Weekend Geekdom

Monday, February 25, 2013

Time seems to have gotten away from me again. I apologize. The pieces of my world are moving about with great rapidity. Primus will graduate soon. Secundus is immersed in vocal music, at school, at the community school and this summer at music camp. Primus is doing better with social aspects of his life but there is still so much room for improvement.
The weekend brought Primus a hockey victory and a league championship. It also brought a top ½ finish in a wide field of robotic geeks. A freaking renaissance man, eh? Secundus immersed himself in the Blue Man Group and then regaled with euphemisms for the male genitals. I kind of liked the one that was “the happy walrus without the tusks”. Apparently it was part of the BMG’s act. When I write next I may have some more concrete things to say.

Across the Border

Friday, February 15, 2013

The other day I was at what remains of our local book store. It used to be one of those places that were packed with densely arranged shelves of hardbacks. On one side it had ten rows of CDs crammed against the back wall. Now there are there rows of CDs, there are a larger number of shelves of lavender hand soaps and the like and the area between the shelves of books is much, much broader. A full quarter of the store is devoted to used book and CD sales. Amazon has changed our world and disturbed a place I loved. More than a library, friendlier than a bar, this place was where I went to let the tangles of my mind unravel. It is clear it won’t be around much longer.



As I was in the store I found an old CD by Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. Hey with those voices how could I go wrong so I picked it up. $5.00 for two of the greatest female voices I know really seemed quite fair.



Upon listening to the disc I realized I did not get burned but it wasn’t a true treasure either. There are several songs that are merely meh. But a couple of them really work to create a visual and mental space. The version they do of Bruce Springsteen’s Borderline is very, very nice. The first part of the song goes like this:



Tonight my bag is packed

Tomorrow I'll walk these tracks

That will lead me across the border

Tomorrow my love and I

Will sleep 'neath auburn skies

Somewhere across the border



We'll leave behind my dear

The pain and sadness we found here

And we'll drink from the Brazos muddy waters

Where the sky grows gray and wide

We'll meet on the other side

There across the border



For me you'll build a house

High up on a grassy hill

Somewhere across the border

Where pain and memory

Pain and memory have been stilled

There across the border



This song has often left me disquieted. As I hear it I often think of my failures and missteps in life. My approach now is to accept these disappointments and blunders and to try to learn from them. It doesn’t mean the pain isn’t real or that it will every go away. The line in this song about crossing a “border” and beginning again is beautiful but it is a fairytale. The song’s author knows it but the singer whose voice the author has penned does not.



I have struggled with how to end this piece but I keep coming back to acceptance. What is what is and we must be open to it all. Here is a quote that I think wraps what I was trying to say up in a nutshell.



“The practice of lovingkindness is, at a certain level, the fruition of all we work toward in our meditation. It relies on our ability to open continuously to the truth of our actual experience, not cutting off the painful parts, and not trying to pretend things are other than they are. Just as spiritual growth grinds to a halt when we indulge our tendency to grasp and cling, the virtue of lovingkindness can’t thrive in an environment that is bound to desire or to getting our expectations met.”



- Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein

The idle mind

I don’t buy into the idle mind is the devil’s workshop line of thought. An idle mind is life’s moment of recharging. You just have to find a space to get idle.

In our world today we are too busy, too squeezed and too scheduled. A few years back I attended a workshop run by the church I attend called “Margins”. There were a series of short films and a book about how our lives have had so much meaningful time stripped away from us in the past four decades.

The argument went something like this. We have lost that mandatory day off as we moved toward a truly secular society. (Don’t get me wrong the secular thing doesn’t bother me, the lack of day where we were forced to do nothing meaningful does. Back when I was young there were blue laws that closed everything on Sunday. In addition social pressure virtually required we do nothing.

Where I grew up only drugstores were allowed to be open upon Sundays. Nobody scheduled functions on Sundays, not soccer games, not hockey games, not committee meetings for social and civic groups. So that day of downtime, that day of maybe feasting at a relative’s house let our minds decompress. That one day of nothing is gone and instead it is packed with kids’ sporting events and other activities like the shopping you don’t have time to get done during the week.

Also convenience devices like smart phones demand far more time that you actually realize. The boundaries between work and life outside of work have also blurred. (A show of hands, how many out there finish up those reports on your home computer at 11:30 at night?) There are inherent pressures to put in 50+ hours weeks and get paid for forty. The author asked how many people work during almost the entirety of the lunch hour without leaving there desk except to retrieve the sandwich or Lean Cuisine from the break room. I know I do.

As it stands now at home we have less time to do anything and we are exhausted. But with computers and with TVs that cover an entire wall we have so much more of our time pulled away.

In days of yore life followed a natural cycle and a social cycle that gave rest. In addition to the mandatory Sunday off the seasons dictated when we rested. When it was dark business drew to a close, almost all business. You worked longer in summer and a whole bunch less in winter.

I try to reclaim some of the margin by mediation. Sometimes I try to do it in other ways.

In spaces where I am not meditating I just have to let my mind go and throw off this yoke of overscheduled meaningless bullshit. The picture above is representative of what I am talking about.

Sometimes I just have to stare at a series of cracks in a black top parking lot and let my mind be lost in their incidental and accidental design and patterning. Sometimes I stare for minutes just tracing the lines. My focus might be on the poorly painting handrails on the loading dock out behind my office. I can get lost on where their shadows fall and while mentally astray not think about a damn thing.

It is kind of Zen isn’t it? No grocery lists, no to dos list, just an idle mind in neutral. And you know what, I usually feel better after I get lost for a time.

I Love Secundus Too

At 15 years this is pretty amazing.

By Secundus


Born far too early, yet almost too late
My life the very deference of death,
Of my mother, struggling to abate
Pain, and urge me on to my first sweet breath.

Throughout my life I have advanced with speed,
A race against a group of older peers,
A struggle to slow thought, focus and heed,
The words of others flying through my ears.

My mind is never truly in my hands,
An instrument musicians cannot play,
So difficult to bend to my commands,
Too dangerous to be allowed to stray.


A child of mischief I have always been,
Bowing words to suit an impish refrain,
My wit and charm have often kept me free,
Glib spirit both my greatest gift and pain.

And so it is my words are not my own,
But from a spinning mind, such notes are sprung.
A seed from my subconsciousness is sown,
A song from my own heart which must be sung.

Senior Night #1

I don’t choke up emotionally very often. Mostly it is because of the human car wrecks I see wandering before me in hearing after hearing. I hear so many bullshit stories of redemptionthat it has burned me out on acceptance of the better nature of human kind.

On Saturday night I came pretty damn close to crying. It was senior night for my son Primus’s hockey team. He is not a major contributor on the ice this year because on a high school varsity team it is about winning not letting everyone get their fair share of ice time. That is how it works in the real world. I truly get that. However I have been told repeatedly he works hard and he never complains.


The ritual of senior night is that the child provides a biography to the manager. On the night of the honors the manager calls out the player’s name and then the skater comes out to center ice. After the biography is read the player skates over to the carpet where Mom and Dad are standing, gives a hug, a handshake and hands a flower (a yellow rose) to Mom.


On this night Primus seemed to want to do these things. He wanted to shake hands. He wanted to hug. Ah how the years have moderated some of the more notable ASD traits when social norms dictate it. He made my proud that he was playing by the neurotypical rules that night.


In order to make sure Primus had created a biography I found time to pull the manager aside. I asked her did he actually give you anything on this? She said “Oh yes, he gave me words and I turned them into sentences.” Is there an ASD parent out there who doesn’t get this? I just started laughing.


When Primus skated onto the ice he got applause, a good deal of applause. It wasn’t the loudest but it was definitely not the lightest either. It was a solid round and it was wonderful. Apparently he is liked by his team mates. One parent told me that he really was somebody that was considered quite highly by his fellows on the squad.


There was a sign at the end of the rink that had been made for him by some of the girls who follow the team. It said, “We “heart” you Primus, #4.” I don’t know who organized the signs but whoever did the fact that there was one for every senior player including Primus was just wonderful.


It was the applause though that I keep coming back to. The applause and one parent’s between periods comment. That parent stopped us to say he thought sport taught kids something important and that Primus was a prime example. We all agree that Primus is not going to be playing college hockey. At best Primus is maybe going to be playing in the beer leagues, maybe. But what the parent said was this, “Primus wanted to be on the high school team and he preserved. Year after year he never gave up. Perseverance is something that sports is good at teaching”.


Yup I welled up a couple of times that night.



A Bigger Container

A Bigger Container

"We can talk about "oneness" until the cows come home. But how do we actually separate ourselves from others? How? The pride out of which anger is born is what separates us. And the solution is a practice in which we experience this separating emotion as a definite bodily state. When we do, A Bigger Container is created.

What is created, what grows, is the amount of life I can hold without it upsetting me, dominating me. At first this space is quite restricted, then it's a bit bigger, and then it's bigger still. It need never cease to grow. And the enlightened state is that enormous and compassionate space. But as long as we live we find there is a limit to our container's size and it is at that point that we must practice. And how do we know where this cut-off point is? We are at that point when we feel any degree of upset, of anger. It's no mystery at all. And the strength of our practice is how big that container gets. . . . This practice of making A Bigger Container is essentially spiritual because it is essentially nothing at all. A Bigger Container isn't a thing; awareness is not a thing. . . ."

~ Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen

So much of what I do is motivated by agitation and anger. Did Primus turn in his work? Will his grades this last semester rise or is he going to drop back into old habits? Has Secundus taken the rolling green trash container to the curb? It is Wednesday morning and it must be done, you know. Will my fellow employee adopt a bad attitude about having work given to him because someone has gone home sick? I get angry just anticipating his anger because, though the act will not be of my choice, I will bear the brunt of his resentment.

If I get what Joko Beck is saying here I must find a meditative space in my mind and step back. Once I have placed that distance between the anger and the negativity I must label all of the nuances of these agitations and visceral responses and come to know them. I need to make my awareness larger than my petty concerns. I must become more that a series of strung together visceral responses to the world that I am in. Ultimately I must become one, aware and larger than the angers, the jealousies and the frustration that await me each minute of each day.


More time on the mat is called for, I guess.

Old Thoughts Revisited

From my bus journal of 07-11-07. (I call it my bus journal because back then I spent about 40 minutes a day on public transit. During that time I would read longer works and make notes. I have about seven journals filled covered to cover with my musings from those bus rides.)


Humankind is free only to the extent that it is not determined by anything external. But since this is in no way true in any of our acts we are not free at all. L & S p. 171.


The above came from a book I read regarding a single meeting between Leibnitz and Spinoza. Fascinating ready really if you are trying to get a handle on either existence or life in Amsterdam for an immigrant Jewish family in the 1600s. According to this interpretation of Spinoza there is no freedom, not really. The whole of existence in this view is ordained from the moment one atom struck another. Time too is an illusion (and that idea is not out of line with some current cosmological thinkers). We are what we are and there is no free will.


Spinoza is a challenge no matter which route you take to approach his writings. John Lennon in what is his probably his most iconic lyric asked us to, Imagine there's no heaven; it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky.” Spinoza was right there with Lennon. There is no judgment; there merely is existence, but a preordained existence. We are assigned our roles and our acts by preordination; we are fixed in all time. Freedom is an illusion.


For me I don’t like the concept that we don’t have will, that we don’t have impact on our lives or the lives of others. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it isn’t so. I am still pondering this.

Writing is a joy well sometimes

Tuesday, February 05, 2013


January was a very productive month in posting on the blog. My creative juices were flowing. The joy of sitting at the keyboard was something that I have not sensed in a long time.


The reality is that I don’t know what it takes to get me on a roll anymore. Nor can I figure out when I am going to drop into a sloth like state. My guess is that it is always a battle to write. Perhaps I should say it is always a battle to write anything good at least.


To buttress my above feeling I went looking for quotes. I found one that touches on what I mean but it approaches the issues sideways. “Any man who keeps working [at writing] is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer,”- Ray Bradbury. Yeah, like I said this quote seems to imply that writing is work, it is a task or a craft but not a whim.



Thinking on it I am of the mind that to write requires that you constantly be absorbing knowledge. You can’t just start out as a tabla rasa and expect to produce a note that is of value. In my case that requires reading a book or a scholarly journal or at least a detailed magazine with articles that are not USA Todayified. You know what I mean. They can’t end in three paragraphs and have no word longer than three syllables. Harpers or Mother Jones or the Economist or the New Yorker, these are magazines that present well written mind filling information. A writing mind needs to be challenged and then the mind needs to work out the challenge on paper.


There are only two exceptions to maxim from my perspective. These are the Daily Dharma quotes I get from Tricycle magazine and the web sites stumbling takes me to based on my profile. The Daily Dharma quotes are from longer articles dealing with issues in Buddhism. Normally in reading one of these quotes my mind can wander far afield into the area of ethics, morality and spiritual focus. The Stumbleupon links can take my mind anywhere. It stimulates my thought. It presents me with what if scenarios.


My hope is to stay alive and keep writing. My father once told me that he read every night before bed. He stated that if you quit learning you might as well just give up. I think he was right.


http://www.stumbleupon.com/

http://www.tricycle.com/

Why Worry II

Friday, February 01, 2013

Welcome to February


“Finally we realize there is no path, no way, no solution, because from the beginning our nature is the path right here and right now.” Joko Beck, Everyday Zen, p. 45.

Let me say this plainly we need no reward. Living on this life’s path with acceptance is complete fulfillment.
Each day I struggle with the concept of life’s reward. My thrashing about with this notion has its origins my childhood where the paradigm was to teach the young that if you work hard, if you keep your nose clean and if you give your best there will be a reward. Ain’t so.

As a result as I grow older I find it harder to say those things with the kind of sincerity to give them credence and believability to my children. I have watched too many people of dubious nature get rewarded for questionable if not criminal behavior. I have watched good people spit upon despite very high morals and very good work.

Were I to hold anger or resentment about what seem to be injustices in, the dark nature of those feelings would kill me. Some days I suspect my irritations at others and at myself have already planted the seeds to my doom and that the harvest will come due soon. Maybe that sense or belief that internalizing hurt and rage is unhealthy is why in my later years I am drawn to Buddhist meditation. I find comfort there although in reality I have not shed my Judeo-Christian upbringing. Acceptance and faith while living in the situations that are real right now and right here makes eminently more sense that praying for or counting on some grand cosmic justice to prevail.

To tie some recent themes together, I offer this paragraph. Iris Dement in her song My Life talks about making things better for awhile. She isn’t talking grand schemes, long term visions; she talks about bringing joy to her mother and her lover now when they need it. The writer in Matthew from yesterday’s post says don’t worry about tomorrow because you can’t add anything to your life by taking an agonizing long view. Cardiologists I think would say worry in actuality will take time away from you. Joko Beck says there is no path to follow that is better. There is no solution to life and life’s challenges and mysteries. There is no right way of living or being. Be here, be now and be aware.

Live in a way that matters in the here and now to those whom you can bring comfort to and don’t worry about what comes next.