Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Sharing Dreams

There is a trinity of dreams. First are the collective dreams of our race, which guide us toward a better future and urge us to strive to make them come true. That all these dreams have not yet been realized—and may never be—does not deter us from having them. We are an indomitable race, and we are patient.

Second are our individual dreams—our daydreams while awake and those which come with sleep. Our daydreams are generally centered on our wishes for the future and can be whatever we wish them to be. Sleeping dreams are totally beyond our conscious control, and serve a valuable purpose as a form of mental “housekeeping”—a way for us to seek resolution to our inner conflicts within ourselves and accommodation with the waking world around us. We seldom have any recollection of our sleep dreams, and if we can recall them or pieces of them, their meaning is almost always hidden from us.

The third of the trinity of dreams is what prompted this entry: those dreams which are conceived in the mind of individuals—artists, musicians, and writers and translated into words and sounds and images which build bridges between individuals and between the individuals and our collective culture. Born in a single mind, they can go on to encompass us all. John Philip Sousa, for example, is said to have dreamed every note of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” on a ship returning from Europe on Christmas Eve, 1896.

Books are the writer’s dreams set to paper: I know mine are. They are formed, as are all dreams, in the imagination while, for the most part, the writer is awake. And unlike sleep dreams, the writer has some degree of control over them. If unable to direct the dream’s every aspect, at least the writer can consciously influence them by nudging them in certain directions. But for writers like myself, it is the mind which frequently overrides writer's original intentions, and takes the story where it wants it to go. A relatively few writers are able, and prefer, to plot out every single step and detail of a story before actually sitting down to write. It works for J.K. Rowling, who has made more money from putting her dreams of Harry Potter on paper than I will ever see in ten lifetimes. But it would never work for me. The element of spontaneity, both in sleep dreams and writing, is far too crucial for me.

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

People frequently ask writers where they get the ideas for their books. Whenever I'm asked, my answer is always the same: I quite honestly have no idea. They just appear. I’ll be minding my own business, thinking of almost anything except where my next story idea is going to come from, when I’ll be aware of something rising to the surface of my mind like a bubble in a tar pit. I’ll watch while it emerges and forms a bubble of thought and finally bursts, leaving me with a topic or plot idea. I love it!

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

All dreams are born and are nourished in the nursery of the subconscious, and there they remain until they are ready to emerge, either as a sleep dream or as a book or a painting or a sculpture or a symphony. Dreams are our humanity, and I cherish them, whatever form they take.
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This blog is from Dorien’s collection of blogs written after his book “Short Circuits” was published. That book is available from UntreedReads.com and amazon.com. It is also available as an audio book from Amazon or audible.com. I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs; these blogs are from that tentative collection. You can find information on all of Dorien’s books at his web site: www.doriengrey.com.


Tuesday, October 23, 2018

America's Voice



One of the regrettable and inevitable things about aging is that the older we get, the more things which were familiar to us from our youth fade and are lost to generations which come after. I was reminded of that recently when I came across a 1938 film clip of Kate Smith introducing “God Bless America.” Those not alive at the time have absolutely no idea of what a frightening and uncertain time it was. We teetered on the brink of a cataclysm unequalled in human history, and while we realized it was coming, we had no idea of what would happen, how or when it would end—or that it would claim 48,231,700 lives worldwide, including 400,000 Americans.

The First World War had ended only twenty years earlier. Anti-war sentiment was strong in the United States, but when war broke out in Europe in 1938 with the invasion of Poland, we found ourselves being inexorably drawn into the conflict. We began to gear up for war first by supplying Britain the things it needed to ward off a Nazi invasion.

We were almost desperate for some sort of comfort, of reassurance that things would be all right. And then Irving Berlin revised a song he had written in 1918 to be part of a musical called "Yip Yip Yaphank," but was cut from the show. He offered it to popular singer Kate Smith, who introduced it on her radio show. It was called “God Bless America,” and it had far more to do with patriotism than it did religion. (If you haven’t already seen it, there is a film clip of her introducing the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEJo7x9y3D4)

It became an instant hit and, after the attack on Pearl Harbor…which shocked the nation in a way that would have no equivalent on the American public until 9-11…became something of an unofficial national anthem.

I remember listening to news of the attack on Pearl Harbor on the radio, and President Roosevelt’s declaration of war on December 8. I remember my Aunt Thyra and Uncle Buck’s concern for their three sons, all draft age, and all of whom subsequently went off to war. My dad did not have to go because he was nearing 30, was married, and worked in a war factory.

WWII galvanized the entire nation in a way, again, almost impossible to imagine in today’s world of political pettiness, mean-spiritedness, bickering, and division. It was a far simpler world, where good and bad, right and wrong seemed much easier to tell apart. We were all in it together.

I remember war bonds and ration books for food and gasoline, scrap metal drives and even drives to collect used cooking oil and grease. I remember Victory Gardens which everyone was encouraged to grow to supplement food shortages. Sugar and candy bars were almost unheard of, everything going to supply the troops.

I remember the small, gold edged banners which were placed in the windows of people who had family in service. In the center of each banner was a star…blue for those serving and gold for those killed in action.

I remember blackouts and air-raid drills, though I lived in the middle of the country, far beyond the reach of enemy bombers. But it was the not knowing that kept everyone extra, undoubtedly overly, alert.

America was a male, white, Christian nation. Blacks and other minorities were all but invisible, existing on the far outer perimeters of the white world. For the most part, all the white majority knew about blacks were the stereotypes seen—usually as comedy relief—in the occasional movie. The hugely popular Amos and Andy radio show, supposedly about Negroes, featured white actors playing the black parts. The only black actors I can recall on radio were Hattie McDaniel (the first black woman ever to win an academy award, for Gone With the Wind), who played Beulah, Fibber McGee and Mollie’s made, and Jack Benny’s sidekick/servant Rochester. In the movies, blacks were largely used as comic relief, epitomized by Stepin Fetchit—whose very name exuded racism. There were a few anomalies where blacks were given token credit for their talent, such as Bojangles Robinson, who danced with Shirley Temple in a number of movies, and singer Lena Horne.

If blacks were seldom seen as anything but stereotypes, gays were even less visible and never, ever shown as anything but objects of derision.

But that was then, and now is now, and time has a way of blunting the sharp edges of the past. It is not our divisions we remember, but the power of patriotism and unity embodied in one woman and one song: Kate Smith’s unforgettable voice singing “God Bless America.”
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Check out Dorien’s redesigned and streamlined site; follow the link below.

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



Wednesday, October 17, 2018

“One Ringy-Dingy,…."


I've never been much of a phone talker since my teenage years—I don't do all that much talking off the phone, either, but that's another story. So when I moved back to Chicago in 2006, I decided not to have a land-line phone at all, and instead bought a cell phone for which I could simply buy blocks of minutes rather than signing up with some service and incurring a monthly fee. It's worked out very well. I would buy a block of 500 minutes for $50 and it would last me up to four months. 

But when my friend Norm died in 2010 and I became executor of his estate, I began using my phone more to deal with things related to settling his affairs, and I began buying blocks of 1,000 minutes for $100. When my minutes are running low, I get a recorded message advising me that: "Your minutes are about to expire. Please renew now for continued service." It then advises me that I can purchase more minutes with my credit card by simply punching in *233 on the phone.

So when I heard the message last week, I punched *233 and went through the usual "For so-and-so, press such-and-such, for thus-and-so, press this-and-that; for.…", and finally, "Enter your 437-digit phone number, birth date, mother's maiden name, name of your first pet, etc." routine, and just as I entered the last digit, the call was cut off. Assuming my order had not gone through, I went through the entire routine again.

An hour or so later, I made a call and, as I waited for the phone to ring on the other end, got the "Your minutes are about to expire. Please renew now for continued service." That hadn't happened before, but I figured there was just some delay in the processing.

And when I got the message yet again after another call that evening, I went on-line to see if my debit card reflected the transaction. The total charge, with tax, was $109.75 and sure enough, there it was, right at the top. And directly under that was another identical charge for $109.75, which meant I had purchased not 1,000 minutes but 2,000 minutes of phone time. That's 33.3333333 hours! That would last me at least until June of 2046.

So I decided I'd better try to get hold of someone at T-Mobile, from whom I buy my minutes. But
when I tried calling T-Mobile to find out what was going on, my phone was dead. Using my friend Gary's phone, I finally got through to a pleasant young lady who introduced herself as “Sally”—apparently a common name for women in Pakistan, which her accent indicated. At any rate, as I was trying to explain my problem—that I wanted first of all to start using the phone minutes I'd paid for and that I wanted to remove one of the $109.75 charges—she informed me several times that she could not understand me. I apologized and said I had a slight speech impediment. She couldn't understand that, either.

But finally, she checked my records and informed me that my last purchase had been four months ago. When I asked why, then, my bank showed not one but two transactions two days before, she transferred me to another department which, after going through the entire story once again, transferred me to another department. A nice young man who introduced himself as "Ted," and who I suspect may possibly have been an American, said he would look into it and call me back at the number he had on his records. .... Uh, excuse me? I pointed out that since my phone was not working, I doubted that he could call me back on it. "Oh."

Finally, in order to get my phone working again until all this was straightened out, I gave him my credit card information so he could bill me yet another $109.75, and reinstate my phone service immediately. As to the two previous $109.75 already on my bank statement...well, what's money? I haven't heard back from Ted yet, but I'm blocking out six hours of time to be spent trying to iron it out with my bank.
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Check out Dorien’s redesigned and streamlined site; follow the link below.


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, October 12, 2018

The Boggled Mind



Light travels at a speed of 670,616,629 miles per hour. A spaceship travelling 100,000 miles an hour would take

5,878,499,833,750,587 miles in a light year

The closest stellar system that has a confirmed planet is Epsilon Eridani which is 10.3 light-years away. However, if you travel a little farther to 15.3 light-years away, there is a system known as Gliese 876. It has four identified planets.

The Boggled Mind

Space travel is one of Mankind’s oldest dreams, and I am one of those dreamers.

Every now and then, I let go of my mind the way a child lets go of a string-tethered balloon he has been holding, and just get lost in the awe of wondering.

I began by wondering how long it would take a spaceship traveling at 100,000 miles an hour to reach the nearest solar system to our own—Alpha Centauri, which is approximately 4.3 light-years away. (In one year, light travels roughly 5,878,499,833,750,587—that’s nearly six quadrillion—miles, if that’s any help, and traveling at 100,000 miles an hour it would take 671,000 years to cover the distance light travels in a year. Even at a million miles an hour, it would still take almost 6,000 years.)

The problem is that Alpha Centauri apparently doesn’t have any known planets. The closest solar system in which planets have been found, Epsilon Eridani, is 10.3 light years away (I’ll let you do the distance-in-miles math on that one).

I didn’t even allow myself to think of how, traveling at that speed, one could avoid colliding with what other unknown objects there may be floating around out there in space. And in the 6,000 years it would take to reach Alpha Centauri, assuming mankind on earth had not destroyed itself or met with some species-ending fate and continued the technological advances we would have made in those intervening years would probably include either even much faster spaceships than the one originally launched, or a way to bend time and space…so that when the first ship finally reached its destination destination, others of our race may well already be there waiting for us.
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Check out Dorien’s redesigned and streamlined site; follow the link below.

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, October 09, 2018

Remembering


I'm not sure why I insist on sharing these things with you...I can't expect you to have any interest in someone you never knew. Yet it is precisely because you never knew Bob Combs, my friend of more than 40 years, that I'd introduce you—however peripherally—to him here. Bob worked very hard at being a curmudgeon, scoffing at and disdainful of everything. He frequently drove me to distraction, as good friends are wont to do. And yet under that carefully-constructed outer shell beat the heart of a romantic.

During the last years of his long battle with laryngeal cancer, he wrote a column for his local newspaper. Quite by accident I came across it not ten minutes ago, and in keeping with my long-held belief that one is not truly dead until one is forgotten, I wanted to bring Bob back for a brief moment. He is not forgotten by those who knew him, and perhaps by reading his words, he may come alive for you.

Following his death, I received the following note from one of his friends. Here it is:

05-21-07

Dear Friends,

With his customary impeccable timing Bob Combs passed away on May 19th 2007, his 92nd birthday. He valued his friendship and kinship with each and every one of you. In accordance with his wishes, there will be no services of remembrance, except the ones you may choose to hold in your hearts.

Attached is Bob's final Sunny Side.

The time has come to say farewell – while it’s still possible!

It’s been such fun these past 13 or 14 years, since Lon got me started on this every-Friday essay, or column, or whatever-you may call it, in an attempt to balance out the Letters page – that is, to point out all the wonderful, beautiful, happy-making things around us. “On the Sunny Side of the Street!”

Stevenson wrote: “The world is full of such a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings!”  Well, as Kipling wrote, “The captains and the kings depart,” but we are still here – until our time runs out. There will always be spring flowers out by Shell Creek,  and the beautiful, winding, climbing,roads of our county, and Black Mountain out past Pozo, lifting its lordly beauty, with its calm and its silence.

There will always be an annual crop of children, full of curiosity and joy – sharing all their exciting discoveries with us, as we once shared with our grandparents. What delights they are, and we must strive to see that the world they grow up will be even better that the one our parents built for us.

In due season will come the breezes and the winds; the black clouds or the fleecy clouds of purest white. The trees and bushes will bud and leaf out and blossom, and flowers will pop out of the ground, seemingly overnight. The birds will come back and my favorite mockingbird, Moxie, will sing his heart out under the moons of spring and there’ll be Moxie XVIII before we can blink!

In its season will come the rain, but nothing, in our part of the world, will rule us as will the sun – and its “Cooker Days.” And so the grapes ripen, “to make glad the hearts of man..” And this old earth turns and turns, and our solar system does, too, and our galaxy goes spinning through space – a tiny dot in the vastness of the unknown.

So, let’s do the best we can, while we can, and smile oftener than we groan, and chuckle more than we sigh, and look on the sunny side….and so, goodbye.
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Check out Dorien’s redesigned and streamlined site; follow the link below.

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, October 05, 2018

Thomas


I’ve taken, of late, to closing my cat Spirit in the bathroom at night with food, litter, water, a couple of places to sleep—he seems to like the sink—and a toy; all to prevent his sitting outside my bedroom door at anywhere from 5 a.m. on to sing me the song of his people at full volume. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to mind his bathroom exile, since I lure him in with cat treats. 

The second night I did it, listening closely for the click of the latch as I closed the door, he somehow managed to open it, thus freeing him to resume his serenade. Thenceforth, I have closed the door, listened for the click of the latch, and placed a canister of cat litter against it to dissuade him from being able to force the door open even if he can unlatch it. The problem there was that as I refilled his litter box, the canister of litter grew lighter and lighter until this morning he was outside my bedroom door at 5:25 with a medley of his favorite wails. 

This afternoon, I bought two canisters, one of which will always be full and of sufficient weight, I hope, to keep him in.

And as I pondered our battle, I couldn’t help but think of Thomas, who will always hold a special place in my heart. Like Spirit, Thomas was jet black—thus establishing my ever-since preference for black cats—and, I’ve always thought, proof that both people and animals have guardian angels.

How Thomas and I met is one of my favorite stories. I was living in Los Angeles, at the time. Near my home there was a huge swap meet held every weekend, and I went regularly just to wander around and occasionally pick up things I really didn’t need. One Sunday I had just entered the swap meet grounds when I saw a tiny black kitten, obviously lost and/or abandoned. I was afraid someone was going to accidentally step on him, so I picked him up and took him to the swap meet office to see if anyone had reported losing a kitten. The man laughed and said, “People drop off animals here all the time” and went back to whatever he’d been doing before I interrupted him.

At the time, I had two large dogs and certainly didn’t want to add a cat to the mix. So I just wandered around and if anyone noticed the kitten, I’d ask if they’d like to have him. No one did, until one woman said, “I’d love to have him! I’ll give him a wonderful home!” I gratefully handed the kitten over to her with thanks, and went about my business.

An hour or so later, as I returned to my car in the middle of the gigantic parking lot, I was just about to open my door when I heard a “Meow.” I looked down, and there was the same kitten I’d given away an hour earlier. I decided that someone was telling me something. I picked him up, put him in the passenger’s seat, and went home. 

I named him Thomas, and he was with me for 14 years, moving with me from Los Angeles to Pence, Wisconsin. Given the fact that time does tend to blur the bad times in favor of the good, Thomas was truly a wonderful cat and companion.

And then, as is inevitable with cats and people and all living things, Thomas grew old. He would spend the night in my basement and come up to greet me in the morning, until one morning, he didn’t. I went down to the basement and found him lying on the floor, still alive, but I knew his time had come. I picked him up, carried him up to the living room and sat down, cradling him in my lap, petting him, until he was gone. I don’t remember if I cried or not…I probably did. But to have been there with him, to hold him and let him know he was loved even in his last moments, is something that I will never regret.

Spirit’s time will come, as will mine, and I wish us both the knowledge, at the moment of passing, that our lives meant something to others, and that we were loved.
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Check out Dorien’s redesigned and streamlined site; follow the link below.

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, October 02, 2018

Flashbacks


For some unknown reason, I awoke this morning having flashbacks of my days (23 years, actually) in Pence, Wisconsin. I moved to Pence from Los Angeles in January of 1983, driving myself in a 24 foot U-Haul towing a second 12-foot trailer behind it. The temperature the day of my arrival was -19. After a hard-now-to-believe 23 years, I left Pence in 2006 to return to Chicago after 40 years, and never looked back.

Geographically, Pence was idyllic. Just seventeen miles south of the magnificent Lake Superior, and surrounded by thousands of acres of forest, the setting is ideal for any nature lover. Endless trails wandered through soundless woods filled with patches of wild blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries. Autumns in years with just the right mixture of rain and temperatures turned the forests into sensory overloads of color which defy description. Winters bring temperatures of -24 and colder; annual snowfalls exceeding 300 inches are common.

Once a thriving lumber and iron-and-copper mining area, the mines had all closed twenty years before my arrival, and commercial logging had been reduced to a few small-time operations. The entire area sank into an economic depression from which it has never recovered. No rail service, and only very limited bus service further isolated the area. Employment opportunities were almost nonexistent. Several local ski hills and the making of Christmas wreaths provided some seasonal employment, but that—and whatever employment could be found in local shops—left many chronically unemployed.

So very many jumbled memories of people and events flood my mind as I try to make some semblance of them without getting into overly long detail on any one of them. The bed-and-breakfast I had moved there to open proved to be a situation I would never, ever repeat despite a number of wonderful guests-who-became-friends. Because the B&B never provided enough money to live on, I had to rely on other work—managing a local food co-op, working part time at a local supermarket, then as a paralegal for a law firm. I did begin writing books, though I felt I needed a pseudonym as a buffer against the intolerance of local rednecks.

Personal relationships? One of the reasons I left L.A. was in hopes of saving my then partner and love of my life Ray from alcoholism (of course a totally futile effort). While he did try, he could not go three months without drinking, which resulted in his being arrested more than once. Finally, given the choice by a judge to either go to jail or leave the area, he chose the latter and returned to Los Angles and was dead of AIDS within a year. I had a subsequent disastrous five-year relationship with someone I really did not like but could not get out of. And finally, my taking in, at a friend’s request, of a lost soul from whom I contracted the HPV virus which resulted in my bout with tongue cancer.

Friends? I was lucky to have some good friends. Two doors west of me lived the Reinerio sisters, Louisa, 80, Rose, 82, and Amelia, 89, who were very kind to me—all three sadly died while I was still living there, Amelia first, then Rose, then finally Louisa; Esther and Albert Baker, Jody DeCarlo, and Tony Barnes, one of the very few gays in the area, and of course Ursula Schramm, a holocaust survivor. I have fond memories of all of them, and each one could be—as Ursula already has been—the subject of a full blog. 

It’s odd how completely I have been able to close the door on those 23 years of my life…it’s rather like they were washed away in a flood, leaving only scattered, fragmented memories of my life there. To this day, I still rather miss my days in Los Angeles. I have many solid, pleasant memories of my time there. Why is the same not true of Pence, I wonder?

Your life, like mine, is made up of an infinite number of pieces, large and small…of places and people and experiences and memories. As I am the sum of all of “my” pieces, so are you the sum of yours. They cannot be changed, only remembered, reflected upon, and perhaps learned from.
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Check out Dorien’s redesigned and streamlined site; follow the link below.

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