We are the ones we've been waiting for.

It made me cry, in a good way. I'd forgotten how much I want to believe in this country, and how long it has been since I could.

When I was a young man, in the 80's, Ronald Reagan had been elected and I though that was the end of the world. We ran Mondale in '84, hopeless from the start, plus he was not my kind of politician anyway, he was just what we had.

My heroes, JFK, MLK, Malcolm X, and Bobby Kennedy had all been gunned down, but I still believed in the promise of the documents that held the promise of a free and prosperous people--the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. I kept a little book that I bought at the LBJ Library that contained both documents in it with me at all times, it finally fell apart.

An interesting metaphor.

I translated the Declaration of Independence into Latin my senior year in college as a class project. My rendering lacked the beauty of the English, but it caused me to really get to know it in a way that I never had--backwards and forwards, every sentence parsed and semantically analyzed. I worked so hard on it, I got a B and couldn't care less about it. It wasn't the Latin I learned that held my lesson.

Then we got another crappy candidate in 88, I worked for the party but lacked any real fire in the belly. In 92, Paul Begala ran the campus Democrats at UT, that was a leg up into the Clinton campaign when he got the nomination, I got into the real heart of a national campaign, which was both inspirational and disheartening.

I bit my lip, and even though Clinton was far too ruthless for my tastes I decided that this was better than another four years of Bush, and it was. Then his fucking idiot fraud moron coke-head son decided to run for Governor of Texas in 1994 and with my 92 resume I got a pretty good slot in the Richards campaign deciding I could at least cut that off at the pass.

It was probably somewhere in there that I lost my youthful hope and I began to fall away from working in politics for any other reason than to stand against the criminal plutocracy of the politics of hate and greed. I wasn't working for Gore or Kerry, I was working against the forces of destruction.

More hope lost.

But, when I watched this video I remembered my dorm room in the early 80's. I had hand-lettered quotes from Bobby, Martin, Jack and brother Malcolm up in my room, things to remind me and inspire me. Things that made me believe that the world I would grow old in would be a fair, clean, and hopeful world that lifted people up and spread the fruits of human progress to all who were fortunate enough to be born in my wake. When I sang "We Shall Overcome" I believed it.

I wept for that 22 year old self when I saw this video.

YouTube Linkage

Flu update: Day 8

I blame Arb.

The flu I have is likely to be the Influenza A (H3N2) virus called "A/Brisbane/10/2007-like." Hooray for our buddies down-under. I swear the rumors about Arb and I swapping spit are highly exaggerated. But there was this blond who called herself "Cookie" who may have been an intermediary. She claimed I was her one and only. but she did have a lot of flat change.

From the CDC:

This season in the United States, an influenza A (H3N2) virus called A/Brisbane/10/2007-like viruses has been detected. This virus strain first appeared in Australia in February, 2007 and predominated in Europe and the southern hemisphere during their last flu season. The A/Brisbane/10/2007-like strain is related to, but is a “drifted” variant from the A/Wisconsin-like strain included in the 2007-08 vaccine. Most of the H3N2 viruses circulating this season have been A/Brisbane.

Here's what I wish I had known.

Tamiflu seems to work against this one, but you need to get it in the first 48 hours of the illness. Jane, feel free to jump in here with additional expertise. You are most contagious one day before you get sick and five days afterward. 38,000 people will die. Well, I guess I'm glad I didn't know that last fact.

I'm still sick, still home from work. I seem to have settled into a second tier of this illness, or perhaps a second illness. I got MUCH better from the first week's symptoms, but I seem stuck in this "bad chest cold" phase. I can eat, get around, go out for a couple of hours, clean up, etc, but I'm still sick.

Still. Sick. Day 8. This is starting the threaten the tranquility of my job. I have an awesome boss, but things are backing up.

Two and a half bottles of NyQuil and a half gallon of Orange Juice.

That's what I am going to remember from this bout with influenza. Of course, since it happened to me, it seems like this is the center of the universe, the biggest story of the year should be how they flubbed up the flu vaccine, and when I saw a piece about the flu season on CNN I began wondering why every major news organization wasn't leading with it.

I had been telling people that this was the most sick I have been since I last had the flu in 1997. I am revising that comment upwards, this is the sickest I have ever been in my entire life. Of course, that declaration partially reflects the fact that I have lived a life relatively free of serious illness, but I can easily see that this bug could kill people. I am a big, strong man. On Tuesday and Wednesday it took all of the strength I could muster to partially stand up to get to the bathroom.

Today, I am particularly enjoying being able to stand up straight. It feels great to straighten my spine and walk upright. This is the first time I've been able to do this in five days. I'll never take it for granted again.

I noticed last night that I felt better but I felt foggy and had a terrible taste in my mouth. I elected to see if I could go off the NyQuil because I had a niggling feeling this was more about the side effects of those meds. I was right. I woke up this morning with a clear head and a relatively pleasant tasting mouth. Thank you to the enlightened pharmacists who concocted this potion originally.

Of course, it originally had pseudophedrine in it too, but it was reformulated in 2006 so it could be sold without being logged due to the anti-meth legislation that requires all products with manufacturing precursors to bathtub speed be kept behind the counter and logged. I didn't miss the pseudophedrine, congestion wasn't a huge issue for me.

I don't know what to tell you guys about protecting yourselves from this that you don't already know. I'm pretty sure I caught it on the road to Minneapolis. I should have washed my hands more maybe, I don't know, sometimes things just happen.

I would tell you to take it seriously when you get it, but that's a bit like telling you to take the hardness of the wood of a baseball bat seriously when someone cracks you across the forehead with it. There's no way not to take it seriously. I have never slept around the clock for more than 24 hours before. I slept around the clock from Monday evening until Friday morning this week. I would wake up about once every 4-6 hours to go to the bathroom, on Tuesday and Wednesday it would take me 10-15 minutes to get partially upright in order to hold on to walls and furniture and get to the bathroom, then I would sit in there for a good 30 minutes afterward to gather up enough strength to hold on to walls and furniture in order to navigate the 20 feet back to bed. I would absolutely collapse in bed, exhausted as if I had just climbed dozens of flights of stairs and fall immediately back into a deep sleep.

Five stars to my immune system for fighting this thing back. I won't gross you out with details of my symptoms, but I wasn't having any symptoms that would suggest to me that antibiotics would have been of any use, so I just kept drinking NyQuil, sipping on water, and taking a glass of OJ every once in a while to give my body some minimal energy input.

Food? I had absolutely no interest in it. None. I went on a four day juice-fast.

I knew I was getting better when I began to dream about food. I broke the fast with crackers and peanut butter, then I had some apples and cheese. I still have yet to have a hot meal, but I went out for a wrap today at my local Starbucks clone. I now feel like a have a mild head cold, I have a nasal drip and some upper airway congestion, but this is like perfect health compared to where I have been.

I realize this is all a lot more interesting to me than you, but it really will persist as a landmark even in my life, the sickest I have ever been in my 47 years on the planet. This is one memorable flu season for me.

Advice for a novice sesshin sitter.

I am sitting sesshin this weekend. A dear life-long friend of mine is also sitting and for the first time. What follows is my advice for my friend, things I would have like to have known before my first sesshin.

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Bring one pair of thick, comfortable socks per day. Shoes are not allowed in the zen center past the front foyer. You'll be spending most of the day in socks. The floors are wooden. You'll see people going barefoot in the zendo. This is traditional for monks. If that suits you, that's fine. It's not more "holy" to go barefoot.

Pack comfortable, loose, but "well-ordered" clothing in dark, muted hues which is comfortable to sit in.The idea here is two-fold. On the one hand, you are going to have enough discomfort to deal with because of sitting still for hours and hours. If you haven't done this before, you know not what you are going to encounter. You do not want to compound whatever that ends up being with clothes that bind, pinch or otherwise add to bodily discomfort.

On the other hand, you do not want to distract other people. Sesshin is a group activity, be mindful of others and choose clothing that is uninteresting yet ordered and uniform. It should be neither too casual (work-out clothes) nor too formal (business attire). Blue denin jeans are okay as long as they are not excessively sexy and/or form-fitting. If you have a hot body, that's fine, just don't guild the lily.

Black is the color of Soto zen students, brown is the color of zen teachers. There is no prohibition against wearing brown, just know this when making your choices. I usually sit sesshin in black jeans and a black polo shirt, but I did not purchase these for that purpose.

There will be work periods, part of which may involve working outside or using cleaners that might spill on your clothes. If the clothing you are sitting in is not hardy enough to withstand a minimal amount of abuse, bring some work clothes. You'll have time to change in and out of them.

Bring a hand towel. Practice leaving a light garbage foot-print. Again, always be mindful of the group, frequent hand-washing is the norm so we don't pass around microbes excessively.

Bring a bath towel and bedding. Staying at the zen center is analogous more to being a houseguest than a hotel patron. There will be a place for you to sleep, but you'll want to be self-sufficient and leave it as you found it.

Shower before the sesshin starts. You won't be showering or shaving during sesshin unless something unexpected happens. That's okay, we're sitting most of the time and you'll be happy to use the half-hour you'd be showering for sleeping. You'll have a chance to shower when it is over.

Forget your watch, forget the comfort of always knowing what's coming next. Pay attention to the group, ask questions of the practice leader (sometimes called the ino - "EEno") if you're confused, but if you follow the pack and listen for the bells you'll be fine. A watch is just going to distract you.

Forget about reading and writing. You'll have time for neither, so you don't need books along and this won't be the time to start that journal you've been meaning to get to.

Do not look people in the eye. This is distracting. Sesshin is a time to "collect the mind," that's what everyone is doing. That's hard enough to do without having to return, understand, or digest eye contact. This is the social contract of sesshin.

Do not speak to anyone. See above. Of course, if you have to talk to someone for an operative reason, that is, to do something, get something, or to avoid some problem, do so. Don't be a rigid idiot and cause some problem for yourself and/or someone else because you're keeping silence, but make no social conversation.

Do not worry about things you forget or foul-up. Everyone does it. When you've messed up, know that the rest of the group is smiling inwardly because it wasn't them. You just brought a little bit of joy to the entire sangha. The teacher will notice ONLY how you recover from the error or ommission. The teacher couldn't care less about the infraction itself, once it is over it is as relevant to the teacher as the fact that you soiled your diapers as a baby decades ago. The teacher is interested in how you bring yourself back to the present moment.

So, if you've dropped a serving spoon and flung oatmeal on the zendo floor, the teacher is only interested that you attend to the spill with mindful dignity. It is much better to fling the oatmeal and clean it up in a manner that seems as natural as your next breath than to be contrite and embarrassed.

Everyone in that room has done something like whatever error and omission you've made, including the most senior and learned teacher. They are not annoyed with you, they are happy it wasn't them this time.

Expect to fall in love with someone, and to be completely disgusted with someone. This is what the mind does when left to it's own devices. Just notice it and return to your breath. It is meaningless other than to illustrate vividly how our minds can shape our perceptions.

Do not try to meditate. Just sit and follow your breath. It may help you to count your breaths up to ten and back down again. It may help to notice the cool sensation at the back of your throat when inhaling and the warm sensation there with exhaling. It may help to attend to the very tip of your nose and notice the sensation of air passing back and forth. That's what to attend to. Everything else that passes through your mind should be released as soon as you realize you've grasped it. There are lots of metaphors for this, some people see discursive thoughts as clouds passing by, others (myself among them) use a train metaphor. I see the train and simply do not hop on, watching it pull out of the "station."

At some point you'll stop even needing to redirect your mind to your breath, or so I'm told. I'm not there yet.

Chiding yourself for getting lost in discursive thought is another discursive thought. Get off that train too. Return to your operative thoughts, i.e., what you are doing. You are breathing. Think about breathing, or more correctly, be your breath.

During rest periods, rest. This goes for eating and working, too. Do what you're doing. When you're working, be the work. When you're eating, be eating.

Chant with your ears. Sesshin is group activity, listen for the tone, rhythm, modulation and volume of the group, blend your voice into it. If you get lost, stop chanting until you've found your way again.

Find someone close to you that knows what they're doing. Watch them, turn to the page in the chant book that they turn to. Picks things up when they pick them up, put them down when they put them down. Get up when they get up, sit down when they sit down. Do not try to figure out for yourself what to do, follow along.

Stay in ear-shot of the bell.

Keep your hands in shashu. Make a loose fist with your left hand, but put your thumb in the middle of it, wrap your right hand around it, place both hands over your solar plexus. Doing so quiets your mind as well as everyone else's. The only time this is the incorrect posture is when you are in gassho (hands with palms together, as in prayer, fingertips even with your nostrils) or when you are in meditation (when you use the universal mudra) or sitting attentively on your mat in the zendo, as during meals when you aren't eating. Don't try to remember all that, do what others are doing. It is perfectly okay, expected even, to watch what others do, it's looking them in the eye that you try to avoid.

Enjoy yourself People will look sort of grim, but that's because they are attending to their inward lives and not paying attention to their facial countenance. This is a precious time to focus on your practice, you are most fortunate to have the opportunity. It will be over soon, don't waste a precious moment in pursuit of anything else.

Expect to break the rules and foul things up. Practice is noticing that and returning to the moment. Practice is not ANYTHING ELSE.

Schadenfreude! Join in!

I heard from my lawyer today that the efforts we've been making to enable my access to the records for my father's trust (to which I am legally entitled and have every right to pursue) are "making life difficult" for my father's widow!

WooHoo! Sweet, sweet justice.

Chew on the notion that a trustee with nothing to hide would be completely unperterbed by what I've been doing. It's really just notifying the financial institutions of my existence and interest in pursuing my rights as co-trustee.

The case against nominating HIllary Clinton

Sorry Em, it's the season.

Politics, I've learned, is actually pretty simple. Voting is not. It is not simple to understand voters, it is not simple to understand for whom one should vote, particularly in primaries. So, my statements about politics below are not meant to be prognostication about the election. I don't know how the election is going to turn out. I'm clear on that.

1. Hillary would unite the Republican party against her. Obama might get some Republican support, some significant Republican support. This is the thing that I still am amazed that is so overlooked by the pundit class. Republicans are embarrassed by the Bush presidency.

They aren't Republicans because they support nepotism, corruption, incompetence, secretiveness, and a combative, arrogant, xenophobic, crusading foreign policy. They want to believe in American ideals again that they'll concede an executive policy points in return for a competent theorist of American government.

Obama is a Harvard Law grad, Review Editor, Constitutional Law professor who has also worked in elected/appointed office at the local, the state and the Federal level to move the levers of government.

And they don't hate him.

2. HIllary won't be able to make the "experience" argument against McCain.

3. People like McCain. Even people who don't agree with him much, like me. This current swift-boating afoot to paint him as some kind of closet Liberal is hilarious. No, he's not an ideologue and he doesn't tow the party line when he knows it's wrong, bad policy (like immigration), but he doesn't believe in interventionist government, either. He believes that the interests and values of an unborn child can be known and that codifying those interests trumps an adult's freedom. He thinks you can advance freedom at the point of a gun. He thinks crusading invasions of oil-rich sovereign nations can be justified by the villainy of their leader. He's not even a little Liberal.

But I could vote for him. McCain can take votes from HIllary.

4. Obama's last name is not Clinton or Bush. He's Dick Cheney's cousin, but we could all use a little Cheney, right?

5. While one can shade Hillary's emotional countenance in a number of different ways, none of them particularly warm, Barack Obama is not desperate, not even a little bit. He is warm, relaxed, funny and you get the feeling that he doesn't feel entitled to win and he'll be happy to go back and keep working in the Senate if that's what the people want. This is his sharpest contrast with Hillary.

So, strategically, if one can step back dispassionately a bit, Obama is more electable. There's a clearer path to him winning.

I know, he's black. There are a number of people who won't vote for a black man. I've studied these voters. They also don't vote. They aren't going to be putting Clinton signs in their yard. They're just as likely to not vote at all as vote for McCain.

There are a far greater number of people, of both genders, who are going to be disinclined to vote for a woman.

Making a voting judgment on the basis of either metric is distasteful, but you can't deny the political life still kicking in all that. I happen to think it is more important to be right than to win, so neither is a factor for my voting decision. But when I take a dispassionate look at the politics of race and gender, I concede that's still a pretty lively kettle of fish.

So, while it will be best for us all if you vote for the person you believe is best suited for the job, part of what suits a good candidate is the ability to win. Just like in college basketball (go Heels!), winning programs play the starters, not the seniors.

Google election results

on the blogroll: Home-sick Texan

This is a lovely blog about the kind of cooking that is seeped into the marrow of my bones. I highly recommend it if you either like Texas food or you want to understand me.

Unix text editor of choice

In reference to another hilarious xkcd strip. There you go, FK, your alt attribute will be intact.

I actually use the editor embedded in Midnight Commander more than any others, it's pretty colors keep me from making stupid coding errors and I know the command key structure really well, but nano is definitely my second choice. I've tried to use emacs, I really have, but I can't get over the steep part of the learning curve.

vi and vim taunt me from afar. I have to know how to use them because they are always present, but I dare not enter that realm lest I lose my ability to use any other editor. Don't taze me, vi!