Dorien Grey and Me

More and Less

2012-02-01T04:46:00.001-08:00

Why does everything have to be so incredibly complicated? It's really very simple. I've known...known...from earliest childhood that I was somehow very different from everyone else and somehow...special. That was confirmed when, at about seven years old, I saw the face of God looking down at me from a cloud. Really! I did! It's one of my favorite stories and I swear it is true. I know it wasn't just a cloud face, like cloud sailing ships and cloud elephants--they're all the same color as the cloud. I was lying on my back in the grass, looking for them, when the cloud I was looking at split in half, and there he was. Just his face. He had a black beard and rosy cheeks and he was looking from left to right and smiling. But the part of this story which disturbed me at the time and disturbs me still is that when he saw me, he stopped smiling and the two parts of the cloud rejoined and he was gone.

I raced into the house to tell my mother, who merely said, "That's nice," and told me to sit down for lunch. Life's been pretty much like that ever since.

I suppose one of the reasons I acquired the belief that I was special was that every other signal the world, my classmates, and adults, sent me made it painfully clear that nobody other than me (and my parents and Aunt Thyra and Uncle Buck) thought I was special. Maybe God was just giving me a heads-up about what I could expect.

But--and this will come as a great shock to anyone who has been following my blogs for any length of time--I digress. I was talking about the simple facts of More and Less. I fully expect, as my due for being special, More of everything good and Less of anything bad. Is that asking too much? And I'm not being selfish here. I want the same for you. Why do there have to be so many mean-spirited, pointlessly hateful people in the world? Like cockroaches and clouds of tiny flying insects that swarm around your head on a hot summer day, what is their purpose, other than to suck as much happiness and goodness and kindness out of the world as they possibly can?

I am aware that, often, wanting more leads me to unseemly-for-someone-of-my-innate-specialness envy for the More possessed by others. A friend recently returned from Hong Kong...the latest of several trips, and I was overcome with envy. He showed videos he'd taken while on the train from Hong Kong's airport, and waves of envy washed over me. They reminded me very much of the train I'd taken between Florence and Naples during my month in Europe last year, and I suddenly drew myself up short, my envy shoved aside by embarrassment. Shoved aside, but not eliminated or even lessened. How could I be so ungrateful for the wonderful things I've been able to do in my own life? Easy...because they happened to me, they were simply the way things were. They were my due.

Reality, my arch enemy, calmly pointed out how very many people have never had the opportunity to spend a month in Europe, and while I fully realized the truth of that, I countered with the fact that some people go to Europe and Asia and Africa and the world's-worth of other exotic places regularly. To me, a month in Europe was "WOW!"--to some, it's a casual "oh, yes," while glancing at their fingernails.

In fairness to myself (and I believe in always being fair to myself even when others, I feel, are not), I have never met anyone who did not want More of something and Less of other things. It could be argued that the concept of More wouldn't mean anything without the concept of Less. Having More would be like riding up on an endless escalator. Everything in life requires a balance, a contrast, to give us perspective, and appreciation for what we have.

So that's it. No matter what wonderful things or experiences I have or have had, or shall have, I want MORE!

I'd make a lousy Buddhist.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

The Boggled Mind

2012-01-30T04:19:00.001-08:00

At times I suspect my mind is a blender set on "puree," with no "off" switch. I am constantly in a state of awe over things I can't imagine anyone else taking the time to think about: simple, passing thoughts which, if grabbed and examined, can indeed boggle the mind.

There are seven billion human beings on this planet, and yet there is only one me and only one you. Seven billion individuals--each of them their own "me." How could this fact alone not boggle the mind? I know, this is sort of like buttonholing a complete stranger on the street and saying, in an awed tone, "Did you realize the sun rises in the east? Every single day?"

Because there are such an infinite number of things to be utterly fascinated by, some sort of inner defense mechanism kicks in to prevent us from becoming so distracted that nothing else gets done. It throws a blanket of unquestioned acceptance over everything not directly affecting the individual, and it is only when we lift up one corner of the blanket to see what's underneath--and again, it seldom occurs to anyone to do--that we can appreciate the incomprehensible complexity and awesomeness of the world around us.

Children have not yet learned that imagination, that wanting to know a "why" for everything, increasingly becomes an anchor slowing down the progress of our individual lives. We learn not to ask, simply to accept. The camera of our mind goes from wide-angle zoom to close-up. Our concerns and interests increasingly focus on ourselves and those immediately around us.

Yet deep within us the wonder resides. Even adults tend to be fascinated by magic. Movies and TV provide for us the wonder we are fairly well unaware is readily available to us if we just open our mind's eye to see it.

Here are two little exercises you can use to demonstrate my point. 1) Open your hand and spread your fingers wide. Now stare at it intently; really concentrate. Examine every crease and wrinkle and tiny crevice. How did they get there? Why are they there rather than a few millimeters in any other direction? 2) Write the word "the" or "an" or your own first name. Stare at it. Again focus all your attention on it. If you do it properly, you will be almost willing to swear that you have never seen that word before.

What's the point to this sort of activity? Looking into corners that you can get by perfectly well without ever looking into? Because our lives should consist of more than getting up and going to bed and filling the interval between with the routines of every-day life. We need to think of things seldom if ever thought of not only as a form of mental exercise, but for the almost childish pleasure it can bring. The mind needs to be boggled every now and then, or it will atrophy.

I admit that my mind is undoubtedly more boggled than most. I probably allow my mind more freedom to wander around than most people, caught up in the necessities of their lives, can really allow themselves to do. I ramble. I digress. The night skies of my mind are a constant fireworks display of thoughts and ideas and memories and impressions. I try to catch as many of the sparks they throw off as I can, and put them in these blogs. Granted, I do no get anywhere nearly as much done...including writing my books...as I should and would were I to reign in my thoughts a bit. But like Oscar Wilde said, "I can resist anything but temptation," and given the choice between reining in my thoughts and letting them run free, it's no contest.

I know you probably can't afford such luxury (if you would even consider it to be luxury), but that doesn't mean you can't afford a minute or two from time to time to open the cage door of your mind and let it fly free.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

All the Pretty People

2012-01-27T04:37:00.001-08:00

I have lived my life in awe and envy of pretty people, aching to be one of them. When I am able to step away from my insecurities and apply the rules of rationality, I realize I am far from alone. Our culture instills in each of us the assumption that beauty is not only the norm, but mandatory for happiness. Just turn on the TV or go to a movie, or pick up a celebrity magazine. Everyone is beautiful.

There is the clear implication that if you are not beautiful, you are somehow not as worthy of attention, admiration, or love as those who are. And whereas the actual proportion of beautiful people to average-looking people is probably around one in twenty-five, the preponderance of beautiful people in the entertainment media reinforces the tendency to equate physical beauty with worthiness.

Sadly, that assumption has solid scientific basis in fact. Research has consistently shown that attractive people have unquestioned advantages in almost every area where selecting one person over another is a factor. Undoubtedly it has roots in the old "survival of the fittest" genetic imperative, altered over time to associate attractiveness and "fitness." (Have you ever noticed that every ad for body-building products features models who have no need for the product being sold?)

Of course, we are all implicit accomplices in all this. We slavishly follow "pretty people" celebrities, no matter how vacuous or devoid of personality or actual talent they may be. They're pretty, and that is enough. Yet in the real world, you can walk through a crowd of ten thousand people and quite literally not see nine thousand eight hundred of them. But I'll bet the pretty ones get your attention, no matter how fleetingly.

Our cultural concept of beauty has varied only through the centuries...and what little variation there has been is centered mainly on the "ideal" weight of the female of the species.

Fortunately, aside from the general universal acceptance of "beauty," each of us also has our own standards of what/who we consider beautiful, based on our individual experiences. I say "fortunately" because there are not that many pretty people to go around. These individual variations on the concept of beauty are vital to the continuation of the species. Were we all are exclusively attracted to the alpha male/female, natural selection would have kept the population to a bare minimum and might have led to the extinction of our race.

There is, I truly believe, something to the concept of "vibes." They do draw people to one another, and either you get them, or you don't. Among gays there is the concept of "gaydar," which we feel enables us to spot other gays in a crowd. I have seen innumerable people who are undeniably beautiful, physically, but from whom I receive no aura of there being anyone beneath the surface of the skin. Conversely, I frequently am physically drawn to people who others would not look at twice.

I've always felt sorry for beautiful people who rely on their beauty to get them what they want from life--and I've known a great number of them. They too often don't have much else going for them and they don't think they need to. Defying all logic, they assume that since they are beautiful now, they will always be beautiful. There is nothing that so saddens me as to compare photos of people my age who were breathtakingly, chest-achingly beautiful in their 20s with photos of what they look like today. What must it be like for them?

I, who was never beautiful--though I now realize to my infinite regret that I was far more attractive than I ever appreciated at the time--am having a hard enough time dealing with all those things of which accumulating age has robbed me. But loss of beauty was never something I had to be overly concerned about. Again, I can't comprehending having to add loss of beauty to the list.

Life plays strange and often cruel games on us. The giving, taking, and lifetime absence of physical beauty is but one of them. We can't change the rules, but we can be aware of them and both recognize and make the most of whatever role we were assigned in the game.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 )

Memory and Reality

2012-01-25T04:36:00.000-08:00

Don Quixote and I, I like to think, have a lot in common. We both live in our own worlds, as independently as possible from reality. But just as Don Quixote was undone by having to face the mirror of reality, I am frequently deeply shaken by the realization that something I clearly and distinctly remember may not, in fact, be the way it actually was. Being something of a pack-rat of the bits and pieces of my life doesn’t help, since I often stumble across concrete evidence, in the form of letters or photographs, that what I was absolutely positive happened at a certain time and/or in a certain way in fact did not.

I resent reality’s unnerving ability to screw up a perfectly good memory. I do not like the fact that memories that have been like old friends, comforting me through the years, can be challenged by fact--and to know that despite all the pains I take to disregard it, reality always wins in the long run.

I’ve had several instances of this since I’ve begun writing blogs. That I have so many photos from my past, and that I have every letter I wrote to my parents during my two years in the Navy have caused my memory to trip over reality on several occasions.

I’ve often told, for example, the story of how my Uncle Buck in effect ran away from home to join the army in WWI, and that my grandmother, who died in the flu pandemic of 1918, never saw him again. It is something I had believed all my life, and it made a very poignant story. And then I came across a photo showing Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, and Uncle Buck--in uniform-- posed together. And therewith, a tiny thread in the fabric of my being was snagged and had to be snipped off. Uncle Buck obviously did return home on leave after his basic training. But the resentment I feel for reality’s intrusion into my memory is, I admit, offset by my pleasure in knowing that Grandma did get to see him again before she died.

In an entry about my beloved Aunt Thyra, I relayed my distinct memory that it was my cousin Jack who had found her dead. But after posting the entry, my second-cousin Tom pointed out that it was his dad, my cousin Cork, who had found her, and I verified that by checking with Jack. A very small lapse in memory, but that it went against what I was so sure I believed bothered me nonetheless.

So what does it matter if memory and reality differ? To me, a great deal, for memories form the foundation of my life—they are an integral part of me, and to doubt them is to doubt everything that has made me who I am. I have built, to the best of my ability, my own world and shaped it to suit myself. I’m comfortable there, and I do not take kindly to the thought that many other cherished, firmly set memories might in fact, be untrue.

You might well think that, since I so dislike reality to begin with, I’d be quite comfortable with a little fudging. But I am not. I take it as yet another reminder that I am only human, and since my very earliest childhood, I’ve always wanted to be, and thought of myself as being, something more. I have no idea why this is so important to me, but it is. Why, I distinctly remember one time when I was about six….

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

Oil and Water

2012-01-23T04:35:00.000-08:00

I've always liked the word "unseemly." It has a charmingly archaic sound to it. How very odd it is that each of us has very personal thoughts, feelings, and opinions of which we never speak; things about ourselves we never discuss or even mention to others because...well, because it just doesn't seem right to speak of them. Perhaps because we are embarrassed by them, or are afraid that others would think less of us were we to make them general knowledge. Or perhaps because it simply is not anyone else's business but our own. The intimate details of our personal sex life is a prime example of the kind of thing we prefer to keep within ourselves. To talk about them would be considered, well, unseemly.

I have a tendency, in these blogs, to talk about things most people don't, but I do it largely as a way of showing that there are areas of unspoken commonality among us all. When I use my own thoughts and feelings as a lab frog to lay out my innards through blogs, it is most often about things in which I hope others might see glimpses of themselves.

My sense of alienation from the rest of the world is a frequent topic because I feel that most people have, though seldom address, at least a small degree of the same feeling of not belonging. But there are areas of my life and personality even I hesitate to confront openly for fear of not being able to express myself properly or for fear of driving off the very people I'm trying to reach out to. It is, frankly, again the case of the little girl's book report on penguins: "This book tells me more about penguins than I care to know." And sometimes I tell you more about me than I'm sure you care to know. This blog is one of those times.

The truth is that I honestly and in all sincerity do not understand heterosexuals. Though as a gay man feel I have a fairly good idea of how other gay men think and act--though I am frequently wrong on specifics--I honestly do not understand the mindset of heterosexual men, and most particularly their relationships to and with heterosexual women. Heterosexual men's utter fascination with things like organized sports and women goes completely over my head. I just don't get it.

I fully understand the physical and sexual attraction of men to men. To me, it's the most natural thing in the world. But while I can accept that the physical and sexual attraction of men to women is some sort of genetic imperative aimed at preservation of the species, I never received or read the manual. I am not the only one in the history of the world to associate the relationship between men and women to that between oil and water, nor am I the first to point out that men and women tend to be complete mysteries to one another. They have very different interests and tend to prefer being with others of their own gender, except....

And it is the "except" that so utterly confuses me. Even in the gay community, where one might expect that the commonality of our sexual orientation might give us a better understanding of and insight into what makes each other tick, the oil and water principle applies. A case could be made that for most practical purposes there are two gay communities: gay men in one, lesbians in the other. There is relatively little social intermingling between the two. In any city large enough to support both gay men's bars and lesbian bars, there will be both, with almost no crossover between them.

Please do not read any degree of misogyny into my oil and water analogy between men and women...gay or straight. To me, as a gay man, women simply...well, are. I can't imagine my life without my female friends and relatives. But in my personal world the oil and water of the genders remain forever separated. There's no vigorous heterosexual shaking of the bottle to try to blend them together in the basic imperative to mate. When it comes to gender incompatibility, I really think I have an advantage over heterosexual men. Like them, I really don't understand the female gender, but since I am not sexually attracted to women, I don't feel the need to.

I do hope you didn't find this topic unseemly, but if you did, it's unlikely that you'd have read this far. I thank you for that.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

Normal

2012-01-20T04:21:00.001-08:00

normal |?nôrm-el|, adjective: conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected, free from physical or mental disorders.

Most people are normal. Most are born mentally and physically healthy and remain largely so throughout life. Because we each must live our entire life within the confines of our physical being, we generally consider "normal" to be whatever we and our circumstances are. And because of that, it is difficult for us to get a true perspective on life. We occasionally see others who are visibly different from ourselves, but while we may empathize, we have no real way of knowing how they view and deal with life on a day-to-day basis.

Yesterday, at Walgreens, I saw a young man in his early-to-mid 20s, to whom I was immediately physically attracted. We were both at the pharmacy counter, and he was perhaps three feet from me. In front of him was a pile of coins with which he was doing something...I couldn't tell what. A quarter rolled under a counter computer and went behind a wire. He searched for it but couldn't find it. At last one of the pharmacists came up and retrieved it for him. A simple enough scene, but in it I immediately recognized that there was something...not "normal"...about him, and my heart sank for him. To be young, and attractive, and yet somehow tragically different, deprived of something most of us take so much for granted...forced me once again to take a look at my own life.

I do not consider myself "normal." In fact, I have worked very hard for most of my life not to be normal in my attitudes, outlooks, or responses to life. But my not being normal is a matter of choice. The young man at Walgreens--and so many more like him, so often unseen or ignored by others--did not have that choice. That they somehow manage to deal with their condition...the fact that whatever their condition may be is "normal" to them...amazes me. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be in their position. But they manage, and my sincere admiration for them is limitless. It is not a matter of their being more brave, or noble than anyone else, though they undoubtedly are...so much as it is of each dealing with their "normal" the best way they can.

As I grow older, I often view with abject terror the fact that what has always, always been "normal" for me, physically, is being taken away from me. I can no longer run. I can no longer eat a full meal, or lift my head high enough to drain a glass of water, or, or, or. Yet when I consider that there are so many people who have never run, or walked, or heard a symphony or seen a sunrise...I feel utterly ashamed of myself for blowing my petty problems so far out of proportion.

Others have so many gifts and talents and abilities...and youth and beauty...that I do not, that I lose track of the fact that there are those who may envy some of the things and experiences which are part of my personal "normal." I have such an infinite number of things to be grateful for, yet I often am not, because those things are "normal" to me and I accept them without thought. I'm sure the same is true of you. It's only when we are able to step outside ourselves--not an easy task--that we can appreciate all that we have. I know that when I am able to do so, I am infinitely grateful for the fact that, while I have lost so much of my physical abilities, lost so many loved ones, and that so many experiences are now forever behind me, I had them! How can I possibly justify resenting their loss to the degree that I too often do?

My sadness upon seeing that young man in Walgreens--and all those physically and mentally deprived of so very many things--is not based on pity, or condescension, but on...what?...an odd sense of guilt that I have been given, even if not forever, so many wonderful gifts I cannot share with them.

But I do share, by these words, what I can in hopes that while our "normal"s are not the same, our ability to understand and appreciate each other's is.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

Immortality

2012-01-18T04:35:00.001-08:00

I remember a line I read once that I loved: “How is it that those who long for immortality get bored on a rainy Saturday afternoon?” Excellent point.

We’ve all wondered what it would be like to live forever; I certainly have, and I realize there is a great difference between the prospect of living forever as an individual and everyone living forever. The latter would be more comfortable, but less practical.

If all humankind were suddenly immortal, we would within decades breed ourselves to the point of there not being a square inch of space on the entire land surface of the planet to hold us all. What would we do then, and how? Spread out like an infestation of bedbugs to other planets, to do the same thing there?

Science has fairly well determined that the universe itself will not last forever. At some point, our sun will grow dim and die, and the earth, too, will die, as will our solar system and our galaxy. Humankind may well, if it survives that long, be able to move on to other worlds, other solar systems, even other galaxies, but those, too, would suffer the same eventual fate, and there would, at some point, be nowhere to run. Mankind, too, must perish.

For a single individual, the gift of immortality would come at a truly terrible emotional price. It’s bad enough for any mortal, in our limited time on earth, to watch those we love age and die around us even as we ourselves grow old. The ending of any relationship is traumatic. Any form of long-term relationship would be impossible when one partner grows older and the other does not. Imagine how terrible it would be to go through that same trauma time after time after time through eternity. And for a single immortal man (or woman) in the end, when the last sun has gone out, what then? There are many things which cannot be conceived of, and this is surely one of them.

What I would wish for all of us, were it in my power to grant such a wish, would be that every human being live in good health, exactly as long as he or she wants to live, barring natural disasters or war or the many other violent methods we are so adept at inflicting upon one another. The decision to die, in all other instances would be completely up to the individual. I’m sure that for the first few hundred years, there would be very few deaths not brought about by the above mentioned means.

But eventually, the “rainy Saturday afternoon” syndrome would set in, and more and more people would say: “Okay, that’s enough. It’s been fun, but now it’s time to move on.” And “move on” to where opens another entirely new book.

I truly enjoy speculations like this, even though there are, and in many cases simply cannot be, any answers. To question is one of Mankind’s greatest gifts: to be denied the answer is one of its greatest curses. So, having little other choice, I think I’ll just try to be as comfortable as I can be with my mortality, and make the most of whatever time I have left. It is, after all, the mind which defines--which is--life.

Pondering the imponderable can go on...well, forever...but when it comes to the subject of immortality, the French philosopher René Descartes pretty much sums it up with three Latin words: Cogito ergo sum--I think, therefore I am. And when I cease to think, I will be no more. Simple as that.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

Words

2012-01-16T04:32:00.000-08:00

I love words. Always have. According to my mother, "Constantinople" was among my very first words, though from whence--a lovely word in itself--I might have gotten it, I'm not sure. I've always been in love with the the sound of words, and their meaning and the thoughts and mental images they evoke.

We tend to live in a world of one- and two-syllable words, with an occasional three-syllable word thrown in. I loathe the dumbing down of the language, and as noted in earlier blogs, the trend toward the stupidification (there is no rule against making up a word if the ones at hand are inadequate) of the general population is both condescending and insulting. TV commercials for products treating "atherosclerosis, or 'athero'", "atreofibrilation, or 'a-fib'", and "low testosterone, or 'low-T'" clearly state that the sponsors think you are far too stupid to be able to pronounce big words. Well, I think they should take their medications for "athero" and "a-fib" and "low-T" and shove them up their "a".

I love multi-syllabic words: lugubrious, tintinnabulation, onomatopoeia, antidisestablishmentarianism. They may be rather difficult to work into a conversation, but they have a delightful sound. Words surge and recede in popularity, and often become archaic. Words like "Thee, thou, thine, prithy, mayhaps, perchance" have a pleasant sound, and are still in our lexicon but almost never heard in general conversation except among the Amish, Quakers, and a few other religious sects.

Word usage is of course limited, to a degree, by the speaker's exposure to them. Like so much else in life, education is the key to the expansion of vocabulary. Lord knows, with the above mentioned concerted effort to dumb down language, the situation isn't made any easier. The less educated one is, the more limited the ability for expression of thoughts. As a direct result, expletives are often the only words the under-educated have to express their anger and frustration. Even so, I find it sadly ironic that that the dumb-down factor extends even to expletives--though one of the most common expletives, "muthf**ker," has four syllables, it is almost always reduced to the first two.

It is the astonishing flexibility of words--the ways they can be combined to evoke any emotion the user wishes to convey--which provide their fascination. Words, whether written or spoken, can be caresses or claws; they can soothe or sting, praise or condemn, be conciliatory or threatening.

Words are keys upon which our emotions are played, and while their combinations most commonly produce ditties or simple folk tunes, they can also produce symphonies. Single words can by themselves play emotional chords: "mom," "America," "cancer," "puppies."

Words paint pictures. They are both artists' brushes and color palate with which masterpieces can be created in vivid colors or the softest pastels.

Spoken words have a slight advantage over written because the human voice allows for inflection where, even when shown in italics, bold-face, or underlined, written words do not. Conversely, written words have the advantage of being able to be rethought and revised before they are released to the world, whereas spoken words, once they have passed the lips, cannot.

Two of mankind's greatest blessings are vocal cords and the intelligence to have invented writing, both of which depend on words. And words are just one more example of the amazing, albeit all but ignored, complexity of human existence.

The 26 letters of the English language contain every book ever written and every thought ever expressed. All you have to do is put them in the right combinations.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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

Some Thoughts on Poetry

2012-01-13T04:31:00.000-08:00

If all forms of written expression could be considered a family, poetry would definitely be the odd uncle, the spinster aunt, the strange cousin. It is, without question, the most subjective form of writing. Arguably, scientific and technological writing aside, it can be the most intricate and complex. For a number of reasons, many people are uncomfortable with poetry much above the nursery rhyme/limerick level, and indeed it can be both obscure and intimidating. Even the simplest of poetry is probably far more difficult to translate from one language to another than prose, simply because words that rhyme in one language do not rhyme in another.

The most elemental poems have a rhythm you can literally beat out on a drum ("da-dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-dah, da-dum-da-dum-da-dah"). Like the various forms of prose, poetry has certain set rules of which I am largely ignorant but which, like the rules of prose, are, I gather, shot so full of exceptions as to resemble a Swiss cheese. Most people expect a poem to rhyme, but it doesn't have to. I think it's probably generally agreed that the most important thing a poem must have is a definite sense of rhythm, of meter, to the words, even when there is no rhyme.

Poetry and news reporting are at opposite ends of the writing spectrum, with all other forms falling somewhere between the two. Interestingly, news writing and poetry require an economy of words to convey their message. But whereas news writing is among the simplest, most straight-forward, and easiest to understand forms of writing, poetry can be the most difficult.

It's not that poetry can't be simple, as the above mentioned nursery rhymes and limericks verify, and the simpler the poem, the more people can relate to it without feeling they are being challenged or their intelligence threatened. Emily Dickinson and Dorothy Parker are two very different types of poet, yet they share the ability to say complex things in the simplest possible way.

It's doubtful that any other form of writing evokes a stronger or more visceral response, either positive or negative, than poetry. The power and beauty of poetry lies in the careful selection of words calculated to compress thought into the smallest possible package, so that relatively few words convey the broadest and most vivid mental images.

I think it's safe to say that people, as a whole, tend to view poetry with a disquieting suspicion, charging (often rightly) that it is too often abstract or obtuse. Those who enjoy abstraction and/or the obtuse tend to get it. Those who don't, don't, and for many--including me--there is a vague sense of resentment in the implication that if I was as smart as I thought I was...or as I should be...I'd have understood it. If I don't, obviously it's my fault. Poetry smacks, in the minds of many, of elitism, snobbery, and assumed intellectual superiority. That poets seem drawn to archaic and ponderous words and obscure illusions doesn't help.

I have subscribed to The New Yorker magazine for years (okay, primarily for the cartoons). I can honestly say that I am utterly incapable of understanding one poem out of one hundred the magazine publishes. I find that frustrating, and I protect my easily bruised ego by telling myself that the magazine deliberately puts them in there as examples of the Emperor's New Clothes--to get readers to "oooh" and "aaaah" over pure gibberish only because they fear they'll appear stupid if they simply admit they don't get it.

There are poems I love and poems I simply cannot force myself through. I like haiku because it is, to me, probably the most compact form of poetry. It is, in a way, a distillation of distillations. Good haiku is the Turkish espresso of poetry--the distilled essence of thought.

I dabble in poetry myself, and believe that writing poetry is good practice for anyone wanting to write more concisely. I stand in awe of beautiful poetry as I stand in awe of beautiful prose. But in the end, everything still all boils down to simple truth that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

Judge and Jury

2012-01-11T04:45:00.001-08:00

There are those who devote far too much time reflecting on their weaknesses and shortcomings, examining each through a magnifying glass as though they were so many insects-on-pins in a display case. They are their own judge and jury. Alas, I tend to be one of them. And while, way down deep, I know I am not being fair to myself, and that I’m not really all that bad, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve always measured myself against others and inevitably come up short. But I am saved from too much "woe is me" anguish by the realization that I'm the one doing the measuring. And I’m talking about it here because, once again, I think I am not totally alone in being far harder on myself than reality dictates, and that in my self-imposed negativism, you might catch just a glimmer of yourself.

Though I cannot be absolutely sure from whence my lifelong, deep-rooted sense of inferiority and unworthiness come from, other than my tendency toward melodrama, I think I have put something of a handle on it.

It most certainly was not the result of my parents’ actions. They loved me unconditionally and never criticized me any more than I’m sure any parent criticizes a child. But I have always lived in a world of dreams, and dreams can never live up to reality. I don’t think I ever fully was able to separate fairy tales and Santa Clause and all the wondrous things that I found in books from real life. I expected myself to have all the sterling qualities, all the marvelous talents and abilities that the heroes in books and movies had.

I was, I felt—and again, it was only I who felt it—a great disappointment to my father because of my total inability to grasp the concept of organized sports, which he loved. The fact that I was also what I’ve always unkindly referred to as a “motor moron”—totally lacking in the hand-eye coordination which leads to physical grace—created a very real sense of self-loathing, echoes of which remain with me to this day.

I looked around me and saw how easily other people seemed to be able to interrelate, how effortlessly they understood what was expected of them by life and society, did wonderful things with astonishing grace, and comparing myself to them, how could I not have felt less than they? I could not understand why I could not be what everyone else seemed to be. So many of the things I ached to be, even as a child…graceful, talented, handsome, at ease in any situation, able to fit in anywhere…I knew I was not and never could be. Therefore, obviously, I was inferior and unworthy.

And of course it wasn't exactly easy growing up in a world in which a boy who knew he truly, purely loved other boys was constantly told by the entire world around him that he was an abomination in the eyes of God, would burn forever in the fires of hell, and was generally not fit to call himself human. (But as willing as I have been to believe so many negative things about myself, even as a child I never bought into that nonsense. One of the reasons I had abandoned organized religion by the time I was twelve was because if God considered me to be an abomination, then why was I also told I was made in His image? I was never very good at specious logic, and I got it every Sunday at Sunday school...which, I'm sure, is why I became an Agnostic.)
I suspect one of the reasons I concentrate so strongly on my own flaws is because I do not feel qualified to comment on the flaws of others. And besides, I know my own so very much better. I can judge myself; I have no right to judge anyone else. And, again, I truly do realize that I am not nearly as bad as I insist upon making myself out to be. It’s just that I expect so very much more out of life…and myself…than it is realistic to expect.

The prosecution...and the defense...rests.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

Baggage

2012-01-09T04:32:00.001-08:00

When we are born, each of us is handed an empty suitcase and the general instruction, "Here 'ya go, kid! Fill it up." And from that moment on, we start filling it with experiences and memories and plans and hopes. Most people fill it pragmatically, making sure everything is orderly and neatly folded. They choose with care exactly what is to go into it and where it is to go. When it becomes too full, they remove or shrink older items to make room for new ones.

Not, alas, I. Almost anything within my reach goes into my suitcase. Big things, little things, important things, trivial things...no matter. If I have seen it or experienced it or contemplated it, in it goes. And no one said I couldn't have more than one suitcase, so as soon as one is filled, I grab another and start repeating the process. Suitcases then give way to steamer trunks and steamer trunks to crates and crates to shipping containers.

All well and good, except for the fact that we must then carry our baggage with us whenever we move, physically or emotionally, from one place to the other, and the older one gets, the more there is to carry and the harder it is to carry it all.

You might think that physical baggage would be relatively easy to get rid of. That old threadbare chair? The chipped platter? Simple: just pitch them. But I bought that chair when I first moved to Los Angeles. My lost love Ray sat in it. My mother sat in it. Aunt Thyra sat in it. Friends now long dead sat in it. To throw it away is to throw part of them away. That chair is a tangible piece of the past. I have only to look at it and I can see everyone who has sat in it. It is a buffer between me and the cold winds of time and reality.

That chipped platter? It is the only remaining piece of a set of china Mom bought for Norm and me when we were together. I have not used it in years and probably won't ever have occasion to use it again, but how could I throw it out?

I'm fully aware of how silly and counterproductive it is of me to make such strong connections between inanimate objects and people, and how impractical it is to keep things just to keep them. Having too many physical things limits options for mobility. If I want to move from one apartment to another, I have to pack it all up, carry it wherever it is I'm going, and then unpack it. To not be tied to any one place, to be able to take off for wherever I wanted to go whenever I wanted to go there is a dream totally negated by the knowledge that I couldn't possible do it...what would I do with my things?

When Norm died, I had to get rid of 40 years of his physical baggage. The minute he died, its value to him ended. The same will of course be true of my indispensable things when I go. But until that moment...

And the problems created by physical baggage are nothing compared to those of mental baggage. They can weigh down the soul to the point where it can be nearly impossible to move forward with one's life. Regrets, grudges, and longings are the reefs and shoals in the ocean of life.

Who we are as individual human beings is too often dictated by our emotional baggage. The heavier the baggage, the less able we are to throw it off and, worst of all, the less able we are to change what we know should be changed. Temerity, distrust, fearfulness are all direct results of our emotional baggage and they stifle growth as surely as a rock set atop a seedling.

And what can be done, at this point in time, to deal with the problems we have largely created for ourselves with our various baggage? It would depend on how hard we are willing to work to do it...on what we can force ourselves to part with. Alas, it is one of those things I fear are far easier said than done.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

Relapse

2012-01-06T04:54:00.001-08:00

Two months or so ago, I went cold turkey in an attempt to withdraw from my addiction to internet spam, which is, I can assure you, just as insidious as addiction to cocaine or heroin or alcohol. I did it by forcing myself, each morning, to go to my spam folder and, without allowing myself to look at a single message, to hit "Delete."

Sadly, as so often happens with addicts, I made the mistake, yesterday, of thinking that I had indeed overcome my addiction, and therefore could allow myself just a quick peek at the come-on opening sentences designed to lure into their web the addicted and those who should not be allowed to handle sharp objects. And then, having read the come-on, I could not resist looking at the entire message.

And looking at one led to looking at another, and another, and...

But the worst part of my addiction is not only that I am compelled to read this crap, but to mentally respond to it!

The following shining examples of the spammer's art are reprinted exactly as received, and my mental reactions as I read.

"MY HEART CHOOSEN TO BLESS YOU. - Dear Beloved, I am Mrs. Alisa Losif and i have been suffereing from ovarian cancer..." (And you, lady, are so far beneath contempt for exploiting a serious disease to scam money that you can't see the bottom by looking up.)

UNITED NATIONS "((($5,000USD ENCLOSED))) - How are you? We happily announce to you the draw of the United Nations programs held on...." (I am fine, thanks, and flattered that the United Nations would care enough to ask. I regret, however, that there was no $5,000 enclosed. How does one enclose $5,000 in an email, anyway? Please send via regular mail. I'll wait.)

Mr. ObdenValentine Ibru "I NEED YOUR TRUST TO EXECUTE THIS DEAL -Hi, Can you handle US $35M for an contract investment fund of Late Mr. Kir...." (Are you kidding? Of course I can! I'm always handling US$35M deals for complete strangers. Just tell me how much earnest money you need, and it'll be in the mail this afternoon!"

"I AWAIT YOUR URGENT REPLY" (My reply may be urgent to you, but it certainly is not urgent to me. And have you ever heard of lower-case type?)

"Rock her hard on your first date - College girls desire me, cool dudes worship me, all thanks to my might rod." (Your "might" rod? I'm sure no matter how "might" it is, it can't match the size of your ego.)

"Change your life in 60 seconds. - She makes 9681. Scam or real? Find out here." (9681 what? A day? A week? A year? And "scam or real?"....wow, that's a tough one.)

LORI GONZALES - "Let's go!" (Dorien Grey - Let's not!)

"Shocking Investigation Report - Local Mom Quits Her Job She Hated...Click Here" (Stop the Presses! 'Shocking' isn't the word for it. Really, it isn't. Oh, whatever shall the poor lady do? Tell me, please!But let's wait until hell freezes over first.)

"Germany shows Portugal the strength in an extra inch - Make your lady cry out in joy every night." (Oh, for the love of God!!!)

"talk to girl - have a look..." (Me gay man! Me no want talk to girl! Me no want look.)

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

"Wheeeeeee!"

2012-01-04T05:07:00.000-08:00

I've always wondered why people say they're "catching a cold." Why would anyone catch a cold? If I see one coming, I duck. The problem with colds is, in fact, that I seldom see them coming until they sneak up from behind and whop me on the back of the head with a coal shovel.

Most of the time, that's just the way it happens with me: I'm fine one moment and lying face down on the pavement the next (okay, so that's figuratively, but you get my point). Usually, it follows the same course: sniffles and a runny nose are followed by my sinuses slamming shut and my nose becoming Niagara Falls. My energy draining away like water from a bathtub. Intermittent coughing slowly increases in frequency and intensity until I start looking at the Kleenex into which I've just coughed, expecting to see bits of lung tissue. I'm fortunate in that I seldom am actually sick during a cold, but just feel generally "Blah!" (A scientific term on the same level as "Low testosterone, or 'Low T'" and "Atherosclerosis, or 'Athero'") The total duration of any given cold varies, but it sometimes seems as though I get a cold sometime around October 1 and it lasts through the following September. And then it abates a bit and I begin the slow, slow Sisyphean push up the hill to whatever passes for normal for me.

Because we all tend to have rather short term memories when it comes to remembering exactly how it felt to be ill while we're ill, I must admit that, looking back on a cold after it's gone, the mental masochist in me tells me that I rather enjoyed it. A bad cold provides me with the chance to play martyr, which I secretly rather enjoy. And, as my friends will attest, I do it very well. Long-suffering nobility is my forte.

I suppose it all goes back to my dislike of reality. Feeling fine most of the time is reality for most of us; being ill is not. There is an element of drama in it...an uncertainty in each moment as to what might be coming next.

Type-A personalities live for challenge, for adventure, for a cliff to climb or an ocean to sail solo. I'm far too timid and physically uncoordinated/inept to ever attempt anything that might result in physical harm. But my mind is constantly putting me in positions of emotional risk and I really must enjoy it or I wouldn't do it. Dealing with a cold is my equivalent of trekking through a rainforest without a compass. It's about as adventurous as I care to get.

I often think of myself as the snail riding on the top of the turtle's shell, yelling "Wheeeeeeeeee!!"

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 )

Fifty-Six Years, Minus One Day

2012-01-02T04:39:00.000-08:00

So as most of us step into a new year, I decided to step back fifty-six years to a then brand-new 1956, via a letter written to my parents while serving aboard the USS Ticonderoga in the Mediterranean. I'd be pleased to have you come along.

3 January 1956

At sea again and a beautiful day, as most of our days at sea are. The sky has just enough clouds to make it interesting, and the sun made it the kind of warm one expects of the Mediterranean-—but I've been too thoroughly disillusioned to be fooled.

I would have liked to spend a lot more time “outside,” but we’re so busy in the office I had to dump my wastebaskets and return. Spent most of the afternoon and evening drawing lines on ledger cards—a job even an imbecile would grow bored at. Damn—the ship is shaking so badly I can scarcely write! It gets carried away like that every so often.

All I’ve been thinking of all day is getting out—I have it all in my mind’s eye; I’ll have less than two months to do when we get back to the States—mom and/or dad will fly out to Norfolk on the 11th, and we’ll leave for home on the 12th, or soon thereafter, taking from three to five days to get there (we drove the 800 miles from Pensacola to Norfolk in three days, traveling only from 10 in the morning till eight at night). I’ll spend all my time buying clothes and getting ready for college; sit in front of the TV set and swap sea stories with Lirf—oh, stop!

Had a most interesting dream last night—all my dreams seem to have plots and are very detailed—I can’t recall whether I dream in color or not, but I think so. Anyway, I was in Shanghai on an American ship during the Japanese invasion. Something happened to the ship and I found myself in a longboat—a powered liberty launch. We decided to try to head inland rather than face the Japanese fleet in the harbor. I was sitting up forward and was terrified that Jap troops along the shore would open fire—I kept expecting to feel a bullet in my back any moment. The next scene (I change scenes frequently without losing the main thought) we were much further up the river, plowing through a bunch of floating debris and branches—I remember watching the boat’s wake washing over them, and the branches riding the waves. To my right was a fallen bridge, a large section of rusty metal jutting from the water. In the next scene we were on shore, near a two-story American-type white frame house, with outside stairs leading to the second floor. On the porch railing was a hand-winding air raid siren, and a Chinese man standing by it, watching the sky. An American woman and her two young sons lived in the house, and wanted to go with us as we fled inland Suddenly (I was now detached and acting merely as a spectator) a plane dived out of the sky. The woman ran from the house, pushing one son ahead and pulling the other, when a bomb exploded directly behind her—I saw her outline in the doorway for an instant and then she and it were gone. I remember thinking with little or no emotion that now we had a young boy (the one who’d gone ahead) on our hands. End.

Not exactly Hollywood, but what do you want on the spur of the moment?

Mom asked me in a recent letter how the food was over here. Well, I really don’t know—in hotel restaurants and on tours, it consists always and everywhere of spaghetti; followed by veal (sliced), a few potatoes (quartered and semi-French fried), and spinach; cheese, and fruit. When I’m by myself I get only Pizza—which is fairly good, but not all decorated like American—just cheese and tomato. And always white wine—which is only a few steps below vinegar on the fermentation scale. I haven’t had a drink of milk since we left the States.

New Year’s Day Nick, I, and two of the other guys decided to go to Pompeii by taxi. It turned out that Pompeii is closed only two days a year—Christmas and New Years. So we went into New Pompeii and visited the Cathedral—the second Cathedral of Italy in importance. It was very pretty—especially the different marble columns around the altar. Some of the large supporting columns are covered in pure gold leaf—over the altar is a fresco of the Virgin Mary, embossed with a diamond necklace—actually, her whole body from the waist up is studded with them, worth a paltry 2000,000,00 Lire (about $300,000—give or take $100,000). I was impressed….

The Other Side of the Window

2011-12-30T05:40:00.001-08:00

If you've been reading these blogs for any length of time, you probably know I seem to have a certain set of themes to which I return probably too frequently. Perhaps the most common of these themes is the fact that I simply do not get it. I never have gotten it, and chances are I never will. I have spent my entire life on the other side of the window, looking in and watching life without really comprehending it.

The entire list of those things I have never understood is far, far, too long to lay out here, but here are just a few of the more frequently visited:

I’ve never understood organized religion. From everything I’ve seen, heard, read, or experienced, it has caused more human suffering than all the natural disasters, plagues and wars--many of which have been fought over religion--in the history of mankind. Despite the occasional notable exception--your religion, I'm sure--organized religion has consistently fostered hatred and intolerance and all the things it claims to be trying to counter. I have never been able to comprehend how simply and sincerely following the Golden Rule would not all but eliminate the need for organized religion. I find it infinitely sad that "Do unto others as you would have done unto you" has been almost universally corrupted into "Do unto others as you would have done unto them."

I’ve never understood organized sports. Enjoying physical activity in the form of sports makes sense, and provides great exercise. Sitting on an overstuffed sofa or a barstool guzzling beer and scarfing down bowls of popcorn, peanuts, and pretzels while watching people you have never met and never will meet do what you’re too damned lazy to do totally escapes me. This week’s BIG GAME!!!! over which people seem to drive themselves into an incomprehensible frenzy, was preceded by last week’s Big Game and an endless string of long forgotten Big Games before that. It will be followed by an infinite string of others. And their point is…?

I’ve never understood computer spam. Do these cretins who so blatantly invade my privacy actually, seriously think for one nanosecond that anyone who has had a computer for more than two days is going to open a message whose subject line is: "Hi. Bedroom faucet rises the early..." or "We cure all disease" or, worst of all, those little strings of small squares with no text at all? And how could anyone with the intelligence of a hamster actually respond to a letter from a "Barrister" in Nigeria informing you that a billionaire relative you have never heard of has died tragically in a car accident and named you sole beneficiary to his (interestingly, it’s always a "his") estate. But they do, and I truly despair for humanity.

And I’ve never understood heterosexuals. Never. I’ve lived among them all my life ("Why, some of my best friends are heterosexual") but have always felt totally apart from them, as though I were a different species. I love my family—heterosexuals all—, am deeply fond of my straight friends, and I like and appreciate many others, but I have never really understood them, and never fail to be mildly infuriated by the automatic assumption of heterosexuals that everyone is heterosexual…or should be. They aren't.

But the primary thing I do not understand, and which has caused me more anxiety, frustration, and grief than all my incomprehensions listed above, is why I am not—and no matter how hard I try, can never seem to be—the person I so desperately want to be. But I take some small consolation in the thought that maybe I’m not the only one standing on this side of the window.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

"Hello, Stupid!"

2011-12-28T04:40:00.001-08:00

I buy a lot of chocolate-covered donuts. I buy them largely because, in the brand I buy, each one has 320 calories, and with as little as I eat, the calories are important. They come in a box of 8 large donuts and cost $3.69 a box. Lately, I’ve had some problem in finding them. Yesterday, there were none. But I saw they had apparently replaced the 8-donut box with a much smaller 12-donut box (each donut about half the size and having 160 calories each). The price remains $3.69. But, hey, they’re giving me four more donuts! Oh, thank you, donut company! So I’m getting, in effect, 1/4 less product for the same amount of money? They’re banking (literally) on the fact that I’m far too stupid to realize I’m being screwed.

H.L. Mencken once said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” and business has certainly taken this as a mantra.

Try to reach any large company by phone. Call any day, any time of day, and the first thing you hear is “Due to unexpectedly heavy traffic....” followed by “Your call is very important to us.” Oh. Okay. Unexpectedly heavy traffic. Sure. How can they possibly anticipate that more of their 2 million customers might want to get in touch with them than their two switchboard operators can handle? (“Your call will be answered in approximately 53 minutes.”) And of course I absolutely believe them when they reassure me that my call is of vital importance to them. (Who am I, again?)

There’s a ubiquitous ad running on TV offering a “FREE Credit Report!” It’s only when you read the small print or are stupid enough to actually try to call the number they give you that you discover the “Free” only applies if you spend a fortune to join something or other—I take great pride in not remembering what.

I’ve commented somewhere else on once having been conned into buying a bag of potato chips with a huge banner saying: “NEW! Larger Bag!” The price went up a quarter, but comparing the “NEW” bag to a remaining “older” version showed that the amount of chips in the bag remained unchanged. Once again, the manufacturer is confident that the buyer is truly too stupid to see through the con.

And furniture store ads screaming “No Interest until 2215!!” are counting on your being far too stupid to realize this means you’ll be paying for it until 2215.

Fast food ads show a two-foot-high sandwich from which meat and cheese and wondrous things literally are falling out of the picture-perfect bun. They’re confident when you’re suckered into actually ordering one of the things, you’re too dumb to notice that you need a magnifying glass to locate whatever is squashed inside an unappetizing bun. The important thing to them is that you came in and bought the thing, and I’ll bet you ten million dollars you never once said anything about it to the manager.

Debt consolidation loans, tax refund advances, and a slew of other altruistic-sounding offers to provide you with economic assistance are based on the assumption—sadly too often correct—that those who take advantage of them are too stupid to realize that they not only still have to pay off the debt for which they needed help in the first place, but have to pay a hefty additional amount to the company who “helped” them.

Hard not to despair, at times. But I’ve got to cut this short—I’m expecting delivery on my new Bow-Flex machine. In three weeks, I’m going to have a body like a 25-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger. Guaranteed!

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

Choices

2011-12-26T04:19:00.001-08:00

Life is comprised of a set of things which cannot be changed and an endless succession of choices for those that can, and who we are today is a result of a combination of the two.

We are born bound to the rules laid out by our individual DNA: basic physical structure, eye and hair color, susceptibility to certain medical conditions, etc. But it is the choices we make with every other aspect of our life which predominate in making us who we are as individuals and set us apart from every other human being. Choices, like sins, can either be of commission or omission; consciously making a choice on something gives us at least the sense of having some sort of control. It seems that too often we opt for choosing by omission; we just let things happen, even in situations in which a conscious choice could definitely effect the outcome. Simply ignoring a problem...not dealing with it head-on by making a choice one way or the other results in the choice being made for us by our inaction, and the outcome may not what we had anticipated or wanted. Choices, once made, are difficult if not impossible to change.

We choose our friends and partners, our career, and our interests. We benefit from wise choices and suffer the consequences of the bad. But when we don't bother to make conscious choices, we are ceding a degree of control over our own lives, and the outcome tends to be more often negative than positive.

The wise learn from their past choices and factor that into future choices. Some do not. I've mentioned before a man I knew who had been married five times. Each of his wives were all but physically identical. He met each one in a bar. Not one of the five marriages lasted longer than two years. The last time I saw him, he introduced me to a woman I'm sure he planned to make wife number six. She looked exactly like the other five, and he met her guess where?

One of the major choices I personally have made is to ignore reality as much as possible. I find reality simply too confusing, too infinitely frustrating. I'm fully aware that ignoring reality is...well, unrealistic, and that by doing so I become increasingly isolated from the world around me. Those things and people I enjoy, I acknowledge. Those I do not, I ignore to the best of my ability. I know they're there; I simply choose to ignore them. It's not easy; the world is a pretty big place and there are a lot of people in it and a lot going on, but by and large it works for me.

The ability to actively choose has moved mankind forward through history. As a society, we are always making choices to improve our lot. And as with individuals, society sometimes makes bad choices.

One choice I do wish would become universal is not to remain silent on those things you sincerely believe to be fundamentally wrong; not to choose to ignore injustice or bigotry or hatred. The choice to speak up to prevent these things may not always be easy or comfortable, but it is why we were given the gift of choice in the first place.

There are an infinite number of times when we are not even aware that we have a choice and unconsciously allow our emotions select one--usually a negative one--by default. I experienced that exact situation not more than five minutes ago. I was trying to upload a program which, because I am firmly convinced cyberspace has it in for me, did not want to be uploaded. As is my wont, I reacted by growing furious at the computer for not doing what I wanted it to do and, more so, at myself for not being able to do something a three-toed sloth could undoubtedly handle with one arm tied behind its back. And then I suddenly realized that I had the choice to look at the situation in the light of what real difference flying into a rage made. It made none of course, and I calmed down.

My life would be much simpler if I can just remember, the next time something similar happens, that I have a choice in my response. I'd venture to guess the same might be true for you as well.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 )

Dues

2011-12-23T04:38:00.001-08:00

I'm not sure why it is that the holidays seem to be the only time of the year we are even vaguely aware of our connection and obligations to humanity, and our need to be better than we are. I guess we're all just so busy the rest of the year living our individual lives and fending off real and imagined assaults of one sort or another that it doesn't really occur to us that we are part of a greater whole.

We often seem unaware of--or choose to ignore--the fact that life comes with obligations, not only to our family and our employer, but to life itself. Membership in the human race is not free; there are dues. That we actually owe anything for the privilege of being alive never seems to occur to most people, and is only even peripherally acknowledged during the holidays with the receipt of a mental "Past Due" notice.

We all go through life alone and the Prime Imperative of humankind--which surely must be imprinted somewhere in our DNA--is survival of the species. Our being totally separate individuals is somewhat blurred by the fact that most of us are fortunate to have others emotionally close to us with whom we form strong bonds. But even so, the general tendency is to look out for ourselves, frequently at the expense of others.

It is difficult at times, even for those aware of our obligations to our fellow human beings, to meet them. The sad fact is that too many of our species are loathsome, utterly despicable animals ruled by bigotry, hatred, greed and selfishness, apparently devoid of any of the nobler qualities we like to think of as being synonymous with being human. That many had these negative qualities forced upon them in their formative years is a reason, but not an excuse, for who they are. We must deal with them with some degree of understanding and, hard as it may be, extend to them the tolerance they would not reciprocate.

Living, as we do, within our own little cage of flesh and bone, our personal problems tend to be magnified. It is difficult to leaven them with the knowledge that we are not the only humans to have experienced them, and that no matter how severe our specific problems may be, there are many who suffer equally and probably far worse.

The holidays are often a time of sorrow for those who have suffered the loss of those whose love and companionship eased their way through life. Yet there is often a note of selfishness in this sorrow. It is we who grieve for them--they are beyond grieving. Rather than feel sorrow that they are no longer with us, we should focus on how infinitely lucky we were to have ever had them at all, for however long we did. Though they can no longer live for themselves, we can devote our lives to living for them. Though we are no longer able to do things for them, to show them friendship and kindness, we are able to do it for others. Often the simple gift of a smile or a kind word can mean more than we can imagine to someone who may not have received one in a long time.

Economic times are hard for everyone. But surely we can each somehow find $10 for a local food bank, or an animal shelter, or some other worthy cause. Just because we may not be able to receive gifts from those loved ones now gone, there is no reason why we can't give in their name. The money we would have undoubtedly spent on them could be given to the needy in their name. The dead are alive in our hearts--why not keep their memory alive somewhere other than there?

None of us is a saint. We are all selfish and greedy to an extent...it all goes back, again, to the Prime Imperative: survival. It's part and parcel of being human.

Life is full of obligations. Each month we get a phone bill and a telephone bill and a cable bill. None of us likes paying them, but we do it. Why should feel we can ignore the debt we owe for our lives?

None of this is easy. But where did we ever get the idea that it should be?

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

When Reality Isn't

2011-12-21T04:29:00.001-08:00

I think the happiest moments of my life have been when reality is the most unreal. As I try to call up some examples, I'm almost swept away by them: my first "love affair," in junior high; soaring, all by myself, through a valley lined by whipped-cream clouds while in the NavCads; having a beer and a pizza with fellow NavCad Harry Harrison on the beach at Pensacola while "Unchained Melody" played on the jukebox; seeing the Rock of Gibraltar emerge through the daybreak fog as the USS Ticonderoga entered the Mediterranean on my 22nd birthday; that magical week in Cannes in July of 1956 and my return to the same places 55 years later; my first truly romantic kiss with a beautiful college classmate in a car parked behind a grain silo near Sycamore, Illinois.

My entire life, I've used my vivid imagination to protect myself from the harshness of reality. My earliest escapes from reality were, as with all children, through play, either alone or with friends ("Let's pretend like...") and, when I leaned to read, through books. Ironically, I was a voracious reader up until the time I began writing my own books.

Books provide perhaps the most intimate form of escape from reality. They rely totally on the reader's mind to convey their power. Radio, and later TV, provided flip-of-a-switch, turn-of-the-dial, any-time escape from reality. But while movies and TV add the dimensions of sight and sound to the unreality, they do so to the great detriment of imagination...if you can see and hear what's going on, you don't have to use your mind to do it for you. (The switch from radio to television was very hard on the careers of many radio personalities--Amos and Andy being the primary example--when their long-time fans realized that the characters they had created in their minds were totally different from the ones on the TV screen.)

But it is the experience of live theatre, of being in the same room (albeit usually a very large room) watching real people suspending reality in real time which, for me, holds a special fascination. How many countless hours of sheer, soul-soaring wonder and beauty have I spent sitting in a darkened theater watching reality-that-isn't unfold on the stage in front of me?

I think I had my first exposure to the theater when I played Raggedy Andy in a third-grade school production of Raggedy Ann. My only real memory of it is having my dad ask, after the performance, "Did your voice have to be that high?"

I can't recall, exactly, when I saw my first professional production...possibly while still in high school, with my mother. But I definitely remember going with a group of friends during my freshman year in college to see New Faces of 1952. But it probably wasn't until I went to New York in 1953 with my classmates/friends Stu and Zane during the break between my freshman and sophomore years, that confirmed my addiction.

The first show I saw on Broadway was during that trip: Rogers and Hammerstein's Me and Juliet, which used Rogers' score from the popular TV show, "Victory at Sea." From that moment, there was no turning back, and I'm sure I've seen well over 100 stage productions since them.

Probably not surprisingly, I strongly favor musicals--I know, I know: how gay can you get?--over non-musicals, simply because musicals take non-reality to another level, and almost inevitably have the one thing I require from any escape from reality: a happy ending (though my very favorite musical is Man of La Mancha, the lack of a "happy" ending being offset by its emotional power and its message of hope). And of course the primary exception is Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake--a ballet with an ending that still brings me to tears, which perfectly balances beauty and heartbreak.

We all need to escape from the prison cell of reality every now and again, and imagination is the key to set us free. It's right there, in the lock, and all we have to do is use it.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

"Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash..."

2011-12-19T04:35:00.000-08:00

If you recognize the source of the title of this entry, you are, as they say, “of a certain age.” It was Jimmy Durante’s traditional sign-off line, and I can still see him, at the end of his TV show, walking from one sharp white spotlight circle to another, singing “Good Night, Good Night, Good Night...”

And if you have to ask who Jimmy Durante was, you have been deprived of a wealth of a whole generation (and more) of marvelous, talented performers, and the wonders of the golden days of radio—which was every bit as integral a part of our culture as TV is today, plus having the incalculably priceless (which is probably redundant) advantage of requiring a degree of imagination no longer demanded or expected.

Fibber McGee and Molly (“‘Tain’t funny, McGee”)…Hattie McDaniel, the first African American ever to win an academy award (for Gone with the Wind), played Beulah, Fibber and Molly’s maid; Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Fanny Brice (as Baby Snooks), Eddie Cantor, Bob Hope (for whom I never really cared, though to admit it during the heyday of radio was almost sacrilege), Amos and Andy, Our Miss Brooks (with the inimitable Eve Arden), The Life of Riley (with William Bendix...remember him?), George Burns and Gracie Allen (“Say goodnight, Gracie”), Henry Aldrich (“Hen-RY! Henry Aldrich!” “Coming, Mother”...though I sadly cannot recall who played Henry). And there are an infinite number of fascinating stories behind each of these shows and each of these people.

And the great “story” shows in what is now called “prime time”: Grand Central Station (“Dive with a roar into the two-and-a-half mile tunnel that burrows beneath the glitter and swank of Park Avenue, and then…Grand Central Station! Crossroads of a million private lives; a gigantic stage on which are played a million dramas daily!” Lux Radio Theater, Inner Sanctum (sound of a creaking door, with voiceover saying “Welcome to…the Inner Sanctum”), The Shadow (“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows...” followed by spooky laughter).

And those were just the evening shows. During the day there was Stella Dallas, Our Gal Sunday (“The story that asks the question: can a girl from a small town in Colorado find happiness married to one of England’s handsomest, most famous lords...Lord Henry Brinthrop”), Just Plain Bill (which switched suddenly from a folksy comedy to heavy melodrama).

The precursors of today’s game shows began coming along toward the end of radio’s golden days: The $64 Question (yes...sixty-four dollars! That was the top prize, and people got just as excited over the prospect of winning as they do now over suitcases of cash.), Queen for a Day (the first of the sob-story ‘reality’ shows, wherein some poor lady with ten kids might hope to win a washing machine).

And for kids, in the 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. time slots, there was Captain Midnight (pronounced dramatically as “CAP-tan MID-night!”), Jack Armstrong: All-American Boy and a host of others.

The entire nation was as transfixed by these shows and the actors on them as people today are with television, though again because you could not see what was going on, it all played out vividly in the listener’s mind. All the bulk of television requires is the use of your eyes. No creating of scenes and faces and actions. The words coming through the radio opened the windows of your mind.

Simpler times. More naive times. Times offset by devastating diseases which no longer exist, and by prejudices and bigotry no longer tolerated. But on looking back, one tends to see only the familiar, and feel only the comfort of friends, family, and an entire world now gone.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

A Cache of Acorns

2011-12-16T04:39:00.001-08:00

A friend asked the other day why I am so obsessed with writing. “Life’s getting shorter every day; you shouldn’t spend all your time writing.”

Actually, that is exactly why I spend so much time writing. Fervently as I hope and much as I may want and intend to live forever, I realize it is unlikely in the extreme, and that some day I will no longer be here physically. And on the same general principle as squirrels tucking away acorns for the coming winter, I want to leave as much of me behind as I possibly can.

The subject of one’s own mortality is one I sometimes believe the human mind is really incapable of fully understanding or even recognizing, and the thought of knowing when you are going to die is one I simply cannot grasp. Yet I’m not and never have been afraid of death itself; it’s the idea that there will come a time when I am no longer able to dream, or write, or get angry over petty little things, or talk with friends, or laugh, that truly shakes me. I grieve for that time, and for myself.

So, like an obsessed squirrel, I have set out to store away, through my writing, as many bits and pieces of those non corporeal things that make up who I am. I want to keep reaching out to others, just as I am reaching out to you now, long after I’ve returned to that eternal nothingness that was interrupted only briefly by my existence.

It’s all summed up in a poem you might already have seen, but because it is so germane to the subject at hand, I’ll repeat here.

Words as Amber

The need to write; the will, the drive
to leave some proof I was alive
for future years—so they may know
I once was here, and loath to go.

A face caught in a photograph;
a tombstone’s faded epitaph
are all that most men leave behind
no hint of soul, or heart, or mind.

They live awhile in memories
till those who knew them also cease
and go the way of those before,
to be remembered nevermore.

If I believed in heaven, then
it might not matter if or when
others might know that I was here;
like them felt joy and pain and fear.

But words are amber: caught within,
the essence not contained by skin;
to read mine is a gift you give,
for when you do, once more I live.

I rest my case.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

The Unintentional Ingrate

2011-12-14T04:44:00.000-08:00

I got on the el this morning, and a very nice gentleman offered me his seat. While I appreciated his kindness (there is some hope for humanity left), I was, well, mildly humiliated by the fact that he thought I needed a seat...that he looked at me and saw an old man! I'm not an old man. I'm not! I'm as young as anyone on that crowed el car. The only difference between us is our physical appearance.

As a confirmed agnostic, basic logic prevents me from believing, much as I might like to, in the concept of a sentient God--though there are times when I do suspect there might be Someone out there with a really perverse sense of humor. How else can you explain the fact that we are totally unprepared for the fact of getting old? There is absolutely no way to understand what it's like until you've done it.

The worst part about getting old is being gradually robbed, though at a seemingly increasing pace, of those fundamental, basic things you have done all your life without so much as a conscious thought. Running, for example. I used to love to run just for the joy of running. Now when I try to run, I don't run so much as lurch clumsily like one of the creatures in a zombie movie. I was never graceful, but I was agile. I am no longer agile, and unless you are my age or older or otherwise physically disabled, you cannot possibly understand the frustration involved. I see it as a loss of dignity.

I realize that my personal aging process was markedly hastened as a result of the residual effects from my treatment for tongue cancer in 2003. And I am fully aware of my apparent lack of gratitude for having survived it. Were it not for the treatment, I would not be writing this blog. Still, can you imagine not being able to whistle when you've whistled all your life?

As another of aging's little annoyances, I have an appointment next week with an audiologist to see about getting a hearing aid--the very thought of which would have horrified the younger me. But vanity only goes so far and I'm tired of watching TV or a stage production and not being able to make out what is being said. I understand this problem is endemic with age, but I bitterly resent its happening to me. Old people wear hearing aids; I don't. But I fear I will.

When I was younger (say, from yesterday backward), I would look at old people with a mixture of incomprehension and sorrow, not understanding how they could possibly have become who they are, compared to, say, photos of them when they were in their 20s. How did they get so timid? So insecure? So dependent on others for simple things? Now I'm realizing that a lot of the changes are brought upon by the simple fact of accumulated repetitiveness: being overly cautious results from having experienced too many occasions where lack of caution had negative and painful results. It takes a long time to reach this stage. Everyone has fallen down from slipping on unseen ice--many times. But with each occurrence, you become ever so slightly more cautious until the point is reached where you anticipate falling, even though you probably won't, and simply don't want to risk it.

Increasingly brittle bones, joints eroded from decade upon decade of constant use, the inevitable and accelerating loss of friends and family who were the very foundations of your life; so very many things totally inconceivable when you are 20 or 30 or 40 slowly intrude into your day-to-day existence.

So I am old. I do not like being old. I do not like being robbed of things I have had and cherished all my life. I do not like not looking like everyone else, or not being treated by others as one of them. I resent it more than I can possibly say...even more-so when I realize there is absolutely nothing I can do to change it.

And yet, the undeniable fact is that I have been granted the luxury of getting old whereas billions of others were denied it. For all my bitching and moaning, it is a gift for which I am deeply grateful, and one I will not relinquish willingly, no matter how much older I may be allowed to grow. I try never to forget that the only people who are as young as they used to be are dead.

Enjoy--and appreciate--every moment of your journey through life. May it be a long one.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

The Ego and the Id

2011-12-12T04:26:00.000-08:00

Hmmm, lets see, now:

Ego: Psychoanalysis: the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity.

Id: Psychoanalysis: the part of the mind in which innate instinctive impulses and primary processes are manifest.

All humans have both, though few...including me...know much about the id. I gather the id is pretty much on autopilot, not interfering too much--at least consciously--with day to day life. But ah, the ego! Again, we all have an ego, but while most normal people merely acknowledge the fact, the not-so-normal can be totally consumed by it. (The names of several politicians immediately spring to mind.) And while I hope I am not consumed by it, mine is large enough that I'm constantly tripping over it like a cat which insists on walking six inches in front of your feet when you're trying to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night. (Nothing like a 48-word sentence to keep you on your toes!) And, like that cat, my ego can be truly annoying.

Do you, for example, think you're special? Well, of course you are special, but you probably don't have a shadow-self walking behind you constantly whispering it your ear. Unfortunately, I do hear the whispers. ("Wow! You're really special, Roger. Why isn't everyone falling all over themselves to buy your books? Boy, you're good! Nobody quite like you!") All well and good, I suppose, were each whisper not followed by a really sarcastic laugh.

Most people live outside themselves, in a world filled with jobs and spouses and children and obligations and activities of one sort and another. Therefore, they as a rule don't have any much if any time to think about their ego. One's ego is, in fact, generally more apparent to other people than to oneself. I, as I'm sure you've noticed--and it is a classic example of my ego to assume you would notice--am pretty much the opposite of most people. You might, if you are charitable, chalk it up to the fact that I have no "job," no spouse, no children, and relatively few social obligations or activities ("Oh, you poor, dear, noble soul!" the voice whispers.) But the fact is that nearly from the time I left my mother's womb, I have enveloped myself in a cocoon of ego. Very early on in life I became aware--correctly, I'm sure--of being of little importance to the world, and turned to my ego to provide me with the emotional nourishment theory the world did not.

Interestingly (to me, any way) my ego is largely introverted--and relatively limited to my writing. In most other areas of my life, ego plays a very small role. I have never directly told and, unlike most people with colossal egos, would never dream of telling anyone just how wonderful I think I am. And the scornful laughter that accompanies any act of hubris on my part keeps me pretty much in check. My ego-cocoon serves as a protective device, for if I didn't have it, my regrettable tendency to self-deprecation and at times self loathing would get totally out of hand.

And as with so many other things in life, I would truly like to know what other people's--what your-- inner ego is like. But, also as with everything else, I can only make assumptions based on myself and projected onto you. Hardly the most scientific of approaches.

And I do, as always, take some comfort in the fact that since you are reading these words, you might be finding something in them that you can relate to yourself...something that unites us. Cocoons and egos protect, but they also isolate, and I also have a strong need to know that I am not as isolated as I sometimes fear I am.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

The Ghosts of Vesuvius Past

2011-12-09T04:24:00.001-08:00

After posting my last blog, about my return to Mt. Vesuvius after 56 years, I thought you might be interested in hearing of my first trip to the mountain, as a young sailor, on December 22, 1956. Following is the letter I wrote my folks from the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga anchored in the Bay of Naples.

22 December, 1956

Dear Folks:

After leaving Pompeii, during which the sun shone obligingly, we stopped at one of the little villages between there and Naples for dinner. While we ate, clouds drifted in from somewhere like sliding doors, completely hiding the mountain. As we started to leave the restaurant, Niagara Falls suddenly appeared overhead, and the street became a river, down which floated odds and ends of branches, celery stalks, and torn bits of paper.

Our guide insisted, with the fervor only Italians have (fortunately) that we couldn’t possibly go up Mt. Vesuvius—that we could see instead Little Vesuvius, an obscure mountain, or hill, that still had a little steaming lava in it. We took a vote, which came out 53 (the sailors) to 2 (the guides) in favor of Vesuvius. We tried pointing out that, if it were raining on big Vesuvius it would most likely be raining on little Vesuvius, too, and we would rather see nothing on the former than on the latter. So, amid a vivid splash of Italian from the guides, we ran to the busses—it was still raining a little—and away we went.

The rain gave way to fog, which turned into clouds as we got higher. We couldn’t see more than fifty feet in any direction, but could make out the road, which twisted and wound, and was directly above and directly below. At first, near the base, there were many farms, and a small village where the driver stopped for cigarettes. About ten people, mostly men and young boys, stood around in front of the “store” staring at us. One of the younger boys smiled and waved, and was immediately shushed and scolded by one of the older men. From then on till we pulled out they just stared at us and we stared back. I think they were a bunch of dirty Communists. (NOTE: Anyone who doesn’t like Americans is a “dirty Communist.”)

Higher up the farms grow more scarce, and the road becomes more torturous. Now the lava can be seen—great walls of it—fantastic shapes—looking like cake batter. Small caves appeared where the lava had apparently splashed over the rocks beneath, trapping a bubble of air or gas. Mounds, ridges, bubbles, swirls; all imaginable shapes. I saw a farmhouse, made of stone, with its roof and two walls gone, cut in half by a rivulet of lava.

Up and up—patches of snow appear; the fog closes in—the bus creeps along, its motor grinding.

At last the bus comes to a comparatively wide flat area and stops. Snow, or hail, is on the ground, looking like large grains of salt. Hugging the mountain is a yellowish-white building. Our guide tells us that this is as far as the road goes—from the building a chair lift rises to the summit—but of course we don’t want to go up today. We do. On the first floor of the building is a bar, where some of the Chiefs decide to stay. Some of the guys hadn’t brought coats, and now regret it—it’s cold. From the second story, the chair lift starts. It’s a damp cold room, open at one end, which faces a sheer lava wall.

The chairs seat two—look something like the kiddie swings in public parks. You sit in, and a man pushes the chair, suspended by a single rod to a wire overhead, to a point where it somehow grabs hold of the moving wire---you look like you’re heading straight for the wall. Then, just before you hit it, you’re whisked almost straight up (actually, about at a 45 degree angle). And there you are. The fog—or clouds—act as a huge, damp blanket. There is absolutely no sound, except for the occasional whir as a chair passes going down, or a click as your chair passes one of the supporting towers for the wires, which loom like ghosts out of the mists and disappear as silently as they’d come. Your left side is covered with a sugar-like mist, which clings to your clothes and looks very pretty. Below you, about ten or twenty feet, is the mountain—snow coated ever so lightly—stark, bare, a few parallel tracks that puzzle you—what can they be? No car can go so steep—no skis, certainly. And then the chair whips into a smaller version of the building below. You get out, walk up a flight of stairs, over a ramp that looks down to the mountain behind the building, and onto the mountain itself.

It’s a weird, eerie, and beautiful sight—a long, winding line of figures, moving in solid white. On the right, the mountain drops away not sharply, but at such an angle that you’d roll a good distance if you slipped. The wind becomes cold and very violent; the snow is granular like below, only larger. It is mixed with the red of the ash. And then the summit—the mouth of the crater—the only way you can tell is because now the mountain falls away on both sides.

Large chunks of lava lie scattered about as we weave our way down—as we get below the rim of the crater, the wind no longer blows—it is a misty, silent fantasy. Grey. We go down as far as we can, until the slope ends and all there is is a sheer drop into nothing; the grey above meets the grey below. And you feel oddly proud, awed, and very humble….

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).
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Vesuvius Redux

2011-12-07T04:30:00.001-08:00

I've given up on trying to figure out why my mind so often seems to have a mind of its own, which goes wherever and whenever it feels like going. Today I'm thinking of Europe...of my next-year's river cruise and my earlier-this-year's month-long visit. And, as I am wont to do at such times, I went back over some of the notes I took. For some reason (yeah, I know...) I found myself remembering Mt. Vesuvius, and the vast difference the 56 years since my first visit has made.

So, with your kind permission, here is another look at my journal from April 8, 2011, written from my hotel in Sorrento.

6:40 a.m. A word of advice: never ever assume. I was thinking as I awoke a few minutes ago that my long no-contact-with-the-world drought would be ending tomorrow when I get to Rome. And then a simple thought: does my Rome hotel have internet service? Well of course it does! Every hotel today has internet service. (Uh, excuse me? I assumed this one had it and it didn't.) So I got out of bed and checked my papers for the Scott House Hotel in Rome. Very small; only 34 rooms. Not a word about internet. Therefore...I shall probably be without the internet for another five days!

I've already described the little internet "cafe" I found here in Sorrento, which is in the equivalent of a small convenience store with two computers in a small corner, and other than that I have seen not so much as even the mention of "Internet" anywhere. Nor have I seen anyone other than me, anywhere, using a laptop. Technology plays cruel games, getting us totally addicted to one of its devices then watching us suffer when we're deprived of them.

I intend to head out to Vesuvius today. Again, I'll probably be able to do it all on my own. I'll keep you posted.

8:27 Just returned from the hotel's dining room "breakfast": cafe Americano and juice. Teenagers just finishing and heading of en masse for...somewhere. I'll be going to the station shortly to catch the train for Vesuvius, but wanted to wait just a bit in case the teen hoards are also going to the station.

The elevator was not working this morning, probably deliberately turned off by the management (it can only hold 5 people, max, and there are at least 50 in the teen group). I noted, as I left my monk's cell on the way to breakfast that the door to one of the rooms across the way was open, and I saw it had three or four of the same mini-beds as my room, thus reconfirming my assumption (there I go again with another assumption!) that the hotel caters to large groups. The dining room is set up for around 80, and the hotel is not located in an area where I'd imagine many people seek it out for dining.

Charging my cell phone. Will need Gary's number if there is no internet available to me in Rome. Damn!

10:07 Took the 9:07 train from Sorrento to Pompeii. One set of roving musicians, two young mothers with infants, asking for money. I really find that demeaning on the part of those asking for money, and an awkward imposition upon those from whom the money is sought. Anyway, finally got to Pompeii, walked out of the station and onto a tour bus--built to look like a tram--for Vesuvio (15 euros. I was the only passenger). The tram then left for a swing through modern-day Pompeii, which was interesting if nondescript, and picked up six Americans. We are now back at the train station apparently hoping to catch more passengers getting off the next train.

I'm really glad I decided to do it this way. A lot more...uh...casual than getting on a plush modern tour bus with structured lectures and stops. (Two more passengers just got on.) The tram, however, rides much like a chariot when it comes to the cobblestones, and the wooden seats are not padded. Nor am I.

12:02 I have just lost a decisive battle in my life-long battle with reality, and I am saddened beyond expressing. The only one of my three major goals on returning to Europe remaining was to climb down into the crater of Mt. Vesuvius as I had done that cold, foggy morning 56 years ago. I remember riding up from where the busses stop--about three-quarters of the way up the mountain--on a chair lift to the summit. I remember how one side of my peacoat was covered in frost as we rode through the fog, unable to see anything around, above, or below.

So on April 8, 2011, I rode another bus three quarters of the way up the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius to where the road ends, and stood in a long line to pay 8 euros for what I assumed to be the ride to the top. (Do we sense a theme, here, children, on the subject of assumption? Do we by now recognize its dangers?) There IS no chair lift to the summit, I found. It was taken down years and years ago as being too dangerous. One walks. A long, long, steep walk. I was determined to do it. Reality bet I couldn't. And reality, sadly, won.

I tried to find some rationale in the fact that I have walked more in the past twenty days than I have in the past year, and I do a considerable amount of walking back home. I tried convincing myself that so much unaccustomed walking would, cumulatively, tire even the hardiest of souls. But despite all the excuses I make for myself in an attempt to salvage a bit of my dignity and the illusions to which I have clung so desperately all these years, I hear reality laughing and taunting "You're old, Roger, old! Look at that reflection in the window...in your computer monitor. You're old!" And all the sadness and regret and denial in the world will not change the truth of that fact.

But what hurts most is that underneath the taunts I hear the small boy who is still me crying as though his heart has been broken. It has.

I am, indeed, become J. Alfred Prufrock.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

Love and Olives

2011-12-05T04:34:00.000-08:00

One of the greatest mysteries in my mystery-filled life is why I think of the things I do, and why I think of them when I do. With Christmas approaching, thoughts naturally tend to swirl around holiday thoughts and memories. But even with that semi-limitation, there are still so very many with no logical reason for any one individual thoughts to surface. Why, for example, am I thinking of the fact that every Christmas up until I went off to college, my beloved Aunt Thyra would, apart from a regular gift, bring me a jar of olives, which she knew I loved. A small gesture, insignificant to most, but outstanding to me.

I suspect that minds, like motors and engines, have governors which keep them from racing out of control. My mind, I fear, did not come with a governor. It operates like a gas pedal held to the floorboard. To me, thoughts are as numerous, varied, and unique as snowflakes, and I live in a continual blizzard. Trying to catch one single thought for a blog is not unlike trying to catch a single snowflake. And the very fact that this paragraph contains three separate metaphors is symptomatic of the problem. I can't keep up with my thoughts, let alone try to control them.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that my thoughts are not infrequently accompanied by vivid mental images and, occasionally, smells. An instant ago, thinking of Christmas, I smelled pine needles, and am having, as I write, a vivid mental picture of those little electric Christmas tree candle lights popular during the 1950s. And another, just now, of making chain wreaths from small strips of colored paper, the ends of the first piece glued together with a paste of flour and water to make a loop, then another strip of paper inserted through the loop and it's ends glued together to form the second loop in the chain, and so on. Similar wreaths could also be made from popcorn strung together with a needle in thread, though the few times I tried it were notably flawed by my eating the popcorn faster than I could string it.

As you have probably noticed by now, I've given up on any attempt at control, and am just letting my mind run wild and jotting down those thoughts which stick just long enough to be written.

Oddly...and I now realize, sadly...my thoughts of my folks at Christmas always seem to center more on my mother than my father. I suppose this is fairly typical; all holidays, Christmas in particular, seem to be orchestrated more by mothers than fathers. And possibly the fact that I was a "momma's boy" had something to do with it.

I do remember the extreme delight I took in not only opening presents from my folks, but seeing their reactions when they opened theirs from me. The nicest present I ever got for them was a trip to Hawaii in 1960; I can't pick out any single gift I received from them as being the "nicest"...they were all wonderful, and I truly wish I had more fully appreciated the sacrifices they made in getting them for me. (And I qualify that last sentence slightly remembering the beautiful statue of Hamlet my mom got for me and which I still have. She and I had been out Christmas shopping and I'd seen it in a store and fell in love with it. It was extremely expensive, even for those days, but when I opened my presents that Christmas, there it was.)

My parents were not well-off, financially, and both worked full time...my dad mostly in a factory, my mom as a secretary...to pay the bills and support me. But I cannot recall, now, ever feeling deprived of anything I truly wanted. But of all the gifts I ever received, of all the pleasant thoughts I have ever had, none compares to my gratitude for the totally unconditional love I received from my mother and my father and my family. I was truly, truly blessed, and would give anything in the world to let them know how much I loved, and still love, them. And oh, Aunt Thyra, how I would love a jar of olives.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

The Curmudgeon's Song

2011-12-02T04:46:00.001-08:00

No one likes to physically age, or to wear glasses to read, or to watch wrinkles develop on what once was firm skin. And I don't think anyone really likes to become a curmudgeon, but it seems I am becoming one.

This blog was prompted by hearing...for as long as it took me to change the channel..."Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer," and realizing I was off on what has become an annual rant. As far as I am concerned, "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" is without doubt the most subliminally subversive Christmas carol ever written. Why? Because of its message: if you are different, you're fair game for anything anyone wants to do to you. (All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names. They never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games.) Hey, I was Rudolph!

The message, drummed into impressionable young minds at least 26,000 times every Christmas season, is clear: if you're "different" you're worth shit. Unless someone needs something from you. (Then how the reindeer loved him!) Right. Great message.

Being a curmudgeon doesn't come easy. It, like everything else in life, is a learning process. I'd be willing to bet most curmudgeons are, as Oscar Wilde defined cynics (surprisingly, my computer's Thesaurus does not consider "cynic" and "curmudgeon" synonyms), frustrated romanticists. Some people don the cloak of curmudgeonry (if a word doesn't exist, invent it) as knights donned suits of armor, as a defense against the slings and arrows of a world which has consistently disappointed them.

I, and I suspect others like me, go through life expecting the very best from people--including myself--and when met with frustration and disillusion time after time, the weight begins to take its toll until, in some but fortunately not all, it robs us of what we once so cherished. We become withered apple-core people unable to appreciate the good when it does present itself.

And we live in an optical-illusion world in which the first version that strikes our eye is too often ugly. Our political system is shattered, and those we elected to represent us represent only their own self interests. Our education system and prison system and health system; our physical infrastructure...all are crumbling around us and there seems to be nothing whatever that we (and especially we as individuals) can do about it.

I do not want to be a curmudgeon. I do not want to look in the mirror--well, I go to great lengths to avoid doing so in any case--and see Ebenezer Scrooge. Fortunately, there is still a part of me that delights in the positive, that loves the innocence of children and some adults, that chokes up seeing soldiers reunited with their families and watching people comfort one another in times of disaster. I love happiness, and patriotism, and people--especially two men, of course--in love.

It's a constant battle for a great many people...and I admit, to me...not to let our personal losses harden us to, and separate us from, the world around us. Holidays are particularly hard, especially as one gets older and those who were so integral and important part of our life are no longer in it.

But as some people, alone in the dark, sing to themselves to reassure themselves that everything will be all right, I sing songs to keep the door to hope and my belief in the goodness of humanity from closing completely: two of my personal favorites, as some of you know, are "Maybe This Time" and "The Impossible Dream." Who could not find hope and courage in their words?

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 ).

People as Punctuation

2011-11-30T04:26:00.000-08:00

Some people are periods. Some are exclamation points. Some are commas. I'm a question mark.

I know, I know...I spend far, far too much time on introspection and trying to figure out exactly what the hell is going on. I never have and probably never will understand the world or my place in it, and I spend so much time dwelling on me because I don't know nearly enough to presume to talk about you and your place in the world. I just do a wing-it hopeful assumption that maybe there are some things about life that you don't understand, either

We look out on the sea of faces around us, and we see...faces; the surface. We can make assumptions based on a number of probably unreliable clues, such as how other people carry themselves and the ease with which they relate to others. But we cannot know what goes on beneath those surfaces because we're all programmed to keep the vast bulk of what's going on inside our individual selves...well, inside. We seldom know for sure what punctuation marks lie beneath the surface.

I'm not sure--three words which sum up my existence--why; probably because our punctuation marks are hidden beneath the all-inclusive blanket of what they call "cultural imperatives": actions dictated by belief systems shared by/unconsciously imposed on a group or individual by the greater society, and to which all members of that group adhere. Given that there are now more than seven billion of us, without some sort of imposed unanimity it would be like throwing a Molotov cocktail into a fireworks factory.

As a result, most of us are extremely hesitant to let anyone know what lies beneath the surface. But as you have probably noticed, I have a penchant for laying myself out like a "help yourself" table at a rummage sale. Nothing's secret; nothing's too sacred to be talked about.

Because, not understanding what is expected of me...even by myself...I am too easily confused, frustrated, and angered. I blame myself for what I see as my failings--which I do not readily see when looking at the surfaces of others. And I, personally, am always favorably swayed though often misled by what I consider to be beautiful or attractive people (especially men, of course). And I tend to ascribe to them qualities they may not indeed possess simply because I consider them to be beautiful or attractive. (This, by the way, seems to be fairly universal trait.)

Growing older certainly exacerbates the entire situation. On those rare occasions when I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror, I am truly, sincerely shocked by what I see. Who IS that man? What became of ME? I find it bitterly ironic that, while I was young, I always considered myself singularly unattractive, and it is only now, looking back a photos of myself, that I realize I wasn't all that unattractive at all. Why couldn't I have realized it at the time?

At times I have the distinct impression that life is a game of cat and mouse...and guess who's the mouse?

When it comes to one's--okay, my--relationship with other people it is once again largely a matter of assumption. I can assume things about you based on personal observation, but I can't know for sure that I'm right. The hope/assumption that you share some of my feelings, reactions, and instincts sufficiently to understand what I'm saying is partly, I'm sure, a method I use to avoid feeling any more like an outsider than I have to. Yet all I need do is look at the news or listen to Rush Limbaugh/Eric Cantor/Michelle Bachmann and their ilk to be quite sure that I'm living in some sci-fi movie, surrounded by beings totally alien from myself.

Some people--the exclamation points--stride through life, purposeful and sure of themselves and their place in it; most are periods--just pleasantly compliant round dots, simply accepting things as they are; a few are commas, a little bolder than periods, curious about what comes next in life. I and my fellow question marks, by our very nature, can never be content--there is just too much to know and not enough time to know it. And every answer hides another question.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out 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 )

Pinball

2011-11-28T04:33:00.001-08:00

I seem to always be searching for new analogies to try to make sense of this vast Terra Incognita which is my life, and this morning for absolutely no reason--there so seldom is one--I was remembering the pinball machine we had in the basement of my parents' home when I was in high school. Where it came from and what happened to it I cannot recall...and the fact that it has taken all of two sentences for me to begin wandering off into a digression goes to the subject of this blog.

Thinking of that pinball machine...and pinball machines in general...I immediately saw a correlation between one of those shiny steel balls caroming haphazardly through the sloping maze of bumpers and obstacles and traps, and me and life. The ball somehow makes its way to the bottom of the machine only to be propelled back again, never ever hitting the same bumpers and obstacles and traps the same way twice. As I say, me and life--and, I suspect, you and life.

As I type this, I am trying to install an update to iTunes to my computer. Ten minutes or so into it, I get a small box saying "In order to continue installation, please close the following application: iTunes" with a bar at the bottom of the box saying "Quit Installer." I close the "application: iTunes." The box remains; no further progress is made (according to the little should-be-moving bar at the top of the screen). But if I "Quit Installer" I cancel out everything that I've done to that point. Dear Lord! Carom! I finally figured it out (I think) and the installation was completed! Hooray! I then went to click on iTunes so I could hear some soothing music after my ordeal. Got a message saying "Your iTunes account has been disabled." Carom-Carom-Ping! Will I get iTunes back? Will the world end not with a bang, but a whimper?

A bit earlier, I went to post a blog on Open Salon. It took a full ten minutes to even reach the site, then another 15 minutes to be able to post the blog. The accompanying illustration never did post, so I finally gave up. I know the fact that I somehow manage to take all these little mishaps personally deprives me of being the poster boy for robust mental health, but I can't help myself.

Old-fashioned pinball machines--real machines over which the player had some modicum of control-- are now pretty much relics, replaced by totally digital, beyond-the-player's-control devices. And on thinking it over, the evolution of pinball games is a pretty good analogy of how our society itself has changed; yet another area of our lives in which humans have lost all power to manipulate or influence, relegated to just standing by and watching the action.

Of course, everyone's life is like an old-fashioned game of pinball. Once our little steel ball is catapulted onto the table of life, exactly what route it takes to the bottom is different for each of us. Some of us are naturally better at the game than others, knowing (or being lucky in) just how to give give a little nudge to the machine or flip one of the little paddles at just the right time to change the course of the ball. I, needless to say, am very poor at it.

Something there is within the human psyche that totally unrealistically expects life to be far simpler than it is, and reacts to the fact that it isn't simple with rebellion rather than acceptance. When something does not go the way we expect/want it to, or something bad happens to us, personally, the common human reaction is to ask "why me?" The answer, befitting the question, is: "Because." If not me, who?

Man is a sentient ball in the vast, insentient pinball machine of life. We don't have to like it, but to like or not to like is not an option. Better we just resign ourselves to the fact and try our best to enjoy the game. We only play it once.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Of a Gloomy Day

2011-11-25T04:22:00.001-08:00

While I love bright, warm, sunny days, there is much to be said for Edgar Allen Poe, Heathcliff-on-the Moors days. They add balance and give time for reflection and a sense of inner calm and contentment. Being inside and warm, looking out through rain-streaked windows at low, dark clouds, trees swaying in the wind, a dark, brooding day can create a sense of pleasant melancholy. Rainy days lend themselves to contemplation of things not usually given much thought on sunny days. It's as though there's a subtle mental shift from the physical to the cerebral. Life takes on a slower pace--things don't appear to be quite so rushed.

And though gloomy days best lend themselves to solitary pleasures--reading, listening to music, the rare luxury of contemplation and quiet introspection, sharing them with a friend or two in quiet conversation has its own unique quiet pleasures. And in the word "quiet," I think, lies the key to gloomy days. (One of my favorite synonyms for "gloomy," is "lugubrious"...a delicious sounding, seldom heard word, though it is a probably a little excessive for the intent of this blog.)

Gloomy days whisper "there's no rush," a message we need to hear, but which tends to be lost or too easily ignored on sunny days. Unfortunately, too many people unfairly equate gloomy days with boredom or lethargy, when they need be neither.

When I lived in the snow belt of the Great North Woods where 3-foot snowfalls were not uncommon, I loved looking out the window at the snow blowing horizontally past the windows and both hearing and feeling the wind throwing itself against the house. I loved it. (Getting outside and shoveling a path to my car, then digging the car out and clearing a path to the road in the subzero cold, however, somewhat balanced the pleasure of being inside looking out.)

There is an actual medically-recognized condition, Seasonal Affective Disorder, which can result in severe depression for those deprived of sunlight for too long a period. It's quite common in areas of the country such as far northern Wisconsin, where I lived for many years where long winters can tend to be wearing. The condition's appropriate acronym, S.A.D., can be countered by light therapy using a lightbox emitting far more lumens than a customary incandescent lamp.

But for those who merely appreciate the variety the occasional gloomy day presents, rain is calmative, smoothing the sharper edges of what might under other circumstances have been sadder thoughts, memories, and recollections, and softens the sting from self recriminations and regrets.

It is the different, the unexpected, which provide the spices of life. It can be the gradual movement of an all day or several day event, or relatively quick and surprising. Summer thunderstorms, preceded by black clouds sweeping across the sky and the far-off but advancing cymbal-clash flashes of lightning and deep tympani booms of thunder are, to me, the last notes of a celestial symphony, the heavy rain sounding like applause. And when a storm is over, Mother Nature sometimes gives us a curtain call in the form of a rainbow.

One of my fondest weather memories of living in Northern Wisconsin was standing in my back yard and watching a weather front moving toward me from west to east. A ruler-straight line drawn from northern horizon to southern horizon divided sharp blue sky to the east of the line with an unbroken wall of black clouds to the west. An amazing sight.

Good weather encourages us to get out, to focus our body and our mind on exterior things. But the next time dark clouds move in, look on them as an invitation to spend some pleasant time inside--both your house and your mind.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

The Boy in the Band

2011-11-23T04:43:00.001-08:00

I'm not sure why I find such bittersweet comfort in rereading letters I wrote my parents while I was in the Navy so very long ago. I guess it's the direct-link reminder of who I was, once upon a time. Each letter is a a frame in the movie of my life, and I only wish I was more fully aware of just how amazing it was as I lived it. Even the ordinary, nothing-special days and the letters they produced are like the ghosts of a long ago, favorite aftershave. Here's one.

Monday, November 29, 1954

Dear Folks

I have time (where it comes from or how I don’t know) to dash off a short note, partially to make up for my long silence. Saturday (no, Friday) I went down and helped Eastern Air Lines buy a new DC-6. And it only cost me $112.90—I had to pawn some old family heirlooms to be able to get my ticket. I cashed my last government check ($50.00) and when I came home I had a little over twenty left! $17 for the plane, plus $5 for a new head for my razor.

Saturday night the band played for a football game—did fairly well, even though we had to compete with the drill team and the Pensacola High School Band, which was really terrific. After returning to the base, I was in one of my “moods,” if it could be called that, and felt like taking a walk. It was raining like mad, but I like to walk in the rain. By this time it was 11:40; a bus came by heading for town, so I took it. Oh, well—it’s fun to be different every now and then.

Just think—only about ten or twelve more days in this place—and only seventeen days more till I come home—I’ve been away so long the very thought of home doesn’t even sink in. I’ll have to believe it when I see it.

I’m sorry if every time I write I seem to be in a bad mood, but at the moment, I could cheerfully DOR (Drop On Request) and be done with this ….*@..program. It has been proven that certain people are “accident prone”—well, I am “frustrating situation prone.” Nobody, and I mean NOBODY can get into the trouble I do in as short a time and with as little effort. At the moment I am not sure if I will ever get through this program (and I don’t care---“at the moment”). I am, as usual, on “academic probation” (--not being set back a week). Every night I go to band study hall. Also every night the battalion has its own study hall, for men who are on academic probation. Band study hall is supposed to excuse you from the battalion “stupid study,” as it’s called. The only drawback to this is that no-one bothered to tell the battalion captains; as stupid study is compulsory, and since I was not there, I was put on report, and chewed out by the captain.

After telling appropriate people, I was assured that the captains would be told and demerits canceled, which they were. So tonight, I went to band study hall, to return to the battalion and face another report chit; tomorrow I must see the same captain who chewed me out before and who evidently still hasn’t been told that I’m excused. And Battalion 4 is noted for its sweet and gentle captains.

Well, here I am again, a day later and no wiser. Went to speak to the Captain, forgot to sound off properly, and was given another five and one. If my demerits were Confederate money, the South would rise again.

Another day—by now its Wed. I think I’m in a little better spirits, but I really can’t tell. Only two more finals and I’m through! You know, it’s funny how the band can pick up my “lagging spirits.” Last night at band practice we got a whole bunch of new music—Song from Moulin Rouge, Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite” (which is one of my favorites) the Triumphal March from Quo Vadis, which is fabulous, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, and some others which we didn’t get a chance to play. Since the band is now officially recognized by the Navy, we get free music every month from Washington.

The Admiral received a letter from NBC saying that Arthur Godfrey wasn’t on that week-end, but asked how we would like to play a half hour show of our own. So that’s the latest. Now, if we play, you’ll be sure to see us (you’d better). It’s only ten days or so away, though, so there’s a possibility we won’t be able to be ready. We also don’t know the date or time yet for sure.

Well, as I’ve said before, the days till I graduate are rushing by (though they can’t rush by fast enough to suit me); and this being one of those days it is also rushing by, I’d better get busy and study if I want to pass those finals.

Hope to have more time to write in the future—I know I will once I get out to Corry Field.

Till then, I remain
Your Prodigal Son
Roge

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Nothing

2011-11-21T04:44:00.001-08:00

Every now and again I find myself however-briefly in a state best described as "Nothing" when, even though fully aware of the number of things I could and should be doing, I am for some reason unwilling or incapable of doing any of them. It's not a comfortable feeling, and I resent it.

There's a great song in A Chorus Line titled "Nothing," in which a girl in an acting class struggles with her inability to respond with the feelings her instructor wants her to. At the moment, I know how she feels--or doesn't feel.

I set out this morning to work on my next book. Whenever I'm away from it for any period of time, I always start reading about three or four paragraphs from where I'd left off as a form of mental pump-priming, so that when I get to the last words written, I can just sail right on. But as I did the same thing this morning, I found I had no reaction to it. Nothing. And I had/have absolutely no idea of what the next sentence should be. And the worst part was that I didn't care. Not a comfortable sensation, to be sure.

"All right," I tell myself, "if you don't want to work on the book--which you really, really should be doing--what would you like to do?"

And the answer, not surprisingly, is "Nothing."

So I sit staring at the monitor...noting that it really needs to be wiped off...and listening to classical music and doing...you guessed it. I could play some computer solitaire but I have noticed that, for me, it is soporific; three or four games into it and I find myself nodding off.

Nature, they say, abhors a vacuum. So do I, in that a vacuum is, in essence, Nothing. There'll be plenty of time for Nothing--an eternity's worth--once I'm dead, and that prospect doesn't concern me in the least. Death and nothing are synonymous. Therefore moments of Nothing while I'm still alive are disconcerting in the extreme. While I'm still alive, Nothing robs me of life, and there is precious little enough of life in even the best of circumstances

I know that for a great many people, doing Nothing is considered a pleasant pastime. To sit under a tree on a warm summer's day, doing nothing, with no cares and nothing that must be done immediately is generally considered idyllic. I can go along with it for maybe three minutes, max. No matter the beauty of my surroundings or the sense of peace it may offer, I will look around for a passing insect so that I can watch and wonder where it's going and why, and to create scenarios about it. Or I will become absorbed in watching clouds and seeing what my imagination might do with them. To be fair, I would assume those I see sitting in parks or on the lakeshore apparently doing nothing must be at least thinking of something. Otherwise it's rather like watching a screensaver of an aquarium or a burning log.

I am driven to avoid Nothing at all costs, and frantically try to fill it in with Something...Anything. On those occasions where Nothing becomes overbearing--waiting rooms without magazines, bus stops, el platforms--I find myself excruciatingly uncomfortable. Whenever I know I'm going to be in a situation where prolonged waiting will be involved, I try to take along my laptop--though I have found trying to use a laptop in a moving vehicle is a lot easier in theory than in practice.

But, ever the optimist, I suppose I can take comfort that even the subject of Nothing can produce something. This blog, for example.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

The Reality Wars

2011-11-18T04:33:00.001-08:00

Well, the title of this blog might be slightly misleading. I am at war with reality, but reality doesn't give a crap: I sincerely doubt that reality even knows I exist. But because I am, by choice, increasingly estranged from reality, I do not handle it well when we do run into one another. I am at a total loss as to how reality operates, and at times such as now I find it almost impossible to verbalize many of my problems with it.

Following written instructions is a primary example. If I am reading, for example, how to give my computer access to some a new technological marvel, I seldom get two sentences into the directions without becoming totally confused. I do not handle confusion well, either. Brain-freeze sets in immediately, followed quickly by total mental meltdown to the point where I am hard pressed to remember my own name.

I pick up the instruction manual and read: "Before beginning installation, be sure the framilizer is shut off. Next, take the osculating miramostat (Illustration B) and carefully insert it into the bifurvated scramister (Illustration M)." Usually, on studying Illustrations B and M with utmost care, I am totally unable to identify either the osculating mirmostat or the bifurvated scramister and I am reminded once again of a vending machine I saw in a subway station many years ago...a gleaming, ultra-modern device with enticing photos of the product offered. There was a slot into which money was to be placed but no opening from which to retrieve the product. None. Nowhere. Not front, side, or back (the machine stood about seven feet tall and sat directly on the concrete floor, preventing me from checking either the top or the bottom). I stood in front of that machine for five full minutes trying to figure out where the product came out, and never did.

Now, surely there had to be some sort of portal through which the product was retrieved. There had to have been, but I was totally unable to find it. And that experience pretty much sums up my dealings with reality: I just don't get it. My life is filled with "there has to be"'s when in fact, for me there isn't.

Yet given my high level of incomprehension, I am still a sucker for trying to do things I am told I must do. I belong to Facebook, which has recently been going through a minotaurs labyrinth of changes to make its subscribers' lives so very much easier. Theirs, maybe, but certainly not mine. I am told I must separate all my "followers/friends/whatever-in-hell-they-are's" into several categories: Friends, family, acquaintances, etc. (with lots of space to create my own categories). Since I have over 700 contacts, I subsequently spent far more time than necessary doing what I was told to do, only to realize that I am now unable to see posts from anyone in many of those categories. The reason I joined Facebook in the first place was to establish contact and get feedback from as many people as possible, which following Facebook's directions has now made either impractical or impossible.

I am then instructed that I can "+1" them. I have no idea what +1-ing does, but I set out to follow the directions to +1 them. I get about 46 +1s done when it dawns on me that maybe I should see just what +1-ing does. I still don't know, but I do find all 46 on a new Dorien Grey page which I'd never had before but which appears to be a carbon copy of my original page. I post a message to the "new" page, and find it does not also appear on my original page. So I now have two Facebook pages under "Dorien Grey" with no discernible crossover, and to be able to say something to the people on both pages, I have to double-post everything.

I do not want to double post everything. I do not want two Dorien Grey pages--which I basically cannot tell apart (other than the fact that one page shows I have 711 friends and the other that I have 46). Apparently they cannot be combined, and since both have the same log-in information, to attempt to delete one would, with my luck, undoubtedly delete them both. And even if I could, to delete one of them would also delete however many followers I have on that page.

If you were able to make one bit of sense out of the above, please let me know and I will send you a little gold star to paste on your refrigerator.

And let me make it clear that I am not blaming reality. It knows exactly what it is doing. I just wish I did.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Spam and Train Wrecks

2011-11-16T04:27:00.001-08:00

I've tried countless times to figure out my total revulsion/utter fascination with internet spam. It's rather like watching a passenger train plunging off a bridge--you watch it in horror, but you watch it nonetheless.

I suppose it is very much like the case of the guy who goes to the doctor, pushes his head to one side with his palm and says "Doc, it hurts when I do this," to which the doctor replies, "Well, then, don't do it." Nobody's holding a gun to my head and forcing me to read spam. Why can't I, like everyone else in the world, just ignore it? Well, for one thing, to me it's like trying to avoid a cloud of mosquitoes hovering around my head. Or like the young man I once dated in Los Angeles who, when I brought him home, wanted to have sex with my tennis shoes. I actually dated him again because I couldn't believe it the first time.

My fascination is due to the utter incomprehensibility of Spam and what the spammers truly think they're achieving. Even more intriguing is how anyone with sufficient intelligence to be able to read can give an atom of credence to what is read in a spam message?

My revulsion stems from many things: the dumbfoundingly brazen, utterly unapologetic lies, the complete lack of a single iota of logic, the spit-in-your-face contempt the spammer displays for the intelligence of the recipient (not to mention the lack of basic intelligence displayed in the messages themselves), the astonishing arrogance of the spammer in assuming that any human being could be gullible enough to fall for their garbage.

Spammers are an utterly despicable, loathsome sub-species. It is my inability to admit the fact that they exist which forms the base of my fascination. I simply cannot believe that any human being could be so shamelessly predatory, so totally devoid of honor, dignity, compassion, decency, or any other trait to which the bulk of humanity aspires.

There has to be a strong element of mental masochism in my inability to simply hit "Delete" without at least scanning the initial words. That I take each message as a personal insult may also indicate a slight problem.

I rest my case with the following, received three minutes ago. Please take a moment to read it...no, to study it...carefully to savor every subtle nuance, from to whom this very "personal" message is being sent, to the fact that the message is sent from Qatar. We all know lots of people in Qatar, of course.

to undisclosed recipients

We receive an email that you are dead and you ask one Dr. John Mark to come and claim your FUND, now and he has also agreed to pay for the renew of your paper works, I am writing you to know if you are truly DEAD OR ALIVE, if you do not reply back before 12hrs we will have no other alternative than to believe that you are truly dead according to Dr. John Mark.

And if you are still alive you can get back to me as fast as you can or you can call me on +234 819-159-2634, so take note that every thing has been paid for it is just for the renew of your paper work that this Dr. John Mark has agreed to pay for and also if you refuse to get back to us am afraid we shall give him the FUND and collect the money from him that means that, he is written that you are dead and you ask him to come and claim the FUND on your behalf.

Please take note that you have been given just 12hours to get back to us so that we can know if you are alive, and fill the Information Below:

Driver License:
House Address:
Direct Cell Phone Number:
Occupation:

We await your swift response in regard of this email we have received from Dr. John Mark, reply back to this email: profjusticeandrew@qatar.io

It is to weep.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

It Ain't Easy

2011-11-14T04:43:00.000-08:00

People tend to look upon romantics as being somehow delicate and fragile blossoms. Nothing could be further from the truth. To be a romantic in today's world is like being a single flower sprouting from a wall of rock: it sure ain't easy. It's difficult--almost impossible--not to become totally disheartened and discouraged by the world around us. Newspapers, television news reports, and talk-show messiahs bombard us, day in and day out, with examples of the worst elements of human nature to the almost total exclusion of the good. But then, gloom and doom sell; happiness and joy have little commercial appeal.

Surrounded by seemingly overwhelming evidence that we are doomed, vast numbers of otherwise good people, frustrated and confused by the world around them, willingly cede their right to think for themselves to those who, knowing nothing but speaking with an air of absolute authority, assume they know everything. Any self-serving pundit who claims to have the answers to unanswerable questions --without, you'll notice, ever offering details--is sure to gain a devoted if brain-dead following regardless of how specious and/or devoid of logic their claims may be. The mountainsides are alight with the burning bushes of these whose fire creates not light but toxic fumes. And their followers gather raptly 'round, breathing deeply.

Meanwhile, huge segments of our population, deprived of education, encouragement, employment, and hope, smolder on the fringes of society. I live in Chicago, which is, in fact, not one but two cities, a classic division of north and south. While I cannot cite statistics, I am confident in stating that the vast preponderance of violence and, not coincidentally, illiteracy and poverty in the city is located on the south side. That the south side has a disproportionate number of blacks and latinos as compared to the north side is not racist or an attempt to disparage their worth as human beings, but merely further evidence that it is that blacks and latinos throughout the country who are, to a shameful degree, too often denied access to those things which could lift them out of negative factors which keep them from an equal chance for growth.

Disenfranchisement breeds disenfranchisement. Those denied basic opportunities for improvement can scarcely be blamed for not having them. Sadly, those denied opportunity too often develop contempt for the very values they themselves are denied. Human life itself is devalued. Death means nothing when life means nothing. Denied courtesy, compassion, and consideration in their own lives, they then deny those things, and more, to others. Their reality is not only bleak, but too often devoid of hope.

Gangs, the bane of law enforcement, are formed to provide their members the sense of belonging the outside world denies them. Things seen by those in the mainstream of society as being counterproductive to progress in the workplace--excessive tattooing, in-your-face clothing, hairstyles, and attitudes, a disregard for the day-to-day language of the majority, etc.--are embraced by those without hope as a way of self expression, and the more hopeless they feel, the more extreme their flaunting of the larger society in which they do not feel welcome. It is a vicious circle seemingly spinning out of control.

Which brings us back, by a rather circuitous route, to the original point of this blog. We each deal with the reality of the world in our own way. My way is to ignore it as much as I possibly can. I am that flower which somehow manages to survive in a small crack of romanticism in the rock of reality. I find emotional nourishment in even the smallest evidence of goodness. Any display of patriotism, the bravery of individuals or groups responding to disaster, scenes of people helping or comforting one another, masses of people acting on or reacting to a positive stimulus; grown men crying, stirring music--all are guaranteed to elicit the strongest emotional response in me.

So as far as I am concerned, being a romantic is not easy, but it is worth the effort to try. And, when balanced on the scale of who we are as a race, evil may have the volume, but without question good has the weight.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Whither the Interrobang?

2011-11-11T04:57:00.001-08:00

I'm having one of those "I need a blog for tomorrow and haven't a clue as to what to write about" days. I'd like to say (and think) that this type of day is very rare, but alas...and seemingly increasingly...it is not. It is indeed true that often an idea pops into my head and I sit down at the computer and go from the first word to the last without so much as a pause. More often, I find myself rummaging through the cluttered closet of my mind until I come up with something I fancy or think I can use. But there are times, like today, where trying to find something to write about is akin to drilling for oil, with all the labor involved and no guarantee that I'm going to find what I'm looking for.

Since I never throw away anything I've written, I often start a blog, get a few sentences into it, and then abandon it for any one of a dozen reasons. I then carefully save however much I'd managed to write on the subject to my "Dorien Grey and Me" blog file, prefacing the title with either a "U"...for "unfinished"...or a "UB"..."unfinished, begun" with the date I started writing it and the title. This gives me an idea, at a glance, how long it's been sitting there. I just checked, in hopes of having one of the unfinished titles strike a spark which I then might use to kindle a brilliant and memorable blog. Nothing. And I note to my great dismay that I have 23 prospective but unfinished blogs prefaced by "U" and, purely coincidentally, another 23 prefaced by "UB". That's 46 potential blogs--three months' worth, were I to complete them all (which I know I'll never do).

And just sitting here, I've come up with the title and idea for a future blog (no time to do it before tomorrow, I'm afraid) called "A Garden of Words," comparing outdated and arcane words ("prithee," "thee/thou/thine/thy," "mayhaps") with exotic hothouse flowers. Well, soon, I hope.

However immodestly, I do think I have a gift for catchy titles, and there are a number of pretty good ones in the Unfinished pile: "Druthers," "Whither the Interrobang?" (which I just stole to use as the title for what I'm writing now), "MacArthur Park," "Life in the Rabbit Hole," "Your Career in Spam," to name a few. Whether I'll ever get around to finishing any of them is unknown, and I sometimes find that the title sounds better than what comes up when I start to get into it. It's most likely why I have so many in my Unfinished list.

I've noticed that many bloggers tend to have...well, specialties. My friend Kage Alan writes always-humorous pieces about his partner, "Pookie" (a.k.a. Ralph) and Ralph's Chinese grandmother, who to Kage is "the Godmonster." I admire Kage, and anyone who can consistently find humor in the most ordinary things. As you may have noticed, I tend to dwell on one subject...me...with the secondary subject of the past. Kage's goal is to amuse, and he succeeds. My goal, as so often stated, is, by spreading myself out before you like the entrails of an owl, that you might read in them some things about yourself to which you've never given much consideration...or considered to be something only you have thought or experienced.

Blogs are, I feel, a very effective tool for a writer. It provides a way to reveal himself/herself to the reader in a way far different than in a book, and to show himself/herself (Oh, dear God! Here we go again with this ridiculous "politically correct" nonsense!) as a human being, not merely, as the wonderful Frank Morgan describes himself in his role of the Wizard of Oz "the man behind the curtain." And while I always consider my books to be a form of conversation between myself and the reader, I feel blogs give me the chance to get closer to the reader--and in far fewer words than I can in a book.

So let's hear it for blogs and their ability to build shorter, less elaborate bridges between me and you.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Books and Dreams

2011-11-09T04:47:00.001-08:00

There is a trinity of dreams. First and chief among them is the collective dreams of our race, which guide us toward a better future and urge us to strive to make them come true. That few of these dreams have yet been fully realized never stops us from having them. We are an indomitable race, and we are patient.

Second is the only form of dreams most people are aware of: those we have as individuals while we sleep, which are considered by some scientists to be a form of subconscious mental housekeeping…a way each of us tries to resolve inner conflicts and deal with the waking world around us. The brain has often been referred to as a computer, yet in two major ways they are diametrically opposed: computers operate on the logic of the literal. They lack the flexibility necessary for dreaming. The human mind, especially when dreaming operates almost totally on what the waking brain would consider totally illogical.

The third of the trinity of dreams is what prompted this entry: those dreams which are conceived in the mind of individual artists, musicians, and writers and translated into forms which can be understood and shared by others.

I’ve always considered books to be a writer’s dreams set to paper: I know mine are. They are formed, as are all dreams, in the imagination. But unlike sleep dreams, the writer has some degree of control over them. If unable to direct the dream’s every aspect, at least the writer can consciously influence them by nudging them in certain directions. I know that some writers plot out every single step and detail of a story before actually sitting down to write. It works for J.K. Rowling, who has made more money from transcribing her dreams of Harry Potter into more money than I will ever see in ten lifetimes. But it would never work for me. The element of spontaneity, both in sleep dreams and writing, is far too crucial for me.

If writing can be compared to flowing water, the detailed-plotting method seems to be like one of Los Angeles’ drainage canals—straight as an arrow and contained within concrete walls. I prefer mine to be like a meandering river: I know where it’s going, but while I can see the bends coming up, I have no idea what lies beyond them. And I am always aware that I am not on the journey alone: the reader and I are Huck and Jim on the raft, flowing through the story together. I can’t imagine it being any other way.

People frequently ask where I get the ideas for my books…and even my blogs…and my answer is always the same: I quite honestly have no idea. They just appear. (If I can be allowed another metaphor here, I’ve often likened my “creative process” to be like the gas bubbles rising to the surface of a tar pit. I’ll be minding my own business, thinking of almost anything except where my next story/blog idea is going to come from, when I’ll be aware of something rising to the surface. I’ll watch while it emerges and forms a bubble of thought and finally bursts, leaving me with a topic or plot idea. I love it!

For me to try to explain how these bubbles form and exactly how I handle them when they do appear is as impossible as explaining how we dream what we dream when we’re asleep. I

All dreams are born and are nourished in the nursery of the subconscious, and there they remain until they are ready to emerge, either as a sleep dream or as a book or a painting or a sculpture or a symphony. Dreams are our humanity, and I cherish them, whatever form they take.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Go, E-Rabs!!

2011-11-07T04:36:00.001-08:00

I received a notice today of my high-school class reunion--the 60th, if you can believe it, and I hope you can, because I certainly can't. I will not be in attendance, just as I was not in attendance for my first-through-fifty-ninth reunions. The charming saying "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out" fairly well sums up my attitude on my high-school experience.

For me, it was like spending four years watching paint dry. Even when I try very hard, I can remember almost nothing at all about it. While I had a number of friendly acquaintances, with the exception of Gary Atkins and Lief Ayen, both irredeemably straight and to whom I never "confessed" to being gay, I had no real friends. I was not a mingler in high school; I am not a mingler now. It's not that my classmates weren't, by and large, nice people; it's just that I was painfully aware that I had absolutely nothing in common with them. And though I realized later that it was a statistical impossibility, I was to the very best of my knowledge the only gay in school.

I know there were enjoyable moments during those four years, of course. There had to have been. It's just that they are so buried in the banality that I don't care to take the time to go looking for them.

I suppose I could consider the numerous sexual encounters with my (male) classmates pleasant, if I could remember them. One of the nice things--for me--was that teenage males are ruled by hormones and testosterone and it is the responding to them which matters far more than the niceties of with whom the end result is achieved. The self-recriminations (theirs, certainly not mine) always came after the act; they never prevented them. And the unwritten rule was that they never, never be spoken of again. Ever. I never came out to anyone in school, not that I needed to. I wasn't bullied or picked on. I was just like one of the extras in a movie mob scene; there, but unnoticed.

I probably had a few more casual girl friends--as opposed to girlfriends, the very idea of which revolted me to the core--than guys. One, Marlene, whom I called "Flower" after Thumper's girlfriend in "Bambi" was truly charmingly sweet, and I enjoyed her company. Another was a very nice girl named Donna of whom I was quite fond. I felt an affinity with Donna, who was overweight, not beautiful, and therefore, like me, invisible. But what she lacked on the outside, she more than made up for in kindness and understanding.

In high school, as has been true most of my life, I was acutely aware that, being gay, I did not "belong," and I cannot, in all honesty, remember really ever wanting to belong. Of course, I wanted to be liked...who doesn't? But for going to dances and hanging around with my classmates after school and weekends,...nothing. They were heterosexual. I was not, and never the twain shall meet. Again, my memory may be slightly faulty here, but I also do not remember ever being particularly lonely because of it. I know now, when I read of how difficult it is for gay teens today, how blessed I was.

My only extra-curricular activity in high school was orchestra, in which I played the clarinet, not particularly well. I took it up in junior high after falling in love with Mike Alongi, who in addition to being beautiful was a truly talented clarinetist. I think I might have been a grade or two behind him, so he was totally unaware of my existence, though I was achingly aware of his. In the orchestra, which was led by a nice older teacher named June Borland--I had never heard of a man named June before, and I fear that is the only reason I still remember him--there was a trombone player who went by the name of Candy. He was, to me, dumbfoundingly beautiful, but I was several planets beyond Pluto in the solar system of which he was the sun.

Oh, and to this day, I have no idea why we called ourselves "E-Rabs." ("E," I know, stood for East High. "Rabs" stood for God-knows what.) I didn't care then, and I don't care now.

So, while I wish my classmates, 99.9 percent of whose names I cannot recall, a wonderful reunion discussing golf and spouses and showing photos of the grandchildren, I don't think my not being there ("Roger who?") will be either noticed or missed. And I'd just as soon keep it that way; though I would be delighted were they to decide to read some of my books.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Of a Long-Ago November

2011-11-04T04:49:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I enjoy going back over the letters I wrote my parents while I was in the Navy so very long ago. They are a form of time-travel for me, taking me back mentally and emotionally if not physically to a time when I was very young and the world lay before me like the presents beneath a Christmas tree.

Here is a letter I wrote when I'd been in the Navy less than three months. My 21st birthday was still two weeks away, and I was beginning to realize that for all the wonder that lay ahead, there was also danger.

Monday, November 1, 1954

Dear Folks

This isn’t going to be a pleasant letter—at least not the first part of it—mainly because it deals with a very unpleasant subject.
In class 25, which graduated about four weeks ago, I got to know several guys; one of them our platoon leader—a quiet guy from California named Franson. He was Norwegian and reminded me vaguely of Zane.
Today, at Corey Field, he and his instructor were taking off—Franson was at the controls. Something happened and he got “shook” as we say; he pulled the nose up sharply—it began to stall—he got more nervous and pulled back on the stick as hard as he could….

The instructor is still alive--Franson resembled a department store dummy that had been hit by a truck.

Death comes in many forms, and is unpleasant in any of them—it can be remote, where someone dies in some futile little war in a nameless country; or it can be personal—like Uncle Buck. Franson was a third type—a vague mixture of the two others. He was no great friend, and yet again, he wasn’t a statistic in the newspapers.

Everyone, I am told, has an intense desire to live—that is one habit or trait I have acquired, and is very deep-rooted. Truthfully, I don’t see how the world could get along without me.

The guy across the hall is playing bop, and I loathe bop! To me, music is something you can hum or whistle; bop is like a surrealistic painting done by a lunatic.

Sorry if I sound morbid—I didn’t mean to, but I get “shook” when it comes to things like that. Death, like life, is also very real, and I suppose I must learn to accept that idea. Tomorrow, no doubt, on the commanding officer's desk at Corey will be five or six letters requesting permission to D.O.R. (Drop on Request). It always happens when a serious accident occurs.

The command is always very unhappy when someone is inconsiderate enough to go and kill themselves; especially around the holidays; for then guys get to thinking about their families and girls and things, and decide that two years of rough Navy life is better than five months of glory that will end in flames at the end of a runway.

Don’t worry, dad; I’m not considering DORing—but should I ever, it won’t be because I disliked the idea of dying—rather that I loved life more (a paraphrase from “Julius Caesar”—Act II, Scene V; I think). Anyhow, which would you rather have—a dead hero or a live nobody?

Well, now if I’ve made everyone perfectly miserable, I feel a bit better. And I’m not discouraged—just a wee bit suspicious of the workings of this old world. Cheer up—I have.

Love
Roge

P.S. Remember how I used to be when I was smaller; get all broke up any time I’d see a dead cat or dog? Well, I’ve put on the hardened shell of growing up; but I think I leak a little here and there….

Till then
Bye

*****
I'm thinking of reposting them all in hopes of reaching a whole new group of readers. Would you be interested in seeing them?

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Euphoria

2011-11-02T04:30:00.001-07:00

Of all emotions experienced by humans, the rarest and most precious of all is euphoria: those moments in which our souls are lifted up and carried to a place we wish we would never leave. We must, and do, of course, but the memory of those moments becomes a part of our being and remains with us forever.

The emotion of romantic love is the most frequent springboard to euphoria: being with someone you deeply love, a glance, a touch, just the sudden awareness of the love itself is enough to evoke euphoria. But almost any happy experience is, depending on the person and the circumstances, capable of triggering euphoria.

Possibly because I am a hopeless romanticist, I have been blessed to have experienced euphoria several times in my life, and I have placed each in a separate bell jar which I keep in the vast curio cabinet which is my mind. Whenever I look at them, I experience the residual warmth they still radiate.

Moments of euphoria are unique to the person experiencing them, and mine are certainly very different than yours, but if you don't mind, I'd like to point out just a few of those which have meant more to me than I could possibly describe.

I recall attending my first gay pride parade in San Franciso in the mid-to-late '70s, surrounded by tens of thousands of my own people holding rainbow flags and marching together down the packed streets in an atmosphere of...of belonging. The pure joy of knowing I was not, as I had been raised since childhood to assume I was, alone was exhilarating beyond description

I can and will never forget the euphoria experienced the day I, as a Naval Aviation Cadet, was on a solo flight and found myself in a "cloud valley" perhaps ten miles long and two miles wide surrounded by billowing cumulus clouds. The sky above was razor-sharp blue, and far below was the green and brown patchwork of farms and woods. To soar up and down that valley, doing aerobatics, barrel rolls and spins and up-and-over circles was an experience I'd never had before and knew I would never have again.

Possibly my most significant example of euphoria is unusual in that it was both cumulative and delayed, covering not a few moments, but several days, and I did not recognize it as euphoria until I was far enough removed from it to realize what it was and fully appreciate it. I'm referring to the time I spent in Cannes, France while still in the Navy, in the company of two German and two French young men...Gunter, Yoahchim, Marc, and Michele. It epitomized, for me, the indescribable joy of being unconditionally young and madly in love with life and the endless adventures it held in store. To this day, I have only to close my eyes and we are together again exactly as we were so very many years ago.

From the above paragraph, I hope you can appreciate my euphoria, fifty-five years later, on returning to Cannes to look for...and find...the battered concrete quay I was sure could not possibly still be there. To be standing once again on the very spot where, more than half a century before, Marc called out to me and a buddy from the Ticonderoga with whom I'd rented bicycles, "Hello, boys! Come on down!" Even now...even now the memory fills me with an overwhelming awe and happiness.

My recent return to Europe, brought me not one but two moments of euphoria, the first described above. The second occurred in Venice as I sat in the Piazza San Marco on a bright, warm April afternoon having a beer and listening to a small orchestra play in front of one of the restaurants lining the piazza. At that moment, I suddenly realized that I...me: insecure, self-deprecating, sometimes-teetering-on-the-edge-of-paranoia me...was sitting in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy, 4,650 miles from home, doing what millions of people would envy. It was the happiest I can remember having been in years. It was...well, euphoric.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

When I Rule the World

2011-10-31T04:39:00.001-07:00

My mind being what it is, I was sitting here minding my own business when I heard, somewhere in the space between my ears, Tony Bennett singing If I Ruled the World ("If I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of spring; every heart would have a new song to sing....")

I often think of how much better off the world would be if, in fact, God were to decide to take an extended vacation and turn the world over to me--or at least make me Emperor.

Here are a few of the changes I'd immediately initiate:

1) Every child will be wanted, loved unconditionally, nurtured, and allowed the freedom to be a child. If a parent deliberately denies their child any of these necessities, the child will be removed and given to someone who would provide them.

2) The objective education of its citizens will be a top priority for every government on earth. Any human being capable of learning how to read will be taught how to read. Courses in civility, basic manners, and respect for the rights of others will be mandatory for every elementary, high school, and college student.

3) What is good for humanity will take precedence over what is good for commerce and bureaucracy. Each human being will be treated as an individual worthy of attention and care. Those who subsequently try to take advantage of this fact for their own gain will be denied all rights afforded in this provision.

4) Individuals who deliberately lie or knowingly mislead others for their own gain will be disenfranchised and fined an amount equal to 100 times what they have gained by their actions. Those who use the internet for fraud will be forbidden to get with 100 feet of a computer for a period of five years. A second offense will involve banishment for life to a desert island without electricity.

5) Those who deny the rights of others will have their own rights denied.

6) The biblical concept of "an eye for an eye" will be reinstated. Anyone who deliberately causes physical harm to another will have the same injury inflicted on themselves, and to the same degree.

7) The death penalty will be abolished. Life in prison without parole will provide ample time to reflect on the stupidity of the act that put them there.

8) Handguns will be abolished and strict sentences imposed upon those who deliberately use any weapon against a fellow human being.

9) All prisons will institute mandatory education programs for those who cannot function on a less-than-twelfth-grade level.

10) Mental care facilities will be provided to those unable to function in everyday society.

11) Food and shelter will be provided to those who, through no fault of their own, are unable to provide it for themselves.

12) Two-year military service will be mandatory for everyone at some point between their 18th and 20th birthdays, no exceptions, no exclusions.

13) The lobbying of politicians will be forbidden, with strict penalties for both lobbyists and politicians, who will receive no benefits not afforded every other citizen.

14) Religious proselytizing will be banned outside of churches, synagogs, and mosques.

15) ...well, you get the idea. I'd appreciate your mentioning these proposals to God the next time you speak with Him.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Tased

2011-10-28T04:23:00.001-07:00

Why do I go through life feeling as though I'd just been shot with a taser gun? Why do I react so strongly every single time I'm confronted by anything I perceive to be utterly stupid and/or egregiously devoid of logic? Why can't I, like everyone else I know, simply accept things for what they are?

One of the infinite number of things I find totally impossible to comprehend is how any human not afflicted with scientifically recognized mental problems manages to survive from day to day without reacting as I do; how they can blithely sail through raging storms of mind-boggling contradictions and astounding balderdash seemingly unaware...or, if aware, able to ignore them. I can't. I never could. I doubt I ever will.

How can anyone...anyone...not be driven to distraction by the hate-filled, irrational rhetoric spewed out by human sewage plants posing as self-anointed pundits, politicians, and Speakers-for-God? That so many so blithely do stuns me to the soul. How can so many people, refusing to think for themselves, sit there like newborn birds in a nest, eyes unopened, beaks agape waiting to receive regurgitated nonsense, which they eagerly swallow?

I have a friend who is an intelligent, well educated professional, and yet for absolutely no reason I can even begin to understand is rabidly, utterly irrationally anti-Muslim. He believes to the depth of his being that there are no good Muslims. None. Not one. Nowhere on earth. Women, children, newborn babies, they are all terrorists in cahoots with Barack Obama--a Muslim--to destroy our great nation. Tased does not begin to describe how I feel when he sends me yet another stupefyingly irrational email forwarding.

There is a man in my building whom I will cross the street to avoid. Like my friend, when speaking of things other than politics he can be pleasant and rational enough. But he speaks of nothing but politics to the point where I fear for his sanity. I have told him time and time again that I while I respect his right to his opinions, I do not agree with then and do not wish to be exposed to them. Does that stop him? Silly question. Why do people do that? Perhaps I should use a taser on him.

Why am I incapable of glancing at the flood of messages pouring into my Spam folder without going into a rage which sometimes borders on the uncontrollable?

The answer is simple...at least for me: I expect my fellow humans to be good, and kind, and considerate of others, and at least reasonably logical, and no matter how often I am confronted with the fact that so many are not, I am truly shocked. I certainly should have gotten used to it by now, but I haven't.

I know the old saying that a cynic is a frustrated romantic, and I fear, while I do try to fight becoming cynical, I can feel it creeping up on me when I'm not paying attention. I fully realize that all my negativity is counterproductive; that I'm not going to change anything, and that the time I spend raging against perceived wrongs could far better be spent in constructive ways.

I admit, as a self-proclaimed romantic, that I see humanity in probably too rosy a light at times, I have to keep reminding myself that humans are, after all, biologically animals. We are predators; why can't I simply accept this elemental and incontrovertible fact? Spammers and far-too-many pundits and politicians and Speakers-for-God are, at their core, nothing more latter-day Tyrannosaurs eager to pounce upon and destroy the weak. They have no conscience, no morals, no concept of dignity or compassion or the common good.

So a good case could be made that if I'm constantly being tased, it's my own fault. I should just shut up and go along with the crowd, and accept the world as it is. I should, but I won't.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Beauty Redux

2011-10-26T04:28:00.000-07:00

I’m listening to Wagner’s overture to Tannheuser as I write, and as always, the section where the shimmering violins cascade over the granite of the brass clutches my chest so tightly my eyes mist over from the sheer power and beauty of it.

I am often overcome by visual and aural beauty…if seldom to the point of tears, very often to the point of a physical pressure in my chest. That I’ve always been an incurable romantic and spend so much of my time in fantasy probably doesn’t help. Beauty is truly in the eyes of the beholder, and I tend to behold it from several different angles at once. Beauty is anything I admire, or envy, or aspire to having or being, and is most often accompanied by the truly physical ache of realization that no matter how badly I might want it, I can never have it.

Beauty exists in lost things: in perspectives of the past only time can bring. Past experiences, relationships, never fully appreciated as they are being experienced, show their true beauty only in reflection. And for me there is sadness in the realization that they are indeed gone and will never return except in memory. That I can treasure them there gives me comfort rather like watching the video of a yule log on TV…it’s beautiful, but the warmth of immediacy is missing.

Being male, I don’t think it is the least bit surprising that one of the cornerstones of my being gay is my longing for the physical beauty and attributes I see in other men. I think this is a situation unique to gay men...I can't imagine it existing as a factor in heterosexual men's attraction to women.

I've mentioned before, in this regard, that before I was aged out of active participation in the "courtship"--a euphemism for which you can provide the appropriate word--aspect of the community, to meet and go home with someone to whom I was attracted was an exhilarating form of validation: that someone I considered beautiful might actually think I was attractive, too!

That our society is fixated on exterior physical beauty--and youth, which is its pre-requisite--to the point where we are bombarded by it and its inescapable message that if you yourself are not young and beautiful, you are inferior to those who are. People considered physically unattractive go through life bearing terrible burdens, not only emotional in knowing and constantly being reminded from without and within that they are lesser beings, but practically: "unattractive" people are less likely to be hired or selected in any process involving choosing one person over another. It is terribly sad and infinitely unfair, but it is a fact.

Beauty is absorbed into the human soul much like a sponge absorbs water, and comes in several forms, primary among which are sight and sound. The deaf are deprived of the beauty of the human voice and the wide variety of instruments mankind has created to produce various pleasing sound, probably best encompassed in symphony orchestras. So while the deaf cannot hear, they are subject to the same preconceptions of physical beauty as the rest of the population. But it is the blind, because they are not distracted by physical appearance, who can often far more clearly recognize and relate to the beauty of the soul rather than of the body.

True beauty exists not only in the eye of the beholder, but the mind, and just about everything is considered beautiful to someone. Because we are surrounded by so much beauty, we often do not see it, and it is often the subtle beauty, which must be given time to contemplate, which is the most rewarding. An autumn leaf upon the wet pebbles on a beach can be every bit as beautiful as any painting in a museum. All we have to do is focus our vision to be able to fully appreciate it.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

And Hast Thou Slain the Jabberwock?

2011-10-24T04:23:00.000-07:00

We live in a world filled with Jabberwocks--social, political, and economic--wherein Lewis Caroll's poem makes more sense than much of what goes on around us. And although we may have relatively little protection from the Jabberwocks which roam the exterior world, we can at least join together to form armies to battle them. But there is also a potentially more dangerous Jabberwock within each of us which wanders the tulgey wood of our individual souls. Our personal Jabberwock takes many forms --insecurities and fears, regrets, unresolved issues, physical problems--which we must each battle in our own way.

Jabberwocks, like the human minds they inhabit, are complex beings, made all the more challenging and frightening because we ourselves create them to our own specifics. Each is a composite of everything that troubles us. Most dwell in the dark, uncharted areas on the far periphery of our minds, and though we may be aware of their existence, we can learn to largely ignore them.

But for some, the Jabberwock lives far closer to the everyday conscious, leaving the dark forest of the subconscious to break through the fences we have built to keep them out. I am one of those people. I find I spend so much time racing off to drive my Jabberwock back into the forest that it drains valuable time away from more constructive activities. And, more often than not, when I do drive him back, he merely hides behind the larger trees near the edge of the clearing, waiting to come out again at the first opportunity.

My personal Jabberwock is comprised mainly of the eternal conflicts between who I think and hope I am and who I think and fear I am. He is partly my ego turned on itself--the firm belief that I can do/be anything I choose to do/be clashing with the undeniable fact that no, I cannot. I refuse to accept reality while being forced to live in its world, at least physically. And the strongest weapon my Jabberwock has to use against me is the mirror.

He taunts me with all the mistakes I have made which cannot be undone; of all the people I have hurt or angered without meaning to; of all the countless things I would give anything to go back in time and do or undo. And he always, always, whispers to me of time, and the fact that no matter how much of it may be left to me, there is more of it behind me than ahead.

I do my best to battle my Jabberwock with whatever meager weapons I have at my disposal, or can improvise. For all my feuding with reality, I don the coat of awareness that most of what I want I realistically cannot have...not because it is me or my ego who wants them, but simply because there are too many things to want, and no human being can do everything. And I scored a sizable victory when I left my insular little world recently to go off to Europe for a month! Most of it alone. And I will do it again next year. I have determined to take far more advantage of whatever opportunities I have. When I was younger, I did not do so many things because I had the cocky assurance of youth that there was plenty of time to do them...later. Now I realize that if I have the chance to do something, I cannot afford the luxury of putting it off.

I sincerely hope that your own Jabberwock is not nearly so disruptive to your life as is mine, and that yours lives so deeply in your mind's tulgey wood that your awareness of him is limited to the occasional, unconscious shiver produced by a distant roar from the dark fringes of your conscious, and that he never threatens to come out of the woods.

And once again, I sincerely hope that, through all this talk of my Jabberwock and my battles, you may find something in it which applies to you and your Jabberwock, and know that you are not the only one who has one.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Why? How?

2011-10-21T04:35:00.001-07:00

Because my mind is a runaway train racing through a world I do not understand, I am eternally coming up with what to me are very logical questions for which there are apparently either no answers, or at least none that I can understand.

Here are just a very few. I would very much appreciate any answers you may be able to provide.

Why, if those "Not Sold In Stores" geegaw TV commercials are anywhere near as good as they say, do they have to double or quadruple the offer to get you to buy them?

Why have I never heard about all those things commercials assure me "everyone is talking about..."?

Why do nurses and doctors continue to smoke?

What the hell is a "well-qualified buyer"?

Why do those who demand you listen to them never want to listen to you?

How do they put a lid on those KFC buckets when the ads always show pieces piled up way beyond the rim? For that matter, why do the food photos shown in fast food restaurants bear absolutely no resemblance to what they serve you?

Why does the phrase "trust me" all but guarantee you shouldn't?

Why do the side effects of drugs often sound worse than what you're taking the drug for?

Why can we not sneeze without closing our eyes? (Just try not closing them once.)

Why do we applaud to show approval? (I at least have a theory on that one. I suspect it somehow relates to a child's wanting to grab ahold of something that pleases it. When we applaud, we're trying to hold onto what we're applauding for...plus it makes a pleasant noise.)

Why can we never remember the exact process of passing from being awake to being asleep?

Why is it so easy to give solid advice, and so difficult to take it?

Why do some birds "walk" while others hop?

Why do pigeons bob their heads when they walk?

Why do squirrels and rabbits hop?

What is the purpose of the slit at the base of a cat's ears?

Why are the irises of some animals (and all humans) round, while others are slitted? And why are some slitted irises vertical (reptiles and cats) while others are horizontal (i.e. sheep and goats)?

Why do all newborn babies have blue eyes?

Why isn't there a phonetic dictionary to help people look up words they don't know how to spell?

Why are there always more questions than there are answers?

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Unforgiving

2011-10-19T04:43:00.001-07:00

There are a few blogs I've written which for some reason I cannot forget, and which I feel bear reposting for the message I hope it conveys. This is one.

My friend Gary and I went to a local coffee shop/bakery this morning. Standing in line by the glassed-in pastry counter, I was aware that the little old man behind me…unshaven, knit stocking cap pulled low on his head; long, shapeless brown overcoat…was making circular motions with one hand in front of the glass pastry case, saying “strawberry shortcake!” “Cinnamon buns!” I assumed he was talking to someone, but then saw he was alone.

“Soup,” he said. “Soup, soup, soup. I’ll have soup.”

I didn’t fully turn to look at him, but couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t talking to me. I didn’t want to say anything unless I was sure. When I got to the cashier, whom I know, I commented that he was lucky to be working inside, because it was cold outside.

“Yes, cold,” the little man said. I still didn’t know if he was talking to me, and felt like perhaps I should have said something to acknowledge him. But I didn’t.

When we sat down, the little man took a table near us, with his bowl of soup and the crust of French bread that comes with it. Head down, he ate quietly and quickly, not removing his coat. A few minutes later he got up to leave and, as he passed our table, he paused. Neither Gary nor I said anything or even looked up at him. He moved on, and Gary, who was facing the front of the shop, said he paused at each table as he passed it.

I at first assumed that the man was one of the far-too-many sadly dysfunctional people who flow along the city’s streets like twigs and leaves and Styrofoam cups float along a swollen creek; the invisible people no one sees, or pretend they don’t see. He may well have been. But it suddenly struck me that perhaps he was simply hoping someone might say hello to him, or somehow acknowledge his existence, and I was literally overcome with sadness and guilt that I, too, had totally ignored him.

When I told Gary how I felt, he said, logically, that to engage people whose looks and/or behavior strike a jarring note in the orchestra of our daily life was to risk…something: awkwardness? An unpleasant confrontation? The fact is that we simply do not know how to react to people who stand out as being uncomfortably different from ourselves and those we are used to having around us.

So rather than risk discomforting and embarrassing ourselves, we pretend they don’t exist. We tell ourselves, often with complete justification, that the panhandlers we see on the street could get a job if they wanted one, or that if we give them any money, they’ll just spend it on booze or cigarettes or drugs, and probably nine times out of ten, we are right. But what of the tenth person; the one who really does need our help. How can we tell the difference?

I have nothing but contempt for those who impose on others out of laziness or a desire to get something for nothing, or who deliberately try to take advantage of people’s goodness, or will do nothing to help themselves. They should be ashamed of themselves, but of course are not. And they deprive those who really need a little kindness or assistance of either.

I don’t know anything about the little old man in the coffee shop, or what his story might be, or if he was talking to himself or perhaps to me in hopes that I might say something to him and make him feel as though he were visible. But I am nevertheless truly and deeply ashamed of myself.

Why does this sort of thing bother me so? And why am I so relentlessly unforgiving of myself for not being who I think I should be? And the next time I encounter a similar situation, will I react any differently? I would like to think so, but, sadly, I doubt it.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

The Name Game

2011-10-17T04:55:00.001-07:00

Our names brand us throughout our lives, though we had no say in choosing them. In the year I was born, 1933--and yes, there was a 1933, long, long ago--the top five boys' names were a solid, no-nonsense, feet-on-the-ground Robert, James, John, William, and Richard. (My own name, Roger, was #48 of the top 100 names. Roger means "Renowned Spearman," though modesty prevents me from assuming its meaning had any bearing on my being gay.) Girls, too, were given solid, practical names, the top five being Mary, Betty, Barbara, Dorothy, and Joan.

In an attempt to be unique, parents often give their children names that are trendy at the time. Like so many other things, names rise and fall in popularity, and the astute can often fairly well guess when someone was born simply by the name they were given, though the fashion in girls names come and go faster than with boys. In 1990, the most popular boy's names were Michael, Christopher, Matthew, Joshua, and Daniel. For girls, the most popular were the more fashionable Jessica, Ashley, Brittany, Amanda, and Samantha.

Based on Social Security Administration statistics, the most popular names for boys in the United States in 2011 are Jacob, Ethan, Michael, Jayden, and William. I don't think I'd ever heard the name Jayden, though I like it. For girls the top names are Isabella, Sophia, Emma, Olivia, and Ava.

Some names, for some reason, carry a subtle stigma: dated, elitist, racist. Percival, Reuben, Jebediah (though I like it), Hymie, Rastus. It is unfortunate but true that names too strongly reflecting national or racial minority heritage can put the child at a certain disadvantage in the real world. There seems to be a trend among African American parents to give their children lyrical names...Keneesha, Latasha, Leeshandra..but which may tend, however unfairly, to be a detriment when the child becomes an adult and enters the business world.

When I worked for an insurance company, many years ago, I made a collection of names which stood out; three I still distinctly remember: Peachy Poff, Mitzpah Frau, and Quo Vadis Cone. I can't imagine that a child with such unusual names can escape being teased and tormented by other children. There are enough battles each child must fight; being targeted for their name should not be one of them.

Oh, and a word of advice for all prospective parents: never give a child a first name he/she is not going to use. My full birth name is "Franklyn Roger Margason." I was given my dad's first name, Franklin (with an "i") and the middle name of my cousin, Cork, whose birth name was Donald Roger Fearn. To avoid confusion with my dad, I have always gone by the name Roger, which has created endless frustration. To every bureaucracy, to every imaginable place where I am not personally known and which requires a full name, I am "Franklyn." I wait in line at the DMV, or visit a new doctor, or...

"Franklin Margason," they inevitably call when my turn come.

"My name is Roger," I respond.

They look from me to the paper with my name. "This says your name is Franklyn."

"It is, officially, but I never use Franklyn. Ever. Never. I'm Roger."

"All right, Franklyn. If you'll come this way...."

Since I've begun writing professionally, I've used the name Dorien Grey. Google tells me there are 252 people with the first name Dorien in the United States. I've just spent half an hour going through literally a dozen sites giving the origin and meaning of names trying to find the meaning of the name "Dorien." Finally went to a site called "Behind the Name: the etymology and history of first names." There are 26 variations given on the name "Dorian." "Dorien" is not one of them.

Why does that delight me?

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Hoarder

2011-10-14T04:24:00.000-07:00

I enjoy the tv show...actually, I think there are a couple of them...dealing with the subject of hoarders--people who collect and save and gather and can never part with anything, with the result that their lives become virtually unlivable if not for the hoarders then for those close to them. Shows like this provide us with the chance to "tsk-tsk" at the shocking conditions in which the hoarders live while allowing us to feel reassuringly if guiltily superior to them.

I am a hoarder. Not so much of tangible things as of thoughts and memories and ideas and information and songs and stories and poems and all kinds of trivia. I keep them not in my apartment, but in my mind.

Like a hoarder's house, my mind has rooms filled floor-to-ceiling with...well, thoughts. All sizes, all shapes, all topics--some whole, most in chunks or bits and pieces. Like the hoarders featured on the program, I always intend to get things in order one of these days. But like them, I do not, and just keep adding to the mounds and stacks and piles: a fascinating (to me) bit of trivia here, an interesting article there, a really thoughtful forwarding received from a friend over there--each of them great material for a blog.

The fact that my mind is such a jumble is related, I'm sure, to my lifelong habit of just putting something down somewhere, knowing full well when I put it down exactly where I put it. And then two minutes later, I can't remember what I did with it. I do that with blogs a lot. I'll get an idea, start to write it, then wander off after a paragraph or two. Oh, but I do save it, sure that I'll go back and finish it one day. And maybe I will--"Maybe" being the operative word. I carefully title each one ("Perspectives," "Tasered," "MacArthur Park," etc.) preface it with a "U" for "Unfinished", and "Save" it into my blog file. Lately, to help myself remember how long a particular unfinished blog has been sitting there, I've been prefacing them with a "UB" for "Unfinished, Begun" and the date. I can't say whether it has helped much, since I seldom go back through them...only add more. Just a few minutes ago, curious as to exactly how many of them I have in my "Blogs" file, I counted them. Seventy. Enough, were I simply to finish them, to last for over eight months!

Most hoarders tend to deny they are hoarders. They see themselves as collectors. However, over time, their habit/compulsion increasingly isolates them from those around and they become, by necessity or by choice, more and more reclusive. They have fewer and fewer visitors, either due to the visitor's discomfort with the conditions under which the hoarder lives, or by the hoarder's own embarrassment over those same conditions.

Unlike most hoarders, I welcome visitor to come into my cluttered brain and look around. One of the major differences between hoarding tangible things and hoarding thoughts is that a thing, once taken from the house, is gone, whereas should someone find something of interest in my mind they might want to carry off with them, I'm flattered...and I'll still have it. Thoughts are the only thing I know of that can be taken, yet still remain with the person from whom they were taken.

I think we are all hoarders of one sort or another, though it does not often become totally life-disrupting. Too many hoard grudges, or griefs, or perceived slights and injustices. Some few, the very wise, hoard happy memories, or dreams.

So here I am, today, with a blog due tomorrow and, as too often happens, I don't know what I should write about. So where did I put that idea I had awhile ago for a blog on hoarders?

Ah...here it is!

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

The Rose Peddler

2011-10-12T04:34:00.001-07:00

I swear I don't know where these things come from! Really, I don't. But I was thinking this morning about my constant running around trying to find new readers for my books--which I always have found somewhat embarrassing--"unseemly," as they say used to say in gentler times. It's very similar to those people who come up to your table in a nice restaurant with a basket of roses, asking if you'd like to buy one. The roses themselves are beautiful, and you know the seller is just trying to make a living. But still you can't escape the feeling of being approached as an unwanted/unnecessary intrusion on your privacy at best, and somewhat intimidating at worst--if you're on a date and you don't buy a rose, you're cheap. It evokes a "Hey, if I wanted to buy a rose from you, I'd have approached you" reaction.

Every author is, in effect, a rose peddler. Big-name authors, at the very top of the writers food chain, do not have to come up to you and ask if you want to buy their book: they have agents and powerful publishing houses to do most of the work for them. An occasional book-signing tour or a speaking engagement here and there...usually paid for by the publisher...with pre-programmed buyers forming lines around the block, and they can get back to writing their next book. But for 99 out of every 100 writers, there are no agents, there are no long lines.

Writing books is a wonderful experience. However, for the average writer, trying to get people to buy them is like chewing tinfoil.

The hard, cold fact is that out of the 150,000 novels published each year, 100,000 will sell less than 100 copies. It’s been estimated that, if the writer were to receive $1.00 for every book sold, he’d have to sell between 25,000 and 50,000 books per year in order to make a living at writing. (And yes, yes, yes, I know there are women writers. But this politically correct and excruciatingly cumbersome “he/she,” "him/her" political correctness drives me to absolute distraction! No offense, ladies.)

The internet is full of "writers-and-readers" groups, which consist almost totally of second, third, and lower tier writers commiserating with one another over how hard it is to find readers. And the relatively few readers who belong to such groups usually sit in the background or, when pressed for their opinion on a topic, invariably say "Oh, I'm just a reader," having no idea that without them...without readers...the writer is nothing. Readers apparently never stop to realize that it is they who hold the fate of writers in their hands. They can "make" a writer by reading him, or break him by ignoring or simply being unaware of him. It's up to the writer to make readers aware that he exists, and to convince them to take a chance and read the book.

There are far more excellent writers and wonderful books out there than there are large publishers to produce or promote them. A writer's chance for success is, unfortunately, too often in direct ratio to the size and clout of his publisher. And the sad fact is that a vast number of books published by smaller houses, once published, just sit there because the writer is more concerned with being able to say, "Oh, yes, I'm a published author" than to do anything to get out there and find people to read the book. I've seen countless posts on writer sites where one of the members will proudly state that he took copies of his book to the church picnic and sold three copies! That's wonderful, but hardly makes a dent in the expense the publisher went through to put the book out in the first place.

So I, and many, many other writers like me, must constantly be doing our little buck-and-wing dances while waving our self-promotional flags and doing whatever we can to call attention to ourselves
and our books. Necessity ain't always pretty, kid.

But just as there is pleasure in smelling a rose, there is pleasure in reading a book, no matter who convinces you to read it.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

The Case Against Acorns

2011-10-10T04:33:00.000-07:00

This past March I took a month-long trip to England, France, and Italy. Next year I'll be taking a 15-day riverboat tour from Budapest to Amsterdam, then stopping over in New York for several days before returning to Chicago. Bragging? No...utter disbelief. That I have done and will be doing these things--things that so many other people can only dream about, as I could only dream about were it not for Norm's generosity--leaves me lightheaded in contemplation. And all these wonderful adventures were possible only through the death of my dear friend and one-time partner, Norm, who did not spend his hard-earned money on himself when he could and should have.

I am deeply indebted to him in death as I was in life. So do I feel guilty for spending money he worked so hard for? No. I am doing with his money what I wish he would have done for himself. I think he would have appreciated the irony in that.

And therein lies the theme and message of this blog: you truly can't take it with you. I could have...and many might say should have...invested the money Norm was kind enough to leave me. But to what end? I have no family to support, and even if I did have a family, I'm well beyond the age of having to support them. I have finally learned to live within my income and therefore didn't really need the money, though I am of course delighted to have it.

I fully realize that everyone's needs are different. We all have financial obligations, which vary greatly from person to person. And I am certainly not advocating just blowing every penny we have on our own personal pleasures. We tend to work hard all our lives, putting money aside for...what, exactly? Like squirrels collecting acorns, we keep stashing it away. But once we have accumulated enough to assure ourselves a reasonable and sustainable level of comfort, we keep going. "For the kids," is perhaps the most common reason given if asked. A noble thought, but once "the kids" are no longer kids, the obligation to support them largely vanishes--they need to stand on their own two feet and make their own way. Leaving them something when you die is fine. But too often "something" is, realistically, too much. Pampering children is one thing; pampering adults is something quite different, not to mention largely unnecessary.

I think a major problem in the acorn-gathering/money-stashing philosophy is that we are seldom aware of how much is enough. It would be safe to say that the vast majority of people are unaware of their true financial condition. They do not budget, they do not plan, they have no real idea of where their money goes. They just keep gathering those acorns.

I'm not addressing this to those whose circumstances prevent much acorn-gathering. But there are still a very great number who can, but who are so concerned for saving for the future comfort of others they neglect their own comfort now.

Norm, for example, left a sizable amount of money to his brother, who has done quite well for himself throughout life and does not need it, and to two nephews whom he never saw and who, from all accounts, were also doing quite well for themselves. I do hope they will use that money as I am using it, to fulfill dreams. I'm sure Norm, too, had dreams, but he was too busy storing acorns to act on them.

I am, as I'm sure you've noticed if you've followed these blogs, excruciatingly aware of the passage of time, and that time is not limitless for any of us. If we don't take the opportunities presented to us, they may well be lost forever. One of my strongest memories of my recent trip is of sitting in the Piazza San Marco in Venice on a beautiful, sunny day, having a drink while listening to a small orchestra playing not 50 feet from me. I made a mental toast to Norm, wishing he was there with me, and knowing that he should have been there instead of me.

So don't spend all your time running around gathering acorns. Take some time to sit in the sun and enjoy them.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

"Scatter Ye Breadcrumbs..."

2011-10-07T04:15:00.001-07:00

For some, life is a vast green pasture, for some a forest, and for some a jungle. But regardless of the terrain through which we pass, many feel the need to leave a trail to mark their passage, either so they can trace the path back to where they began or so that others may know the path they have taken.

Memories are the breadcrumbs of choice for most of those looking to retrace their steps along the way, but memories really don't hold up too well in the light of reality. They are much too easily warped by the passage of time. But since we tend to avoid staring into the light of reality just as we avoid staring directly into the sun, we seldom realize that what we're sure we remember clearly may not in actually be exactly what happened. Time wears away memory's sharp corners and fades the colors. As strongly as we believe something happened at a certain time in a certain place in the company of certain people or under certain circumstances, almost assuredly we are not 100 percent accurate.

Because I have never understood the world, and am so easily lost or led astray, I have been an inveterate breadcrumb-dropper all my life. But instead of relying totally on memories to mark my journey, I reinforce them with as many tangible bits and pieces of my past as possible, mostly in the form of my writings. Since words can last forever, I use them as my breadcrumbs. As a result, my trail through life is much easier to follow than most. I have an entire two-year period of my life, in fact--by way of letters written to my parents when I was in the Navy--documenting an almost day-by-day, as-it-happened accounting of events. After not having looked at the letters for many years, I was shocked to discover that several things I distinctly remember either did not happen, or did not happen when or in the order that I could swear they happened.

Memories are ephemeral, words are solid.

I always strongly encourage anyone with a desire to be remembered to drop tangible breadcrumbs as they travel through life. Even if they have no need to retrace their steps, it allows those they care about, and those who care about them, to see the exact path they took.

Photographs make fairly reliable breadcrumbs, but unless they are dated, even they can be misleading. When you take a photo, you know full well who is in them, their relationship to you, when and where it was taken, and under what circumstances. But unless you take a moment to caption them, 20 years down the line who else will know?

While few people think to do it, keeping a journal of what may seem uninteresting or even trivial to you. Taking brief notes on vacations and trips, saying what you did and, more importantly, your thoughts and feelings can, when you look them over in future years, sharpen memory and rekindle emotions--especially good ones.

I feel strongly about the need to leave breadcrumb showing our individual paths through life. If not for ourselves, then for those who come along a bit later and may want to know more about us and who we were. The more solid the breadcrumbs, the sharper the image we leave of yourself. Personal letters to friends or family, for example, are not only a part of who we are, they serve as a sort of time capsule for anyone who might come across them in the future.

What we take for granted, what is totally normal and may seem mundane or even boring--what is now--to us, will be viewed quite differently when seen from the perspective of the future.

You can't go back in time and leave breadcrumbs retrospectively. But it's never too late to start.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and the recently-released Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

Words Spoken, Words Written

2011-10-05T04:32:00.000-07:00

I wish I spoke well...and I'm not referring to the residual effects of tongue cancer on my ability to speak clearly enough so that other people can always understand me. I mean I wish I were able to put my thoughts together quickly enough to enable me to instantly say what I wanted to say, rather than saying something lame or saying nothing at all, or coming up with what I wanted to say sometime later.

There's that old saying which, like most old sayings has a good deal of truth to it: "It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and prove it." I, unfortunately, tend to do both.

How many times have I, having been snubbed or snapped at or insulted or neglected by a clerk or asked a totally unexpected question, felt angry or like a fool for not responding the way I should have responded at the very moment?

It's not that I am incapable of coming up with a blistering, sage, or witty (whichever is appropriate) retort to something said. I can...just not in time for it to do any good. Twenty seconds, five minutes, half an hour later I invariably come up with something absolutely brilliant I wished I'd said. It is no wonder I do not play tennis. Thought-mouth coordination is just as important to communication as hand-eye coordination is to sports.

Not only do I deal poorly with my own personal thought-mouth coordination, I frequently think of what I wish other people had said. To this day it truly bothers me that, upon landing on the moon, Neil Armstrong said, "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind." What he should have said and I am sure meant to say, was, "That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind." Amazing how much difference one tiny word can make.

And the insertion of the words "under God" into our pledge of allegiance--words which were not in the original version, which were never intended to be there, and which flagrantly violate the fundamental principle of separation of church and state and were inserted only to satisfy fundamentalist Christians (in my opinion, the worst kind)--sincerely drives me into a frenzy.

I would have loved to be a candidate on the platform at the Republican debate when the audience booed the gay soldier in Afghanistan. Not one of those gutless-blob candidates had the guts to say what may well have guaranteed them the Republican nomination. Had, the minute the booing occurred, any one of them had the guts to say: "All right...all of you who booed stand up! Here is someone wearing the uniform of the United States of America, someone who volunteered to put his life on the line every day to protect your sorry asses and you have the utter, unmitigated gall to boo him? You're a disgrace and, should I be the Republican candidate for president, I do not want your vote."

I have often said that one of the main reasons I became a writer was that writing gives me time to think after I speak, and to go back and change things so that they come out the way I wanted them to. Spoken words are immutable: once they leave the month, they can't be changed or taken back, no matter how hard one tries. It's like trying to unring a bell. But written words are infinitely malleable: they can be rephrased, rearranged, amended, softened, hardened.

It is the spontaneity of the spoken word which holds both its power and its inherent danger. Hearing a moving speech, for example, often has more impact than reading about it, thanks largely to the ability of inflection to convey shadings of meaning. Many deaf who have learned to speak have a certain flatness to their voice because there is no way for them to really be aware of the importance of inflection.

Spoken words can and too often do confuse, or cause pain which cannot be uncaused. Both spoken and written words can induce thought, but unless the spoken word is recorded, it cannot be reheard; written words are always there and can be gone over again and again, allowing time for introspection. The spoken word is now; the written word is forever.

If it sounds as though I'm making a case for the written word over the spoken...well, considering the source, I guess you're right.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

Words Spoken, Words Written

2011-10-05T04:21:00.001-07:00

Be Prepared

2011-10-03T04:51:00.000-07:00

It isn't that I don't like the idea of planning. I do. I admire, albeit oddly grudgingly, people who take the time to think out and methodically plan their every action. It's just, basically, planning takes time and I have precious little enough of that as it is, so I generally don't do it. If I'm at a point where I want to begin a project and I have the choice between just getting to it or spending the time to plan out every possible detail and contingency, the choice is clear: the time involved in planning something takes time away from actually doing it. It also, I think, takes some of the fun out of it, at least for me. I've mentioned several times that I never plan out my books (or, as you may rightly suspect, my blogs) before I start them. I get an idea and I go with it. It may not be the way most people do things, and sometimes I'm sure it shows, but it works for me.

I have literally dozens of begun-but-never-finished blogs in my "Blogs" folder. I get an idea, start writing, and run out of steam or thoughts a few paragraphs into it, and abandon it. I don't just delete it, though, in case I might want to go back and finish it someday. This is quite different than writing a book. I admit that with a book, the initial idea usually includes the theme, the method of murder, the motive, and tentatively whodunnit, though the actual killer frequently turns out to be someone other than I first intended, depending on how the story progresses.

When it comes to planning and its consequences, writing has overwhelming advantages over real life, the primary one being the ability to go back and rewrite what has been written. Probably that is also one of the reasons I so dislike reality. Life does not allow rewrites. Once a moment in real life has passed, it cannot be changed or altered. Say something you should not have said, do something you should not have--or wish you had not--done, and you're stuck with it forever. For all the planning you may have done in real life, changing the outcome is not possible.

One of the many joys in writing, for me, is in being able to, in effect, just read the story as it unfolds on the screen in front of me. This pleasure would be lost were I to have carefully plotted out exactly what was going to happen exactly where in the story. My mind simply could not allow such confinement, and I honestly cannot comprehend how those who do meticulously plot in advance can do it.

Of course I am not totally uninvolved in the progression of my stories; just as one has to make changes and adjustments and decisions and process new information in the course of everyday life, so it is, for me, with the process of writing--though with far more flexibility than real life affords. If, in the course of working on a book, I have to figure out how Dick or Elliott might come by a some piece of information, I can go back into the story and plant a clue or a introduce a character from whom the information might logically be obtained. With luck, the reader will never be aware that it was done, which is exactly the way it should be. Deus ex machina--just having something appear out of nowhere, with absolutely no advanced preparation for the reader is, for me, the ultimate cop-out and the kiss of death for a book, story, tv show, or movie.

For most people and in most instances, "Preparation" more frequently involves the mental process than any physical things that must be done before the event, and too easily "preparation" becomes a euphemism for "pointless fretting." Preparation implies that some specific actions can be taken prior to the event to positively affect what is being prepared for. Too much of what people consider "preparation" is in effect, busy work prompted by worry. I generally consider the degree of preparation required to be largely dependent upon the importance of what is being prepared for. I am really trying to prepare for my anticipated trip to Europe next year, for example, but I'm limiting it to laying the groundwork, without micromanaging every detail in advance.

Of course, as I read over what I've just written (since—surprise!—I didn't prepare what I was going to say in advance), I realize that it could, with some justification, be considered my attempt to rationalize the simple fact that I am just plain lazy, and not preparing for things is my way of taking the path of least resistance. I do hope I'm not taken to court over the issue, for I fear I would lose.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

Growing Up Gay

2011-09-30T04:32:00.001-07:00

As you may have noticed, many of my blogs deal with various aspects of my being gay, and the reason is simple: I talk so much about being gay because for the first nearly 2/3 of my life I was, out of very real concern for the possible consequences, unable to do so.

And now, looking at the title of this blog, it has the same vague redundancy as if it had been titled "Growing Up Brown-Eyed" or "Growing Up Right-handed." Of course I grew up gay: it's simply an integral part of who I am and who I have always been. The realization...make that the acceptance of the fact...that one is gay varies from person to person. I was blessed to realize and accept who I was before I ever heard the term "gay."

I don't remember when I first heard the actual word "gay" used to define those like me. Up until my early teens the only words I heard to describe what I was were "Queer," "Sissy," "Pansy," "Nance," and other equally charming epithets. Interestingly, I don't recall hearing "Faggot" (the most commonly derogatory term today) until I was well beyond my teens. I was, in fact, not directly aware that there were more than a few others like me until I was 17 and was picked up in a movie theater by a guy visiting from Chicago, who showed me there was a whole world of us out there.

I never experienced any bullying for being gay, though in high school there were a few minor incidents of name calling and whispers and, once, a car full of my male schoolmates--none of whom I knew personally--driving by and yelling "Queer!"

Knowing what I know now about the growing-up experiences of others of my generation and beyond, I realize not only how lucky I was, but that I was in fact utterly blessed. My mother and father loved me unconditionally, and had they ever asked, I would have told them. But they didn't. They didn't have to. I never lied, or pretended to be anything but what I was, but we played a mutual game of avoidance. My father was far more aware of my sexual orientation than my mother, and at a far earlier age. It wasn't until I was 33 and had broken up with Norm after six years that we addressed the subject openly. My dad said, "Are you sure? Have you tried being with a woman?" (No, I most definitely had not.) and my mom, said, "Well, I wish you weren't, but that doesn't change how much we love you." And it didn't.

I had relatively (no pun intended) little contact with my father's side of the family...my grandmother, aunt (Dad's half-sister), her husband, Pete, and their two kids. I heard only many years later that one time while I was a teenager, Pete apparently made some comment about my being "queer" to my folks and my dad nearly got into a fight with him over it.

I always identified strongly with my mom's side of the family, the Fearns, and down deep considered myself more a Fearn than a Margason. Every one of them--my grandfather, aunt, uncle, cousins, and second cousins--never once so much as suggested that I was "different," though they all knew, and I love them all the more for it. One of my fondest memories is when I brought my then-partner, Ray, back to Rockford for a visit. The entire family got together for dinner, and treated Ray as they had treated Norm...as one of the family.

My dad, being more aware, was deeply concerned for me, and sometimes this led to conflicts between us. Once, between my freshman and sophomore years of college, two of my best gay friends, Stu and Zane, and I planned a trip to New York. Dad did not want me to go, and we had several heated arguments until finally he said, "Okay, go to New York with your queer boyfriends!" This shocked me because he knew Stu and Zane and had always treated them warmly, and had never before said a word against them. I realize now his reaction was based on his true concern over the possible dangers inherent in my being a gay teenaged tourist in New York.

When I moved to Chicago after college and partnered with Norm, my folks and the entire family accepted him without question. Even though my folks and I had not yet even mentioned the "g" word, and would not for several more years, they adored Norm and treated him as a second son.

When I took my parents to Hawaii as a Christmas present one year, Norm stayed in Chicago. One night, when my folks were getting ready to go to bed, I decided I wanted to go back out (to check out the local gay scene, though of course I didn't tell them that). My mom said, "Well, when you get married you won't need all this running around," and my dad said, "Hell, he's already married."

I miss my folks...and at this moment, (no offense, Mom), I particularly miss my dad.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

"Damned if you do,..."

2011-09-28T04:41:00.001-07:00

That we humans are able to exist at all in so infinitely-complex and frustrating a world is a testament to our resilience and flexibility. We are bombarded every moment of every day with contradictions and challenges and decisions, and somehow we manage to wend our way through the minefields, though it can be argued it is harder and harder to do so.

Ironies and contradictions abound. We have created technology to make our lives simpler, and have ended up being ruled by it. We come up with new ways of direct communications and lose the ability to communicate directly (as anyone who has ever tried to reach a real human being at a major corporation can attest).

The invention of the computer has changed our entire world. But now, to have a computer is not enough. One must have an iPod and an iPad and a Tablet and a Kindle and a Nook and a Blackberry. Telephones begat cell phones, and cell phones begat texting and ring tones and 14,999 various "apps". I have a computer (and have made the quantum leap from sit-in-one-place PC to a laptop and have a small device that plugs into the laptop to enable me internet access from anywhere in the city of Chicago). I do not have an iPod or an iPad or a Tablet or a Kindle or a Nook or a Blackberry. I have seen them, but I have never used them, and though I'm sure they're lots of fun, I honestly get along fine without them.

I am bedeviled by endless TV commercials that encourage me to sign up for a mind-boggling array of supposedly absolutely necessary services I in fact do not need, each of which I can have "for only $99.99 a month for the first three months," after which it usually goes up to $129.00 per month. Multiply this by six different devices requiring some sort of service contract and you're getting close to the gross national product of Paraguay.

I am well aware that the single purpose of all commercial ventures is to make money, but I rather strongly resent the implication that if I don't have (read "buy") all these gadgets and gee-gaws, I am a pathetic relic unfit for society. Lord knows I get that message clearly enough in other areas of my life; I don't need it from technology.

I have yet to completely figure out Facebook and Twitter and Google+ and LinkedIn and and BranchOut and the 9,000 other internet sites I am told I "must" belong to if I intend to get/keep my name out there and find new readers for my books. And as a result, I spend so much time bouncing from site to site trying to keep up that I have almost no time to write.

Obligations are part of life. If you are below retirement age, you have to get up and go to work five days a week whether you want to or not. We all have obligations, to friends, family, employers. For the most part, we meet them, and when we don't, there are often consequences. It is the obligations imposed on us by our culture and by technology which are the problem. We are in effect bullied into them.

The human need to belong, to feel part of the whole, is universal. It is a fact advertisers know well and exploit to the fullest. One of the most popular expressions in the advertiser's lexicon is "Everybody's talking about..." The fact that, of course, everybody is not talking about it is totally irrelevant. The clear message they are sending is that if you are not talking about it, you don't belong.

Bombastically partisan politicians are fond of saying "The American people will not tolerate such-and-so," meaning that if you have no objection to or may even be in favor of the "such-and-so," you are obviously not a part of "the American people."

The world, it seems, is the embodiment of that old vaudeville question: "Have you stopped beating your wife?" No matter how you respond, you're in trouble. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

When I Was Who I Was

2011-09-26T04:26:00.001-07:00

When I was who I was, I was not satisfied. I took everything I had for granted and wanted more. Now that I am who I am, and no longer have what I had then, I look back in longing for it, and in self-recrimination for not appreciating what I had until I no longer had it. This seems to be an all-too-common human trait, and one which, if you do not yet understand, you surely will.

We tend to assume that life is just...there...all for us. When we are young, we firmly believe that we will be young forever. Life does not come with an instruction manual or a warrantee, and we totally ignore cautions of what lies ahead for us just as we ignore the tiny-print cautions that come on every bottle of aspirin. It is only much later, when it's too late to make any sort of mental preparation, that we begin to realize that life is not a gift, but a pay-as-you-go proposition. Each of us must pay, in some form, for every year we live and, like health insurance premiums, the cost goes up every year. It is not until we are well into our 30s or 40s that it begins to occur to us that the rules of mortality apply to us. The realization is like slowly being lowered into a bath of ice water.

We are far too easily distracted from where we are going by our real and perceived problems. Every human has problems--they're a part of life. Some, of course, are much more serious than others, but while some are life-changing, the vast majority are not. Problems of the moment tend to be exaggerated in our minds because 1) they are our problems, and 2) we are having them now. Once they are past, they generally fade away to relative insignificance, to be replaced by newer problems. But in our obsession with them, and in wasting much more time than necessary on them, we lose perspective on the rest of our lives.

Some species, like ants and bees, seem to share a common awareness. It would be nice if, even as we remained individuals, humans were privy to some sort of similar shared awareness of the true path of our life. Because we are locked within ourselves and spend every instant there, we are not aware of the changes going on within ourselves...the gradual change from who we were to who we are. Seeing ourselves in a mirror each day is an example of this phenomenon. Reflective surfaces reveal these changes, but they are so gradual as to be unnoticed. I, unlike most people, go to great lengths to avoid reflective surfaces out of my refusal to accept what I see there. I therefore can go for months without confronting myself. But when I do, because I do not have the "buffer" of incremental unawareness, I am painfully aware of the changes between what I see now and what I saw the last time.

I don't want to be who I am now. I want to be who I was, once. And the full awareness that I never will be, never can be, does not stop me from wanting, or reduce the intensity of that want. And yet I find myself slowly coming to what I hope to be an...accommodation...with myself. No matter how old we are, we are never going to get any younger, but by the same token, we are, at this moment, as young as we will ever be, and I am determined to enjoy whatever it is--and there is much--I have now. I can't do anything at all about the past, but I can have considerable control over my future. I plan for it (a European river cruise next summer, the completion of my current book and a string of subsequent books stretching as far into the future as time will allow me); I try not to put off things I want to do by falsely assuming I will have "plenty of time" in which to do them. I may not, and this is as true of you as it is with me.

To say "time is precious" is to repeat one of the oldest and most overused of cliches. But like most cliches, it became a cliche because it is true. And I relate my awareness of the value of time to my habit of, when seeing a penny on the sidewalk, stooping to pick it up. Not because I need the money, but because like time, it is there, it has value, and it should not be wasted.

I will never be who I was when I was, but I'll do my best to be who I am.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

We Humans

2011-09-23T04:23:00.001-07:00

We humans are an endlessly fascinating species, constantly at war within and among ourselves. We each exist in and move through a world of astonishing everyday wonders of which we are never aware. That we are not is understandable in that were we to be aware of them all we would have no time, given our relatively short lifespan, to do anything at all else but be in a state of constant, overwhelming amazement. We'd be like a deer in the headlights, immobilized.

But every now and then we should stretch our minds by giving some thought to those things never thought of. Our genetic imperatives, for example. Our DNA is almost identical to the primates and carnivores from which we evolved--and yes, you Tea Party twits, we evolved! Get used to it.

But for all our genetically based aggressiveness, which has plagued us since before we became identifiably human, we are also programmed for what might be called nobility. Our genetic imperative is centered on the preservation of the species. We protect our children instinctively. With few exceptions, we would without hesitation give our lives to save theirs. And, to our credit, not only our own children, but all children within our circle of influence. Were the starving children in remote areas of the world within our physical reach, I have no doubt but that we would do anything to save them. It is the physical distance which gives us a sense of helplessness. Our only recourse, given the distances separating us, is to contribute money to be used by those physically closer to the problem to help them, and it can always be argued that no matter how much we do to alleviate their suffering, we can and should do more.

I've always been fascinated with sudden, unexpected natural and man-made disasters--fires, earthquakes, explosions, tsunamis, ship sinkings, floods, tornadoes--not for the suffering they cause, but for the very best qualities of our species those disasters bring out. Caught up in violent events, we react instinctively, and to our great credit, most of us act nobly in attempting to protect and save our fellow humans--and often other living creatures also directly involved.

We have created complex societies with complex laws which we obey without thought or question. We hear a siren behind us while we're driving, and we instinctively pull over without giving an instant's thought as to why we are doing it. With few exceptions dictated by circumstances, we stand in line rather than trying to rush to the front. We pay our taxes, we vote...all elementary, simple things until you pause for a moment to wonder why we do these things. We have schools and hospitals and libraries and stores and factories and build roads and bridges and establish national parks and playgrounds. Think of any one of them and wonder how they came to be and why--really why--we invented them.

It is sometimes difficult not to truly despair for the future of humanity. There is so very, very much evil and hatred and bigotry and cruelty and gratuitous stupidity in the world it tends to overwhelm us, and makes it easy to forget the good, the selfless, the caring, the kind. It is, again, to our credit that we pay so little attention to the positive because we expect the positive: it is simply assumed to be the norm. And because the negative still surprises, shocks, and saddens us, we tend to forget that it does so because it goes against what we assume and expect--through desire if not always through fact--to be the norm; to be the way we expect the world to be.

Of all the gifts given humanity, the one which most separates us from all other species with whom we share the planet is hope. With it, we can and do face any challenge. Without it, we are doomed.

I wonder if, were they to look for it, scientists might find a Hope gene in our DNA?

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

"Dear Dugbate:"

2011-09-21T04:38:00.000-07:00

After my last posting on the subject of internet spam, I swore that I would go to my spam folder only long enough to hit "Delete All", and thereby save myself from the fits of uncontrollable fury reading even the subject lines of those messages inevitably evoke.

But today, rather like an alcoholic who, after a period of abstinence, thinks it will be okay to have just one little drink--I gave in to the temptation of trying just one, brief, totally objective look at the messages awaiting me when I came on line this morning.

I sincerely wish it were possible to write the real people...and I am being kind in referring to them as "people"...behind these messages to see if I could determine exactly why they have chosen to throw away their humanity for the sake of pure greed. But I guess that sentence both asks and answers the question.

Anyway, since I know full well that to actually respond to a spam message is to automatically have my email address and whatever other information I might be foolish enough to provide put up for sale to thousands of others of the morally dead, I thought I'd pick out two at random and write--though not send--a response. This is, I've been told, a valid and often recommended form of therapy.

So here are just two of today's spam subject lines and my responses:

SGT LARRY WAYNE - Pls do not disregard - Hello, How are you and your family sincerely hope all is well. My names is SSG Larry Wayne; I....

Hi, there, Larry!

Why of course I wouldn't disregard your message: You're a member of the United States armed forces, to whom I and every American owe a great debt! Though I am a bit curious as to why, since as stated in your note, your "names is" SSG Larry Wayne (I thought it was "SGT" Larry Wayne), the message was sent by suzana.paunescu@cgsinc.ro? ".ro" is the e-mail designation for Romania. I assume Suzana is your Romanian girlfriend, and you had her look through 2 billion email addresses to specifically find mine while you were out there putting your life on the line defending my freedom.

Your folksy approach in asking about my family--though I don't have one--was very much appreciated, and yes, all is indeed well except for one small thing: that anyone would stoop to posing as an American serviceman in an egregious attempt to screw me and the 18 million other people to whom this same message was sent.

You're so far beneath contempt, Larry, you could not be located on Sonar, and I wish I believed in God so that I could fervently pray for you to get what you so richly deserve if not in this life, then the next.

Your Buddy,

Dorien

Federal Bureau of Investigation - Federal Bureau of Investigation Contact Mr Dugbate John for your payment...

Dear Mr. John (may I call you Dugbate?)

While I was unaware that one of the duties of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was to send out "payments"--I won't presume to ask for what--to complete strangers, I am eager to accept your kind offer. Please, however, do not ask me for my bank account information in order to complete the transfer. Just send the check to me, and I'll deposit it.

My best to J. Edgar,

Dorien

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

"For Want of a Nail..."

2011-09-19T04:22:00.000-07:00

The proverbial rhyme about the consequences of the loss of a single horseshoe nail ("for want of a nail, the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost...") is no less applicable today. So let us gather here today to mourn the loss of simple common sense, one of humankind's greatest gifts, which has shown us the way through some of our darkest hours, and whose loss has significant consequences on our society.

And I think, being honest, that we must all accept responsibility for its loss by increasingly turning our backs on it.

Michele Bachmann, that great humanitarian and scholar, tells us that a trip President Obama (a.k.a to Republicans as "the Antichrist") made to Japan cost taxpayers $200,000,000 a day; that he took along an entourage of 2,000 people, who stayed in 735 luxury 5-star hotel rooms (at least that comes out to nearly three people per room--a sure sign of frugality ignored by Ms. Bachmann). She also told us, with the deep sincerity and profundity for which she is known, that our founding fathers worked tirelessly (this is in 1776, mind) until slavery was eradicated from the land.

Is she laughed off the stage and forbidden to play with sharp objects? No, she is running for the office of President of the United States, and her every word is greeted with applause and knowing nods of agreement by her followers. And she is accompanied in her bid for the presidency by others whose intellectual qualifications and devotion to truth equal her own.

As our society becomes more and more ruled by technology--the workings of which are unintelligible to the average human--we feel, correctly, that we have less and less control over our own destinies. As even trying to figure out how and why things and institutions work the way they do becomes increasingly more difficult, more and more people are throwing up their hands in frustration and saying to self-proclaimed pundits, "Okay, you tell me what to think," and those pundits, whose motivations are based far more on greed for power than altruism, are more than happy to oblige. And with every egregiously false and misleading statement they issue, another nail is pounded into the coffin of common sense.

Can this trend be reversed? Possibly, but I fear it would require more time and effort than most people are willing to devote to it--there's a "Housewives of the Jersey Shore" rerun on tonight, after all, and priorities are priorities.

But just because we've tossed common sense into the back of a sock drawer doesn't mean we can't take it out and start using it again. First, we must all realize that just because something is said on TV or read in a forwarded email does not make it true. As someone once said, if ten million people believe a lie, it is still a lie. All it takes, when reading/seeing/hearing something like this is to ask the simplest of simple questions: "Does this really make any sense?" President Obama plans to give every illegal immigrant $400,000 a month, free health care, a new house, and a new car? Forget that even if he wanted to he could not get it passed through a congress which, if he said the sun was shining, would run for their umbrellas. Hey, a friend sent me an email of an article he saw in some magazine, so it must be true. Muslims use a melon scoop to remove the brains of Christian babies? They said so on Fox News, so it has to be true.

Politics, of course, is not the only thing lacking the nail of common sense. Internet spam is obviously unaware of its existence. After railing against Spam endlessly, I still cannot comprehend it, let alone how any rational human being could ever, under any circumstances, believe a word of it.

Television commercials--and especially infomercials and those aired late at night--depend on the lack of the nail of the viewer's common sense.

Instances of the effects of the loss of the nail of common sense are endless, and to point to them all is like standing in the back yard at night pointing up at the stars.

But the nail's not lost; we can find it and use it. All we have to do is try.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

Who? What? When? Where? Why?

2011-09-16T04:41:00.000-07:00

When I took my first journalism class in college, the professor pointed out the key to every good news story. Each, he said, must answer five basic questions: who, what, when, where, and why, and do so as concisely as possible.

I always loved the story of the fledgling reporter who was assigned to cover the death of a local socialite who had committed suicide after attending a party. He submitted his story, which his editor rejected as too long, citing the five keys. He re-did it, cutting it considerably. The editor rejected it as too long. Three more attempts were also rejected. Finally, in frustration, the writer submitted the following. "Socialite John Smith, 48, attended a party Thursday evening. He took his hat, his coat, his leave, a taxi to his home, a gun from his drawer, and his life." I think he was fired.

I think that's why I never went into newspaper journalism, and why I don't even write short stories anymore: brevity may be the soul of wit, but when it comes to writing, I find it next to impossible to be brief.

A novel must answer the same five key questions as a news story, but has the luxury of allowing the writer to take as much time as he ("No, no!" Political Correctness admonishes sternly, "He or she!" To which I reply, "Screw Political Correctness.") needs to do so. Also, whereas in a news story, the five keys are most usually given in the set order of who/what/when/where/why, a novel can shuffle them to suit the writer's whim. As a general rule, of the five questions, the "who/what/why" are probably more important than the "when/where"--and this is especially true in mysteries.

Probably because each of my fiction books is part of a series (two, actually) the "who/what/why" are the primary questions--the "when/where" are more or less constant from book to book. And on closer analysis, it is really the "who" which is the most important. All my books are primarily character driven, and it is they who bind each of the series together.

I love writing series because by having the same characters return, book after book, set in the same surroundings, the readers can--and I'm delighted to say, do--get to feel they know them personally. As I've said before, with the Dick Hardesty series (book #14 of which, The Peripheral Son, is scheduled for release next month) I now consider each book to be simply another chapter in the continuing story of the characters' lives.

But writing a series presents certain challenges as well. It's very important that someone who has never read any other book in the series not feel as though they have no idea of who these people are. So each book has to include a subtle reintroduction of the secondary characters. However, each book can be read alone, in any order, without overly confusing the reader as to what's happened in previous books.

I'm considerably frustrated by the fact that many people understandably want to read a series in the order written, to get an idea of the development of the characters from book to book. The unfortunate death of the publisher of the first ten books of the Dick Hardesty series, and the dissolution of the company, means that as the first ten books run out stock, they will in effect be out of print until they can be reissued by my current publisher. The first of the reissues, The Bar Watcher, has just been released. It is book #3 of the series, though the rest will be reissued in the order written. But spacing out the reissue of ten books is going to take some time, and I am not noted for my patience. I realize this is also a huge inconvenience for readers who want to read the series in order, which only adds to my frustration.

A writer's life, regardless of which form he specializes in, is not an easy one. No one's is.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

Men and Women, Men and Men

2011-09-14T04:23:00.001-07:00

A straight friend and I were talking about the differences between our two orientations. He apologized for the fact that his being irredeemably straight made it difficult to understand just how gays though/felt/operated when it came to intimate interpersonal relationships. I assured him I felt the same way about straights. I've never really understood what makes them think or behave, when it comes to sexuality, the way they do. Please understand this blog is not intended to lure straights away from heterosexuality, or to claim that being gay is superior to being straight (they are apples and oranges). And I do not intend to--nor could I--speak for all gays, merely for myself based on nearly three-quarters of a century of observation of the differences between men and women and men and men.

I think the majority of heterosexuals would agree to the simple fact that men and women simply do not understand one another. They never have, and it is unlikely they ever will. Though members of the same species, each is engineered differently, both physically and emotionally.

It amazed me, when I was editing half a dozen straight "sex education" magazines which required researched--though largely unread--text (which gave it the legal protection of having "socially redeeming value) and no-holds-barred explicit photographs, to realize how absolutely ignorant straight men are about women's physiology. Gays don't have this problem, since both partners are men. They know pretty much how the male mind works and they know pretty well what the male body finds pleasing, sexually.

In all areas of a relationship, gay men are much more likely to understand the reactions of their partner to any given situation far more easily than straight men can understand a woman's. Disagreements between straight couples are often based in this lack of understanding. Not knowing where the lines are frequently lead to conflict. With same-sex partners this is not so large a factor. But the danger in arguments between gay partners is, as someone once so aptly put it, each partner generally "knows exactly where to sink the knife." This may account for the short duration of many gay relationships.

It could be reasonably argued that same-sex couples tend to be more often more compatible than straight couples simply because they are of the same sex and therefore have the advantages of intrinsically-shared interests and experiences. And while being of the same sex can bond gay couples more tightly than straight couples, the intrinsically different characters of men and women provide something of a balance gay couples may lack.

Throughout our history, social proscriptions have denied gays the same fundamental rights as straights. I always found it ironic that one of the strongest criticisms aimed at gays has been that the gay "lifestyle" is not "normal" while at the same time being doing everything in their power to prevent us from being so. Another fundamental charge is that gays are "promiscuous." (It could be argued that, being denied the right to marry, what other choice do we have?) We have been traditionally criticized for our perceived promiscuity when in fact we all live in a culture in which men tend by nature--and are expected--to be more overtly sexual than women. I have absolutely no doubt that were straight men denied the right to marry, the "promiscuity" rate among them would undoubtedly equal or surpass that among gays. Men are, after all, men, regardless of their orientation..

Our society is, at long last, beginning to emerge from the dark ages, and the gaps are slowly closing--against the still-strong objections of far too many people. It would be fascinating to step 100 years into the future to see how much an issue this man-woman, man-man situation still is.

But when all other factors touched on briefly above are set aside, one fact remains: all romantic relationships, straight or gay, are based on love, and love doesn't give a damn about sexual orientation.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

Friends and Lovers

2011-09-12T04:35:00.001-07:00

Though I know next to nothing about how heterosexual men and women interrelate, I'm quite sure it is--or was--greatly different than that of gay men.

When I was living in Los Angeles and very active in the gay "scene," many of my friendships stemmed from having met someone in a bar, going home with them, and our then deciding--either before, during, or after our time in bed--that we would like to get to know each other better. Usually, the element of sex dropped totally out of the equation. This was simply the way gay culture at the time worked and I suspect still does. It's not coincidental that in my Dick Hardesty mystery series, many of Dick's closest friendships began with sex.

As a minor digression, I find it fascinating that the gay lexicon has changed dramatically when it comes to the description of long-term relationships. The word "lover," which was used for most of my adult life, has been replaced by "partner," which I personally prefer, and "lover" is almost never used.

Of all the relationships I've had in my long and checkered career, only two stand out as having a major impact on my life: Norm, who was my first real relationship, lasting six years, and Ray, which lasted nine years, on and off--mostly off due to the alcoholism which inevitably destroyed him. After our breakup, Norm and I segued from partners to loving friends until his death last year. I realize that I have largely fantasized my relationship with Ray, who I did indeed deeply love--seeing only the incredibly sweet, kind, loving young man he was when sober and ignoring the monster he became when drunk. For those of you who follow my books, Ray was the inspiration for Dick's partner, Jonathan--which is hardly surprising since I, in my fantasy world, am Dick.

In our lives, if we are lucky, we have many friends of both genders and a variety of sexual orientations. If we're very lucky, some of them remain friends or a lifetime.

The word "friend" covers a broad spectrum of, for want of a better word, "intensities." Simply put, some friends are closer than others. Friends tend to come and go. A mark of a true friend is one who may have drifted away for whatever reason but who, when re-meeting after many years, can pick up a conversation in mid-sentence as though the intervening years never existed. I've been blessed to have several of those, and the re-establishment of the friendship is a joy hard to describe.

But throughout life there are relatively few we consider true "best friends." I've had three in my life--and I hasten to add that the term does not apply to lovers/partners, who are in a special category of their own.

When I was in high school, my best friend was Lief Ayen, who looked like a young Charles Laughton, if any of you are old enough to remember him. We were both outsiders who knew we did not belong, and this awareness and our shared sense of offbeat humor was the glue that bound us for many years.

Russ Hogan was my best friend in college and for 40 years thereafter. We drifted apart for reasons I've never fully understood, but for which I always felt oddly guilty, and I only learned of his death through a mutual friend.

My current best friend is Gary Brown, who is also my webmaster, my designated listener-to-my-real-and-imagined woes, and my run-to-every-time-I-have-a-problem-with-my-computer (which is at least several times a week) guy. He is infinitely patient with me, and we both understand that should either of us ever need anything, the other will be there.

The one element which separates partners/lovers from best friends is sexual attraction/romantic love. Gary is the brother I never had. I love him as I assume brothers love brothers, but as with real brothers, there is no romance. (When we checked into our hotel in Paris this past March, they mistakenly gave us a room with only one double bed. We were both mutually horrified at the thought and had to wait four hours for them to find us a room with two double beds. Same room, fine. Same bed...uh, no way in hell.)

I hope you are blessed with many friends and at least one "best friend." They brighten and ease our lives and, should you doubt their value, try to imagine your lie without them.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs

Getting It

2011-09-09T04:18:00.001-07:00

Let's face it: when it comes to "getting it"...to understanding something that everyone else apparently so easily understands and takes for granted...I generally don't.

"...for well-qualified buyers"? What in the hell does that mean? I don't get it.

Starlets and (female) celebrities posing with one hand on a sideways-thrust hip is, I gather, the height of seductiveness? I don't get it. I guess you have to be straight to understand.

"Reality" shows devoted to vacuous, rude, self-centered people with absolutely no discernible talent who contribute nothing to society and who are famous only for being famous? I don't get it. And that they have an avid viewing audience of millions who hang on their every monosyllabic word? Even harder to comprehend.

Presidential candidates who deny the most basic tenets of science yet are firmly convinced they are eminently qualified to lead the country in an increasingly technological ("Technology, noun: the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, esp. in industry") world? I don't get it. And those who would vote for them? Totally incomprehensible.

Internet spam messages from Nigerian barristers, from people dying of (usually) cancer wanting you to help them dispose of their millions, and, recently, shameful posts from people purporting to be United States servicemen and women asking for help...and those astoundingly naive/gullible/stupid people who would consider responding? I simply do not get it.

Anyone with the intelligence of a baked ham watching, let alone buying into, infomercials and commercials offering "not sold in stores" (gee, I wonder why?) schlock which then say they will double, triple, or quadruple the order for the same price? Sorry, I don't get it.

Organized sports? Organized religion? Cults? Bigotry? The Tea Party? I don't get any of them.

Eric Cantor? John Boehner? Sarah Palin? Michele Bachmann? Rush Limbaugh? Glenn Beck? Mitch McConnell? "Reverend" Fred Phelps? Can someone explain what positive contribution any one of these people has made to society, to the furthering of compassion, tolerance, compromise, or to the betterment of the human race?

Employees in government offices who act as though they are the government? People who accept the bad service and the most egregious behavior without a peep of protest? I don't get it.

Instruction manuals...for anything...written by technophiles in language only technophiles and those who speak gibberish can possibly understand? Sorry, again. I don't get it.

Restaurant menu and prepared-food-package photographs that bear absolutely no resemblance to what you are served/is in the package?

Those who presume to speak for God who totally ignore all that bothersome "Love one another," "Do unto others," and "Judge not lest ye be judged" nonsense while preaching intolerance and hatred? I don't get them, nor do I want to.

Perhaps some day a light will go on in my head, and everything will be made clear to me, as it seems to be to everyone else on the planet. But I doubt it.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs

"How 'ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm...."

2011-09-07T04:40:00.001-07:00

The American Civil War began a fundamental, basic change in the fabric of not only American society but of our interpersonal relationships. Until that time, the vast majority of people never traveled more than 20 miles from their homes in their entire lives. The average person's total social existence was built upon the rock foundation of family, friends, and neighbors. The Civil war created widening cracks in this foundation when it uprooted young men from the soil of the past. Taken from their farms and villages and transported to places they'd never been or even knew existed began a trend which continues today. (As the popular WWI song so clearly put it, "How 'ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paree?")

After WWII, ages-long close-knit bonds between family, friends, and life-long neighbors crumbled rapidly as entire populations moved and shifted and blended.

Family remains the rock upon most people's lives are built, but as distance separated many family members, nearby friends became more important in our culture, often as a substitute for family. For years, being friends largely depended on being able to get together face to face. But friends, too, like family, began to move away. And then, as technology welled up to swallow us all, along came the internet, which opened the door to the entire world. In cyberspace, there is no concept of distance. People who normally would never have even become acquaintances--probably never even known of each other's existence--became a new kind of friend: cyber friends who still probably would never meet face to face.

And as technology continues to rob us of our traditional connections to other people, as families break up into small pieces and scatter, like traditional friends, around the country and the globe, we tend to rely more on cyber friends. As age begins to take away our traditional friends and family, cyber friends become a larger part of our social structure.

I've found this particularly true for myself, and on all levels. Much of it has to do with the simple fact of my growing older. Family members and friends die; our face-to-face social contacts tend to dwindle. It's part of being a young adult to cultivate many close face-to-face friends, resulting in an active social life surrounded by people you can--and often do--reach out and touch. I am blessed that I still have a number of friends who date from my childhood, college, and young adult years. But most of them are scattered, now, and we use cyberspace to substitute for face-to-face meetings.

For me, right now, in Chicago, my face-to-face social network consists of my best friend, Gary, who I see almost every day, my friend Diane from my earliest days in Chicago. I have a few people I think of more as friendly acquaintances than true, soul-deep friends, but it is a far different world, on a personal social level, from my 20s and 30s.

I find myself more and more reliant on my cyber friends for a sense of being connected with the world, and for the validation that traditional-type friends normally supply. I quite probably, in fact, have a much wider circle of cyber-friends than I ever had of face-to-face friends. I sincerely enjoy our exchanges (and their encouragement and support). I have been lucky enough to actually meet several of my cyber friends, either on their visits to Chicago or mine to New York, and now count Kage and Eric and John and Joe as both cyber and face-to-face friends. And I am quite sure that, had we the chance to meet face to face, any number of my current cyber-friends could/would easily become friends in the traditional style.

So, as in all things in life, it is a matter of trade-offs. The world continues to change, and there is nothing we can do to bring the past back, other than in our memories. Would I give anything to be 28 again and to spend an evening with Norm and Tom and Franklin and Ray and Ace and the other wonderful people who were such an important part of my life at the time? Of course. But I am also truly grateful for the cyber friendship of so many wonderful people I've met on line through my books and blogs.

Face-to-face is great: mind-to-mind and heart-to-heart is just as good, if not better. So let this blog be a form of thank you to all my friends, face-to-face and cyber. And there is always room for more.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs--a review of which appears today, 09-07-11 at http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/1381519.html

On Being Gay, Part II

2011-09-05T04:48:00.001-07:00

When I was editing In Touch for Men, an international gay men's magazine in Los Angeles, I always enjoyed, as I do now, hearing from readers. I heard several times from a very nice young man in Utah, who was having a hard time dealing with his homosexuality, largely because of his family's rock-bound religious beliefs. I tried to encourage him to just accept himself and not let others tell him how he should live, and to convince him that not all the world was Utah, and not everyone in it was like his immediate family.

The magazine decided at one point to do a bar guide, similar to several others, listing gay bars in U.S. cities. I put out a general call for contributions, and wrote everyone with whom I had been in contact asking for their help. The young man from Utah sent me a list of bars he knew of, which I included in the guide, and when the guide was published, I sent a copy to everyone who had contributed. Naturally, I sent one to him.

A week later I received a thick envelope with a Salt Lake return address and, upon opening it, found a shredded mass of paper which I recognized as our bar guide. It also contained a letter from the mother of the young man I'd been in contact with, informing me that she had discovered that he had been having abominable relations with another man and was a disgusting pervert. When she confronted him, he killed himself "out of shame for his unspeakable sin." It was quite clear that she thought he had done the right thing.

I was heartsick. It took me a few days to be able to sit down and write to his mother, using the return address on the envelope she'd sent, saying how terribly sorry I was for her loss, and that from what I had known of him, he was a fine young man of whom she should be proud. It took all my willpower to keep from saying what I so badly wanted to say: that it was she who had caused his death, and that had she shown him the love and compassion every mother owes her child, instead of condemning him for being who he was, he undoubtedly would still be alive. But I couldn't do it.

The memory of that incident haunts me to this day, and is exacerbated by the terrible fact that the young man's story was not unique, and that countless others, even today, are driven to suicide for simply being who they are. How can human beings display such cruelty, such insensitivity, such lack of compassion and basic decency? How can intolerance and hatred rule...and destroy...so many? It is, truly to weep.

But for even the darkest night, there is a dawn, and it is the dawn to which this blog is addressed.

When I did Part I of this blog, having no intention at the time for there to be a Part II, I received a note from my cousin Judi which not only touched me deeply but stands in day-and-night, good-and-evil contrast to the incident reported above, and reminded me yet again just how truly blessed I am to have a family who knew I was gay long before I ever told them, yet always accepted me for who I was and am without question, unconditionally.

Here is Judi's note:

Thank you for today's blog. From way back when, I think I was eight or nine, I realized that you were different from others. Not in a bad way, just different. And I didn't think anything about you being different. It wasn't until I grew older that I understood what made you different. You are gay. That's the way you were born and that is the way you live your life. I accept you for who you are, a gay man. I could never shun you or go out of my way to hurt you. I accept you as you are. Dad's cousin, part of my family!!!

I am glad that you were able to grow up and become who you are and not cave in to how others want to see you. It is truly very sad that in this day and age, people still can not or will not accept others for who they are.

I remember coming into Chicago with Grandma Fearn to see you. We always had such a good time. We came into see you one time and it was around Christmas. I think you and Norm took us to Marshall Fields for lunch in the Walnut Room under the Christmas tree. I thought I was so grown up having lunch with the two of you. Of course there were some who looked at the four of us and just shook their heads and walked away, their problem not ours. I didn't know at the time why these people did that, but now I do. How sad for them to not know you as a person.

Would that everyone were a Judi.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

On Being Gay

2011-09-02T04:51:00.001-07:00

I don't think anyone who has ever read one of my books or blogs is unaware that I'm gay. But heterosexuals probably cannot appreciate how wonderful it is to be able to say it. I was raised in a world in which to be who I am was to walk through a minefield: any wrong step on my part which might make my being gay public knowledge could have had serious--and possibly physical--repercussions. I could have lost my job, been thrown out of my apartment. I could be--and was--arrested and thrown in jail (albeit very briefly) for "lewd and lascivious conduct" in a classic and all-too-common case of police entrapment. And as a homosexual, I had absolutely no protection or recourse under the law. And I was not alone; there were then, as there are now, millions like me.

But the purpose of this blog is not to be a broad overview of being gay, or an attempt to speak for anyone but myself, but rather to examine, as I am so wont to do, just what factors contributed to/resulted in my becoming a homosexual rather than a heterosexual. To me, the answer is simple: just as I was born, as are all babies, with blue eyes but predisposed to have them turn brown, I was born predisposed to be gay. While I could not define the word "gay" when I was five years old, I knew instinctively even then exactly what and who I was. And I have never, for one second of my entire life, ever doubted who I was, or wanted to be anything else, or doubted that I had the right to be who I was and am.

From infancy, the world has always overwhelmed me with its complexity, its contradictions, its infinite frustrations, and its lack of what I consider to be the most basic logic. Though I had the unconditional love and support of my family, I always felt like an outcast, and I early on fixated on those I wanted so desperately to be. Since after discovering, to my abject horror, that girls were physically different than boys, my fixation was naturally upon other boys (and later, I should emphasize for those who see pedophilia lurking behind every tree, my attraction changed to men). I've always been attracted to those I wanted to be like, who had grace and, in my eyes, beauty, and all those things I felt I lacked--but mostly those I wished I looked like.

From the time I discovered sex I, always insecure and self-deprecatory, would find a euphoric validation when someone to whom I was attracted would for whatever reason also be attracted to me. Always a believer in fairy tales and good things, I yearned for romantic love and was fortunate enough to find it a few times, a year or two here, six years there, nine years somewhere else. But romantic love requires two individuals, and it is difficult for any human being raised in a society which considers them perverts and abominations in the eyes of God to maintain a relationship, as much as they may want it.

Being gay is an integral part of who I am as a human being...perhaps a more important part than being straight might be to a heterosexual. I am proud of being gay in that it has allowed me to withstand the pressures and idiocies of the world in which I live. I simply cannot comprehend not being gay, a fact which, living in a heterosexual world, only increases my sense of alienation and not belonging.

The passage of years first robs us all of youth and any physical attractiveness we may have had, then slowly edges us out of the mainstream. This is particularly true of the gay culture, where youth and beauty are a premium. I, though never as beautiful as Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, have found my body, if not my mind, becoming the portrait in the attic.

Yet I still, in my mind and heart, am who I was so many years ago. I still ache to be like the beautiful young men who pass me on the street without so much as a glance. It's not a matter of self-pity, merely of fact.

But unlike so many gays who find--or will find--themselves in the same position as I am now, I have the ability, as mentioned in a recent blog, to step into other worlds I have created, where I can be, and am, all those things I have always wanted to be: where I am forever young, and forever gay.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

Writers, Books, and Life

2011-08-31T04:50:00.000-07:00

Every now and again, I pull myself up short and realize just how amazingly lucky I am to be a writer, especially considering how generally uncomfortable I am living in the real world. And when that world closes in too tightly, I can...and do...simply step into the worlds of my mind. I am fully aware of how difficult...and probably impossible...it is to explain how real this "other" world--this alternate universe, as it were--is to me.

As Dorien Grey and Roger Margason, I am two people in one, Roger living in the corporeal world we all share, Dorien in the world of thought and dreams and hopes. My Dorien world is, to me, almost as solid and real as my Roger world, and I am, truthfully, often more comfortable in it than I am in the real world.

Please let me make it clear, however, that I am always fully aware of whichever world I am spending my time at the moment, and never confuse them. I'm sure there are those who would consider me delusional, but it is a controlled delusion and I take quiet pleasure in it.

I've often stated my belief that life and time are in fact a cosmic mobius strip, with no beginning and no end. Every instant of time, including our lives, exists somewhere on that strip, and as time moves around the strip, every moment is repeated time and time again, endlessly.

Now think, if you will, of life as a book. Just as every life has a beginning and an end, so does a book. And just as a book, read from first sentence to last, can, upon reaching "The End," be reread over and over again, so are our lives endlessly repeated. The movement of the reader's eyes over each word in a book is the equivalent of the movement of time around that cosmic mobius strip. The book's story is propelled forward as the reader's eyes move. Every word, every sentence, every paragraph of a book, is the equivalent of an instant of time on the mobius strip: fixed, unchangeable.

Yet even though the entire book has been written and is being held in the reader's hand as it is being read, the characters in the book, unaware that they are not real, unknowingly depend on the reader's eyes for forward momentum. The characters are aware of what has happened in previous sentences and paragraphs and chapters, but what comes next is totally unknown. It's all there, in the book, the reader's eyes just haven't taken the characters there yet.

Each new page is a new segment of the character's lives. But the characters are totally unaware of what the next page has in store for them, though the entire book has been written. And the reader can pick up the book at page one and set the characters off on the same adventure, though again they are only aware of what has come before, not of what the next sentence or paragraph holds.

We move along the mobius strip of life in the same way the reader's eyes move through a book. It is time--and specifically that portion of time we know as "now"--which propels us through our lives, unaware that it has done so before and will do so again throughout eternity.

I've always loved optical illusions...those pictures in which you see one thing, but suddenly, by the slightest shift in focus, become something totally different. Roger's world is the immediately obvious picture, Dorien's the alternate. The optical illusion analogy pretty much sums up and combines my two lives, my two alternate universes and unites my book/mobius strip analogies.

Because I am able to...and truly do...live vicariously through my characters and the stories I create for them, I can have in the Dorien-me parallel/alternate universe what I do not have in Roger's real world. One of my most profound regrets is that in the corporeal "real" world in which the Roger-me lives, I do not have someone with whom I am deeply and romantically in love and who loves me in the same way. I miss it more than I can possibly say. I know that the world abounds with people who are in the same position as I. And yet, in my alternate, Dorien world, I am Dick Hardesty, and I have Jonathan and Joshua and all the marvelous things not available to me in Roger's world. Hard as it may be to understand, their love and commitment to one another are very real to me, and they provide me with an inexpressible joy and comfort.

I am, truly, blessed.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

The Masochist

2011-08-29T04:37:00.001-07:00

Why do I do it? I don't like pain. Really, I don't. So why do I subject myself to the agony of reading the opening words of the endless spam messages gushing like an overflowing sewer into my Spam box? Why can't I just hit "Delete All" and get on with my life? But I can't. It's like trying not to watch a train wreck. My eyes are drawn to the first words that accompany each message and I am swept away by the utter incomprehensibility of it all.

Humans tend to be fascinated by things they realize they could never understand if they lived ten thousand years. That realization can be painful, even agonizing for those who want so desperately to find some logic in the utterly illogical.

I've tried to resist posting another blog on the madness of internet spam, and the question of how anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances could possibly, possibly believe...let alone respond to...these idiocies. But my mental masochism compels me to continually pick at the scab, and I am powerless to stop.

Here, then, is another random sampling of messages found in my Spam "in" box, reprinted exactly as received, and my uncontrollable, knee-jerk reactions to them. If you'd like to stop reading here, I can certainly understand.

Mrs Annabel Laura - Quoting my reference number - Hello, My name is Mrs Annabel Laura am going on a cancer surgery today.contact my law...

Excuse me? Who's quoting what reference number? Referencing what? I've never heard of "going on a cancer surgery"...is that like a safari? A field trip? Why do I doubt to the bottom of my soul that you yourself have cancer? And why in the world would I want to contact your law(yer) other than to possibly file a harassment lawsuit against you?

HUMAN RIGHT COMMISIO - IMMEDIATE RESPONSE FROM THE HUMAN RIGHT COMMISSION - OFFICE OF THE ARTORNEY GENERAL JUSTICE....

"Human Right Commission"? Which Right is that? "Artorney General"? Dear Lord!!!

Barrister Rasheed Suleim - Reply Back....-Attention, My name is Barrister Rasheed Suleiman (Esq.) a personal attorney to my late client ...

"Reply back"? As opposed to "Reply forward"? And I should respond to a post from somebody who can't even decide how to spell his own name?

Mrs Lowe Michelle - DONATION FOR THE LORD - DONATION FOR THE LORD from Mrs.Lowe Michelle Please get back to me in this email ad....

Sure, Mrs Michelle...I'll get back to you about three days after Hell freezes over. In the meantime, I rather wish I believed in Hell; I'm sure there would be a very special place for you there.

Mr.Haenssgen Horst Dieter - Re: Your Payment Via Consignment To Your Doorstep. -From Haenssgen Horst Dieter Foreign Operations Manager Ove.....

"Your Payment Via Consignment To Your Doorstep"? What in the HELL is that supposed to mean? What species do you belong to?

Hoping I might find a word to sum up internet spam, I went to my Thesaurus to start with the first word I could think of: "Despicable." I found...

Despicable (adjective): contemptible, loathsome, hateful, detestable, reprehensible, abhorrent, abominable, awful, heinous; odious, vile, low, mean, abject, shameful, ignominious, shabby, ignoble, disreputable, discreditable, unworthy; informal dirty, rotten, lowdown, lousy; beastly;

Unfortunately none of these comes close to the definition of "Spam" or those who perpetuate it.

Oh, the hell with it: Masochism can only go so far. Where's that "Delete" key?

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

The Repentant Ingrate

2011-08-26T04:39:00.001-07:00

I've always loved, and frequently told, the classic story of the doting grandmother who takes her small grandson to the beach. She'd bought him a little sailor suit for the occasion, and as they were enjoying themselves by the water's edge, a huge wave swept in, picked up the boy, and carried him out to sea. The grandmother, of course, was beside herself with fear and concern for her darling little boy. Finally, she fell on her knees, raised her arms and eyes to heaven, imploring God to save the boy. And as she did so, another wave swept in and deposited the boy at her feet.

Grabbing him to her, she covered him with kisses. Then she stopped, held him at arm's length, and looked up at the sky, scowling.

"He had a hat!" she said.

I too frequently remind myself of that grandmother. I go back over my blogs and so many of them dwell on the things (and people) I no longer have, the things I can no longer do, and I am ashamed of myself for my ingratitude. I spend so much time bewailing all the thing I want and/or feel were taken from me that I all but ignore the things I do have.

Tongue cancer did terrible things to my body. Cancer does terrible things to a lot of people, and many of them do not live to complain about it. I'm alive when I could, so easily, have been dead. I bitch and moan about how much I hate growing old, and give no thought to the untold billions of people who never had the chance to grow old. All I need to do is wander through a cemetery reading the tombstones of those who died while younger than I am now. My dad was only 57 when he died; my mom only 62. I've lived 20 years (!) longer than my dad, 17 more than my mom. What would they have given to have had those extra years? How dare I complain about growing older?

I am blessed to live in a world of words, which I love, and which bring me indescribable joy. I write books and blogs and journals, and can easily transport myself into the word-worlds of my mind. If I do not like reality...which as you know, I don't...I can create my own.

I spent a month in Europe this year...thanks only to my dear friend Norm, who died last year and who should have lived long enough to spend his money on himself. Next year I'm taking a 15-day river cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam. This isn't bragging (it's not my money I'm spending. I didn't earn it, and it could be argued I don't deserve it)...it's an expression of complete awe. I'm doing these things...things that so very many people would love to do but, for one reason or another, cannot! Me! Self-deprecating, low-self-esteem, constantly-complaining me. Dear Lord!

I am blessed, too, with family and friends...and even though time takes its toll and there are fewer and fewer with each passing year, they provide an island of comfort and support above life's raging waters. Some of my friends are people I have never met face to face but who I still consider friends nonetheless. And I have you, who are reading these words. I am infinitely blessed to have you.

So, please don't let me fool you. The next time frustration leads me to write something less than Disneyesque, or that sounds a bit more like a dirge than a march, please keep in mind that I am indescribably grateful for the all the gifts of my life and that, while I tend to dwell upon the past, I look forward to every tomorrow.

It all boils down to one of my basic mantras, of which I fear I occasionally lose track: "One tomorrow is worth 10,000 yesterdays." Please, when considering the problems of your own life, feel free to make it your mantra, too.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

The Battles Within

2011-08-24T04:43:00.001-07:00

One of life's myriad of frustrations is knowing you have to do something you don't really feel like doing. I have to write a blog for tomorrow. I don't want to write a blog for tomorrow--there are too many other things to be done. I've grabbed myself by the back of the neck and forced myself to stop another really-has-to-be-done project at least three times in the past hour.

"Do the damned blog!"

"I don't want to do the blog right now! I'm busy! I'll do it later!"

Of course the project I keep dragging myself away from is the preparing of another--number six--of the first ten books in the Dick Hardesty series for reissue, and when I'm in the middle of something, I deeply resent having to interrupt it to do something...anything...else. Trying to convince myself that it's probably going to be, at the rate things seem to go with me, ten or fifteen years before all the books can be reissued (when I'm in a bad mood, I tend to overdramatize), and there is, therefore, no rush to finish the go-over falls on totally deaf internal ears. I want to work on the go-over. I do not want to write a blog.

And I'm of course not fooling myself when I say I'll get to the blog a little later. I know that now I'm working on the go-over, I won't want to stop until it's done, and know that I am condemned to a long series of "Do the blog NOW!"/"I'll get to it later" (when I know full well I won't) back and forths which will neither get the blog written, nor allow me to concentrate fully on the go-over.

"You've got an obligation to those people who are good enough to come looking for a new blog every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to give them one."

"I'll just rewrite an older blog. No one will notice."

"I don't know who that insults more...your readers or your ego. Besides, that's a last resort, and you know it. And, you'd still have to interrupt the go-over in order to rewrite one."

"You're going to pawn this off as a blog, aren't you?"

"Well...."

"One of the prerequisites of a blog is that it says something significant; that it says something that the reader can relate to. What the hell is the significance of this drivel? What are they supposed to relate to?"

"Maybe to the fact that by keeping so much locked up within ourselves and never admitting to our inner conflicts...what we see as our weaknesses...we only make things worse. I look at you, and at everyone else, and see a well-adjusted human being who is always calm, controlled, and in control of themselves, when in fact, chances are very high that you are internally going through exactly the same things as I am. But because we never admit to our inner battles, each of us assumes we're the only one who has them. And you quite probably assume that, because no one else shows, or talks about, or in any way acknowledges their own our inner struggles, they don't have any.

To acknowledge that to be human is to have internal, personal problems which don't really involve anyone else--and that internal confusion and frustration are just a natural part of life for everybody-- would go a long way toward alleviating our sense of alienation and underscoring the fact that we all have far more in common than we realize.

I've apparently made it my mission, in these often rambling and perhaps seemingly pointless blogs, to reassure you that if, perchance, you can identify with some of the things I say which others, for whatever reason, don't, maybe my saying them has some small value to you. It would be nice if they did.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

Iris

2011-08-22T04:22:00.001-07:00

Each of us, over the years, accumulates favorite "stories" based on our experience, which we tend to tell over and over again. One of mine is how I went to work for the largest "porn mill" on the west coast, and I'll give you only an abbreviated version here, since the main point of this blog is not porn but people.

I applied for a job as editor of a "men's magazine" in Los Angeles, and was called in for an interview. I soon discovered that the magazine in question dealt with issues of human sexuality and relied on sexually explicit photographs...heterosexual, of course. The man who interviewed me, Keith Bancroft, was very nice and, in the course of the interview he called in his wife, Iris, who also was an editor at the company. She was as pleasant as her husband, so when Keith offered me the job, I felt I had to be honest with them. "Well, I said, I think you should know that since I'm gay, I don't have the foggiest idea what men and women do in bed together."

Keith didn't bat an eye, and merely said, "Well, then, you'll have a different perspective on things."

I started to work for them the next day and was with the company for, I think, seven years. In that time, Keith and Iris became very close friends, and we have remained friends for more than 40 years. Perhaps it was because I have relatively few heterosexual friends that Keith and Iris's unconditional acceptance made them so important a part of my life. I used Iris's name for one of the lead characters in The Hired Man and borrowed parts of her personality to give to other characters.

Both Keith and Iris were remarkably talented human beings. Each was an avid and excellent photographer, each played in at least two local symphony orchestras, Iris wrote and published several books. They had a wide range of interests which kept them forever active. We often would go hiking in the foothills near my home, sitting beside a remote waterfall with a picnic lunch, laughing and talking, and I always loved going to their home for an evening of food, music, and friendship. At lunch, at work, they would play chess. They tried to encourage me to learn, but I never did.

Iris's life was particularly fascinating. She was born in China, the daughter of missionaries. She had, I think, three sisters, one of whom was seriously and chronically ill. She married young, had two sons, and settled into a typical middle-western, middle class life. Then she met Keith and divorced her husband to marry him.

When I moved from California, we kept in sporadic touch, but the friendship never wavered or waned, and I considered them to be part of the solid foundation of my life.

And then I got a note from Keith saying that Iris had died. She had had a minor stroke two years ago, and had been battling cancer for the same amount of time. Yet other than casual, in-passing references in her infrequent letters, I had not given a moment's thought to the fact that she would not always be here, and part of my life.

In the past three months, I have lost three people important to me: my good friend, Bil Buralli, whom I met when he wrote to compliment me on my books, my former publisher, Bill Warner, and now Iris.
I feel very much like a sand castle on the shore of eternity, with the waves of time lapping ever closer. They've breached the moat and I can't help but fear my lofty minarets and flag-topped towers will soon crumble.

I know, I know, the older one becomes, the more friends one loses to time. It's inevitable. But I have always relied so heavily on my friends and family for comfort and support and a sense of belonging, that when yet another stone in the foundation of my life crumbles I feel a growing sense of loss, and longing.

And you see? I've managed to turn what I intended as a tribute to my irreplaceable friend Iris into another reflection in the cracked mirror of myself.

Goodbye, Iris. I can never tell you how much your friendship meant to me, or how much I will miss you.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

E Unum, Pluribus

2011-08-19T04:34:00.000-07:00

I've always been fascinated by historical trivia, and one of my favorites is that, in ancient Rome, as conquering heros marched in triumph through the city, through the cheering crowds, a slave would ride on the hero's chariot, standing directly behind him, holding a laurel wreath over his head while whispering “Remember, thou art but a man.” Wise people, those Romans.

Every human being—I’m sure this was true even of Roman generals—is a mixture of ego and insecurities: they are part of what makes us human. It is the varying percentages of each which helps make each of us who we are and sets us apart from everyone else. I’m not sure what the ideal percentage of each might be, but suspect that most of us fall somewhere around 10 points to either side of the 50 percent center line, with some natural degree of fluctuation between them. Ego and insecurity are a little like oil and vinegar in a cruet, each clearly defined.

I truly admire people with healthy egos, and have noticed that those who have them seldom seem aware of it. But then, that’s the point of a healthy ego: there is no need to question it. And while people who project too strong an ego can be insufferable, it’s been my experience that obnoxious egos are often chimeras, and those who display them often are doing so to hide their insecurities.

But in some people, writers among them, it’s as though someone were shaking the bejezus out of the cruet to the point where the ego and insecurity are so jumbled as to be indistinguishable. I know whereof I speak, because my ego and insecurity have been in the process of emulsification in the cruet of my mind for as long as I can remember. My ego tells me I’m great, and that anyone who reads my words will automatically become devoted and adoring fans. My insecurity tells my ego it’s full of crap, and I’m no damned good (on a bad day) or mediocre at best (on a good day) and that anyone who tells me I do have some worth is being either extraordinarily kind or condescending.

Writers egos are large enough to assume people will want to read what they have written, while often unjustifiably insecure in fearing they won’t. I am frequently awed by the extremes of both my ego and my insecurities, and frustrated by the fact that they invariable negate one another. It is my ego which writes these blogs, and my insecurities that constantly scoff at how I can have the temerity to think that anyone could actually care what I have to say.

For whatever reason, many writers—and you don’t need a caliper and slide rule to figure out I’m including myself here—have a desperate need for approval, which is a form of validation. Every human needs validation, but writers…I…seem for whatever reason to be particularly needy. There is never enough love; never enough approval, and a perverse willingness to seek out and magnify faults and flaws. I fully realize I’m an emotional sponge, eager to soak up every drop of approval I can get. And when I don’t get enough—which of course I never possibly can—I chalk it up to my unworthiness and figuratively beat myself severely about the head and shoulders for it.

But underneath it all, or perhaps because of it, I am truly convinced (ego) that I am not alone in the way I feel; that you, writer or not, may sometimes feel the same way, and that through my throwing myself out in front of you, you might see that you are not as alone as you may think. It is pure ego for me to assume so, but would be nice if it were true. I think they call it “validation.”

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

Exposed Nerves

2011-08-17T04:16:00.000-07:00

A friend on Facebook reported the death of a close woman friend. The poster commented on the woman's kindness, generosity, loyalty, and decency. And someone subsequently posted a response asking if the friend "had been saved" before she died! I'm afraid I went off like a rocket, as I am far too often wont to do when faced with such astonishing lack of thought or compassion! The implication, to me at least, was that if the friend had not been "saved," she had no worth, no value, and deserved to be condemned to the fires of hell for eternity.

I go through life as an exposed nerve end: just the slightest touch can send me off into an all but uncontrollable rage. Granted, this rage is often unjustified or the result of a misunderstanding on my part, but that doesn't shield me from it.

Why this particular Facebook exchange was so like chewing tinfoil rests in a never-forgotten personal experience which still rankles to this day.

My maternal grandmother died in the flu pandemic of 1918 and my mother, then only nine years old, was subsequently partially raised by a housekeeper, Bessie Whiteman, whom Mother adored. Bessie was a truly marvelous human being, and was well into her eighties when I knew her. Tiny, with beautiful white hair, and flawless, unblemished skin, her face had no wrinkles or crevices, but rather soft, gentle cake-batter folds. I'm sorry I didn't have the chance to know her better. Devoutly but quietly religious, she never missed a Sunday at church, and exemplified to me what every true Christian should be, and so few are.

Bessie outlived my mother, and when I heard she had died, I was truly sad. That Christmas, I sent a donation to Bessie's church in her name and wrote a letter to her minister, saying that while Bessie loved her particular church, she would still have been an example of the best of humanity no matter what her religious beliefs.

I received a letter from the minister shortly thereafter thanking me for the donation but saying that I was completely wrong: Bessie was a good person only because she was a Christian. My reaction then was identical to my reaction to the Facebook note. It made me heartsick to realize that people who are supposedly devoted to love and kindness and mercy and decency and honor have the unspeakable gall to put qualifications on these best of human qualities.

Religion and I have never gotten along. Hardly surprising considering I was raised in a society which considered me an abomination in the eyes of God, and which routinely uses hypocrisy and false piety to condemn people they do not even know.

How can any human being so readily and harshly pass judgement on others...and not merely on individuals but entire ethnic, racial, and religious groups...who they do not know and who have never done anything to harm or interfere in their lives? How can they hate with such utter irrationality and virulence?

Humans have a need to feel superior to others, to cover their own insecurities and self doubts. Banding together with others who think as they do gives them a sense of power they cannot find in their individual lives. They feed on negativity, on hated, on mean-spiritedness. When is the last time you heard leaders of the Tea Party say one single thing positive, or offer one truly constructive suggestion of how to right their perceived and pervasive wrongs? It's one thing to rant and wave the flag and demand that we take our country back. Back from what? Back to where? How, specifically, can it be done? What positive steps can be realistically taken? It takes far less effort to set a forest fire than to put one out once it has gotten out of control.

We are becoming, as a society, like a wolf with its paw caught in a steel trap and, like the wolf, in pain and confusion we seem determined to chew off our own leg. We are flaying our humanity to the point where we are little more than a pulsating mass of exposed nerve endings.

This is not a happy blog. It is not meant to be.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

The Doll House

2011-08-15T04:37:00.000-07:00

I've frequently told the story of how, when I was around six or seven, I asked my parents for a doll house for Christmas. My father, of course, would not hear of it, and my pleadings fell on deaf ears. In his defense, both he and I were aware by that time that I was "different" (I knew I liked--really liked--boys, though I was too young to realize what that meant). He, I am sure, saw my fascination with doll houses as an omen that his son would soon be dressing up in women's clothes and putting on lipstick.

Of course--and this was something he never understood and I was unable to express at that young age--femininity had absolutely nothing to do with it. Never--then, now, or for one moment in my entire life-- have I ever wanted to be in any way feminine, or ever thought of myself as such. My fascination with doll houses had nothing to do with gender and everything to do with imagination.

But, to my father, doll houses were for girls, not for boys, and certainly not for his son. I don't remeber when or where I first saw a doll house, but I was utterly fascinated. I was entranced by the reality/fantasy/power aspects it presented. Here was a real (to me) house, with real (to me) furniture, and I was a giant with total control over it and whatever went on in or around it. I had no interest whatever in playing homemaker or inventing some imaginary family. No, what I wanted to do was get the furniture nicely arranged, then have some pretend-battle during which everything was violently knocked over and tossed about.

I've been given to melodrama from a very early age. The ordinary was, well, ordinary and therefore held relatively little interest for me; it was the pretend, the larger-than-life, the bravely facing adversity and trauma that intrigued me. It still does.

But back to my story. Christmas came, and with it the usual flood of parental generosity: my parents were what was then known as "lower middle class." They struggled and worked hard for every penny they had, yet they always found the money to indulge me to the best of their ability. But it was after all the gifts were exchanged and the floor was littered with torn wrapping paper, and the smell of the Christmas tree, warmed by the lights, hung over the room, that my mom called me aside and took me into my room, where, on my bed, was...a two-room doll house she had made out of an orange crate. The few pieces of furniture were far out of proportion to the rooms, but it was a doll house, and it was mine. I do not believe in heaven, or in angels, but I do believe in mothers.

That simple orange-crate doll house, with my other toys and the books I read and the stories I listened to were the razor strops on which I honed my imagination and led me to become a writer. For an insecure child excruciatingly aware that I was not like the children around me, imagination was--and is--my refuge from a world in which I never felt comfortable, or welcome.

Today I consider each of my books, in effect, a doll house wherein I carefully arrange the furniture. The major difference being that I also put people in them and watch, fascinated, as they go about their very-real-to-me lives with only an occasional conscious nudge or rearrangement from me.

Every child is born entrusted with a small bag of seeds which will grow to produce the adult that child becomes. The seed of imagination is among the most precious of all. It blooms early, but is too often then neglected and left to wither. But when carefully nourished and lovingly tended it can produce the most magnificent of flowers. And they look very nice on the soul's mantle, next to a doll house.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

"This Above All..."

2011-08-12T04:30:00.000-07:00

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow,
as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
--William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3

We are increasingly a rudderless society without a compass, an anchor, masts or sails. Words of wisdom, such as those given by Polonius to his son Laertes, are increasingly meaningless in an exponentially complex world.

I've always tried to live by Polonius' advice. I'm not 100 percent successful, of course, but I really do try, and I am puzzled, saddened, and frustrated by the seemingly pervasive evidence they are, for so many, utterly meaningless.

I really try to be what I think every human should be: open minded, compassionate, honorable, and respectful of the rights of others. Again, I don't always succeed, but that doesn't keep me from trying. But while I sincerely believe that my way of looking at/doing things is the proper way, I unequivocally believe that every human being has the right to think and believe what he/she wants--up to the point where those thoughts and beliefs infringe upon the rights of others to do the same.

It quite sincerely would never occur to me to deny others their right to do and think as they wish, again with the caveat mentioned above. I have never operated on the theory that a crime--or a thousand crimes--committed by a member/members of a specific national, racial, religious, or ethnic group automatically condemns every single member of that group.

I have a friend...as I'm sure all of us do...who is intelligent, educated, and generally a nice guy, who keeps forwarding me the most egregiously vile, hate-filled, irrational and illogical anti-Obama and anti-Muslim diatribes. And I am stunned and saddened every time I get one--though all I generally need to do is read the heading of the message to know to delete it without reading it.

The issue is whether, if this is the way he, and so many more like him, truly feel, can he be considered "being true" to himself?

As our society becomes exponentially more complex, and more reliant on technology, we lose more and more control over our own individual lives, lashing out becomes more virulent and violent. We become increasingly willing, in our frustration, to accept concepts we never would accept had we more a sense of control over our own lives. Race and religion become magnates for virulent over-reaction.

It is our nature to seek the simple, even in a world which is no longer simple. Watch tv crime-reality shows ("Cops," "Bait Car," etc.) and it is easy to come away with the conclusion that the vast majority of criminals in the United States are either blacks or hispanics. These two groups statistically account for the bulk of the prison population in the U.S. Simplism steps in and says, "Well of course! Just look at the way they dress; listen to the way they talk! Their crimes against the English language alone should be grounds for incarceration. Clearly, they are inferior."

And yet not one person in ten, secretly or openly relishing this perceived inferiority, gives a moment's thought to the fact that the problem is far more deeply rooted in education and opportunity than in skin color or ethnicity.

Hatred is a weapon for those who feel powerless, and it is increasingly the weapon of choice in our losing battle with technology.

And what has Polonius's advice to do with anything? What does being true to one's self matter when we are all seemingly aboard a sinking ship? Well, for me, it is a life vest to which I can cling, and hope it may somehow help me to survive the storm.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's "Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs."

"Pay Attention!"

2011-08-10T04:00:00.000-07:00

Ah, were I to have a nickel for every time I've heard those two words, I would be a very wealthy man indeed. And my only problem with being told to pay attention is that I generally don't. Oh, I try. Really. And I often convince myself that I really am. But ten seconds later, I'm hard pressed to remember just what it was I was supposed to be paying attention to.

Throughout grade school, my parents accumulated a sizable stack of notes from various teachers saying, in effect, "Roger is a wonderful, wonderful young man, but would do far better in his studies if only he would pay attention." (Well, maybe everything up to the "but" is wishful thinking, but the latter half is almost verbatim.) I think part of the problem lay in the fact that I am so easily distracted. I mean, how can anyone be expected to concentrate on the formula for determining the hypotenuse of a triangle when there's a very strange little insect staggering across the top of my desk. Obviously, it had been out all night and was trying to find its way home from a party, and I had to speculate on how it got on my desk and where it really thought it was going, and....

Unfortunately, not paying attention has almost gotten me killed on more than one occasion while I was learning to fly as a Naval Aviation Cadet. The airfield from which I was flying had several runways, each one designated by it's compass orientation, and the runway in use at any time was determined by the wind direction. It was important to memorize the runway numbers so that, when requesting permission to land, we would know which runway to use. But try as I might, I could never remember which runway was which, a problem I solved by simply following whatever plane was preparing to land in front of me.

But the closest I actually came to death was on a night flight with a dozen or more other planes. We were told to ascend at a set rate of speed, and to descend at another set rate of speed. All was well until the time came to return to base, and we began our descent. I remember the two speeds, but not which one was which. I chose the faster speed on the grounds that at least I wouldn't be plowed into by someone behind me. All was going fine until I noticed the wingtip lights of the plane directly ahead of me seemingly racing toward me. I shoved the stick forward to dive downward and looked up in horror as I passed less than 20 feet under the belly of the plane that should have been ahead of me. I surely could not only have died myself, but caused the death of another pilot. It was one of the most sobering moments of my life.

But did it make me pay closer attention to things from that moment on? For awhile, yes, but....

I cannot read instruction manuals of any kind because, the moment I take my eyes off the instructions themselves, I forget what they were. If someone tells me their telephone number, I seldom remember it long enough to write it down, even with a pencil in my hand. Transposing a phone number I did manage to write down into a computer file requires endless going back and forth. The handwritten 773-949-0211 becomes 773-994-0112 or 773-994-0121, or ....

When I was in service, our Marine drill instructors had a rule for teaching: "Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em." A very wise method. Unfortunately, it never worked for me.

I have come to the conclusion that I am emotionally dyslexic.

Now, what was I talking about?

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's "Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs."