James Dean's in Rebel Without a Cause. In 14 years of life this was a first.

Aspergers defines who my son is. Sometimes sadly it also defines how people perceive him. Aspergers makes getting to know him difficult and challenging. But it also makes him interesting, if you take the time to make real contact. Primus comes at the world in his own way and he doesn't seem to care a whit about what you think. In some ways that is a true thing and a meaningful statement, but in others it is not. Primus wants to be liked but not necessarily on the terms and in the ways social convention delineate.

In the past year Primus’ teachers have told us that he is trying to make social connections. They say he is working hard to find ways to respond to social cues. He wants to act in ways that are at least consistent with the behaviors of other kids he goes to school with. Primus clearly wants to be part of the world of people. It is by his choice that he works to be on a sport’s team. But the hidden cues in our faces confound him. The unspoken rules are unknown to him. Vocal tones don’t carry clear meaning to him. Sorting these things just doesn’t come naturally.

But I must turn back to the incident at Dog and Suds with the boys in the blue shirts. The blue shirts are part of the uniform at the Blue Lake Fine Arts camp. The folks at Blue Lake must be different. This is the third year Primus has been and each time he goes we find something new and positive that gives us optimism.

The first year we were overjoyed when the kids after the final concert were saying things like, "Primus you are coming back next year aren't you?" Nobody had ever invited him back for an event unless they were forced to, or needed to for one reason or another. The comments in that informal moment backstage were different, it was clear these boys liked him.

Year two it was the banter around the cabin as he was packing to go. Again the kids seemed to genuinely care about Primus and what was up with him and his plans for the rest of the summer. The counselors that year told us how much they had enjoyed him. They made it clear that it really wasn't an issue that he had Aspergers and that he was a good kid.

Leaving the car to go seek out someone else to talk was watershed moment. Before our wide open eyes Primus instigated an outreach to another person because he liked them and because he wanted to keep a contact with them. Wow. My wife and I stared at each other as he opened the door and walked down the sidewalk. It was a moment we had wanted for so long. Reaching a point where social reciprocity was wanted is something.

Trust me the world didn't not turn upside down but it was a start. When we got home the first thing out of his mouth to his brother Secundus was "Be quiet you." But the command was warm, not just barked out in routine fashion.

Maybe it is just the maturing process. On the way to the car after his performance he carried his own instrument. About halfway up the path to the car I offered to carry it the rest of the way and he readily agreed. But he made the effort to carry the heavy instrument at least for the first part of the way. Taking responsibility was a change.

When we talked in the car on the ride home he tried to make conversation. The answers weren't much different than they usually are. What was the funniest thing that happened? I dunno. What did you enjoy most? I dunno. Did you have fun? Yes. I assume that some of this is just pure teenager. However I know that some of it is pure Aspergers. He doesn't rank emotional experiences the way I do. It just doesn't happen like that.

Sitting at Dog and Suds I looked out at the lake. The sky was blue and the air temperature was as comfortable as it had been in weeks. A tray of death dogs and greasy burgers and onion rings had arrived. The smell of such food is wonderful. The moment was perfect. Primus was happy and connected. I could have cried. Some days are better than others. Blue skies do come. Success can be attained. I felt so good that I went home and cleaned the garage. Sweating I picked through years o f accumulated crap. The work was hard I was motivated. It had a day to remember. This was worth much more than the price of admission to music camp.

Words and Voices

My life is words. Spoken aloud and spoken not loud it seems my words carry a distance that is so very far. Language comes easy for me and my words are plentiful. Chuckling here I muse that many probably think my words are far too plentiful. Because of the ease I feel with language I may not think about what I say as much as I should. In reality more often than not I do not fully think before I speak.



When you have spoken out loud something that you are at the moment thinking and have thought on for a long time, people gain an insight into the essence of who you are. If you say the thought you have been nurturing too hastily others may not see what really is inside of you. Or maybe the problem is they see too well what is in you because the words carry out more of what we keep inside than was planned.

One would think that having let an idea gestate for a while in the back of your mind would season it. One would think that ruminating over the meaning of something you have seen or come to a conclusion about would refine the way it gets presented to your audience. It just isn't so.

We oft forget that what made us who we are did not make everyone else who they are. At best we are making guesses about the scope of common experience that we share with others. So many times we find that our guesses are just that and nothing more.

There should be no surprise in finding out that my words and your words, my world and your world are like that faux old timey picture of the two trains meeting six feet off center. Still I am surprised when my words do not convey what I mean.

At times I wish there were some common source like the tree in Avatar that we could all plug into. Sometimes I wish that the barrier that exists between myself and other people would just disappear for a moment and that I could be in their skin and they in mine with our minds sharing what we know to be true, what we have experienced and through that process reconciling and advancing on to a better form of understanding and human communion.

The hippies and hipsters of the 1960s wanted to do this with LSD. They failed. Monks have wanted to do it with celibacy and libertines have wanted to accomplish it with wanton copulation. They both failed and continue to fail. Churches want us to do this through their paths, their ways of redemption. If any of these ways was the one, including Paganism, Buddhism, Christianity, Tao ad infinitum why do we still fight religious wars, crusades and jihads?

I don't have an answer to my ultimate question, how do we move beyond the limitations of language. Living with an open heart is fine, but somehow you have to communicate what your idea of good is. Words seem to be the only choice available. I guess I will just strive for greater precision in my words.

A Sunday Should be Well Spent

Lazy Sunday brings with it a vibrant feeling of life when it comes. In a sunlit room with wood floors I make time to read Prince Valiant.

Reading the old fashioned strip is not an obligation but rather a habit. I read Prince Valiant when I was young and thought things like, “Geez this is slow and boring” and “When will this every get to some action”. Now I savor the fact that I only have to read the story once a week and I am current.

By saying I “make time to read Prince Valiant" I mean I have the opportunity, the down moment in which to waste my time in an idle pleasure. Our world we live in is too fast. We have lost any sense that we can ever rest. Culturally we went from to hand to mouth existence to a time of leisure society in less than a century. In less that three decades we are now back at fighting for our day's morsels.

Still I think we need to carve out downtime. Rest beyond sleep is important.

The pictures are from a Sunday afternoon spent wandering about a county park on Vancouver Island. I think the shot of my youngest all those many years ago is a thing of beauty.

It was different back then

I am cleaning up an old computer and this is what I found in the images. Forgive me if I posted it before. Yeah times were different back then. Looking at the typing I think it wouldn't have taken much to turn me into a Unibomber clone.

The Two Stimulants that are Always Visible

The motivation for the posting of the Joni Mitchell song, the Three Great Stimulants was a walk in the alleyway behind my office. As I was departing for a lunch one day I noticed an odd bit of urban art. The piece had clearly been arranged by someone.

My mind saw this as an installation by one or more addicts in a private urban space. I snapped a picture to memorize the effort. The coffee cups were all precisely placed at an angle save one. The empty cigarette pack also seemed to be staged with care so as to complete this work comprised of lost/discarded materials. My mind gave it a title, Stimulants in Iron before Brick.

The only things missing from this shot are intoxicants and sex. Putting a woman in a slit skirt with a mostly empty microbrew bottle in her hand might be the answer to that. It would resolve the lack of completion that I see in this work. Maybe I will try and stage that and post the image.

Anyhow once the stimulants thing got in my head I started humming the Mitchell tune.

Faces

Sometimes you see a face and just accept the emotion being conveyed as being open. Perhaps the person you gaze has caught is smiling. It may come from the twitch of a muscle near the mouth. Perhaps a bone in the cheek flexed.

A face can tell us so much. The arch of the eyebrow, the presence of “laugh” lines, these are the kind of nuances of facial features conveying who a person really is. Well it conveys this information to me and to other people of my ilk, neurotypicals. Clearly and without question my son doesn’t see these things; nor will he ever. His brain has been proven empirically per a series of MRI scans to be formed in a way that is not set up to read these cues. It is what it is.

For me reading a face isn’t about the complexion as much as it is the eyes and the mouth. Oh the complexion can tell you if the person has worked hard and thus has been weathered. Stress or the elements are a couple of causes for the aging of skin. My father’s face worked outside and worked with stressful situations. His face was as worn as an old leather jacket supple and wrinkled. His was an expressive face. The skin told you what he did. However the mischievousness or anger or confusion that is what you had to read in the eyes and the laugh lines. A complexion can also tell you if a person has sought refuge in a bottle or some other intoxicant. But skin tone can’t tell you what somebody is really all about.

For years now I have seen the above face behind the counter at the coffee shop I haunt. The image does not do her justice. It does not show the open joy she exudes in daily conversation. It does not show the love of life and the lust for knowledge she ebulliently exudes. What it does show is another human who can use her face as a canvas to tell us so much more about who and what she is.

The Three Great Stimulants

I don't know if I would call this one of Joni Mitchell's great lost songs. I like it. The sentiment seems true when I think about it. Also how many songs can you name that use the word artifice?



Here are the lyrics in case you want to peruse them.

I picked the morning paper off the floor
It was full of other people's little wars
Wouldn't they like their peace?
Don't we get bored?
And we call for the three great stimulants
Of the exhausted ones
Artifice, brutality and innocence
Artifice and innocence

No tanks have ever rumbled through these streets
And the drone of planes at night has never frightened me
I keep the hours and the company that I please
And we call for the three great stimulants
Of the exhausted ones
Artifice, brutality and innocence
Artifice and innocence

Oh and deep in the night
Our appetites find us
Release us and bind us
Deep in the night
While madmen sit up building bombs
And making laws and bars
They'd like to slam free choice behind us

I saw a little lawyer on the tube
He said, "It's so easy now, anyone can sue."
"Let me show you how your petty aggravations can profit you!"
Call for the three great stimulants
Of the exhausted ones
Artifice, brutality and innocence
Artifice and innocence

Oh and deep in the night
Appetites find us
Release us and blind us
Deep in the night
While madmen sit up building bombs
And making laws and bars
They're gonna slam free choice behind us

Last night I dreamed I saw the planet flicker
Great forests fell like buffalo
Everything got sicker
And to the bitter end
Big business bickered
And they call for the three great stimulants
Of the exhausted ones
Artifice, brutality and innocence
Artifice and innocence

Oh these times, these times
Oh these changing times
Change in the heart of all mankind
Oh these troubled times

Spinoza

Our apprehension of truth can’t be passive at all, but active, a function of the exercise of reason-the same reason that exists in all humankind. Goldstein, Rebecca. Betraying Spinoza. New York: Schocken Books, 2006, p 208

A walk at lunch on a gray day passes quickly. Time spent this way gives a moment to reflect. Walking down the streets of a small city is a different walk than the one in the mountains I described recently. On the misty evening of the earlier walk I was seeking relief. Today when I walk at lunch I am seeking a moment to think.

Primarily when I have been striding abut today I am thinking about what Baruch Spinoza endured in his search for the truth. Being driven from his community of Amsterdam Jews, that is the entirety of the world he had known until his excommunication, could not have been easy. Today nobody is expelled forever from society except for sex offenders. Now even murderers can be rehabilitated. In our 21st century world you can challenge the existence of God and humankind in most places will not kill you.

Having been ordered to sever his ties with the Jewish community, and they having been demanded by the religious authorities to cut all time with him, Spinoza had to move into a more rural area. It was a place where he was isolated from the day to day world. He was left alone with his ideas. Alone isn’t quite right he had correspondence with persons engaged in similar pursuits, but some of these were clearly designed to trap him in acknowledging one heresy or another. Some seem to have been been sent with the hope he would say something in response with which he could be prosecuted. He entered a world where all of Christendom was suspicious of anyone other than the true believes; it could not have been easy.

I liked the above quote. In some ways it is my mantra. The search for truth must always be foremost in how we carry on in our lives. To probe for truth and challenge assumptions allows us to grow. However with growth comes pain. Spinoza really was an extraordinary being.

A Tree Resolves it All

Sometimes you just need a walk. Putting your feet into motion feels good when your world is too intense and too in your face and when you just need to be anywhere but where you are.

On vacation recently I hit one of those moments. No single thing took me there; no single person brought me to that point. It was the accretion of a number of things that caked together made me want to go.

Let’s consider the situation. Sitting in a garage some 60 miles away was my car. As noble a beast as the Prius it for some reason it had started smoking on the long decline into Cherokee. Social dynamics on the child front were bad. The kids had been at each other in the back of my sister in law’s van for the better part of the day. We had been visiting historic sites and the Gameboys were mandated to be off. Lacking distraction teen fuses were short. Me I was just sweaty and tired.

Arriving back at the condo, I couldn’t find any reading material that would work to divert my mind. The TV did not work well and I really didn’t want to play cards. Lacking any other options I decided to take a walk. On the way out of the condo I noted our camera was sitting on the table. Grabbing it I headed out.

Despite the humidity the walk was exactly what I needed. As I headed down the hill I noticed a cloud rolling over the next hill/mountain. Stopping about halfway down a pretty steep incline I noticed how majestic the mist coming down over the green lush trees was. Looking up I spotted a single tree standing erect and very strong against the fading light. There was no hidden in the tree it was just beautiful to me. I took a couple shots of that pine and my mind cleared.

A walk on a country road took me out to a solitary tree. A solitary tree took me to a space beyond all the hubbub of the day. It grounded me and I was okay. Go take a walk.