Posts
You may have noticed a recurring theme here: a ranting and railing against crap we are willingly spoon fed through our TV sets. And the astounding thing, to me, is that so few people object to it. It’s infinitely easier to blindly accept what we’re told than to even attempt to think for ourselves.
I'm sure you've seen that ad for the Byproducts-on-a-Bun chain showing a quadruple cheeseburger with bacon and tomato that looks to be equivalent to the height of a six-year-old boy and the seductive voiceover assures us is “piled high” with goodies? Sheep that we are, we race, salivating in anticipation, to our nearest Byproducts-on-a-Bun store and order one.
And what do we get? Instead of the wonderous tower of mouthwatering deliciousness we just saw on TV, we’re handed something that could easily be slipped under a closed door. But of the 34 people standing in line in front of you and the 34 people standing in line behind you, each and every one of whom orders the same thing, exactly how many complain that they have been screwed? How many even realize it? The only thing “piled high” is the bull***t that dragged us in in the first place.
If I am served something in a restaurant that is not what I ordered or the way I ordered it, I will send it back without hesitation. If the service I receive is shoddy, I ask to speak to the manager, which is just what I did at a Perkins Restaurant last time I was on a visit to Mayo. I went in for breakfast. I was seated and sat. For ten minutes. No coffee, no water, no menu. Sat. The waitress passed by with one of those little push-sweepers picking up crumbs from the aisle. I sat. Finally, she brought a menu--no coffee, no water--and then disappeared again. The next time she came by, I asked to speak to the manager, and did. She was, of course, very apologetic and said the breakfast was on Perkins. I explained to her that while it was very kind of her, I did not want the breakfast to be on Perkins. I wanted breakfast to be less than an all-day adventure.
As I always explain to the manager…and I have spoken to a number of them…I direct customer complaint is far better for all concerned, including the manager, than the cutomer's simply walking out and never coming back. Though again, sheep that we are, most people will go back, and no one will have learned a thing.
When I am kept on hold for an hour and a half, being reminded every 30 seconds that “We are experiencing heavier than normal traffic. Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line and a service representitive will be with you shortly” when I do get a service representative, I explain the reason for my call and then ask to speak to a supervisor.
Some of my dear friends really hate going anywhere with me because I refuse to simply shut up and ignore an obvious wrong. These incidents do not occur frequently, and I do not go out of my way to find fault with anyone. But when I find it, you can bet your bottom dollar I report it.
There was a time when businesses were there for the convenience of their customers. A few still are. But increasingly customers are there at the convenience of the business, and 99.5 out of 100 people simply accept it. It’s wrong, and I’ll be damned if I will go along with it. We deserve what we accept.
Our politicians tell us lie after lie after lie after lie, and we nod with wide-eyed innocence and take every mispronounced word and mangled sentence as gospel, and when election time comes around those of us who bother to vote at all make sure exactly those same people are returned to office. It is to weep.
But I’m out of space, so will close for now. Thank you again for putting up with me.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Itch
Several nights ago an itchy finger woke me up. I learned long ago not to scratch an itch, but rather to use my fingernails to push down on the affected area. It’s just as effective as scratching, but avoids a lot of redness and scratch marks. Despite my efforts, the itch kept up for a long time before it finally went away.
The next day I went out and bought some cortisone cream. That night, the same finger itch, plus a new itch on my right foot. I applied the cream, and it went away. The third night, more itching, more intense. First one finger, then several fingers, then the palm of the one hand, the fingers and palm of the other hand, then my left knee. I’d just begin to deal with one when something else would start to itch. I lathered on the cortisone cream, which did no good at all.
I should point out this happens only at night, never when I’m up and about.
Last night I not only could not sleep, but the itching became so intolerable I was forced to get out of bed at 2:30 a.m. I went to the computer, hoping to find out what was going on, for the computer knows everything, even though it is sometimes extremely reluctant to let you know what it knows. I tried searching under “Symptoms: Night Itching” and several other places. Tons and tons of references to scholarly papers, most of which could be purchased from equally scholarly medical journals. But nothing…absolutely nothing…to suggest what was going on, or what I might do about it.
I did, in a list of symptoms, come across this: "Intolerable itching all over body without perceptible eruption of skin especially in pregnant women worse at night preventing sleep and worse from scratching :- Dol"
I took some, albeit small, comfort in discovering the condition was not unheard of and apparently not life-threatening. But other than that, it didn’t really help, particularly since I am neither a woman nor in menopause nor pregnant.
Some time ago, my local oncologist had referred me to a general practioner named Dr. Wexelman, whom I thereafter saw on one occasion. So this morning, I came to the computer to find Dr. Wexelman’s number and give him a call. I did not have his number. I looked in the phone book. It did not have his number. I called St. Joseph’s Hospital, where both Dr. Malhutra, my oncologist, and Dr. Wexelman are located. and asked for Dr. Wexelman’s number. I was told there was no such person.
I then called my oncologist’s number, explaining to the receptionist what my problem was, and asking her to please check my chart to find Dr. Wexelman’s number. “I’ll have Dr. Malhutra call you,” she said. I told her I didn’t want or need Dr. Malhutra to call me. I wanted Dr. Waxelman’s number. That’s all. “I’ll have Dr. Malhutra call you,” she repeated.
Dr. Malhutra has not called. I have no way of contacting Dr. Wexelman, if in fact he exists. And the evening lies ahead.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
The next day I went out and bought some cortisone cream. That night, the same finger itch, plus a new itch on my right foot. I applied the cream, and it went away. The third night, more itching, more intense. First one finger, then several fingers, then the palm of the one hand, the fingers and palm of the other hand, then my left knee. I’d just begin to deal with one when something else would start to itch. I lathered on the cortisone cream, which did no good at all.
I should point out this happens only at night, never when I’m up and about.
Last night I not only could not sleep, but the itching became so intolerable I was forced to get out of bed at 2:30 a.m. I went to the computer, hoping to find out what was going on, for the computer knows everything, even though it is sometimes extremely reluctant to let you know what it knows. I tried searching under “Symptoms: Night Itching” and several other places. Tons and tons of references to scholarly papers, most of which could be purchased from equally scholarly medical journals. But nothing…absolutely nothing…to suggest what was going on, or what I might do about it.
I did, in a list of symptoms, come across this: "Intolerable itching all over body without perceptible eruption of skin especially in pregnant women worse at night preventing sleep and worse from scratching :- Dol"
I took some, albeit small, comfort in discovering the condition was not unheard of and apparently not life-threatening. But other than that, it didn’t really help, particularly since I am neither a woman nor in menopause nor pregnant.
Some time ago, my local oncologist had referred me to a general practioner named Dr. Wexelman, whom I thereafter saw on one occasion. So this morning, I came to the computer to find Dr. Wexelman’s number and give him a call. I did not have his number. I looked in the phone book. It did not have his number. I called St. Joseph’s Hospital, where both Dr. Malhutra, my oncologist, and Dr. Wexelman are located. and asked for Dr. Wexelman’s number. I was told there was no such person.
I then called my oncologist’s number, explaining to the receptionist what my problem was, and asking her to please check my chart to find Dr. Wexelman’s number. “I’ll have Dr. Malhutra call you,” she said. I told her I didn’t want or need Dr. Malhutra to call me. I wanted Dr. Waxelman’s number. That’s all. “I’ll have Dr. Malhutra call you,” she repeated.
Dr. Malhutra has not called. I have no way of contacting Dr. Wexelman, if in fact he exists. And the evening lies ahead.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Friday, October 05, 2007
And Blog Begat Blog
I’m not really quite sure why I do it. Sometimes I think my ego has just totally taken over. And too often, my self-absorption reminds me of those annoyingly precocious tykes one sees on TV, ozzing “cute” from every pore.
I honestly would have to sit down with an abacus to figure out exactly how many blogs I have going. I have one devil of a time trying to keep up with them all. And so what do I do? Why, I start another blog, of course.
To tear my mind away from the fact that the pipeline for publishing my already finished books is frustratingly clogged and seemingly getting more so every day, I decided to take on a non-writing project I’ve had sitting patiently on the back burner: scanning hundreds of old personal and family photographs dating back more than 100 years (I’m not in quite all of them), and sorting them out into some sort of a thread. I’ve divided them into categories—mom and dad, Fearns (mom’s side of the family), photos from my folks’ cottege, college photos, friends…and “friends”…my navy years, photos of Ray, my time in Los Angeles, my time in Pence, and individual photos of me from zygote to the present . Again, egotism run amok.
And I fall back yet again on the flimsy reasoning that you might have even the most remote interest in any of this because it goes to prove that we are all far more alike than we are different.
So, having scanned and sorted and categorized, I heard the far-off voices of Judy Garland and Andy Rooney chirping “Hey, gang, let’s put on a show!” And I thought that since I spend so much of my time laying myself out before you, warts and all, in my various forms of writing, why not do so visually, too?
And thus was Dorien Grey: A Life in Photos born. The object is to post at least one photo every day or so, accompanying it with a short paragraph of explanation. I have no idea how successful this little experiment will be and can readily foresee that, like life, there are so very many overlaps and interrelations and visual digressions that it may all fall down like a house of cards. But we’ll give it the old college try, and hope you might come along for the ride. I really do enjoy and appreciate your company.
The “warts and all” aspect, for example, might be a bit difficult. One seldom has photos taken under other-than-pleasant circumstances. None taken of all those embarrassing or shameful or seamy episodes that clutter everyone’s life, and my increasing reluctance, as Time began playing her mean-spirited tricks, to have my photo taken at all. And none at all, of course, taken when no one else was around. One tends to be on one’s better behavior when someone is standing there with a loaded camera. So there’s mostly happiness or contentment and good times reflected in these photos, which, after all, is what all of life should be about.
Oh, and I might point out in my own defense that I use “Dorien Grey” in the title of all the blogs not quite so much for the joy of seeing my own name repeated yet again…which of course I do…but for the sake of Google and other search engines, in the remote chance that someone might be trying to look me up. I wouldn’t want them to miss anything.
If you might want to take a look, you'll find the new blog at http://www.doriengreyphotolife.blogspot.com
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
I honestly would have to sit down with an abacus to figure out exactly how many blogs I have going. I have one devil of a time trying to keep up with them all. And so what do I do? Why, I start another blog, of course.
To tear my mind away from the fact that the pipeline for publishing my already finished books is frustratingly clogged and seemingly getting more so every day, I decided to take on a non-writing project I’ve had sitting patiently on the back burner: scanning hundreds of old personal and family photographs dating back more than 100 years (I’m not in quite all of them), and sorting them out into some sort of a thread. I’ve divided them into categories—mom and dad, Fearns (mom’s side of the family), photos from my folks’ cottege, college photos, friends…and “friends”…my navy years, photos of Ray, my time in Los Angeles, my time in Pence, and individual photos of me from zygote to the present . Again, egotism run amok.
And I fall back yet again on the flimsy reasoning that you might have even the most remote interest in any of this because it goes to prove that we are all far more alike than we are different.
So, having scanned and sorted and categorized, I heard the far-off voices of Judy Garland and Andy Rooney chirping “Hey, gang, let’s put on a show!” And I thought that since I spend so much of my time laying myself out before you, warts and all, in my various forms of writing, why not do so visually, too?
And thus was Dorien Grey: A Life in Photos born. The object is to post at least one photo every day or so, accompanying it with a short paragraph of explanation. I have no idea how successful this little experiment will be and can readily foresee that, like life, there are so very many overlaps and interrelations and visual digressions that it may all fall down like a house of cards. But we’ll give it the old college try, and hope you might come along for the ride. I really do enjoy and appreciate your company.
The “warts and all” aspect, for example, might be a bit difficult. One seldom has photos taken under other-than-pleasant circumstances. None taken of all those embarrassing or shameful or seamy episodes that clutter everyone’s life, and my increasing reluctance, as Time began playing her mean-spirited tricks, to have my photo taken at all. And none at all, of course, taken when no one else was around. One tends to be on one’s better behavior when someone is standing there with a loaded camera. So there’s mostly happiness or contentment and good times reflected in these photos, which, after all, is what all of life should be about.
Oh, and I might point out in my own defense that I use “Dorien Grey” in the title of all the blogs not quite so much for the joy of seeing my own name repeated yet again…which of course I do…but for the sake of Google and other search engines, in the remote chance that someone might be trying to look me up. I wouldn’t want them to miss anything.
If you might want to take a look, you'll find the new blog at http://www.doriengreyphotolife.blogspot.com
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Friday, September 28, 2007
The Klutz King
This was definitely not my intended blog topic for today, but yet another combination of my stupidity, frustration, anger, and utterly perverse sense of humor…plus the heat of the moment (the event to be related taking place less than ten minutes ago)… have made me do it.
My bathroom floor is a mess. It is always a mess. I try to mop it fairly regularly (every six weeks or so), but don’t know why I bother because as soon as the Polish & Buff or whatever crap it is I use (it promises “A dazzling clean!”) dries, it still looks like a herd of Wildebeests had used it to climb out of a muddy river.
So this morning, I decided to really, really do a job. I got out a bucket, filled it with hot water, poured in about a half gallon of Pine Sol, got out a stiff-bristled scrub brush, got down on my hands and knees, and scrubbed. And scrubbed. And scrubbed. I couldn’t see one G-D bit of noticeable difference between where I’d scrubbed and where I hadn’t. But I persevered, sloshing hot sudsy water and scrubbing until I thought my arms would fall off. And then I fell over. How I fell over (I was on my knees at the time, which makes falling over difficult under the best of circumstances) or why I fell over, or what made me fall over other than my own incalculable stupidity and lack of motor coordination, I have no idea. Maybe my knees slipped. Maybe I started to get up to move to another spot. Who knows.
So I fell over. And of course I fell over directly onto the bucket filled with Pine-Sol-frothy hot water, which then cascaded across the bathroom floor, out into the hallway, and moved swiftly toward my area rug.
I forgot to mention I was wearing my pajamas, which naturally became sopping wet. I tore them off and tossed them as a makeshift dam between the advancing water and the rug. My slippers, which I’d taken off before getting down on my knees and set in the doorway, were of course carried halfway across the room on the tsunami, and are quite probably ruined. (We shall see.)
I pulled several towels from the linen closet and used them as water-sops. Three towels, one pair of pajamas, and a sponge mop later, most of the water had been picked up, leaving a wonderfully sticky film over everything.
And the floor, after all this? I just checked…it still looks like a Wildebeest crossing.
God, but I have fun!
I’m sure a psychiatrist might possibly have some explanation of why I insist on parading my flaws, faults, and failures in front of the world in general and you in particular. I’ve talked before about my tendency toward self-loathing when things do not go as I want or expect them to go, or as they would go for any other human being on the planet. This is one of those moments of self-flagellation, but since no blood was spilled, I trust your reaction will be more puzzled bemusement than disgust. I have enough of that for both of us.
Another short blog, but so what?
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
My bathroom floor is a mess. It is always a mess. I try to mop it fairly regularly (every six weeks or so), but don’t know why I bother because as soon as the Polish & Buff or whatever crap it is I use (it promises “A dazzling clean!”) dries, it still looks like a herd of Wildebeests had used it to climb out of a muddy river.
So this morning, I decided to really, really do a job. I got out a bucket, filled it with hot water, poured in about a half gallon of Pine Sol, got out a stiff-bristled scrub brush, got down on my hands and knees, and scrubbed. And scrubbed. And scrubbed. I couldn’t see one G-D bit of noticeable difference between where I’d scrubbed and where I hadn’t. But I persevered, sloshing hot sudsy water and scrubbing until I thought my arms would fall off. And then I fell over. How I fell over (I was on my knees at the time, which makes falling over difficult under the best of circumstances) or why I fell over, or what made me fall over other than my own incalculable stupidity and lack of motor coordination, I have no idea. Maybe my knees slipped. Maybe I started to get up to move to another spot. Who knows.
So I fell over. And of course I fell over directly onto the bucket filled with Pine-Sol-frothy hot water, which then cascaded across the bathroom floor, out into the hallway, and moved swiftly toward my area rug.
I forgot to mention I was wearing my pajamas, which naturally became sopping wet. I tore them off and tossed them as a makeshift dam between the advancing water and the rug. My slippers, which I’d taken off before getting down on my knees and set in the doorway, were of course carried halfway across the room on the tsunami, and are quite probably ruined. (We shall see.)
I pulled several towels from the linen closet and used them as water-sops. Three towels, one pair of pajamas, and a sponge mop later, most of the water had been picked up, leaving a wonderfully sticky film over everything.
And the floor, after all this? I just checked…it still looks like a Wildebeest crossing.
God, but I have fun!
I’m sure a psychiatrist might possibly have some explanation of why I insist on parading my flaws, faults, and failures in front of the world in general and you in particular. I’ve talked before about my tendency toward self-loathing when things do not go as I want or expect them to go, or as they would go for any other human being on the planet. This is one of those moments of self-flagellation, but since no blood was spilled, I trust your reaction will be more puzzled bemusement than disgust. I have enough of that for both of us.
Another short blog, but so what?
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Whispers
Loss is a part of life. We all experience it…some more than others…and each must learn to deal with it in his or her own way. I have never handled loss well, and even though I always manage to get on with my life after one, its ghost joins the many others walking the halls of my mind. I have developed the ability to largely ignore them, but if I’m not careful,…
I was scanning photos of my last house in Los Angeles; probably the nicest house I have ever owned. Perhaps, if I do start the photo blog I mentioned in the last entry, you might have a chance (assuming you might have the desire) to see them. At any rate, in looking at the photos, the ghosts of the time reached out and grabbed me yet again.
That these ghosts grab me is one thing…what really hurts is their whispered tauntings: “You had this once. Remember? Look. You’re almost there again. Just reach out, and…” and then the humorless laughter before they continue: “It is gone, and you will never have it again. You will never sit at the breakfast room table, or look out at the hill behind the house, or spend time with the friends and conquests who came and went with comforting frequency. You can look at these photos, but you cannot have what you had there. Never again.”
While I am given to melodrama, as you may have noticed, I am being sincere when I say that those rare occasions when I allow myself to dwell on the whispers are not only mentally excruciating but actually cause a definite physical tightening of my chest. I had it. I want it! I want to see and talk to and touch all those people who were so much a part of my life. I miss them terribly.
I know, too,, that this dwelling on the past makes me—wrongly, I can assure you—seem ungrateful for the present and all the good things and people around me today, and I apologize for that, but it is simply the way I am, and I can’t change it.
Since I was a very small child, I have been aware that each passing minute brings me closer to the time when I will no longer be here, and that thought is terrifying. And as a perverse result, many of the good times of my life have been tainted by the fact that, even as I am enjoying them, I know they must pass and become more ghosts to wander my mind.
As I’ve mentioned often before, I spend the majority of my time alive storing up bits and pieces of myself for the time when I will be dead. The irony of that fact certainly does not escape me. I consider myself something of a squirrel, gathering up the nuts of my life for the long winter of eternity. My books, my letters, my blogs, all small parts of who this Roger/Dorien person was and is with luck will live on after I am physically gone. Even as I write this, I am bitterly resentful of the fact that my physical body, already far from its best, will at some point simply cease to exist. It’s been a good body, and it has served me very well, and I feel sorrow that it cannot always do so. I still have it, but I deeply miss it already.
Have I perchance happened to mention that I do not like reality? My body is forced to live in it, but my mind refuses to.
Also, as I write these little exercises in self indulgence, I wonder exactly why I expect you, who have your own life, your own losses, to have any interest at all in mine…and the answer is, as always, that I trust you may see in me parts of yourself, and realize that we are not quite as…I started to say “unique,” but prefer to substitute “alone”…as we sometimes feel.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
I was scanning photos of my last house in Los Angeles; probably the nicest house I have ever owned. Perhaps, if I do start the photo blog I mentioned in the last entry, you might have a chance (assuming you might have the desire) to see them. At any rate, in looking at the photos, the ghosts of the time reached out and grabbed me yet again.
That these ghosts grab me is one thing…what really hurts is their whispered tauntings: “You had this once. Remember? Look. You’re almost there again. Just reach out, and…” and then the humorless laughter before they continue: “It is gone, and you will never have it again. You will never sit at the breakfast room table, or look out at the hill behind the house, or spend time with the friends and conquests who came and went with comforting frequency. You can look at these photos, but you cannot have what you had there. Never again.”
While I am given to melodrama, as you may have noticed, I am being sincere when I say that those rare occasions when I allow myself to dwell on the whispers are not only mentally excruciating but actually cause a definite physical tightening of my chest. I had it. I want it! I want to see and talk to and touch all those people who were so much a part of my life. I miss them terribly.
I know, too,, that this dwelling on the past makes me—wrongly, I can assure you—seem ungrateful for the present and all the good things and people around me today, and I apologize for that, but it is simply the way I am, and I can’t change it.
Since I was a very small child, I have been aware that each passing minute brings me closer to the time when I will no longer be here, and that thought is terrifying. And as a perverse result, many of the good times of my life have been tainted by the fact that, even as I am enjoying them, I know they must pass and become more ghosts to wander my mind.
As I’ve mentioned often before, I spend the majority of my time alive storing up bits and pieces of myself for the time when I will be dead. The irony of that fact certainly does not escape me. I consider myself something of a squirrel, gathering up the nuts of my life for the long winter of eternity. My books, my letters, my blogs, all small parts of who this Roger/Dorien person was and is with luck will live on after I am physically gone. Even as I write this, I am bitterly resentful of the fact that my physical body, already far from its best, will at some point simply cease to exist. It’s been a good body, and it has served me very well, and I feel sorrow that it cannot always do so. I still have it, but I deeply miss it already.
Have I perchance happened to mention that I do not like reality? My body is forced to live in it, but my mind refuses to.
Also, as I write these little exercises in self indulgence, I wonder exactly why I expect you, who have your own life, your own losses, to have any interest at all in mine…and the answer is, as always, that I trust you may see in me parts of yourself, and realize that we are not quite as…I started to say “unique,” but prefer to substitute “alone”…as we sometimes feel.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Total Blank
I went to bed last night realizing I did not have a blog entry for today. Being an equal mix of laziness and optimism, I wasn’t concerned. I’d just get up this morning, sit at the computer, and dash off yet another classic example of deathless prose. Uh-huh.
Instead, I find myself standing, in my mind, at one of those carnival machines filled halfway with cute little stuffed animals and toys of various descriptions. For 50 cents, or whatever the rate is now, you turn a little crank which is attached to a claw hanging down a few inches from the top of the. The object is to maneuver the claw over the prize you want, drop it down, and pick it up. Except that in practice, it’s nearly impossible to do. The second you drop the 3-pronged claw down and it even brushes against anything, it closes and you have grabbed nothing at all. But you can put in another 50 cents and try again.
Thus far this morning, I have spent the equivalent of about $43.50 trying to grab not a toy, but an idea for today’s topic. Zilch.
Not that there’s a dearth of things to talk about, if I could just latch onto one. But every time I think I have one, the little mental claw just won’t grab it. I’ll get about two sentences written, then get impatient that I’m not saying it the way I want to say it, and I let the claw close and reach for another. I started to write, for example, about coming out, and will undoubtedly do one soon. Just not today.
My friend Gary got a new printer/scanner and gave me his old one, which prompted me to start scanning into my computer some 2,000 photographs I’ve accumulated over the years. A very time consuming project, you can be sure, but a fascinating (to me) recounting of my life. And I’ve been thinking of perhaps, when I have them all scanned and neatly sorted, of starting a blog…yeah, like I really need to do another blog…detailing what would, in effect, be a photo recounting of one individual’s (my, of course) journey through time. And I might do that one, too, when I’m ready. But wondering if anyone at all might be even the slightest bit interested in my life in photos gives me some pause.
Because I’d really like to know what you might think of the idea, that set me thinking of maybe an entry saying how very much I enjoy hearing from people who read my books and my blogs, and encouraging anyone who might think about dropping me a line—okay, you—to do so. I realize that for some strange reason, people seem to be intimidated by writers and hesitate to contact them. (The old “I’m just a reader” reasoning which always drives me up the wall since, yet again, reaching out to you is the reason I write.) But I set that one aside because it smacked just a bit of pandering and desperation.
So I’ve ended up writing this straight off the top of my head, and feeling not a little guilty for not giving you something a bit more well thought out. But since I am usually able to find some small comfort in nearly everything, I console myself with the fact that the whole purpose of writing this blog in the first place is to invite you into my world, messy and disjointed as it too often is.
For me, this blog is, in fact, the Portrait of Dorien Grey.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Instead, I find myself standing, in my mind, at one of those carnival machines filled halfway with cute little stuffed animals and toys of various descriptions. For 50 cents, or whatever the rate is now, you turn a little crank which is attached to a claw hanging down a few inches from the top of the. The object is to maneuver the claw over the prize you want, drop it down, and pick it up. Except that in practice, it’s nearly impossible to do. The second you drop the 3-pronged claw down and it even brushes against anything, it closes and you have grabbed nothing at all. But you can put in another 50 cents and try again.
Thus far this morning, I have spent the equivalent of about $43.50 trying to grab not a toy, but an idea for today’s topic. Zilch.
Not that there’s a dearth of things to talk about, if I could just latch onto one. But every time I think I have one, the little mental claw just won’t grab it. I’ll get about two sentences written, then get impatient that I’m not saying it the way I want to say it, and I let the claw close and reach for another. I started to write, for example, about coming out, and will undoubtedly do one soon. Just not today.
My friend Gary got a new printer/scanner and gave me his old one, which prompted me to start scanning into my computer some 2,000 photographs I’ve accumulated over the years. A very time consuming project, you can be sure, but a fascinating (to me) recounting of my life. And I’ve been thinking of perhaps, when I have them all scanned and neatly sorted, of starting a blog…yeah, like I really need to do another blog…detailing what would, in effect, be a photo recounting of one individual’s (my, of course) journey through time. And I might do that one, too, when I’m ready. But wondering if anyone at all might be even the slightest bit interested in my life in photos gives me some pause.
Because I’d really like to know what you might think of the idea, that set me thinking of maybe an entry saying how very much I enjoy hearing from people who read my books and my blogs, and encouraging anyone who might think about dropping me a line—okay, you—to do so. I realize that for some strange reason, people seem to be intimidated by writers and hesitate to contact them. (The old “I’m just a reader” reasoning which always drives me up the wall since, yet again, reaching out to you is the reason I write.) But I set that one aside because it smacked just a bit of pandering and desperation.
So I’ve ended up writing this straight off the top of my head, and feeling not a little guilty for not giving you something a bit more well thought out. But since I am usually able to find some small comfort in nearly everything, I console myself with the fact that the whole purpose of writing this blog in the first place is to invite you into my world, messy and disjointed as it too often is.
For me, this blog is, in fact, the Portrait of Dorien Grey.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Monday, September 17, 2007
No!
Before we begin, if you are intending to see the Israeli/Palestinian film “The Bubble,” stop reading right now.
I knew going in that the film was about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but I can’t resist movies with gay themes (a hangover from the decade upon decade during which there were no films with gay themes), and I’d read a review which indicated that it had a positive ending It’s a moving film effectively demonstrating the myriad of problems and mutual hostility between Jews and Palestinians. But its emphasis was on a sweetly romantic tale of an Israeli soldier who meets a young Palestinian at a checkpoint between Israel and the West Bank. They fall in love despite the problems all around them, and in effect live in a bubble of their own. On this level, the film is truly moving and uplifting.
I was therefore totally unprepared for the last fifteen minutes of the movie, in which the Palestinian’s sister is accidentally killed by Israeli troops and, in the last terrible scene, he blows himself and his lover up in a suicide bombing.
No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no!!! I’m sorry, but I’m out’a here. I do not need this. I do not need an agonizingly slow-motion close-up of the two young lovers in the final instant of their lives as the bomb goes off, the one looking confused, the other infinitely sad.
I left the theater furious at being cheated out of hope. It’s been several days now, and I’m still furious. I have thought of the film almost constantly since, which is, I suppose, exactly what the people behind the film intended. To that end, they most certainly succeeded but, for me, not in the way they wanted.
It certainly isn’t as though I had no idea of what is going on in the world. I haven’t been living in a vacuum (or a bubble) all these years. I am already far more than sufficiently aware of all the madness in the world, all the pointless stupidity and hatred and cruelty and pain and sadness. They are impossible to avoid. It is simply that I see absolutely no need to run out and deliberately expose myself to more. And while there are undoubtedly many people who somehow have been sleeping through the past 50 years of history who need to be reminded of the harsh realities of the world. I am not one of them, and I truly resent having gone to the film. I am not a puppy who has just peed on the carpet and needs to have his nose rubbed in it.
I cannot live without hope; without the belief that despite often overwhelming evidence to the contrary, there is more good than evil in the world. In a voice-over at the very end of the film, the Palestinian says that someday, perhaps, things will change. And he is right. But seeing him die did little to encourage this belief.
I hope you will excuse the brevity of this post, but I think I’ve said just about all that needs to be said for today.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
I knew going in that the film was about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but I can’t resist movies with gay themes (a hangover from the decade upon decade during which there were no films with gay themes), and I’d read a review which indicated that it had a positive ending It’s a moving film effectively demonstrating the myriad of problems and mutual hostility between Jews and Palestinians. But its emphasis was on a sweetly romantic tale of an Israeli soldier who meets a young Palestinian at a checkpoint between Israel and the West Bank. They fall in love despite the problems all around them, and in effect live in a bubble of their own. On this level, the film is truly moving and uplifting.
I was therefore totally unprepared for the last fifteen minutes of the movie, in which the Palestinian’s sister is accidentally killed by Israeli troops and, in the last terrible scene, he blows himself and his lover up in a suicide bombing.
No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no!!! I’m sorry, but I’m out’a here. I do not need this. I do not need an agonizingly slow-motion close-up of the two young lovers in the final instant of their lives as the bomb goes off, the one looking confused, the other infinitely sad.
I left the theater furious at being cheated out of hope. It’s been several days now, and I’m still furious. I have thought of the film almost constantly since, which is, I suppose, exactly what the people behind the film intended. To that end, they most certainly succeeded but, for me, not in the way they wanted.
It certainly isn’t as though I had no idea of what is going on in the world. I haven’t been living in a vacuum (or a bubble) all these years. I am already far more than sufficiently aware of all the madness in the world, all the pointless stupidity and hatred and cruelty and pain and sadness. They are impossible to avoid. It is simply that I see absolutely no need to run out and deliberately expose myself to more. And while there are undoubtedly many people who somehow have been sleeping through the past 50 years of history who need to be reminded of the harsh realities of the world. I am not one of them, and I truly resent having gone to the film. I am not a puppy who has just peed on the carpet and needs to have his nose rubbed in it.
I cannot live without hope; without the belief that despite often overwhelming evidence to the contrary, there is more good than evil in the world. In a voice-over at the very end of the film, the Palestinian says that someday, perhaps, things will change. And he is right. But seeing him die did little to encourage this belief.
I hope you will excuse the brevity of this post, but I think I’ve said just about all that needs to be said for today.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Friday, September 07, 2007
Tears of Joy
As I write this, my eyes are misting. But they are tears of utter, total, complete joy…of an elation I seldom have experienced in my own humdrum, boring, meaningless life. I have just learned that Toby McGuire, of Spider Man fame, is getting married!! I cannot imagine anything that may have a more powerful impact on the lives of millions of people around the world. (Can you imagine the joy in Darfur? The jubilation in the streets of Bagdad?) I’m positive I’ll be going to the wedding, of course. I’m sure the invitation is in the mailman’s pouch even as I type. I mean, Toby is such an important part of my life. Maybe he’ll ask me to be his best man!
And I desperately needed this ray of sunshine in my life after the indescribably agonies I have been going through over Lindsay’s and Brittany’s trials and tribulations. That these saintly young role models are continually harassed and hassled just for being fun-loving is unconscionable. And that some people actually dare to suggest they be treated like everyone else! Are they mad? Brittany and Lindsay and all those other wonderful people famous for being famous are not like everyone else. They are STARS whose luminous brilliance lights the dark, hopeless night in which the rest of us are doomed forever to reside.
And the rumors of possible unhappiness in Brad and Angelina’s relationship have kept me awake nights, sobbing into my pillow, or shaking my fists at the uncaring and cruel fates.
These people are my LIFE! How could I possibly exist without knowing that Jude Law threw a punch at some photographer? I’m sure the photographer deserved it for thinking he had a right to take a photograph of Jude on a public street. These paparazzi are totally out of hand and should be soundly thrashed. (But then I realize that without them taking pictures of Prince Harry slipping on a banana peel, I would not be able to feel as close to Harry as I do.)
Oh, dear Lord, what is there in human nature that makes what happens in the lives of total strangers—people whom we have never met, will never meet, and who have absolutely no direct effect whatever on our own lives—so pathetically important to us? Why do we spend millions of dollars which could be far better spent on other things buying glossy magazines filled with the intellectual and emotional equivalent of lo-cal bat guano?
Why do we buy tennis shoes simply because a sports figure shills them? The fact that 99.9 percent of product advertising features pretty people speaks for how pathetically insecure the rest of us are. Think, people! THINK!Envy is a natural emotion, but we have taken it to astoundingly incomprehensible lengths. I suspect one reason why we blindly follow every movement of the rich and “famous” beautiful people is that we truly believe, way deep down, that they are somehow superior to us. We are—thee and me excepted, of course—becoming a nation of pigs eagerly gobbling up whatever garbage those who are obviously superior to us choose to slop into our troughs. And we should be grateful, for by doing so they have all but eliminated the bothersome necessity to actually think for ourselves and make our own decisions.
But in defense of all the beautiful, rich, and famous Tobys and Lindsays and Brittanys and their agents and publicists and personal hairdressers and fitness trainers out there, I must say that if anyone so insecure about their own value as a human being as to need vicarious validation from the lives of others, they deserve a place at the trough.
Well, I seem to be very good at asking questions, but very poor at providing answers. What do YOU think I should think? I’ll be sure to ask Toby at his wedding.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
And I desperately needed this ray of sunshine in my life after the indescribably agonies I have been going through over Lindsay’s and Brittany’s trials and tribulations. That these saintly young role models are continually harassed and hassled just for being fun-loving is unconscionable. And that some people actually dare to suggest they be treated like everyone else! Are they mad? Brittany and Lindsay and all those other wonderful people famous for being famous are not like everyone else. They are STARS whose luminous brilliance lights the dark, hopeless night in which the rest of us are doomed forever to reside.
And the rumors of possible unhappiness in Brad and Angelina’s relationship have kept me awake nights, sobbing into my pillow, or shaking my fists at the uncaring and cruel fates.
These people are my LIFE! How could I possibly exist without knowing that Jude Law threw a punch at some photographer? I’m sure the photographer deserved it for thinking he had a right to take a photograph of Jude on a public street. These paparazzi are totally out of hand and should be soundly thrashed. (But then I realize that without them taking pictures of Prince Harry slipping on a banana peel, I would not be able to feel as close to Harry as I do.)
Oh, dear Lord, what is there in human nature that makes what happens in the lives of total strangers—people whom we have never met, will never meet, and who have absolutely no direct effect whatever on our own lives—so pathetically important to us? Why do we spend millions of dollars which could be far better spent on other things buying glossy magazines filled with the intellectual and emotional equivalent of lo-cal bat guano?
Why do we buy tennis shoes simply because a sports figure shills them? The fact that 99.9 percent of product advertising features pretty people speaks for how pathetically insecure the rest of us are. Think, people! THINK!Envy is a natural emotion, but we have taken it to astoundingly incomprehensible lengths. I suspect one reason why we blindly follow every movement of the rich and “famous” beautiful people is that we truly believe, way deep down, that they are somehow superior to us. We are—thee and me excepted, of course—becoming a nation of pigs eagerly gobbling up whatever garbage those who are obviously superior to us choose to slop into our troughs. And we should be grateful, for by doing so they have all but eliminated the bothersome necessity to actually think for ourselves and make our own decisions.
But in defense of all the beautiful, rich, and famous Tobys and Lindsays and Brittanys and their agents and publicists and personal hairdressers and fitness trainers out there, I must say that if anyone so insecure about their own value as a human being as to need vicarious validation from the lives of others, they deserve a place at the trough.
Well, I seem to be very good at asking questions, but very poor at providing answers. What do YOU think I should think? I’ll be sure to ask Toby at his wedding.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Pond Scum
I really don’t know which frightens me most: just how stupid advertisers think we are, or how stupid we actually have to be to believe the fathomless idiocies that we are fed every time we turn on the TV or read a magazine.
I love the car ads that say “0 percent financing for well-qualified buyers.” Do you know what a “well-qualified” buyer is? I certainly don’t, though I strongly suspect a “well-qualified” buyer is one who can afford to pay cash for the car and therefore has no need for a 0 percent financing in the first place. Cash is, after all, 0 percent financing. The rest of us pay full fare, as we find out when we’re suckered in to the showroom.
Advertisers are totally in love with modifiers: “Emerging science suggests that Barfenol may help lower whatever it is that needs lowering.” Five modifiers in that one sentence. “Emerging” means it isn’t proven, “suggests” means the “emerging science” doesn’t actually come out and say anything, “may” leaves them wiggle room in the unspoken implication that it equally well may not, “help” means it won’t do it by itself, and “lower” means it won’t eliminate the problem. And yet we rush to buy it.
Furniture stores going out of business love to say: “No reasonable offer refused!” (Gee, and would you care to make a wild guess as to who determines the definition of “reasonable”?)
Women’s facial products boast they “reduce the appearance of wrinkles.” You will note they do not even imply that the product actually do a damned thing for wrinkles other than to “reduce” the appearance” of wrinkles. It doesn’t matter: it sounds great and thousands of women are stupid enough to go out and spend good money on it.
How many commercials do you see in one evening of television that urge you to “Ask your doctor” or “see your doctor.” I suspect that, at up to $100 per visit to the doctor, the A.M.A. is all for your seeing the doctor to ask about some snake-oil capsule.
I do, however, grudgingly admire the near-to-brilliant wordplay advertisers come up with to con the public. I mentioned some time ago one of my favorites: “No loan application will be refused!” Of course, it cleverly avoids pointing out that just because they will accept your application, there is absolutely no guarantee that you’ll get the loan.
Another of my all-time favorites, which I have also referenced before is: “If unsatisfied with this product for any reason, simply return the unopened bottle for a full refund!” Since one generally has to open a bottle before knowing if the product is any good, that neatly eliminates any necessity to even try for a refund.
Makers of schlock cleverly use that old saw “when you have a lemon, make lemonade” by concentrating their advertising on television and proudly proclaiming “Not Sold in Stores!” Uh...if the stuff was any good, do you really think they’d refuse to let stores handle it?
Offering a “Certificate of Authenticity” for some overpriced replica brings in customers by the ton. And a “Certificate of Authenticity” does exactly what? But, oh, boy, it sounds impressive.
There’s an old saying in the ad game: “Sell the sizzle, not the steak,” and they are experts at just that. Ah, but I once again find myself sliding into my curmudgeon mode, when I should be embracing all these wondrous opportunities with which I am inundated every day. I apologize. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to watch the Home Shopping Network.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
I love the car ads that say “0 percent financing for well-qualified buyers.” Do you know what a “well-qualified” buyer is? I certainly don’t, though I strongly suspect a “well-qualified” buyer is one who can afford to pay cash for the car and therefore has no need for a 0 percent financing in the first place. Cash is, after all, 0 percent financing. The rest of us pay full fare, as we find out when we’re suckered in to the showroom.
Advertisers are totally in love with modifiers: “Emerging science suggests that Barfenol may help lower whatever it is that needs lowering.” Five modifiers in that one sentence. “Emerging” means it isn’t proven, “suggests” means the “emerging science” doesn’t actually come out and say anything, “may” leaves them wiggle room in the unspoken implication that it equally well may not, “help” means it won’t do it by itself, and “lower” means it won’t eliminate the problem. And yet we rush to buy it.
Furniture stores going out of business love to say: “No reasonable offer refused!” (Gee, and would you care to make a wild guess as to who determines the definition of “reasonable”?)
Women’s facial products boast they “reduce the appearance of wrinkles.” You will note they do not even imply that the product actually do a damned thing for wrinkles other than to “reduce” the appearance” of wrinkles. It doesn’t matter: it sounds great and thousands of women are stupid enough to go out and spend good money on it.
How many commercials do you see in one evening of television that urge you to “Ask your doctor” or “see your doctor.” I suspect that, at up to $100 per visit to the doctor, the A.M.A. is all for your seeing the doctor to ask about some snake-oil capsule.
I do, however, grudgingly admire the near-to-brilliant wordplay advertisers come up with to con the public. I mentioned some time ago one of my favorites: “No loan application will be refused!” Of course, it cleverly avoids pointing out that just because they will accept your application, there is absolutely no guarantee that you’ll get the loan.
Another of my all-time favorites, which I have also referenced before is: “If unsatisfied with this product for any reason, simply return the unopened bottle for a full refund!” Since one generally has to open a bottle before knowing if the product is any good, that neatly eliminates any necessity to even try for a refund.
Makers of schlock cleverly use that old saw “when you have a lemon, make lemonade” by concentrating their advertising on television and proudly proclaiming “Not Sold in Stores!” Uh...if the stuff was any good, do you really think they’d refuse to let stores handle it?
Offering a “Certificate of Authenticity” for some overpriced replica brings in customers by the ton. And a “Certificate of Authenticity” does exactly what? But, oh, boy, it sounds impressive.
There’s an old saying in the ad game: “Sell the sizzle, not the steak,” and they are experts at just that. Ah, but I once again find myself sliding into my curmudgeon mode, when I should be embracing all these wondrous opportunities with which I am inundated every day. I apologize. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to watch the Home Shopping Network.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Grown Men Crying
As I type these words, each one is underlined in red. Why each word is underlined in red I have no idea. How I can prevent each word from being underlined in red, I do not know. What I do know is that I am on the verge of a temper tantrum of epic proportions. And as always, my anger, rage, and fury are directed against myself. How can I be so incredibly, unbelievably stupid as not to know how to stop every word--except, significantly, for "I"--from being underlined in red?
I of course went to "View" and clicked on "Reveal Codes," which shows exactly what is being done in careful detail. But is there anything there… anything …to indicate that each word is being underlined in red? Well, of course there isn't.
I have rebooted my computer in the naive belief that when everything came back up, whatever is causing the underlinings would disappear.
Did it? (If your answer is "Yes," you must be even more naive than I am.)
What does it matter that each word is underlined in red…a marking, incidentally, which normally only appear to indicate a misspelled word. Perhaps every word I have typed has been misspelled. But checking my dictionary for the spelling of the word "to" I see that by all accounts, it is spelled correctly. But I digress (oh, now there's a news flash!). So if the words are not misspelled…and I am suddenly comforted by the idea that if I do misspell a word, I will have no way of knowing, since they're ALL underlined in red.…what is the problem? What did I do to create the problem?
Countless times, I have somehow (I never, ever know how) struck a wrong key and all hell has broken loose, and I assume this is one of those instances. I know I did something wrong. I know that the solution is so astoundingly simple that, should I ever find it, I will feel like even more of an idiot than I already feel.
Utter frustration results in tears of utter rage and utter confusion and utter…what's the word I'm looking for? Ah, yes…frustration. I feel my chest filling up with them, but of course I cannot actually let them out, much as I might want to. Real men don't cry. No, they don't! That's what adults hammer into male children from the minute they are old enough to understand what is being said to them. And would grown-ups lie to a child? So I do not cry. Instead, my chest becomes a pressure cooker with the rage turning the tears to steam and the little indicator moving steadily further into the red zone until I at times fear for what might happen if I cannot control it.
And every word I have typed is underlined in red.
I just went back to "View" and "Reveal Codes" thinking that just because it didn't help last time, it might help this time. I noted a little icon called "Graphics" had a check mark in front of it. I clicked it to remove it, sure that I had solved the problem. I had not.
I am a writer. I write books. Each book has tens of thousands of words and I must resign myself to the fact that from this moment on, every single one of those tens of thousands of words will be underlined in red, and I will never be able to know when I have actually misspelled a word, and my ears will ring with the sound of the computer gods' laughter.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
I of course went to "View" and clicked on "Reveal Codes," which shows exactly what is being done in careful detail. But is there anything there… anything …to indicate that each word is being underlined in red? Well, of course there isn't.
I have rebooted my computer in the naive belief that when everything came back up, whatever is causing the underlinings would disappear.
Did it? (If your answer is "Yes," you must be even more naive than I am.)
What does it matter that each word is underlined in red…a marking, incidentally, which normally only appear to indicate a misspelled word. Perhaps every word I have typed has been misspelled. But checking my dictionary for the spelling of the word "to" I see that by all accounts, it is spelled correctly. But I digress (oh, now there's a news flash!). So if the words are not misspelled…and I am suddenly comforted by the idea that if I do misspell a word, I will have no way of knowing, since they're ALL underlined in red.…what is the problem? What did I do to create the problem?
Countless times, I have somehow (I never, ever know how) struck a wrong key and all hell has broken loose, and I assume this is one of those instances. I know I did something wrong. I know that the solution is so astoundingly simple that, should I ever find it, I will feel like even more of an idiot than I already feel.
Utter frustration results in tears of utter rage and utter confusion and utter…what's the word I'm looking for? Ah, yes…frustration. I feel my chest filling up with them, but of course I cannot actually let them out, much as I might want to. Real men don't cry. No, they don't! That's what adults hammer into male children from the minute they are old enough to understand what is being said to them. And would grown-ups lie to a child? So I do not cry. Instead, my chest becomes a pressure cooker with the rage turning the tears to steam and the little indicator moving steadily further into the red zone until I at times fear for what might happen if I cannot control it.
And every word I have typed is underlined in red.
I just went back to "View" and "Reveal Codes" thinking that just because it didn't help last time, it might help this time. I noted a little icon called "Graphics" had a check mark in front of it. I clicked it to remove it, sure that I had solved the problem. I had not.
I am a writer. I write books. Each book has tens of thousands of words and I must resign myself to the fact that from this moment on, every single one of those tens of thousands of words will be underlined in red, and I will never be able to know when I have actually misspelled a word, and my ears will ring with the sound of the computer gods' laughter.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Beauty Postponed
As so often happens, yesterday afternoon I realized I had not yet written today’s blog, and set out to do so post-haste. I chose the topic of “Beauty”, a subject of great interest to me, but with which I have had little direct personal contact. I got about two thirds through it and, upon reading what I’d written, realized I must have been channeling one of the lesser Victorian romance writers. I found it ponderous, pontifical, and florid to the point of embarrassment. It eminated the distinct scent of talcum powder.
So I decided to hold off on it for a while, which was probably a good idea. However, having done so, that left me with no blog for today. I went to bed thinking—I am nothing if not an optimist—that I would whip one out this morning when I got up.
The only problem I find in “whipping one out” is that it quite often tends to read as though I had done just that. Plus the fact that I awoke at 4:15, probably anticipating the arrival today of my friend Gary, who is moving to Chicago and will be living in my building, and could not go back to sleep, leaving me a bit groggy when I did crawl out of bed around six. And it is now, as I type, 6:56.
But since you are so kind as to take your valuable time to stop by, you have every right to expect to find something when you do. This is, I grant you, not much of an entry, and probably one of the shortest I’ve ever done, but I do hope it might tide you over until Friday, when I promise I’ll try to have something a tad more substantial.
Thanks for bearing with me.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back
So I decided to hold off on it for a while, which was probably a good idea. However, having done so, that left me with no blog for today. I went to bed thinking—I am nothing if not an optimist—that I would whip one out this morning when I got up.
The only problem I find in “whipping one out” is that it quite often tends to read as though I had done just that. Plus the fact that I awoke at 4:15, probably anticipating the arrival today of my friend Gary, who is moving to Chicago and will be living in my building, and could not go back to sleep, leaving me a bit groggy when I did crawl out of bed around six. And it is now, as I type, 6:56.
But since you are so kind as to take your valuable time to stop by, you have every right to expect to find something when you do. This is, I grant you, not much of an entry, and probably one of the shortest I’ve ever done, but I do hope it might tide you over until Friday, when I promise I’ll try to have something a tad more substantial.
Thanks for bearing with me.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back
Monday, August 13, 2007
C'est Moi!
Louis XIV is credited with saying “L’etat, C’est Moi!”, though I can’t prove it, being preoccupied at the time with standing in a 300-year-long line waiting my turn to be born. But I’ve not only shared but greatly expanded on Louis’ sentiment. Like small children, I am firmly convinced I am not merely “the state” but that the universe revolves around me. What keeps me from being totally insufferable (I hope), is that the zenith of my ego has always been offset by a nadir of self loathing.
Despite unconditional love from my parents and family, I grew up with the absolute certainty that I was a complete failure as a human being and (thanks to church and Sunday school) “an abomination in the eyes of God”—don’t ‘cha just love religion?—and the fact that I have always demanded a form of perfection from myself that nobody could possibly come even close to attaining.
When it came to anything involving physical skill, grace, or coordination, I failed miserably. All I had to do was look around at everyone else, who seemed to move through life effortlessly and with the grace I so longed for and never had. As a result, if I could not do something well, I would not do it at all. I never quite grasped the concept of “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” If I tried it and it didn’t work, put one more mark in the “self loathing” column.
And so, because I was never able to be what I expected myself to be in the physical world in which we all live, I turned inward to books and to fantasy, where physicality was never a factor. To protect myself from the toxic effects of an astoundingly poor self image, I set about carefully constructing wondrous fantasies of the finest blocks of polished ego to save myself from utter destruction. If I could not fit into the real world, I’d build worlds of my own.
Yet to this day I am bemused by the degree to which I seek the approval of others. Again, like a small child, whenever I do something of which I am proud, I insist on running around to anyone who will listen, hoping they will think I truly am as wonderful as I would like to think myself as being—or at least not as bad.
Being able to escape into my own fantasy world through my writing has, I honestly feel, been my greatest personal accomplishment. And on those occasions that other people seem to enjoy the worlds I have created, and actually feel as comfortable in them as I do, I find the validation I have been seeking all my life.
To get a letter or email from a reader kind enough to tell me that they enjoy my books and/or the workings of my mind never fails to produce a sensation of mild euphoria and reassurance that perhaps I am not quite as alone as I sometimes think I am. It’s a nice feeling.
The universe may not in fact revolve around me, but like all my fantasies (and some of my assumptions) it is a harmless delusion from which even the realist in me can derive a degree of bemusement. I’ll take whatever small pleasures I can find. I would hope you might do the same.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Despite unconditional love from my parents and family, I grew up with the absolute certainty that I was a complete failure as a human being and (thanks to church and Sunday school) “an abomination in the eyes of God”—don’t ‘cha just love religion?—and the fact that I have always demanded a form of perfection from myself that nobody could possibly come even close to attaining.
When it came to anything involving physical skill, grace, or coordination, I failed miserably. All I had to do was look around at everyone else, who seemed to move through life effortlessly and with the grace I so longed for and never had. As a result, if I could not do something well, I would not do it at all. I never quite grasped the concept of “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” If I tried it and it didn’t work, put one more mark in the “self loathing” column.
And so, because I was never able to be what I expected myself to be in the physical world in which we all live, I turned inward to books and to fantasy, where physicality was never a factor. To protect myself from the toxic effects of an astoundingly poor self image, I set about carefully constructing wondrous fantasies of the finest blocks of polished ego to save myself from utter destruction. If I could not fit into the real world, I’d build worlds of my own.
Yet to this day I am bemused by the degree to which I seek the approval of others. Again, like a small child, whenever I do something of which I am proud, I insist on running around to anyone who will listen, hoping they will think I truly am as wonderful as I would like to think myself as being—or at least not as bad.
Being able to escape into my own fantasy world through my writing has, I honestly feel, been my greatest personal accomplishment. And on those occasions that other people seem to enjoy the worlds I have created, and actually feel as comfortable in them as I do, I find the validation I have been seeking all my life.
To get a letter or email from a reader kind enough to tell me that they enjoy my books and/or the workings of my mind never fails to produce a sensation of mild euphoria and reassurance that perhaps I am not quite as alone as I sometimes think I am. It’s a nice feeling.
The universe may not in fact revolve around me, but like all my fantasies (and some of my assumptions) it is a harmless delusion from which even the realist in me can derive a degree of bemusement. I’ll take whatever small pleasures I can find. I would hope you might do the same.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
All in a Day's Work
My dear friend Gary has just retired from teaching and will be moving to Chicago with a week or so. One of his greatest concerns, expressed frequently and with all sincerity as the date of his retirement neared, was what he would possibly find to do with himself when he no longer had to be at school at the crack of dawn. I’ve done my best to assure him that it will not be a problem, and I think he’s coming to realize that even in the short time since his retirement became official.
I of course consider myself blessed by the fact that my “work” and my principle joy in life are the same: writing. As a result, my days fall into what I’m sure many people would consider a rut, but which I think of as a comfortable routine.
Up between 5:30 and 6, not through choice but simply because my body’s built-in alarm clock simply will not permit me to sleep any longer, though I truly wish it would.
Turn on the computer as I pass it on my way to the bathroom to let my cat, Crickett, out. (I keep here closed in the bathroom at night to prevent her from wandering back and forth across me while I sleep and, most bothersome of all, making frequent nose-to-nose inspections to make sure I am truly asleep and not dead.
Check e-mail, putter, sometimes panic-write a blog if it is Monday, Wednesday, or Friday and I’ve somehow not prepared one the day before. Post the blog on the correct days, then turn on the Today Show at 7. (Some habits are indeed strange. Why NBC? Because I always watch NBC. And why do I always watch NBC? Because I always watch NBC. A rose is a rose is a rose.)
Put coffee on...another inexplicable habit, since I honestly am not crazy about coffee and never have been. I can’t remember when I’ve actually finished an entire cup, either at home or out. While waiting for the coffee, I use the same cup I used to pour water into the coffee maker to fill it 2/3 full of V8 juice (I eat shockingly few real vegetables, so this is my pathetic attempt at redemption). Coffee ready, V8 drunk, I wash the cup, put in my ruts-worth of half-and-half, sugar, and coffee, then take a chocolate covered donut from the refrigerator (I am expecting a not of appreciation from the Entemann’s Bakery’s Chocolate Covered Donut division, of which I must be their primary source of income, and it is they who provide the bulk of my calories for the morning).
A couple times a week, I join friends for coffee around 10:30 at a coffee shop about a mile and a half from my apartment, and the walk provides my daily exercise. Then home to write.
There are variations, of course, but basically that is it. Comes 5:30, it’s news time and then the remainder of the evening is usually TV…though finding something to watch in re-run season can be a challenge. I know I should probably read, but after spending most of the day writing, I really prefer to shut my mind off and just float along with the boob tube.
Looking this over, even I find it stupifyingly dull on the surface, until I remember my recent post on the fact that I am in effect more than one entity. Nearly everything mentioned above is totally in the purview of my body, which thereby frees my mind to do what it enjoys most…play in the magic land of words.
So while I am quite sure that my body’s daily routine would bore most people senseless, it represents to me a most equitable division of labor.
And now it is time for my body’s morning coffee and V8 and donut and Today Show while my mind gets ready to go out and play.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
I of course consider myself blessed by the fact that my “work” and my principle joy in life are the same: writing. As a result, my days fall into what I’m sure many people would consider a rut, but which I think of as a comfortable routine.
Up between 5:30 and 6, not through choice but simply because my body’s built-in alarm clock simply will not permit me to sleep any longer, though I truly wish it would.
Turn on the computer as I pass it on my way to the bathroom to let my cat, Crickett, out. (I keep here closed in the bathroom at night to prevent her from wandering back and forth across me while I sleep and, most bothersome of all, making frequent nose-to-nose inspections to make sure I am truly asleep and not dead.
Check e-mail, putter, sometimes panic-write a blog if it is Monday, Wednesday, or Friday and I’ve somehow not prepared one the day before. Post the blog on the correct days, then turn on the Today Show at 7. (Some habits are indeed strange. Why NBC? Because I always watch NBC. And why do I always watch NBC? Because I always watch NBC. A rose is a rose is a rose.)
Put coffee on...another inexplicable habit, since I honestly am not crazy about coffee and never have been. I can’t remember when I’ve actually finished an entire cup, either at home or out. While waiting for the coffee, I use the same cup I used to pour water into the coffee maker to fill it 2/3 full of V8 juice (I eat shockingly few real vegetables, so this is my pathetic attempt at redemption). Coffee ready, V8 drunk, I wash the cup, put in my ruts-worth of half-and-half, sugar, and coffee, then take a chocolate covered donut from the refrigerator (I am expecting a not of appreciation from the Entemann’s Bakery’s Chocolate Covered Donut division, of which I must be their primary source of income, and it is they who provide the bulk of my calories for the morning).
A couple times a week, I join friends for coffee around 10:30 at a coffee shop about a mile and a half from my apartment, and the walk provides my daily exercise. Then home to write.
There are variations, of course, but basically that is it. Comes 5:30, it’s news time and then the remainder of the evening is usually TV…though finding something to watch in re-run season can be a challenge. I know I should probably read, but after spending most of the day writing, I really prefer to shut my mind off and just float along with the boob tube.
Looking this over, even I find it stupifyingly dull on the surface, until I remember my recent post on the fact that I am in effect more than one entity. Nearly everything mentioned above is totally in the purview of my body, which thereby frees my mind to do what it enjoys most…play in the magic land of words.
So while I am quite sure that my body’s daily routine would bore most people senseless, it represents to me a most equitable division of labor.
And now it is time for my body’s morning coffee and V8 and donut and Today Show while my mind gets ready to go out and play.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Fury
If it seems I’m in something of a less-than-saintly mood of late, I can assure you it’s just a phase…a way for me to blow off a little steam, and I hope you’ll bear with me…it will pass soon. But let’s face it, my application for sainthood will never be approved. I have much too short an emotional fuse for it and sometimes startle even myself by going from my usual adorable, charming, sweet-natured self into a raging idiot spewing lava from every orifice in the blink of an eye.
Today offered a perfect example. Though my just-released book, The Dream Ender, is available on Amazon.com, its cover photo does not appear…after more than two weeks…under “Books: The Dream Ender.” Clicking on the title does take you to an information page on the book, which does show the cover.
So I wanted to write to Amazon to ask what could be done to put it up in both places. I found the well-hidden “Contact Us” button and was taken to the proper page, which requested my name and the nature of my wanting to contact them. I was given a number of options: questions about my order, questions about the status of my order, and several other order-related options. At the bottom is an option for “Other matters.” I clicked “Other matters” which presented me with a very attractive page on which I was asked for my name and my order number.
I do not have an order number. My question is not about an order. So I typed my problem in the indicated box anyway, and hit “Submit.” I was told that I had not provided the required information…meaning my order number…and therefore they could not allow me to post my message.
Instant Mt. St. Helens! How the devil can I write them about something other than an order? Simple. I can’t. And why? Because if I’m not writing them about an order, they could care less what my problem might be. Then why the hell offer an “Other matters” option when they totally refuse to acknowledge that there might be another matter?
At one time, businesses used to be there for the convenience of the customer. Now the customer is there only at the convenience of the business. Not only do they not give a hoot in hell about you (despite their infuriatingly hypocritical “Your call is very important to us” baloney), they do everything in their power to make sure that actually getting a response to a question not in their list of “Frequently Asked Questions”, is next to impossible, as it is to find a way to actually contact a human being. With many companies, it is not “next to impossible”: it simply can’t be done. If they do deign to have a customer service telephone line, they have A customer service telephone line. (“Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered by the next available representative. Your wait time is approximately 3 years, ten months, twenty-nine days, and fifteen minutes”)
I do not have a “land-line” phone; just my cell phone, and I buy blocks of minutes. No matter what business I call, I am treated to: “For English, press 1”—why should I have to press 1 for my own language in my own country? Which is followed by “For so-and-so, press 4; for such and such, press 5; for this and that, press 6…” ad infinitum. Some of them compound the fury by wanting to know if I would be interested in hearing all about their latest product or “service”, and all of which eats into my minutes and my money.
Perhaps it is just me. Maybe it’s the weather (it’s quite hot today). But I think it’s mainly that I do not like to be disregarded, ignored, insulted, summarily dismissed, or treated like pond scum, and that too few people who may agree with me just accept it as their due. It is not their due. It is not my due, and I’ll be damned if I will just shut up and take it if I have any option at all.
Consider this post an option.
Oh, and if you want to know what I really think, just ask.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Today offered a perfect example. Though my just-released book, The Dream Ender, is available on Amazon.com, its cover photo does not appear…after more than two weeks…under “Books: The Dream Ender.” Clicking on the title does take you to an information page on the book, which does show the cover.
So I wanted to write to Amazon to ask what could be done to put it up in both places. I found the well-hidden “Contact Us” button and was taken to the proper page, which requested my name and the nature of my wanting to contact them. I was given a number of options: questions about my order, questions about the status of my order, and several other order-related options. At the bottom is an option for “Other matters.” I clicked “Other matters” which presented me with a very attractive page on which I was asked for my name and my order number.
I do not have an order number. My question is not about an order. So I typed my problem in the indicated box anyway, and hit “Submit.” I was told that I had not provided the required information…meaning my order number…and therefore they could not allow me to post my message.
Instant Mt. St. Helens! How the devil can I write them about something other than an order? Simple. I can’t. And why? Because if I’m not writing them about an order, they could care less what my problem might be. Then why the hell offer an “Other matters” option when they totally refuse to acknowledge that there might be another matter?
At one time, businesses used to be there for the convenience of the customer. Now the customer is there only at the convenience of the business. Not only do they not give a hoot in hell about you (despite their infuriatingly hypocritical “Your call is very important to us” baloney), they do everything in their power to make sure that actually getting a response to a question not in their list of “Frequently Asked Questions”, is next to impossible, as it is to find a way to actually contact a human being. With many companies, it is not “next to impossible”: it simply can’t be done. If they do deign to have a customer service telephone line, they have A customer service telephone line. (“Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered by the next available representative. Your wait time is approximately 3 years, ten months, twenty-nine days, and fifteen minutes”)
I do not have a “land-line” phone; just my cell phone, and I buy blocks of minutes. No matter what business I call, I am treated to: “For English, press 1”—why should I have to press 1 for my own language in my own country? Which is followed by “For so-and-so, press 4; for such and such, press 5; for this and that, press 6…” ad infinitum. Some of them compound the fury by wanting to know if I would be interested in hearing all about their latest product or “service”, and all of which eats into my minutes and my money.
Perhaps it is just me. Maybe it’s the weather (it’s quite hot today). But I think it’s mainly that I do not like to be disregarded, ignored, insulted, summarily dismissed, or treated like pond scum, and that too few people who may agree with me just accept it as their due. It is not their due. It is not my due, and I’ll be damned if I will just shut up and take it if I have any option at all.
Consider this post an option.
Oh, and if you want to know what I really think, just ask.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
We Three
I was sitting here a moment ago having my afternoon cup of coffee and chocolate covered donut (one of my primary sources for calories) and found myself having to painfully pry my mouth open with my free hand far enough to get the thickness of the donut into my mouth. I was not happy, but Dorien found it very amusing. And in that small incident lies a partial explanation of just why there is a “Dorien and me.”
I have increasingly found myself to be a rather distinct trinity (hardly in the biblical sense, I assure you): physical, mental, and…well, Dorien, who both bridges and transcends the other two parts. Each part has its own distinct function. My physical “third” is solely concerned with maintenance and upkeep of the flesh, bone, muscles and organs. It doesn’t have the time or need to think much, but it has served all three of “us” amazingly well over lo, these many years.
The “mental” third is in charge of those aspects of daily existence not directly under the purview of basic body functioning, though it shares some responsibilities with my body such as eating and dressing and scratching where it itches. It tends to be unrealistically set on itself, and I am ashamed to admit that it is all too often dismissive and sometimes almost contemptuous of my body. It cannot or will not accept the notion that as my body ages, I simply cannot do those things I once did with such ease. (“Look!” my mind tells my body. “He can run: he can turn and lift his head; he can open his mouth wide enough to eat a double-decker hamburger! Why can’t you?”) My mind knows it is cruel and unfair to do so, but it can’t help itself. And my body just goes quietly about its business. It is well aware of what my bout with cancer did to it, and it grudgingly accepts it even though my mind will not. It knows I am lucky just to be alive.
And Dorien, bless him, remains removed from it all. Totally free of physical limitations or restraints, he can and does do anything or be anything or go anywhere he wishes. Dorien is everything my body and mind I want to be and am not. In his safekeeping I have entrusted the majority of my hopes and dreams, my faith and fantasies. It is Dorien who provides the imagination for my writing. It is Dorien who creates the stories—my body merely types them out. My mind…that part of it which is separate from Dorien…truly take great delight in watching what appears on the screen, and is often totally unprepared for what shows up there.
All three parts of me share great concern and infinite regret in the realization that while Dorien could, and I hope will, live forever, my body, again, is subject to all the laws of the physical world, and the years, however hard we fight, do take their toll. It is a battle we all must eventually lose, and my mind knows all too well that when my body dies, my mind, like the captain of a ship, must go down with it.
Death does not frighten me: it never has, for I know that, as I’ve said so often before, it is merely a return to the nothingness from which it emerged. But oh, the thought of everything I shall miss: the people, the sunrises, the fun, laughter and even sadness…everything that makes me human and alive….
So I constantly remind myself of what a marvelous gift life is, and to treasure every second I am given, for as long as I may have it.
May you do the same.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
I have increasingly found myself to be a rather distinct trinity (hardly in the biblical sense, I assure you): physical, mental, and…well, Dorien, who both bridges and transcends the other two parts. Each part has its own distinct function. My physical “third” is solely concerned with maintenance and upkeep of the flesh, bone, muscles and organs. It doesn’t have the time or need to think much, but it has served all three of “us” amazingly well over lo, these many years.
The “mental” third is in charge of those aspects of daily existence not directly under the purview of basic body functioning, though it shares some responsibilities with my body such as eating and dressing and scratching where it itches. It tends to be unrealistically set on itself, and I am ashamed to admit that it is all too often dismissive and sometimes almost contemptuous of my body. It cannot or will not accept the notion that as my body ages, I simply cannot do those things I once did with such ease. (“Look!” my mind tells my body. “He can run: he can turn and lift his head; he can open his mouth wide enough to eat a double-decker hamburger! Why can’t you?”) My mind knows it is cruel and unfair to do so, but it can’t help itself. And my body just goes quietly about its business. It is well aware of what my bout with cancer did to it, and it grudgingly accepts it even though my mind will not. It knows I am lucky just to be alive.
And Dorien, bless him, remains removed from it all. Totally free of physical limitations or restraints, he can and does do anything or be anything or go anywhere he wishes. Dorien is everything my body and mind I want to be and am not. In his safekeeping I have entrusted the majority of my hopes and dreams, my faith and fantasies. It is Dorien who provides the imagination for my writing. It is Dorien who creates the stories—my body merely types them out. My mind…that part of it which is separate from Dorien…truly take great delight in watching what appears on the screen, and is often totally unprepared for what shows up there.
All three parts of me share great concern and infinite regret in the realization that while Dorien could, and I hope will, live forever, my body, again, is subject to all the laws of the physical world, and the years, however hard we fight, do take their toll. It is a battle we all must eventually lose, and my mind knows all too well that when my body dies, my mind, like the captain of a ship, must go down with it.
Death does not frighten me: it never has, for I know that, as I’ve said so often before, it is merely a return to the nothingness from which it emerged. But oh, the thought of everything I shall miss: the people, the sunrises, the fun, laughter and even sadness…everything that makes me human and alive….
So I constantly remind myself of what a marvelous gift life is, and to treasure every second I am given, for as long as I may have it.
May you do the same.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Monday, July 30, 2007
I've Made a Little List
Taking a cue from Gilbert and Sullivan, I’ve made a little list of people to be dealt with when I become Emperor.
First, of course, are the hate-mongers. I realize that this will eliminate a number of the world’s political leaders and will definitely decimate the world’s televangelists and a huge number of devoted churchgoers. but so be it. Hate is a contagious disease and should be treated as such. I will lock each of these people in a very small room where their basic needs will be provided, but absolutely forbid them from having contact with anyone. I will, of course, provide each of their rooms with a large mirror so they can still feel close to the only person they care about.
A large number of my second group can also be found in the first: the proselytizers…those people who are as unwilling to consider anything other than their own views as they are insistent on foisting those views on you. I do not suffer gladly their knocking on my door or buttonholing me on the street or calling me on the phone. Those who cannot accept the rights of others to have their own opinions and beliefs deserve a special place in Purgatory. But one of my small rooms will suffice until someone with a higher authority is able to pass judgement.
Next are the bullies: those people who feel they have every right to be as loud, obnoxious, insulting, and contrary as they want to be. My very first act as emperor would be the strict enforcement of the Golden Rule, and those who did not observe it would be removed to a little room until they did.
Those who cannot speak a full sentence of dictionary-recognized English words without the use of profanity will have their mouths taped shut, the tape removed only long enough to permit eating. Should they utter profanity during that period, the tape will be immediately replaced until the next meal. This of course will be devastating to the “popular” music industry, but who cares.
People who wear baseball caps at a “cute” angle will be forbidden to wear them and heavily fined if they do..
Then come those who for reasons I have yet to even come close to comprehending, are famous not for doing good deeds or improving the human condition in any way, shape, or form, but merely for being famous. As for the people who make them famous and follow their every meaningless peccadillo as though it really, truly meant anything at all, I have not yet come up with a punishment for them. I find them a bit pathetic, and think the fact that they don’t seem to believe their own lives have any value or interest might be punishment enough.
The originators and purveyors of internet spam will not only be locked away but absolutely forbidden to ever touch a computer for the rest of their lives. And the only reading matter they will be allowed will be the same spam they and others like them have produced.
The blatantly hypocritical who think no one recognizes their hypocracy will be put on a bus and driven over a cliff. Every company with a telephone recording saying “Your call is very important to us...” will immediately be shut down. The “Nigerian barristers” who prey upon the stupifyingly naive will simply be rounded up and shot.
Anyone who deliberately kills or causes needless physical pain to another human being will be dealt with summarily by experiencing exactly the same pain and to the same degree. This will in time free a vast number of prisons for conversion to my “little rooms”.
Those who laugh at the misfortunes or physical or mental limitations of others will be forced to undergo the same misfortunes, to see how it might affect their sense of humor.
My mind is beginning to boggle as I think of all those who deserve to be on my list. All the petty, the cruel, the deliberately thoughtless, the intolerant…there is no way they can all be listed in one short blog.
I am thinking of starting a petition to have me indeed made Emperor so that I might implement the changes listed above. Can I count on your signature?
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
First, of course, are the hate-mongers. I realize that this will eliminate a number of the world’s political leaders and will definitely decimate the world’s televangelists and a huge number of devoted churchgoers. but so be it. Hate is a contagious disease and should be treated as such. I will lock each of these people in a very small room where their basic needs will be provided, but absolutely forbid them from having contact with anyone. I will, of course, provide each of their rooms with a large mirror so they can still feel close to the only person they care about.
A large number of my second group can also be found in the first: the proselytizers…those people who are as unwilling to consider anything other than their own views as they are insistent on foisting those views on you. I do not suffer gladly their knocking on my door or buttonholing me on the street or calling me on the phone. Those who cannot accept the rights of others to have their own opinions and beliefs deserve a special place in Purgatory. But one of my small rooms will suffice until someone with a higher authority is able to pass judgement.
Next are the bullies: those people who feel they have every right to be as loud, obnoxious, insulting, and contrary as they want to be. My very first act as emperor would be the strict enforcement of the Golden Rule, and those who did not observe it would be removed to a little room until they did.
Those who cannot speak a full sentence of dictionary-recognized English words without the use of profanity will have their mouths taped shut, the tape removed only long enough to permit eating. Should they utter profanity during that period, the tape will be immediately replaced until the next meal. This of course will be devastating to the “popular” music industry, but who cares.
People who wear baseball caps at a “cute” angle will be forbidden to wear them and heavily fined if they do..
Then come those who for reasons I have yet to even come close to comprehending, are famous not for doing good deeds or improving the human condition in any way, shape, or form, but merely for being famous. As for the people who make them famous and follow their every meaningless peccadillo as though it really, truly meant anything at all, I have not yet come up with a punishment for them. I find them a bit pathetic, and think the fact that they don’t seem to believe their own lives have any value or interest might be punishment enough.
The originators and purveyors of internet spam will not only be locked away but absolutely forbidden to ever touch a computer for the rest of their lives. And the only reading matter they will be allowed will be the same spam they and others like them have produced.
The blatantly hypocritical who think no one recognizes their hypocracy will be put on a bus and driven over a cliff. Every company with a telephone recording saying “Your call is very important to us...” will immediately be shut down. The “Nigerian barristers” who prey upon the stupifyingly naive will simply be rounded up and shot.
Anyone who deliberately kills or causes needless physical pain to another human being will be dealt with summarily by experiencing exactly the same pain and to the same degree. This will in time free a vast number of prisons for conversion to my “little rooms”.
Those who laugh at the misfortunes or physical or mental limitations of others will be forced to undergo the same misfortunes, to see how it might affect their sense of humor.
My mind is beginning to boggle as I think of all those who deserve to be on my list. All the petty, the cruel, the deliberately thoughtless, the intolerant…there is no way they can all be listed in one short blog.
I am thinking of starting a petition to have me indeed made Emperor so that I might implement the changes listed above. Can I count on your signature?
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Mental Blanks
My mind has a tendency to go blank at the most inappropriate times. (And an "appropriate" time would be...?) Usually it happens when I most desperately need it not to go blank…like when introducing two people, each of whom I have known for years, and suddenly can't remember one, or often either, of their names.
The most current example was about five minutes ago, when I realized I needed a topic for this blog entry. One minute my mind is like a whale swimming through thoughts as thick as an ocean full of krill, and the next It’s like looking for a lemonade stand in the desert. (Aha! How about a nice blog on non sequiturs and mixed metaphors?)
When I’m writing a book, one or two blanks are almost guaranteed, but I usually get over them by going back a chapter or two into the manuscript and reading my way forward to where the blank occurred. It’s rather like a car trying to get up a slippery hill…back up, shift it into first, and gun the engine. (Hmmm…about those metaphors….)
Blanks are always a source of frustration, but on very rare occasions they can also be terrifying. I've only had one such instance, but it was more than enough. About a year ago I was on the el late at night, returning from a writers’ meeting. Chicago’s els have various “lines”, the Red and Brown serving the north side of the city. Each line has its own statioins. The Red line is the main line, and all its stations are located in the center of the tracks with northbound trains stopping on one side of the platform and southbound trains on the other. Brown line trains are more or less “feeders” to the Red line, and have two platforms, northbound on one side of the tracks and southbound on the other.
I was on a southbound Brown Line train and somehow got off one stop short of the one I wanted. I had reached the bottom of the stairs before I realized my mistake. I immediately turned around and went back up the same set of stairs to the platform. But when I reached the platform and looked across the tracks at the other platform, my mind drew a total blank. I was absolutely positive that I somehow had crossed from the southbound to the northbound platforms. I stood there totally confused, and my confusion quickly turned to panic. Even when a Red Line train passed by and I clearly saw it said “Dan Ryan”, which I knew meant it was southbound, I still was sure I was on the northbound platform.
It was one of the most terrifying experiences I have ever had, and I realized just how horrifying memory loss has to be for those with Alzheimer’s.
A Brown Line finally came by, clearly marked “Loop” and I got on. I hope I never have an experience like that again.
And so, children, you see what I do when my mind draws a blank when it comes to what I can possibly write about for the next blog. I just start writing about whales and krill and lemonade stands in the desert, gun my engine, and charge up the hill.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
The most current example was about five minutes ago, when I realized I needed a topic for this blog entry. One minute my mind is like a whale swimming through thoughts as thick as an ocean full of krill, and the next It’s like looking for a lemonade stand in the desert. (Aha! How about a nice blog on non sequiturs and mixed metaphors?)
When I’m writing a book, one or two blanks are almost guaranteed, but I usually get over them by going back a chapter or two into the manuscript and reading my way forward to where the blank occurred. It’s rather like a car trying to get up a slippery hill…back up, shift it into first, and gun the engine. (Hmmm…about those metaphors….)
Blanks are always a source of frustration, but on very rare occasions they can also be terrifying. I've only had one such instance, but it was more than enough. About a year ago I was on the el late at night, returning from a writers’ meeting. Chicago’s els have various “lines”, the Red and Brown serving the north side of the city. Each line has its own statioins. The Red line is the main line, and all its stations are located in the center of the tracks with northbound trains stopping on one side of the platform and southbound trains on the other. Brown line trains are more or less “feeders” to the Red line, and have two platforms, northbound on one side of the tracks and southbound on the other.
I was on a southbound Brown Line train and somehow got off one stop short of the one I wanted. I had reached the bottom of the stairs before I realized my mistake. I immediately turned around and went back up the same set of stairs to the platform. But when I reached the platform and looked across the tracks at the other platform, my mind drew a total blank. I was absolutely positive that I somehow had crossed from the southbound to the northbound platforms. I stood there totally confused, and my confusion quickly turned to panic. Even when a Red Line train passed by and I clearly saw it said “Dan Ryan”, which I knew meant it was southbound, I still was sure I was on the northbound platform.
It was one of the most terrifying experiences I have ever had, and I realized just how horrifying memory loss has to be for those with Alzheimer’s.
A Brown Line finally came by, clearly marked “Loop” and I got on. I hope I never have an experience like that again.
And so, children, you see what I do when my mind draws a blank when it comes to what I can possibly write about for the next blog. I just start writing about whales and krill and lemonade stands in the desert, gun my engine, and charge up the hill.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Patience
I admire people who have patience. I also admire people who have $28,000,000 in the bank. Unfortunately, I have neither
Patience—or,, more accurately, my total lack thereof—is one of the most consistent and recurring themes in my life. I have never been able to grasp the need for it: if I want/expect something to happen, there is in my mind absolutely no reason why I should have to wait for it. Waiting for something wastes time, and time is without question my largest single obsession.
Being a writer and having patience go together, like peanut butter and jelly. I hate peanut butter and jelly. I am at the moment awaiting the release of my next book, which my publisher assures me is rolling off the press as we speak. But it was supposed to be rolling off the press sometime in the middle of June, and it didn’t, and I’m still waiting for it, mumbling and muttering and being miserable. I know I will have it sometime, but I want it now, and I have wanted it now long before it’s originally-scheduled release date. I’ve wanted it now since the minute I sent it off to the publisher.
And, please, you know me better to say “but that’s not realistic”…we all know where I stand when it comes to accepting reality. I do make some concession to logic: I know it takes time for a book to go through the process, but that same logic also says that six months should be more than ample time to do what has to be done and get the book into the reader’s hands.
I often wonder how I can possibly justify my lack of patience with the very real pride I take in the stoicism I developed during and after my bout with cancer, and I realize that in the scheme of things patience is little more than a niggle. Patience is the desire to bridge the gap between now and a point of time in the future but, like worry—to which we all seem to devote far too much time—the fact is that the things we wait for or worry about inevitably do resolve themselves eventually and, like kidney stones, once they’re passed, the pain and anxiety are instantly over and usually forgotten as we turn our attention to the next set of niggles.
Now, if I could just take the awareness in that last sentence and apply it to my own life, things would go a lot easier. But considering that I am far better at giving advice than taking it, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back
Patience—or,, more accurately, my total lack thereof—is one of the most consistent and recurring themes in my life. I have never been able to grasp the need for it: if I want/expect something to happen, there is in my mind absolutely no reason why I should have to wait for it. Waiting for something wastes time, and time is without question my largest single obsession.
Being a writer and having patience go together, like peanut butter and jelly. I hate peanut butter and jelly. I am at the moment awaiting the release of my next book, which my publisher assures me is rolling off the press as we speak. But it was supposed to be rolling off the press sometime in the middle of June, and it didn’t, and I’m still waiting for it, mumbling and muttering and being miserable. I know I will have it sometime, but I want it now, and I have wanted it now long before it’s originally-scheduled release date. I’ve wanted it now since the minute I sent it off to the publisher.
And, please, you know me better to say “but that’s not realistic”…we all know where I stand when it comes to accepting reality. I do make some concession to logic: I know it takes time for a book to go through the process, but that same logic also says that six months should be more than ample time to do what has to be done and get the book into the reader’s hands.
I often wonder how I can possibly justify my lack of patience with the very real pride I take in the stoicism I developed during and after my bout with cancer, and I realize that in the scheme of things patience is little more than a niggle. Patience is the desire to bridge the gap between now and a point of time in the future but, like worry—to which we all seem to devote far too much time—the fact is that the things we wait for or worry about inevitably do resolve themselves eventually and, like kidney stones, once they’re passed, the pain and anxiety are instantly over and usually forgotten as we turn our attention to the next set of niggles.
Now, if I could just take the awareness in that last sentence and apply it to my own life, things would go a lot easier. But considering that I am far better at giving advice than taking it, I wouldn’t hold my breath.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back
Friday, July 13, 2007
Mindworks
I woke up this morning realizing that I had not written a blog entry for today. My own fault: I had two days to do it, but on the old tried-and-true principle of “never do today what you can put off ‘til tomorrow,” I didn’t.
The first thing I reached for, when trying to think of a topic, was my Whitman’s Sampler Box of Metaphors. I tend to think in metaphors a lot. The first one I picked up was one of my favorites, the “life as an ocean” one. So I started off with it, and here’s all the further I got (obviously, as you can tell, I added this paragraph after the fact):
“So here I stand, on the shore of my mind, skipping thought-stones across the surface, trying to see which one will go the furthest and therefore be the one I’ll use for the blog. The first one I tossed was about my friends Forrest and Bill, who have been together for 50 years and are two of the most blessed people I have ever met. I will definitely do one on them; just not today.
“I then tried tossing the idea of a general blog on friends living and dead, and friendship past and present: I’ve done several of those and enjoy spending mental time with them, but I’m still not totally awake and the decision of which one of hundreds to do was just too cumbersome, made a huge splash the instant it hit the surface, and sank immediately.”
Okay, let’s pitch that one for the moment.
I should have posted this by now, and I still haven’t even come up with an idea of what to write about! Something silly? Something warm and fuzzy? Something deep and pontifical? ( I seem to do a lot of those). Or reflexive, or nostalgic, or ranting, or …? So many choices, and while I rummage around in increasing panic as the minutes tick by, it occurs to me that I would be better off just skipping an entry for today.
But of course I couldn’t do that. You were kind enough to take time from your busy day to come to this site expecting to find an entry, so I couldn’t possibly not have something for you. But you’ve come for a piece of cake and all I’m offering you here is a plate of crumbs. (Uh…was that a metaphor?)
And then the guilt kicks in, and one of Dick Hardesty’s mind voices is berating me severely for being so damned lazy…for trying to just foist off a bunch of pointless babble as an excuse for an entry. I don’t like feeling guilty, but it is too-large a part of my life at times.
So I’ll just cover all of the above in a nice, shiny coat of paint which I know will begin to chip off even before it is dry, and offer this whatever-it-might-be as a small example of how one writer’s mind works: metaphor after metaphor, unconnected thought after unconnected thought; a popcorn popper with the heat turned up and each kernel a thought; a fireworks display of mental synapses firing off randomly.
So I once more throw myself on your patience and good nature, and hope you will forgive me these occasional lapses. I’ll start working on the next blog today. I promise.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
The first thing I reached for, when trying to think of a topic, was my Whitman’s Sampler Box of Metaphors. I tend to think in metaphors a lot. The first one I picked up was one of my favorites, the “life as an ocean” one. So I started off with it, and here’s all the further I got (obviously, as you can tell, I added this paragraph after the fact):
“So here I stand, on the shore of my mind, skipping thought-stones across the surface, trying to see which one will go the furthest and therefore be the one I’ll use for the blog. The first one I tossed was about my friends Forrest and Bill, who have been together for 50 years and are two of the most blessed people I have ever met. I will definitely do one on them; just not today.
“I then tried tossing the idea of a general blog on friends living and dead, and friendship past and present: I’ve done several of those and enjoy spending mental time with them, but I’m still not totally awake and the decision of which one of hundreds to do was just too cumbersome, made a huge splash the instant it hit the surface, and sank immediately.”
Okay, let’s pitch that one for the moment.
I should have posted this by now, and I still haven’t even come up with an idea of what to write about! Something silly? Something warm and fuzzy? Something deep and pontifical? ( I seem to do a lot of those). Or reflexive, or nostalgic, or ranting, or …? So many choices, and while I rummage around in increasing panic as the minutes tick by, it occurs to me that I would be better off just skipping an entry for today.
But of course I couldn’t do that. You were kind enough to take time from your busy day to come to this site expecting to find an entry, so I couldn’t possibly not have something for you. But you’ve come for a piece of cake and all I’m offering you here is a plate of crumbs. (Uh…was that a metaphor?)
And then the guilt kicks in, and one of Dick Hardesty’s mind voices is berating me severely for being so damned lazy…for trying to just foist off a bunch of pointless babble as an excuse for an entry. I don’t like feeling guilty, but it is too-large a part of my life at times.
So I’ll just cover all of the above in a nice, shiny coat of paint which I know will begin to chip off even before it is dry, and offer this whatever-it-might-be as a small example of how one writer’s mind works: metaphor after metaphor, unconnected thought after unconnected thought; a popcorn popper with the heat turned up and each kernel a thought; a fireworks display of mental synapses firing off randomly.
So I once more throw myself on your patience and good nature, and hope you will forgive me these occasional lapses. I’ll start working on the next blog today. I promise.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Commercial Raves
You may want to send small children out of the room, since when I say I’ll be raving about commercials, I fear I mean it literally.
What prompted me to go off on this particular tangent I of course have no idea. But here are just a few random thoughts on advertising/commercials that came along as I wrote. Don’t expect much in the line of linear thought. Ready?
I’m often tempted to ask just how stupid advertisers think the public is—or how stupid the public is to believe them—but the answer is all too clear. Think Home Shopping Network.
Car ads are fond of offering next-to-nothing finance rates “for highly qualified buyers.” May I ask just what a “highly qualified buyer” might be? I suspect that means someone who has enough money to be able to buy the car outright and doesn’t need a low finance rate to begin with.
One of my very favorite ads absolutely positively guarantees that “no loan application will be refused”. That’s truly brilliant! You will note it says nothing whatever about whether once the application has been accepted, it will be approved. Would anyone like to place a bet?
I love “loan consolidation” offers (paycheck advance loans and income tax advance loans are fruit of the same tree). It never seems to occur to those suckered in that not only will they still have to pay off their regular bills, but that now they will have a new one...paying off the people who made the loan to pay off original set of bills.
Why is it that advertisers seem to think that by talking very fast in a frantic “Run! Save Yourself!” voice might somehow convince you to buy whatever swill they’re pushing?
Schlock sold with a “Certificate of Authenticity” also amuses me. And the point…let alone the value…of a Certificate of Authenticity is?
As the night follows day, you can absolutely, positively guarantee that when anything being sold for $19.95 claims to be “A $250 Value!!!” its true value could not conceivably exceed $1.25, if that.
If that marvelous combination floor-mop-and-popcorn-popper with the Lifetime Guarantee were one tenth as good as they claim it to be, why would they then offer to give you two of them for the price of one?
Four words which should be cause for lethal injection for any advertiser are “But Wait! There’s More!” Why in the world would they have to give any more than they absolutely have to, if what they’re pitching is 1/1,000th as good as they’ve been screaming at you? The answer would be obvious to a chimpanzee, but apparently not to homo sapiens.
Were I king, I would seriously also consider lethal injections for anyone involved in the production and distribution of Infomercials. I would nobly spare the same fate for people who watch the things on the grounds that they surely must already be brain dead. Where do they get the audiences for these shows? They grin and nod and applaud wildly as though someone were standing off camera with a machine gun trained on them threatening to open fire if they don’t act like complete idiots. Whenever presented with the most trivial supposed fact about the product being touted, they display more awe than St. Bernadette must have shown upon seeing the Virgin Mary. And I will not ask about the so-called ‘hosts’ of these insults to 5,000 years of struggle toward civilization. The word “sycophant” was coined for them: they gush more than an Oklahoma oil field.
And when I’m told by the breathless salesperson/voiceover that whatever gewgaw they’re trying to foist off is “Not Sold in Stores!!” I can be sure that the reason is because no store would touch it with a ten foot pole.
Hey, I’ve run out of space, and I’m only just getting started! Well, later you can be sure.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
What prompted me to go off on this particular tangent I of course have no idea. But here are just a few random thoughts on advertising/commercials that came along as I wrote. Don’t expect much in the line of linear thought. Ready?
I’m often tempted to ask just how stupid advertisers think the public is—or how stupid the public is to believe them—but the answer is all too clear. Think Home Shopping Network.
Car ads are fond of offering next-to-nothing finance rates “for highly qualified buyers.” May I ask just what a “highly qualified buyer” might be? I suspect that means someone who has enough money to be able to buy the car outright and doesn’t need a low finance rate to begin with.
One of my very favorite ads absolutely positively guarantees that “no loan application will be refused”. That’s truly brilliant! You will note it says nothing whatever about whether once the application has been accepted, it will be approved. Would anyone like to place a bet?
I love “loan consolidation” offers (paycheck advance loans and income tax advance loans are fruit of the same tree). It never seems to occur to those suckered in that not only will they still have to pay off their regular bills, but that now they will have a new one...paying off the people who made the loan to pay off original set of bills.
Why is it that advertisers seem to think that by talking very fast in a frantic “Run! Save Yourself!” voice might somehow convince you to buy whatever swill they’re pushing?
Schlock sold with a “Certificate of Authenticity” also amuses me. And the point…let alone the value…of a Certificate of Authenticity is?
As the night follows day, you can absolutely, positively guarantee that when anything being sold for $19.95 claims to be “A $250 Value!!!” its true value could not conceivably exceed $1.25, if that.
If that marvelous combination floor-mop-and-popcorn-popper with the Lifetime Guarantee were one tenth as good as they claim it to be, why would they then offer to give you two of them for the price of one?
Four words which should be cause for lethal injection for any advertiser are “But Wait! There’s More!” Why in the world would they have to give any more than they absolutely have to, if what they’re pitching is 1/1,000th as good as they’ve been screaming at you? The answer would be obvious to a chimpanzee, but apparently not to homo sapiens.
Were I king, I would seriously also consider lethal injections for anyone involved in the production and distribution of Infomercials. I would nobly spare the same fate for people who watch the things on the grounds that they surely must already be brain dead. Where do they get the audiences for these shows? They grin and nod and applaud wildly as though someone were standing off camera with a machine gun trained on them threatening to open fire if they don’t act like complete idiots. Whenever presented with the most trivial supposed fact about the product being touted, they display more awe than St. Bernadette must have shown upon seeing the Virgin Mary. And I will not ask about the so-called ‘hosts’ of these insults to 5,000 years of struggle toward civilization. The word “sycophant” was coined for them: they gush more than an Oklahoma oil field.
And when I’m told by the breathless salesperson/voiceover that whatever gewgaw they’re trying to foist off is “Not Sold in Stores!!” I can be sure that the reason is because no store would touch it with a ten foot pole.
Hey, I’ve run out of space, and I’m only just getting started! Well, later you can be sure.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Condescension
Oh, dear Lord, how I hate condescension! Deliberate condescension is infuriating; unintentional condescension is just hurtful. But either way, it is dismissal…and I find myself increasingly on the receiving end of it as the years too-rapidly pass. Again, most of it is well-intentioned, but the fact is that the older we become, the more we are regarded the same way as we regard small children. (“Oh, that’s a very pretty picture, Bobby. Did you draw it all by yourself?)
Yesterday in a store, a young woman dropped a plastic bottle of water, and I quickly bent over to pick it up for her. Rather than a simple “thank you” she went out of her way to let me know how very much she appreciated my kindness, and wished me a very nice day, which, in turn, was very nice of her. But would she have reacted the same way if a 30-year-old had done the same thing? Possible, but I somehow doubt it.
What happens to us as we grow older? Why do people begin treating us differently just because we have accumulated several more years than they have? And have not the slightest doubt, regardless of how young you now are, that if you are lucky enough to live long enough, your days of being on the receiving end of condescension will come.
Part of the problem, admittedly, belongs with the aging, who too often stop doing things for themselves when they see they can rely on other people to do it for them. Strong, dynamic people who once ran successful businesses and raised families and whose opinions were sought and valued on every subject slowly slide into timidity and hesitancy and unsurity. “Oh, I can’t do that anymore!” “I’m to old to do thus and so.” “No, thanks, I think I’ll just stay home and knit.”
When I lived in northern Wisconsin, my neighbor and good friend Louisa was nearing 80, living alone, keeping her house spotless, cooking wonderful things which she would make sure I would share. She tended a good sized garden, and was always on the go. Then one day she fell in her home and wasn’t found for a couple of hours. Her daughter Marge immediately came from Minneapolis to care for her and in the blink of an eye, it seemed, Louisa changed from “Let me get you a cup of coffee” to “Marge, could you get me a glass of water?” Marge, out of love and concern, insisted Louisa come to live with her and her family in Minneapolis, taking Louisa not only from her home but from everyone and everything she had known all her life. Within a year, she was dead. In a way, I can’t help but think she was a victim of a virulent strain of unintentional condescension.
The gap between what we were and what we, willingly or unwillingly, become grows with each act of condescension. “How are we today, Bob?” (The use of “We” is the epitome of condescension.) “Would you like some help with that?” If Bob looks like he needs “some help with that”, by all means offer it. If he looks too frail to stand by himself on a bus, by all means offer him a seat. But if he is just carrying a package or standing there minding his own business, give him the dignity of treating him like everyone else.
We should never stop being kind, or thoughtful of others of any age. But when it comes to those much older than you, just, please, adapt the level of kindness to the situation. Be careful that your kindness does not say, as condescension to the elderly too often says: “You are no longer one of us.”
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Yesterday in a store, a young woman dropped a plastic bottle of water, and I quickly bent over to pick it up for her. Rather than a simple “thank you” she went out of her way to let me know how very much she appreciated my kindness, and wished me a very nice day, which, in turn, was very nice of her. But would she have reacted the same way if a 30-year-old had done the same thing? Possible, but I somehow doubt it.
What happens to us as we grow older? Why do people begin treating us differently just because we have accumulated several more years than they have? And have not the slightest doubt, regardless of how young you now are, that if you are lucky enough to live long enough, your days of being on the receiving end of condescension will come.
Part of the problem, admittedly, belongs with the aging, who too often stop doing things for themselves when they see they can rely on other people to do it for them. Strong, dynamic people who once ran successful businesses and raised families and whose opinions were sought and valued on every subject slowly slide into timidity and hesitancy and unsurity. “Oh, I can’t do that anymore!” “I’m to old to do thus and so.” “No, thanks, I think I’ll just stay home and knit.”
When I lived in northern Wisconsin, my neighbor and good friend Louisa was nearing 80, living alone, keeping her house spotless, cooking wonderful things which she would make sure I would share. She tended a good sized garden, and was always on the go. Then one day she fell in her home and wasn’t found for a couple of hours. Her daughter Marge immediately came from Minneapolis to care for her and in the blink of an eye, it seemed, Louisa changed from “Let me get you a cup of coffee” to “Marge, could you get me a glass of water?” Marge, out of love and concern, insisted Louisa come to live with her and her family in Minneapolis, taking Louisa not only from her home but from everyone and everything she had known all her life. Within a year, she was dead. In a way, I can’t help but think she was a victim of a virulent strain of unintentional condescension.
The gap between what we were and what we, willingly or unwillingly, become grows with each act of condescension. “How are we today, Bob?” (The use of “We” is the epitome of condescension.) “Would you like some help with that?” If Bob looks like he needs “some help with that”, by all means offer it. If he looks too frail to stand by himself on a bus, by all means offer him a seat. But if he is just carrying a package or standing there minding his own business, give him the dignity of treating him like everyone else.
We should never stop being kind, or thoughtful of others of any age. But when it comes to those much older than you, just, please, adapt the level of kindness to the situation. Be careful that your kindness does not say, as condescension to the elderly too often says: “You are no longer one of us.”
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Pennies
Though I’m sure you haven’t noticed from my earlier blogs, I have a very slight tendency toward egomania. I firmly believe that certain key elements of my emotional development hit a snag somewhere around the age of two and have never advanced beyond that point. I cannot help but believe, in my heart of hearts, that the universe revolves around me…or should. That evidence of that belief is sorely lacking and in fact is overwhelmingly and consistently countered by reality is, as has been the subject of several blogs, the reason I write. If the world won’t conform to what I want it and expect it to be, I’ll create my own world and ignore the real one as much as possible.
I bewail at great length those things which I do not have in the real world, or which I feel have been denied me. I resent, with a blinding intensity, growing older—though the only practical alternative is unthinkable. I resent not being, physically, the same person I was five years ago. I have a part-time job working weekends at a local shopping center, which contains a Bally’s gym, and to watch the endless flow of physically perfect and beautiful young men who are completely unaware of what they have truly often makes my chest ache with longing.
T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” pretty much says it all. “I hear the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they sing for me.”
And yet, even with all this gnashing of teeth and wailing and moaning and too-frequent plunges into fathomless oceans of self pity, every now and then I am yanked back to reality like a tethered dog which, racing at full tilt, abruptly reaches the end of its leash.
Yesterday, walking down the street with a friend and practicing holding my head as high as I physically can, I noticed that ahead of us was a severely handicapped young man in his late teens or early twenties. And I was instantly yanked back to reality and was deeply and thoroughly ashamed of myself for being so totally absorbed with my own relatively minuscule physical problems.
For me to pity that young man, or anyone with severe physical limitations, would be an insult to them and shame me further. Pity too often covers a conscious or subconscious sense of superiority. My admiration for people who simply deal with what life has given them is boundless. To realize that someone who deals, every moment of their life, with potentially isolating physical and/or emotional restrictions infinitely greater than my own puts my own overblown egocentricism into perspective.
I bewail being my age, until I realize that not one of those beautiful 20-year-olds I see and envy every day knows whether he will be so fortunate as to be given the number of years I have been given.
I cannot raise my head higher than being able to look passers by in the eye, and even then I can’t hold that position for very long. My head is permanently bent forward due to changes in my neck vertebra caused by the effect of the 35 radiation treatments I underwent in 2004 for tongue cancer. But I am alive, and cancer-free and when rationality overcomes emotion I am infinitely, infinitely grateful for those facts.
And, hey, with my head bent forward I can more easily spot pennies lying on the ground. I pick them up, too.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
I bewail at great length those things which I do not have in the real world, or which I feel have been denied me. I resent, with a blinding intensity, growing older—though the only practical alternative is unthinkable. I resent not being, physically, the same person I was five years ago. I have a part-time job working weekends at a local shopping center, which contains a Bally’s gym, and to watch the endless flow of physically perfect and beautiful young men who are completely unaware of what they have truly often makes my chest ache with longing.
T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” pretty much says it all. “I hear the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they sing for me.”
And yet, even with all this gnashing of teeth and wailing and moaning and too-frequent plunges into fathomless oceans of self pity, every now and then I am yanked back to reality like a tethered dog which, racing at full tilt, abruptly reaches the end of its leash.
Yesterday, walking down the street with a friend and practicing holding my head as high as I physically can, I noticed that ahead of us was a severely handicapped young man in his late teens or early twenties. And I was instantly yanked back to reality and was deeply and thoroughly ashamed of myself for being so totally absorbed with my own relatively minuscule physical problems.
For me to pity that young man, or anyone with severe physical limitations, would be an insult to them and shame me further. Pity too often covers a conscious or subconscious sense of superiority. My admiration for people who simply deal with what life has given them is boundless. To realize that someone who deals, every moment of their life, with potentially isolating physical and/or emotional restrictions infinitely greater than my own puts my own overblown egocentricism into perspective.
I bewail being my age, until I realize that not one of those beautiful 20-year-olds I see and envy every day knows whether he will be so fortunate as to be given the number of years I have been given.
I cannot raise my head higher than being able to look passers by in the eye, and even then I can’t hold that position for very long. My head is permanently bent forward due to changes in my neck vertebra caused by the effect of the 35 radiation treatments I underwent in 2004 for tongue cancer. But I am alive, and cancer-free and when rationality overcomes emotion I am infinitely, infinitely grateful for those facts.
And, hey, with my head bent forward I can more easily spot pennies lying on the ground. I pick them up, too.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Monday, June 04, 2007
The Lives of Others
I won’t go into detail as to how it came about, but I found myself the other day in a situation wherein for several hours I had a choice between staring at the walls or reading a stack of fan and gossip magazines. I should have stared at the walls, for thumbing through page after endless page of the absolutely enthralling details of the daily lives of movie stars and far more “celebrities” than I ever knew or cared existed convinced me without a doubt that we, as a society, are doomed.
Children are starving in poor countries around the world, yet we cut down millions of trees to print glossy drek to let us know that Nick and Jessica (who?) absolutely are/are not getting back together, and that Lindsay Lohan (who?), and Brittany (who?) are back in rehab for the twelfth time in two weeks.
American servicemen and women are being slaughtered in Iraq, but there’s a ten-page in-depth report on Tori Spelling (who?) and her new baby...he’s only six months old and already he is cutting his first tooth!!!!
We are constantly being lied to by our own government, but who cares? Did you catch what Rene Zellweiger (who?) wore to the C.R.A.P. awards?
Global warming? Why waste your time? You can’t do anything about it anyway. But what’s really hot is that shot of Matthew McConehey (who?) In his briefs.
And how can I possibly care about skyrocketing gas prices when I am consumed with angst over word that Tom and Katie (who?) are either definitely considering a divorce or are the happiest married couple on earth.
The ever-changing status of these I mean like awesome people’s relationships ( “married.” “wed,” “hitched”, “engaged”, “living together”, “dating” , “seen with”, “constant companions”, “gal-pal”, etc.) is far more important than the petty lives of insignificant nobodys like…well, like you, for instnace..
But I am being unfair, and I apologize. People do care about bigger issues. Did you see that darling little girl Brad and Angelina (who?) just adopted from…uh…one of those places in Africa (or was it Asia? Oh, well, no matter…she’s just darling.) Nor are they unaware of human suffering: there was a heart-rending article on the agonies Parker Posey (who?) underwent when a drain backed up in not one but two of her bathrooms at the same time! and just ruined her new carpets.
I was vastly reassured, however, to derive from a careful analysis of each of these august periodicals, albeit by implication rather than stated fact, that homosexuals apparently do not exist. The supposed ratio between heterosexuals and homosexuals is not, as science has indicated, 9 to 1, but as these learned tomes undoubtedly correctly indicate, more like 99,999,998 to none. Certainly the appearance of the words “homosexual” or “gay” is scarcer than hen’s teeth. And when one of these revered bastions of journalistic excellence does use one of the words—usually on a shocking headline on the front cover, carefully placed there to draw readers like flies to a slop bucket—“Inside the Rumors: Is Ryan Seacrest (who?) Gay??!!!???!!!???”, you can take great comfort in the fact that upon reading the article, you learn that the answer is of course he isn’t gay, you silly goose!
But the most discouraging thing about my hours with this idiocy—other than that I spent them at all—was that I am not, as I had always thought, the only one who refuses to acknowledge reality. The difference, as I see it, is that while I find so much fascination within myself so as to have little time for it, far too many others apparently find so little of interest or worth within themselves that they must seek it in the delusional “reality” of others.
It is to weep.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Children are starving in poor countries around the world, yet we cut down millions of trees to print glossy drek to let us know that Nick and Jessica (who?) absolutely are/are not getting back together, and that Lindsay Lohan (who?), and Brittany (who?) are back in rehab for the twelfth time in two weeks.
American servicemen and women are being slaughtered in Iraq, but there’s a ten-page in-depth report on Tori Spelling (who?) and her new baby...he’s only six months old and already he is cutting his first tooth!!!!
We are constantly being lied to by our own government, but who cares? Did you catch what Rene Zellweiger (who?) wore to the C.R.A.P. awards?
Global warming? Why waste your time? You can’t do anything about it anyway. But what’s really hot is that shot of Matthew McConehey (who?) In his briefs.
And how can I possibly care about skyrocketing gas prices when I am consumed with angst over word that Tom and Katie (who?) are either definitely considering a divorce or are the happiest married couple on earth.
The ever-changing status of these I mean like awesome people’s relationships ( “married.” “wed,” “hitched”, “engaged”, “living together”, “dating” , “seen with”, “constant companions”, “gal-pal”, etc.) is far more important than the petty lives of insignificant nobodys like…well, like you, for instnace..
But I am being unfair, and I apologize. People do care about bigger issues. Did you see that darling little girl Brad and Angelina (who?) just adopted from…uh…one of those places in Africa (or was it Asia? Oh, well, no matter…she’s just darling.) Nor are they unaware of human suffering: there was a heart-rending article on the agonies Parker Posey (who?) underwent when a drain backed up in not one but two of her bathrooms at the same time! and just ruined her new carpets.
I was vastly reassured, however, to derive from a careful analysis of each of these august periodicals, albeit by implication rather than stated fact, that homosexuals apparently do not exist. The supposed ratio between heterosexuals and homosexuals is not, as science has indicated, 9 to 1, but as these learned tomes undoubtedly correctly indicate, more like 99,999,998 to none. Certainly the appearance of the words “homosexual” or “gay” is scarcer than hen’s teeth. And when one of these revered bastions of journalistic excellence does use one of the words—usually on a shocking headline on the front cover, carefully placed there to draw readers like flies to a slop bucket—“Inside the Rumors: Is Ryan Seacrest (who?) Gay??!!!???!!!???”, you can take great comfort in the fact that upon reading the article, you learn that the answer is of course he isn’t gay, you silly goose!
But the most discouraging thing about my hours with this idiocy—other than that I spent them at all—was that I am not, as I had always thought, the only one who refuses to acknowledge reality. The difference, as I see it, is that while I find so much fascination within myself so as to have little time for it, far too many others apparently find so little of interest or worth within themselves that they must seek it in the delusional “reality” of others.
It is to weep.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Different Worlds
I was reading a post from a cyberfriend on one of the many predominantly straight lists to which I belong She was telling of her Memorial Day weekend activities with her husband and family, and of picnics, and nieces and weddings and all the other wholesome things that seem to be part of every heterosexual’s life, and I was struck yet again by how totally alien these things are…and have always been…to me.
The sense of belonging to my own family is something I cannot imagine being without. It is the one solid, unchangeable thing in a constantly changing, turbulent world. Yet even with them, I am aware of vast gulfs in our daily lives…differences which go far below what appears on the surface. So much of the lives of heterosexuals revolve around the problems (and joys) of raising children, of weddings, engagements, bridal showers, baby showers, messy divorces, church functions, and the like. All integral parts of the average heterosexual’s life, and all completely foreign to me.
I don't have much trouble, day to day, dealing with straight women. But I tend to be uncomfortable around straight men I do not know well. It probably stems from the fact that while I myself am a man (and have never either doubted it or had the slightest desire to be anything else), we simply cannot relate to or understand each other. Intellectually there may be few differences, but socially.... Straight men's lives social lives understandably revolve around the wife and kids or the girlfriend or fishing or deer hunting or sitting around with their emotional peers watching the Big Game du jour (and even more incomprehensibly, getting jump-up-and-down excited about it). Sorry, but we might as well be from two different planets.
I’ve never understood, for one thing (among many) why it is that straight men seem driven to go to great lengths to prove that they are “real men”? Why in the world should the question ever even have to arise?
Straight men tend to view gays with widely varying degrees and mixtures of suspicion, mistrust, revulsion, and curiosity. I rather suspect that deep down inside there is also an element of grudging envy of some of the “freedoms” gay men supposedly have that they do not. While gays have long been condemned for their “promiscuity” (largely because society won’t allow us the rights of monogamy), I wager that more than a few straight men would love to be as unrestrained in their sex lives as they condemn (usually wrongly) gay men for being.
Straight men may well...and rightly...resent the fact that gay men are as a rule far more free to ignore the chained-to-the-wall constraints our society imposes on men. “Men” do not cry when they are sad or hurt: in fact, the less emotion they display, the more “manly” they are (or consider themselves to be), and if keeping things bottled up inside leads to ulcers or a stress-induced heart attack, well, so be it. Straighten up and face it “like a man.”.
I find it fascinating that while sex is an integral and undeniable part of human existence, it is the object of our sexual attraction which creates nearly insurmountable walls between us. Love, the most positive emotion known to our race, is only considered valid if the two people experiencing it are of different genders.
With a global population of six billion or so, and counting, one might think that the fact that Adam and Steve or Eve and Joanne cannot naturally procreate would be considered in a far more positive light than it is. (“Breeders” is a pejorative gays direct against straights in partial retaliation for the endless string of epithets directed against us.)
The fact of the matter is that our society concentrates far, far too heavily on strict adherence to arbitrary gender roles, and in so doing it prevents our focusing on those things far more basic to humanity: love, loyalty, honesty, kindness, honor, and common decency toward one another.
It is said that the mills of the gods grind exceedingly slowly. Our society is, in fact changing. But I wouldn't put off doing the laundry waiting for the change to be complete.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
The sense of belonging to my own family is something I cannot imagine being without. It is the one solid, unchangeable thing in a constantly changing, turbulent world. Yet even with them, I am aware of vast gulfs in our daily lives…differences which go far below what appears on the surface. So much of the lives of heterosexuals revolve around the problems (and joys) of raising children, of weddings, engagements, bridal showers, baby showers, messy divorces, church functions, and the like. All integral parts of the average heterosexual’s life, and all completely foreign to me.
I don't have much trouble, day to day, dealing with straight women. But I tend to be uncomfortable around straight men I do not know well. It probably stems from the fact that while I myself am a man (and have never either doubted it or had the slightest desire to be anything else), we simply cannot relate to or understand each other. Intellectually there may be few differences, but socially.... Straight men's lives social lives understandably revolve around the wife and kids or the girlfriend or fishing or deer hunting or sitting around with their emotional peers watching the Big Game du jour (and even more incomprehensibly, getting jump-up-and-down excited about it). Sorry, but we might as well be from two different planets.
I’ve never understood, for one thing (among many) why it is that straight men seem driven to go to great lengths to prove that they are “real men”? Why in the world should the question ever even have to arise?
Straight men tend to view gays with widely varying degrees and mixtures of suspicion, mistrust, revulsion, and curiosity. I rather suspect that deep down inside there is also an element of grudging envy of some of the “freedoms” gay men supposedly have that they do not. While gays have long been condemned for their “promiscuity” (largely because society won’t allow us the rights of monogamy), I wager that more than a few straight men would love to be as unrestrained in their sex lives as they condemn (usually wrongly) gay men for being.
Straight men may well...and rightly...resent the fact that gay men are as a rule far more free to ignore the chained-to-the-wall constraints our society imposes on men. “Men” do not cry when they are sad or hurt: in fact, the less emotion they display, the more “manly” they are (or consider themselves to be), and if keeping things bottled up inside leads to ulcers or a stress-induced heart attack, well, so be it. Straighten up and face it “like a man.”.
I find it fascinating that while sex is an integral and undeniable part of human existence, it is the object of our sexual attraction which creates nearly insurmountable walls between us. Love, the most positive emotion known to our race, is only considered valid if the two people experiencing it are of different genders.
With a global population of six billion or so, and counting, one might think that the fact that Adam and Steve or Eve and Joanne cannot naturally procreate would be considered in a far more positive light than it is. (“Breeders” is a pejorative gays direct against straights in partial retaliation for the endless string of epithets directed against us.)
The fact of the matter is that our society concentrates far, far too heavily on strict adherence to arbitrary gender roles, and in so doing it prevents our focusing on those things far more basic to humanity: love, loyalty, honesty, kindness, honor, and common decency toward one another.
It is said that the mills of the gods grind exceedingly slowly. Our society is, in fact changing. But I wouldn't put off doing the laundry waiting for the change to be complete.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Monday, May 21, 2007
The Lake
Mom and Dad at the Lake, circa 1965
We began going to Lake Koshkonong in southern Wisconsin, about 70 miles from our home in Rockford, sometime during World War II. Some friends of my parents from the Moose Club, the Olsons, had a cottage there which they rented out. We subsequently began spending our summer vacations there, in a small compound of four lakeside cottages all owned by people from Rockford
Lake Koshkonong is formed by the Rock River. It is about 2 miles wide and 9 miles long and very shallow…perhaps 20 feet deep at its very deepest point. We could wade out from in front of the cottage for a good block and a half without the water reaching our shoulders (and I was not very tall at the time). The bottom was also very, very muddy, and the water was muddy brown.
It could also be deadly. Being so shallow, the winds could quickly whip it into a froth of whitecaps. The last cottage in the row of four belonged to the Skinner family, whom we knew well. One evening, they and a group of friends decided to go across the lake for a fish fry. Nine people crowded into the 16-foot boat, and on the way back the winds rose, the boat was swamped, and seven of the passengers drowned. Their cottage was sold shortly thereafter to the Fines, a very nice elderly couple from Chicago.
When the cottage between the Olsons and the Fines also went up for sale, my parents bought it. It was small…only two small bedrooms…but it was jerry-built pleasant and had a lovely curved stone fireplace. The people who built the place had carefully gone all around the lake collecting different colored stones for it. And somewhere along the way, someone then painted it white.
While I was in college, my “gang” of friends would frequently come up for weekends, during which we’d sing college songs all the way up and back, water ski and sunbathe during the day while we were there, and play charades, cards, and board games at night. And thinking of those days as I write, I feel the sweet ache of intense nostalgia.
One of these weekend excursions was during rehearsals for a play, and several of the cast members came up, ostensibly to rehearse our lines. When we returned, David, one of the guys who couldn’t make it asked how it went, and with the spontaneity of college kids, a tale developed—with each of us who’d gone contributing a piece of the story—of a weekend from hell. My parents, David was told, were religious fanatics of the most fundamental sort. My mother, he was told, had spent the entire weekend doing nothing but quoting scripture and tatting an altar cloth. My father had insisted on loading us all into our boat and taking us around the lake to distribute religious pamphlets. It wasn’t fair to David, of course, but it was great fun.
My parents came down for the play the closing night, and I told David that I wanted to be sure he met them, though he was less than thrilled by the prospect. Just before curtain, one of the girls who had been up for the “weekend from hell” came in to the dressing room to report that she’d looked out into the audience and that my parents were there. “Your dad must really be mellowing,” she said. “He’s not wearing black.”
After the show there was a cast party to which friends and family were invited. Dad was, by pure coincidence, wearing a dark grey suit. I’d told him of the story we had given David, and the first chance I got, I went to bring David over to meet him. Poor David had been totally traumatized by this point and didn’t know what to expect, but he reluctantly came along.
“David,” I began, “This is my father…,” at which point my dad, poker faced, raised his hand in benediction and said solemnly “Peace, David.”
It is one of my fondest memories of my college career.
I miss my dad.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
His Eye is on the Sparrow
Anyone’s death saddens me, but I fear some sadden me less than others. The death of Jerry Falwell is a case in point. I was frankly amazed to think he managed to live as long as he did without a brain, heart, soul, or conscience.
Mr. Falwell fell into the class of individuals who truly terrify me: those who dare to presume to speak for God. And that so many good, decent people sincerely believed every word the man uttered saddened and depressed me more than I can possibly say. (I was surprised to learn, via Mr. Falwell, that I was largely responsible for the deaths of everyone on September 11, 2001, that I live a depraved, ungodly lifestyle...that I am an abomination in the eyes of God. On reflection it is quite probably this still-widespread notion among many fundamentalist religions that is the reason I am an Agnostic. How can I believe in a God who does not believe in me?
I truly consider myself to be a fair, honest, and decent human being; only one of more than 20 million other fair, honest, and decent members of the gay community, which has been one of Mr. Falwell’s primary targets throughout the years. He continually issued moral judgements,declaring--with no logic or basis in fact--us to be depraved, sinful, and generally unworthy. He was, in my opinion—and yours may well vary—the very worst type of bigot: one who preached intolerance, bigotry, and hatred while claiming to be a Christian. As so many people have pointed out, his Moral Majority was neither. How he or his followers could possibly justify such basic tenets of Christianity as love, the Golden Rule, casting stones, or judging others with the venomous intolerance which was Falwell’s stock in trade is beyond me.
The shortest paragraph in the bible is “Jesus wept.” And I truly believe that would have been Jesus's reaction to Mr. Falwell’s usurping and distortion of His message.
Even though I am, as I said, Agnostic, I do hope there might be a heaven so that, upon arrival there, Mr. Falwell would find exactly the “welcome” he so richly deserves. I’d love to see the look on his face.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Mr. Falwell fell into the class of individuals who truly terrify me: those who dare to presume to speak for God. And that so many good, decent people sincerely believed every word the man uttered saddened and depressed me more than I can possibly say. (I was surprised to learn, via Mr. Falwell, that I was largely responsible for the deaths of everyone on September 11, 2001, that I live a depraved, ungodly lifestyle...that I am an abomination in the eyes of God. On reflection it is quite probably this still-widespread notion among many fundamentalist religions that is the reason I am an Agnostic. How can I believe in a God who does not believe in me?
I truly consider myself to be a fair, honest, and decent human being; only one of more than 20 million other fair, honest, and decent members of the gay community, which has been one of Mr. Falwell’s primary targets throughout the years. He continually issued moral judgements,declaring--with no logic or basis in fact--us to be depraved, sinful, and generally unworthy. He was, in my opinion—and yours may well vary—the very worst type of bigot: one who preached intolerance, bigotry, and hatred while claiming to be a Christian. As so many people have pointed out, his Moral Majority was neither. How he or his followers could possibly justify such basic tenets of Christianity as love, the Golden Rule, casting stones, or judging others with the venomous intolerance which was Falwell’s stock in trade is beyond me.
The shortest paragraph in the bible is “Jesus wept.” And I truly believe that would have been Jesus's reaction to Mr. Falwell’s usurping and distortion of His message.
Even though I am, as I said, Agnostic, I do hope there might be a heaven so that, upon arrival there, Mr. Falwell would find exactly the “welcome” he so richly deserves. I’d love to see the look on his face.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Nick
Nick never knew his father, though his drug-addict mother named her son after him. His name was Nicholas, and the fact that she deliberately misspelled her son’s name as “Nickless” was only the first indication of his fate.
While still very young, he was taken from his mother and placed in the Foster Care system, where he was passed from foster home to foster home like a bowl of potato salad at a picnic. His last ten years in the system was spent with a former marine drill sergeant who continually sexually abused him.
Whether he aged out of the system or ran away is not clear, but he wound up basically on the streets. No real education, no idea of how to behave in the society to which most of us belong and take totally for granted, he drifted. His few friends tended to be other lost souls like himself who simply existed in any way they could.
He was, not surprisingly, frequently in trouble with the law.
I was living in northern Wisconsin when I met Nick through a friend from Milwaukee, who had picked Nick up one evening while hitchhiking. Nick was living with a fellow lost soul he referred to as his “brother,” and the “brother”’s girlfriend. They spent their time smoking pot and dreaming the dreams of the lost.
He did whatever it took to survive, and worked at menial jobs wherever and whenever he could, but never for very long at any one place. And of course when each job ended, it was never his responsibility. Responsibility was not a word in Nick’s vocabulary.
My friend took Nick under his wing and asked if Nick might stay with me for a while, to try to break him free of those chains to his past, and I agreed.
Nick was around 23 at the time; a tall, handsome and basically good young man who, like an abused animal, trusted no one, and his entire life experience had proven him correct. But of all the things that had been denied him, from the day he was born, the greatest by far was the feeling of being loved for anything but his body. He revealed himself only through his drawings, which he kept in a tattered notebook. He carried a sheathed knife in his belt and it was with him everywhere. When I arranged for him to apply for a job at a local supermarket, he wore the knife. He did not get the job.
Even in a small area like the one in which I lived, he managed to find others like those he had left behind in Milwaukee and soon got into the pot habit—it was, after all, a form of escape from a world he simply could not relate to and did not understand.
On the verge of being arrested yet again, Nick returned to Milwaukee…where he subsequently was jailed yet again. With absolutely no other realistic options, and without far more help than is available, Nick defines the term “lost soul.” He is so deep into the dark forest that I fear he will never find his way out.
When I think of Nick, and of what he could have been had someone…anyone…taken the time to care for him, to love him as any child should be loved…my heart truly aches
I wrote a poem about Nick, called “The Broken Child.” If you might be interested in seeing it, just drop me a note.
So why have I told you about Nick? Simply because those of us blessed with all the things of which Nick was deprived simply do not comprehend just how fortunate we are. We too often are so consumed with our own petty problems that we cannot appreciate what we have.
Nick is the candle I hold up in the darkness of my own self-absorption. I hope he can somehow, someday, find his own light.
New entries posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
While still very young, he was taken from his mother and placed in the Foster Care system, where he was passed from foster home to foster home like a bowl of potato salad at a picnic. His last ten years in the system was spent with a former marine drill sergeant who continually sexually abused him.
Whether he aged out of the system or ran away is not clear, but he wound up basically on the streets. No real education, no idea of how to behave in the society to which most of us belong and take totally for granted, he drifted. His few friends tended to be other lost souls like himself who simply existed in any way they could.
He was, not surprisingly, frequently in trouble with the law.
I was living in northern Wisconsin when I met Nick through a friend from Milwaukee, who had picked Nick up one evening while hitchhiking. Nick was living with a fellow lost soul he referred to as his “brother,” and the “brother”’s girlfriend. They spent their time smoking pot and dreaming the dreams of the lost.
He did whatever it took to survive, and worked at menial jobs wherever and whenever he could, but never for very long at any one place. And of course when each job ended, it was never his responsibility. Responsibility was not a word in Nick’s vocabulary.
My friend took Nick under his wing and asked if Nick might stay with me for a while, to try to break him free of those chains to his past, and I agreed.
Nick was around 23 at the time; a tall, handsome and basically good young man who, like an abused animal, trusted no one, and his entire life experience had proven him correct. But of all the things that had been denied him, from the day he was born, the greatest by far was the feeling of being loved for anything but his body. He revealed himself only through his drawings, which he kept in a tattered notebook. He carried a sheathed knife in his belt and it was with him everywhere. When I arranged for him to apply for a job at a local supermarket, he wore the knife. He did not get the job.
Even in a small area like the one in which I lived, he managed to find others like those he had left behind in Milwaukee and soon got into the pot habit—it was, after all, a form of escape from a world he simply could not relate to and did not understand.
On the verge of being arrested yet again, Nick returned to Milwaukee…where he subsequently was jailed yet again. With absolutely no other realistic options, and without far more help than is available, Nick defines the term “lost soul.” He is so deep into the dark forest that I fear he will never find his way out.
When I think of Nick, and of what he could have been had someone…anyone…taken the time to care for him, to love him as any child should be loved…my heart truly aches
I wrote a poem about Nick, called “The Broken Child.” If you might be interested in seeing it, just drop me a note.
So why have I told you about Nick? Simply because those of us blessed with all the things of which Nick was deprived simply do not comprehend just how fortunate we are. We too often are so consumed with our own petty problems that we cannot appreciate what we have.
Nick is the candle I hold up in the darkness of my own self-absorption. I hope he can somehow, someday, find his own light.
New entries posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Gnats
The shore of Lake Superior is magnificent in summer…endless miles of pebbly beach where one can walk for hours without seeing another person. But on a warm summer’s day with no wind, there is a reason why there are no people. To walk there then is to guarantee being enveloped in a literal cloud of tiny, swarming insects I assume are gnats. The locals call them “noseeums”. And their effect can be maddening.
Problems are like noseeums. One or two at a time and they can be shooed away with relative ease. We all have them, all the time
But today is a Lake Superior lakeshore day. Why, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you.
My friend Norman is being released from the hospital today and, to save the $400-plus expense of ambulance transportation, it was agreed that I could pick him up and take him from the hospital to the nursing facility where he’ll remain during the period covered by Medicare post-hospitalization recovery period.
But in order to let me transport him, he needs the oxygen tank from his apartment, which I arranged to pick up this morning before going to get him.
At 8:30 last night he called to say that they needed the oxygen tank immediately, in order to be able to check it out. I hate going out at night because I am never sure of being able to find a parking place when I return. But having little choice, I went down to my building’s parking lot to get into my car.
But my car was not there. I was positive I’d left it there, though on rare occasions I will leave it for up to a day on the street. But I was positive I’d parked in the lot, and even remembered where. It was not there. I walked up and down the entire lot three times, then walked up and down the street in front of my building another two times. No car.
I called the police to report it stolen. Not having driven it in over a week, I had no idea when it could have been taken. They asked for my license plate number, which of course I could not remember (I’m very good about forgetting things under pressure). I looked everywhere through all my papers for the plate number and finally found it. I was told the car had been towed.
Since I have a parking sticker, I could only imagine I had somehow parked it on the street. Surely they would not have taken a stickered car from a sticker-required lot.
So this morning, first thing, I began trying to find out exactly where my car was and how I could get it. I made no fewer than seven phone calls. The police gave me a number. I called it. They did not have the car. They gave me another number. I called it. They did not have the car. They gave me a number. I called it........well, you get the idea.
Finally…finally…I found it, in a city impound lot so far away from where I live I was surprised that it is still in the City of Chicago. To get there by public transportation will take well over an hour, I”m sure.
When I called Norm last night to tell him I’d be unable to pick him up today, he suggested I go and get his car, which has serious front-end-wobble problems.
So now, when I finish typing this gnat-filled note, I shall take the elevated over to Norm’s condo (half hour plus), get his car and his oxygen tank, go to the hospital (fifteen minutes), wait until they officially release him (half-hour to an hour, probably), take him to the nursing home (20 minutes), return his car to his condo (25 minutes), take the Red Line downtown to the Blue Line, get off at Western and take “a bus”–they didn’t specify which one–to the impound lot, where I shall hand them $275, eyes welling with tears of gratitude that they don't charge--as they well could(who could stop them?)--$1,400, and they, with luck, will hand me my car.
On pondering why they had towed my stickered car from the sticker-required parking lot, the only thing I can think of is that the stickers might have an expiration date…something, of course, no one ever bothered to tell me.
Oh, the fun we have.
They’re just gnats, and they’ll all be gone tomorrow. But for right now…
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Problems are like noseeums. One or two at a time and they can be shooed away with relative ease. We all have them, all the time
But today is a Lake Superior lakeshore day. Why, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you.
My friend Norman is being released from the hospital today and, to save the $400-plus expense of ambulance transportation, it was agreed that I could pick him up and take him from the hospital to the nursing facility where he’ll remain during the period covered by Medicare post-hospitalization recovery period.
But in order to let me transport him, he needs the oxygen tank from his apartment, which I arranged to pick up this morning before going to get him.
At 8:30 last night he called to say that they needed the oxygen tank immediately, in order to be able to check it out. I hate going out at night because I am never sure of being able to find a parking place when I return. But having little choice, I went down to my building’s parking lot to get into my car.
But my car was not there. I was positive I’d left it there, though on rare occasions I will leave it for up to a day on the street. But I was positive I’d parked in the lot, and even remembered where. It was not there. I walked up and down the entire lot three times, then walked up and down the street in front of my building another two times. No car.
I called the police to report it stolen. Not having driven it in over a week, I had no idea when it could have been taken. They asked for my license plate number, which of course I could not remember (I’m very good about forgetting things under pressure). I looked everywhere through all my papers for the plate number and finally found it. I was told the car had been towed.
Since I have a parking sticker, I could only imagine I had somehow parked it on the street. Surely they would not have taken a stickered car from a sticker-required lot.
So this morning, first thing, I began trying to find out exactly where my car was and how I could get it. I made no fewer than seven phone calls. The police gave me a number. I called it. They did not have the car. They gave me another number. I called it. They did not have the car. They gave me a number. I called it........well, you get the idea.
Finally…finally…I found it, in a city impound lot so far away from where I live I was surprised that it is still in the City of Chicago. To get there by public transportation will take well over an hour, I”m sure.
When I called Norm last night to tell him I’d be unable to pick him up today, he suggested I go and get his car, which has serious front-end-wobble problems.
So now, when I finish typing this gnat-filled note, I shall take the elevated over to Norm’s condo (half hour plus), get his car and his oxygen tank, go to the hospital (fifteen minutes), wait until they officially release him (half-hour to an hour, probably), take him to the nursing home (20 minutes), return his car to his condo (25 minutes), take the Red Line downtown to the Blue Line, get off at Western and take “a bus”–they didn’t specify which one–to the impound lot, where I shall hand them $275, eyes welling with tears of gratitude that they don't charge--as they well could(who could stop them?)--$1,400, and they, with luck, will hand me my car.
On pondering why they had towed my stickered car from the sticker-required parking lot, the only thing I can think of is that the stickers might have an expiration date…something, of course, no one ever bothered to tell me.
Oh, the fun we have.
They’re just gnats, and they’ll all be gone tomorrow. But for right now…
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Potpourri
Whenever I make the mistake of turning my back on my mind for ten seconds, it inevitably goes running off wildly in all directions.
I was waiting for a bus the other day when a very short, balding little man with a horseshoe of white hair around his pate and an absolutely huge pot belly walked past carrying a briefcase. My immediate thought was: “I am May-or of the Munch-kin Cit-ty”. Go figure.
From there I for absolutely no reason thought of a place called “Preview House” in Los Angeles. People would stand out on busy street corners and offer you free tickets to see and rate TV pilots. I made the mistake of taking one.
Preview House was a very nice theater, with each seat having a small hand-held control unit with a dial and ten numbers, with which we were to record our reactions. Once everyone was seated,, an unctuously hale-fellows-well-met M.C. (or whatever it was he was supposed to be) appeared on the small stage in front of the screen to welcome us and say that we would be seeing two prospective pilots on which the networks would like potential audience reaction before scheduling them in prime time. To enhance the verisimilitude of the TV-watching experience, he advised us they’d also be showing some new commercials as well, and that we should rate them also. He gave us detailed instructions on dial-turning, which he apparently assumed most members of the audience would find difficult to grasp. The houselights dimmed and, the commercials began. Lots of commercials: it seemed like ten or twelve of them, and we all duly rated each one. Finally the first promised TV pilot began.
It was obvious from ten seconds in that this was not only the most God-awful television program ever recorded but that it had, in fact, been recorded some ten to fifteen years earlier. But there were the requisite “commercial breaks” for another endless string of commercials. I was amazed that no one got up and left the theater after the first fifteen minutes of the show. I guess, like me, they were thinking the second pilot would be better.
If possible, the second show was even a greater stinker than the first. At last it was over, and I and everyone else rose in great relief. But the M.C. hurried back on the small stage looking distraught, and said: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am horribly sorry to tell you this, but there was some malfunction with the equipment recording reactions to the commercials, and we’ve lost it all. We feel terrible about this, but could I please implore you to watch them again?”
I suspect that the doors were locked had anyone actually tried to leave, but the guy was so very sincere and gave the impression that if anyone didn’t want to help him out, here, he might well lose his job. So we all sat back down, watched the 30 or so commercials again, and re-entered our reactions to each one.
Thanking us profusely for our cooperation, the M.C. bid us a good night.
Six months later, a friend who had never experienced the joys of Preview House said “Hey! I got us free tickets to Preview House! Let’s go!” So, against my better judgement, I went.
Need I tell you that we were treated to exactly the same execrable pilots, though of course the commercials were different. When it ended, everyone started to get up, but I did not. I knew what was coming. The M.C. appeared and said: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m horribly sorry to tell you this, but....”
For you see, boys and girls, the entire purpose of Preview House was to help advertisers determine which commercials worked and which didn’t. And by forcing us to sit through them twice, they were able to tell whether our opinion of the product being touted may have changed...hopefully improved by seeing it more than once.
I gave each commercial the lowest possible rating the second time around. I don’t think they cared.
I never went back to Preview House, but if you ever get to Los Angeles, watch for someone on the street passing out free tickets.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
I was waiting for a bus the other day when a very short, balding little man with a horseshoe of white hair around his pate and an absolutely huge pot belly walked past carrying a briefcase. My immediate thought was: “I am May-or of the Munch-kin Cit-ty”. Go figure.
From there I for absolutely no reason thought of a place called “Preview House” in Los Angeles. People would stand out on busy street corners and offer you free tickets to see and rate TV pilots. I made the mistake of taking one.
Preview House was a very nice theater, with each seat having a small hand-held control unit with a dial and ten numbers, with which we were to record our reactions. Once everyone was seated,, an unctuously hale-fellows-well-met M.C. (or whatever it was he was supposed to be) appeared on the small stage in front of the screen to welcome us and say that we would be seeing two prospective pilots on which the networks would like potential audience reaction before scheduling them in prime time. To enhance the verisimilitude of the TV-watching experience, he advised us they’d also be showing some new commercials as well, and that we should rate them also. He gave us detailed instructions on dial-turning, which he apparently assumed most members of the audience would find difficult to grasp. The houselights dimmed and, the commercials began. Lots of commercials: it seemed like ten or twelve of them, and we all duly rated each one. Finally the first promised TV pilot began.
It was obvious from ten seconds in that this was not only the most God-awful television program ever recorded but that it had, in fact, been recorded some ten to fifteen years earlier. But there were the requisite “commercial breaks” for another endless string of commercials. I was amazed that no one got up and left the theater after the first fifteen minutes of the show. I guess, like me, they were thinking the second pilot would be better.
If possible, the second show was even a greater stinker than the first. At last it was over, and I and everyone else rose in great relief. But the M.C. hurried back on the small stage looking distraught, and said: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am horribly sorry to tell you this, but there was some malfunction with the equipment recording reactions to the commercials, and we’ve lost it all. We feel terrible about this, but could I please implore you to watch them again?”
I suspect that the doors were locked had anyone actually tried to leave, but the guy was so very sincere and gave the impression that if anyone didn’t want to help him out, here, he might well lose his job. So we all sat back down, watched the 30 or so commercials again, and re-entered our reactions to each one.
Thanking us profusely for our cooperation, the M.C. bid us a good night.
Six months later, a friend who had never experienced the joys of Preview House said “Hey! I got us free tickets to Preview House! Let’s go!” So, against my better judgement, I went.
Need I tell you that we were treated to exactly the same execrable pilots, though of course the commercials were different. When it ended, everyone started to get up, but I did not. I knew what was coming. The M.C. appeared and said: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m horribly sorry to tell you this, but....”
For you see, boys and girls, the entire purpose of Preview House was to help advertisers determine which commercials worked and which didn’t. And by forcing us to sit through them twice, they were able to tell whether our opinion of the product being touted may have changed...hopefully improved by seeing it more than once.
I gave each commercial the lowest possible rating the second time around. I don’t think they cared.
I never went back to Preview House, but if you ever get to Los Angeles, watch for someone on the street passing out free tickets.
New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.
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