Dorien Grey and Me

Thursday, January 29, 2015

"Pretty"

I know, I know…our attraction to physically pretty people is somehow encoded in our DNA as an imperative. Survival of the fittest and all that. But our humanity should raise us above our genes, and it far too seldom does.

One of the least followed of biblical teachings is "Judge not, lest you be judged." We are continually judging other people...and ourselves…using arbitrary standards imposed upon us. By whom, exactly? No one seems to know. And, if we have an iota of concern for how we compare to other people, or of our relationships to the rest of humanity, we inevitably suffer from them.

Surely there are people who are sufficiently self confident that how they see themselves when compared to others is a non-issue. I truly envy them, but unfortunately have never been one of them…and I fear they are a tiny minority.

There are scientific studies proving an almost mathematical equation for determining attractiveness—the more “balanced” one’s facial features, the more closely a mirror image of one side of the face matches the other, the more attractive the person is judged to be. And being “pretty” is an incalculable advantage on almost every level of human interaction. “Pretty” people tend to be the first hired, the first to be promoted. They tend to marry other pretty people. While this may have a certain general, utterly unemotional logic rooted in genetic imperatives, the fact is that our preoccupation with beauty causes incalculable pain and suffering for millions and millions of people who are made aware that they are not pretty.

The prejudice toward attractiveness and appeal is perhaps even more blatantly obvious when it comes to our pets. Go to any animal shelter where pets are offered for adoption. Which ones get adopted first? The cute little puppies and kittens, the handsome older animals, of course. But what of that runt in the litter, or that sad-eyed, scraggly mutt with his tail between his legs? Are they any less deserving of a good home? Though I have no figures on which to base this statement, I will be willing to bet that far more "ugly" animals are killed by "humane societies" than are handsome ones.

Are ugly creatures, human and animal, less worthy of love? It breaks my heart to see the fuss made over the cute little human darlings while the heavy-set kid with thick lips or a big nose or a receding chin is all but totally ignored.

And our society goes to great lengths to perpetrate this injustice. Turn on any commercially produced television program. Count the number of pretty people, then count the number of average-looking or less-than-average. Odds are the proportion of pretty people is many, many times larger than the ratio of attractive to not-so-attractive in society in general. And how many unattractive actors, proportionately, ever reach the status of stars? It is the beautiful people, in movies and in life, who are the “stars.” The rest are “character actors.”

Fortunately, there is hope for everyone. We all can recall certain incidents, certain encounters, certain seemingly insignificant moments which somehow permeate deeply into our souls and remain with us throughout our lives. On the subject of being “pretty”—a very sensitive one for me, who has never been pretty—one such moment still fills me with wonder and heartbreaking joy. Many years ago, I was in a restaurant seated directly across a table with a man and a woman both of whom were, by any scientific or general measure of beauty or physical attractiveness, singularly unattractive; by most people’s standards they would be thought of as ugly. The man was grossly overweight with a rough, pockmarked face, which was totally lacking in scientific "balance." The woman looked like a cruel caricature of the Wicked Witch of the West. (And even as I write this I am truly ashamed of myself for perpetrating the cruelty by describing them in this way.)

But the thing that matters, the thing has stayed with me all these years, is that as they looked at each other and held hands across the table, they radiated such a powerful sense of love that it, for me, completely redefined the word "beauty." They had each other. They loved each other. The "rules of physical attractiveness" didn't matter. What I thought or you thought or the world thought didn't matter. What possibly could?

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).

Monday, January 26, 2015

Observing

We're all so busy living our lives that we seldom take the time to step back and really look at things. Not the big stuff upon which our existence depends, but on those millions and millions of trivialities that surround us every minute and yet go ignored. It is these little things which fascinate me.

"Such as," you ask? Well, such as the following:

I enjoy picking out left-handed people at a play or concert: left handers clap their left hands into their right; right handers clap their right hands into their left.

Tap the lip of a cup lightly with a spoon as you fill the cup with hot water and listen to the change in pitch as the cup fills. (It doesn't work quite as well using cold water, interestingly.)

Lay two sheets of paper in front of you on a desk. Take a pencil in each hand and without concentrating or looking at what you're doing, write your name simultaneously with both. Your dominant hand will, of course, write your name correctly. The other hand will write it backwards.

Runway models always cross one foot slightly in front of the other as they walk.

Female celebrities have the annoying habit of posing one hand on hip far, far more often than would naturally occur, apparently assuming this to be somehow seductive. It is not.

Notice, the next time you are in a government office, how many of the employees charged with dealing with the public seem completely certain they are the government.

If you've followed my blogs for any length of time, you know of my ongoing ranting about the very real demand that actors in commercials prominently display a wedding ring to subliminally show the viewer that he is a "family man" and therefore can be trusted. Unmarried actors or those who do not normally wear a wedding ring are often actually required to put one on for the commercial. And, again, you will never see an adult male alone in a commercial with a young child unless the man is wearing a wedding ring, lest the viewer think the man is a pedophile.

New York subway cars are almost half again as long as Chicago subway cars and have three sets of doors as opposed to the two sets on Chicago cars. Some modern European subway trains are articulated and have no divisions at all between cars.

The next time you are at a museum featuring classical ancient Egyptian paintings or sculptures, note that statues of standing figures all have their arms rigidly against their sides, their hands clasped into a fist around what appears to be a short stick but which, I realized, is only something to fill the gap between the thumb and clenched fingers. And all standing figures have their left foot extended beyond their right.

In Egyptian wall paintings, eyes and torsos are always painted as if being viewed head-on, despite the position of the rest of the body. It is very rare to see a body portrayed from the side, or in any other position.

Classical Greek statues have no bridge to the nose...the ridge of the nose is a straight line from forehead to tip.

Etruscan sarcophagi often feature sculptures of the dead propped up on one arm, but always turned to the right, and the right knee often bent and raised slightly.

How can I...or you...become bored when just opening our eyes and looking at things as though they are being seen for the first time presents such a wealth of things to wonder about and be in awe of? Try it and see.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Lip Service

We are a lip-service people. Both as individuals and as a society, we solemnly proclaim belief in and adherence to one thing while doing the exact opposite. There is, far too often, only the most flimsy connection between our words and our actions. Generally, lip service is basically harmless; it's something everyone does. But it covers a very broad spectrum from the generally harmless—almost a natural reaction—to calculatedly cynical and hypocritical.

Paying lip service to something is, for the most part, a form of taking the path of least resistance. We claim to believe things simply because, whether we honestly believe them to be true or not, we acknowledge that everyone else seems to believe them, and we don't want to rock the boat or risk calling attention to ourselves by standing out too far from the crowd. Standing out from the crowd makes one vulnerable and a potential target, like a wildebeest who strays too far from the herd. Few people want to be targets.

Lip service also provides protective coloration, offering a large tree behind which we can hide our true thoughts and feelings. And there are those who can delude themselves into confusing lip service with truth. Bigots, for example, almost always vehemently deny they are bigots. Religious zealots loudly and piously proclaim their fealty to the written tenets of their faith while totally ignoring and violating them. Muslim extremists have done perhaps irreparable harm to the religion they slavishly defend, often to the death of themselves and others. Christian extremists are somewhat less dismissive of their own lives, but still only slightly less reprehensible. Those who most strongly avow their allegiance to the Bible are often the very ones who do the most undermine it. They seem to have the astonishing ability to overlook such insignificant-to-them little precepts as "Love thy neighbor," "Do unto others as you would have done unto you," "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone," and "Judge not lest ye be judged."

Corporations, which differ from religious zealots only in that the deity they worship is Mammon rather than God or Allah, have made an art out of saying one thing and doing another. ("Your call is very important to us," and "...where you, the customer, are our primary concern" spring to mind. Few if any of them even bother, anymore, to pay lip service to "the customer is always right." I suspect when they try to say that, they burst into uproarious laughter.)

Lip service is the cornerstone of politics. Politicians regularly and unctuously pay lip service to any widely held belief they think might win them votes while, while subverting it for their own ends. Tea Partiers want to "take back our country" to its constitutional roots, but want to rid the Constitution of those parts they find bothersome.

On a personal, individual level, lip service is sometimes the only logical way of dealing with matters one is truly unable to comprehend. I pay lip service to—that is, I can accept, albeit with great reluctance—the belief that one is only as old as one feels, and that age doesn't matter. I can even say my age aloud, but though I say it in English, it might as well be Swahili. The words strike my ear, but not my mind. Try as I might, I simply cannot believe it because it can't be true. And you'll notice I'm not saying it here. It's not a matter of being coy, it's simply a matter of sincere incomprehensibility.

So, lip service, universally used and universally ignored, is simply yet another little device we humans use to try to make some sense and order out of what is too often a senseless and chaotic existence. It is one thin thread in the rope we have spun as a race to tether ourselves to reality. I just wish the rope were stronger, and that it didn’t so easily become a noose.

Monday, January 19, 2015

Seriously?

Margaret Hamilton, as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz hit it on the head: “What a world! What a world!”

I have spent more than 3/4 of a century bumbling through life avoiding reality whenever possible, thinking I was unique in doing so. But I slowly became aware that my aversion to reality is shared by the vast majority of the American public, if not the world’s population. Our entire culture seems to be largely based on it. We have carefully created a world of euphemisms and smoke and mirrors, applying layers of powder and rouge and eyeshadow to the harshness of reality. If we don’t want to think about something, we do our best to find a way to divert ourselves. It is simply easier to evade and avoid.

Are you old enough to have ever bought a used car? There are no such things anymore. You don’t buy a used car…you buy a “pre-owned vehicle.” Oh, well, a “pre-owned vehicle” is obviously infinitely better than a “used car.”

Governmental agencies at all levels have developed their own language to convey their authority in pomposities intended to cow the public. Police reports never say someone got out of the car. No, the person “exited the vehicle.” (I don’t think I’ll ever understand the logic behind that one.)

Items are never sold for rounded-off amounts—$2.00 or $20.00, say—but for $1.99 or $19.99—because reducing the cost by a whopping one cent sounds so much cheaper and sells infinitely more. There is a world of difference between the sound of reality and the sound of evasion.

Perhaps my “favorite” example of reality-evasion is that in our society, people do not die; they “pass away.” Seriously? And, upon burying the container that the person came in, we murmur, “Rest in Peace.” Rest? The individual is as beyond resting as he/she is beyond every other problem, care, or concern. Why do people find the concept of simply returning to the eternity from which he/she came so disturbing/frightening?

TV infomercials excel at putting lipstick on a pig. They first do everything in their power to convince us that whatever is being sold is the greatest invention since the wheel; that there has never, ever, been anything like it in the history of the world. And then they offer to double or triple the order to encourage you to buy. Seriously? If it’s 1/1,000th as good as they say it is, why should they need to give away more than they have to? And then, as if it were some wonderful added benefit, we are told it is “not sold in stores.” They obviously hope no one wonders why.

The asking of questions is anathema to the anti-reality World of Mammon in which we all live. Large, pricey items are sold on apparently special credit terms to “well-qualified buyers,” though what those terms might be are never explained. And just what, pray tell is a “well-qualified” buyer? I have asked this question a thousand times and never received an answer.

We buy something and are told there will be “No Interest Until 2025” as an incentive. Not one person in 100 stops to think that the reality behind that statement is we’ll be paying for it until at least that date.

The evasion of reality is never-ending. Words and phrases like “piled high,” “big money,” “no reasonable offer refused,” “strict limit of,” are all blatantly false come-ons we have become so accustomed to that we never, ever question. We should. Seriously.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

You, Me, and Snowflakes

Glancing out the window during our most recent light snowfall, I got to thinking about snowflakes and our metaphysical resemblance to them. (Nice segue, Dorien!)

Each of us, be we human or snowflake, is unique, though when viewed in large numbers both are all but indistinguishable from one another. The closer one gets to either an individual snowflake or an individual human, the more distinct its differences become. The various components which go into each human's physical and emotional makeup--and their relative proportions--vary widely, though in most people these components are for the most party fairly well balanced. However, in others, the various elements--primarily our emotional composition--combine to produce some very strange results.

I definitely fall into the latter category. For example, whereas most people are an easily manageable blend of self confidence and doubt, I find myself both irrationally insecure and unjustifiably egocentric, often at the same time. I am a glutton for attention and praise, yet am excruciatingly embarrassed to be singled out from a crowd. While others at a large public event effortlessly and openly display their enthusiasm, shouting and jumping up and down and waving their arms and dancing to the music, I stand like Lot's wife, an unmoving block of salt. My soul dances, but my body will not even try. And as a result I, who so fear standing out in a crowd, stand out by not being a part of it.

Like snowflakes, people vary widely in the symmetry of their physical appearance and, as a result, in their attractiveness. The laws of average dictate that there will be far, far more nondescript snowflakes as there are the nearly-perfect. And so there are infinitely more Roger Margasons than there are Tom Cruises. Perfection, in both snowflakes and the human concept of physical beauty, invariable comes down to symmetry. The "perfect" snowflake is one which is perfectly symmetrical, and studies have shown that the more symmetrical/balanced a person's facial features, the more beautiful he/she is considered to be. The perception of this symmetry in human faces is all but subliminal. Just to look at someone's face, unless the lack of symmetry is striking--which is seldom is--we don't notice that one eye is just a fraction of an inch lower on the face than the other, or that one nostril is very subtly larger than the other. But our mind subconsciously recognizes the differences.

Just as all snowflakes, no matter how they may vary from one another in appearance, share the commonality of water vapor formed around a minute speck of dust, we humans all share a common DNA, which is the core of our physical being. Though myriads of other subtle factors influence each of us, because we are biological creatures, the genetic makeup of our race influences and accounts for, either directly or subtly, the fact that the vast bulk of us have similar goals, needs, and desires. Most of us marry, or want to marry, and our need to reproduce to assure the survival of the species is a genetic imperative.

There is a certain irony in the fact that the "be fruitful and multiply" imperative has proven so successful that we are dangerously close to imperiling our survival through uncontrolled overpopulation. With more than seven billion of us now taking up space and resources, the question is, might reproduction for preservation of the species basically been achieved? We're not in danger of running out of people. A nice, steady snowfall can be lovely: a force-10 blizzard with 20-foot snowdrifts can be devastating.

The single greatest advantage humans have over snowflakes is that, even among the billions of other humans, one single individual can have an effect over, if not all, large numbers of other humans. Snowflakes do not have leaders. And not all humans go down in the history books for influencing our fellow humans for good or for ill. But we have the ability and the power to make not only our own lives better, but to make a positive difference in at least a few others. We should use this ability far more than we do.

Monday, January 12, 2015

Boogeyman

There is a boogeyman who lives beneath my bed, and in my closet, and who stalks me every hour of every day, no matter where I go. I never see him, of course...boogeymen never show themselves...but I know he is there, and he knows I know. He saturates my mind like water saturates a sponge, and his name is Time.

He's been with me all my life, and has always been frightening. But he grows more so with each passing year.

I read a science fiction story many years ago that has stayed with me all this time. It was about a society in which murder was very rare, and the murderer was always detected. The punishment for murder was death, but it was administered in a very different way. The murderer was not put in prison. He could go about his life freely. But he was always accompanied by a machine which would, at some unknown point and totally without warning, kill him, as one swats a fly. He had to go through every day never knowing which moment would be his last, but knowing it was coming, and each passing minute brought it closer. Until....

And I still, strange as it may seem, identify with that story. Though I have not committed any crime, I am like that murderer, and the machine that follows me everywhere, and which I know will one day take my life, is Time.

I know this obsession is downright unhealthy. I know there is no boogeyman under my bed or in my closet, or deliberately, calculatedly, consciously following me around, just as I know a train speeding down the tracks has no evil intent and has no awareness of anyone in its path. But if someone stands on the tracks in front of a moving train, the outcome is inevitable. Each of us is, in fact, standing on the track at different intervals, and each of us, in turn, will be run over. We can stand there, watching the train barreling down on us, and wave our arms frantically and shout for it to stop, but it won't even slow down. It's probably a blessing that most people stand with their backs turned to the train of Time, and are so preoccupied with the sounds of their own lives they cannot hear it coming. I can, and the sound grows louder every minute.

I am fully aware, too, that in my preoccupation with how quickly the future becomes the past, I am unable to fully appreciate the present. Delight and joy are tempered by the knowledge that the particular moment must end. I wish with all my heart and soul that it were different, and am convinced that my life would be infinitely less stressful if I could somehow get over it. But as with so much of life, wanting something to be different does not, even with great effort, make it so.

On reading this over, it once again seems that I come across as a bitter, disagreeable curmudgeon; really a totally wet blanket, never happy, always bitching and moaning about one thing or another. I too, wish it were not so. Oscar Wilde observed that "A cynic is a frustrated romantic," and I fear he pretty much summed it up. I've often said that romantics are those whose hearts have never let go of the dreams of childhood and youth--of a world of kindness and beauty, without harshness or hatred or bigotry. Like all romantics, I want so very much for things to always go smoothly, and simply cannot understand why common courtesy and basic logic are almost universally ignored if not scorned. And disillusion creates a inevitable state of sadness and frustration. Perhaps, were it not for the boogeyman, all this wouldn't matter as much. But I feel cheated when so much of the terribly short time each of us has on this earth has to be spent countering the negatives. Let's add that one to my list of things I truly wish weren't so.

I blame it on my boogeyman.

Thursday, January 08, 2015

"You're Nothing!"

The human need to feel a sense of belonging is a subject seldom discussed openly, but is an important factor in each of our lives. While we may not think much about it, you can be absolutely certain that advertisers and those out to champion some cause or other do. They are firmly...and rightly...convinced that the best way to get you to join them is to imply, or simply come right out and declare, that there is something basically wrong with you if you do not agree with them.

Several of these blogs have, over the years, discussed the fact that because each of us goes through life as one individual in a vast sea humanity, the assumption too often is that we are different and apart from everyone else...that life is a huge club to which we don't really belong.

One of my favorite cartoons shows five men seated around a table, talking. One says: "So here we are, four intelligent men...five, if you count Frank, here...." And each of us is a Frank.

A couple of decades ago, there was a lot of talk about "subliminal messages" inserted into all forms of communications to influence you to think one way or another. I haven't heard subliminal messages mentioned of late, but it's certainly not that they have gone away. It's just that they no longer even make any pretense of being subliminal. We are bombarded with them every single day, and they have transmogrified from being subtle whispers to sledgehammers.

Consider for a moment.

"The movie/book/show everyone is talking about!" Well, I'm certainly not talking about it. I most likely had never even heard about it before, which isn't really surprising considering that it may not even have been released yet. However, that I haven't heard anyone else even mention it, either, is beside the point. The point is that since I'm not talking about it, clearly I am an outsider.

Politicians...and, in today's astoundingly mean-spirited times, especially Republicans...routinely use disenfranchisement as a weapon. How many times do they claim, unequivocally, that "The American people do not want" or "The American people will not stand for" some program they oppose--usually a program approved by the majority of voters. Since I've always assumed--apparently wrongly--that my birth certificate qualifies me as an American, where does this statement leave me? Usually they are talking about a program that I indeed do want, and that, since I probably voted for it in the first place, I certainly will stand for. But the message is clear: if I don't toe the line they have drawn, I am outside the circle and utterly worthless.

I am constantly amazed by the fact that anyone casting themselves in the role of the bull in the china shop has tens of thousands of people following them avidly, hanging on every utterly illogical word they utter, and believing without question every hateful, dehumanizing, self-serving statement they make. They take their power largely from convincing others that they have power, and a tragically large number of people, increasingly feeling they themselves are powerless, follow those who assume it, usually by playing on their fear and ignorance. It is a virulent case of the Emperor's New Clothes gone mad.

There is an old saying which, sadly, is becoming more and more true, and more and more accurate: "Those who cannot create, destroy."

And you? Well, if you don't agree with every single word those-who-would-be-king utter, it doesn't matter. Obviously your opinion doesn't matter. You are worth nothing at all.

Monday, January 05, 2015

Egotism vs Egoism

There is a very fine but very sharp divide between egotism and egoism, both of which are centered on the self. But it is the assumption of superiority that divides the two. Egotists have the luxury of automatically assuming they are aways right; egoists are never really sure. The egotist looks outward to feed his sense of superiority; the egoist realizes that, while he might assume what others are thinking or feeling, he can never really know for sure, and therefore looks within himself for answers.

Overt self confidence is a mark of an egotist; the lack of it is the mark of an egoist. The egotist, like an exploding supernova, projects his sense of superiority outward; the egoist, like a black hole, draws everything into himself, and can never truly be sure that what he finds there is correct.

While I have a certain grudging admiration for what I consider to be the gall of egotists, I am definitely an egoist. And because I cannot be sure of anyone else, I can seldom be totally sure of even myself. The result is, of course, utter confusion, and it is a state in which I have existed my entire life.

I am far too often conflicted as to whether I really believe what I think I believe. There are few things in life which are all black or all white. Every argument does, indeed, have two sides—and occasionally more. I seldom encounter a statement that I cannot, with however faulty logic, refute in some way.

I’m enough of an armchair psychologist to be fairly confident, given the human tendency to self-delusion, that egotism undoubtedly often masks a deep sense of insecurity, and is used to shore up a fragile ego. I tend to equate egotism to agnosticism: both boil down to the statement, “I don’t know!”

There is very little in life that is absolute; few things either pure white or totally black. The more questions one asks, the more complicated life seems to get, partly because questions beget questions. The point could be made that the fewer questions—especially philosophical ones—one asks of life, the better. The vast majority of the world’s population manages to get through life by asking a minimum of questions not related to their day-to-day functioning. The tendency to just going along with whatever hand life deals them and not think more than a year or two ahead is undoubtedly also helpful.

Because there are so very many things we do not and cannot know about the world in which we live, let alone about ourselves and our true motivations, we tend to bumble through life making choices and personal decisions based on personal feelings, experiences, and preferences. And the amazing thing is that we do all this without giving any of it a single conscious thought.

I feel fairly confident (never, as a typical egoist, being able to be absolutely sure of anything) that there are a great many people among my 7.2 billion fellow humans who share my beliefs.

But I can’t be sure.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Slight Flaws

I recently bought a timer so that when I do laundry in my apartment building I can know when the time comes to take clothes from the washer and put them into the drier, then when to go take them out of the drier. I chose a streamlined, small, simple-looking, and inexpensive device from my local Walgreens. Three elementary buttons: hour, minute, and Start/Stop, with a small display window for the digital numbers. The simple manual (were it not simple, I wouldn’t have bothered to read it knowing I wouldn’t understand a word) told me it would beep 10 minutes and five minutes before the timer reached 00:00.

On it’s first two uses, I realized the “beep” was so soft that unless I was really paying attention or had the timer up to my ear I couldn’t hear it. I do not consider walking around with a timer to my ear to be an ideal situation. But by concentrating very, very hard, and being sure the timer was no further than a foot away, I managed, provided there were no overriding exterior sound distractions, like my cat breathing.

So we reached a sort of accommodation, the timer and I. Until yesterday when the sound of the beeping either stopped completely or dropped below the range audible to humans. So unless I sit there and stare at it, waiting for it to reach 00:00, I have no idea when the time has run out. But the little digital numbers do an admirable job of counting down the seconds…unless I have forgotten to watch very carefully when I hit “START.” If I don’t watch for it to start, it doesn’t. So not only do I know when the time has run out, I have no idea of how long it has been since I hit “START.”

My personal grand prize for slight flaws built into modern machines goes without question to a sleek, ultra-modern, efficient-looking streamlined, gleaming-aluminum ice cream bar dispenser I came across at a shopping mall. The attractiveness of the machine was enhanced by eye-grabbing design elements hinting of the delectable pleasures that awaited within. There were a set of sleek-looking buttons from which you made your selection, above which was a slot for inserting your money. All in all, a beautiful piece of modern technology. The only flaw I was able to determine was that the designers had apparently neglected to put in any way for you to get the ice cream out of the machine once you’d paid for it. The front, sides, and I assume the back, which was flush against the wall, was seamlessly smooth, with absolutely no doors or openings of any kind. After several minutes of searching, I gave up and walked away, wondering rather cynically if there really was any ice cream—or anything else—inside.

I can’t help but see malicious deliberation in a great many flaws, and I consider them specifically designed with me in mind. To me, all instruction manuals are deliberately flawed in that I have yet to get more than two paragraphs into one without being utterly confused. “Some Assembly Required” manuals and kits are classics of insidious flaws: not only are the directions impossible to follow, but I am convinced the manufacturers deliberately either leave one piece out, or add one simply for the perverse glee it brings them.

Some “flaws” are both subtle and truly brilliant: take the bottle of cough medicine on which the label says: “If unsatisfied with this product for any reason, simply return the unopened bottle for a full refund.” Excuse me?

A currently running commercial for something called “Zarelto” states, “Do not take if you are allergic to Zarelto.” Really? And the teeny-tiny print accompanying a product guaranteed to cure toenail fungus says, “Apply to affected area for 48 weeks.” 48 weeks?

Ah, well, nothing is perfect.

Thursday, December 25, 2014

From: Me ..... To: You

Monday, December 22, 2014

Lost and Found

Over the course of our lives, friends come and go. We change, they change; bonds which connected us break or slowly dissolve. Most of the friends of our lives fade into the distance of memory, and the longer we are separated, the greater the distance.

Reconnecting with…or even encountering…former friends can range from casually-exchanged greetings to, in some cases, the reestablishing of the friendship.

I was thinking of such instances in my own life, and several stand out.

In 1948, while in Junior High, I met Larry, the first “love of my life.” He was beautiful and we carried on a sporadic but torrid teen-age-hormonal affair for a year or two. We drifted apart, as is pretty common at that stage of one’s life, but the torch I held for him never went out. Many years later, I ran into him in a gay bar. He was still beautiful, but we were by then different people. I felt no real connection nor, obviously, did he. We never saw one another again.

In college, I shared my first romantic kiss with a to-me breathtakingly beautiful young man named John who became my dorm roommate. Poor John was excruciatingly conflicted about being gay, and our affair was short-lived. Sometime in the late ‘60s I ran into him at Los Angeles’ Farmer’s Market. The years had not calmed him and I had the distinct impression he was embarrassed to see me.

While in the Navy I became wildly infatuated with a shipmate, Lloyd, who was irredeemably straight. I thought of him many times after returning to civilian life and tried to locate him several times over the years. Finally, a few years ago, I was able to locate him and phoned him. He had married shortly after his service and has two grown daughters. We exchanged addresses and I wrote him. He did not reply, and I closed the door.

Larry, John, and Lloyd were, in the overall scheme of things, simply warm memories but passing fancies. Fortunately, I’ve been lucky enough to have several other, more significant reconnections.

When I started at a new school in the third grade, one of my classmates was a boy named Dan Sable, who went on to attend the same college as I. We were not terribly close, but friends nonetheless. About ten years ago, now, he came across my name on Facebook and wrote me. We instantly re-established our friendship as though there had not been a 60-year-plus pause, and we remain in regular contact.

Through Dan, I got back in touch with another school-and-college-years friend, Ted Bacino, whom I’d met in Cub Scouts and with whom I attended Junior high and my first two years of college. Again, we picked up our friendship in mid-sentence. Ted now lives in Palm Springs, and we met up a few years ago while we were both in New York. It was as though we’d seen each other the day before, and we still keep in regular touch.

Through Ted, I reconnected with another member of our college “gang,” Effie Foulis. Since my college years were among the happiest of my life, being able to have direct links to those halcyon days is indescribably comforting.

But one of my major reconnections has been with Diane Kopp, with whom I worked during my earliest days in Chicago. I had lost track with her when I moved to California and had no way to contact her (women almost inevitably change their last name upon getting married). So when I received a Facebook message from her after nearly 60 years, I was elated. She knew, and is therefore also a bridge to, my now-dead dear friend and one-time partner Norm. Again, the lapse in time meant nothing, and we now get together every couple of months.

For someone to whom links to the past provide invaluable comfort, having the opportunity to re-establish ties—whether those opportunities result in a continuation of or a resolution to a once-important friendship—is one of life’s deepest pleasures. I hope you may have had, or will have, similar experiences.

Memories are the yule-logs of the soul.

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).

Thursday, December 18, 2014

A Matter of Distance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, December 15, 2014

Cliffhangers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Fun and Logic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, December 08, 2014

"I Hear the Mermen Singing..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).

Thursday, December 04, 2014

Mantras and Acorns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).

Monday, December 01, 2014

The Doll House

I frequently start these blogs with only a general idea of a theme, and just let my fingers take over without much conscious direction. This one is a bit different in that I am not sure what approach to take with it. Writing of memories is always a slippery slope, threatening to slide into the deep sense of longing and loss that so many people experience during the holidays. So I’ll try to avoid it. We shall see.

Memories are based not on specific incidents alone, but everything that led up to them. I awoke this morning thinking of my doll house, and what led up to it, and to the special place it holds in my heart.

I was tempted to say that I was a strange child until I realized that being strange is part of being a child. When I was around six or seven, I announced to my parents that I wanted a doll house for Christmas. I really did. I really, really did. My father, of course, adamantly refused to even consider such a thing. He probably already suspected I would grow up to be gay, and wanted to discourage any overt signs of femininity in his son.

He did not realize that I wanted a doll house not because I related it with anything at all to do with girls, but simply because it was an extension of my very active fantasy life. I wanted a doll house filled with doll-house furniture so that I could then have imaginary fights in the house and knock over all the furniture.

My family was what they used to call “lower middle class.” Both my parents worked hard at full-time jobs all their lives. I had no idea at the time, of course, just how hard they worked and what they sacrificed to provide for me. I can never recall ever having to go without something I really needed, and I almost always got what I asked for for Christmas.

A doll house, however, even if my father had approved, would have been an expensive gift. So, with my dad refusing to allow my mom to buy me one, she made me one…from an old wooden orange crate. There were only two rooms—orange crates had a center divider—and the furniture she was able to find was far out of proper proportion to the “rooms.” I don’t recall now what else she did to make an orange crate into a house, but she did her best, and I do hope I was properly appreciative—though, being a child who wanted a “real” doll house, I may not have been. But the thing was, I wanted a doll house and my mother got me one.

A slight pause between paragraphs while I forced myself to step back from the slippery slope and shift my focus from sorrow for her loss to unfathomably deep gratitude that I had her…that I had both my parents…in my life at all.

All memories are part of who we are, and the holiday season seems especially rich in memories. The mind is drawn to them like iron filings to a magnet. Mine are filled with Christmas parties and family get togethers, good friends and laughter; the smell of pine needles; bubble-light Christmas ornaments; exchanging gifts—and being as excited to see the reactions of those to whom I’d given them as I was to open my own; Dad’s Tom & Jerrys; the every-Christmas jar of olives from Aunt Thyra; the smell of her Estee Lauder talcum powder…they are and will always be part of my life, just as your memories are a part of your own life. And I hope, when you reflect on your own memories, you can view them not with sorrow of loss but with warmth and love for having had them at all.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Thanatophobia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, November 24, 2014

Moments and Times

Each of us has indelible memories of events in our life which stand apart from all the others, and which shape and mold not only how we view the world, but who we are as individual human beings.

I was thinking today of the moments and times in my life that I consider to have had the deepest and most lasting effects on me. In my mind's eye, I became like a gold miner in a rushing stream, swishing memories around in a mental sieve, and carefully picking out the ones which remain. I hope you won't mind my sharing some of them with you. And while they are indeed mine and not yours, I hope you might see why I chose them.

1) Hearing, while eating dinner with my folks when I was around four or five, the ringing of the bell on my tricycle, which I'd left on the sidewalk, realizing someone was stealing it, and my father—who had not heard the bell—refusing to allow me to leave the table to go save it. I'm sorry to say I think it negatively affected my entire relationship with him for most of the rest of his life.

2) Being asked by a stranger, at around the age of five, why I was singing Christmas carols in July. For some reason I was humiliated and I look on it as the moment when my tendency toward shyness turned to stone and put a wall between me and being able to express my emotions freely.

3) Attending the funeral of my beloved Uncle Buck in 1953. I had never before experienced such wrenching, unbearable grief.

4) As a Naval Aviation Cadet drinking beer with a NavCad friend and eating pizza at a little bar off Pensacola Beach while the Everly Brothers' "Unchained Melody" played on the jukebox.

5) Soaring alone in a huge valley surrounded by clouds, doing acrobatics and looking down at the green patchwork quilt of the earth far below.

6) Diving off a quay in Cannes into the crystal-clear Mediterranean with Marc, Michele, Gunter, and Joachim as part—though I did not realize it until later—of one of the happiest and most memorable weeks of my life.

7) Driving with my then-partner (the word "lover" has fallen out of fashion in the gay community, I fear) Norm back to Chicago from my parents' cottage in my new, bright red Ford Sprint convertible, watching from the corner of my eye as Norm studiously rummaged through a large bag of potato chips, finally pulling out the perfect chip, and handing it to me.

8) Being awakened at 6:15 on February 9, 1970, by the deep, ominous and absolutely unmistakable rumbling of an approaching earthquake.

9) Driving my mother back to the hospital from which she had just been released earlier in the day, after subsequently suffering a minor stroke which left her only able to point to things and say "What's that?" I was in anguish, and she reached over and patted my hand. I still cry when I think of that.

10) Leaving the theater after viewing Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake for the ninth time and suddenly realizing that my obsession with it was that, to my mind, I was the Prince and Ray, the love of my life, was the Swan—goodness and sweetness and kindness when sober, and incomprehensibly cruel when under the influence of alcohol, which eventually killed him.

11) The true sense of shock and sadness I experience every single time I look into a mirror or accidentally see myself in a reflective surface.

These are only a few of the many, many memorable moments of just one life out of billions. I know you have your own, and I hope you join me in the appreciation—hard though that word is to use with some experiences and memories—of each and every one of them. Gather all of yours together, then step back to get a better perspective, and what you see is...you.

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