Today is both the Vernal Equinox (happy spring!) and Palm Sunday. I guess these two days don't always fall on the same date - in fact, I guess that it's impossible to always be the same day of the year. Just a coincidence this time, I suppose.

I don't recall exactly what Palm Sunday commemorates; it has something to do with Jesus' triumphant arrival in some city shortly before the crowd turns on him and has him crucified. All I remember is that you would get some sort of long leaf at church, a frond, to take home and play with, only to realize that there was really nothing you could do with it, so after waving it around for a little bit and trying to whip your sister with it, you'd give up and go on to other things. I guess that Palm Sunday's main significance was always that it marked one week until Easter.

Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, so let me first point out that I generally have little patience for those who define their religious beliefs by bashing the beliefs of others. This applies not only to televangelists, but also to some so-called Buddhists that I've met, who seem more interested in rebelling against their Judeo-Christian upbringing than in really embracing Buddhism. I've also been dismayed to read Japanese Zen masters who try to talk about Christainity, when it's painfully obvious they have no clue what they're talking about. So I offer my comments on Jesus here not to criticize the belief of others, but to provide an alternative view of Jesus as bodhisattva.

If you look at the four gospels and take away all of the obvious mythology (the virgin birth, etc.), and look at the common themes, you'll find the story of a man who lived at the intersection of a nomadic spiritual tradition (Judaism) and a secular world power (Rome). Meanwhile, John the Baptist was whipping up a religious frenzy with prophesy of a coming messiah. Into these heady times comes a carpenter from Nazareth.

The gospels are generally quiet about Jesus' early life, and what little is presented makes it sound like he was a fairly typical carpenter for his time. However one day, this carpenter wanders off into the desert and fasts for 40 days and when he comes back, he is profoundly changed.

Now, we'll never know what happened to Jesus while he was fasting in the desert, but his preaching career began when he returned, and he started saying things like "I and the Father are one." From a Buddhist perspective, it seems that Jesus experienced a profound sense of identity with the universe, much like the Buddha experienced while sitting under the Bodhi tree, and much like Zen offers to everyone.

The primary difference, and the fundamental tragedy of Christianity in my opinion, is that while the Buddha taught that everyone could have the same experience of being one with the Almighty, Jesus' followers claimed exclusivity, that only he could have that experience and no one else. What Jesus himself might have said about that may be lost, although, as Julie pointed out in her email, the Gnostic Gospels suggest that he didn't view the experience as exclusively as the Church later claimed that it was ("if you read the Gnostic Gospels, he spends a lot of time telling his disciples that they are no different from him & that if they want to see the Kingdom of God, they should just open their eyes in the here and now").

Well, as we all know, Rome didn't take very well to the notion of an enlightened mystic stirring up the masses, and they had him killed. Now, the Easter myth states that three days after being crucified, Jesus rose from the dead and appeared again among the people. What I don't understand is, if you accept his return to the world, what did he do with this Second Act?

Not very much. Apparently hang out with Mary Magdalene, convince Doubting Thomas that it really was him, and, strangely, ask for meat. Here, he just made literally the greatest comeback of all time, and no great closing sermon, no profound last teaching, no memorable last words. What a squandered opportunity!


So what I see is the story of a Semitic carpenter who goes off to the desert and experiences an enlightenment, comes back and tries to tell the others about it but is misunderstood and eventually murdered, and his followers, who never really understood his message anyway, begin a religion around their view of his teachings. As the church grows, those accounts that enable and give authority to the church are codified into the scriptures, and those that encourage the follower to think for himself are rejected and later classified as "heresy."

Of course, I wasn't there, so I don't really know.

Mercury Goes Retrograde

According to the calendar, at 7:08 p.m. this evening, the planet Mercury goes retrograde for three weeks. That is, instead of appearing to be traveling across the sky toward the west, it will appear to be traveling in an easterly direction for the next three weeks.

So what does this mean? Nothing, really. It might be gratifying to reflect on how this used to confuse the hell out of pre-Copernican astronomers if you get off on that sort of thing. Astrologers probably ascribe some meaning to the retrograde motion, if you're naive enough to believe in astrology.

I just take it as a good excuse for any behavior I need to justify. You should try it. If you're late for work, just tell your boss that he couldn't possibly expect you to be on time "what with Mercury going retrograde and all." If someone asks why you're dressed the way you are, say "because Mercury's in retrograde." Ladies, if you need an excuse for your husbands, tell them "Not tonight, honey. I can't while Mercury is in retrograde." The possibilities are endless.

This week went by in a blur of seminars and conferences. Wednesday, I went to the first day of a two-day conference for Georgia waste-water plant operators at the new Georgia Convention Center. I can summarize the day by simply saying that waste-water plant operators do not necessarily make dynamic public speakers. There was a keynote speaker over lunch, but I honestly can't recall a word that he said. Thursday, I bailed on the conference and instead went to a one-day seminar for environmental attorneys. Much better. It was held in the Buckhead Westin, the coffee was Starbuck's, and trial lawyers at least know how to speak and attempt to hold an audience's attention.

Here's the conclusion to Julie's email:

What is the role of buddha in zen buddhism, is he a god like figure? What kind of role does he play in the lives of the people of this world?

I can't say what role the Buddha plays for "the people of this world," but I will say in human nature there is a tendency for people to want a savior, someone who can do things to/for them. It's handy to have a being like that around, as responsibility for oneself is a difficult and lonely business sometimes. So, the last words of the Buddha's lifetime are, "work out your own salvation diligently," and yet today there are branches of Buddhism which seem to advocate the idea that if practitioners just pray enough, or say the right mantra enough, they will get what they want, whether it be a Mercedes or an extended vacation in the Pure Land. With Jesus it's the same: if you read the Gnostic Gospels, he spends a lot of time telling his disciples that they are no different from him & that if they want to see the Kingdom of God, they should just open their eyes in the here and now. Yet contemporary Christian traditions de-emphasize this aspect of his teachings and centralize the idea of Jesus and the Church as intercessors.

There is this Zen idea that the Buddha is us, and we are the Buddha. In essence, we are all already just as we should be, but we run around being distracted and thinking we just need to perfect this, study that, get the right teacher, or eat the right balance of whole grain foods, in order to get something we lack. The Buddha's teachings, the Zen teachings, are there to put a stop to this spiritual scavenger hunt. Knuckle down, says the Buddha! Quit goofing off and pay attention.

Could you briefly discuss the origins of zen buddhism/the history of its creation. Just the history specific to zen buddhism?

On a scholarly level, the history of Zen is better learned from books or people besides me. On a personal level, I can tell you Zen comes from a movement within China and then Japan, away from heavy ritual, priestly intercession, and other trappings, back to the Buddha's original teachings about clear awareness in the present moment. So, much as Buddhism itself can be seen as a reform movement within Hindu practice, Zen is a reform movement within Buddhism, and within each practitioner.

So, let's see, that should just about cover everything I wanted to say this week while Blogger wasn't working: what I did this week (check), the crime wave (check), emails (check). As for an answer to GreenSmile's question, I can see that I still haven't addressed the topics about which he was asking, that is, the three wheels and Kabbalic practice, but, hey, you can't expect this finger to point directly at the moon when Mercury's in retrograde, now, can you?

Yes, that cute little tyke is me in an earlier incarnation, circa 1958. No particular reason, other than narcissism, for posting it.

I mentioned a local crime wave the other day. I first became aware of this on Tuesday when I received the following, rather ominous, message from a neighbor:

"I do not have an abundance of details, but can tell you a car was vandalized (windows broken, laptop stolen) around 1 A.M. this morning (Tuesday, March 15), and another car was stolen from the car port. Be alert. Watch out for each other."

That was followed by this email from a resident from around the block:

"My car had money taken out of a briefcase either Monday or Tuesday night. I just discovered it today. Perhaps it happened at the same time as the other break-ins. The car was not locked and was parked in my driveway at the back of the house."

Greetings from the third most dangerous city in America. But who leaves money in a briefcase overnight in an unlocked car?

The day that I got these messages, I had to go to the state environmental offices in the morning to review some files and then I had a meeting at the law offices of a client, but I finished these tasks early enough to do some clothes shopping, and since Bloomingdale's was having a 25% off sale on Calvin Klein underwear, I bought about $100 worth of boxers, briefs and t-shirts even though underwear wasn't at the top of my list, and while I was at it, I went up to Women's Intimates on the Third Floor and got L. a surprise gift of C.K. lingerie (although who the gift was really for is open to debate), then I swung over to the new Barney's store in Atlanta, which was a big disappointment because it's a Barney's Co-op, not a department store, and it basically just sells jeans and t-shirts like some sort of a Gap for Teens, so I went to Parisian and bought three pairs of pants, and then headed home and L. stopped by and was delighted by the surprise lingerie and we went out to dinner at Chops, which, along with Bones, is among the best steakhouses in Atlanta, and we had a lovely time and when I got home I got the first of the messages about the break-ins but I wasn't able to blog about it or about the day because Blogger wasn't working and all I could post was a picture of a woman pointing a handgun so I had to address all of this by trying to squeeze it in to today's post.

Meanwhile, here's more from Julie's email:

Is there an omnipotent existence in the universe? Is it active in the universe?

Well, if you're looking for universal laws within the context of Buddhist teachings, a good place to start is with the law of karma, which teaches that "All beings are the owners of their action, companions to their action, and its results will be their home. All action with intention, be it skillful or harmful, of such acts they will be the heirs. "

We are subject to the consequences of our actions, on an individual level, a family level, a national level, and so on. There's no free lunch and there's no Wrathful God. Karma is neutral, and operates universally. Bo Lozoff, founder of the Prison Ashram Foundation, says that from the standpoint of a practitioner, karma acts as a spiritual Help Wanted ad. If there's something we're blind to in ourselves, then the results of our actions help us to see what we are not seeing. Why do I keep getting irritated at this person? Is it possible I'm actually more like them than I'm willing to admit?

Are there causes of huge catastrophies, such as the december tsunami? Are the reasons of such events simply natural, unavoidable and unfortunate? Or is there something else behind these kinds of events?

To me one of the most pernicious aspects of so-called New Age thinking, and one of the clearest reasons why it shouldn't ever be lumped in with Buddhism, is the vague idea that we create our own reality, and thus, if we suffer at all, it is because we've failed to visualize a suffering-free reality.

The Buddha's teaching is based on the Four Noble Truths, the first of which is "there is suffering." Suffering comes in two flavors: that which is inevitable, and that which can be let go of through practice. The first category includes the tsunami as a natural phenomenon. Conditioned upon birth, we are subject to aging, sickness and death, to separation from what we love, and to contact with what we dislike. This is bad enough! Yet we choose to compound this situation through our misunderstandings of the nature of things and the causes of suffering. If a person mopes around for example thinking, "my suffering is the fault of my parents, for being so horrible to me when I was a small child," then that person is very unlikely to ever accept responsibility for themselves, or to become free of their emotional distortions. The path of practice is essentially a path of learning to let go of the unnecessary suffering we add onto existence through our ignorance, so that we can respond better to things we can't change, like the tsunami.

The Ulysses Effect

Well, if you’re reading this, that means that Blogger is once again working, or I’ve figured out some way to post message text without going through their inconsistent on-line interface.

I’ve been working away from the office for three days now, and while that might be a story unto itself, it’ll have to wait until another day. I've got a lot to say that's all trying to burst out of my mouth simultaneously, but first, I want to respond to GreenSmile’s comments.

Unfortunately, it is, quite simply, not possible to state what Zen teaches about this or teaches about that, just as Zen itself defies definition. To define it is to limit it ("it is this, and therefore not that"), and to make a neat conceptual package that abstracts from the whole and gives only part of the picture. This would not capture Zen, which is rooted in our deepest direct experience. The non-conceptual nature of Zen is apparent in catch phrases that became popular in Song Dynasty China. Zen trainees took their cues from such expressions as:

"No dependence on words or books"
"A special transmission outside the scriptures"
"Direct pointing to Mind" and
"Seeing one's true nature is to become the Buddha."

People talk about “Zen teachings” or “the Buddha’s teachings,” but these are just figures of speech, expediencies for the sake of communication. There is, in fact, nothing to teach. On the other hand, over the last 2,500 or so years, great amounts of “teachings” have been recorded and passed down from Master to student. But keep in mind, these “teachings” are not the thing being taught – they are like fingers pointing at the Moon, skillful means of directing the student toward the truth, but not the truth itself.

In the following email, my friend Julie P. deals with this tricky issue:

From: Julie P.
Date: Wed 3/16/2005 2:49 PM
Subject: Zen Questions

I've just spent a good chunk of today working on answers to a set of questions sent to me by young C. K., an Emory student who came to last Sunday’s newcomers' session. Thought I'd post the dialogue to our group.

Could you describe the Zen Buddhist community further for me. What is it like? Are the people you practice with all close friends of yours? What role does the community play in your life?

As a general point, I’d like to say that I don’t think of myself as a Zen Buddhist - the denomination doesn’t really make much of a difference to me, the way that it might be important to some other people. So my sense of community within Buddhism is more to do with the general idea of sangha - a community of people to practice with, who are each working in their own way to understand and realize the teachings. This is very important in the Buddha’s teaching - this idea that we do not practice alone - that we depend on one another to realize truth. Sangha is the third of the Triple Gems - the three foundations of practice.

Close friendships are always a joy, but that isn’t totally relevant in this context - I almost never see people from the Zen Center outside the zendo, and that is fine. I rely on the Center for a practice community, not a social life.

What are your beliefs on the origin of the universe?

Actually, I don’t think about this very much at all. It’s one of the topics the Buddha put into a wonderful pile he called Things Which Are Not Productive to Think About. Though another way of answering your question is to say that the origin of the universe is in each mind-moment: how is consciousness conditioning what The Universe is understood to be at any given moment?

What are your beliefs on the end of time/death of the universe?

Again, this question doesn’t have much of a bearing on practice, so it’s another member of the aforementioned pile.

What do you believe happens when a person dies?

OK - so this very clearly does have a bearing on practice, if you phrase the question as, “what do you think will happen when you die?” And the answer is a big DON’T KNOW, though I think as a Buddhist there are things I can do to prepare for this inevitability. One is to acknowledge it as an inevitability. Another is to practice “spending time in the neighborhood of death” (my wording). This comes down to a willingness not to ignore death, and to pay attention to death as I encounter it in daily life. In Buddhist countries like Thailand, hospital morgues are teaching facilities which people can visit to familiarize themselves with what dead bodies are like, not from a morbid point of view, but from the point of view that our bodies are themselves of the nature to die. There are a couple of important funeral chants in the Theravada tradition which say:

(for the dead)
All conditions, truly they are transient,
Of the nature to arise and cease
In their cessation, bliss.

(for the living)
Such is the nature of my body
It too will die and lie senseless on the ground
As useless as a rotten log.

Another part of “spending time in the neighborhood of death” is less literal, and involves accepting and fully experiencing the grief and confusion of events such as the breakup of a relationship, an illness, or the death of a friend. Our tendency in this culture is to plaster over painful experiences, to over-medicate and distract ourselves, but Buddhist practice encourages us instead to take the time to be with painful experiences and let them be our teachers. A person who has spent a lot of time getting used to death is much likelier to be able to move gracefully towards her physical death when the time comes. . .

There is more to this email, but I’ll have to continue with this on another day. I want to jump off for now and write a little bit more about this on my own.

At a seminar today, I heard a professor from the University of Georgia who specializes in medicine and public health discuss what he called “The Ulysses Effect.” Basically, this effect refers to what happens to a person who is diagnosed, either correctly or not, as having a life-threatening disease. Ulysses, of course, went off one day to fight in the Trojan War and undertook a long voyage and had many great adventures, some painful and difficult, some pleasurable, but all life-altering. When he finally returned home, he found that both his world and he himself had changed.

It’s like that to the diagnosed. Their life is “normal,” at least to them, and then one day this diagnosis happens and suddenly they’re in a world of hospitals, clinics, tests and procedures, and when it’s all over, they’ve changed. After a battle with cancer, say, the patient suddenly spends less time in the office and more time with family and friends, at the golf course, or even at church. The old world is gone, and they are no longer the same.

What’s happened, in my opinion, is that they had this sudden epiphany of the impermanence of life, and they’ve examined their values, and found the old behaviors lacking. But why does one need to wait for a diagnosis for this kind of life-altering reaction? With the direct experience of Zen, one can clearly see the impermanence of all things, directly realize one’s own mortality, and accept the inevitability of death. And therefore come to live each moment as fully and mindfully as possible.

Don’t mistake these things, “seeing the impermanence of all things, directly realizing one’s own mortality, and accepting the inevitability of death” as the teachings of Zen. These are common experiences of Zen students, but not Zen itself. They’re fingers pointing at the moon.

As I said before, there’s nothing to teach.

JustAGirl, who set me up with my gmail account (thanks!), notes that "Blogger is being a retard. Again." She's not talking about me. She's talking about Google's Blogger server, which apparently has been down since last night. Although I was able to post yesterday's picture to my blog, I wasn't able to post the accompanying text (there's IS an explanation of that picture, but now you'll probably never know what it was). Anyway, Blogger will allow me to only get as far as the Dashboard home page, but I cannot access my own files to compose a new post, or to edit posts, or to caption pictures. The only way this is getting posted (and as I sit here typing, I have no assurance that this will actually work), is by captioning a picture using Hello and sending it to Blogger, not a very efficient way of composing large bodies of text.

Post-Script: It's now 11:15 p.m., and Blogger is apparently finally back on line, although now it's too late and I'm too tired to write too much. My attempt to post the paragraph above was only partially successful, since I hit the "enter" button on my keyboard to start a new paragraph, but instead it sent the text on line before I had a chance to edit the text, or even finish my thought. Frustrating.

Anyway, I had a lot to say about the last very interesting couple of days. Also, I wanted to respond to GreenSmile's comment to my Monday post, share an email and even report on the local crime wave (a rash of car break-ins and thefts on my block). But all of that's going to have to wait until tomorrow or later as long as the creek don't rise, the City manages to keep the felons behind bars and Google keeps its server on line.

Honoring the Body

Actions themselves are neither good nor bad; only the intention is important. If you think something is good, it is good; if you think it is bad, it is bad.

"When the Buddha was alive, there was a prostitute called Pass-a-million. Every day, she sold her body many times. Every day, many different men came and had sex with her. But any man who had sex with her would become enlightened. So she was only using sex to teach Buddhism. When a man came to her, he had many desires. But after being with her, he had no desires, he understood his true self, and he went away with a clear mind."
- Zen Master Seung Sahn

Bodhidharma said, "Self-nature is inconceivably wondrous. In the dharma where there is nothing to grasp, nothing to take hold of, 'not giving rise to attachment' is called the precept of refraining from misusing sexuality."

Master Dogen said, "When the three wheels are pure and clean, nothing is desired. Go the same way as the Buddha." The three wheels are the body, mind and mouth. Greed, anger and ignorance are pure and clean. Nothing is desired.

Twice yearly, the Zen Center holds the Zaike Tokudo or lay initiation ceremony for those wishing to receive the precepts and formally enter the Buddhist path. This is an important and powerful event in the life of a practitioner and in the life of the sangha. This ceremony, historically known as "entering the stream," has been performed continually since the time of the Buddha. In the Soto Zen tradition, the ceremony continues to be offered exactly as set down by Master Dogen in his text Kyojukaimon (Instructions on Giving the Precepts) more than 800 years ago.

During the ceremony, participants undertake the Three Refuges (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha), the Three Pure Precepts (Do No Harm; Do Only Good; and Save All Sentient Beings), and the first five of the Bodhisattva Precepts:

1. Affirm life; Do not kill.
2. Be giving; Do not steal.
3. Honor the body; Do not misuse sexuality.
4. Manifest truth; Do not lie.
5. Proceed clearly; Do not cloud the mind with intoxicants.

In zazen, we directly experience our self-nature and can see how inconceivably wondrous it truly is. As we come to understand how complete we actually are, we realize that there is in fact nothing to be attained, nothing to grasp, nothing to take hold of. With such a realization, how can one not observe the precept of honoring the body?

Ann Coulter: "Canada used to be one of our most loyal friends and vice-versa. I mean Canada sent troops to Vietnam - was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than Saddam Hussein?"
Bob McKeown: "Canada didn't send troops to Vietnam."
Coulter: "I don't think that's right."
McKeown: "Canada did not send troops to Vietnam."
Coulter: "Indochina?"
McKeown: "Uh no. Canada ...second World War of course. Korea. Yes. Vietnam No."
Coulter: "I think you're wrong."
McKeown: "No, took a pass on Vietnam."
Coulter: "I think you're wrong."
McKeown: "No, Australia was there, not Canada."
Coulter: "I think Canada sent troops."
McKeown: "No."
Coulter: "Well. I'll get back to you on that."
McKeown (in voice-over): "Coulter never got back to us -- but for the record, like Iraq, Canada sent no troops to Vietnam."
- from "The Fifth Estate," Canadian Broadcasting Company, January 26, 2005

L. and I had a great day together. After brunch at Cafe Intermezzo, she helped me pick out an oriental (Chinese) carpet for the living room, and we looked at fabrics for the living-room window treatment.

But the real domestic responsibility is going to be the Unsellable Condo in Vinings. The realtor went over to the UCV to hang a "For Sale" sign, and came back with good news and bad news. The good news is that the asking price for the identical unit next door to me is $20,000 more than I'm asking. The bad news is that before we can show the now-empty UCV, I need to re-clean the bathrooms, the kitchen, the refrigerator and the freezer. The carpets need to be steam cleaned, and the living room walls, mantlepiece and built-in shelves need to be painted. She didn't notice, apparently, that the toilet in the master bath leaked, the repair of which was one of the tasks on my winter holiday "to-do" list that never got done.

Now that it's almost two-and-a-half months since the holiday, let's review the list once again and see how much I've got done:

1. Fix computer. Not done. It's still running like shit (but it is still running). I'm leaning now more towards just getting a new computer.

2. Change address on driver's license/tag registration. Not done. According to Georgia law, you have 30 days after you move to change the address on your driver's license and to change the county sticker on your tag. I'm still driving around with the UCV address on my license and with Cobb County tags, even though I moved last August.

3. Fix toilet in condo. Not done.

4. Get duct tape marks off car. Done!!! Score one for the team . . .

5. Join a gym. Nope. My idea was to focus on running and karate, and join a gym this spring, so I guess that now is the time.

6. Buy living room furniture. Well, I'm getting there. The sofa arrived in February, and I got the carpet today, and made at least a start toward window treatments.

7. Buy mirror and sconces for bathroom. Not done. Wires are still sticking out of open holes in the wall.

8. Yard work. I made some progress on this task over the holiday, but very little since then, other than moving some downed branches following the ice storm. I'll probably hire some professional landscapers to remove last autumn's leaves.

Now, I have to add the following tasks to the list:

9. Fix up the UCV. Re-clean the bathrooms, the kitchen, the refrigerator and the freezer, steam clean the carpets, and paint the living room walls, mantlepiece and shelves as the realtor suggested.

10. Body work. The doctor says that now that I'm 50, I need to get a colonoscopy (oh, boy!). While I'm at it, I need to get a dermatologist to look at some moles and other "interesting" things growing on me. And finally get a dentist to fix my teeth.

11. Reading. Knock off all those books that I bought on January 30 and stay up to date on The New Yorker and The Economist.

12. Writing. Write more than just this blog. Publish a few technical papers for work, and maybe even a few articles for the Buddhist press.

13. Arithmetic. Do my income taxes. Straighten out some of my finances. Collect monies owed me.

Actually, I'm exhausted just thinking about it all. Now I need a nap. I'll start on these tasks tomorrow.

The search for the fugitive accused of killing a judge, a court reporter and a sheriff's deputy in a courthouse rampage ended Saturday morning when the man surrendered peacefully after a SWAT team cornered him in the Gwinett County apartment of a woman he had taken hostage.

Before his arrest, the fugitive might have killed a fourth victim - at 8:30 a.m. this morning, carpenters found an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot dead at his unfinished Buckhead home near Lenox Road. Two people visiting Atlanta for the SEC tournament were assaulted, possibly by the fugitive, Friday noght on Lenox Road, not far from the house where the agent’s body was found.

The agent’s house is not far at all from where I live, and I had crossed Lenox Road just a few blocks south of where the agent’s body was discovered not once, but twice, Friday night as I went to and from the Zen Center for the evening service.

At around the time the carpenters found the body this morning, I was crossing Lenox Road two more times as I headed back to the Zen Center to meet some others for our Saturday hike, and again as we headed from the Center up to the North Georgia Mountains.

Also, the meeting in Doraville that I went to yesterday, when I saw the messages alerting motorists to the car the suspect was believed to be driving, was very close to where he had taken the woman hostage and later surrendered to the police. I probably couldn’t have crossed the fugitive’s path more times if I had tried.

Greetings from the third most dangerous city in America.

The Atlanta police suffered a public embarrassment when the green Honda that investigators believed the fugitive had car-jacked and used in his escape was found in the very parking garage where he commandeered it more than 12 hours earlier. Authorities had issued an all points bulletin on the Honda, broadcasting its description and license plate number over television, radio and the highway alert network. But about 10 p.m. Friday, someone noticed the car in the garage and notified the police.

Today’s hike itself could not have been nicer. The weather, after a cool and cloudy week, was perfect – sunny and in the 60s up in the mountains (76 when I got back to Atlanta). The turnout was relatively small – only five of us – but we had all hiked together before, so we were an intimate group, very comfortable together. We had the trail to ourselves most of the time, only encountering a very polite group of college boys taking a spring-break backpacking trip and the expected crowd on top of Springer Mountain.

The next Zen hike will be June 11, if the creek don’t rise and the City manages to keep all of its felons behind bars.

As you've probably heard by now, a man on trial this morning for rape, assault, kidnapping and several other felonies grabbed a deputy sheriff's gun in an Atlanta courthouse and opened fire, shooting the deputy in the mouth and killing a Superior Court Judge and a Court reporter before fleeing. The deputy is expected to survive.

The suspect then escaped, gunning down a second deputy outside the courthouse, this time fatally, and carjacked at least one vehicle. He also pistol-whipped a journalist during his escape.

Police in Georgia and neighboring states launched a massive manhunt for the man, appealing to the public to report any sightings. Electronic highway messages were posted with information on the vehicle the suspect was believed to be driving.

I was unaware of all this at 11:30 a.m. while I was driving over to Doraville for a meeting, and wondered what all the highway signs were talking about. The signs were still up as I headed back from the meeting at 1:30 p.m.

According to the press, "Police said they did not know what had provoked the shooting." Well, I'll go out on a limb here and say that maybe it was because he was on trial for rape, kidnapping and other charges.

Atlanta to Brunswick to Atlanta

It's a long drive from Atlanta to Brunswick (4 1/2 - 5 hours) and I should know - I did it today. Twice.

I had to go to Brunswick to look at a piece of property and do a little research for a client, and even though it was only about two hours of work, it was a long day with all of the driving.

Now, there are flights from Atlanta to Brunswick, but they're so infrequent that the day would have been just as long anyway, but with most of the time spent hanging around the airport terminal. Just as long and just as boring.

When I drive to Brunswick, I like to get off of the interstate as soon after Macon as I can, and take the back roads (U.S. 23 to 341 and then on to route 25 into Brunswick), passing through the occasional small town (Cochran, Eastman, Baxley, etc).

I used to do this drive frequently back what seems like lifetimes ago. In the early 1980s, I would head to Brunswick on Monday mornings to go supervise a drilling crew and return on Friday afternoon. I would drive a Georgia DNR pickup (I was assigned a Ford F-150) with no radio. It was explained to me that the taxpayers of Georgia saw no reason to buy state employees a radio to listen to while they were on official business. So, I would bring along a classic boom-box and set it on the floor of the truck and play cassettes of all my early-80s New Wave favorites (Talking Heads, Gang of Four, Romeo Void and Ian Dury come to mind) as I headed down to Brunswick.

Those memories came back as I drove down today in my Jeep Grand Cherokee listening to CDs of my current faves (on this trip, it was mostly Soul Coughing, dj Cheb i Sabbah and Elvis Costello's "The Postman"). The alert reader will probably notice that I've changed more than my music has.

But in addition to the drive and the music, memories of past relationships also came back. As you can imagine, being on the road five days a week took its social toll, so I was often heading south full of anxiety on Monday, and speeding back as early as I could get away on Friday.

As I drove today, I recalled working in 1983 on a long-term pumping test in Brunswick right after Anne had left for Denver, after sharing an apartment with me for a couple of months, and how I kept trying to call her at night from my hotel (this was way before cell phones) and became frustrated by not reaching her. Something like 17 attempts only to hear the phone ring and ring with no answer, and the hotel still wanted to charge me $3.75 for each of the "long-distance calls."

I also thought of the trip along the same route that I took last summer with L., going to and from Saint Simon's Island for the July 4th weekend. And rushing back from Brunswick later that summer on my way to catch a flight to meet her in Budapest, and having to buy her cranberry juice on the way.

Before I left this morning, I had sent L. an e-mail, but then realized as I drove down that I would not be able to read her reply until I got back home (I don't carry a Blackberry, and there aren't any internet cafes in Cochran, Eastman, Baxley, etc). Then on top of that, the battery in my cell phone died, so I couldn't make or receive any phone calls. What if she were trying to reach me?, I wondered. How would she interpret my lack of response? So on the way back home, I drove as fast as I could, even getting a speeding ticket in Dodge County, anxious to get back into the communication zone, and frustrated once again that work was getting in the way of my personal life.

Which is fine when you're in your 20s, but a little unseemly when you're 50.

When I got home, I found that L. had sent me a nice but non-committal reply to my e-mail, requiring no answer, and there were no messages from her on my voice-mail.

It's a long drive from here to Brunswick.

"It is not enough
It is just a habit
Nostalgia, it's no good
Our future was in the past"
- Gang of Four

On this day, March 9th, in 1796, Corsican Napoleon Bonaparte married Josephine, and in 1862 the ironclad warships Monitor and Virginia (formerly the Merrimac) clashed to a draw after five hours of battle at Hampton Roads, Virginia. On this day in 1997, The Notorious B.I.G. was killed at age 24 in a drive-by shooting in L.A.

And it's Mickey Spillane's, Bobby Fisher's, Emmanuel Lewis', Linda Fiorentino's and Juliette Binoche's birthdays.

"It is not enough
Here we go again
I'd like to see something new
It's all so familiar

I wanted to be a good wife
I wonder if I've lived before this life
Or seen it on television
I can't stand the repetition"

Hunter S. Thompson is still dead.