Here are the folks I was hanging out with in the first dream referenced below. At least it's a nice-looking bunch. 

I had weird dreams last night, and I can't remember what order they were in.

First, I was in the back bedroom of a house somewhere, with several cast members of "The O.C." Strange, as I've only seen that show 3 times. However, I saw a poster of a cast member yesterday morning at WalMart, so that may help explain the association. Anyhow, evil grandfather Caleb was performing a ritual of some kind to possess Ryan (the blonde one) with an evil spirit. Ryan was on the floor, evidently unconscious and near death. I watched for a while, then I went to fetch the Cohen boy from his bedroom, where he was having sex with that girl he likes. No, I wasn't watching them--I knocked on the door and he opened it. It was no big deal for anybody that they were gettin' it on or that I interrupted them. The dream ended with me strangling Peter Gallagher's character (Cohen's dad) in an attempt to stop them from killing Ryan. Gallagher was lying on a sofa, and I was banging his head on the sofa arm as I choked him. It was kind of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" meets "The O.C."

Second, I was being chased around town by a hungry bear. I thought I had got away from him by going to the top of a skyscraper, via elevator, and another time by scaling up a sheer cliff. I had to jump down from the top of the building by going from ledge to ledge, in hopes that the bear would jump and miss the ledges. I can't remember whether that strategy worked or not. I can't remember exactly what happened with the cliff, either. I ended up at a big family breakfast, except all of the sausage omelets had been eaten while I was out preoccupied with the bear. I fried up a load of sausage, and the bear appeared. I fed the bear and he left happy.

Third, I was watching coverage of events from the South Pacific. Some island or other was voting for independence, claiming to be the last piece of territory in the world occupied another country. People in Alaska were upset because one of their islands had been occupied by the Soviet Union (which was still intact). Suddenly, I'm in a boat in an Alaskan forest, going up some pretty intense river rapids. I wonder why we aren't out in the Bering Straight or in the Aleutians. There is a bear in the woods, I think.

I may have had another dream also, but I don't remember any details about it. Enjoy!

Oops! Yesterday was a federal holiday, and I showed up for work anyway. I didn't even notice that I wasn't supposed to be here. I put in a leave slip to go home sick half an hour early, and my supervisor called me in this morning to ask why I did that when it was a holiday. I needed to get some things made-up anyway. I'm going to see if I can count yesterday as a work day and take a comp. day later in the year. How embarassing is that!

First it was Tinky Winky, now it's SpongeBob SquarePants. No, he's not changing his name to SpongeBob QueerPants. However, Nick Jr's biggest star has been denounced by the Rev. James Dobson of Focus on the Family for appearing in a video produed by a group that promotes social tolerance, including tolerance for differing sexual orientations. I looked at the group's website, and it is affiliated with that dangerous leftist, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Go figure.

Oh yeah, I'm wearing a SpongeBob tie today for my presentation to a panel of judges. Most of the lawyers here are pretty conservative about how they dress for those conferences. Not me--I favor loud ties and colored shirts. That always annoyed the old boss, which, of course, meant that I had to keep it up.  

I've had a very weird psychosomatic pattern since Adam moved to the St. Mary's school. Historically, I've been the parent who gets up early with the kids on weekends, and the one who runs them ragged all over town on Saturdays and Sundays. Now, I tend to crash physically and emotionally on Friday nights, then have panic/anxiety symptoms on Saturdays. I think my mind and body are anxious about the abrupt change in my routine, and that causes the symptoms I've been experiencing. I'm treating myself by increasing my Zen sitting and by doubling my dose of Lexapro. I'll be seeing a psychiatrist on Friday about this, as it seems to be a mental issue with physical symptoms.

My wife and I were looking through a box of her memories this morning, and we came across some of her old writing. Here's a little sample that I like:

My rag doll sits still;
untouched, yet loved
from a distance.

Her face, expressionless;
without smile or frown--
she does not know
what the future brings.

I neglected to mention in the photo captions that we had another encounter with the notorious Shoe Nazi of Alexandria yesterday. We took Adam to McDonalds for some fries and a romp in the playland. The Shoe Nazi appeared and told us that Adam must take off his shoes. DW didn't even look at the Shoe Nazi, and she told the Shoe Nazi that Adam is a special needs kid and that his shoes would remain on his feet. The Shoe Nazi went back into the main part of the restaurant, glared at us for a minute or two throught the glass, then went behind the counter. We weren't bothered again.

We had school planning conferences yesterday in Alexandria, Louisiana. Toby strikes a nice profile on the way to the car. 

Adam is deep in thought while the occupational therapist talks. "When will these people shut up so I can go eat some french fries?"  

Adam looked like a little man during his school planning conference. That guy holding him just looked fat. 

I needed to get out of the house today, so DW and I decided to head down to the French Quarter for a few hours. She's been wanting to look around for some stones for her emerging interests in spiritual and psychic phenomena, and the Quarter is the place to go for that. She's still a little uneasy about actually walking into some of those places, so she asked me to come along.

We started at a tea room that has psychic stuff on the side--way overpriced psychic stuff. DW didn't find anything there she really wanted, so we decided to walk around for a while longer. We walked aimlessly for about 20 minutes, when I spotted Marie Laveaux's House of Voodoo on Bourbon Street. I walked straight in, and DW followed nervously behind me. We hung around there for a few minutes, then left abruptly. DW told me there was a very dark spirit in there; otherwise, she would have suggested that I have a reading done there. We made our way back up Bourbon Street to a more wicca-oriented shop. DW told the clerk I wanted a reading, but the psychic wasn't going to be there for a couple of hours. We had lunch, then found a gemstone store that had exactly what DW wanted, and for cheap at that.

I looked at my watch, and it was time for the psychic to be at that wiccan shop. We made our way back there, and I met Tom, the hippy psychic. I told the man nothing, so as to test his abilities. Tom began my reading by having me shuffle a Tarot deck. He then took my hands, closed his eyes, and felt my hands. He rubbed hard after a few minutes, then opened his eyes and examined my hands. He declared that I prefer to receive information in very practical terms, and that I learn best through hands-on experience. I don't like bullshit, and I believe in accountability. I'm open to ideas, but I also have a stubborn streak.

He then noted that I have markings for mild depression on one hand, but not on the other. We talked at some length about my depression and my treatment regime. I mentioned my anxiety and panic attacks, but he really didn't react to that. He did say that I'm on the edge of a precipice emotionally and psychologically, and that if I can make it through the next 4-6 weeks, I'll be fine in the long run.

As far as genetics, he noted cancer and heart disease from my hands, then pulled a Tarot card and said that I didn't need to worry about either, but that I shouldn't be surprised if I have Alzheimer's in my 70s. As far as careers go, he said I must have a natural business sense (I wouldn't know) and that I would make an excellent trial attorney. I already had said that I went to law school, so he knew I was an attorney.

Tom said that my hands were very rough internally and that's why he rubbed them a little harder than usual. He was surprised to find a strong spirit of compassion underneath the roughness. That is a feminine trait, and it is very unusual to find it in that measure in straight men in America.

We talked at great lengths about the boys and their issues, after I brought up autism. He placed nine Tarot cards on the table, and said "wow, you really are concerned about those boys" (the first three cards) and "well, you're really unfocused." (the second three cards). He assured me that placing them at St. Mary's was the right thing to do, and said bluntly that the boys' autistic behaviors are going to get worse. He predicted that Toby will take a brief turn for the worse in the near future, and that I need to be able to deal with that. He then brought up my anxiety and panic attacks and said that he could understand why I am having them, given the stress that I've been under the past several years.

DW decided to have him give her a reading also. I hung around the store and checked out some of the trinkets and baubles. I purchased a dharma wheel talisman necklace, which I'm wearing right now.

I seem to be full of Zen thoughts this week. I posted this on a bulletin board, so some of you may already have read it.

I'd like to throw something out that I've been thinking about lately, the Buddhist ideal of ego-abandonment. I read a fabulous Zen book recently entitled "Opening the Hand of Thought." The author distinguished what he called the "conditioned self," or "karmic self," from what he called the "universal Self." The conditioned self is ego-driven (or even id-driven, if you want to use Freudian terms), and has a strong sense of him/herself as an independent, separate entity. But Buddhists believe that nothing--including individual people--has any permanent form. Everything arises from a life-force paradoxically labeled "emptiness," and to emtiness everything returns, and everything is impermanent and always changing. Moreover, everything--including me--is dependent on the conditions that bring it about and that bring about its termination. So I have no independent existence and no permanent form. The universal Self thus is emptiness, and through emptiness I am one with all sentient beings in the universe. Therefore, I am you and you are me. One obvious consequence of this line of thought is that I must abandon my sense of self along the way. I have felt that ego-abandonment while sitting zazen intensely, dropping my pride and my baggage, if only for a few minutes at a time.

My point of departure in all things spiritual, and my comparison/contrast naturally is Mormonism. It struck me yesterday that the LDS Church (and, indeed, Christianity generally) teaches ego-abandonment to some extent. The Christian is broken before the Cross, and submits his/her will to God's will. The Mormon is broken before the Cross largely by submitting his/her will to the will/commandments/policies of the LDS Church.

However, while the individual members of the Church may achieve a great degree of ego-abandonment and humility, the LDS Church as an entity most certainly does not. The One True Church on the face of the Earth is infallible and incapable of error, as a matter of doctrine. Those who question are mislead, apostate, or incapable of understanding. Additionally, the Church builds up the egos of those broken souls I describe above by advancing them in the corporate hierarch and giving them titles and status. It's really something to have the power of God to do His work on the Earth, via the exclusive LDS Priesthood. For example, a decade or so ago, a GA gave a conference talk titled "Honoring the Priesthood." He spoke about how people should be addressed by their titles, how counselors should stand behind the Bishop at the end of Sacrament Meeting to receive assignments, and so forth. Even then, I found this talk small-minded and pharisaic. Shortly thereafter, my Bishop requested that I speak on the topic of honoring the priesthood. I spoke all about administering to the sick, home teaching, being good examples, avoiding unrighteous dominion, etc. That to me was honoring the priesthood. Ultimately, then, the LDS Church rebuilds the egos of those who come to it with a broken heart and a contrite spirit.

Yesterday while jogging, I thought about some of the things that have been causing me angst recently. I realized that at the root of most that angst is attachment to objects and concepts. If I can loosen those attachments--particularly to a concept I call categorical identification ("I am this," "I am that," or "gosh, I could be that")--and just live the best I can with things as they are, much of that angst should lessen or even disappear. The attitude of detachment has helped me deal with the challenges of "exceptional" parenting in the past 18 months or so that I have been studying Buddhist philosophy. I didn't have terribly strong notions about what parenting should entail to begin with, and I've managed to let go of even those notions.

Also yesterday, I received a CD from a friend in New Jersey containing the Big Mind teachings of Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi, abbott of the Zen Center of Utah. Big Mind is a program that fast-tracks its participants into a Zen state of mind. I watched the introductory portion of the CD last night; it looks like it should be interesting.

Today I'm mulling over the notion of ego-abandonment. I may post about it if I come up with anything at all interesting.

I have priceless Latin American artifacts on display in my office. 

We had a nice sunrise on the Northshore this morning, so I ran back inside the house and grabbed the camera. 

Here's a recent photo of my oldest son, Toby. He's my mini-me, except I've gotten fat in my old age. 

Hmmm. I went on the IRS website a few minutes ago to download a form I need to complete my return, and I got a pop-up ad for "sex search.com" It didn't look all that promising, um, I mean, I was shocked to see that our Government is allowing sex merchants to sponsor its websites.

I had the strangest experience Friday and Saturday of this week. I was planning to attack housekeeping and physical fitness with real vigor after all the chaos of the past few months. However, I experienced a physical and emotional shutdown Friday evening and all day Saturday. I slept for 11 hours or so Friday night, then went back to bed during the mid-morning hours on Saturday morning. I felt physically ill much of yesterday. It was a real effort to clean one room and go to the drug store to fetch a prescription. I think my body is reacting to 6-7 years of being stressed out and constantly on-call.

Got one right:

Take the quiz: "What color eyes should you have?"

blue
sad eyes

Take the quiz: "Serial Killer Quiz"

The Green River Killer
You are somewhat methodical, as you kill women and leave their bodies in the Green River.

I was thinking this morning about making it through four major family crises in the past year, relatively intact, and how meditation/zazen has kept my head from exploding:

Angry man, burning
Sitting, sees his Ancient Face
Coldwater trout stream

A mountain of Zen
A valley of disturbance
Schizophrenia?

I noticed a comment on my Sopranos post by a blogger from Logan, Utah. I falsely listed my DW's hometown as my own hometown on my blogger profile. Anyway, here's a photo of my fake place of origin. 

DW saw a story today about "The Sopranos" being syndicated. Evidently, they filmed alternative scenes along the way to make the show less objectionable to people who get bothered by sex and violence on television. I'll stick with the HBO version. 

Here's an aerial view of my kids' school. 

More about my kids' school -- here's a kid during a hippotherapy session. I don't know much about it, but horses are therapeutic for kids with autism. 

Yesterday was Adam’s big day, when he moved in at St. Mary’s with Toby. We drove up to Alexandria on Sunday and fetched Toby for a short outing. Adam was so delighted to see his brother that he squealed with glee –- very loudly –- at Target and at the restaurant we took him to after we dropped Toby off at school. Adam and I had a long time together in the hotel swimming pool and at the doctor’s office Monday morning. I’m grateful that I was able to have some special time with him.

I’d been trying to prepare Adam for this transition for a couple of weeks, mostly by saying short phrases like, “Adam live with Toby,” but I don’t know whether he understood what I was saying. It turns out that the people at St. Mary’s were using social stories to prepare Toby for Adam’s arrival. For the first time ever, Toby was delighted to see Adam. However, I got the impression that Toby had made a mental leap from “Adam is coming” to “Adam is coming, so I get to go live at home now.”

We took Adam to the dorm around 12:30 yesterday. He tantrumed when he realized I wasn’t there (I pulled the car around to unload his toy box), but he calmed down somewhat by the time I left. However, I was told that it took six adults working with him for about an hour or so to get him calm enough to go into the classroom. After that, he did fine yesterday, and he was sleeping soundly when I called around 8:40 p.m.

I think Adam will see this as more of an adventure than Toby does. He has always enjoyed running around the place and jumping on other kids’ beds. Adam was getting bored with the same-old same-old here, and I was having trouble getting him into new things. I hope that being around other children –- especially Toby –- will give him good models for imitation. If that happens, this will be a great development. Still, it’s all very chancy.

The chapel at St. Mary's Residential Training Facility, Easter Sunday, 2004. 

The view from Infant Jesus of Prague Hall, looking towards the chapel, St. Mary's Residential Training School. 

Dormitory, St. Mary's Residential Training School. This is Toby's bed; Adam is in the section behind Toby. 

Adam, January 31, 2005. 

Kayak goes unused;
scuba gear in the closet;
Internet surfing.

I was blessed, I suppose, with a naturally cheery personality, though I do tend towards melancholy some of the time. As my gentle readers know, the past few years have seen some real challenges:

A broken lightbulb --
his breezy optimism
shattered on the floor

I love this little poem that the poet wrote while visiting an old battlefield:

Summer grasses:
all that remains of great soldiers’
imperial dreams

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

Tony Soprano --
criminal, sociopath.
Still, can't miss that show!

Adam shows affection by slapping his brother's shoulder. Toby doesn't quite see it that way. 

Toby is teaching himself how to draw. 

My apologies for yesterday's spree of posting and deleting. I was traumatized yesterday by having my supervisor pop into my office several times for this, that, and the other. His visits naturally coincided and interfered with my web-surfing activities. Again, my apologies.

Help! Someone stop me before I take another one of these tests:

I am 24% Punk Rock.

It's not a fashion craze, or even a cool thing to do. I should just swallow it, get Lost, and take my friends with me.

Take the
Punk Rock Test
@ FualiDotCom

Aw, heck! I just took a test online that makes me look like an effete snob:

I am 24% White Trash.

I, my friend, have class. I am so not white trash. . I am more than likely Democrat, and my place is neat, and there is a good chance I may never drink wine from a box.

Take the
White Trash Test
@ FualiDotCom

And to think my dream car is a 1972 GMC pickup with a gun rack in the back window. I did grow up in Oklahoma.

Big, blue Western sky:
open, clear, calm, infinite
At peace with myself.

Panic attack hits --
mind like a radio dial;
heart like a fast car.

We had some fun at the park yesterday. Adam insisted on trying to slide down an embankment like the teenagers were doing, so I walked up with him and spent the better part of an hour working with him on it:

We slide down the hill
on scraps of cardboard, and I
am a "typical" dad.

Randy's poetry --
such self-indulgent whining!
A baby-boomer.

Reason, not emotion;
I am purely logical.
My dreams defy me.

I put all of that
into a psychic dumpster.
My dreams deny me.

Questions disappeared
many years ago, or not.
My dreams remind me.

Yesterday and today everybody in my office has been discussing the Supreme Court's opinion in United States v. Booker, which amounts to a full-employment act for us for the next few years.

A little background first. In 1984, Congress passed the Sentencing Reform Act, which set up a commission to write guidelines for the sentencing of criminal defendants. The Sentencing Guidelines that ultimately resulted were made mandatory, and sentencing judges were required to use them. The way it worked was that 1) a defendant either pleaded guilty or was found guilty; 2) a probation officer prepared a presentence report, taking into account many factors and setting forth relevant facts for the judge's findings; 3) the judge made findings as to relevant facts and imposed sentence accordingly, using the Guidelines. A few years ago, in Apprendi v. New Jersey, the Supreme Court determined that any sentencing fact not found by a jury that took a sentence beyond a statutory maximum violated the Sixth Amendment jury trial right. Last year, in Blakely v. Washington, the Supreme Court surprised us by holding that a state sentencing scheme similar to the federal sentencing scheme was unconstitutional. In that case, the Court held that the maximum statutory sentence was in fact the maximum guideline sentence.

In Booker, the Supreme Court found that the statutory provision making the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines binding on sentencing judges violated the Sixth Amendment's right to a jury trial. Most observers expected that holding in light of Blakely. However, what we did not expect was the remedy imposed by the Supreme Court. I feared a situation in which every little fact relevant to sentencing would need to be put before a jury and found beyond a reasonable doubt, something that would be terribly unweildly and inefficient.

Justice Stevens wrote the opinion on the constitutionality of the relevant provision, joined by Justices Scalia, Souter, Thomas, and Ginsburg. Dissenting were Justices Breyer (who helped write the guidelines before he was on the Supreme Court), Rehnquist, O'Connor, and Kennedy.

However, Ginsburg switched sides when it came to what to do about the unconstitutionality of the statute, giving Justice Breyer an opportunity to salvage what he could of the Sentencing Guidelines. Breyer, therefore, wrote the part of the Supeme Court's opinion on the remedy for the constitutional violation. Stevens, Scalia, and Thomas wrote dissenting opinions about that part. Breyer determined that the statute making the guidelines mandatory had to be cut out of the statute, and that another provision having to do with the appellate standard of review had to be deleted, but that otherwise the use of the Sentencing Guidelines is okay. So now the guidelines are advisory, not mandatory, and appellate courts review for reasonableness.

So, we end up with sentencing judges being able to make factual findings and being able to use the Sentencing Guidelines the same as before, except as "advisory" guidelines. There are other factors they can consider, but I suspect most judges will just keep on doing what they've always done.

So, in the end, a major Supreme Court decision will end up changing almost nothing.

This was our backyard pool at the end of summer 2004. Adam enjoyed throwing handfulls of mud and gravel from our French drain into the pool. I took it down shortly thereafter, but I wanted to immortalize the summer of mud with a photograph. 

Hot damn!

Miranda directed my attention to this nerd test, and I discovered I'm not as nerdy as I thought. Of course, the fact that I took the test in the first place suggests that I am a nerd. I mean, I studied hard at a party school and got good grades while everyone around me was getting drunk and laid eight ways to Sunday. But not me, I had my head in the books; I ... Oh, well, here's my score:

A coworker just alerted me that the University of Utah football team won the national championship in one poll: http://www.theedgeinteractive.net/utah.htm

In light of this shocking development, I'll bet Urban Meyer is already rueing the day he accepted the head coaching position at the University of Florida.

The words are all there --
I just have to scribble them
in the right order.

This poetry thing is really fun. It's weird -- I employ words for a living, yet this is the first time I've really played with them. Anyhow, I've been using the 5-7-5 haiku rule as a challenge to express my thoughts as economically as possible. It's also a challenge to come up with words with the right number of syllables to make things work.

Daylight turns to black
Leaden sensation drags down
Mind and body sink.

Antidepressants --
Lexapro and Wellbutrin
I'm all happy now!

Masculinity.
Now there's a daunting concept.
Do I make the grade?

Demons, once suppressed
rattle around in my house;
the place is a mess.

Two hundred one pounds!
How did that happen to me?
I'd like fries with that.

Apologies in advance to my non-LDS readers:

Man can be like God!
Our eternal progression.
Do we still teach that?

I usually wake up in the morning and have to hit the ground running. I'm way too neurotic to rest in bed like a normal person. Thus, this poem:

The feel of her skin
against my own as she sleeps;
coffee beckons me.

The scars on my arms
are not that bad whenever
autism breaks my heart.

I've thought it all through and, as painful as it is, I'm leaning towards sending Adam to St. Mary's school for a while. He would benefit greatly from the structured program there and from association with other children, especially his older brother, whom he adores. He has progressed in many ways in the past year or so, particularly in play skills and his sense of self. Still, he needs to learn to control his violent and self-injurious impulses, and he has a long way to go to be able to really interact with other kids and to function "normally" out in society (not that I always manage that myself, mind you). Also, we've mostly been impressed with Toby's stay there thus far.

The things I feel the worst about are: 1) how Adam will feel about going there -- will he feel abandoned? Will he hate us? and 2) to what extent is this a selfish thing on my part? It hasn't escaped my attention that I will have more time to myself should Adam go off to boarding school. The fact that I noted that made me feel an extra dose of guilt. However, I felt comfortable with the decision after sitting zazen yesterday morning. It really cleared my head and let me think things through as objectively as possible.

Thanks to everybody for your kind words and support.

Today I killed time in the jury pool room at the St. Tammany Parish courthouse. Yes, I’ve got jury duty this week. I have three major strikes against my being selected: First, I am a lawyer. Second, I work for the federal court system. Third, I sat on a death-penalty jury in 1984. None of those amount to legal disqualifications, so to the courthouse I went this morning. I get to go back there tomorrow.

Now for some bad haiku, based on yesterday morning:

Cool, gentle wind blows
January in the park
Pine scent fills the air

Damp Sunday morning
Fire engines with lights flashing
LDS building

Despite the fire engines, it didn’t look like anything too terrible had happened to the building, thus my lighthearted attitude.

I came across a poem this morning while sitting in the courthouse that I found quite lovely, though a bit depressing:

A falcon hovers at the edge of the sky.
Two gulls drift slowly up the river.

Vulnerable while they ride the wind,
they coast and glide with ease.

Dew is heavy on the grass below,
the spider’s web is ready.

Heaven’s ways include the human:
among a thousand sorrows, I stand alone.

– Tu Fu (712-770)

The portions of the poem referring to animal actions remind me somewhat of the LDS temple film and its line about all life being created to live out the fullness of its creation and have joy therein. I’m no scholar of ancient China, but I can’t imagine that life there was terribly pleasant for most people, not even poets.

However, the thought of standing alone amidst sorrows is rather depressing, even as a impermanent, transient state. I do know that feeling, but my impulse is to reach out rather than to stand entirely alone. As a matter of spirituality, I understand that ultimately each of us works things out individually. Nobody – not even my own DW – possesses my unique mind or spirit. I suppose that is in part what Tu Fu is getting at when he says he stands alone.

But why must he stand among sorrows? Perhaps because Buddhists teach the four noble truths: 1) life is suffering; 2) there is a cause of suffering (mostly delusions and attachements); 3) there is an end to suffering; and 4) there is a path to the end of suffering (namely, Buddhism). Suffering is defined to include everything in the life of an unenlightened individual. But if Tu Fu has achieved enlightenment, he should not see anything in his own life as sorrowful, should he?

Mahayana Buddhists, including Zennists, teach that the “Self” is actually a life-force (emptiness) that forms the substance of every sentient being. Thus, because his Self includes everybody and everything, Tu Fu cannot achieve Nirvana (end of suffering) until everybody else does. Therefore, Tu Fu stands amidst the suffering of the unenlightned. My question is this: If the concept of the Self set out above is correct, then can a Zen Buddhist ever truly say that he stands alone? Moreover, I wonder whether there is a certain ego-centric element is this concept of standing alone. That would be a delicious irony in a philosophy that eschews ego and emphasizes ego-abandonment. Just a thought.

It might be nice if Buddhism had a more positive vocabulary to express its core concepts. The notion that everything is suffering kept me at a distance for a while, until I came to an understanding of what that meant. Also, the loneliness suggested by Tu Fu, while not false, could perhaps be designated with some other label. Finally, it seems a little odd to label the life-force of the universe “emptiness.” But I digress.

I sense another Zen concept in the poem – that of just doing whatever it is you’re doing at any one time, and nothing else. The animals do what they do; they don’t do anything else. People, however, are different due to our ability to think and delude ourselves into believing all sorts of crazy things and to become attached to objects and concepts.

See what happens when you get nailed with jury duty? Don’t you hope you get your summons in the mail really soon?

I've been reading America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, written by Jon Stewart and other writers from The Daily Show. It's a faux civics textbook, complete with the "This Book is the Property of" stamp on the inside front cover. Stewart and his merry band ridicule and shred every institution in American civic life, and they show no concern for political correctness, either left or right. Here is a sample relevant to my employer:

This is not to insinuate people feel the judicial branch is an unimportant part of our government, just that it is the least important. And that is exactly how the judicial branch likes it. Flying under most people's radar allows the judicial branch to quietly control all aspects of your life. From your morning hardcore pornography masturbation session, to your lunchtime abortion, right up through your twilight neo-Nazi march through a predominantly Jewish/black community, the judicial branch is there to make sure everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law . . . under God.

Most excellent political satire.

Christmas 2004 went surprisingly well for my family. The day got off to an extremely early start, with Toby and Adam both waking up before 3:00 a.m. Really for the first time the boys were aware of the concept of opening presents under the tree. Toby became obsessive about it and ended up opening some of Adam's presents too. That didn't bother Adam a bit; he only wanted his share of the swag. The boys played indoors all day, with the exception of a couple of relatively brief car rides. Adam may have had the best day of his life, while Toby certainly had a very good day. We even had a dusting of snow on our roof, something that is extremely rare in South Louisiana.

A spitting image of yours truly at the same age. I love this bloggerbot thingy for posting photos. 

Here are Adam (Left) and Toby, about whom I frequently write. 

Deep, blue, open sky,
a fragile pine branch swaying.
I smile from the grass.

Eternity or
emptiness; it depends on
how you see the world.

This afternoon, I needed a break from tossing Adam into the air repeatedly, so I lay down on the grass. He ran off and played by himself as I just looked into a gorgeous, cloudless sky.

Adam, by the way, has had some major self-esteem milestones recently. A few weeks ago, he got on the big-kid swing for the first time. Last weekend, he got his first bike. This week, he started rejecting pull-ups in favor of underpants. Now if we could get him to make the connection between those underpants and the potty, we'd have it made.

Craig the Filosopher is bloggin' away again. Check it out:

cka3n

Today's daily Zen is home-grown and political. Jesse Jackson's latest publicity stunt -- a last-minute challenge to Ohio's electors in the Electoral College -- made me think about how political junkies need to relax and get on with life after November 2 (or, if you live in Washington State, after whenever the recounts are over). This morning I thought up a couple of haikus on the way into work:

Bush wins again.
Republicans! I think they
need to get laid.

Kerry loses.
Dems a-jumpin. But they just
need to get laid.

I've been thinking recently about why I have had so many odd dreams in the past couple of years. I've posted a few of them here, and there are quite a few more. I didn't dream very much at all until recently, then it was like the steel door behind which my subconscious self was locked burst open. Many of the dreams I have had are about dealing with the subconscious, though the dreams presented themselves in a symbolic form. Many of the issues that are coming up go way back to my childhood; it's intersting how feelings one has about oneself as an adult are based on childhood experiences. For example, I have strong feelings of inferiority to many other people IRL, despite understanding logically that I'm no worse or better than they are. I wonder how many people have subconscious issues pop up around age 40? How can they/we alter patterns of thought and behavior that have become entrenched over a lifetime?

There’s a controversy a brewin’ among the Mormon intelligentsia. A former Church Education System employee named Grant Palmer is facing an internal church disciplinary proceeding, evidently because he wrote an opus titled “An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins.” I’ve not read the book, but I’ve heard it essentially discusses many of the historical controversies of early Mormonism and posits that the LDS Church has chosen to ignore inconvenient facts or to sugar-coat and spin the negative. Additionally, Palmer claims that the Book of Mormon is not an actual work of history. None of this is exactly shocking to anybody who follows Mormon history; indeed, these various controversies have been around for years and have been discussed ad nauseum.

Various Internet fora have taken up Palmer’s banner, and even a number of former Mormons are outraged that Palmer may be excommunicated due to his book. I, on the other hand, have suggested that he be burned at the stake in downtown Salt Lake City, but then I love a spectacle. Actually, I can’t imagine that Palmer thought the Brethren in the Church Office Building would be down with a book containing that word “insider” in its title that debunks the official, “faithful” history of the LDS Church. Heck, Palmer may even have been present when Apostle Boyd K. Packer delivered his Orwellian address about the writing of Mormon history back in 1981. Packer decried historians who believe that everything that is factually true must be told, and declared that “not everything that is true is useful.” He went so far as to say that historians who write “advanced history” that, although factually correct, causes less sophisticated Mormons to lose their faith, are at risk of eternal damnation. Shortly after Packer’s speech, the LDS Church History Department was trashcanned.

Palmer’s book certainly could cause less sophisticated Mormons to lose some, or all, of their testimony of the LDS gospel. It’s no wonder that Salt Lake evidently wants his head on a plate. Palmer does not want to be excommunicated for his book, but I don’t see how he could have expected any other result. Don't get me wrong -- I'm all for anybody who writes honest history, whatever conclusions they might draw, and I have sympathy for the plight of LDS scholars who must always color inside the lines drawn by the ecclesiastical authorities. It just seems to me that you can't claim to be an "insider" and call into question some the fundamental claims of the faith without risking being made an "outsider" forthwith.

The other night, I had a dream in which President Bush was screaming at somebody in a booth that looked like it was part of some indoor exposition. However, I think it was a member of the press on the receiving end of Bush’s screeching. Bush then came by where I was standing with some other person and explained why he sometimes sounds like a blithering idiot during press conferences. He expressed his belief that the press and the public are too stupid to understand what’s going on in the world. Bush then went into a detailed riff about the Israel/Palestine situation that made him sound like a total genius. The President was wearing Coke-bottle glasses that distorted his eyes. He looked very weird.

As my gentle readers know, I'm not particularly antagonistic towards President Bush. However, I wonder why I've had two dreams very close together in which the President came off very badly.

Recently, DW and I finished watching the first season of "Arrested Development" on DVD. AD is one of those shows that has no safety net, and its willingness to take risks and its apparent lack of concern about offending anybody are a couple of the elements that make it a great show. It’s the story of a wealthy family that loses everything when the family patriarch is arrested for various white-collar offenses. One brother is a responsible, normal guy, and he is left to run the business. The rest of the family is clueless, and all of them have become accustomed to raiding the family company’s treasury for their personal expenses. The family matriarch is a scheming socialite; one brother is a part-time magician; one brother is infatuated with his mother and behaves like a child; the sister is a self-proclaimed liberal activist, but is really a fashion-obsessed airhead; and the sister’s husband is a closeted gay psychiatrist who loses his medical license and wants to be an actor. The son of the normal brother is a brainiac teenager who is obsessed with his female cousin, with whom he is forced to share a bedroom. The female cousin is in perpetual rebellion against her parents, but her rebellions take unique forms.

All of these people, with the exception of the responsible brother and his son, are out for themselves and nobody else. Their misadventures are funny enough, but the show also has managed to poke fun of the gay marriage debate, the Ten Commandments controversy, the Iraq War, the legal system, prison gangs, people faking disabilities, Spanish-language television, inspirational videos, "Girls Gone Wild," psychiatry, acting, social climbing, and incest. Like I said, they really don't seem to care about offending people. As an added bonus, Executive Producer Ron Howard narrates the show. The show airs on Sundays at 7:30 CST on Fox. Check it out.

The birds have vanished from the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

-- Wang Ch'ang-Ling (698-756)

This poem is a great description of the feeling of complete mental freedom and ego-abandonment I occasionally experience while sitting zazen. Sitting in the correct posture allows me to lose awareness of my body, and getting myself beyond thought and non-thought (very difficult for me to do, actually) allows me to abandon my ego and feel connected to life, the universe, and everything. The first two lines of this poem to me have to do with clearing out the mind, but maybe not -- the Soto school encourages practitioners to let thoughts drift in an out as the scenery of zazen. Finally, the mountain imagery is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, "only the mountain remains" suggests the abandonment of "me" or ego. Second, a person seated in zazen is like a mountain, with the knees firmly on the ground and the head pressing against the sky. Is the mountain in this poem a meditator who has abandoned his/her ego? Or is it really a mountain?

My brother-in-law is in town from Utah for a few days. He's a very straight-arrow LDS guy; however, he's not the least bit self-righteous or judgmental about it. I had lunch with him and DW today in the French Quarter. I left them as they both sat down to have psychic readings. I hope that the gal who did DW's reading told her something about always giving me what I want.

I’ve been heartbroken the past couple of days about my kids’ situations. Toby’s behavior was occasionally deplorable over the five days we had him; he would throw things and hit people whenever he wanted something or didn’t get his way. I attribute his behavior to 1) the doctor taking him off of antipsychotic medication and/or 2) his resentment against us for placing him in a residential facility. I will be talking with the people at his school this week to figure out what’s up. The other day at the park, I watched Toby stirring up pinecones and other debris in a large mud-puddle. For some reason, I realized at that moment that we probably will not be bringing Toby home in the next year or two, as we originally had planned.

Meanwhile, Adam totally fell in love with his older brother. He made a point of going on the “big-kid swing” at the park whenever Toby was swinging, and he joined in the fun whenever I was playing my silly little games with Toby. Adam even got interested in computer games Toby and I were playing.

The ride back to Alexandria was painful yesterday. I sat in the back of the van to deal with Toby’s tantrums and to comfort him when he started crying. Last night, after we got back home, Adam pulled out a full set of clothes and brought them to me. I guessed that he wanted to go back up to Alexandria and fetch Toby again. Adam cried briefly when we dressed him in his pajamas instead. I felt battered and worn out last night.

I went to bed feeling about two inches tall, and I had trouble sleeping. My boys can’t be together, and it’s my fault. My heart ached for Toby and Adam. This morning, I told my therapist how I felt, and he said something like, “you know that’s not rational,” which wasn’t what I needed to hear. He also tried to tie my feelings to medication issues; I found that annoying. IMHO, the grief and guilt that I feel are normal, human emotions that I need to work through.

Yesterday morning, A. woke me up around 1:30 when he couldn't get back to sleep. Around 2:00 a.m., we went into the kitchen and ate Froot Loops. Four or five blocks away, a tornado touched down and damaged several dozen houses. I didn't hear a thing! DW went to the store in the morning and saw severe damage to several houses and Sheriff's vehicles swarming into the neighborhood. It took a minute or two for me to realize that a tornado had hit the 'hood. The funnel followed a path in which one row of houses was devastated while the row behind was left untouched. The randomness of the destruction was kinda scary. Our house was totally undamaged, so we feel fortunate. Typical of Louisiana -- by the end of the day, Home Depot and Lowe's had donated thousands of dollars in lumber, visquene, and other materials to help people close up their damaged homes, and a local church put together a Thanksgiving dinner for people who suffered losses. Also, neighbors were out helping neighbors.

A. and I drove up to Alexandria yesterday to fetch T. for the holiday. We had a loud, celebratory ride home. Lots of growling, shouting, clapping, and singing. As I hadn't slept much the previous night and had to drive the whole way, my head was pounding last night. T. was so worked up that I had to drive him around town at 11 p.m. Good times!

I had a vivid dream last night, one that ended with me actually screaming and DW waking me up. In the dream, I was somewhat like the psychic character on the "Dead Zone," who is able to touch people and see their futures and/or pasts. Last night, my son A. had just turned 18 or 19, and was sent to fight in Iraq. A. currently is 6, but George W. Bush was still President in the dream. Did that two-term limitation in the Constitution bite the dust? I seem to recall protesting that A. is autistic and unable to serve, and A. being shot up or blown up right at the end. I've never been all that upset about the Iraq War, but I am happier today that I voted for John Kerry a couple of weeks ago.

I had another dream last night after the first that was unrelated to it. I don't remember anything about it except that it involved my in-laws somehow. I am really tired today.

I’ve been thinking some lately about my overall mid-life experience. I don’t like to label it a crisis, as that brings to mind the self-indulgent, hedonistic, yuppie-from-hell phenomenon known as the mid-life crisis. I haven’t left my wife and kids, and I haven’t bought anything more exotic than a used Altima to drive around in, so I’m not experiencing a stereotypical mid-life crisis. I did take up scuba a few years ago, and I recently purchased a Nirvana CD, but that’s about it in the hedonistic pleasure category.

My crisis (there’s that word!) has been an internal, spiritual and mental one. I slid into it not really understanding what was going on, and I seem to be emerging from it much more comfortable in my skin than I ever have been.

As background, I was pretty happy-go-lucky growing up. I took everything and everybody pretty much at face value, and I had little interest in probing any deeper than that. I worked hard in school and made good grades, even without developing particularly sharp critical skills. I was painfully shy and I experienced the death of a parent at age 14, but I thought that I got over that very quickly by simply blocking it out. Otherwise, I had a good childhood, good grades, and a good attitude.

I grew up LDS, which wasn’t that big a deal one way or the other as a kid. Most people in Oklahoma thought we were an oddball church, but they left us alone. I always resented the negative emphasis put on things, but to be fair that was mostly my mother’s doing. My father was not LDS –- I think he was agnostic -- but he left religion up to my mother, so he had no influence on my spirituality. Years later, after law school, I rediscovered my old faith and became very active in it.

From the perspective of an outsider, I suppose Mormonism looks like a mish-mash of puritanism, reimagined Old Testament Judaism, and 19th Century American mythology. From the perspective of an insider, however, none of that matters. What matters is that Joseph Smith restored the Church of the New Testament in its original form following a long apostasy, and that the LDS Church is led by a living prophet, whose inspiration can supersede and even reverse the doctrines and policies of previous prophets.

As I grew older, I noticed a few internal demons that I blocked out just like I had my father’s death – or so I thought. I was always aware of things I considered to be inadequacies, and I always felt somehow inferior to others in my circle of friends and acquaintances. I never consciously thought of that as a big deal, particularly as I gained their respect and affection in other arenas. I realize now that those internal demons and inadequacies gave rise to a searing self-hate, but that realization came only very recently.

A few years ago, the happy-go-lucky kid who took things as they were began to disappear. First came the neurological issues with other family members. DW had a nasty bout with postpartum depression after our first son was born; our first son was diagnosed as autistic/MR in 1999; and our second son was diagnosed as autistic/MR in 2000. As I had done with my feelings about my father’s death and my inner demons, I suppressed my emotions immediately. I was going to fix eveything single-handedly and defeat autism and depression head-on by myself. I ignored anybody who said I would burn out; I figured if I can’t be a husband and father, then what good am I? I have learned from watching my children exhibit self-injurious and outwardly violent behaviors and from their odd learning patterns that I understand very little about the human brain and about what motivates human behavior. That’s not to say that I’ve suspended all judgment about conduct, but I do think that some behaviors I considered deviant or sinful or whatever are brain-based and therefore natural. Also, I have learned from the efforts we have made to cope with our family situation that rigid rules must be thrown aside for the sake of survival.

At the same time all of this was going on, I began to reevaluate my faith. I was teaching a Sunday school class for the first time in ages, and really for the first time I thought about doctrinal and historical issues. I have always disagreed with the hard line the Church has taken on many gay and feminist issues, but for me the bigger problems were spiritual, historical, and theological. I have no problem with mysticism and theology generally, but the Church has a problem with the discipline of history. Perhaps this helps to explain the pronounced anti-intellectualism of some of the current Church leadership. Moreover, the increasing absolutism on nitpicky little things by church leadership really started to bug me. Why should it matter how many earrings people wear or what color shirt men wear to church on Sunday? Finally, I hadn't felt spiritually uplifted inside the Church for several years. I was going throught the motions, with little or no return. All of my mental issues with the Church were going on against a backdrop of my DW finding excuses to dodge church meetings and my children being somewhat unwelcome in the local ward. So I just walked away.

Around the same time I walked, I became clinically depressed. I suppose I pushed myself too hard, stayed up too many nights, etc. Somehow it all changed my brain chemistry. I started in therapy and on antidepressants. I felt better once I was on antidepressants, but there were some underlying issues I needed to work on. And one huge new issue arose early this year, when we decided to place our oldest son in a residential facility. It is a good place for him to be right now, but I was crushed by having to make that decision.

I began to tinker with yoga during 2003, and my therapist suggested I study the moral principals of that practice. I poked around in a couple of books, and for whatever reason I didn’t take to Hinduism. I really enjoyed meditating at the end of yoga workouts, so I picked up a book by the Dalai Lama one night at Target. As I read that book, I thought, "finally! Someone is telling the truth about my life!" I didn’t go with the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan tradition, which struck me as too complicated and church-like. Instead, I ended up at my local Zen center. Zen is radical in its simplicity, and I think that drives some folks away. I noticed after a short time that my zazen practice was opening my subconscious and was popping open the locks on the places where I had stored away all those emotions, feelings, and demons that had been suppressed for so many years. Also, I’ve had a series of bizarre dreams in the past 18 months or so, the gist of which is that I cannot escape from my subsconscious, so all of these things must be addressed.

I suppose a lot of what I’ve experienced is existential in nature. Who am I? What in the hell is going on inside me? Does this happen to everybody after age 40?

This week I'm part of an experiment at work called Continuity of Ordinary Operarting Procedure, or COOP. In case of a hurricane or a terrorist attack, my employer wants to be able to keep us working and being paid. Thus about 20 of us are spending the week working from home. I'm loving it -- I get up at my usual time, have a bowl of cereal, then sit down at the computer and get to work. I've worked from about 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. until 2:30 or 3:00, with a few short breaks here and there. I'm an early bird, so that's a great schedule for me. Also, I can start work when I'm fresh and not after an hour-long commute. I've written up four cases in two days, and I only brought home six for the entire week.

On the down side, yesterday's respite-care worker felt like a fifth wheel with me around, and today's worker didn't bother to show up. I'm trying to get them started on some behavioral exercises with A., something that has been allowed to slide since the beginning of the school year.

I had another fun little dream last night. I was hiking up a high chasm above Lake Powell, Utah/Arizona, with someone I used to know but who's name I can't remember. Dave and Voodew were standing on a kind of rope bridge spanning the chasm, watching a Canadian Football League game that was going on below, I suppose away from the lake. At the bottom of the lake was a space shuttle that had crashed there. However, the shuttle was completely intact, and could be seen clearly through the pristine water. That's about all I remember.

From the DZ:

The sage sees how to stop clinging
While all others find this very hard.
If you can see through joy and sorrow,
Then you too will glimpse the great peace.

- Perfection of Wisdom

I have been having a hard time letting my thoughts float in and out during zazen recently. I seem to grasp whatever comes into my head and process it with thought until I consciously expel it and start that process over with something else. The idea of zazen, as I understand it, is to have direct experience with the life force that precedes thought entirely. I may have done this on a few occasions -- I'm not exactly sure -- but it's been difficult to achieve that state of mushotoku mind, where I have no expectation of gain and where I just let thoughts drift like clouds across the sky. However, on those few occasions, I have felt my mind break through its boundaries and become spacious and somehow connected with life, the universe, and everything. Or maybe somebody put something in the water.

This morning A's teacher mentioned that St. Joseph's Catholic Church in the city is holding a monthly mass for disabled children. Yesterday was the second month for that; she hadn't told us previously because we aren't Catholic. I told her to let us know the date of the next mass because A. enjoyed the service at the St. Mary's school and he seems to like sacred music. At yesterday's service, the priest brought out some flowers and told the kids to take one and give it somebody they love. One boy with Down's Syndrome kept coming back; he handed out about eight flowers. It seems like something that's worth a try.

Whew! I'm plum tuckered out at 8:00 p.m. this Sunday evening. DW brought T home for the weekend, and the fireworks started Friday night when saw A taking DW and I to the bedroom for A's bedtime ritual. T started screaming and throwing things, including the toy 18-wheeler DW had purchased for him on the way home. It took an hour or two to get things back under control.

Yesterday, I took T and A to the park in the morning. A stepped in a fire-ant mound as I was placing T on the swing. I had to run over and attend to A, who ran off to play as soon as I brushed off the ants. The boys loved watching me run around screaming like a caveman, but I heard one small boy tell his mother that I scared him. T and I played a game on the teeter-totter in which he would say his name, then I would slam my butt down on the my side, launching T several inches into the air. For some reason, other parents don't play that way with their kids.

Things went well for an hour or so, when T pooped his pants. We went home and changed T's clothes, then drove to the railyard in the city to find a train. We saw the tail end of a big train, so I whipped across the industrial canal to see if there was anything on that side. Nothing. Not a thing. T launched into another huge tantrum, which led to me moving to the back of the van to put him in a therapeutic hold. We were that way until we got home.

Later, it was back to the park, where we played until dark. Again, we played with reckless abandon and me running hard and grunting and growling like a caveman. Both T and A were angry about having to leave, so we drove home with me in the back holding T again. After A went to bed, I took T to the mall for his one-on-one time with me. He enjoyed himself, but I think he would have preferred Target.

This morning, we drove back to Alexandria. T and A both tantrumed when we passed the McDonalds just outside Baton Rouge. We never stop at that one, but they wanted to today. Now here was a challenge: simultaneous tantrums in both the middle seat and the back seat. I managed to get them both calmed down, but I did have to jump back and forth while DW was driving along at 70 mph.

So we drop T back at school and head to the infamous Alexandria McDonalds with A. Great luck, the playland was closed while the staff cleaned up some kid's poop. Savage tantruming as we put A into the car and drove off. It only took about five minutes to get him calmed, and we had smooth sailing from then on.

A few observations about the weekend: First, T is very angry, which isn't the least bit surprising. However, he still loves to be with us. I'm sure the whole situation is terribly confusing to him. Second, A adores T, and does whatever he can to get T to notice him. Yesterday at the park, A swung on the big-kid swing for the first time, and he did it on the swing right next to T. Third, an experience that now seems terribly exhausting is something that used to be a pretty typical weekend. No wonder I've put on so much weight in the past couple of years.

Yesterday Phoebe got me a'thinkin' 'bout anger and the difficulty I have with that emotion. I'm very self-critical and aware of my inadequacies, failures, and inner demons, so I have quite a bit of anger turned inwards. I've been told that depression is anger turned inwards. However, I have real trouble allowing myself to be angry at other people or about events around me. Is that a Randy thing? A guy thing? A Mormon thing? A Mormon guy thing?

The election is over and my inner political junkie is in withdrawal. I don't get all the Bush-hate I've seen on the Internet the past few days. [Edited after Randy got down off of his high horse]. The Libertarians are still a bunch of kooks, however. Just kidding!

Ironic words on a blog:

With one who does not
Speak his every thought
I spend a pleasant evening.

- Hyakuchi (1748-1836)

Today's Daily Zen is hilariously inapposite in the context of the near-90 degree temperatures we've been experiencing around here lately:

In field nor mountain,
Nothing stirs
On this snowy morning.

- Chiyo-Ni (1701-1775)

I had another fun dream last night. My father-in-law was running a tow-boat/search-and-recovery operation on the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge. FIL is an agricultural economist/university professor IRL, so this was quite a departure for him. FIL was on the river because he owed P-Diddy Combs several thousand dollars. He couldn't pay P-Diddy because somebody else had taken advantage of him and fleeced him of his funds. I didn't know the exact nature of the debt to P-Diddy, but I did know that FIL was furious with Steve Croft for reporting the story on 60 Minutes in a light most unfavorable to FIL. What on Earth a recent LDS mission president was doing hanging out with P-Diddy is an interesting question. At one point, FIL decided to take a group of us fishing in the tow-boat. We got to a lake in the tow-boat, even going over some dry land. Once at the lake, however, I was surprised to see that we were being trained in search-and-recovery techniques by scuba instructors. However, we still had our rods and reels. I was surprised but pleased to strap on a tank. That's when the dream ended.

For several reasons, the past few weeks have been an emotional roller coaster ride for me, and I feel myself wanting to have a mini-breakdown to get it all over with. It's like having nausea and wanting to make yourself throw up so you can get on with life. As some of you know, I've been active on the Internet boards that I've sworn off again and again. I suppose that the boards have proven to be a valuable stress-reliever. Why are those things so addictive? I've also made contact with some old friends to whom I haven't spoken in years. That has also proven fruitful.

Kid update: A. has decided that DW is his favorite parent, and he wants almost nothing to do with me. That wouldn't be so bad, but he is overtly hostile about it. T. is doing well at St. Mary's -- it looks like the infection outbreak that caused all the boils has died down up there -- but yesterday the trainer told me that T. looked homesick while he listened to me talk on the telephone. I do miss T.'s happiness and his bounciness, and I really haven't gotten over the guilt of placing him in an institutional setting.

I heard yesterday that Craig the Philosopher will be leaving the office next month to go to work at a big law firm. Congratulations, Craig.

Check out http://www.villaaquilea.com One of my roommates from law school lives there with his DW and their three kids. The place had been abandoned for years when they bought it. Now it looks like something in a Merchant Ivory film. However, my ex-roommate isn't a snooty British expatriate -- far from it, as I recall.

I was thinking this morning on the drive in about a little joke I had with the office film fanatic a few years ago. I suggested that we think about how different directors would do that worst of all big movies, "Titanic." We didn't get too far with it back then, but here are a few of my ideas:

-- Martin Scorsese: Leonardo and Kate have sex in the backseat of the car, then Leonardo drags Kate to the kitchen and shoves her head into a pizza oven.

-- Brian de Palma: Kathy Bates stands up at dinner, grabs a baseball bat, and clubs Billy Zane to death as the assorted high-society dinner guests look on in horror.

-- Jonathan Demme: The White Star Line official who gets away in a lifeboat gets the munchies. He viciously kills, then eats, the other lifeboat passengers. He opens a small box that he brought along and has a snack of fava beans and a nice chianti.

-- David Fincher: As the ship starts to sink, Leonardo begins spouting puerile philosophy about masuclinity in modern America. Leonardo and Kate stand on the door in the water and beat the hell out of each other until they both fall into the water and freeze to death.

-- Michael Moore: After hearing that the ship has hit an iceberg, the Titanic's captain continues to listen to a child read a book about a goat for seven full minutes. During that time, Moore speculates aloud what must be going through the captain's head. Much of Moore's film focuses on the murky ties between the captain, a Serbian terrorist group, and Tsar Nicholas II. Moore builds a case for the proposition that the sinking of the "Titanic" was used as a pretext for World War I.

A few more:

Billy Wilder: Kate murders Leo upon hearing that the ship has hit an iceberg. She descends the grand staircase and says, "I'm ready for my closeup now, Mr. de Mille."

David Lean: Keeps the movie as long as it is; however, we get gorgeous vistas of sea and sky throughout. Also, Leo kills Billy Zane and is disturbed that he enjoyed doing so. Russian Navy appears and drags Leo off to fight for the Bolsheviks (okay, my timeline is off on that one).

Federico Fellini: Everybody dresses in circus attire and parties as the ship sinks. Nobody attempts to get away. Life is absurd, so why bother?

Ingmar Bergman: The sinking ship is a metaphor for the existential crisis within us all. Nobody leaves the ship; instead, everybody commits suicide.

Anybody else have any movie thoughts?

My DW is an obsessive reader of novels, mostly in the mystery genre. A couple of weeks ago, I had the bright idea of reading some of those novels myself. I've ploughed through "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown, and now I'm reading "The Rule of Four" by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason. All three novels remind me of Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" and "Foucault's Pendulum," but all of them are more accessible than Eco tends to be. I enjoy the idea of taking some historical book, idea, rumor, or superstition, and basing a detective story on it. I liked "Angels and Demons" better than "The Da Vinci Code," but that may just be because "A&D" is set in Italy and has a more surprising villain. "The Rule of Four" is exceptionally written and does a dead-on parody of academic disputes over obscure topics that nobody really cares about. However, the academic dispute in the novel involves a secret that people are willing to kill to keep. I can't wait to finish it and find out the secret and whodunit.

Today's Daily Zen:

Resting at my open window
I gaze out at mountains
A thousand peaks of blue and purple
Rise above the pines
Without a thought or care
White clouds
Come and go
So utterly accepting
So totally relaxed.

- Han-shan Te-ch’ing (1546-1623)

I had a couple of odd dreams one night last week. In the first dream, I'm driving on an interstate highway in St. Louis, looking for the local Mormon temple -- not to go do temple work, but just to drive past it. I know that the St. Louis temple is on a hill at the interchange of two interstates, at the location of the former Missouri Baptist College. When I arrive at the interchange, all I see on the hill is a shabby old Baptist church with a neon cross and neon signage.

In the second dream, I'm naked and seated in somebody's living room. I am part of a nudist Zen group. We are preparing to attend a conference in St. Louis. We dress and load up into a car caravan, then we drive up Interstate 55. End of dream.

What is it about people and their conspiracy theories? I had a little fun this morning on an Internet bulletin board twitting a guy who thinks that George W. Bush and John Kerry are conspiring together to create a New World Order because they are both alumni of the Skull and Bones society at Yale University. I always thought Skull and Bones was a campus fraternity, meaning that members drink themselves silly and work harder at getting laid than at taking control of the world. My understanding of the conspiracy world is that Skull and Bones is part of a larger conspiracy started by Cecil Rhodes and involving Oxford, the U.N., the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, and numerous investment banks. It has to do with placing everybody under the control of one world government. Looking at the world as it is right now, I'd say that this conspiracy, if it exists, is a pretty dismal failure. Nationalism, Islamo-fascism, tribalism, and other nasty -isms are running rampant, despite the work of these dastardly conspirators.

Then there are the left-wing conspiracy theories, most prominently those portrayed by Oliver Stone and Michael Moore. I laughed myself silly throughout the movie "JFK," which posited that Lyndon Johnson, a bunch of evil Texans, and the military-industrial complex conspired with anti-Castro Cubans to murder a president who was going to withdraw American troops from Vietnam. Now I suppose it's a bunch of evil Texans conspiring with Halliburton and the Saudi Royal Family. Whatever. Hey, I'm a native Texan, so you shouldn't take my word for this or anything else.

I suspect that a great many people cannot understand or accept the complexities of political reality, so they come up with elaborate conspiracy theories to explain everything. One of my far-right relatives told me that she believes that everything in politics is conspiratorial. I, of course, think that she's totally insane.

What do y'all think of political conspiracy theories?

Anybody interested in autism or Asperger's syndrome should click on the link to Marc's blog. He's posted some good articles and links. Thanks, Marc.

Geez, what a wacky weekend. A. was bonkers from 9:00 a.m. Saturday until at least 6:00 p.m. Sunday (as I'm writing). He has been unable to remain at home for more than a little bit at a time, so I've been hauling him here, there, and everywhere. Today was Chuck E. Cheese, Target, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and the local mall. Yesterday was both local parks, McDonald's playland, and the mall. Also, he's been putting crayons in water, then arranging them on the carpet, making paintings worthy of Andy Worhol. That leads to me bringing in the Bissell, which flips A. out, which means another trip out. The beach was really fun -- A. and I walked 200 yards or so out into the Gulf, and he flopped around like a fish. When he was ready to go, he walked me back to the van and DW.

We spoke with T. this afternoon. For the first time, he cried when he heard our voices. So add a large dose of guilt to the chaos of running with A.