Friday, December 28, 2018

Let Me Count the Ways

If you have followed my blogs with any regularity, you have undoubtedly noticed that the majority have a common theme: me; my experiences, my reactions, my responses, my beliefs, my opinions. The answer to any charge of narcissism or egocentrism is simple: who else’s experiences, reactions, responses, beliefs, and opinions might I be qualified to speak of with any authority?

In any case, I was thinking yet again of all the ways I do not fit into this time, this world, this society.

  1. I am not a sheep. I do not like things or do things or believe things just because other people like/do/believe them. This made it difficult for me when growing up, when “fitting in” equals acceptance, but it got me accustomed to the fact that I marched to a different drummer and preferred it that way.
  2. I am excruciatingly uptight and self conscious in large groups of people having a good time. I do not jump up and down, sway to the music, raise my hands in the air. I do not fist-bump or fist-pump or high five. I do not vocalize my pleasure. I stand there like a pillar of salt, all but unmoving, and in my desire not to stand out from others, I stand out from others. I would love nothing more than to do all those things listed above, but I simply cannot.
  3. I do not comprehend the appeal of organized sports, nor do I have or ever have had any particular interest in doing so. (The only possible exception to this is, for some unknown reason, volleyball.) As I have often said, I was 33 years old before I figured out what a “down” was in football, and even then I didn’t care. How people can get so excited over a game they are not themselves participating in is totally beyond my understanding. “We’re Number One! We’re Number One!”…No, YOU’RE not Number One unless you’re on the team…otherwise you’re just an observer. I do, however, admire individual sports—gymnastics, swimming, etc.—and appreciate the talent and effort of the athletes engaged in them.
  4. Our national obsession with “celebrities” leaves me shaking my head in disbelief. How the lives and activities…the romantic entanglements, the personal problems…of people I have never met and never will meet can possibly have any bearing on my own life is incomprehensible to me. With all the very real things, the very real problems of the world, how can we waste our time on such trivia?
  5. I find national politics to be beyond disgraceful, and the hateful, mean-spirited, vitriolic garbage currently spewed by (mostly) Republican contenders for election to President infuriate and disgust me to the point of despair.
  6. I cannot tolerate willful stupidity, the unquestioned acceptance of the most egregiously false premises…or the people who encourage and perpetrate them for their own greedy ends.
  7. Organized religion, like organized sports, are largely anathema to me. Throughout history more wars have been fought, more people have died, more intolerance and hatred and misery fostered by organized religion than by any other single factor. And yet every religion, when its credo is boiled down to its essence, shares the same basic message: “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” Thousands of years, and we still haven’t learned.
  8. Unlike the vast majority of people, I am incapable of simply accepting without comment poor service, rudeness, or being ignored by people I am paying to provide me something. Not wanting to “make waves” only perpetrates this type of bad behavior. I insist on speaking to a manager/supervisor to make my displeasure known. It may not do any good, but it certainly makes me feel better. 

I’m fully aware that you, while perhaps reluctant to admit it, share one or more of the issues raised above. It’s part of human nature, I believe, for each of us to feel as though we don’t belong, don’t fit in. But unless someone is willing to openly talk about things few others do, how can we really know we’re not alone?
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com.  I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com



Tuesday, December 25, 2018

CTA Holiday Train

Rather than repost a holiday blog today, here is a video Roger and took of the CTA Holiday Train in 2014:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEt54IY5-Ok

Saturday, December 22, 2018

Once Upon a Town


I moved from northern Wisconsin to Chicago some eight years ago, now, but every now and then I think of my 23 years there and shake my head in contemplating the differences between the two.

Pence, Wisconsin, is a tiny, time-warped town in an economically depressed area of the Great North Woods, separated from Lake Superior twelve miles to the north only by one highway, a few narrow roads, and virtually uninterrupted forest. I’m sure Henry David Thoreau would have loved the idyllic nature of the area: he’d have appreciated the mile upon mile of forest, small isolated lakes, and the majestic, endless shores of Lake Superior; walking through the woods to find large patches of wild strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries.

But the idyllic beauty of the area is in stark contrast to the economic realities of actually living there. Once a major lumbering area rich with iron and copper mines, when the ore ran out in the 1950s and the virgin forests were decimated by lumbering, the entire area was plunged into a depression from which I doubt it has yet recovered. In my time there, a large percentage of local residents depended on a number of seasonal employment opportunities for their livelihood. Several ski hills provide employment during winter, though that was largely dependent on the amount of snowfall, which fluctuated from year to year. Hunting season drew large numbers of deer hunters, and was—and undoubtedly still is—a vital source of income for the area’s many bars and restaurants. Beginning around Thanksgiving and running for several weeks, many found employment in the cutting of greenery for Christmas wreaths and garlands, and the making thereof.

Aside from television, the local movie theater, and a small local theater group, the area was, and I suspect remains, a cultural wasteland. There was and is a small junior college, but it offered nothing in the way of cultural activity. Hunting, football, and beer drinking were the primary means of entertainment, and made the region a form of Bubba-land North.

I had moved to Pence from Los Angeles (culture shock, anyone?) in January, 1983, with the intention of opening a Bed and Breakfast inn…surely one of the worst decisions of my life, for I found myself caught in the same trap of income being totally dependent on the season. The day I arrived, it was 19 below zero and the U-Haul truck I’d driven from L.A. froze solid about 300 feet from the house, necessitating my finding someone to help me unload all my furniture and carry it into the house.

The entire area’s population was of Italian and Finnish backgrounds. The Finns were brought in to work the logging industry, the Italians to work the mines. Pence’s population (198 per the 2000 census) was representative of that mixture. All good, hard-working, church-going (predominantly  catholic) family-oriented people, for whom having a homosexual in their midst was something of an anomaly. But aside from some teenager childish phone calls, I really didn’t encounter any direct prejudice. 

Most of the male population were retirees from the mines, who lived primarily on their pensions. Rather surprisingly the younger people did not tend to move away, but to marry very early and have four or five kids before they were old enough to realize that that decision was an obstacle to practical hopes for a better life.

Shortly after I moved to Pence, I attended a couple of the monthly town meetings which, I soon discovered, were attended by the same handful of mine-retired men. No women attended and any proposals for change of any kind met with the objection that if it hadn’t been done that way in 1933, it wouldn’t work now. I soon stopped going.

Five miles to the east of Pence lies Hurley, Wisconsin, on the Wisconsin/U.P. of Michigan border; Ironwood, Michigan is on the other. They are essentially one town with a combined and declining population of around 8,000.

Between Hurley and Pence, on Hwy 77, is the town of Montreal, a classic example of a paternalistic company town, built by the mining company for its employees, with row upon row of neat, identical white houses. The only break from the cookie-cutter houses along the highway are two larger homes for company supervisors. The houses along Hwy 77 were designated for employee families with several children. The street to the north of the highway was lined with identical smaller bungalows, for employees with smaller families. When the mines closed, the former employees were given the chance to buy their houses for as little as $800, but with no work, few were able to take advantage of the offer. And while the houses were for sale, the rights to the land on which they stood remained with the company, in the highly unlikely possibility that mining might somehow pick up at some future point, and the mines reopened.

Looking back, I question my sanity. I had bought a 12-room house primarily because I wanted to have a B&B despite having had absolutely no experience in doing so, and because the house had a mansard roof, which I’d always loved—now, there was an excellent reason. The total cost for the 12-room house was $7,500. Did that ring any alarm bells or tell me anything about what I was getting myself into? Of course not. Let it suffice to say that I did open the B&B, struggled to keep my head above water for five years, finally closed it and bought a tiny little house about four blocks away. It was an experience made bearable only by the fact that several of the B&B’s guests became and remain good friends. 

For reasons I cannot and probably could not explain, I remained in Pence until 2006, when I returned to Chicago after a 40-year absence. I have seldom looked back since. Until now.
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com.  I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com



Tuesday, December 18, 2018

The Delusionist


I’ve been a delusionist all my life. Never comfortable with the harshness of reality, I early-on developed the ability to pretty much ignore it unless it was somehow physically impossible to do so. It worked well for seven decades. If I chose to see the world in a certain light, I did so, and no one was harmed or basically the wiser. (When, for example, as a gay man I see an attractive man on the street, I automatically assume he is gay. Whether he is or not is entirely beside the point; I think he’s gay, so he is. It gives me quiet pleasure, and harms no one.)

When I was five years old, I had absolutely no interest in being six…or sixteen, or anywhere beyond. I most certainly never wanted to be a “grown-up.” Grown-ups were almost a separate species to which I had no interest in belonging…and, largely, I have managed to avoid doing so. Even into my 40s and beyond, I still found it difficult to think of myself as a “man” because men are grown-ups. (If this sounds childish to you, well, I rest my case.)

However, as the years mount up and it becomes impossible to ignore the ravages of time, the little boy in me grows increasingly frightened at what is happening to him. Being a delusionist works fine for seeing the world from the inside, but not nearly so well when the physical body is involved. I have never been more aware of, and frightened by, it than following my recent trip to Europe. I, who as a 22-year-old, bounded up the slopes of the Acropolis with ease on a hot summer’s day in 1956, found the 2014 August heat incredibly draining. Though bottles of water were distributed by the cruise line, because I now am unable to lift my head high enough to drink normally from a bottle, I recognized the very real threat of becoming quickly dehydrated. 

I’m sure there were crowds on the Acropolis in 1956, but in 2014 it was difficult to see anything but people, especially since despite my sincere efforts to increase my head and neck flexibility with Botox treatments, I was unable to lift my head up high enough even to look people in the eye, let alone see over their heads.

Age brings with it totally unexpected surprises. For nearly 70 years there was never any question that my body would do whatever I wanted of it. I didn’t even really have to make any effort between thinking of an action and my body’s doing it. I realize now that this was a very large delusion on my part; I assumed body and mind were the same. They are not. I must spend more and more time now trying to convince my body to do something, with less and less confidence that it will do it.

Where I could stand up on the toes of one foot and spin around like a top, I no longer even try. I do not run—I lumber and lurch awkwardly. Equilibrium, yet another of the myriads of things we take for granted, is increasingly unreliable. Where I used to walk purposefully, I now frequently find myself hearing my shoes shuffling on the sidewalk without my being aware of it. Whereas walking in a straight line was automatic, I now find myself occasionally weaving. Where I routinely walked—or bounced—up and down stairs two at a time, I now do one at a time. I have not yet reached the point where I must step up or down with one foot and bring the other foot up or down to the same step before proceeding to the next, I fear it is only a matter of time.

Of course I feel terribly sorry for myself. I am, after all, like all small children, an extreme egoist. But I sincerely see myself as a latter-day Paul Revere, sounding a warning of what lies ahead for you, in hopes you may handle it better than I have.

There are many people in their 80s and even 90s who have much more control over their physical lives than I, and that realization is a great blow to my lifelong sense of invincibility. I have relied upon my delusions all my life and now find myself being stripped of them. It is not a comfortable position to be in, I can assure you.

But though I realize that I cannot escape the inevitability of “that good night,” I still do not intend to go gentle into it.
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com.  I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com



Friday, December 14, 2018

A Letter from My Father


My father has been dead 47 years now. Our relationship, as with many fathers and sons, was often contentious, and much of the “blame” I now know, rests with me. I often treated him very badly, though I never doubted for a single moment that he loved me. But when one is young, and away from home for the first time, feeling one’s way through a huge and complex world makes it next to impossible to maintain a proper perspective.

I recently came across a letter my dad had written me two weeks after I entered the Naval Aviation Cadet program in Pensacola, Florida. My mother, bless her, kept every letter I wrote home while I was in service and I, in turn, saved every letter I received from her and my father.
Mom wrote nearly every day; dad far less often, but that was totally in keeping with the times...writing letters wasn't something that men did.

It's hard to describe my feelings as I read the letter below. Dad always tried so hard to be the kind of father he thought a father should be, which meant doing his best to guide me and guard me against perceived dangers. I truly ache that I never, at the time, really, fully appreciated him or realized just how proud of me he was and how much I meant to him. I would give anything to go back, physically, in time knowing what I know now. Perhaps I would have been a better son. I know I would have tried.

Aug 30 - 1954
                                                                          
Dear Son―

Just read your letter and from your attitude of words I feel I must say this―Don’t forget you are not the only one undergoing the same treatment and you were warned that it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to go through. Time and time again I have tried to tell you that you must learn to take the easy bumps before you can face the hard ones.  You are getting your first taste of the world as it is and you must learn to face it on your own. I believe in you and sincerely want you to believe in yourself. You are no worse than any of the fellows there and you just have the will to get ahead in order to do so.  Sure, I grant you that it seems dark a lot of times but son you and you alone can make the grade.  Nothing I can do can help you and again I believe you have the stuff in you to be as good as any man there.  So please (not for my sake or your Mother’s) be as good as the next one.   IT’S UP TO YOU.

Enough of this lecturing―it’s really not meant to be that but just a boost to your seemingly sagging morale.  Don’t under any conditions lose that wonderful sense of humor you have.  But again please son think of your future.  I know that you can do it.  So son just a little more effort on your part and I’m sure that there will be no more demerits.

Remember Son it’s no fun punching a time clock and you are receiving the finest training and education that no college in the world can give you.  So Son chin up and try just a little harder. Huh, Son?

I know I’m not the best Father in the world, but none could hope for any more happiness or success than I have for you. This is evidently one of my more serious moods Son, but take it from a guy who knows, nothing that is worthwhile comes easy.  Everything I have someday will be yours but you must earn it. We did and no one can take away the  satisfaction of knowing we did it on our own.  Take all the above Son for what it is worth and whatever the outcome Son, you’re mine now and always.  Whatever comes up we can meet it Son, but again, let’s try a little harder.   Sorry if I bored you but again Son it’s you I am thinking of.  

                          Bye Son
                               Dad   

I had never realized before that in this single letter, he calls me Son 13 times. I am trying not to cry.
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com.  I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com



Friday, December 07, 2018

Philosophies


Each of us, as we travel through life, develop our own individual philosophies during the journey, based on an infinitely varied combination of experiences, assumptions/understandings, and our emotional responses to them. They usually develop slowly, often without our giving them much if any conscious thought, until they are a part of us. I have several of the “fortune cookie” variety, though I admit I immodestly find most of my philosophies...rather profound.

Back in the 1950s, my father gave my mother a beautiful grandfather clock, which has been part of my life since Mom's death. It stopped working a few years ago and I just don’t have the money required to get it back into working condition.  I always found its ticking and its chimes comforting, and the sounds became so ingrained into my life—rather like philosophies, now that I think of it—that I assume they are still there. Grandfather clocks work on the interaction of weight and gravity. Three weights suspended from chains are slowly moved down by gravity. Each swing of the pendulum releases a tiny bit of the tension on the weights, which gravity pulls downward until it's time to pull the weights back up to rewind the clock. It is the swinging of the pendulum moving the small gears holding the counterweights which produces the familiar "tick-tock."

This morning, glancing at the now-silent clock I realized that life is very much like a my mother’s clock. We are born fully "wound," like the clock, and each day of our lives is a "tick" of morning and "tock" of evening. And very slowly our lives pass until the weights of our existence have reached the bottom of their chains, and we, like the clock, stop. Unfortunately, unlike the clock, our lives cannot be rewound.

But having so said, I amend it with another of my basic philosophies/beliefs: that of time being a Mobius strip, constantly replaying eternity. Our individual lives, though an incalculably small segment of eternity, therefore keep recurring over and over again, and while that means that we are doing the same things, instant by instant, somewhere, and making the same mistakes and suffering the same pain and sadness—and exhilarating in the same loves and joys—each second is, to us, new and very-first-time. This in no way conflicts with the idea of free will. We do the same thing over and over and each time, and with life-changing crossroad, we are free to choose which one we take; the fact that we choose to take the same one every single time is simply part of the loop.

And that philosophy/belief leads me to yet another, regarding death and what lies beyond. I believe nothing more strongly or with more sincerity that when we die, we simply return to the state that preceded our birth. Death is the end of life. Nothing more, nothing less. There is no awareness, no heaven, and no hell. And how can one be afraid of nothing? The wish for something after death is partly answered by the Mobius strip of eternity; every instant of our lives is being replayed constantly, and has always been replayed and will always be replayed. Therefore the concepts of life and death are in fact moot.

Not all philosophies are, or need to be, profound. Many, perhaps most, are basic, every-day guides to how we live our lives and view and interact with others. They need not even appear to be realistic, but as long as we hold to them and truly believe in them, they are valid. I believe, for instance, in the goodness of our species, despite frequently harsh and overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is not the reality of our philosophies which matters in the end, it is the comfort they provide us. 

Pondering our individual philosophies and trying to trace their origins can be a fascinating mental exercise...if, in the end, probably pointless. But, like an old fashioned razor strop, it hones the mind.
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com.  I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com



Tuesday, December 04, 2018

The Child Within


When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. -- Corinthians 13:11, American King James version

As with so many things, what is true for most people is not necessarily true for me. I may no longer speak as a child, but I consider retaining the ability to understand and think like a child to be a great blessing. Children are born with priceless gifts: wonder, unquestioned trust, and infinite hope, all of which reality tends to steal away over the years until little--and sometimes nothing--of the gifts remain. They are stolen so gradually that we don't even realize they're gone or, far worse, that we don't care or miss them.

Far from putting away childish things--and I prefer to substitute "childlike" for "childish"--I have clung to them, cherished them, and nourished them. I would not be who I am had I let them fade away or to be stomped out of me by reality.

Whenever I am asked for a biography, I often begin with the same sentence: "When I was five years old, I never wanted to be six." And it is absolutely true. Strange as it may sound/seem, though I chronologically and physically crossed the line between boy and man well over half a century ago, I have never considered myself to be a fully-developed "adult." To me, "adult" is synonymous with "grown-up," and like Peter Pan, I've never wanted to be a grown-up. 

Interestingly, as a child, I never had imaginary friends. But today I take a childish delight in having divided myself into Roger, who is in charge of the "mature," daily-life part of me, and Dorien, whose realm is my imagination. 

Dorien is my child within. He doesn't have to worry about the mundane. He is totally free to like bunnies. And toast with cinnamon and sugar. And lying on his back in the tall grass on a warm, silent summer afternoon staring up at the clouds and seeing the wondrous forms and faces and animals within them. He's been around long enough now that he frequently totally takes over with those few friends who know how deeply a part of me he is. One of those friends just sent a message referencing some article which concluded with the line: "We'll all end up having to worry about rabbits." My instant, without-a-moment's-thought response was: "Dorien is always worried about rabbits: do they have enough to eat? Do they have someplace nice to live? Do they wear their mittens when they go outside to play in the winter? Ageless questions."

Those hardened into the shell of adulthood will undoubtedly find that sort of thinking silly, affected and childish. I prefer to think of it as sincerely fun and child-like. It's the way my mind works and has always worked, and the veneer of adulthood has never gotten thick enough to repress it.

But again, as with all things, being child-like has its down side. Children expect more than reality can deliver, and it is in the slow acceptance of and adjustment to reality that being childlike is lost. I have never accepted reality's total dominion, which is why reality and I have become estranged. I am truly incapable of understanding why things cannot be as I expect them to be--which is to say, as they should be. Because I expect life to run smoothly, effortlessly, and without conflicts, I do not handle problems, negative challenges, or stress well. Because I expect simplicity in all things, complexities lead to frustration and unhappiness far more frequently than I would imagine is the case with those who I would consider fully-developed adults. 

And while I feel very sorry for those who have lost their inner child, I am not so far removed from reality as to refuse to acknowledge that in many ways their lives of non-resistance are easier than mine. I know that in the end reality always wins. But with me, it won't be without one hell of a fight.
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com.  I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com



Friday, November 30, 2018

The Housewives of....


Ah, I've done it again. I began this blog by heading off in one direction and then wandering off in another. There is a connection, but it might be a little hard to tell at first. See if you can connect the dots. 

Let's start at the beginning:

My cat, Spirit, seems to enjoy staring at walls. He does it a lot, and with such concentration I would give anything to know what he sees or thinks he sees there, or what his motivations might be. Usually this is done relatively calmly, as though pondering some weighty philosophical issue. But frequently he will race madly around the apartment and dash to a corner where, screeching to a halt with his face no more than three inches from where two walls meet, he will stare up at God-knows what and "me-owl" at the top of his considerably powerful lungs, then suddenly break off the stare, spin around and dash off into another room at full tilt. 

To say I don't understand cats is rather redundant. But I fear I can say the same of an awful  lot of people as well. I never cease to be amazed at how many of them, too, seem to spend so much time staring...figuratively if not literally...at walls and often making a great do-do about nothing. Well, let's modify that to "nothing that I can even remotely understand." 

I freely admit that I probably watch too much TV. My pattern/routine/rut is such that after spending most of the day writing, I stop at 5:30 for the evening news and then spend between 6:00 and 10:00 wandering across the vast TV landscape trying to find something to catch and hold my interest. I guess in that regard, I might have something in common with Sprit and walls. But I at least try to defend myself by saying I prefer programs which involve at least a smidgen of involvement on my part. And I'll also admit that the "smidgen" occasionally dominates...I'm not above, if the programming landscape is particularly barren, watching an episode of Cops and Hell's Kitchen and HGTV home renovation programs, on the grounds that they are interestingly informative even though I have not had a bite of solid food in over a month now and I haven’t lifted a hammer in years.

But I convince myself that those programs are profound when compared to the likes of the wildly if inexplicably ubiquitous Housewives of Name-a-City. While I have never watched a single episode of one and would have to be forced at gun point to do so, they are all but inescapable. Both programs seem to delight in glorifying stupefyingly, totally unwarranted vanity, infuriating arrogance and the glories of utter idiocy. At least one of the first of these dumb-fests, Jersey Shore did include some some attractive male eye candy--Warning: digression follows!—but beauty only goes so far.

(Digression: the men--or, if you're so inclined, the women--on Jersey Shore reminded me of an exchange overheard many years ago in an L.A. bar: "Take a look at that guy! He's incredible!" "Yeah, but I'll bet he doesn't have a brain in his head." "That's okay. I didn't come here to f**k brains!")

But while with Jersey Shore one could turn the sound down and just concentrate on the eye candy, from what I've been able to tell, the only conceivable attraction of The Housewives of Name-a-City is to see what obscene amounts of money can do to people who otherwise have absolutely no reason to exist. As I said, I've only seen the trailers for these shows, but as I race to change the channel, my overwhelming desire is to slap those obnoxious, disgusting, hand-seductively-on-hip poseurs silly and put them a one-way flight to Darfur.

And to yank us all back to the point where this blog began, let me tie a neat bow with the observation that whatever Spirit sees by staring at the walls has to be better than The Housewives of Name-a-City.
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com.  I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com



Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Let's Pretend


Cream of Wheat is so good to eat
that we have it every day!
We sing this song, it will make us strong,
and it makes us shout 'Hooray!'

It's good for growing babies
and grown-ups too, to eat!
For all the family's breakfast,
You can't beat Cream of Wheat!

And with this ditty, from March 24, 1934 to October 23, 1954 began Let's Pretend, one of the longest-running children's programs on radio. I probably came upon it in the early 1940s. Each program was an adaptation of some classic children's book or fairy tale, and I loved and looked forward to every episode.

I don't think there are programs like Let's Pretend anymore, and I consider that to be a very great loss. 

Are there, in fact, any radio programs aimed at children? Radio was to the imagination what water is to a plant. Children today grow up watching Sesame Street—a wonderful program, but fundamentally different from Let's Pretend on an elemental level: it is totally visual; the child sees everything; there's no need to imagine what Big Bird or Elmo or Cookie Monster look like—-they’re right there. 

But I think the major difference between Sesame Street and radio programs is that Sesame Street's primary focus is on developing learning, whereas Let's Pretend's focus was on developing the imagination, and I would argue that learning without imagination is like a cake without frosting. 

(You can, by the way, hear a few of the original shows by going to https://archive.org/details/Lets_Pretend)

Do kids today play the same kinds of games I played? Most of the games did not have specific names but simply sprang from the utterance of the three magic words "Let's pretend like..." and from that point on, the imagination took over completely. A tree became a castle, a pile of dirt a fort, a towel tied around the neck a superhero's cape. 

While age has far removed me from the games I played as a child, it does seem that kids today live in a totally different world, in which the value of developing the imagination is all but totally overlooked. The emphasis is far more on preparing children for adulthood than it is on letting them simply experience the joys of being children. Piano lessons? Violin lessons? Good for developing skills, but terribly short, for most children, on fun. While it can be argued that soccer practice, baseball practice and other sports activities are technically games preparing children for the grown-up world, they are structured activities designed to produce conformity, and the child involved in them is all but totally deprived of the need for any...well, individuality, any mental freedom to explore and engage the imagination.

Do moms today still tell their kids to "Go out and play"? And if they do, do the kids do it, or do they prefer to hunker down with their video games, the vast bulk of which, though set in imaginary landscapes of someone else's creation, seem to emphasize physical dexterity in pressing the button/waggling the stick to kill monsters than in actually thinking what it might be like to be inside the game?

Does the child today, sitting in the Little League dugout, glancing up at whipped-cream clouds lazily floating overhead, have the time to look for castles and whales and sailing ships? Or does he just see clouds as he waits for his turn at bat?
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com.  I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com



Friday, November 23, 2018

The Circles of "We"


This started out simply enough, with the idea for a blog talking about why I've always found the word "we" to be my favorite word in the English language, not for its sound but for its definition. (We: pronoun [ first person plural ] 1. used by a speaker to refer to himself or herself and one or more other people considered together). It's the commonality, the "together,"  I love. 

And then, as so often happens when I'm looking up the definition of a word, I found myself thinking of another word which I then have to look up, which leads me to another word, which....Anyway, looking up "we" led me to think of the word "us" and how, to me, "us" and "we" were synonymous. So I looked up the definition of "us" and thereby went from dipping my toe in the water to plunging in far over my head.

The dictionary definition of "us" ( pronoun [ first person plural ]1. used by a speaker to refer to himself or herself and one or more other people as the object of a verb or preposition") for some unknown reason pretty much drains the humanity out of it. The quality of  "together" in the definition of "we" isn't even mentioned in the definition of "us," and for some inexplicable reason that both surprises and bothers me. I still can't help but seeing "we" and "us" as synonymous and overlapping.

But wanting to get on with the original intent of this blog, not knowing which word is really more applicable to its theme, I'll just arbitrarily use "we" because I like it more.

There are concentric circles of "we" in each of our lives, in which our individual selves are the center.  And the minute I typed "our" in that sentence I was compelled to look it up to see how it relates to "we" and "us"!  (our: possessive adjective 1. belonging to or associated with the speaker and one or more other people previously mentioned or easily identified).

I swear, I shouldn't be allowed around a dictionary! 

Dragging myself back to the circles of "we": while all circles appear to be generally the same, there are an infinite number of variations within each one. The individual is always the center of his/her own set of circles. The first circle outward from the center is family and, for most of us (and there we go with "us": see what I mean about overlaps?), the next one beyond that is friends. From that point, the lines between the circles become progressively less distinct the further out from the center one goes, with more overlapping and more variations: acquaintances/co-workers/colleagues, one's religion, social contacts, political affiliations, nationality, ethnic/minority identities. 

Your circles...my circles...are as unique as fingerprints; while all circle categories may be basically the same, there are an infinite number of variations within each. Some circles, like family, religion, and ethnicity, we are born into and, while we may be free to leave some of them, we seldom do. As we pass from childhood to adulthood, we tend to add to our circles, to create new ones, or to join the circles of others.

But what all these circles have in common, and the point of this blog, is that they all—as with so very much of our lives—stem from our individual, personal concept of the word "we"...those things and people which create within us the sense of comfort and belonging.

"We," "us," "our," and "together" form the bases upon which human society is built and wherein lie our hopes for the future.
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com.  I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com



Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Running



The “Flight or Fight” reflex is one of the basic human survival techniques. But “Fight or Flight” refers primarily to external threats, and there are many traumatic situations in life where the problem is internal and emotional, and “fight” is simply not an option. I’ve had several of these events in my life, and learned each time that while “flight” is indeed often an option, it is seldom a good one. 

I've done major-league running away twice in my life, the first shortly after I turned 30 and ran from Chicago to Los Angeles like a citizen of Pompeii fleeing the eruption—the ash fall in this case being shattered pieces of my psyche. You would think after that experience, I'd have learned my lesson and not repeated it. But there is no rationalizing with a devastated mind and heart.

I did not handle turning 30 well. I'd been in a relationship for several years by that time, but while I am a firm believer in monogamy, it didn't work out that way. Norm, my partner, traveled a great deal, sometimes gone two to three weeks out of a month. And, when I learned the hard way that he was not monogamous while away, I began to stray myself. It reached the point where I couldn't handle the duplicity, or live up to my own moral standards. I broke up with Norm, which hurt him deeply and emotionally devastated me, adding mountains of guilt to my other problems. Finally, I determined that the only way out of the labyrinth was to pick up the pieces of me and get as far away from the situation as I could.

Of course I soon learned, after having done so, the very simple fact that no matter where you go, there you are. And if the problems are within yourself, there's no way to get away from them.

So I spent several years with rolls of Scotch tape and Elmer's Glue putting the pieces of me back together, stumbling through various relationships, always hoping that the next one would be Mr. Right. He never was.

The death of my mother in September of 1970 (1970?? Was there ever such a year as 1970?) was, as I'm sure you can appreciate, one of the worst times of my life. It was as if I had mentally stepped on a land mine. I quit my job, bought a  21-foot Winnebago motor home, and took off in a futile attempt to run away from reality. I was coincidentally in a disastrous relationship at the same time as she was dying, but her illness prevented me from having the time to deal with it. So my buying the Winnebago and taking off was undoubtedly also partly to distance myself from the relationship as well. And, of course, it didn't work.

Thinking on the subject now I suppose there was a third running away, though of a different sort. With the Grim Reaper striding through the gay community in Los Angeles, cutting down friends and acquaintances with a terrifying relentlessness, I began to realize that I could well be next. I was still in a several-year on-again, off-again relationship with Ray—thanks to his alcoholism— but in the off-again periods I'd be out there in the bars. It occurred to me that to run from Los Angeles might be a good idea. If I could take Ray somewhere far, far away from the bar scene, perhaps he could stop drinking. And since I would have no need to look for...well, you know...elsewhere, we might actually find the kind of life I wanted so badly for the both of us.

I think you know me well enough by now to see this as yet another classic example of my refusal to acknowledge the existence of reality. But I sold my home in L.A., moved to Pence, Wisconsin—which could have a mileage marker just outside of town saying "Pence, 2 miles. End of the Earth, 1 mile”—and the rest you can fairly well guess. I brought Ray with me to Pence and we came, when he was sober, as close to the idyllic life as I had hoped for. But he could never stay sober for more than three months, and got in trouble with the law. A judge gave him the choice of returning to L.A. or going to jail. He reluctantly chose to return to L.A. where, within two years, he was dead of AIDS.

Life is not fair. Where we get the idea that it should be is a mystery. Life simply is, and we deal with it the best we can. One thing we cannot do is run from it.
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com.  I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com



Friday, November 16, 2018

The Forest and the Trees


How strange it is that the human brain has, essentially, no limits, while being held captive by a physical body that does. We live our entire life within those confines. We are, physically, as separate from others of our species as are the individual trees in a forest. We have only our own mind to interpret and make sense of the world around us, and who we are is the compilation of our individual perceptions and experiences. 

It's fascinating how well we somehow manage to interrelate with others given we have nothing but ourselves and our own experiences to go by. As I observe the world around me and the people who pass through my range of vision in the course of an average day, I am frequently struck by what interesting lives they lead and by what I see as the dullness of my own.

Not being able to see the forest for the trees is one of many human phenomena to which we pay very little attention. The closer we are to something, the more narrow our focus, and we basically see only what is directly in front of us. It's all a matter of perspective and as with so many things, perspective requires a stepping back, which is easy enough to do for external things...you can see the forest if you stand back far enough from the individual trees...but it is physically impossible for us to step back from ourselves, and extremely difficult to do so mentally and emotionally.

We look at others' lives with a perspective they cannot have themselves, just as they can look at us in the same way. But even so, by and large we observe only the exterior surfaces...a very truncated (no pun intended) version. I look at others and see what they do and what they have accomplished, and how they relate to other people, and because I only see the surface, as it were, my own life often pales by comparison to theirs. I am not privy to their inner problems, insecurities, worries, fears, or concerns. And because I can't see them, I can't fully understand or appreciate them. 

Since we are within ourselves every nanosecond, 24 hours a day, it's hardly surprising that our own lives can easily appear to be dull or boring. I write books. That's what I do and who I am. Writing is my norm. Since whatever talents/advantages I may have are just a part of me, I see my life as not particularly interesting when compared to the lives of others.

When I do manage to step back from the individual trees that make up the forest of my life, I can see how different each of them is, and how insignificant my own "tree" appears. Few of us allow ourselves credit for our own uniqueness. How many people have flown solo through the tops of huge, whipped-cream clouds? How many people have--or take--the chance to go off to Europe by themselves for a month? How many people have written more than 20 books? I have, but it's just part of me and therefore, to me, nothing special.

Of course, other people have flown solo through clouds, or had wonderful adventures, or written many books...but none in exactly the same combination.

Each person's forest is unique. There is no universal blueprint for a forest any more than there is a universal blueprint for all human beings other than those physical attributes with which most of us are born. Visually, we all pretty much resemble one another, just as visually, trees all resemble each other. But it is our experiences, our emotions, and a million other invisible factors which come together to make each of us uniquely ourselves, our "tree" different than every other tree in the forest.

And my point? That while human nature may dictate that we assume that we are somehow less interesting, less worthy of attention than others, that assumption is wrong and we should celebrate our uniqueness far more than we do. Each of us may be only one tree in the forest, but that tree is far more special than we give it credit for.

I love forests.
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com.  I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com



Tuesday, November 13, 2018

A Chat with My Miuse



You rang?

Yes! I just realized I've got to do a blog for tomorrow.

Relax. No hurry. You've got all day.

Oh, yeah. We know how that goes. I get up at 6 a.m., have a cup of coffee, pet the cat, and the next thing I know the late-night local news is on. And I still haven't done a blog.

So, write one.

That's why I called. You're my muse. What should I write about?

Whatever you've been writing blogs about for the last…what?…six years, now?

Yeah, well that's sort of the problem. I’ve written about just about everything already. I'm getting mind-freeze. I need a new one, but I can't figure out a subject to write one on.

You mean you "can't figure out on what subject to write."

Oh, great! You who couldn't pick a transitive verb out of a pile of predicate nominatives are giving me English lessons?

Could YOU pick a transitive verb out of a pile of predicate nominatives?

No, but that's not the point. Read my lips: I need to write a blog for tomorrow.

Childhood memories?

Done that. Lots.

How about jobs you've held?

Ditto.

Pets? Family? Friends? Past loves? What you had for breakfast?

Been there. Done that.

How about a nice, projectile-vomiting rant against something that ticks you off? You never seem to run out of ideas for those.

True, but I do way too many of those as it is.

Kittens? Puppies? Bunny rabbits?

Uh, not today. I'm in a hurry.

How about a blog on why you never hear about male muses? It’s sexism, pure and simple!

Good point, but would probably require more research than I’ve time for right now.

Okay, how about this conversation?

Nah. The reader'd never buy it. I'll just have to keep on thinking.

Okay. While you're doing that, I'll go have a beer.

Gee, yeah, you do that. Sorry to have bothered you!

Hey, no problem. I do what I can.
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com.  I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com