bring the noyz

you let me down



__
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Both these things were spoken in my classroom moments ago to describe recent behavior of my students with autism:

"rubbing velcro on his nipples"

"obsessed with shredded cheese"

The frequent sheer absurdity of my job never fails to bring a smile.
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Tell me true tell me why was Jesus crucified
Is it for this that daddy died ?
Was it for you ? Was it me ?
Did I watch too much T.V. ?
Is that a hint of accusation in your eyes ?
If it wasn't for the nips
Being so good at building ships
The yards would still be open on the clyde
And it can't be much fun for them
Beneath the rising sun
With all their kids committing suicide

What have we done Maggie what have we done
What have we done to England
Should we shout should we scream
"What happened to the post war dream ?"
Oh Maggie Maggie what have we done ?

- Rogers Waters

Much like my dear friend Fang, I too feel anger's sting.

I am angry at The Sprawl. So angry that I would like nothing more than to see every building razed to the ground until all is bathed in fire. Then so greatly salt the earth that nothing grows there for lifetimes to come. Make visible the culturally vain, spiritually vapid, and creatively vacuous wasteland for all to finally see.

It is the only way.

It is the only way to put an end to it, to truly destroy the pestilence that resides within.

"It's like a disease" is how I believe my dear G-tron 3000 described his thoughts on the subject in a conversation earlier in the evening.

He is very right.

It is a disease that cannot be cured, for it is almost as much darkness. The darkness of an empty yearning soul. And for that there can be no cure.

For three generations, it has been striking youth on the cusp of adulthood.

During the 1980's, most commonly with a car in the garage. Many of these were my friends. Their funerals are strongly written in memory. We got an article in Newsweek.

During the 1990's, more slowly and more of a gamble with a greater thrill, heroin. Also made the national media.

Now, in the first decade of the 21st century, more slowly still by using the new found bane of baseball to induce a frightening combination of increased strength, aggression, and the likelihood of full blown freak out psychotic break. I saw this on C-SPAN, and hot-damn that's a cable network!

It will continue to strike as long as the parents and powers that be remain somehow seemingly oblivious to its existence and baffled by the sudden and unforseen deaths of their children.

Most will forever remain blinded by their affluence and therefore powerless to see.

I see this in the walls that adorn widened boulevards defining the perimeters of subdivision after endless subdivision. I see this in the shopping mega-malls and reflected off the freshly waxed paint of SUV's and Escalades that line the parking lots.

But we made it out. We suffered the trials and tribulations of a consumer culture adolescence. Everyone does. We were the ones that survived. Social Darwinism? Perhaps.

We escaped.

We were wrong.

Twice now in as many months it has returned.

It is a cancer that lies dormant for decades, then suddenly goes terminal in the amount of time it takes for the bullet to leave the barrel and enter the brain.

And if that's not a statement on something I don't know what is.
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Enter the champion Prince By-Tor

Just like it was 1982.

Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone

Duh. You're not so alone if there's two of you.

All the same we take our chances
Laughed at by time
Tricked by circumstances

True. So what?

Too many hands on my time
Too many feelings ---
Too many things on my mind
When I leave I don’t know
What I’m hoping to find
When I leave I don’t know
What I’m leaving behind...

Really? I think I do.

I turn my back to the wind
To catch my breath,
Before I start off again
Driven on,
Without a moment to spend
To pass an evening
With a drink and a friend

I let my skin get too thin
I'd like to pause,
No matter what I pretend
Like some pilgrim --
Who learns to transcend --
Learns to live
As if each step was the end

Time stand still --
I'm not looking back
But I want to look around me now
See more of the people
And the places that surround me now

Freeze this moment
A little bit longer
Make each sensation
A little bit stronger
Experience slips away...

I turn my face to the sun
Close my eyes,
Let my defences down --
All those wounds
That I can't get unwound

I let my past go too fast
No time to pause --
If I could slow it all down
Like some captain,
Whose ship runs aground --
I can wait until the tide
Comes around

Make each impression
A little bit stronger
Freeze this motion
A little bit longer
The innocence slips away...

Summer's going fast --
Nights growing colder
Children growing up --
Old friends growing older
Experience slips away...

Yeah. I guess it does.

Tobes of Hades, lit by flickering torchlight

And tonight a new light shines brightly in the other place.


Chris


Dine on honeydew and drink the milk of paradise.

I have been, and always will be your friend.

- Snow Dog

p.s. You're a Melon!
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Anybody else see similarities between the Terri Schiavo protesters and this movie?
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To the Schindlers:

This whole situation just plain sucks. From every angle.

It reeks! Whether it's the putrid smell of a pandering Republican majority or the festering stench of a cheesy-mustachioed giant asshole adulterating husband.

It has been heavy on my mind, for reasons both personal and professional. At some point when this human drama has reached it's sad conclusion I will most likely ramble on in a great drunken stream of consciousness stupor my complete thoughts and comments on the subject.

For now, I have this to share:

If you have truly exhausted all options and now can do nothing but wait for the icy hand of death to hold your daughter in its eternal grasp. . .

If you truly cannot bear to see her whither away into lifelessness, without regard to whether her suffering, sorrow and pain is real or imagined. . .

Just shoot her.

Point blank.

In the head.

Then see what happens.

Will the state have the balls to charge you with murder for quickly killing someone they are in the process of killing slowly?

The state, through the courts, have in effect concluded that the being that was your daughter no longer exists in the body that still lives. The decision has been made that your daughter's body should be allowed to die because your daughter is already gone and what remains is now somehow less than human. Can the state even charge you with murder for killing someone they consider less than human?

End her real or imagined suffering. And end yours.

End it now.

Shoot her in the head.

with deepest empathy,
The Good Doctor Polymer Noyz
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Earlier this evening I made a trip to our local grocery store to pick up a quick and easy dinner along with a couple of other odds and ends. On the list, a feminine product for The Wife to use during The Week of The Month.

Ah Hell! Why am I beating around the bush?* I bought some damned tampons, alright.

"Tampons!" you say, my dear reader.

Well, yes. The pink box with the pink label. Other than some vague notions about their use that is the sum extent of my knowledge.

On the box, it describes them as having "incredible comfort".

Incredible?

I'll never know.


* future winner
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(another adventure in the ongoing saga of my need for a raise)

Wednesday morning. Around 10:30.

My class had recently returned from Adapted Physical Education Class (gym class, like you remember, minus the embarrassment of the locker room, with activities modified to meet the needs of individuals with disabilities). My student's practiced for the upcoming Spring Track and Field Special Olympics Games. (Ah, Special Olympics. . . If you have never been, I recommend it highly. It has a Pythonesque feel that is very entertaining.)

We were outside, enjoying a perfect spring morning, until our practice was cut a few minutes short because one of my students was obsessively picking up pebbles from the playground and eating them.

Time to move on to the next activity on today's schedule, Uno. We play every Wednesday, after P.E.

Uno is a great game for folks with disabilities. It is very easily modified to meet the needs of pretty much anybody. It provides lots of opportunities for working on social interactions, waiting for a turn, etc. and a variety of other goals. One of my students is working on picking up a card and putting it in a basket for his turn. Another student is working on color recognition, a third on numbers and counting. I am quite pleased if another student makes it through a game without eating a card.

Myself, four of my students, and two of my teaching assistants are seated at a round table in the middle of the classroom. On my left, one of my big teenage boys with autism has decided he is tired of the the game. He is alternately throwing the cards at me and hitting my arm as he screams his monosyllabic protest, "Uh-Uh-Uh-Aaaagh!"

Without missing a beat or acknowledging his behavior I calmly redirect him to the game, "Count the cards. . . "

On my right, a student sits happily in his wheelchair in his self absorbed world, holding and shaking a key ring with old keys with his one arm and hand that he can use functionally. Cerebral palsy has claimed the use of his other arm. He loves shiny jangly things. He just does. He is at best apathetic or at worst completely oblivious to the game going on at the table. For his turn, I snatch the keys from his hand. When he reaches for the keys I block the reach with a card. He grabs the card, drops it in a small basket and I give him back the keys.

The student on my left is still screaming and throwing cards.

Across the table, perhaps sensing an opportunity due to the distraction of his classmate, this student tries to jump up and away from the table. One of my assistants stops him with a gentle hand on the shoulder. He sits back down and begins to two-handed smack and beat the crap out of his own face in frustration. As my assistant's grab his hands to prevent injury (he's given himself black eyes in the past) and try to talk him down, a fourth student makes his big move.

He reaches out from his wheelchair and with his almost literal superhuman upper body strength grabs the table and begins to pick it up. As the cards slide to the floor I realize that although to an outside observer this might look chaotic or completely out of control, I think the game is still going rather smoothly and relatively well. Because it is. This happens nearly every time we play Uno.

We pick up the cards and resume play.

My fifth student is not playing Uno. He quite honestly just can't handle it. For so many reasons: severe autism, undiagnosed schizophrenia, oppositional/defiant behavior, and so on and so on and so on.

He should be shredding paper as part of his regular daily routine. He typically likes doing it, and the obsessive/compulsive function of his autism makes him rather meticulous at the task.

But not right now.

Right now he is curled up in the fetal position on the floor about five feet behind me. Totally naked. Screaming something mostly unintelligible about "the bus the bus". Apparently he wishes to go home. My teaching assistant who is supervising him asks him a question I didn't quite hear.

I heard the answer just fine. "No!" he screams as he lunges forward. My assistant jumps back as the arm of a naked man swings wildly. He misses my assistant but connects with a box of magazines on a built-in bookshelf beneath the row of windows that make up one wall of my classroom. The magazines virtually explode off the shelf onto the floor. The very naked and now very upset student jumps up. He pounds against the glass and pulls at the blinds. He is in a panic, a pure animalistic fight or flight fury.

My assistant graps an arm and the student half falls and half just plain sits down on the floor, surrounded by the magazines.

He remains in a panicked, fight or flight state. He grabs magazines off the floor and wildly throws them in all directions. He can't go forward. . .

I turn from my seat and stand up just in time to block him from going under our card game at the table. Another unintelligible scream begins as he pounds on my feet and legs with his open hands, scrambling to get around or through me. He is a naked whirling twirling screaming kicking hitting machine on the floor at my feet. My feet and legs begin to ache from the beating, but I hold my ground as my assistants quickly move the other students and the table to safety on the other side of the classroom.

After a seeming eternity of this, but in reality probably less than a minute, he stops, exhausted, returns to the fetal position and just whimpers. His eyes and face are soaked with tears, his face between his nose and his chin is a mess of saliva and mucous.

Game over.
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Now, my dear reader, please don't misundertand my meaning, it's not that there's anything wrong with that.

But plee - eze.

There's what's right and there's what's right. And never the twain shall meet.

As I have stated many times before, I am a proud resident of the Blue beating heart of the Reddest of States. I am not, however, an individual with no limits or a lack of deceny and shame.

Last weekend, whilst out for an afternoon constitutional, I quite literally walked right into this:



Ugh! Have you, my dear reader, ever seen such a sight? Two pale and hairy hippies engaging in a passionate embrace under a flower covered archway. It was a wedding for Chris'sake! There were children watching!

Disgusting!

Be thankful, my dear reader, that you only have to suffer the vision of this spectacle. I also had to experience the putrid stench of cheap alcohol and stale cigarette smoke mixed in with the foul aroma of sweat, urine, and I shudder to imagine the other possible bodily fluids.

There ought to be a law.

Oh, wait. There is. Thank the Lord and God Bless the U.S.A.
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As you, my dear reader, are no doubt already aware, Spring Break is upon us.

I have just returned home from an evening's outing in honor of the occasion.

The Wife took The Boy to see Her Parents for a few days. They are five and half hours away as the car drives.

So, for the previous two and duration of this night, I am a single man, unencumbered by the responsibility of being husband and father.

I acted in the manner most suitable for all men in my particular circumstance.

I went straight to The Bar.

First, my dear reader, allow me to clarify what exactly is my meaning. By "The Bar", I do not refer to what either the most urban or urbane amongst us would properly consider "a bar".

It is more of a windowless limestone box alongside an always busy four-lane city street. Its interior is entirely lit through the neon of beer signs. Its presence is known through the half burnt out neon sign embazoned with its logo that serves as a beacon on a metallic pole near the curb. As a beacon, it invites and it summons.

This bar is the bar of our grandfathers, where people would gather at the end of a long day in the factory or field and share there cares with their neighbors.

(Please pardon any and all overblown and flowery prose. By night I went to The Bar. By day, I stayed home and finally had the opportunity to enjoy all six discs of this and all of its glorious extended director's cut edition entirety. I fear that for the near future I will be only able to communicate in such language as is befitting the proper Common Tongue of Men.)

Today it sits as a relic to a dying age, in defiance of the sprawl in the name of progress that slowly creeps in and surrounds it. It is a small neighborhood bar for comraderie and cold ones. The juke box has both kinds of music: country and western. They serve both kinds of beer: bottled and canned.

Yes beer. No fancy sissy boy martini drinks with twists of lemon. No pretty little metrosexual pastel colored daiquiris. Beer. Damnit. Beer. Icy cold and inexpensively priced.

It is not a big place. There is room for a pool table, a shuffleboard table and a scattering of tables with black plastic ashtrays and those red glass restaurant candles. The place was not crowded, there were plenty of comfortably worn and padded bar stools around the the most comfortably padded bar in the city. It's "U" or "horseshoe" shape dominates the room. The vinyl padding is replaced from time to time after the spills and burns begin to take their toll. It is usually the drab color of The University's primary school color, as a show of spirit.

Business was not slow. One typically does not go to The Bar for one or two beers. Leave that pace to the yuppies and the coeds who mix and mate at the trendier and hipper downtown establishments. One or two is only acceptable when you arrive at last call for "c'mon, just one or two more" on your way home. Go to The Bar to drink beer. Lots.

So I sit at the bar and order a beer. There is a rodeo on the television in the corner. On my right side a college couple on spring break exchange sly touches and furtive glances. She is talking about her disgust at the rodeo, about its cruelty towards the bulls. He sits and feigns attentiveness, sneaking his hand farther upwards and inwards on her thigh in between drags on a Camel Light.

The men across the bar gesture towards the television in appreciation.

Seeing this, I glance back over my shoulder at the television in time to see a young cowboy ride a bull named "Slim Shady". What's this? Some rednecks idea of a joke to demonstrage the superiority of their culture over that of the urban hip-hop generation?

The young cowboy was thrown in 2.46 seconds.

I fondly recall a feeble attempt some years back by management to institute a dress code. One night there suddenly appeared a sign. It was taped over cigarette smoke-stained beer signs to a wooden support pillar in the middle of the room. Neatly typed, in a font that filled the page it read:

SHIRTS
MUST
HAVE
SLEEVES

When I returned the following weekend the sign had been altered, an exception was made to the new rule. In black marker scrawled across the top of the sign was a single word. The sign now read:

MEN'S
SHIRTS
MUST
HAVE
SLEEVES

Presumably women without sleeves were still welcome.

Standing right beside the sign was a tall man in a tattered t-shirt with the sleeves long since removed. He is holding one beer and ordering another.

This man had the most amazing and strangly beautiful mullet I have yet to experience. Delicately moused and gelled on the top, it cascaded in permed ringlet curls down his back and lingered gently at the base of his butt crack as it crept out from the tight waistband of his blue "Ocean Pacific" courdoroy shorts. Just like the ones I use to wear. In 7th grade.

I parked in the back, always mindful of the advice imparted to me by an older gentlemen I had the good fortune to be seated beside one evening many years ago:

"Always park in the back. That way, if your wife or girlfriend drives by looking for you, she won't see your car in the front parking lot and won't know your here. That way you can drink your beer in peace."

That sentiment of that statement still rings true. In The Bar I usually sense an underlying and outdated attitude. The Bar once was a refuge for men of all ages wary of and away from the prattering and prying minds of women. To some extent, it still is. Except that now there is almost a likely a chance of a woman sitting at the bar drowning her sorrows over another woman as a man.

This liberal and progressive worldview places well with the clientele. As though many feel that if men are doomed to feel misery and woe about loving women, other women deserve the same opportunities in the name of equality. So just deal with it. Let them all marry. Who cares? Now let's move on. We are after all still in the proudly Blue beating heart of the Reddest of states.

You can see it in the eyes of The Regulars. I know this because I have seen them.

I know them to be The Regulars because I sat three, four, sometimes five nights a week, across the other side of the bar, watching the same group of men sit in the same spot. One always has a Bud and a cigarette, another drinks Pearl Lite on ice in a big travel coffee mug.

It is their faces that stare out from the photos that adorn the walls, giving the place an air of sincerity that is shallowly mimicked in the chain clubs and franchise bars. They are photos of late night celebrations and annual holiday parking lot picnics with bikers and barbecue.

I did this in the years before The Wife and The Boy, when I had just returned from my self imposed isolation "out of the country" (also known as my first marriage). What my heart lacked in sobriety it on ocassion made up for in sorrow. I went to share " a drink they call loneliness, but it's better than drinking alone."

And as I sat there tonight and watched their faces, and the faces of a few others gathered around, I noticed something I had not seen before.

Not a single man wore a wedding ring. While they joked and they smiled, their eyes held no joy. You could see it when they stole lustful and longing glances at the nubile coeds who arrived and played dominoes with a small group of friends. These are lonely men. While they may consider themselves happy, successful and proud of their independence, they still long for something more.

It was like holding up a mirror reflected back upon time. I recognized the expression because I once sat there and wore the same expression. I had not done that before. For a moment the absence of The Wife and The Boy pushed that same expression back onto my face. It quickly faded into a smile as I thought about holding them both close to me.

One time, an older gentleman shared with me the secret to a long and happy marriage. He told me that many decades earlier he had instructed his new bride in the art of performing fellatio. He finished his last beer with a smile, telling me it was time for him to go home so his wife could practice her well-honed craft.

Remembering that poignantly punctuates my current feeling of being alone. I miss The Wife.

I miss The Boy.

They will be home tomorrow evening.

Only one more sleepless night.
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My landlady came by my apartment
She came by just to make up my bed
But it took her all night long
Can you imagine what the neighbors said
That's why I gotta move
Hey, I gotta get out
Of my neighborhood
I tell you the people
They tell lies on me
Hey, they just don't mean me
No doggone good

Hey, I gotta move
Hey, I gotta move
I gotta move
I gotta move

- B.B. King

"the journey is the reward" - John, 16, one of my students, The Tao of Autism

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar,
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

- B.B.

And in the end, if all else fails, consider the ducklings. The ducklings are neutral.
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Spring Break officially begins in 7 hours. I can almost taste the beer. I am very frustrated and feel beat down. Moments ago I caught a string of expletives flowing from my lips.

"Did I just say that out loud?"

Yes. Yes I did. Oh well, what the fuck.

It's not the kids. It's never the kids. Kid's I understand. They have diagnosed physical and cognitive disabilities. They have an excuse. It's the parents. They have no excuse. A misguided and unrealistic (or dare I say delusional) but loving parent with the best of intentions can cause just as much harm to a child as one who is intentionally neglectful or abusive.

But no court or judge will or even should intervene. Rightfully so. Because parents have the right to raise their children as they see fit. Even if it means screwing them up.

So I smile and nod and watch the clock tick down the hours as I go back to a simpler time . . .

. . . Many years ago, in a little bar in Matamoros filled primarily with underage American kids getting way to drunk than is safe in a border town, some cheesy Mexican cover band banged out a bastardized version of Faith No More's "Epic", screaming "Spring Break! What is i-i-it? Spring Break!".

On a much happier note:

Today is officially the one year anniversary of the day we were finally able to rescue The Boy and bring him home as our child. If you are interested, my dear reader, (and really now, how could you not be?) you can reminisce with me here.
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Recently I have had the good fortune to become reaquainted with several old friends from my younger days. While the circumstances surrounding this reunion of sorts were far from pleasant, I can't say it's not nice to see old friends whom you have not seen in almost 20 years. It was said many times, and perhaps even in the eulogy that our departed friend brought people together. To honor that legacy I hope to continue to renew and refresh old friendships.

I have been communicating regularly with some of these friends from the 20th century with a tool from the 21st century, this very forum, the 'blog.

There is one person, who remains as he was when we were kids on the cusp of adulthood (and if my memory serves me correctly, like myself one of five out of the Lord knows how many hundreds of 7th graders at our middle school to be chosen for this and therefore doomed to a high school social life of geek and dorkdom), as one of the smartest people I know (and I know lots of smart people).

When I saw him recently, it seemed to me as though his intelligence has been broadened by experience and somewhat tempered by wisdom. Like his personality has grown to match his almost wizardly appearance.

There was also a sadness to him, greater than the common grief we shared at the sudden death of a friend.

When it rains it pours, or so they say, and for some January was a much wetter month than for others.

Turns out, his marriage of several years died a day or two before our friend.
Although I may not have yet adequately expressed the sentiment, I empathize. Yes, I empathize. As you may or may not be aware, my dear reader, I travelled that same road several years ago, and the parallels between our tales to me seem astounding if not outright spooky.

I coped with and got through the divorce process by living for about a year on bar food and Camel Lights while self-medicating with lots of beer and a bong.

Well, my old friend has I think found a much healthier way to deal. He started a blog.

He has also been reading and writing about lots of Taoist philosophy and stories. Which of course, means that he worships the devil because. . .

As you can see, Taoism is contrary to the bible. It is also the main theme of the new age movement in which many celebrities have promoted. The Beatles, Shirley McLain and many others have fallen for this deception. It is also the main theme of Witchcraft in that nature is one with the gods. There is no creator, no good and evil, just existence and you make life what you want it to be. Just as Buddhism influenced Taoism, so has eastern beliefs influenced the church. What a shame that people fall for this garbage.

Taoism is also part of the New World Order. All of these false religions are pushing for harmony, a one world religion and One world Government.

Okay, not really, that just strikes me as rather funny and really sad. Another tragic example of mistaking the menu for the meal.

Anyway, my old friend has been reading and writing a lot about Taoism.

Which has got me pulling a book or two down off the shelf. And this time I'm doing more than just using a swiffer to dust it.

Ask any scholar, they'll tell ya, ya can't do all that fancy hi-falutin' book readin' and philosophizin' wit'out gettin' yah mind all a flutter.

I've been spending my days somewhat oxymoronically witnessing Taoism in action in the behavior of my students. A little more research and observation and I could write a book, The Tao of Autism.

Or The Tao of The Boy.

Reading this posting reminded me of this one.

Now go think very deeply.

"It’s not about a salary it’s all about reality"
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