Discernment, truth, relinquishment, and calm.

As I sit and listen to Stile Antico singing ancient church music I am mentally taken to a place that is akin to meditation. It calms me. Mentally it moves me into a cool stone edifice filled with light from stained glass windows. If you are standing in the beams of the royal hues of red and purple the sun warms you.

In my mental calm surrounded by an ancient hymn I let go of the world and its problems, just for now. My breathing slows and I feel real rest coming to my bones and sinews. With my thoughts clearing I can see, I can discern something that lies partially within me and partially beyond me. It is a real truth that stretches out forever and compresses into the smallest space of a heart. I cannot put this truth into words. I cannot assign it a name. It isn’t a philosophy, a theology, an ism or any method or path. It just is. Discernment, truth, relinquishment and calm these are the things needed to touch what I perceive in this sacred space and these are what this larger force offers. It is a conundrum isn’t it.

TV Top Five-Aspergers Edition

I am not running apps on Facebook anymore. By making the choice to get low and into the background of America’s favorite anti-social addiction means that I can’t use that Social Living program anymore. You know the one I am talking about; it lets people list their five favorite foreign films or five favorite books by Latin American authors, etc. But I miss that one application. Telling people about entertainment you like is fun. The mental selection process takes you invariably to the good that you remember about the contenders in whatever category you are picking the top five in. So I decided I would jot down a list of my five favorite TV programs right now and do it as a note. The result was surprising to me.

My current favorite choices were in no particular order Bones, Parenthood, Big Bang Theory, Justified and Fringe. After I had jotted the list down I had to go over it a second time and think about what qualities these shows had that drew me to watch them. Reviewing those titles what struck me was that there were two unifying thread among the batch. The first thread and this covers all of them is that they are fluff. My time is not spent watching news wonks or shows on how to build stuff on the cheap. These are stories, mostly episodic and mostly light as air. Television for me is escape and I make no apologies for using it that way.

The second thread only covers three of the five series. The first three programs listed are shows that have prominent characters with ASD/Aspergers. My life is not defined by ASD/Aspergers but it is impacted by it. For three shows on three different networks to have an ASD character is pretty amazing. I should say to have three shows with positive (mostly) ASD characters is amazing. Shows like CSI, Criminal Minds and other police procedurals often trot out an ASD character as a soulless, conscience lacking villain. Really is that how we have to define people who are different than ourselves?

In Bones the Temperance Brennan has made optimal use of the clinical precision of her exacting mind and limited (by neurotypical standards) emotional attachments to others to prevail in her field. It is a popular myth that because a number of persons Aspergers have an inordinate (by neurotypical standards) focus on specialized areas that savant like behavior is rampant in their population. The writers of the show have imbued the Brennan character with a focused genius status. The writers take care to make the degrees she hangs off plumb from the norm seem quaint. They resolve stories without real estrangement from those around her due to her ASD. This is accomplished by surrounding her with highly educated understanding people. Real life isn’t necessary like that. Still for the odd person out dramedy the show is fun.

On the other hand Big Bang is a typical Chuck Lorre production with oversexed people mouthing double entendres left and right. Sheldon like Temperance Brennan has climbed well into the firmament of the scientific community based on the edge ASD has given him in the intellectual arena. He is however a total social buffoon. This gives Lorre’s writers the chance to play the awkwardness of ASD for all that it is worth. The lack of Sheldon’s due interpretation of social cues coupled with his obsessive tics and irrationally patterned behaviors are worth a belly laugh from time to time. Sheldon may be ASD but he is way not real. (I do have to say that the episode when Sheldon ordered Penny off of his spot on the couch is a guilty pleasure of a memory for me. While watching this episode Primus was in my home almost simultaneously ordering Secundus off his spot on our couch so he could sit down to watch Big Bang. All the while he was laughing a Sheldon’s buffoonery. It was meta-hilarious beyond words for me.)

Parenthood is just about people, pretty people (this is television), highly sexed people (this is television) of whom three or four have to deal with the realities of a clearly identified Aspergers child. God sometimes it feels like the writers have hidden camera in my home. I hadn’t checked in with the show for a couple of episodes because the plot line of having one brother sleep with the hired specially trained aid for the ASD child thus compromising her continued employment just seemed a little too icky for me. I sped the DVR through that and the subsequent episode stopping only when it was clear a major expository moment was happening.

On this week’s episode Adam the father of Max the kid with Aspergers gets into a fight at a grocery store. The start of the fight was Max reacting poorly to the person ahead of them in the quick check out lanes being 7 items over limit the 10 item limit. Eventually Max is sent on an errand elsewhere in the store to defuse the situation. Know that strategy well. The aggrieved cheater mutters about Max being a retard and Max’s father belts him. (I did hold back from cheering out loud others in the house were asleep). When Adam finally discloses to his wife what has happened he is ashamed and he admits he is angry. His anger is about not being able to do more for his son. For being stressed at work. For being lost in life.

Watching the episode was cathartic for me. I get it 100%. I will never punch anyone but I can get my hackles up verbally and have in meetings with teachers and others who don’t want to factor in the Aspergers when dealing with my son. I know I can’t be sure that I will protect my child from the fate of Sheldon and I know Temperance Brennan is a fantasy. She really seems to turn her ASD on and off or dial it down or up in different episodes and it just isn’t that way for Primus. All I can do is work with my son to try and teach him ways to meet the neurotypical world in a manner that he won’t threaten its peoples and in a way they won’t take advantage of him.

Yeah that is why I watch Parenthood. It is a good story for me and for my family. It is well written and it gets how the issues of Aspergers impact on a family. Bones I watch because I am drawn to seeing how many gross ways the special effects guy can make a corpse fall apart. Big Bang I watch because everyone including me likes to watch geeks screw up. And as to Fringe I watch it because I like good science fiction with characters that are not just two dimensional. Did you know that the guy who came up with the theory of an infinite series of universes arising from every decision point we act on was the father of the lead singer of the Eels? True fact.

I guess I watch Justified because it is an emotional release. I like seeing angry rednecks from Kentucky talk in rapid word play crafted in the style of Elmore Leonard. When they shoot people and brawl my angst and anger dissipates. Plus I wish I had Timothy Oliphant’s accent.

Anyway these are my current picks for good television.

Bite Me Earl

Last night I left the office early. Departing before 5:30 I left so as to avoid having to be the person to activate the alarm. Going out early meant I had to walk about 10 minutes to the nearest Panera Bread Company, a chain sandwich, coffee and pastry shop. My wife was going to meet me there.

On the way to our meeting point I had to walk through a park. As I took the paved but cleared path from one side of the park to the other I saw a small Kroger shopping cart. Wheels up it sat in a snow drift. I pulled the cart out and decided to be a good doobie. My thought was that I would take over to the front of Panera. Panera and Kroger are three doors apart with a World Market in between. My hope was that the Kroger cart kids would round it up at the end of the business day.

I have no vested interest in Kroger. Moving the cart closer to the store from whence it came just seemed like a nice thing to do. Like Earl and his list of wrongs maybe I needed to work out some karma. I mean thirty years ago I took a Kroger cart from this self-same Kroger and loaded my very loaded wife in it and pushed her back to the dorm. It was after an evening at the long gone, often lamented Boom Boom Room. The name of the bar should tell you what kind of place it was.

Whatever the reason I took the cart back. Ah, but I am sure now there will be consequences and not the ones I intended. As I pushed the cart back I took my briefcase off my shoulder and put it in the basket. From the point I picked the cart up I had to traverse the park, several store front facades and then a large parking lot. It didn’t click to me until I was almost to Panera that some passing cars were giving me the once over as they went by. Limping with my bag in the cart I looked well odd. The looks were beyond glances but didn’t really reach the level of glares.

How long will it be before my wife gets that first call about whether I have gone insane or become homeless? I can hear the call, “Mrs. T. I saw your husband shuffling through the mall parking lot with his belongings in a grocery cart. Is everything okay?”

I guess that is the thing about large scale spiritual forces. Trying to do the right thing isn’t like putting your money in a soda pop machine and pressing a selection. In the case of the drink machine you hit Diet Coke and you get Diet Coke. On the spiritual side when you try to do the right thing, when you try and address the deficits of the divine in your life what comes to you in return is not an automatic pass for something you did wrong that day (or thirty years earlier). Often the response is enigmatic or more likely it is a sideways response.

A simple act is like a stone thrown in a pond. The ripples move out and touch things you never contemplated. I hear you thinking but nobody has called yet.

I have been at this long enough to know they will. It may not be a call but someone will bring it up, I promise.
Last night I left the office early. Departing before 5:30 I left so as to avoid having to be the person to activate the alarm. Going out early meant I had to walk about 10 minutes to the nearest Panera Bread Company, a chain sandwich, coffee and pastry shop. My wife was going to meet me there.

On the way to our meeting point I had to walk through a park. As I took the paved but cleared path from one side of the park to the other I saw a small Kroger shopping cart. Wheels up it sat in a snow drift. I pulled the cart out and decided to be a good doobie. My thought was that I would take over to the front of Panera. Panera and Kroger are three doors apart with a World Market in between. My hope was that the Kroger cart kids would round it up at the end of the business day.

I have no vested interest in Kroger. Moving the cart closer to the store from whence it came just seemed like a nice thing to do. Like Earl and his list of wrongs maybe I needed to work out some karma. I mean thirty years ago I took a Kroger cart from this self-same Kroger and loaded my very loaded wife in it and pushed her back to the dorm. It was after an evening at the long gone, often lamented Boom Boom Room. The name of the bar should tell you what kind of place it was.

Whatever the reason I took the cart back. Ah, but I am sure now there will be consequences and not the ones I intended. As I pushed the cart back I took my briefcase off my shoulder and put it in the basket. From the point I picked the cart up I had to traverse the park, several store front facades and then a large parking lot. It didn’t click to me until I was almost to Panera that some passing cars were giving me the once over as they went by. Limping with my bag in the cart I looked well odd. The looks were beyond glances but didn’t really reach the level of glares.

How long will it be before my wife gets that first call about whether I have gone insane or become homeless? I can hear the call, “Mrs. T. I saw your husband shuffling through the mall parking lot with his belongings in a grocery cart. Is everything okay?”

I guess that is the thing about large scale spiritual forces. Trying to do the right thing isn’t like putting your money in a soda pop machine and pressing a selection. In the case of the drink machine you hit Diet Coke and you get Diet Coke. On the spiritual side when you try to do the right thing, when you try and address the deficits of the divine in your life what comes to you in return is not an automatic pass for something you did wrong that day (or thirty years earlier). Often the response is enigmatic or more likely it is a sideways response.

A simple act is like a stone thrown in a pond. The ripples move out and touch things you never contemplated. I hear you thinking but nobody has called yet.

I have been at this long enough to know they will. It may not be a call but someone will bring it up, I promise. Really I just wanted to get to Panera to read a little more from Tricycle the Buddhist monthly.

Midwinter Joy

A few days back mid-winter’s oppression broke for a day or so. Snow melted. Birds sang. Hearing a bird singing and trilling a song carried across warm air had a way of lifting even my darkest thoughts.

Clear high notes aflutter in the heavens, at least for me, cleansed all corners of my soul from winter depression. The break did not last long. Snow has returned and chill air remains. Still, I am holding that memory of that aural joy close to get me through the waning weeks of this season away from the sun.

In a bird’s song I became part of creation, I was a thread in the divine world. Joy lived if only for a moment.

Interlude in Silence Before a Challenging Day

Without a focus on the divine life is trivial, distracted and not in a place of balance. We can allow ourselves to think that this errand or that cause has meaning but if we don’t have a tie to the deeper well our lives while busy will become arid places. Today my hope is to be in the moment struggling to stay connected with the universal.

Aspergers and the Rink Revisited-Beat Down Epiphany

A week ago after another nothing hockey game Primus was on his way off the ice. The game had been chippy. Geez the boy’s team has averaged less than a goal a game, well less than a goal every three games in reality and the scores are usually double digits to zip. Frustration was high on the team. Eventually this was going to boil over.

As I understand one of the 15-18 year olds (I don’t know which team) called another of these testosterone driven boy-men a “homo”. A player on our team also offered up the “finger” during the end of the game handshakes. Then a punch flew. Within seconds the ice surface was a donnybrook. I was at the gate letting players off the ice when all hell broke loose between the boards. Players were in clumps of twos and threes all wailing on each other and engaging in pro wrestling moves picked up off SyFy network. I swear to God I saw the camel clutch come out of retirement. (And yes I know what the camel clutch looked like I represented the Sheik years ago).

Until helmets and gloves come off a hockey fight does not pose that much relative risk for injury in a normal youth game. The greatest risk comes if you end up on the ice and parts of your arm and leg get exposed to errant sword-like skates thrashing about.

My problem was that from the gate I could not see Primus. Eventually one of the other dads, a team representative holding a coaching card pulled Primus off and led him to the door where I was standing. At that point the whole of each team was trickling off the ice. I ordered Primus whose helmet was half off and who seemed to be nursing a whack to the solar plexus region over to our locker room door.

Between one of the team mothers and me we used our outdoor scary crazed adult voices and sent the players into each of their respective locker rooms. It was tense and it was daunting because some of these kids still wanted to go at it. On skates these kids were way bigger than we are but with the right tone of psycho in your voice you can make almost anyone cowl and cower.

After the kids were in the locker room the coach came out to find me to tell me my son had been suspended for two games for fighting. I was a little pissed because the buzz I had gotten from people who had seen the fight was that he had not started the fight he just responded in self defense. Of course I was talking to parents from our team.

It became clear when the names of the others on our team and the numbers of the players on the other team were know the refs had simply done what refs are wont to do, suspend the big guys. Six players on each team got two game misconducts. Our goalie deserved it and so did one of their players whose number I heard mentioned. However there were a number of other names and numbers I had seen involved that got nothing in the way of penalties they much deserved. Once you are like Primus six foot one inch tall and 200 plus pounds you get tagged for whatever crap happens near you on the ice.

As a father of a child with ASD this situation gave me fear because of one thing, his lack of proportionality. When an aspie gets hit and harassed his tolerance level is way high. Primus with his version of ASD puts up with it, puts up with it, puts up with it and then he blows. I know Primus’s tolerance level is far higher than mine but I also know that when he goes he goes all in. Apparently from the coaches it wasn’t that way this time. Primus and the other kid had each other in a headlock and were just trading shots but it never got close to totally nuclear.

When I finally had the chance to talk to Primus I began my commentary with the phrase “I am not proud of you but neither am I angry with you. Fights happened in hockey. What happened?” What came next was, as all things are in these situations, so filled with mixed messages and emotions that it was hard to respond with anything other than an “I see”.

According to Primus as he was coming off the ice the melee commenced behind him. He words, “Dad, I looked behind and saw one of my team mates getting a beat down. I couldn’t ignore that.” Holy shit Batman, my kid-the universe until himself-made a choice based on what was happening to another person and came to that person’s aid. As a Dad I view this response as a huge, really, really huge milestone in personal development. He didn’t know who it was but it was “his team mate” and he wasn’t going to let that beat down happen.

Sitting stunned I mulled over what to say next. Eventually I offered this. “Primus, you have Aspergers, you know that. You also know that you have trouble stopping your anger once it boils over. Right?” Nodded agreement happens here. Me continuing, “You always have to think about consequences. In this case you got involved in a fight not of your own making, most likely started by someone on your team that you don’t even like or care about. You put yourself at risk and it cost you. There are six games left this season and you have thrown away a 1/3 rd of them. Does that sound like the best and most rational course?” A head shakes no.

As I continued I told him that it was okay to use his size, to make clean but board rattling checks and to defend himself if someone was acting with a real intent to injure him. But I also told him if you get into a fight in this day and age being who you are you have already lost. Then I ran down the list of good plays I had seen during the game that day and told him that I was proud of him for who he is. Period.

All I can say is that the feelings I get from this are truly conflicted. I see the danger but I see the growth.

Several nights later when he and his fellow suspended team mate stood at the glass watching their team play without them, they talked nonstop for the entire game. This is a child that three years ago wouldn’t say hello to a next door neighbor he had known his entire life if he saw them outside in their yard. Killing time at the rink today he talked in extended conversations with three or four team mates. Wow.

This is one suckfest of a season if you measure in wins (if only there was one) and losses. But if you measure it in Primus’s building bridges to a world outside himself it is pretty darn awesome.

Of Books and Beach VIII Glowing Waves and Trust

Nature is present in beach world at every moment. All the artifices that humankind employs cannot deny nature its due. No matter how modern and wonderful a structure built of sticks and wood is, or even if that mansion is made of the newest composites sand will pound the cracks, edges and crevices. Eventually those countless grains will erode the façade enough to create a way in. People tracking in and out of the house will also bring with them the sand from the alley ways, the beach and from the street. Sand is nature at its most elemental.

Moisture is another part of nature that will not be denied in beach world. No matter how efficient the air conditioning the humidity will find its way in too. Any pillow used down at the shore will become a rock within a few weeks. Soaked with sea air those feathers become leaden, it is just the way it is.

If you go out into the ocean you have to risk crab bites, kelp and various sediments thrown at you by the churning waves. It you body surf your snot will mix with the saline water. If you don’t respect the water’s power you will die. ‘Nuff said, swimming can equal death in a rip tide. But once and again you will be greeted with a moment when nature will show you a moment of wonder.

One night when Don and I went for the 25 block each way walk of cosmology, that is we would smoke four or five cigarettes apiece and talk about the meaning of life and what the universe is really composed of. On one of those kinds of nights we saw a once lifetime thing, luminescent jellyfish.
On that moonless night as we walked down the strand the waves seemed to shimmer as they crashed. At first the odd light was very, very faint. But as we walked further the waves grew brighter. There was no natural illumination of the water that night. As wave after wave crashed we had trouble believing our eyes. The Atlantic was glowing.

Don and I walked down toward the water’s edge. As we reached that part of the beach where the waves had already hit and then receded it looked like lightening spreading out in all directions. Faint electrical pulses shot off in every direction from where our feet fell.

We stopped and with our toes gently poked at the sand. There were hundreds of silver dollar sized jelly fish lying in the shallow ¼ inch of water that remained from the last wave. Any pressure on the sand near the jellyfish and they lit up with little lightning strikes heading out in ever directions of their little circular bodies. We stopped and really looked out at the waves hardly trusting our senses. Each time when the waves crashed the jellyfish lit up all down the length of the crest. There was a cool mint green light that spread out as the water rolled and roiled along the shore’s edge.

We had to stop and step back to insure we understood what we were seeing. It was something so unexpected on the Jersey shore that we didn’t believe our own eyes. We didn’t trust our visual sense. We simply had to let nature be what nature would be and let it show us what was true and real.

I don’t know who this fits in with Section 8 of On Caring-Trust. This section focuses on trust. In some ways it might be possible to try and tie trust to our doubts about our experiences that night but it really doesn’t work. I guess in this case the story stand alone. The analysis too stands alone.

Trust is in the way the author first structures his discussion a bit of a misnomer. It is a continuation of knowing and honesty. I trust the other to grow in his or her own way and to make mistakes. Inherently I have certain knowledge that mistakes will be made or divergence from what I view as the path of growth will occur. But if I am honest about growth being the goal I will allow these things to happen.

I must know and have faith that I learn and grow from experience and mistakes. I must be secure in my judgments. If I am always second guessing my choices then my trust in the other to likewise learn and grow will be tentative and tainted. Trust requires I have a sense of balance as to what is an isolated problem and what requires a course correction in the other’s growth.

The other having knowledge that we are allowing this process is liberated to grow. Trusts frees the other to make choices and then to return and discuss the resulting experience and be subject to examination and potentially criticism. Risk and unforeseen consequences may follow but growth requires choices be made and experiences accumulated.

A failure to offer trust, to be overprotective means we are not being responsive to the needs of the other. This stifles growth. If we wish to dictate every course of behavior and outcome we are really trying to protect ourselves from pain and disappointment.

Trust is not an abdication of responsibility. It is not undertaken indiscriminately. We do what we can to insure that the conditions exist where trust is warranted. We offer opportunities to learn and experience but we watch to make sure the other is not unnecessarily at risk in trying to grow. This is a delicate balance.