Technology and Me

I am a simple man—some would argue “in all definitions of the word.” And while I am very grateful to live in an era of iPads and Smartphones and Digital-This-es and High-Speed-6D-Thats, my admiration for these devices is exceeded only by my total lack of comprehension as to how they work. I do not refer to the scientific miracles that went into creating these devices, but rather how, once they’ve been created, I’m supposed to work with them. 

I stand in awe of technology, much as the earliest humans must have stood in awe of fire. Like probably the majority of humans not living in third-world countries, I have become utterly addicted to my computer. I have a cell phone not associated with any “Service” providing an infinite number of bells and whistles for which I simply have no need and in which I have no interest. Rather than paying the “Service” well upwards of $100 per month, I buy blocks of usage minutes. I do not text, and cannot understand the purpose for it. If I want to talk to someone, I’ll phone them. If I want to send them a message, I’ll use e-mail. 

My relationship with technology is not quite so adversarial as is my relationship with reality; technology simply ignores me and marches forward, and it is up to me to try to keep up with it as best I can. But it is none the less frustrating.

My life has two settings: “Bumbling along” and “Chaos.” If I am attempting to deal with something that has moving parts, I am on shaky ground. If electricity is involved, all bets are off. Instruction manuals are utterly beyond my comprehension. I consider them the Devil’s work. Their sole purpose, no matter how “user friendly” they claim to be, is to mislead and confuse. I have seldom made it through two paragraphs of any instruction manual without becoming totally frustrated. If diagrams are included, it’s even worse. I try to follow instructions. I really, really do. (“Insert Tab A into Slot B.”) Fine. “Attach part 1 to part 2” is possible only if there is only one way the two can be attached, and things go rapidly downhill from there. If any product I am considering buying includes the words “Some Assembly Required” I move on looking for one for which NO assembly is required. I have yet, in my entire life, to buy something for which “Some Assembly” is required without ending up with a piece missing or three left over, and any resemblance between the end product pictured on the box and what I end up producing is strictly coincidental.  

My television set has two remotes: one to turn on the TV via the cable box and control volume and “pause”, the other to change channels. Each remote has, for reasons I dare not even try to guess, at least 32 buttons, the purpose(s) of which are totally beyond my ken. Occasionally I will somehow accidentally press a wrong button (I am never aware of which button it was I pressed) and the TV will go blank. Nothing I do—nothing—will bring the picture back. I begin frantically pressing buttons—any buttons/all buttons—desperately trying to find the right one, even knowing as I’m doing it that I’m only making matters worse. And finally, after ten minutes of button-pushing and frustration building to fury, I will call my best friend Gary, who lives in the building next to mine, to ask him for help, and he will give up whatever he’s doing/watching to come over. Inevitably he will pick up one (not both) of the remotes, casually click one of the 32 buttons, and God returns to His heaven, and all’s right with the world until the next time. And there always is a next time.

Purchasing anything on line, changing passwords, filling out any type of form either online or on paper becomes an exercise in madness. I can and have spent half an hour or more on line dancing through hoops only to hit “Submit” to be told I’d done something wrong and having to start over from scratch. I will enter a password I have used for six years only to be told it is incorrect, search through records to find what I entered was, indeed correct, re-entering it, and being told yet again that it is incorrect. I am told to change the password (another time-consumer), receive confirmation of the new password, enter it where required, and am told it is incorrect.

It is to weep.

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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.  We are 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. 

Lies

Lying is an integral part of human nature. For anyone to deny lying merely proves the point.  There are an infinite number of types of lies, but the vast majority are basically a form of defense mechanism—a means of self protection when we fear the truth may get us into trouble. 

While truth is often subjective (that I hate mushrooms is the truth…for me. That you love them is the truth…for you), it is in fact largely malleable to some degree based on each individual's interpretation and experience. Lies fall into two basic categories: those told of perceived necessity/convenience and those told solely to gain some advantage. Because lying is ubiquitous, the former vastly outnumber the latter, but it is the latter that can and often does result in incalculable damage.

The toxicity of lies is in direct ratio to the harm they do. The vast majority of lies are simple responses to questions, and are often to protect the feeling of others. ("Do these pants make me look fat?" "Do you really think I have a chance?") Children and teenagers, who do not yet fully understand the effect their lies may have on others ("No one likes you!"), are particularly good at them. It is the lies of adults—those who know full well the consequences of their lies and simply do not care—which are inconceivably unforgivable. The sole purpose of deliberate, calculated, predatory lies typified by the contents of any computer's spam folder ("My dear friend. I am Mrs Mjeba Qnobe, widow of the Finance Minister....") is to take advantage of the trust, hopes, innocence, gullibility, or greed (in which the individual lied to is complicit in the lie) of others. The sociopaths who create harmful lies, unfortunately, deserve a far more harsh and severe punishment than they will ever receive.

The saddest and most destructive thing about lies is that the cynicism they engender systematically corrodes our basic human ability and need to trust, threatening those very qualities which make us human. Politicians and corporations liars know full well they are lying to us, and they just don't care. That we accept their lies without blinking encourages more blatant and egregious lies, which we also simply accept. As a society, we have become injured to lies.

We live in an toxic atmosphere, and we knowingly inhale deeply. By our unwillingness to stand up to—or even question—a lie, we become complicit in it. Social media has become a vast sea of patently egregious lies designed to foment fear and hatred, and we blindly accept them and forward them to others when a simple check for truthfulness, via www.snopes.com, for example, could prevent spreading the virus these messages carry.

Of all forms of lying, most are of the “white lie” variety, harming no one. Most are out of a perceived need to appease, or when the value of going into a more detailed explanation would involve more time than the situation warrants. 

Despite all the negativity surrounding lies, our hope lies in the fact that there are a great many people who prefer to evade or sidestep rather than outright lie, and who find lying specifically to hurt another human being or solely to gain an advantage repugnant. This does not make these people saints. But it does make them responsible human beings.

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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.  We are 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. 

Communication

All creatures communicate with one another in some form. Cases have been made that the ability to communicate exists even in trees and plants. Animals and insects—elephants, bees, ants, whales, dolphins, other primates have developed the ability to effectively communicate basic information such as needs, fears, and emotions with others of their kind. But only Man—unless there is something we don't know yet—is the only one to have developed the skill on so many levels.  

Each of our basic means of communication—speech, music, writing, art—has it's own place in our culture and in our lives, and each has its own unique power. Museums are devoted to those inanimate objects which speak clearly and often with great emotional eloquence to us, and present a singular view of our cultural history—though largely without words or speech. The oldest and most universal form of human communication is, of course, music, which speaks a non-verbal language which all can understand. Mankind has been making music for far longer than history can record, and unquestionably predates spoken languages. We were scrawling on cave walls and making small figures out of stone and clay from our caveman days while our verbal communication skills were barely developing.

The development of spoken words and their gradual evolution into language is what truly branched us off from the other animals. Transforming spoken words into symbols others could understand—writing—is a relatively new method of communication in the overall span of our existence, but it is words, and especially the written word, which enable us to record our past, and therefore are unquestionably the single most powerful form of communication available to our species.

Today we are inundated, often overwhelmed, by the various methods of communication, and the advances of technology have exponentially exacerbated the situation. Every day of our lives we watch TV, or listen to music, or read, or email, or text, as well as communicating verbally with those around us.

But, technology's bells and whistles aside, probably the most basic of all form of human communication remains words. We almost never stop to consider, even for a moment, how vital language and written words are, not only to our species but to us as individual humans. There are those few of us who cannot read, or cannot speak, or cannot hear, but even they are nonetheless surrounded by words and language in some form and develop their own variations to convey thought among themselves, and are thereby not cut off from the rest of humanity.

Words appeal primarily to our intellect; music and art, the other major and undeniable forms of communication, appeal to our soul.

Words and music are the most naturally compatible forms of communication, and again we never give a moment's thought to how astonishing the ability to combine the two is. The incredible power of combining words and music to appeal to our emotion is all around us, and never more so evident for Americans than during a patriotic sing-along during 4th of July celebrations.

But the glorious power of words to move us, in songs, poems, stories and novels, is vastly under-appreciated. Words have the power to create mental pictures as vivid and beautiful as any painting, or as powerful as any sculpture. Writers are, in fact, artists who use words the way painters use colors, subtly shading or harshly contrasting, smoothly blended or rough-textured, and after having painted his/her word picture, becomes a type of sculptor, going back over the work to chisel away sections or paragraphs or sentences here, gently using a fine chisel to smooth out a word or phrase there. 

There is of course simply not enough time allotted to us to be able to fully appreciate everything in our lives that deserves appreciation, but to take a moment, every now and then, to give thought to one or two of them—to know that they are there and to realize the purposes they serve—cannot help but enrich our lives.

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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.  We are 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. 

Spare Me!

Survivors of a tornado in a small southern town were interviewed on national news. One of those asked to relate his experience was a man who had been working in his church when the tornado hit. He said he had hidden under a table as the building came down around him. He then launched into an interminably long praise of "the Lord, who saved me from the demon Alcohol and Satan's power in 1970" and whose loving arms were the only things that saved him from the wrath of the tornado, and that all praise be to God and.... Why the interviewer didn't cut him off after a full minute of "Praise be to the Lord" is beyond me. And I couldn’t help but wonder why the man didn’t question why God had sent the tornado to destroy the church in the first place. 

I am glad the man survived the tornado. I really am. And that he has strong religious convictions is admirable. But please, please, spare me the excruciating embarrassment of lengthy exposure to beliefs I do not share.

There is nothing wrong with having strong beliefs and wanting to share them with others—as long as the others are willing to listen. A respectful exchange of ideas is the basis of any discourse. But the words respectful and exchange are alien concepts to proselytizers, who are bound and determined to change your way of thinking on a subject whether you want them to or not. We've all been approached by religious zealots and people trying to sell us something we're not interested in buying. Proselytizers take full advantage of the fact that most of us put up with them because we are too polite to be rude. (My late, dear friend Uncle Bob used to delight in visits from Jehovah's Witnesses and squeaky-clean, white-shirt-and-tie Mormons, who he would invite in and try to convert to Druidism.)

TV literally teems with politicians, pitchmen, and self-appointed pundits who know far more about what is good for you than you do, and who spew their toxic waste over anyone within hearing or viewing distance. Entire networks are devoted to them. But at least on TV, relief is but a remote control button away. It's the face-to-face encounters with utterly insensitive boors who haven't the slightest interest in what you might believe or be willing to consider. That you have the right to your own opinion is totally irrelevant to them.

One of my a-few-doors-down-the-hall neighbors is what I like to refer to as an Obama-is-the-Antichrist Republican. Absolutely nothing our president...his president, too, by the way...does is not an obvious conspiracy to turn this nation over to the minions of Satan. I dread being cornered on an elevator with him. He knows I do not share his views and am in fact strongly opposed to most of them, and I have told him so many times. Yet he insists on going on and on and on and on spewing vitriolic hateful garbage, not one sentence of which has a shred of logic.

If you have been following these blogs, you know that I have one or two rather strong opinions on a number of topics I am truly convinced should be shared by everyone else in the world. But I feel free to rant and rave because I know that if I say anything with which you strongly disagree, you will probably just stop reading...which is exactly the way it should be.

I may not agree with your views on any given topic; I may in fact vehemently disagree with them. But I would never try to deny that you are entitled to have them, or have the gall to demand you change them to echo mine. 

I learned long ago that there is no point in arguing with a brick wall. Brick walls have every right to be brick walls. However, the right to a strong belief should never be confused with the right to impose that belief on others.

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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.  We are 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. 

Goldilocks

The little golden-haired moppet of the children's classic had to deal with a series of three choices: too much of something, not enough of it, and just the right amount. When it comes to thinking, people tend to favor Goldilocks' second choice; they either think too little, or do not think at all, which is the path of least resistance. Very few tend to think too much.

Not thinking at all has its advantages. It's definitely, as stated, the path of least resistance. There are always a lot of people around who are more than happy to do your thinking for you. Not sure what your political stand is on any given issue? Listen to the self appointed pundits. Don't let the fact that while they themselves don't have a clue of what they're talking about, every one of them has their own personal agenda involving you feeding their egos, ambitions, and bank accounts. Don't give it a thought. Just do what they say and think what they tell you to think. They must know what they're talking about, or they wouldn't be on TV or writing articles, right? So just go along in whatever direction they point you and never, never ask questions.

The same is true with those saintly folk we see every Sunday morning,  telling us where to send our love offerings. They are on a first-name basis with God and thereby have the right to tell us what is right and what is wrong—and I've noticed there seems to be a lot more wrong than there is right. And while they see it as their duty to tell you what to believe and whom to love they are also quick to tell you whom you may not love. While there are differences in approach, the one thing pundits, politicians and pastors share is their single-minded duty to tell you whom to hate. 

Hate is an awesome thing! It gives power to those who feel they are powerless; it gives a sense of superiority over the hated; it allows the venting of all those deep, undefined insecurities and feelings of inadequacy. It is much, much easier to hate when one is unencumbered by the need for truth or logic or facts, and do not think for one second that those who treat you like a Pavlov's dog or a marionette on the end of a string are not acutely aware of what they're doing and why. But the best thing about hate is that it requires absolutely no thought. 

While most people fall into only one of the categories listed at the beginning—too much, not enough, or just the right amount—I strongly suspect that a pie chart showing people’s choices, not thinking at all would undoubtedly be by far the largest slice, followed by not thinking enough, followed by and thinking rationally would be the smallest piece by far. I might also add another, very small slice representing thinking too much. My tendency to simply not think at all before I do something is the story of my life. It occurs to me to do something—figuratively jumping off a cliff into a pond, say—I do it and only find out after I've hit the water that it is only three inches deep. But do I learn? Nope. It's back up the cliff for another jump. (Hey, maybe it's a lot deeper a little to the left.)

I spend far, far too much time trying to undo mistakes than I do actually accomplishing anything.

Not thinking enough is almost as bad as not thinking at all. ("Okay," I'll tell myself, "all I have to do is this, this, and this." And that's as far as it goes. I don't spend any time on really thinking about what "this" entails, and what I'll do if it doesn't do what I expect it to do.) And often, when whatever I'd set out to do doesn't work, I'm not sure which "this" I did wrong.

But I also occasionally over-think. I will decide that this time I'm going to have everything figured out before I start a project. But the more I think about it, the more anxious I become to get on with it, and the questions start rushing in, and I start wandering off in a dozen different directions and am pummeled by "yeah, but" and "how do I handle it if..." And as a result, I either abandon the project entirely or just climb back up the cliff and jump in.

Goldilocks had it easy.

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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.  We are 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. 

Do Not Go Gentle

A case can be made for the nobility of suffering physical and personal problems in silence. My mother died after a far-too-long battle with lung cancer, yet never complained. More recently, a good friend dealt stoically with the bone cancer which killed him and never, ever spoke of it or his reactions to it, despite the fact that he knew I was more than willing to listen and do what little I can to provide support. My admiration for those who suffer in silence borders on awe. 

I have never suffered in silence on any level...even at those times—almost all of them—when I admittedly probably should have. If I have a hangnail, everyone within a six-mile radius knows about it. (I just got a paper cut on my tongue while sealing an envelope to the manager of a business at which the receptionist had been gratuitously rude...thus enabling me to suffer, loudly, twice.) I know my desire to share my physical discomforts is undoubtedly a rather childishly crude bid for an "Aww, poor baby!" response. But this is not true of my insistence on being treated with courtesy and reasonable attentiveness by those whose job it is to provide me with a service.

There is no nobility in suffering gratuitous rudeness, professional incompetence, poor service, poor treatment, or willful ignorance in silence, and I refuse to do so without making my displeasure known.

People tend to be sheep. Rather than risk any form of confrontation by "making waves," they accept the unacceptable without a single word of protest...which of course only encourages more of the same. And as a result, they suffer not only the initial transgression but the frustration and bottled-up anger of knowing they should have/could have objected but did nothing. I do not consider stating a legitimate complaint clearly and without undo emotion to necessarily be a "confrontation."

I have friends who will tolerate the most egregious rudeness and insensitivity without a murmur. Surly, inattentive clerks, poor service, cold food in a restaurant, bureaucratic dictates? No matter how frustrating or anger-inducing, they accept it all with not a peep of protest, and it drives me crazy.

When I am paying for a service, I have every right to expect that service, and if I don't get it you can be sure I'll not remain silent.

Back when I was still able to eat, if I received cold food in a restaurant, I didn't hesitate a second in sending it back...politely, of course. My friends just shrug and eat what they're served. If a clerk or a waiter is rude, I ask to speak to the manager. Immediately. I then calmly explain my position and, while not demanding the clerk/waiter be fired on the spot, suggest that they be reminded of the value of civility and courtesy to the success of any business. Not to report improper behavior to the manager is to perpetuate it, and to perhaps assure that the customer will not only never return, but let others know what happened. The only way a manager has of knowing there is a problem is to bring it to his/her attention.

If there is a problem with a phone representative (usually after dancing through hoops and waiting half an hour to do so), I immediately ask to speak to a supervisor. If I am not satisfied with the response, I ask to speak to the supervisor's supervisor, and ask for the name and address of the head of the company.

I can think of at least two incidents where my refusal to simply acquiesce to what I was told by the first person I talked to saved me several thousand dollars. I would not be in the apartment in which I am now living had I simply accepted the explanation, when I requested to change from my old apartment, that "nothing could be done." It could, and it was. But it would not have been done had I not pursued the issue beyond the first “no.” I never forget that low level bureaucrats have the tendency to assume that they are the organization for which they work, and that what they say is the way it is. Period. It is not.

And even if expressing unhappiness does no good...as my friends are quick to point out that it probably won't...I at least have the satisfaction of knowing I did not suffer in silence, that I did not go gentle into that good night.

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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.  We are 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. 

Bees & Flowers, Progeny & Words

For all the complexities of the human brain, for all our technological achievements as a society, for all our philosophical pride in "free will," homo sapiens are still biologically an animal with certain imperatives—-“Prime Directives" as they are known in science fiction film—most involving our survival as a species.

The imperative to leave something of ourselves behind for future generations is wired into our very being. Most humans obey this imperative by the most fundamental of all processes—breeding, by which we to pass our physical DNA down through the generations. (I've always found it interesting that gays frequently use the word "breeders" as a mild epithet when speaking of heterosexuals.) I am not a breeder. I will not pass my physical DNA down through time.  I shall leave no living, breathing posterity. My words are my progeny. If I cannot produce children, I can hope to produce words which will outlive me. I cannot pass on my body, but I can pass on my mind. 

I must admit that, though rarely, every now and again I miss not having children. I think I would really have made a very good father. But as a 100% homosexual male, the physical "insert tab A into slot B" process necessary to produce a child the usual way is utterly repugnant to me (and, if you are heterosexual, that statement is probably utterly incomprehensible to you). Until relatively recently, adoption by a single man...let alone any same-sex couple...was not an option, and now I have been, as with so many things, aged out of the possibility.

There's an old saying: "Love me, love my dog."  My often-rather-embarrassing need for validation has resulted in my changing that to "Love my books, love me." As with most things, I tend to be a study in contradictions. On the one hand, I really want everyone to like me. But on the other hand, if they don't, I don't take it personally. Not all parents get along with their children, and vice-versa. So I strive to lay out as much of myself as I can in my writing. I can completely understand how richly rewarding it is for a parent to have the love of a child, but if I cannot produce children to love me, I can hope to produce an untold number of books through which I might win the affection of an untold number of readers. It's not the same, of course, but it comes close. 

For a writer whose life is words, books and blogs and emails and letters are not unlike different children, each with their own separate personality. Each are comprised totally of words, yet each serves a specific purpose and have a different...well, I like the word "gravitas." In the world of writing, books are generally given much more respect than blogs or emails/letters, probably because the writer has invested more time and effort in them. While all writing is an aggregate of the writer's thoughts, beliefs, and life experiences, books present them in a more blended, broader-based form; blogs, emails and letters are on a more concentrated and personal level.  

Just as heterosexual parents want the very best for their children, so do I want the best for my words. I would truly love to become rich and famous through my writing. But even as successful as I am in the denial of reality, I cannot delude myself into thinking I might ever achieve fame or fortune through my words.

Like 99.9 percent of all writers, I write because I cannot not write. Secondarily (and it's a big "second") I write to be to be read. But most importantly to me is that I be remembered; that when I am however reluctantly forced to turn in my membership card of life, my words might stay behind. And thus I put as much of my personality and feelings and outlooks and experiences and memories as I possibly can into words. Words are not life, but to me they are the next best thing.

I tried to come up with a single analogy to explain what I'm trying to say, but so many flood in that I can't choose just one. I've often, in describing the hard-to-explain relationship between my dual selves, Roger and Dorien, used the analogy that Roger is the bulb, and Dorien the flower. Taking that analogy one step further, my words are the pollen of Dorien's flower and you, by reading them, are the bee, and without your carrying away the pollen of my words, they end with me. I do not wish to die without a trace.

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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.  We are 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. 

Name Dropping

While I always find name droppers mildly annoying, I realized the other day, while talking with an English friend (drop #1) I met on my last year’s cruise from Rome to Istanbul (drop #2) about the possibility of his joining me and my friend Gary on our August Venice to Athens cruise (drop #3) that I am one of them. Actually, I’m far more of a place-dropper than a name-dropper, but the annoyance factor is potentially the same.

My defense is that I do it not so much to impress others as to convince myself that neither I nor my life are quiet as dull and uninteresting as I have told myself all my life. I have never liked myself very much and have always thought of myself as the epitome of “vanilla”…nothing outstanding or of any particular interest to anyone, including myself. 

But when I can step away from myself and look at my life as though it were not my own, view it  from the perspective of the little boy who still lives somewhere inside me, I find an odd form of validation and reassurance that I’m not as dull as I think I am.

There have been moments of true euphoria in my life…moments so marvelous to recall that they send me into a state of wonder: Soaring alone through the clouds  as a young naval aviation cadet; rediscovering, after nearly 60 years, a battered quay in Cannes, France I so strongly associate with the happiest week of my Navy service; sitting on a beautiful April day in front of a cafe in Piazza San Marco in Venice, having a beer while an orchestra plays songs from old movies; sitting on a broken column in the courtyard of a villa in Pompeii, listening for the whispers of people dead 2,000 years. Me! I did these things!

I have friends who routinely travel from Saskatchewan to Kenya, from England to Japan, from Florida to Thailand. I read books of peripatetic adventurers who constantly move from one amazing adventure to the next, and see movies in which the wealthy go casually and effortlessly from exotic hotel in Dubai to equally exotic castle in Spain, or cross the ocean on a small sailboat. And I realize that no one human being can do all these things simultaneously. One cannot live in a snow-covered chalet on the side of a Swiss mountain and attend an opening of the Paris Opera at the same time. But the implication from all forms of media is that they do.

I’ve been to London once, Paris, Cannes, Athens, and Istanbul twice, Rome three times; Venice, Nice, Florence, Sorrento, Capri, Budapest, Vienna, Amsterdam, and a dozen or more places most people never get to see. Granted, I did not spend all that much time in any one place, but I was there! And with the upcoming trip, I’ll be back in Venice and Athens with half a dozen or more new places. Liza Minelli, in her album, Liza with a Z, sings “Ring Them Bells,” in which there is the line, “Be sure you see Dubrovnik, dear, before you come home.” Well, I’ll be seeing Dubrovnik. 

This next trip will quite probably be my last European adventure. I’ve seen most of what I’ve wanted to see there and, at 80 (odd how there are so many things I can say and yet cannot comprehend), my body, upon which I have depended for so long and which has served me so well, is simply getting to the point where, like any machine or living organism, it can’t do everything it once could. 

But like a squirrel storing up nuts for the winter, I have accumulated and will continue to accumulate enough positive memories to sustain me through the long winter and whatever lies beyond.

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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.  We are 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. 

The Candle

Please believe me—I do not want to become a bitter old man muttering oaths under my breath and swiping at passing children with my cane. But I am sincerely growing increasingly concerned about how bitter I am becoming. I don't want to turn into a nasty curmudgeon people cross the street to avoid. But it's like being in quicksand: the harder I try to free myself, the further in I sink.

Perhaps it is just that bad things weigh more heavily on the mind and sprit than do good things and tend, with every passing year, to become more and more the consistency of hardening concrete.

How can I—how can anyone—escape being aware that we are becoming a society utterly consumed by a pathetic fascination with the rich, the beautiful, and the famous? Our worth as individuals—often in our own eyes—is measured against those three criteria: wealth, beauty, and fame. A "celebrity" suffers a hangnail and the world gasps in horror and shock. Flowers and messages of support pour in. Mary Jenkins, a supermarket clerk in Olathe, Kansas, is brutally murdered in her home in front of her children and the news doesn't make it past the next county.

Have I been under a rock for the past ten years? Who the hell are these people who rule our popular culture--these preening, posturing poseurs whose unknown talent totally escapes me? What constructive, positive things have they ever done to help improve humanity? Why should their peccadillos, their divorces, their scandals interest me in the least? (Well, they don't, of course, but surely, surely I have to be missing something, somewhere!)

Why are we glued to "reality" shows—awash in vacuous young rude, obnoxious foul-mouthed—but filthy (the operative word) rich bimbets and with flawless skin and perfect teeth but with a heads so hollow you can almost hear a the wind whistling between their ears—which couldn't possibly be further from reality? Why do people listen to—and far, far worse, obviously totally believe—the purveyors of ignorance, bigotry and hate posing as "political analysts," pundits, and talk-show hosts on egregiously un-fair and un-balanced media like Fox News?  (Actually, Fox occasionally displays some bitter humor. You can be sure, for example, if, when reporting on a home-grown terrorist, they discover that the perpetrator's great grandfather had voted Democratic in the 1928 election, it will be brought out as incontrovertible evidence of guilt.)

The problem is that it is so hard not to be bitter when things that should be so simple and self evident are twisted and skewered and turned inside out at the whim of anyone with a perceived axe to grind. Becoming bitter is a particular danger for romantics, who really want and fully expect to see goodness and courtesy in others and who never really develop the rhinoceros hide most people don in order to deal with the world. The more one yearns for a world of puppies and cocoa with marshmallows, the more prone one is to be disappointed and hurt by gratuitous evil. 

The seeds of bitterness grow slowly, but the trees that spring from them are almost impossible to fell. And worst of all, there is no joy, or hope, or promise in them.

And yet, for all my very real concerns, for all my inability to comprehend why the world works the way it does, or why there is so much soul-crushing stupidity and bigotry and greed and so little compassion and common courtesy, there remains, underneath the accumulating layers of cynicism and distrust which threaten to smother me, the belief in good and our ability to somehow...somehow reverse all this negativism; to somehow put the genie back in the bottle.

And as long as humanity has hope, however unrealistic it may seem, we will survive. For in the raging tempest of existence, hope is our one small, inextinguishable candle providing a beacon in the vast night.

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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.  We are 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. 

"Mine Enemy Grows Older"

It’s not often one gets to make reference to raconteur Alexander King, Walt Kelly’s Pogo, and Dorothy Parker in the same sentence, but I’ve managed. The title of this particular blog is taken from King’s 1958 book of his personal observations on aging. That I and so many others appear to look upon aging as continuing battle brings me, of course, to Walt Kelley’s marvelous comic strip character’s astute observation that “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Which, in turn, sparked the memory of a classic exchange in the long-running feud between the inimitable Dorothy Parker and socialite Clare Both Luce. At one point, a friend said to Dorothy, about Clare: “But you know, Dorothy, Clare is her own worst enemy,” to which Dorothy replied, “Not as long as I’m alive, she’s not.” Scotch-tape the references together, and you have the story of my life.

I am and have always been my own worst enemy, my bitterness against aging and against myself easily rivaling the enmity between Parker and Luce. It stems from the fact that, all evidence to the contrary, I am a perfectionist. I can and do accept flaws in others that I cannot and will not tolerate in myself. Actually, it is a particularly perverse form of hubris. A great part of me has never matured beyond the child’s assumption that he is all-powerful, and that everything that happens in the world is somehow related to him.

As a result, I am incredibly easily frustrated when something—anything—does not go as I think it should. And when that something directly involves me, frustration often quickly spirals totally out of control, sending me into a self-directed rage.

Though I’m not a psychiatrist, I would suspect that masochism, the self-infliction of pain, has a mental component, and I fully if regrettably see that quality all too clearly in myself. I am constantly measuring myself against others and falling far short.

Regrets are a part of the human condition; we all have them, and they cause us a great deal of suppressed sadness and pain. But for the mental masochists among us, the emotional scabs which inevitably form over the incident are constantly being picked at and reopened.

I can clearly recall embarrassments and shames experienced from childhood and throughout life, and they often for no reason I can determine suddenly pop into my head. I can also recall too clearly the pains I have caused others; the things I should have done that I did not do; the careless and thoughtless things I would give anything to change. And, of course, these flaws build up over time like the individual snowflakes in a life-long snowstorm. The older I get, the more oppressive they seem.

So why, exactly, do I insist on dragging out all the skeletons in my closet and frantically waving my dirty laundry in front of you? Perhaps as a part of the mental masochism thing, but I would prefer (I am also very good at self-delusion) to believe it is because, once again, I do not think I am the only human to have this problem. There are many things in life which, though common-to-universal are, like certain bodily functions, considered too private and personal to talk about. So I like to think I do it to assure others who feel the same way that they aren’t alone. It may simply be yet another form of self delusion but, hey, I’ll take 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.  We are 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.