Scatter ye Breadcrumbs...

For some, life is a vast green pasture, for some a forest, and for some a jungle. But regardless of the terrain through which we pass, many feel the need to leave a trail to mark their passage, either so they can trace the path back to where they began or so that others may know the path they have taken.

Memories are the breadcrumbs of choice for most of those looking to retrace their steps along the way, but memories really don't hold up too well in the light of reality. They are much too easily warped by the passage of time. But since we tend to avoid staring into the light of reality just as we avoid staring directly into the sun, we seldom realize that what we're sure we remember clearly may not in actually be exactly what happened. Like pebbles tumbling against one another on the seashore, time wears away memory's sharp corners and fades the colors. As strongly as we believe something happened at a certain time in a certain place in the company of certain people or under certain circumstances, almost assuredly we are not 100 percent accurate.

Because I have never understood the world, and am so easily lost or led astray, I have been an inveterate breadcrumb-dropper all my life. But instead of relying totally on memories to mark my journey, I reinforce them with as many tangible bits and pieces of my past as possible, mostly in the form of my writings. Since words can last forever, I use them as my breadcrumbs. As a result, my trail through life is much easier to follow than most. I have an entire two-year period of my life, in fact—by way of letters written to my parents when I was in the Navy—documenting an almost day-by-day, as-it-happened accounting of events. I reference them frequently, and am invariably shocked to discover that several things I distinctly remember either did not happen, or did not happen when or in the order that I could swear they happened. 

Memories are ephemeral, words are solid.

I always strongly encourage anyone with a desire to be remembered to drop tangible breadcrumbs as they travel through life. Even if they have no need to retrace their steps, it allows those they care about, and those who care about them, to see the exact path they took. 

Photographs make fairly reliable breadcrumbs, but unless they are dated, even they can be misleading. When you take a photo, you know full well who is in them, their relationship to you, when and where it was taken, and under what circumstances. But unless you take a moment to caption them, 20 years down the line who else will know?

While few people think to do it, keeping a journal of what may seem uninteresting or even trivial to you can be a great asset a way down the trail. Taking brief notes on vacations and trips, saying what you did and, more importantly, your thoughts and feelings can, when you look them over in future years, sharpen memory and rekindle emotions—especially good ones.

I feel strongly about the need to leave breadcrumb showing our individual paths through life. If not for ourselves, then for those who come along a bit later and may want to know more about us and who we were. The more solid the breadcrumbs, the sharper the image we leave of ourself. Personal letters to friends or family, for example, are not only a part of who we are, they serve as a sort of time capsule for anyone who might come across them in the future.

What we take for granted, what is totally normal and may seem mundane or even boring—what is now—to us, will be viewed quite differently when seen from the perspective of the future. 

We can never go back in time and leave breadcrumbs retrospectively. But it's never too late to start.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to check out his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and his book of collected blogs, Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 ).

On Growing Up Gay

As you may have noticed, many of my blogs deal with various aspects of my being gay, and the reason is simple: I talk so much about being gay because for the first nearly 2/3 of my life I was, out of very real concern for the possible subsequences, unable to do so.

And now, looking at the title of this blog, it has the same vague redundancy as if it had been titled "Growing Up Brown-Eyed" or "Growing Up Right-handed." Of course I grew up gay: it's simply an integral part of who I am and who I have always been. The realization...make that the acceptance of the fact...that one is gay varies from person to person. I was blessed to realize and accept who I was before I ever heard the term "gay."

I don't remember when I first heard the actual word "gay" used to define those like me. Up until my early teens the only words I heard to describe what I was were "Queer," "Sissy," "Pansy," "Nance," and other equally charming epithets. Interestingly, I don't recall hearing "Faggot" (the most commonly derogatory term today) until I was well beyond my teens. I was, in fact, not directly aware that there were more than a few others like me until, when I was 17, I was picked up in a movie theater by a guy visiting from Chicago who showed me there was a whole world of us out there.

I never experienced any bullying for being gay, though in high school there were a few minor embarrassing incidents of name calling and whispers and, once, a car full of my male schoolmates--none of whom I knew very well--driving by and yelling "Queer!"

Knowing what I know now about the growing-up experiences of others of my generation and beyond, I realize not only how lucky I was, but that I was in fact utterly blessed. My mother and father loved me unconditionally, and had they ever asked, I would have told them. But neither of us did. They knew, and I knew they knew. They didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.  But they didn't. They didn't have to. I never lied, or pretended to be anything but what I was, but we played a mutual game of avoidance.  My father was far more aware of my sexual orientation than my mother, and at a far earlier age. It wasn't until I was 33 and had broken up with Norm after six years that we addressed the subject openly. My dad said, "Are you sure? Have you tried being with a woman?" (No, I most definitely had not.) and my mom,  said, "Well, I wish you weren't, but that doesn't change how much we love you." And it didn't.

I had relatively (no pun intended) little contact with my father's side of the family...my grandmother, aunt (Dad's half-sister), her husband, Pete, and their two kids. I heard only many years later that one time while I was a teenager, Pete apparently made some comment about my being "queer" to my folks  and my dad nearly got into a fight with him over it.

I always identified strongly with my mom's side of the family, the Fearns, and down deep considered myself more a Fearn than a Margason. Every one of them--my grandfather, aunt, uncle, cousins, and second cousins--never once so much as suggested that I was "different," though they all knew, and I love them all the more for it. One of my fondest memories is when I brought my then-partner, Ray, back to Rockford for a visit. The entire family got together for dinner, and treated Ray as they had treated Norm...as one of the family.

My dad, being more aware, was deeply concerned for me, and sometimes this led to conflicts between us. Once, between my freshman and sophomore years of college, two of my best gay friends, Stu and Zane, and I planned a trip to New York. Dad did not want me to go, and we had several heated arguments until finally he said, "Okay, go to New York with your queer boyfriends!" This shocked me because he knew Stu and Zane and had always treated them warmly, and had never before said a word against them. I realize now his reaction was based on his true concern over the possible dangers inherent in my being a gay teenaged tourist in New York.

When I moved to Chicago after college and partnered with Norm, my folks and the entire family accepted him without question. Even though my folks and I had not yet even mentioned the "g" word, and would not for several more years, they adored Norm and treated him as a second son.

When I took my parents to Hawaii as a Christmas present one year, Norm stayed in Chicago. One night, when my folks were getting ready to go to bed, I decided I wanted to go back out (to check out the local gay scene, though of course I didn't tell them that). My mom said, "Well, when you get married you won't need all this running around," and my dad said, "Hell, he's already married."

I miss my folks...and at this moment, (no offense, Mom), I particularly miss my dad.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

Damned if you do, damned if...

That we humans are able to exist at all in so infinitely-complex and frustrating a world is a testament to our resilience and flexibility. We are bombarded every moment of every day with contradictions and challenges and decisions, and somehow we manage to wend our way through the minefields, though it can be argued it is harder and harder to do so.

Ironies and contradictions multiply like spores on a petri dish. We have created technology to make our lives simpler, and have ended up being ruled by it. We come up with new ways of direct communications and lose the ability to communicate directly (as anyone who has ever tried to reach a real human being at a major corporation can attest). 

The invention of the computer has changed our entire world. But now, to have a computer is not enough. One must have an iPod and an iPad and a Tablet and a Kindle and a Nook and a Blackberry, several of which are already obsolete. Telephones begat cell phones, and cell phones begat texting and ring tones and 14,999 various "apps". I have a computer (and have made the quantum leap from sit-in-one-place PC to a laptop and have a small device that plugs into the laptop to enable me internet access from anywhere in the city of Chicago, only to learn that for no given reason, they will be shutting down in one month). I do not have an iPod or an iPad or a Tablet or a Kindle or a Nook or a Blackberry. I have seen them, but I have never used them, and though I'm sure they're lots of fun, I honestly get along fine without them.

I am bedeviled by endless TV commercials that encourage me to sign up for a mind-boggling array of supposedly absolutely necessary services I in fact do not need, each of which I can have "for only $99.99 a month for the first three months," after which it usually goes up to $129.00 per month as soon thereafter as they think they can get away with it. Multiply this by six separate electronic devices requiring some sort of service contract and you're getting close to the gross national product of Paraguay. 

I learn I can, at a minimal (minimal to whom is never explained) cost, "live stream" my favorite cooking show while on vacation in Bora Bora! If I'm on vacation in Bora Bora, why the hell would I want to waste my time watching a cooking show?

I am well aware that the single purpose of all commercial ventures is to make money, but I rather strongly resent the implication that if I don't have (read "buy") all these gadgets and gee-gaws, I am a pathetic relic unfit for society. Lord knows I get that message clearly enough in other areas of my life; I don't need it from technology.

I have yet to completely figure out Facebook and Twitter and Google+ and LinkedIn and and BranchOut and the 9,000 other internet sites I am told I "must" belong to if I intend to get/keep my name out there and find new readers for my books. And as a result, I spend so much time bouncing from site to site trying to keep up that I have almost no time to write. 

Obligations are part of life. If you are below retirement age, you have to get up and go to work five days a week whether you want to or not. We all have obligations, to friends, family, employers. For the most part, we meet them, and when we don't, there are often consequences. It is the obligations imposed on us by our culture and by technology which are the problem. We are in effect bullied into them.

The human need to belong, to feel part of the whole, is universal. It is a fact advertisers know well and exploit to the fullest. One of the most popular expressions in the advertiser's lexicon is "Everybody's talking about..." The fact that, of course, everybody is not talking about it is totally irrelevant. The clear message they are sending is that if you are not talking about it, you don't belong.

Bombastically partisan politicians are fond of saying "The American people will not tolerate such-and-so," meaning that if you have no objection to or may even be in favor of the "such-and-so," you are obviously not a part of "the American people."

The world, it seems, is the embodiment of that old vaudeville question: "Have you stopped beating your wife?" No matter how you respond, you're in trouble. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

When I was Who I was

When I was who I was, I was not satisfied. I took everything I had for granted and wanted more. Now that I am who I am, and no longer have what I had then, I look back in longing for it, and in self-recrimination for not appreciating what I had until I no longer had it. This seems to be an all-too-common human trait, and one which, if you do not yet understand, you surely will.

We tend to assume that life is just...there...all for us. When we are young, we firmly believe that we will be young forever. Life does not come with an instruction manual or a warrantee, and we totally ignore cautions of what lies ahead for us just as we ignore the tiny-print cautions that come on every bottle of aspirin. It is only much later that we begin to realize that life is not a gift, but a pay-as-you-go proposition, and that the cost goes up every year. It is not until we are well into our 30s or 40s or beyond that it begins to occur to us that the rules of mortality apply to us. The realization is like slowly being lowered into a bath of ice water.

We are far too easily distracted from where we are going by our real and perceived problems. Every human has problems—they’re a part of life. The vast majority are not life changing, though we tend to be exaggerate them in our minds because 1) they are our problems, and 2) we are having them now. Once they are past, they generally fade away to relative insignificance, to be replaced by newer problems. Life’s more serious problems, generally physical, tend to develop relatively later in life and, because we’ve tended to exaggerate the seriousness of lesser problems, we find them much more difficult to deal with. 

Some species, like ants and bees, seem to share a common awareness. It would be nice if, even as we remained individuals, humans were privy to some sort of similar shared awareness of the true path of our life. Because we are locked within ourselves and spend every instant there, we are not aware of the changes going on within ourselves...the gradual change from who we were to who we are. Seeing ourselves in a mirror each day is an example of this phenomenon. Reflective surfaces reveal these changes, but do so so gradually as to be unnoticed. I, unlike most people, go to great lengths to avoid reflective surfaces out of my refusal to accept what I see there. I therefore can go for months without confronting myself. But when I do, because I do not have the "buffer" of incremental unawareness, I am painfully aware of the changes between what I see now and what I saw the last time.

I don't want to be who I am now. I want to be who I was, once. And the full awareness that I never will be, never can be, does not stop me from wanting, or reduce the intensity of that want. And yet I find myself slowly coming to what I hope to be an...accommodation...with myself. No matter how old we are, we are never going to get any younger, but by the same token, we are, at this moment, as young as we will ever be, and I am determined to enjoy whatever it is—and there is much—I have now. I can't do anything at all about the past, but I can have considerable control over my future. I can and do plan for the future (plans are a subtle form of self assurance that there will be a future. But by the same token, I try not to put off things I want to do by falsely assuming I will have "plenty of time" in which to do them. I may not, and this is as true of you as it is of me.

To say "time is precious" is to repeat one of the oldest and most overused of cliches. But cliches are the fortune cookies of truth. And I relate my awareness of the value of time to my habit of, when seeing a penny on the sidewalk, stooping to pick it up. Not because I need the money, but because like time, it is there, it has value, and it should not be wasted.

I will never be who I was when I was, but I'll do my best to be who I am as long as I am.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1)

We Humans

We humans are members of an endlessly fascinating species, constantly at war within and among ourselves. We each exist in and move through a world of astonishing everyday wonders of which we are never aware. That we are not is understandable in that, were we to be aware of them all, we would have no time, given our relatively short lifespan, to do anything at all else but be in a state of constant, overwhelming amazement, like a deer in the headlights, immobilized.

There are around 9 billion of us, yet each is unique, never really knowing anyone other than ourself. But every now and then we should stretch our minds by giving some thought to those things never thought of. Our genetic imperatives, for example. Our DNA is almost identical to the primates and carnivores from which we evolved--and yes, you Tea Party Speakers for God, we evolved! Get used to it. 

But for all our genetically based aggressiveness, which has plagued us since before we became identifiably human, we are also programmed for what might be called nobility. Our genetic imperative is centered on the preservation of the species. We protect our children instinctively. With few exceptions, we would without hesitation give our lives to save theirs. And, to our credit, not only our own children, but all children within our circle of influence. Were the starving children in remote areas of the world within our physical reach, I have no doubt but that we would do anything to save them. It is the physical distance which gives us a sense of helplessness. Our only recourse, given the distances separating us, is to contribute money to be used by those physically closer to the problem to help them, and it can always be argued that no matter how much we do to alleviate their suffering, we can and should do more.

I've always been fascinated with sudden, unexpected natural and man-made disasters--fires, earthquakes, explosions, tsunamis, ship sinkings, floods, tornadoes--not for the suffering they cause, but for the very best qualities of our species those disasters bring out. Caught up in violent events, we react instinctively, and to our great credit, most of us act nobly in attempting to protect and save our fellow humans--and often other living creatures also directly involved.

We have created complex societies with complex laws which we obey without thought or question. We hear a siren behind us while we're driving, and we instinctively pull over without giving an instant's thought as to why we are doing it. With few exceptions dictated by circumstances, we stand in line rather than trying to rush to the front. We pay our taxes, we vote...all elementary, simple things until you pause for a moment to wonder why we do these things. We have schools and hospitals and libraries and stores and factories and build roads and bridges and establish national parks and playgrounds. Think of any one of them and wonder how they came to be and why--really why--we invented them.

It is sometimes difficult not to truly despair for the future of humanity. There is so very, very much evil and hatred and bigotry and cruelty and gratuitous stupidity in the world it tends to overwhelm us, and makes it easy to forget the good, the selfless, the caring, the kind. It is, again, to our credit that we pay so little attention to the positive because we expect the positive: it is simply assumed to be the norm. And because the negative still surprises, shocks, and saddens us, we tend to forget that it does so because it goes against what we assume and expect--through desire if not always through fact--to be the norm; to be the way we expect the world to be.

Of all the gifts given humanity, the one which most separates us from all other species with whom we share the planet is hope. With it, we can and do face any challenge. Without it, we are doomed.

I wonder if, were they to look for it, scientists might find a Hope gene in our DNA?

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

"Dear Dugbate:"

My name is Dorien, and I am a Spamaholic.

After each blog posting on the subject of internet spam, I swear that I will go to my spam folder only long enough to hit "Delete All", and thereby save myself from the fits of uncontrollable fury reading even the subject lines of those messages inevitably evoke.

But today, like an alcoholic who, after a period of abstinence, thinks it will be okay to have just one little drink--I gave in to the temptation of trying just one, brief, totally objective look at the messages awaiting me when I came on line this morning. 

I sincerely wish it were possible to write the real people...and I am being kind in referring to them as either “real" or "people"...behind these messages to see if I could determine exactly why they have chosen to throw away their humanity for the sake of pure greed. But I guess that sentence both asks and answers the question.

Anyway, since I know full well that to actually respond to a spam message is to automatically have my email address and whatever other information I might be foolish enough to provide put up for sale to thousands of others of the morally dead, I thought I'd pick out two at random and write--though not send--a response. This is, I've been told, a valid and often recommended form of therapy.

So here are just two of today's spam subject lines and my responses:

SGT LARRY WAYNE - Pls do not disregard - Hello, How are you and your family sincerely hope all is well. My names is SSG Larry Wayne; I....  

Hi, there, Larry!

Why of course I wouldn't disregard your message: You're a member of the United States armed forces,  to whom I and every American owe a great debt! Though I am a bit curious as to why, since as stated in your note, your "names is" SSG Larry Wayne in one sentence and "SGT" Larry Wayne in the next, the message was sent by suzana.paunescu@cgsinc.ro? ".ro" is the e-mail designation for Romania. I assume Suzana is your Romanian girlfriend, and you had her look through 2 billion email addresses to specifically find mine while you were out there putting your life on the line defending my freedom. 

Your folksy approach in asking about my family--though I don't have one--was very much appreciated, and yes, all is indeed well except for being able to comprehend that anyone would stoop to posing as an American serviceman in an egregious attempt to screw me and the 18 million other people to whom this same message was sent.

You're so far beneath contempt, Larry, you could not be located on Sonar, and I wish I believed in God so that I could fervently pray for you to get what you so richly deserve if not in this life, then the next.

Your Buddy,

Dorien

Federal Bureau of Investigation - Federal Bureau of Investigation Contact Mr Dugbate John for your payment...

Dear Mr. John (may I call you Dugbate?)

While I was unaware that one of the duties of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was to send out "payments"--I won't presume to ask for what--to complete strangers, I am eager to accept your kind offer. Please, however, save yourself the time and effort in asking for my bank account information in order to complete the transfer. Just send the check to me, and I'll deposit it.

My best to J. Edgar,

Dorien

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

When I took my first journalism class in college, the professor pointed out the key to every good news story. Each, he said, must answer six basic questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how, and do so as concisely as possible. 

I always loved the story of the fledgling reporter who was assigned to cover the death of a local socialite who had committed suicide after attending a party. He submitted his story, which his editor rejected as too long, citing the six keys. He re-did it, cutting it considerably. The editor rejected it as too long. Three more attempts were also rejected. Finally, in frustration, the writer submitted the following. "Socialite John Smith, 48, attended a dinner party Thursday evening. He then took his hat, his coat, his leave, a taxi to his home, a gun from his drawer, and his life." I think he was fired.

I suspect that's why I never went into newspaper journalism, and why I don't even write short stories anymore: brevity may be the soul of wit, but when it comes to writing, I find it next to impossible to be brief.

A novel must answer the same key questions as a news story, but has the luxury of allowing the writer to take as much time as he ("No, no!" Political Correctness admonishes sternly, "He or she!" To which I reply, "Screw Political Correctness.") needs to do so. Also, whereas in a news story, the keys are most usually given in the set order of who/what/when/where/why/how, a novel can be much more flexible in the order of the questions/answers to suit the writer's whim.

As a general rule, of the six questions, the “who/what/why/how" are probably more important than the “when/where”—and this is especially true in mysteries. 

Probably because each of my fiction books is part of a series (two, actually) the "who/what/why" are the primary questions—the "when/where" are more or less constant from book to book. The “how" varies widely. And on closer analysis, it is really the "who" which is the most important. All my books are primarily character driven, and it is they who bind each of the series together.

I love writing series because by having the same characters return, book after book, set in the same surroundings, the readers can—and I sincerely hope, do—become more personally vested in them and their development. That many readers have said that they consider the characters as real people and friends is about the highest compliment a writer can receive. It's reached the point, for me, of considering each subsequent book in the series to be simply another chapter in the continuing story of the characters' lives.

But writing a series presents certain challenges as well. It's very important that someone who has never read any other book in the series not feel as though they have no idea of who these people are. So each book has to include a subtle reintroduction of the secondary characters and locations. However, each book can be read alone, in any order, without overly confusing the reader as to what's happened in previous books.

Many people understandably want to read a series in the order written, to get an idea of the development of the characters from book to book. The unfortunate death of the publisher of the first ten books of the Dick Hardesty series, and the dissolution of the company, meant that as the first ten books ran out stock, they became, in effect, out of print. Luckily Zumaya Publishing picked up and continued the series with the 11th book, and began reissuing the out of print titles. This created something of a logistical problem which could have been more serious were it important to read them all in the order published. Faced with what could be a considerable logistics problem trying to squeeze ten “unexpected” titles into the publishing backlog of its own original titles, Zumaya kindly turned the entire series over to Untreed Reads publishing, which is reissuing it in the order written, with the first four already available. (Book #5, The Good Cop, will be reissued on October 13.) We are on track to have the entire series, including a new one, back in publication by late 2016 with minimal inconvenience to you as the reader.

A writer's life, regardless of which form he specializes in, is not an easy one. Come to think of it, no one's is.

      

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Friends and Lovers

When I was living in Los Angeles and very active in the gay "scene," many of my friendships stemmed from having met someone in a bar, gone home with them, and our then deciding—either before, during, or after our time in bed—that we would like to get to know each other better aside from the sex. Usually, the element of sex eventually dropped out of the equation completely. This was simply the way gay culture at the time worked and I suspect still does. It's not coincidental that in my Dick Hardesty mystery series, many of Dick's closest friendships began with sex.

As a minor digression, I find it fascinating that the gay lexicon has changed dramatically when it comes to the description of long-term relationships. The word "lover," which was used for most of my adult life, was almost totally replaced by "partner," which I personally prefer, and "lover" is now almost never used.

Of all the relationships I've had in my long and checkered career, only two "partners" stand out as having a major impact on my life: Norm, who was my first real relationship, lasting six years, and Ray, which lasted nine years, on and off—mostly off due to the alcoholism which inevitably destroyed him. After our breakup, Norm and I segued from partners to loving friends until his death in 2010. I realize that I have largely fantasized my relationship with Ray, who I did indeed  love deeply—seeing only the incredibly sweet, kind, loving young man he was when sober and ignoring the monster he became when drunk. For those of you who follow my books, Ray was the inspiration for Dick's partner, Jonathan—which is hardly surprising since I, in my fantasy world, am Dick.

In our lives, if we are lucky, we have many friends of both genders and a variety of sexual orientations. If we're very lucky, some of them remain friends or a lifetime. 

The word "friend" covers a broad spectrum of, for want of a better word, "intensities." Simply put, some friends are closer than others. Friends tend to come and go. A mark of a true friend is one who may have drifted away for whatever reason but who, when re-meeting after many years, can pick up a conversation in mid-sentence as though the intervening years never existed. I've been blessed to have several of those, and the re-establishment of the friendship is a joy hard to describe.

But throughout life there are relatively few we consider true "best friends." I've had three in my life—and I hasten to add that the term does not apply to lovers/partners, who are in a special category of their own. 

When I was in high school, my best friend was Lief Ayen, who looked like a young Charles Laughton, if any of you are old enough to remember him. We were both outsiders who knew we did not belong, and this awareness and our shared sense of offbeat humor was the glue that bound us for many years. We eventually drifted apart and, when I tried a few years ago to find him in hopes of re-establishing our friendship, I learned he had died. And even though it had been well over 50 years since I last saw him, I felt a great sense of loss.

Russ Hogan was my best friend in college and for 40 years thereafter. We drifted apart for reasons I've never fully understood, but for which I always felt oddly guilty, and I only learned of his death through a mutual friend. I still miss him terribly.

My current best friend (of coming up on 20 years) is Gary Brown, who is also my webmaster, my designated listener-to-my-real-and-imagined woes, and my run-to-every-time-I-have-a-problem-with-my-computer (which is at least several times a week) guy. He is infinitely kind, generous, and patient with everyone, but I know I must tax his limits frequently. It is simply understood that should either of us ever need anything, the other will be there.

Why, then, you might ask, are we not lovers/partners? Because the key element necessary for lovers/partners—missing between best friends—is sexual attraction/romantic love. Gary is the brother I never had. I can’t imagine brothers being any closer. But again the element of romance is totally lacking. (On a trip to Paris, arriving at our hotel after having been awake for over 30 hours, we were mistakenly given a room with only one double bed. Though we were exhausted, we waited four hours for them to find us a room with two double beds. Sharing a room, fine. Sharing a bed...uh, no way in hell.)

I hope you are blessed with at least one "best friend" who brightens and eases your life and without whom you cannot imagine your life.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Here Lies Common Sense

Let us gather here today to mourn the loss of one of humankind's greatest gifts, which has guided us through some of our darkest hours—simple common sense—whose loss has significant and increasing consequences on our society.

I think, being honest, that we are all complicit in its loss by increasingly ignoring its value and doing little or nothing to come to its aid when under attack. However, politicians are at the vanguard of the assault.

Though Michele Bachmann, that great humanitarian and scholar, has blessedly departed from the spotlight, who can possibly forget her single-handed war on the most elemental forms of logic or common sense? She tells us that a trip President Obama (a.k.a to Republicans as "the Antichrist") made to Japan cost taxpayers $200,000,000 a day; that he took along an entourage of 2,000 people, who stayed in 735 luxury 5-star hotel rooms (at least that comes out to nearly three people per room—a sure sign of frugality ignored by Ms. Bachmann). She also told us, with the deep sincerity and profundity for which she is known, that our founding fathers worked tirelessly (this is in 1776, mind) until slavery was eradicated from the land. And the protest against her utterly egregious nonsense was a deafening silence.

But her exit from the political stage merely opened the door for the likes of Donald Trump, who no longer feels it even necessary to even mention common sense. He boasts of huge plans…HUGE!…to “make America great again” without bothering to give a single example of how this would be accomplished, and we all “oooooh” and “aaaaaah” and cheer in response. 

Are Trump and the other embarrassingly self-serving candidates laughed off the stage and forbidden to play with sharp objects? No, they are running for the office of President of the United States, and their every vacuous word is greeted with applause and knowing nods of total agreement by their followers.

As our society becomes more and more ruled by technology—the workings of which are unintelligible to the average human—we feel, correctly, that we have less and less control over our own destinies. As even trying to figure out how and why things and institutions work the way they do becomes increasingly more difficult, more and more people are throwing up their hands in frustration and saying to self-proclaimed pundits, "Okay, you tell me what to think," and those pundits, whose motivations are based far more on greed for power than altruism, are more than happy to oblige. 

That old saying, “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost,…” is as true today as ever; maybe even more so. And with every patently false and misleading statement issued, another nail is pounded into the coffin of common sense.

Can this trend be reversed? Possibly, but I fear it would require more time and effort than most people are willing to devote to it—there’s a football game on tonight, after all, and priorities are priorities.

But just because we've tossed common sense into the back of a sock drawer doesn't mean we can't take it out and start using it again. First, we must all realize that just because something is said on TV or read in a forwarded email or seen on Facebook does not make it true. As someone once said, if ten million people believe a lie, it is still a lie. Before passing something on a gospel is to ask the simplest of simple questions: "Does this really make any sense?" President Obama plans to give every illegal immigrant $400,000 a month, free health care, a new house, and a new car? Forget that even if he wanted to he could not get it passed through a congress which, if he said the sun was shining, would run for their umbrellas. Hey, a friend sent me an email of an article he saw in some magazine, so it must be true.  Muslims use a melon scoop to remove the brains of Christian babies? They said so on Fox News, so it has to be true.

Politics, of course, is not the only thing lacking the nail of common sense. Internet spam is obviously unaware of its existence. After railing against Spam endlessly, I still cannot comprehend it, let alone how any rational human being could ever, under any circumstances, believe a word of it.

Television commercials—and especially infomercials and those ads aired late at night—depend on the lack of the nail of the viewer's common sense.

Instances of the effects of the loss of these nails are endless, and to point to them all is like standing in the back yard at night pointing up at the stars.

But the nail's not lost; we can find it and use it. All we have to do is try.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs.

Getting It

Let's face it: when it comes to "getting it"...to understanding something that everyone else apparently so easily understands and takes for granted...I generally don't.

"...for well-qualified buyers"? What in the hell does that mean? I don't get it.

Starlets and (female) celebrities posing with one hand on a sideways-thrust hip is, I gather, the height of  seductiveness? I don't get it. I guess you have to be straight to understand.

"Reality" shows devoted to vacuous, rude, self-centered boors with absolutely no discernible talent who contribute nothing to society and who are famous for being famous? I don't get it. And that they have an avid viewing audience of millions who hang on their every monosyllabic word? Even harder to comprehend.

Presidential candidates who deny the most basic tenets of science yet are firmly convinced they are eminently qualified to lead the country in an increasingly technological ("Technology, noun: the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, esp. in industry") world? I don't get it. And those who would vote for them? Totally incomprehensible.

Internet spam messages from Nigerian barristers, from people dying of (usually) cancer wanting you to help them dispose of their millions, and, recently, shameful posts from United States servicemen and women asking for help...and those astoundingly naive/gullible/stupid people who would consider responding? I simply do not get it.

Anyone with the intelligence of a radish watching, let alone buying into, infomercials and commercials offering "not sold in stores" (gee, I wonder why?) schlock which then say they will double, triple, or quadruple the order for the same price? Sorry, I don't get it.

Organized sports? Organized religion? Cults? Bigotry? The Tea Party? I don't get any of them.

Donald Trump (or any one of the Republican presidential wanna-bes)? John Boehner? Sarah Palin? Michele Bachmann? Rush Limbaugh? Glenn Beck? Mitch McConnell?  Can someone explain what positive contribution any one of these people has made to society or to the furthering of compassion, tolerance, compromise, or to the betterment of the human race?

Those who presume to speak for God who totally ignore all that bothersome "Love one another," "Do unto others," and "Judge not lest ye be judged" nonsense while preaching intolerance and hatred? I don't get them, nor do I want to.

Employees in government offices who act as though they are the government? People who accept the bad service and the most egregious behavior without a peep of protest? I don't get it.

Instruction manuals...for anything...written by technophiles in language only technophiles and those who speak gibberish can possibly understand? Sorry, again. I don't get it.

Restaurant menu and prepared-food-package photographs that bear absolutely no resemblance to what you are served/is in the package?

Perhaps some day a light will go on in my head, and everything will be made clear to me, as it seems to be to everyone else on the planet. But I doubt it.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

"How 'ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm,...?"

The American Civil War began a fundamental, basic change in the fabric of not only American society but of interpersonal relationships. Until that time, the vast majority of people never traveled more than 20 miles from their homes in their entire lives. The average person's total social existence was built upon the rock of family, friends, and neighbors. The Civil war created widening cracks in this foundation when it uprooted young men from the soil of the past. Taken from their farms and villages and transported to places within their own country they'd never been or even knew existed. This trend was vastly accelerated with America’s entry into WWI, and was perfectly summed up in the popular song, "How 'ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paree?" 

Following WWI, ages-long close-knit bonds between family, friends, and life-long neighbors crumbled rapidly as entire populations moved and shifted and blended.

Family remains the rock upon most people's lives are built, but as distance separated many family members, nearby friends became substitutes for far-off family. But the more mobile our society became, friends, too, like family, began to move away. Face-to-face meetings with friends were slowly replaced, as technology welled up to swallow us all, by the internet, which opened the door to the entire world. In cyberspace, there is no concept of distance. People who normally would never have even become acquaintances—probably never even known of each other's existence—became a new kind of friend: cyber friends who still probably would never meet face to face.

And as technology continues to rob us of our traditional connections to other people, as families and close-knit circles of friends break up into small pieces and scatter around the country and the globe, we tend to rely more on cyber friends. And as age and distance begin to take away our traditional friends and family, cyber friends become a larger part of our social structure.

I've found this particularly true for myself, and on all levels. Much of it has to do with the simple fact of my growing older. Family members and friends die; our face-to-face social contacts tend to dwindle. It's part of being a young adult to cultivate many close face-to-face friends, resulting in an active social life surrounded by people you can—and often do—reach out and touch. I am blessed that I still have a number of friends who date from my childhood, college, and young adult years. But most of them are scattered, now, and we use cyberspace to substitute for face-to-face meetings.

One of the most important and most overlooked casualties of the loss face-to-face contact with family and friends is the loss of physical contact. The emotional/psychological power of simple physical contact—a handshake, a hug, a casual pat on the back or arm around the shoulder—is a too-often-overlooked yet major casualty of our societal diaspora.

For me, right now, in Chicago, my face-to-face social network consists of my best friend, Gary, who I see almost every day, my friend Diane from my earliest days in Chicago, and Sandra, a woman with whom I worked after my return. I have a few people I think of more as friendly acquaintances than true, soul-deep friends, but it is a far different world, on a personal social level, from my 20s and 30s.

I find myself more and more reliant on my cyber friends for a sense of being connected with the world, and for the validation that face-to-face friends normally supply. I quite probably, in fact, have a much wider circle of cyber-friends than I ever had of face-to-face friends. I sincerely enjoy our exchanges (and their encouragement and support). I have been lucky enough to actually meet several of them, either on their visits to Chicago or mine to New York, and now count them as both cyber and face-to-face friends. And I am quite sure that, had we the chance to meet face to face, any number of my current cyber-friends could/would easily become friends in the traditional sense. 

So, as in all things in life, it is a matter of trade-offs. The world continues to change, and there is nothing we can do to bring the past back, other than in our memories. Would I give anything to be 28 again and to spend an evening with my mom and dad and aunt Thyra and Uncle Buck and my cousins, or with friends Norm and Tom and Franklin and Ray and Ace and the other wonderful people who were such an important part of my life at the time? Of course. But I am also truly grateful for the cyber friendship of so many wonderful people I've met on line through my books and blogs.

Face-to-face is great: mind-to-mind and heart-to-heart can be just as good. So let this blog be a form of thank you to all my friends, face-to-face and cyber. And there is always room for more. A cyber-hug to you all.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

Writers, Books, and Life

Every now and again, I pull myself up short and realize just how amazingly lucky I am to be a writer, especially considering how generally uncomfortable I am living in the real world. And when that world closes in too tightly, I can...and do...simply step into the worlds of my mind. I am fully aware of how difficult...and probably impossible...it is to explain how real this "other" world—this alternate universe, as it were—is to me.  

As Dorien Grey and Roger Margason, I am two people in one, Roger living in the corporeal world we all share, Dorien in the world of thought and dreams and hopes. Dorien’s world is, to me, almost as solid and real as Roger’s, and I am, truthfully, often more comfortable in it than in Roger’s.

Please let me make it clear, however, that I am always fully aware of whichever world I am spending my time at the moment, and never confuse them. I'm sure there are those who would consider me delusional, but it is a controlled and harmless delusion, and I take quiet pleasure in it.

I've often stated my belief that life and time are in fact an endless loop in which every instant of time, including our lives, exists somewhere, and is repeated time and time again, endlessly. 

Or think, if you will, of life as a book. When you pick it up, every word has been written and cannot be changed. Yet each is new to you as you move through the book. Just as every life has a beginning and an end, so does a book. And just as a book, read from first sentence to last, can, upon reaching "The End," be reread over and over again, so are our lives endlessly repeated. The movement of the reader's eyes over each word in a book is the equivalent of the movement of time around that cosmic loop. Every word of a book is the equivalent of an instant of time on the loop of time: fixed, unchangeable, and yet always new and unknown. 

Even though the entire book has been written and is being held in the reader's hand as it is being read, the book’s characters, unaware that they are not real, are propelled through the book’s “time” by the reader's eyes. The characters are aware of what has happened in previous sentences and paragraphs and chapters, but what comes next is totally unknown. It's all there, in the book, the reader's eyes just haven't taken the characters there yet. 

Each new page is a new segment of the character's lives. But the characters are totally unaware of what the next page has in store for them, though the entire book has been written. And the reader can pick up the book at page one and set the characters off on the same adventure, though again they are only aware of what has come before, not of what the next sentence or paragraph holds.

We move along the loop of time in the same way the reader's eyes move through a book. It is time—and specifically that portion of time we know as “now”—which propels us through our lives, unaware that it has done so before and will do so again throughout eternity.

I've always loved optical illusions...those pictures in which you see one thing, but suddenly, by the slightest shift in focus, become something totally different. Roger's world is the immediately obvious picture, Dorien's the alternate. The optical illusion analogy pretty much sums up and combines my two lives, my two alternate universes and unites my book/endless-loop analogies.

Because I am able to...and truly do...live vicariously through my characters and the stories I create for them, I can have in the Dorien’s world what I do not have in Roger's. One of my most profound regrets is that in the Roger’s corporeal "real" world, I do not have someone with whom I am deeply and romantically in love and who loves me in the same way. I miss it more than I can possibly say. I know that the world abounds with people who are in the same position as I. And yet, in my alternate, Dorien world, I am Dick Hardesty, and I have Jonathan and Joshua and all the marvelous things not available to me in Roger's world. Hard as it may be to understand, their love and commitment to one another are very real to me, and they provide me with an inexpressible joy and comfort.

I am, truly, blessed.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

E Unim Pluribus

I've always been fascinated by historical trivia, and one of my favorites is that, in ancient Rome, as conquering heroes marched in triumph through the cheering crowds, a slave would ride on the hero's chariot, standing directly behind him, holding a laurel wreath over his head while whispering “Remember, thou art but a man.” Wise people, those Romans.

Every human being―I’m sure this was true even of Roman generals―is a mixture of ego and insecurities: they are part of what makes us human. It is the varying percentages of each which helps make each of us who we are and sets us apart from everyone else. I’m not sure what the ideal percentage of each might be, but suspect that most of us fall somewhere around 10 points to either side of the 50 percent center line, with some natural degree of fluctuation between them. Ego and insecurity are a little like oil and vinegar in a cruet, each clearly defined.

I truly admire people with healthy egos, and have noticed that those who have them seldom seem aware of it. But then, that’s the point of a healthy ego: there is no need to question it. And while people who project too strong an ego can be insufferable—presidential candidate Donald Trump leaps to mind—,  it’s been my experience that obnoxious egos are often chimeras, and those who display them often are doing so to hide their insecurities.

But in some people, writers among them, it’s as though someone were shaking the bejeezus out of the cruet to the point where the ego and insecurity are so jumbled as to be indistinguishable. I know whereof I speak, because my ego and insecurity have been in the process of emulsification  in the cruet of my mind for as long as I can remember. My ego tells me I’m great, and that anyone who reads my words will automatically become devoted and adoring fans. My insecurity tells my ego it’s full of crap, and I’m no damned good (on a bad day) or mediocre at best (on a good day) and that anyone who tells me I do have some worth is being either extraordinarily kind or condescending.

Writers’ egos are large enough to assume people will want to read what they have written, while often unjustifiably insecure in fearing they won’t. I am frequently awed by the extremes of both my ego and my insecurities, and frustrated by the fact that they invariable negate one another. It is my ego which writes these blogs, and my insecurities that constantly scoff at how I can have the temerity to think that anyone could actually care what I have to say.

For whatever reason, many writers―and you don’t need a caliper and slide rule to figure out I’m including myself here―have a desperate need for approval, which is a form of validation of their worth. Every human needs validation, but writers…I…seem for whatever reason to be particularly needy. There is never enough love; never enough approval, and a perverse willingness to seek out and magnify faults and flaws. I fully realize I’m an emotional sponge, eager to soak up every drop of approval I can get. And when I don’t get enough―which of course I never possibly can―I chalk it up to my unworthiness and figuratively beat myself severely about the head and shoulders for it.

But underneath it all, or perhaps because of it, I am truly convinced (ego) that I am not alone in the way I feel; that you, writer or not, may sometimes feel the same way, and that through my throwing myself out in front of you, you might find some small comfort in seeing that you are not as alone as you may otherwise think. It is pure ego for me to assume so, but would be nice if it were true. I think they call it “validation.”

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1).

The Doll House

One of the benefits of an unorganized mind is that memories have the tendency to reappear, unbidden, from who knows where. Why, I cannot say, but they often reopen doors to the past. This morning, for absolutely no reason, I was thinking of how, when I was around six or seven, I asked my parents for a doll house for Christmas. My father, of course, would not hear of it, and my pleadings fell on deaf ears. In his defense, both he and I were aware by that time that I was "different" (I knew I liked—really liked—boys, though I was too young to realize what that meant). He, I am sure, saw my fascination with doll houses as an omen that his son would soon be dressing up in women's clothes and putting on lipstick. 

Of course—and this was something he could not understand and I was unable to express at that young age—femininity had absolutely nothing to do with it. Never—then, now, or for one moment in my entire life—have I ever wanted to be in any way feminine, or ever thought of myself as such. My fascination with doll houses had nothing to do with gender and everything to do with imagination.  

But, to my father, doll houses were for girls, not for boys, and certainly not for his son. I don't remember when or where I first saw a doll house, but I was utterly fascinated.  I was entranced by the reality/fantasy/power aspects it presented. Here was a real (to me) house, with real (to me) furniture, and I was a giant with total control over it and whatever went on in or around it. I had no interest whatever in playing homemaker or inventing some imaginary family. No, what I wanted to do was get the furniture nicely arranged, then have some pretend-battle during which everything was violently knocked over and tossed about. 

I've been given to melodrama from a very early age. The ordinary was, well, ordinary and therefore held relatively little interest for me; it was the pretend, the larger-than-life, the bravely facing adversity and trauma that intrigued me. It still does. 

But back to my story. Christmas came, and with it the usual flood of parental generosity: my family what was then known as "lower middle class." They struggled and worked hard for every penny they had, yet they always found the money to indulge me to the best of their ability. But it was after all the gifts were exchanged and the floor was littered with torn wrapping paper, and the smell of the Christmas tree, warmed by the lights, hung over the room, that my mom called me aside and took me into my room, where, on my bed, was...a two-room doll house she had made out of an orange crate. The few pieces of furniture were far out of proportion to the rooms, but it was a doll house, and it was mine. I do not believe in heaven, or in angels, but I do believe in mothers.

That simple orange-crate doll house, with my other toys and the books I read and the stories I listened to were the razor strops on which I honed my imagination and led me to become a writer. For an insecure child excruciatingly aware that I was not like the children around me, imagination was—and is—my refuge from a world in which I never felt comfortable, or welcome.

Today I consider each book I write to be, in effect, a doll house wherein I carefully arrange the furniture. The major difference being that I also put people in them and watch, fascinated, as they go about their very-real-to-me lives with only an occasional conscious nudge or rearrangement from me.

Every child, at birth, plants a small bag of seeds which will grow to produce the adult that child becomes. The seed of imagination is among the most precious of all. It blooms early, but is too often then neglected and left to wither. But when carefully nourished and lovingly tended it can produce the most magnificent of flowers. And they look very nice on the soul's mantle, next to a small doll’s house.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please take a moment to visit his website (http://www.doriengrey.com) and, if you enjoy these blogs, you might want to check out Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs (http://bit.ly/m8CSO1), which is also available as an audiobook (http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00DJAJYCS&qid=1372629062&sr=1-1)

"Pay Attention!"

Ah, were I to have a nickel for every time I've heard those two words, I would be a very wealthy man indeed. And my only problem with being told to pay attention is that I generally don't. Oh, I try. Really. And I often convince myself that I really am. But ten seconds later, I'm hard pressed to remember just what it was I was supposed to be paying attention to. 

Throughout grade school, my parents accumulated a sizable stack of notes from various teachers saying, in effect, "Roger is a wonderful, wonderful young man, but would do far better in his studies if only he would pay attention." (Well, maybe everything up to the "but" is wishful thinking, but the latter half is almost verbatim.) I think part of the problem lay in the fact that I am so easily distracted. I mean, how can anyone be expected to concentrate on the formula for determining the hypotenuse of a triangle when there's a very strange little insect staggering across the top of my desk. Obviously, it had been out all night and was trying to find its way home from a party, and I had to speculate on how it got on my desk and where it really thought it was going, and.... 

Unfortunately, not paying attention has almost gotten me killed on more than one occasion while I was learning to fly as a Naval Aviation Cadet. The airfield from which I was flying had several runways, each one designated by it's compass orientation, and the runway in use at any time was determined by the wind direction. It was important to memorize the runway numbers so that, when requesting permission to land, we would know which runway to use. But try as I might, I could never remember which runway was which, a problem I solved by simply following whatever plane was preparing to land in front of me. 

But the closest I actually came to death was on a night flight with a dozen or more other planes. We were told to ascend at a set rate of speed, and to descend at another set rate of speed. All was well until the time came to return to base, and we began our descent. I remember the two speeds, but not which one was which. I chose the faster speed on the grounds that at least I wouldn't be plowed into by someone behind me. All was going fine until I noticed the wingtip lights of the plane directly ahead of me seemingly racing toward me. I shoved the stick forward to dive down

and looked up in horror as I passed less than 20 feet under the belly of the plane that should have been ahead of me. I surely could not only have died myself, but caused the death of another pilot. It was one of the most sobering moments of my life. 

But did it make me pay closer attention to things from that moment on? For awhile, yes, but.... 

I never make lists of things I need while shopping because of course I will remember them. And I do…right up to the time I get to the store.

I cannot read instruction manuals of any kind because, the moment I take my eyes off the instructions themselves, I forget what they were. If someone tells me their telephone number, I seldom remember it long enough to write it down, even with a pencil in my hand. Transposing a phone number I did manage to write down into a computer file requires endless going back and forth. The handwritten 773-949-0211 becomes 773-994-0112 or 773-994-0121, or .... 

When I was in service, our Marine drill instructors had a rule for teaching: "Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em." A very wise method. Unfortunately, it never worked for me. 

I have come to the conclusion that I am emotionally dyslexic. 

Now, what was I talking about? 

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Friday. Please come back. And please feel free to visit my website (www.doriengrey.com) and/or take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's "Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs." 

Shells

Every human being is linked to every other human being by DNA and a myriad of complex commonalities  that define us as human. Yet, ultimately, despite all of these links, each of us is on our own when it comes to dealing with the intimidating complexities of life surrounding us. In that regard, each of us is not unlike a single Hermit crab on a vast beach, seeking some a “just ours” shelter into which we can retreat for comfort and security. 

My own little protective shell is composed, not of calcium carbonate as are most seashells, but of logic. Logic is the tether that anchors my view of the world and, in fact, my sanity. 

However, as strongly as I rely on logic to protect me, far too much of my life is spent in frustration which at times verges on being debilitating. It is difficult to cling to one's beliefs and Illogic, clearly demonstrating that logic is utterly worthless when dealing with the real world. I simply cannot comprehend how things which are, to me, so quintessentially logical, are so easily ignored or dismissed out of hand by what seems at times to be the majority of my fellow human beings. The current state of our political system is perhaps the strongest single example of how little power logic has in our world. I firmly believe that those people in and out of Congress who swear allegiance to the Tea Party are far more closely aligned to Lewis Carol than to Boston.

To me, logic is the mind's salvation, just as hope is the soul's. However, to be continually shown irrefutable evidence that what is so vital to me is held in such disregard--and viewed with such disdain and contempt by so many--is truly disheartening. I simply, sincerely cannot understand how otherwise rational, intelligent people can be so totally unconcerned by not only the neglect of logic but its downright rejection. How can the most egregiously illogical precepts/ideas/theories be foisted upon us as gospel and, incomprehensibly, almost universally accepted without question?

It is when I find myself personally abandoned by logic that I am most exposed and vulnerable, and this happens most often when it comes to issues of consistency. Consistency is logical. If I do something in a certain way 99 times and get the same results all 99 times, should I not be able to safely assume that doing the same thing exactly the same way as I've done it 99 times before will produce the same result? Alas, the answer is no. I can never be sure that doing the same thing the same way will produce the same results as the last time I did it.

I've always found my reliance on logic at odds with my refusal to accept reality. Logic is, after all, the ultimate reality. But like most humans, I am quite good at making my own accommodations between the two.

I'm fully aware that my sincere belief in the basic goodness of our species flies in the face of both logic and reality, and marks me as incredibly naive. But it is because I so sincerely believe in the goodness and honesty of others that every single instance of outrageous, blatant dishonesty upsets me so. I walk around like an exposed nerve end.

I simply cannot understand how people cannot be more kind to one another, or more considerate, or how or at what point the Golden Rule metastasized from, "Do unto others as you would have done unto you," to "Do unto others as you would have done unto them."

And yet, in spite of it all, I still find comfort and safety within my increasingly thin little shell of logic, and try to ignore the storms that rage outside.

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

Dorien's blogs are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday and Thursday. Please come back. And please take a moment to check out http://bit.ly/m8CSO1 for information on Dorien's "Short Circuits: a Life in Blogs."