On Colds

I don't like to brag--no, really; I don't. But there are some things at which I excel, and colds are one of them. I seldom have a cold, but when I do, I believe in going all out. If most colds could be compared to a high school production of "Death of a Salesman," my colds tend to be on the scale of a Metropolitan Opera production of "Aida," complete with elephants.

Night before last I awoke at 2:15 to the sound of my sinuses slamming shut. My mouth is dry enough under the best of circumstances, so I try to avoid breathing through it. However, the fun of taking a full 20 seconds to inhale one breath through my nose wore out quickly. Finally, by lying in one position long enough, I was able to open up enough to breathe through one nostril. But the minute I changed position.... So I didn't get back to sleep much before 3:00.

Yesterday my nose began running without my first having had a drink of water (whenever I drink water, it tends to run out of my nose, thanks to the radiation's having rearranged the inner structure of my head). I really should invest in Kleenex stock. Yesterday afternoon I enjoyed a couple 5 minute long from-the-bottom-of-my-toes sneezefests, each sneeze accompanied by the spraying about a quart of liquid. Then came the coughing.

Before bed, I scoured my medicine chest in hopes of finding some NyQuil. I did. The label indicated it had Expired 11-08. Found another bottle, nearly empty, which apparently is still good ...I saw a "13" there somewhere and assumed it meant 2013. Who knows.

Chug-a-lugged it and went to bed. Awoke approximately every 7-15 minutes, feeling like a wrung-out  dishtowel, to blow my nose, cough, get up for the bathroom, etc.

This morning awoke feeling both exhausted and drugged. That I didn't wake up until 7:15 (the latest I've slept in in living memory) was significant, and I wouldn't have gotten up then except that it was blog day and I had to post it early for east-coast readers.

I must admit that reflecting on my total nobility in suffering (albeit, obviously not in silence) gives me some comfort. I like being brave and stoic, but I like it much more when everyone else knows it, too.

As is the natural progression of my colds and their effect, the above was written yesterday and here it is the third day of my piteous affliction (can I have an "awwwwww" here?) and I'm hoping I am approaching the other side of the hill. Still very little enthusiasm or energy for anything...It's Saturday as I write, and I'm working today. Absolutely no appetite, which isn't saying much since I eat almost nothing even when I'm feeling fine. (I won't wander off in that direction, since I've already squeezed as much sympathy as I possibly could get out of that one.) 

But things could always be a lot worse, and I really can't complain--which doesn't stop me from complaining, of course. My colds always hit me like a freight train, but they tend to pass just as quickly, so I'll just think of this one as the 4:10 to Omaha. Ventured out to the store for a new bottle of generic Ny-Quil yesterday (that "13" I mentioned as being on the old bottle could have easily have referred to 1913...I hate throwing anything away). To bed before 10 and up just before 7:30. Slept very well, actually.

So here I sit, still a bit groggy, hoping the worst is behind me, finishing a blog I wonder, as I re-read it, why I'd ever begun. But as I say, I hate throwing anything away.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

On Being 80

On November 14, 2013, I became eighty years old. I can say it with a casualness I am totally incapable of feeling. Me? Eighty years old? I find it similar to staring at the Rosetta Stone and knowing it has great significance, without having any idea of what it says. I do not like being eighty years old. Despite what the calendar says, I am not eighty years old. I am, as my heart and mind keep telling me I am, twenty. Twenty-five, tops.

I grieve for my body. It saddens me beyond my power to describe that I am increasingly unable to care for and protect it as I have always been able to count on it to care for and protect me. I cannot help but feel that the natural aging process to which everyone is subject was greatly accelerated by my 2003 bout with tongue cancer. I won the battle, but at a considerable cost. Catching a glimpse of myself in any reflective surface never ceases to be a shock. 

I have recently taken to drooling. Because my head is bent forward as a result of the cancer treatment, liquid—I have no idea what it consists of, since my salivary glands were destroyed by the radiation—gathers at the front of my mouth and leaks out without my knowing it until I glance down at my shirt. I find it humiliating, but I cannot blame my body.

Life is a gift which comes with a price tag, and growing physically old and drooling are merely part of the bill to be paid for the privilege of remaining alive.

I was somewhat surprised to find, after a quick bit of research, that fully fifty-six percent of Americans live to be eighty years old, so my being eighty is not quite the accomplishment I had assumed it to be. And on the “glass half full” principle, it means I have lived longer than forty-four percent of Americans has or will.

While few people enjoy getting older, the vast majority accept it without question. But for those of us who, however old, recognize the Peter Pan within themselves, the reaction can range from sadness to terror. I encompass the entire range. While I do not fear nor have ever feared death—which I see as merely a return to the eternity from which we each somehow emerged—the irrefutable fact is that even if I live to be over one hundred, I still have far more life behind me than ahead. And like the child who does not want to go to bed…who wants to stay up just a little longer…I don’t want to miss out on anything. The entire future, the progress we will make as a society and a race, the places we will go as a species, and the wonders we today cannot even conceive; all this will happen without me, and I feel cheated.

Of course, at eighty I have lived through momentous historical events those younger than I have only read of or seen in old movies or photographs. I was privileged to have been entertained by wonderfully talented people who are now all but forgotten, to have seen amazing live performances by now long gone legends of the entertainment industry. I listened to others on  radio in the days long before television. Though only in grade school, I lived through WWII and rationing and war bonds and Victory Gardens with a nation that responded as one people, not as Republicans or Democrats. I remember the disgraceful Communist witch hunts led by the equally disgraceful Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose hate-filled tactics and tirades provided the playbook for the likes of the loathsome Ted Cruz and his minions of psychopaths.

I am infinitely (an interesting word, considering) grateful for all of the things I have done that those younger than me have missed, the events that I’ve witnessed, the advances and changes I’ve seen. But the little child in me still wants…more. Always and forever, more.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Frustration

I do not handle frustration well. I do not handle many things well, but that's fuel for a future blog.

One would think that having spent a great portion of one's life being frustrated, one would become used to it. One would be wrong.

I'm sure 20 years or so on an analyst's couch, sorting though the myriads of colorful and sometimes odorous details which make up every minute of my life, would produce the conclusion that my problem rests with my absolute conviction that the universe revolves around me, and that therefore I should have complete control over everything at all times. Well, we can save the 20 years because I know that already.

The problem lies in recognizing something on an intellectual level and acknowledging it on an emotional level. My logic and my emotions are continually in a pitched battle over which will have control. Were I you, I would not place much money on logic.

Logic tells me I am a reasonably intelligent human being, and with that thought comes loud and raucous laughter from my emotions. The simple fact is that I have never, ever been in complete control of my emotions, which as I have often said never really got beyond the "terrible twos" stage of development. When I want something, I want it, and I want it now and can see no reason why I cannot have it. 

That I have never understood life, my place in it, or how I am expected to react to also plays a large role in my own little civil war. I see the world, emotionally, pretty much as a toddler sees it. If it's pretty, I want it. And I do not take "no" for an answer. My logic, which spends a great deal of its time shaking its head sadly and sighing, does its very best to explain what it has learned of the world through reading and observing other people. My emotion totally disregards it. I'm the center of the universe, fer chrissakes! How can things not go the way I want them to?

How can everyone else on the planet with 1/10th my intelligence (ego, anyone?) do things with total, effortless ease, get it right the first time and, most insulting of all to my emotions, not think a thing of it. They wouldn't write instruction manuals, or give careful, full-color illustrated "Insert Tab A into Slot B" directions for assembling a cardboard box if anyone else but me could not understand them.

And once something...anything...triggers my frustration response, all bets are off. My mind totally shuts down to the point where I would be hard pressed to tell you my own name. All rational thought ceases. 

I know full well that frustration is a part of life...I'd imagine even you experience it from time to time. But everyone else seems have a built in mental safety switch which I do not have, and which kicks in, allowing them, after perhaps a moment or two of distress, to recover, calm down, and get on with their lives. I can best describe my reaction to frustration by comparing it to pictures of the World Trade Center collapse. Total, utter, instantaneous destruction with no hope for anyone's survival.

I find it ironic that my totally disproportionate emotional reaction to things which trigger my frustration is directly related to my totally disproportionate sense of my own importance. Because I am the center of the universe, how can this be happening to me? How can I be so stupid? My frustration quickly, like the falling towers, dissolves into rage and self loathing so intense it often, and sincerely, frightens me.

It just struck me that this blog may be an attempt by my logical side to subtly convince my emotions not to over-react so strongly. Unfortunately, it's never worked before, and I wouldn't hold my breath on its working this time, either.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Logic

There are many definitions of the word “logic," but I prefer this one: "the quality of being justifiable by reason." The problem with that one, though, is that the word "reason" has a number of definitions of its own. 

Like all things not scientifically provable--truth, for example--logic tends to be relative. What is logical and reasonable to me may not be logical and reasonable to you.

I've always thought of myself as a logical person. While the world is made up of far more shades of gray than solid whites or blacks, I use a simple rule when it comes to my own logic: if anything raises a question in my mind, I go with the answer that makes the most sense to me.

It's been a great and constant source of frustration for me that while I know that mathematics is based entirely on logic, I have never been able to get beyond the "if Johnny has three apples and gives Billy two" stage. Try as I might, I just don't get it. The only class I ever failed in my four years of college was geometry (or was it algebra? One of those signs-and-symbols things).

Instruction manuals are another form of logic which totally, completely escape me. I try. Really, I do. I'll buy something requiring "some assembly," carefully take out the manual, set it and the 4,792 various pieces out in front me. I get perhaps as far as the period in the second sentence in the manual, and I'm totally lost. Where's my logic when I need it?

I really don't have trouble with those things ruled by the laws of science. I may not understand them, but I accept them, if only because I don't feel competent to question them in depth. I know the conclusions of science are based on empirical evidence proven by those far smarter than me. But when it comes to things dealing with the human mind and human reactions and responses, I step on the banana peel. I am constantly dumbfounded by the ease with which most people simply ignore or walk around bottomless chasms of illogic as though they weren't there.

While I don't want to get into a discussion of religion here, I've never been able to comprehend how normally intelligent people so readily accept on “faith” things totally unsupported by fact or logic. Maybe that's one of the reasons I'm agnostic...I just can't do it. The same people who readily understand that laws of the physical universe prevent pigs from flying totally accept without question the proposition that Jesus ascended bodily into heaven. I'm really sorry, but the word "faith" utterly dismisses logic.

But religion is only one example of how willing people seem to be to accept the most ridiculous premises without the slightest question. For verification of this theory, one need look no further than the self-presumed righteousness of Tea Party Republicans—the embodiment of utter illogic. Perhaps it is because logic requires a certain amount of question-asking, which in turn requires thought. Much easier to simply accept whatever you're told. The foundations of our entire religious and political systems rest to a large degree on this principle. Even the most cursory glance at a newspaper, magazine, or television program demonstrates that when it comes logic, the most basic rules of common sense simply do not apply.  

Just as The Golden Rule is given universal lip service while being universally ignored, so is the totally logical caveat, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." Whether it is naivety or greed or a combination of the two, in almost any conflict involving them on the one side and logic on the other, don't put your money on logic.

While I'd love to take the high ground and claim that my life operates entirely on logic, that very logic tells me I can't do it. A certain amount of illogic seems to just be a part of the human character. I can readily accept that. It’s the overwhelming disproportion of illogic to logic that worries me.

Did that make any sense?

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

How?

I often wonder, my mind being what it is, how we ever manage to function, either as individuals or as a society. There is, granted, considerable evidence to support the premise that we don’t, and that the world is a huge house of cards forever in the process of crumbling.

How can we adjust to waking up one day to find those things which are so integral to our lives--the people we love so very much and who form the very foundations of our being, or the places to which we have such strong attachments--gone forever? Memories are precious and I cannot imagine life without them, but comforting and satisfying as they may be, they can also be cruel. They present themselves to us as a huge, impenetrable glass wall between the now and then. The objects of memory may be so very real you can see them, hear them, feel their presence--you can literally ache for them--but you cannot reach out and touch them.

How is it that we expect so much, yet are willing to give so little?

How can we expect to be treated fairly and with courtesy when we put our own interests above everyone else's?

How can we so easily ignore that which we don't want to see/acknowledge?

How is it that we can so clearly see the faults of others, yet not recognize our own? 

How can we so easily give excellent advice, yet never take it ourselves? 

How can so many people suffer from such severe moral dyslexia, blithely going through life spouting phrases from the bible while condemning anyone who does not think exactly what they do? How can they be so thoroughly convinced that that the Golden Rule says “Do unto others as you would have done unto them.”

How can people possibly justify deliberate rudeness to those who have done nothing to deserve it?

How can we blindly tolerate rudeness and bad service from those we pay to provide those services without voicing our displeasure to someone in a position do something about it?

How can people simply throw their garbage out the car window, or drop it within six feet of a garbage can?

How can so many so readily accept the most blatantly egregious falsehoods without question, and why is it that the more lacking in logic the falsehood is, the more readily it is accepted?

How is it so much easier to hate than to love?

How can we be so smug in the assumption of our moral superiority that we cannot even entertain the thought that there might be even a shred of truth in opinions other than our own?

How can we cling to hope when every shred of existing evidence clearly says there is none?

And for all the negatives in all the questions posed above, it is only that last one that matters, for it is what makes us truly human.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

The Dictionary Schizophrenic

schizophrenia |ˌskitsəˈfrēnēə, -ˈfrenēə|, noun: a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.

• (in general use) a mentality or approach characterized by inconsistent or contradictory elements.

I don’t mean to make light of the very real and often devastating condition of schizophrenia, but if I go by my computer’s dictionary definition of the word, I find I can readily identify with a lot of it.

Schizophrenia is often thought of as one’s having a split personality, and I happily admit to the charge. I truly consider myself, for all practical purposes, as being two separate people: Roger and Dorien, though it is more a matter of a division of responsibilities—Roger’s those duties grounded by the laws of time and physics, Dorien’s the writing of books and blogs, and entertaining Roger—than any clash or conflict of separate personalities.

“Faulty perception,” definitely. I see the world one way when most people obviously see it quite differently. They seem to accept its complexities and contradictions far more readily and casually than I. In my lifelong effort to try to understand the world, I am constantly fine-tuning my perceptions and understandings, much like fiddling with an old-time radio to get rid of static. I’ve always felt myself to be, largely by choice, an outsider, which doesn’t do much to improve the sharpness of my focus.

“Inappropriate actions and feelings,” probably more often than I would like; I seldom respond to things the way society obviously wants and expects me to. 

“Withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion.” Well most definitely the first part. Reality and I have never gotten along. I find it much too restrictive and, often, capriciously cruel. 

Being gay, I automatically if wrongly assume that everyone else is gay until and unless proven otherwise. I see no harm in it and, gays being outnumbered by straights 9-1, I find it oddly comforting. I know it’s totally unrealistic, but why should I care? When I pass an attractive man on the street, I naturally assume he’s gay. Whether he is in his own life or not is of no matter. If I don’t know for a fact that he’s straight, and I assume he’s gay, he’s gay. There is no harm done to anyone, and it pleases me.

“Withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion.” A definite yes on the “withdrawal from reality.” As mentioned above I choose to create my own reality to whatever degree possible. Being a writer helps make this easier, since when I’m in the process of writing a book, I can pretty much step away from the world that physically surrounds me and retreat into the world of my characters. The withdrawal from “personal relationships” is a toss up. Partly because of my physical difficulty in speaking, my verbal interchanges with others are limited. I have never been the “hale fellows well met” type, even when my speech was totally understandable and I was more active in the gay community. Other than my friend Gary, I really have very little face-to-face interaction with other people. I am extremely outgoing on social media sites like Facebook where my age and my speech impediments are not a problem, yet find myself saying less and less on those rare occasions when I am with other people.

“A sense of mental fragmentation.” Oh, my, yes. So many thoughts and ideas and impressions and memories swirl around in my head that I often have a difficult time in grabbing any one of them or, having caught one, holding onto it long enough to do anything with it. I am very easily distracted from whatever I…oh, look: there’s a bird…am trying to do.

My love of books and musicals and movies and flash mobs and all things romantic and fanciful are clearly rooted in my disassociation from reality. They may not be the world’s reality, but they are mine, and I delight in them. I write because I am far more comfortable creating worlds over

which I have some control and influence than coping with the real world around me.

So, am I schizophrenic? From a psychology textbook definition, no. Computer dictionary definition? More than a little. Does it bother me? Not in the least.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

The Reluctant Cynic

For someone who really considers himself an optimist and as such strongly decries cynicism, I fear I give in to cynicism far more often than I care to admit. Of course, I prefer to think of myself as being more jaded than cynical, but realize the line between the two is often so thin as to be non-existent. Be that as it may, no matter how hard I try, I can’t escape the fact that I truly despair by what I see as the state of the world. We seem to constantly be presented with views of the underbelly of humanity.

You’ve undoubtedly noticed that one of the strongest recurring themes in these blogs is my utter inability to understand either the world, or, far too often, other assumed members the species to which I belong. How can anyone with an iota of awareness possibly understand, let alone justify, what lies behind and beneath the incomprehensible stupidity, cruelty, bigotry, hypocricy, and ignorance that constantly assail us—and that we ourselves too often display?

How can any intelligent person cling to hope for the future of mankind when nearly every TV commercial seems very deliberately designed to mislead us; when every computer’s “In” box is awash daily in dangling bait so egregiously insulting to the most basic concept of intelligence? How can anyone capable of communicating thought not only produce such utter garbage but expect anyone capable of reading to respond to it? What motivates them to do so is simple: 99.5 percent of all the steaming elephant dung plopped into our computers' Spam folder—into which I regularly dumpster-dive for blog material—has one reason for being there: greed. Those who respond to it are complicit by eagerly seeking something for nothing (a Ph.D. in brain surgery by mail? Earn $10,000 a day at home typing envelopes? It is to weep!). Our politics is an open sewer of self-serving lies and hypocrisy and misrepresentation.

Our media is increasingly being taken over by talking-head pundits and predatory political sociopaths without conscience, compassion, remorse, or regret (Fox News, anyone?). Their claim to being human is largely genetic, and they apparently derive a sense of superiority in pouring gasoline on any potentially volatile issue.

Of course, the saddest, most discouraging and "abandon-all-hope-ye-who-enter-here" aspect of the internet is that it is, indeed, a net cast into a rich feeding ground for predators. If there weren't huge numbers of people unwilling to use, or incapable of using, common logic, the predators would starve. And while that prospect is unlikely in the extreme, there is some small comfort to be taken from the fact that from what I can gather—the exact same message being received from several different spammers, for example—that major spammers franchise out their crud to lesser spammers. It appears to be some sort of a pyramid scheme and a perfect example of a snake swallowing its own tail. Secondary spammers are conned by the primaries into thinking they're going to get rich. All of which proves that those who send out spam are just as prone to being suckered as the people to whom the messages are sent.

That after several thousand years of struggle and sacrifice to establish a civilization we, as a race, have produced a society which seems to thrive on taking advantage of others, and we are back at the first sentence of this blog.

Gloom and despair descend upon the land, and the dark closes in.

Quick! Someone bring me a basket of kittens!

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).