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. 

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

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.