A Matter of Distance

The continual volcanic eruption which is my mind is forever spewing out chunks of thought. Usually, there are so many of them that I can't concentrate on any particular one as they fall around me like rain. However, a random thought will frequently score a direct hit and remain with me long enough for me to deal with it.

It suddenly occurred to me how much of our existence is based on our distance from events and people. The closer we are, the more involved we tend to be and the more the events effect us. 100,000 people killed in a tsunami halfway around the world does not have nearly the emotional effect as personally witnessing a fatal car crash.

In our increasingly mobile society, friends and family do not always remain in close proximity. Until the late 19th century, the vast majority of people had never travelled further than 20 miles from their home in their entire lives.

The physical distance created when close friends move apart too often leads to a gradual cooling of the relationship—with fewer and fewer immediately-common ties to refer to, the contacts grow less frequent, until eventually the only exchanges are at birthdays or Christmas, if that. While there are notable exceptions, distance in time compounded by distance in space cannot help but cool the fires of friendship. I've made frequent attempts to locate people from my past...service friends, for example...only to run into a brick wall. It is as though they never existed; all that remain are warm and bittersweet-from-their-loss memories. I've recently been extremely lucky to reestablish contact with three good friends, one a young woman (well, she was young when I first met her) with whom I worked shortly after I first moved to Chicago, and two from my college years. I'd totally lost touch with all of them for more than more than 50 years, which is proof that, the glowing coals of true friendship can be reignited. 

Facts may not suffer much from physical distance, but most certainly fall victim to the distance of time. The more time that passes between an event and the present, the less clearly they are seen. Once razor-sharp mental images blur and become obscure as more and more time passes. Probably the majority of the facts of our early lives are all but totally lost to time. I am again blessed to have at least two years of my life—the time I was in service—down in writing, and to which I can refer whenever I question something that happened during that period. Even now I am surprised, in re-reading the letters written to my parents while I was in the navy, to discover that what I remember "clearly" is not the way things really happened.

Returning to Chicago after 40 years provided more evidence of how our minds see things differently than history or the calendar. I had convinced myself, somehow, that our—my ex-partner Norm and my—apartment on Wellington was near Clark and Division. It wasn't. It was near Clark and Diversey. Of course, over the years, physical changes, not merely within ourselves, altered our perceptions. Landmarks I remember clearly from the early 60's are now long gone. The tennis courts across from my first Chicago apartment, coincidentally on the same street and within six blocks of where I now live are now a parking structure.

This blurring/fading of memory, while subtly changing many of the good memories, also serves to soften the pain of the bad. Perversely, for me, so many of my fondest memories are accompanied, and occasionally overshadowed, by an overpowering sense of loss and longing. I often say that I "ache" for things I no longer have, and it is literally true. I ache for lost experiences almost as intently as I ache for lost friends and family, and they are of course inexorably linked.

So I guess the best thing for any of us to do is to try to stay keen to what is happening now, fully appreciate each moment and the people we share the moments with for what they are, and worry about the fading of their memory when the time comes.

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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.

I Hear the Mermen Singing

We can’t change reality, but we can change our perception of it. I’ve been doing it since I was a child and it has served me very well. Our bodies are bound by the laws of physics and time and we are all but powerless to change them. But our minds are not subject to those laws. It is our mind which makes us who we are. How we perceive our lives and the world around us is largely up to us. We may be confined in the cage of reality, but we are free to “decorate” it as we choose. When it comes down to it, perception is simply imagination, and imagination can make the world a far more tolerable place.

Those like me, who have never really understood how or why the world works the way it does and who therefore feels inferior because of it, altering our perceptions to fill in the gaps left by reality makes life, in our minds at least, easier to deal with.

I tend to look on life the same way I view books and movies—concentrating on those aspects with which I am comfortable and ignoring the rest. I refuse to read books or watch movies that I know do not have at least a ray of hope at the end. Even Schindler’s List, which was agonizing to watch, ended in hope.

Though you, I, are each only one of billions, we are totally separate, unique individuals. And each of us, surrounded by billions of others like us, goes through life alone. We learn whatever coping skills we develop through observation of our fellow humans; by reading and watching and listening to their individual experiences. We can easily be overwhelmed by the sensations of being hopelessly, helplessly outnumbered.

Life is a board game I play without having all the pieces, but I do the very best I can with those I have. I am gay (I know…you never suspected) living in an overwhelmingly heterosexual world. I am not comfortable in an overwhelmingly heterosexual world. So in my mind, the world is overwhelmingly homosexual. Every attractive man on the street is, in my mind, gay. Whether he is or not is totally irrelevant, since the odds of my having the opportunity to find out for sure are pretty close to astronomical unless I’m in a predominantly gay area. So what’s the harm?

And that phrase, “so what’s the harm,” pretty much sums up my entire philosophy of perceiving things the way I wish to perceive them.

And I do reach certain reluctant accommodations with reality. The reality of time, having “aged me out” of active participation in the gay world, I no longer feel comfortable…or welcome…even there. I think of my favorite line from Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: I hear the mermen singing, each to each. I do not think they sing for me.

And yes, I changed the gender. What’s the harm, if it gives me pleasure? 

While one can learn of the world in many ways, it is only our own personal experiences and perceptions which matters in the end.

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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.

Cliffhangers

“Cliffhangers” are a time-honored tradition of luring an audience back for the next episode of a series. It all stems from the one of the original movie serials, The Perils of Pauline in 1914 in which each 12-to-15-minute episode ended in the heroine’s being placed in deadly peril. Audiences couldn’t wait to get back to the theater for the next episode. Movie serials were extremely popular through the 1940s and into the 1950s. Even today, big-budget “serial” movies tend to end with some form of cliffhanger to excite viewers for the next film.

Serials were a staple of my early-years moviegoing. In my hometown, Rockford, Illinois, the State Theater showed Saturday matinee films aimed at kids…generally westerns…which always also featured a serial. Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Gene Autry, etc. Each episode, regardless of genre, would end with the equivalent of the hero/heroine bound to a chair with a ticking time bomb near by counting down the seconds to explosion. The camera would zoom in on the hero/heroine’s understandably concerned face, the diminishing number of seconds remaining—always less than 10—then a distracting shot of, say, the outside of the building, and then….BOOM!: the building dissolves in flame and debris. End of episode; come back next week, which of course you would, to find that at the last second the hero/heroine manages to free him/herself from the bonds, locate a trap door in the floor leading to a tunnel to safety, and get safely away before the bomb goes off. It never failed.

Movie serials were cranked out with little regard for niceties like logic or production values. An example that I still remember after all these years was an episode of a serial called, I think Nyoka, Queen of the Jungle. In it, Nyoka, our heroine—who, though ostensibly living her entire life in the jungle, always managed to look like she just stepped out out the beauty parlor—has been captured by the always-dastardly villain, trussed up, and thrown into a raging river just above a thundering waterfall. The next week we see Nyoka stepping out of the water below the falls, untethered, absolutely dry and not a single hair out of place.

Though major studios—Columbia, Universal and the quintessential B-movie king, Republic Pictures—produced serials, none cared much about logic or production values; that wasn’t the purpose of serials. Their purpose was to drag you back to the theater week after week, and they succeeded admirably from 1911 thru 1953, when Blazing the Overland Trail was the last serial from a major studio.

The tradition continues to this day with some serialized major productions: The Hobbit, Star Wars, etc. And those that don’t have specific cliffhangers always add “previews” of the next film in the series.

Television has picked up the gauntlet, especially now that most series are broken into two blocks…fall and spring, and are not above resorting to the Perils of Pauline tradition of having the hero/heroine in a seemingly impossible-to-escape disaster.

A classic example is the recently-aired cliffhanger for the popular show, Arrow. Our hero, for reasons too long and complex to go into here, finds him shirtless on an icy, snow-blown mountaintop facing an equally shirtless nemesis. Why are they shirtless? With bodies like that, how could they not be? Anyway, the duel rages until Arrow is run through with a sword and, falling to his knees, is pushed off the edge of the cliff to his seemingly certain death. I was a bit surprised the villain didn’t put a lit stick of dynamite in his mouth just to emphasize the point that his fate is sealed. So is it “goodbye, Arrow”? Uh…stay tuned.

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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.

Fun and Logic

I really enjoy a good, rousing everything-blowing-up-and-falling-down-and-people-running-around-in-total-panic/confusion “end of the world as we know it" disaster film, or an imagination-stretching outer-space yarn—as long as everything ends on a note of hope. I consider them perfect examples of how two elements...logic and fun...can either join together or be totally at odds. A classic “popcorn" movie lets everyone just turn their mind off, their eyes on, and shovel it in with both hands while totally ignoring the sound of logic banging at the door. 

Fun frequently requires "the willing suspension of disbelief," but, like a rubber band, it can only be stretched so far before it snaps. Each individual has his/her own tensile strength for belief—the point at which the band breaks—and I'm pretty lucky that mine will go quite a ways. I think that's largely due to the fact that I've never totally given up on being a child. 

A child's imagination is almost totally disassociated from logic. Life is a fascinating game that's never been played before. As logic encroaches upon imagination and begins to take on the role of teacher, one's choice of games changes to meld both fun and logic. Chess, crossword and jigsaw puzzles, dominos, most card and board games are both fun and involve varying degrees of logic. For many adults—me included—it’s often because things are not logical that makes them so much fun. 

While logic itself can't be fun, it can also be maddening. I tend to find many logic games frustrating simply because I pride myself on being logical, and I still can't get them. Mathematics, for example is pure logic, yet any game or puzzle involving anything beyond the "If Billy has three apples..." level utterly eludes me.

Likewise, the relationship between "fun" and "humor" is a most interesting one, and very difficult to explain...at least for me. While they are certainly not mutually exclusive, logic and humor, like logic and fun—of which humor is of course a part—can often be at odds, simply because what makes things funny often lies in the flaunting of logic. If we are led to believe or expect one thing, and something totally unexpected happens it can be hysterically funny. There is a certain shock value in humor.

And one can have fun without humor being part of the equation. "Enjoyment" is one of the first words in the Thesaurus's definition of "fun." Star Trek's Mr. Spock isn't noted for his sense of humor, but it's obvious he enjoys what he's doing. I suspect the same is true of many of those we call "workaholics," those who work with their hands, and artists. They do what they do because they love doing it. To them, work is both fun and logical, if they can't really see themselves doing anything else and wouldn't particularly want to if they could. I don't consider writing to be work, even though I spend six hours or so a day at it, but I most certainly do consider it fun.                                                  

The capacity for both logic and fun are essential components of human existence. The degree to which we utilize them, and in what proportion, varies from person to person. One can, conceivably, go through life without fun, but it is impossible to function as a human being without logic. I know, I know; most politicians, evangelicals of all stripes, hate mongers and bigots appear to be notable exceptions. But whether they can truly qualify as being human is a question best left for another blog.

My unsolicited advice is to try to apply at least some level of logic to whatever you do, to whatever you read or hear. It needn't be deeply analytical, and it really isn't all that hard. Just always ask the question "does this really make any sense?" The brain should be more than just something stuffed in the space between the ears to keep the wind from blowing through. Thinking can really be fun. Wouldn't it be nice if more people tried 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.

Mantras and Acorns

Odd how something can be sitting quietly in some dimly-lit and dusty corner of your mind for years without giving it a conscious thought. It wasn't until this morning that I was conscious of a word my mind had been repeating in the softest of whispers for I don't know how long. And it occurred to me that this single word was in fact a mantra which to a large degree rules my life. The word is accomplish. It's with me every waking hour, just below the surface of my consciousness, and I suspect in my dreams as well: accomplish. It probably would be helpful if it were modified by specifics, but it never is, and I guess that's part of the point: it isn't that I accomplish something specific, but that I accomplish something.

Since my skills are limited largely to putting my thoughts down on paper (ok, on the computer screen), it's why, I realize, that I feel I must write. Write something. Every single day. It's as though my time of existence in this world is a gigantic acorn tree, with each moment of my life an acorn. And I am one small squirrel, trying desperately to store away as many of those acorns as I can, while I can. It is why, when I don't write every single day, I feel guilty; like I've robbed myself of time which, once passed, is gone and lost forever—all those acorns lost. Had I worked diligently rather than done nothing, I could have used those non-productive seconds, minutes, and hours to store away who-knows-how-many more acorns. 

It is why I cannot spend hours at coffee or lunch with friends—my definition of accomplish does not include coffee or lunch. Unfortunately it also does not include a great many things in which I realize I should be taking pleasure, like just sitting somewhere enjoying my surroundings, or reading. (The act of reading is always accompanied by the awareness that in reading the words—the accomplishments—of others, I am losing time which could/should be spent recording as many of my own thoughts and experiences as I possibly can. And the irony is not lost on me that I am so busy recording my life that I don't have time to fully savor living it.

I know, too, that I will never—and never possibly could—accomplish everything I would like to accomplish, to write all the books I would like to write, or post all the blogs I'd like to post, or see all the places I would so like to see, or spend time with all the people—even those I already know, let alone everyone I would like to meet—I wish I could spend time with. So that means I must—we all must—establish some sort of list of priorities of what we wish to do with the time available to us. Not an easy task, and not unlike trying to fit a gallon of milk into a one-quart container.

That other people do not feel this need does not make me feel superior to them—just, yet again, different from them. They obviously feel neither the need nor the desire for constant self-reflection. Most of them have other people into whom they channel their time, efforts and thoughts and are too busy living their life to think much about leaving a record of it.

And just this instant, I flashed, as is my wont, on the TV show "Hoarders," about people who, for whatever reason, so cram their homes with things they are unable/unwilling to get rid of that their homes, and their lives, become uninhabitable. Stacks and mounds and piles of...things...to which they compulsively continue to add. At times I suspect the house of my mind is like one of the homes featured on the program, except that instead of magazines and newspapers and porcelain dolls and never-worn clothes and battered lamp shades, my mind is crammed with memories and thoughts and speculations and questions. 

I would imagine hoarders consider that they are accomplishing something by hoarding; that no one else can figure out what that something is is beside the point. I tell myself that I am not a hoarder of past memories on the grounds that I freely share them with anyone who expresses even the slightest interest (and, at times, I realize, even with those who really have no interest but are simply too polite to ignore me). The problem is that, after I've shown them my mountainous stacks of acorns, the acorns are still there. 

Hey, that's a pretty profound thought! Another acorn! I think I can squeeze it in over there, on top of that stack of memories of all the cars I've owned in my life.

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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.

Thanatophobia

Thanatophobia

What? You know what "thanatophobia" means and you're still here? And what the hell are we talking about death for today? It’s Thanksgiving! Could there possibly be two less compatible topics? But the fact is that the greatest thing we can possibly give thanks for today and every day is…being alive. Taking a moment to realize that we won’t always be should only increase our gratitude!

The very subject of death any day of the year sends 99% of the population mentally heading for the hills. Of all the astonishing number of fears afflicting mankind, surely the fear of death is far ahead of whatever might be in second place.

We go to great lengths to throw a sheet over the elephant in the room. Uncle Charlie didn't die, he "passed away," or "passed over." Uh-huh. Our grotesque funeral rituals--painting and primping Uncle Charlie's corpse so those passing by his open coffin can pretend he's just taking a nap--are a case in point.  I love the lines from Oklahoma's "Pore Jud Is Daid": "Poor Jud is dead,/poor Jud Fry is dead;/he's layin' there so peaceful and serene..../He looks like he's asleep;/it's a shame that he won't keep,/but it's summer and we're runnin' out of ice."

I find it fascinating that thanatophobia covers both the fear of death and the fear of dying, and to me, they are two quite separate things. I'm not afraid of being dead, but I am more than concerned by the process of passage between the two. Though it is impossible to know, I’m quite sure that most people are as unaware of crossing the actual line between life and death as they are aware of crossing the line between being awake and asleep. Except for those relative few who experience a sudden trauma resulting in their death and are conscious of what is happening up to that very instant, most people first lapse into a coma. Few, I suspect, experience real fear.

I know that, for myself, the "fear of death" lies primarily in the reluctance to give up life...to imagine the world going on without me, and most specifically the thought of all the wonderful things I will never get to see or do once I am dead: all of which is counterbalanced by the simple fact that once I'm dead, I won't be aware of what I'm missing. I've never considered this to be morbid; quite the contrary. There is a wonderfully calming sense of peace in wandering through a cemetery, reading tombstones and thinking of those who lie beneath them. Try it sometime, if you don't already understand what I'm saying.

I am firmly convinced that organized religion came about as a cultural reaction to our fear of death. The idea of a heaven and a hell (the latter created largely to keep the living in line) and the concept of an afterlife ("Oh, don't worry: when you die you will move on through the Pearly Gates and live forever.") may be comforting in theory, but crumble like a waters-edge sand castles at high tide. Far, far, too many questions and far, far too few answers. Logic, so vital to our culture, civilization, and human existence, utterly vanishes.

And it has always struck me as wonderfully...well, perverse...that those who so strongly proclaim the glories of heaven very seldom seem to be in any hurry to get there.

As a total romantic, I would, truly and with every fiber of my being, love to believe that there is a heaven. I would also truly like to believe in a hell, for there are a large number of hate-mongers and bigots I sincerely believe richly deserve to suffer the flames of hell throughout eternity for their cruelty to their fellow humans. But I simply cannot believe, no matter how hard I try.

I always remember a discussion I had with a friend on the subject many years ago. As to heaven and hell, he said, "I believe that if, at the moment of death, you can look back on a good life, that is heaven. If you can't, that is hell.”

But for right now, I am truly thankful for being alive.

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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.