Dorien Grey and Me

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Goulash

I never cease to be fascinated with how the mind—and, of course, my mind specifically—works.

I admire those whose minds and thoughts are like a well organized closet where there is a place for everything and everything is in it’s place. Mine is much more like a “Help Yourself” bin at a yard sale. Thoughts suddenly appear from absolutely nowhere, and disappear just as quickly.

I was thinking about goulash this morning (see what I mean?). And that thought immediately took me back to my childhood, when goulash was a frequent meal, and was often served (in my household, at least) when guests came over for dinner. America was just emerging from the Great Depression, and times and money were still tough. In 1938, the year I turned five, the minimum wage was reset by the government at twenty-five cents an hour; the average annual wage in the United States was $1,750.00. I’d imagine that’s just about what my father made as a manager-training instructor for the Western Tire Auto Company. My mom didn't work at the time...I'd just recovered from a badly broken leg which required her full-time attention, and I was a pretty high-maintenance kid at best.

Goulash, just in case you don't know, is an extraordinarily flexible and nourishing dish. It is most usually made of beef (Mom used hamburger because it was cheaper—less than 20 cents a pound), onions, stewed tomatoes, and almost any other vegetables you have on hand, spices--primarily paprika powder, without which goulash is not goulash--and pre-cooked elbow macaroni. It originated in Czechoslovakia, where the word means "mishmash," and depending on how it's made it can be considered a soup or a stew.

My folks, still under 30 in 1938, had lots of friends, all of whom were in the same financial boat as they. They'd get together often, and social gatherings then consisted mainly of just friends sitting around talking, or playing games. I don't remember that beer, wine, or any type of alcohol played as much a part of social life as it does today. And very frequently, friends would just stop by, unannounced. If it was near dinner time, or if they stayed until dinner time, Mom would make a large batch of goulash. If there was any left over, we'd have it for dinner the next night. And if someone else showed up while she was cooking, it was easy to just add a little more water, or toss in more cooked macaroni or whatever happened to be around.

My family was what was considered "lower middle class," but I was completely unaware of it. To a child, whatever conditions you're used to are, simply, the way is—you don't miss what you’re not aware of. Goulash was to me what prime rib or filet mignon or lobster tails was to those more wealthy. I was largely unaware of the financial pressures my parents were under, or the sacrifices they made for me. It is with considerable shame that I remember the time my parents had to take the money from my piggy bank to buy something they did not have enough of their own money to cover, and how angry I was with them. You have no idea how I wish I could have my parents back, even for an hour, to tell them how much I appreciate what they did for me.

I'd love a bowl of my mom's goulash right about now, and to hear the talk and laughter of friends long gone. But that's all right: all I have to do is close my eyes and open my heart, and they're here.

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, April 27, 2015

Obsession

Obsess (verb): preoccupy or fill the mind of (someone) continually, intrusively, and to a troubling extent

I don’t like to think of my emotional growth as being stunted, but I freely admit to its having slowed to a crawl by the time I was six. All children want things they cannot have, but most learn, as they grow older, to accept reality and move on. I, too, have indeed moved on…but I have never fully accepted the fact that I cannot have what I want, and this has been the albatross around my neck all my life.

I knew I was gay before I ever really knew what the word meant. By the age of five, I knew I liked other boys, and consider myself truly blessed that never for one single moment of my life have I regretted or been ashamed of being who/what I was. When I was a boy, I was been obsessed with other boys—those who clearly had what I felt I lacked. When I became an adult the obsession changed from boys to men, and fixated on those who possess physical, social, and mental characteristics I so desperately wanted, but did not have. My chest quite literally aches with longing to be like them…to be them. Being a homosexual is not all I am, but every aspect of my life is sternly related to it. I am gay because I am so strongly attracted to those who are, to my mind, physically beautiful, who possess grace and poise and charm and intelligence and the ability to blend easily with others…none of which, I feel, I have ever done.

I have for several years now been obsessed with male ballet dancers, who epitomize and combine my concepts of beauty, grace, and talent. I spend hours…hours I should be spending on my writing…wandering around the internet seeking photos to place on my www.pinterest.com/doriengrey “Nothing More Beautiful” boards. So as not to overwhelm anyone who chooses to view them, I limit each “board” to 125 photos. I now have 12 of them…roughly 1,500 photos, with another 650 or so I’ve not yet posted. And I am constantly adding more.

Interestingly (to me, at any rate) this particular obsession stems directly from an earlier obsession, which in turn was resolved by the most significant epiphany of my life. When in 1999 my friend Gary told me to be sure to watch PBS one night because they were putting on a version of “Swan Lake” with males dancing the parts of the swans. It was of course Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake and from the moment I sat down at the TV I did not move until well after it had ended. It was the most beautiful and moving performance I had ever seen, and I was instantly obsessed. Immediately after the program ended I called to order a DVD of it and watched it at least a dozen times. When the stage production came to New York from London, I went to New York twice to see it…four times the first trip, five times the second. (And I’ve seen it subsequently in Chicago and in a movie theater “live” broadcast.)

The story is of a prince who falls in love with a beautiful male white swan who has an evil counterpart. The ending is both tragic and agonizingly beautiful. I could not understand why I was so obsessed with it…until I attended the last Broadway performance of one of the leads, and the epiphany hit me as I left the theatre: I was the prince and Ray, whom I still think of as the love of my life despite being an irredeemable alcoholic who had died of AIDS as a result of his alcoholism, was both the white and the black swan. I had been so angry with Ray for dying that I never grieved for him. But I realized now that, with each performance I saw, I was reliving our relationship, and I was grieving.

As I say, it was the most profound epiphany of my life.

Life is infinitely complex, and infinitely confusing to those, like me, who expect everything to be simple. Our obsessions…for those of us who have them…are signposts pointing to some often unrecognized thing within ourselves. We should follow them.

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, April 23, 2015

Over the Rainbow

I am eternally grateful to my mother for giving me a fascination with and love for words. It was she, by reading me stories even before I was able to understand many of the words—though I loved the sounds—who opened the doors of wonder contained in those words.

From the time I learned to read, the library was a very special place. I got some sort of award while in first grade for having signed out more books than anyone in my class. Most of them were pretty elementary stuff, but among the first "real" books I remember were the Oz series, by Frank L. Baum. The most famous of which, of course, is "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", from which the classic movie was made. I saw it when it was released in 1938 and though I was not yet five years old, it enthralled me then, and it enthralls me now.

Once I discovered that there was an entire series of Oz books--fifteen in all--I'm quite sure I read most of them if not all. I can still close my eyes and see them...outsized, as I recall, with thick cardboard covers with wonderful illustrations. To open them was to open the door to the imagination and all the wonders therein.

The fifteen books, should you be curious, were The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Marvelous Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, The Road to Oz, The Emerald City of Oz, The Patchwork Girl Of Oz, Little Wizard Stories of Oz, Tik-Tok of Oz, The Scarecrow Of Oz, Rinkitink In Oz, The Lost Princess Of Oz, The Tin Woodman Of Oz, The Magic of Oz, and Glinda Of Oz.

For a child (and later an adult) who never felt he belonged, books offered an escape from the world—and the restraints—of reality. The concept of the Oz books is that there is a special place, somewhere "over the rainbow" with enchanted creatures and wondrous fields and forests and cities where anything is possible. They acted like a magnet for my own imagination, and taught me that if I was not happy with the world in which I lived, I was free to create my own.

One of my favorite characters in the Oz series was a little boy named "Button-Bright," about my own age, who appears in several of the books. He got his name from his parents, who thought he was "bright as a button." I'm sure I strongly identified with him. As I recall, he was constantly getting lost, then being found, then getting lost again. Eventually, he moved to Oz permanently. I take particular delight, on looking back, to realize that he was a friend of Dorothy's, because a long-time code between gay men was to ask "Oh, are you a friend of Dorothy?" I certainly was, and am. And the rainbow about which Judy Garland sings in the movie, lent its colors and its symbolism to the gay community.

The Oz books contain all the ingredients required to nourish and enrich any child's imagination, as it did mine. They teach the child that the mind—the imagination—is not tied to the body; that it can go anywhere, do anything; that it can provide a refuge, a haven, when the real world is harsh and cruel. It teaches that there are other places, other worlds. Every book is an arrow, a path, a guide to where the imagination can take us.

In an inscription to his sister in one of his books, Baum wrote: "I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp, which when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward."

I'd take that one step further and point out that an adult with an imagination is still a child, and it is to the adult child that I have dedicated my own books. And so I embarked on a life-long journey to create my own arrows, my own paths, my own guides for others. It's been a wonderful journey, and I hope that when it is over I, like Button-Bright, often lost and often found, may move permanently to Oz.

Monday, April 20, 2015

The Past-Clinger

I just got out of the shower and began getting dressed, starting to put on the same pants I wore yesterday—the pants my friend Gary had pointed out to me as having developed a hole above my right knee; the pants that are also badly pilled from Spirits’ claws having frequently gotten caught in them while laying on my lap.

I bought those pants, and four others just like them, when I was still living in Pence, in Northern Wisconsin. I bought five pair partly because whenever I go clothes shopping I can never find anything I like, and when I do…as with these pants…l stock up.

I moved from Pence nine years ago, and I’m still wearing the pants, alternating among the five pair. They are all showing their age. I’ve had to give up wearing one pair other than around the apartment because the pockets have frayed to the point where I can’t put anything in them without its dropping immediately down my leg and onto the floor. They each are in different stages of being frayed and pilled, and I should just pitch them all. But I simply cannot bring myself to doing it. Why?

Partly…an totally illogically…because of my strange sense of, well, loyalty. If something has served me well, I find it next to impossible to simply throw away as though it had never mattered. I’ve worn those pants while walking on the beach in Cannes, and wandering the streets of Pompeii. To throw them away is to throw away a tangible link I have to those places, those times.

Throwing away is ending. It is closing the door on the past, and I have always, always clung to the past for security. I truly do understand…and agree…that this is neither normal nor healthy from a mental standpoint, but I am powerless (or utterly unwilling) to change.

I’ve talked before of my attachment to…things. The little art-deco store-display statue of a lady with a real bakelite necklace. I’m sure I would never have bought it for myself, but Ray bought it for me, and each time I look at it, I think of him. It is, again, a tangible link to him. He touched it, I can touch it, and by the strange workings of my mind, touching it is touching him.

So many things are similar connections to my past; to parents and others who are no longer actually in my life. But tangible memories of them provide me with a hard-to-explain sense comfort.

I’ve often said, and take pride in the fact, that I never really feel lonely…and I realize that this is largely because I have surrounded myself with the tangible memories of so many things and people I don’t really need more.

The future is unseeable and therefore a source of uncertainty—we hope for the best from it, but have no assurances. The present is merely the vehicle which carries us from past to future. But the past is known. It cannot be changed. It is filled with a lot of unhappiness and sorrow, of course…all lives are. But we have the freedom of picking and choosing which parts of it we wish to deal with, and which to ignore.

And this entire blog has been written between the time I realized I could not wear that particular pair of pants, and this moment, when, pantless, I must decide what pair of pants I will wear.

(Have I mentioned that I am not wild about decision making, either?)

And after all this is done, I must decide what to do with the pants that prompted this all. Maybe I can just wash them, fold them, and put them in a box somewhere. At least it will spare me the trauma of throwing them away.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Tar Bubbles

When I lived in Los Angeles, I enjoyed going down to the La Brea Tar Pits to stare out over the still surface of the largest of the pools and watch gas bubbles slowly form little black igloos, linger a moment, and then more melt away than burst. They’ve been doing that for millions of years, and never seem to run out of the gas to create the bubbles.

My mind’s a lot like that. Thoughts, ideas, and memories from deep within me will work their way to the surface of my consciousness, remain for just long enough for me to acknowledge them, then vanish to rise again without notice or warning. Where they come from and how they were formed I have no idea. I suspect it is some sort of short-circuitry in my thought processes.

When I thought of my school days, little bubbles of memory began breaking the surface of my mind. I realized that putting 16 years into a one page blog might be a tad difficult. But here are a couple of bubbles that rose to the surface while I was contemplating it:

Because I’d broken my leg badly just before I was to enter first grade, I had to wait until the next year. I first attended Loves Park Elementary—though I’m sure it had another name—in Loves Park, Illinois. Shortly after I started school, the United States entered WWII. My three male cousins all went into service immediately, and I distinctly remember my prize possession being a military-type jacket that made me feel very grown up.

I loved “The Weekly Reader” a very early form of news magazine made especially for elementary students.

I remember going from door to door selling packets of vegetable seeds to raise money for the school to buy a motion picture projector. I hated going door to door selling packets of vegetable seeds, no matter how noble the purpose. And of course just before the projector was purchased, we moved and I transferred to another school, Harry Morris...which was located on the south-west outskirts of town and had a total student body of 68. In one of life’s little serendipities, after more than 60 years, I am once more in contact with two of my Harry Morris classmates, Dan Sable and Marion (then) Bender.

I remember the mothers—mine specifically, of course—taking turns walking to the school in winter to make hot soup for us for lunch: Campbell’s Tomato and Chicken Noodle were of course our favorites. I remember “milk money” and buying pints of chocolate milk. I remember The Bugville News, my first literary effort, which was a “Newspaper” relating the various disasters befalling the insect citizens of Bugville. I would tack each “edition” to the school’s front door, like Martin Luther.

I remember hating recess if organized sports were going to be involved. They would always choose up teams and then argue over who had to take me, and I would go into the bathroom and cry. Recess was not a fun time.

But I also remember many a happy hour, walking home from school, spent wandering through a side-of-the-road dump, breaking bottles.

I remember learning to ride a bike. Because my family was what was referred to as “lower middle class,” my dad bought me a used bike much too big for me...I could barely reach the pedals...and one day riding down the hill from school I could not stop and sailed directly into cross traffic where I was hit by a car. Luckily, I wasn’t hurt. But I was very badly shaken, and following my experience with my broken leg—caused by being accidentally jumped on by a playmate—it reinforced my aversion to doing anything which might cause me physical harm. Odd how such incidents when we are children can remain with us through life.

I remember with great, great fondness my teacher, Mrs. Larson, who always reminded me very much of Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Larson was who God had in mind when he created teachers. Her exact opposite was another of my teachers, Mrs. Hines, a red-headed harridan who, for punishment (which was frequent), would make us write every verse of the Star Spangled Banner.

Oh, Lord, I remember so much. So many people; so many more lost to memory. If I allow them, the bubbles rise faster and more thickly, until the surface of my mind is like a vast, rapidly boiling pot and I can no longer separate one bubble of memory from the next. I seem to be approaching that point as I write this, so it is time to turn off the burners for now. But don’t be surprised if the bubbles start rising again before long.

Monday, April 13, 2015

Remembering Fairdale

The recent tornado which swept across Northern Illinois all but wiped out the tiny town of Fairdale, of which I had fond memories from my childhood. About a year ago, I’d written a blog about Fairdale and a long-gone rural Midwest America. I’ve rewritten it and am reposting it in memory of a time—and place—now gone.

In the mid-to-late 1930s my grandfather and his wife owned and lived in a combination bar and gas station in Fairdale, Illinois, one of those tiny unincorporated hamlets quaintly but often accurately referred to as a "wide spot in the road." It was located on far-from-busy Hwy 72, which connected with the far busier Hwy 51 which cuts vertically through the center of Wisconsin and Illinois . It was probably less than 25 miles from my hometown of Rockford, but seemed like hundreds of miles—and decades in time—from anywhere.

Fairdale consisted of three very short streets, each no more than one-or-two-blocks long, The longest, and only one I can remember, had once served as the town's "main street." It ran north and south between Hwy 72 and the railroad tracks. Clustered along the end nearest the railroad tracks were perhaps three or four even-then-long-abandoned 2-story once-commercial buildings, but as I recall, Grandpa's bar/gas station was the only business in the town.

The bar, too, was old even then, a typical small farm-town bar which smelled of cigarette and cigar smoke and stale beer and whiskey. Once, when I was "helping" Grandpa sweep up in the morning before the bar opened, I found a $5 bill someone had dropped. A $5 bill in the mid-to-late 1930s was a very great amount of money, indeed, and when no one returned to claim it, Grandpa let me keep it.

Neither the bar nor the gas station made much money. This was a very rural area, and the effects of the Great Depression still bore heavily on all aspects of the lives of average people.

Just east of Grandpa's place, on the highway, was Fairdale’s one-room school, which I remember primarily because its playground had one of those metal self-propelled "merry-go-rounds" you can still occasionally find today, which kids would start by pushing it in one direction, running faster and faster until they could jump on and go round and round until the centrifugal force died and it slowed to a halt. Then you jumped off and started the process over again.

Across the street from the school was a farm with a large—to the eyes of a 5 year old kid, huge—barn. I can still close my eyes and smell the hay. The family that owned it had a couple of kids around my age, and we would sneak into the barn, climb up into the hayloft, and then ascend a ladder to a small platform almost to the barn's rafters. It seemed like a very great height, but was probably eight feet at most. We would then jump down into the hay, shrieking with laughter and the sense of excitement such courage warranted.

It was, indeed, a different time and a different world, with different values and attitudes, and the more harsh realities of life at the time gradually grow less distinct as the fog of time closes in. Sharper edges dim and soften, and nostalgia paints memories in softer colors, making the past often more appealing than the "now."

But man is a creature which craves comfort, and if memories of a tiny town long ago can provide me with some comfort, I'll savor it like a fine, vintage wine.

Thursday, April 09, 2015

Custodial

When I was in college, my best friend, Russ Hogan, used to say, "Margason, you're custodial" after I would make yet another in an endless string of goofs/gaffs/mistakes. Much of the criticism was (and is) based on the fact that while I understand and can fairly well define the word "organization," I seem incapable of practicing it. This situation has not materially improved in the years since.

Last week, someone was kind enough to ask me to do a guest blog for their site. I was of course flattered, as I always am by gratuitous acts of kindness, and immediately set out to do the blog. It is not due until later this month, so I set it aside for a few days. When I went back to work on it this morning, I realized to my horror that I could not remember for whom I was writing the blog, nor did I, therefore, have any idea of how to contact the person who had requested it! I frantically went back through past emails hoping to find our exchange, and cannot. Of course, my search was negatively effected by the fact that I have no fewer than 25,000 emails in my “In” box—I am also incapable of using the "delete" key if there's any possible chance I might want to go back to a past email—and was of course unable to find it. And unless I do find it, I will miss the deadline and the person who asked me to write the blog will, wrongly, assume that I just couldn't be bothered, and have every right to assume that I am not to be depended upon. This drives me absolutely crazy!

I never make notes, simply because at the time I should be making them, I know perfectly well what the note would be about and therefore don't feel I need one. It's the same with my keys, my wallet, my glasses, and almost anything I might have in my hand at any given time. I set them down knowing perfectly well at that instant where I put them, yet fifteen seconds later when I go to retrieve them, I haven't a clue.

Russ having sadly died several years ago, my best friend, Gary, is—like Russ—a former school teacher whose life revolves around organization. He constantly tries to convince me of the value of always putting things in a certain place so that I'll always know where they are. All well and good. But when I walk in the door with a couple magazines and a piece of mail I want to open right away, I'll set my keys down on, say, my dresser, and go to get the letter opener—which, of course, I can't find. So I pry up one corner of the envelope's flap, insert my index finger, and rip the envelope to shreds in the process. By that time, I'm not even thinking about my keys, and I won't think about them until next time I need them, at which point...well, you get the idea.

A key (no pun intended) factor in my not being organized is that I have never been a candidate for "Homemaker of the Year" award, so chances are good that whatever I'm looking for at the moment has been buried beneath something else (a stack of magazines, for example).

I am also cursed with a total lack of short-term memory. I spend an inordinate amount of computer time bouncing back and forth between windows simply because if I want to use a name or a number from one window in another, by the time I get to where I want to put it—all of three seconds—I’ve forgotten what it was, and have to go back to look it up. I've been known to do this five times in the space of thirty seconds.

When I was in the service, I took movies, which I had converted to CDs. Earlier today, I wanted to send the CDs to a friend. Can I find them? Of course I can't find them. I live in a very small apartment only slightly larger than a breadbox, and I keep all my CDs in one place. I look, and sure enough, they're all there...except the ones I want at the moment. Where in the hell can they be? Where can I possibly have put them? I know they're here, somewhere. But where?

Organization takes time, and I simply do not have the time to organize. I'm too busy looking for things.

I think Russ might have been on to something.

Monday, April 06, 2015

Odd Man Out

How very odd, we humans. On a genetic level, we are all but identical. On a mental and emotional level, no two of us are the same. And we each have only ourselves to use as the basis for comparison with others. Many, probably most, feel comfortable in and around others, with whom they share common beliefs and reactions to any given situation. Some, however, consider themselves to be “odd men out.” I am one of them.

I am frequently made acutely aware of the fact that I am so far “out of it” that I could never find my way “in” with a map and compass. This awareness was most recently renewed by the incomprehensible frenzy engendered by “March Madness.” I definitely agree with the “Madness” part. It’s a basketball game, people! A basketball game! And not just a game, but a game that no one other than the teams involved actually, physically plays! Shrieking and jumping madly up and down and reacting like…well I’m afraid its hard for me to find a word that wouldn’t offend those involved in the shrieking and jumping…for a group of guys you’ve never met and who wouldn’t know you from Adam strikes me as just a tad, well, odd. And “March Madness” gives way without so much as an eye-blink’s pause to baseball season, which in turn segues seamlessly into football season, each chock-a-block full of vitally important “BIG GAME”s which are all but immediately forgotten to make room for the next BIG GAME. I am sincere in saying I simply cannot comprehend any of it.

Organized religion is, for me, on the same level of incomprehensibility as organized sports. I am embarrassed in the proximity of those who obviously understand and support either/both. I have never understood, or had the slightest interest in understanding, either. Since I am so vastly outnumbered in my attitudes toward them, it must be some sort of deep flaw within me. It is safe to say that organized religion has accounted for more human grief and tragedy than all the earthquakes and floods and natural disasters in the history of the world. Why? Every human being has his or her own moral code—has an intensely personal sense of right and wrong which guides their lives. I can understand how organized religion provides comfort and reassurance for those who for whatever reason feel they need it. But too many people use organized religion as a crutch…a way of avoiding responsibility for their own lives. I can respect those who feel strongly about anything that does not harm others, but I deeply resent proselytizing, which I consider a form of arrogance. There is a great difference between believing strongly in something and demanding everyone else share that belief.

I have never felt I belonged in the human mainstream, though I have absolutely no idea as to where or among whom/what I would belong. Life and the actions and reactions of others are eternal mysteries. I manage within the carefully constructed confines of my daily life, but the farther I wander from those confines, the more alienated I feel.

While I was born to a heterosexual couple and raised in a heterosexual family of which I was the only homosexual, being homosexual I simply cannot grasp, on any real basis, the personal interrelationships between men and women. The heterosexual world of weddings and baby showers and anniversaries and the various forms of socializing between couples is utterly terra incognito for me. The gay community, of course has its own versions of many of these events, but I now have largely been aged out of participation in even them, and remain uncomfortable among any group of heterosexuals I do not know personally.

And of course I realize that to a degree, all these problems are mine: I could make an effort to blend in more with the heterosexual world around me…you know, maybe go to a Cubs game, listen to my neighbors talk of their kids and ex wives and grandkids and golf games. But the harsh truth is, I never felt I belonged to, or was wanted by them before, and I’ve reached the point at which I don’t want to. I’m lucky enough to have a few good friends who keep me as connected to the Big World as I care to be. And, hey, I’ll always have me. There are worse things than being an odd man out.

Thursday, April 02, 2015

Lives

The young woman in the photo is Annabelle Fearn (nee Erickson). The year is probably around 1910. She is, if it is 1910, 34 years old. Married to Chester (Pete) Fearn, she has two children...a boy, Charles (Buck), 10, and a one-year-old daughter, Odrae. She has friends and acquaintances, and an extended family. She is a homemaker. She irons and sews and tends to Odrae and gets Pete off to work at the foundry and Buck off to school each weekday. She has only 8 more years to live.

She had no computer, no cell phone, no iPad, no TV, no radio, no electric refrigerator or electric stove, no air conditioning, no washing machine, no drier. She could not vote.

William Howard Taft was President. The Wright brothers had taken their first flight only seven years before. In Belfast, Ireland, 3000 men were busy constructing the ship that would become RMS Titanic. World War I would not begin for another four years.

And yet these facts were, to Annabelle, simply facts. They were the way things were. Her days were too filled with...life...with day-to-day existence...to ponder things which did not directly affect her or her family. Every day was spent in chores and routines and conversations and laughter and problems and sorrows and joys and plans for the future, just as yours are. But without the distractions of today's technology, her entire world centered around her family and friends. People were the focus of her world, not gadgets. She did not know about all the things she was missing, and therefore she didn't miss them. While I'm sure she would have loved many of the things we so take for granted today, she didn't feel deprived because she didn't have them.

The entire world was filled with people like her, who went about the business of living without too much pondering what was yet to come. The thing is that she was ALIVE. She was alive as you are alive and the people you pass on the streets are alive. Her mind was filled with thoughts, and plans, and dreams and hopes and grocery lists and birthday/holiday gifts. And every moment of her life was measured by exactly the same inhaling and exhaling that measures our own lives.

America's population at the time was under 100 million. Not one of those 100 million is alive today. Yet they all had names and faces and personalities and families and friends and jobs. They loved laughed and cried and argued and made up. And they are gone. Every single one of them.

And a hundred years from now, people will look at our lives and think us quaint, wondering how we could possibly have gotten along without the things they take totally for granted.

And none of this should be seen as morbid, or depressing. It is simply the way things have always been, how they are, and how they will always be. I have always taken great, if difficult to explain, comfort in wandering through cemeteries reading the tombstones' names and dates of birth and death, and the epitaphs on the stones. And I think—really think—of the people who lie beneath them, and imagine them as they were when they were still alive. I try to give them the individuality that death has taken from them. And I realize, as I do so, and especially with the older stones, that I may be the first person in a very, very long time, to be aware that they ever existed as living, breathing human beings.

Reflecting on the past and all those who have gone before us should give us greater appreciation for every day...every minute...we have this infinitely precious gift of life.

Annabelle and Chester and Charles and Odrae are now gone, but we must never forget that they once were here, and that they loved and were loved.

My favorite epitaph reads: "As you are now, so once were we. As we are now, so shall you be." So the next time you're sure your world is coming down around you because your computer has crashed, or your cell phone has dropped a call, think of Annabelle Fearn. Please.

Monday, March 30, 2015

The Boggling of the Mind

boggle (verb): to be astonished or overwhelmed when trying to imagine something

My mind is so easily boggled. It only takes one thought, popping in from God-knows where for absolutely no determinable reason, to set me off. I had decided—trying to trace how or why I decided it back to its roots is too convoluted to bother with—to write a blog about the differences and similarities between the estimated five million life forms existing on our earth. Yeah, that subject can be easily handled in less than 1,000 words.

So I set out thus:

Despite humanity’s hubris, the fact is that we are, biologically, simply one of an infinite number of living organisms inhabiting a little dust-mote of a planet in a grain of sand solar system in a pebble of a galaxy in the endless mountains of the universe.

The limits of the human mind make It impossible for us to comprehend the complexities of even one of the species existing on our one planet, let alone grasp the interrelationships between them, but I find it fascinating to give it a try. It’s rather like a small child spinning around and around until he grows so dizzy he falls down.

The relationship and interactions of individual member of any species to the other members of that species can easily evoke awe. Bees and ants, for example, are communal to the point that each member is, infinitely far more so than humans, an integral, interactive part of the whole, responding in uniformity to given stimuli as though sharing a single mind.

The individual members of probably the majority of species are solitary, coming together with other members of their kind primarily for the purposes of propagation. Having done so, they move on to their individual lives.

Some species like spiders and ladybugs and cockroaches coexist and gather in huge numbers for no readily discernible purpose. Some, like huge schools of fish and flocks of birds or bats cluster together primarily for whatever protection from predators their numbers may provide.

Many larger animal species gather in herds for mutual protection against predators. But those species with a higher degree of intelligence, like elephants and primates such as Man, gather in groups both as a matter of mutual protection and in response to the simple comfort being with others of their own kind provides. And the more intelligent the species, the more important some degree of social interaction becomes.

It is interesting that dogs are pack animals while cats (with the exception of lions) tend to be mostly solitary.

The natural responses of species to their young is also fascinating, and once again intelligence and these reactions are strongly related. The further down the intelligence scale, the less involved the individual tends to be with its young. In many species, the young are born either completely on their own or with a minimal involvement by, the parents’ only obligation to them being to enable their birth; once born, they’re on their own. Species with higher intelligence—again, on an ascending scale—tend to produce young who cannot survive without the care and protection of their parents. The more intelligence, the more care seems to be taken—and needed. Dogs and cats need parental care and protection for the first few weeks or months of their lives. Elephants, whales, and primates (including Man) are responsible for caring for their offspring for varying degrees of time following birth. Human children cannot survive without considerable help from other humans for several years (being raised by wolves, for example, is highly unlikely). The earlier the separation from parents or caregivers of ascendingly intelligent species, the less likely the survival.

And I’m going to stop here and try to back-pedal to more solid ground before I’m swallowed up completely in this vast boggle.

But one thought did come to me as the complexities of this single subject multiplied and multiplied again: How, with so many things of vital importance to the existence of life on this planet, can we allow ourselves to be bogged down by the words and actions of incredibly mean-spirited individual humans to the point where we lose our perspective on what really matters in life? Think about it and get back to me.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

"He Had a Hat!"

Coca Cola, Colonel Sanders' "seventeen herbs and spices," and my Aunt Thyra's angel food cake all share one thing in common: no one else in the world knows its secret or can exactly duplicate it. The same is true with humor: each of us has our own recipe for what is funny to us.

There are large general areas of common ground in humor: slapstick—slipping on a banana peel, being hit in the face with a cream pie, etc.—seems universally acknowledged as funny. And those who have attempted to analyze humor tend to agree that the basis of humor is surprise; the unexpected. But it must be harmless surprise; being hit by a bus while crossing the street is unexpected, but generally not funny. You can tell a lot about a person by what makes him (and no, once again, I refuse to dance to the "him/her/PC Polka") laugh.

I treasure my own sense of humor, even though what I find hysterically funny often leaves everyone else glassy-eyed. (A classic Charles Addams cartoon leaps to mind—a theater audience in which everyone is sobbing except one typical Addams character, who has a huge smile. Now, Charles Addams is funny.)

I stand in awe of stand-up comedians and those people at parties who keep everyone else in stitches. Timing, surprise, body language are all part of it but again, every comedian’s—every person’s—humor contains indefinable elements which sets them apart from all others. I personally never found Bob Hope, a hugely popular radio/movie/TV comedian of my childhood particularly funny, whereas I loved Bobcat Goldwait, Bill Cosby, and Bob Newhart.

But for as much as I love jokes, I simply cannot tell them. I either put the punch line somewhere in the middle or forget it entirely. My timing is lousy and my nearly every attempt to tell a joke has resulted in a deafening silence—or worse, a small, condescending smile—from the listener.

I regret that I have not had a good, leaves-me-gasping-for-breath belly laugh in far too long. But my humor has always tended more toward the offbeat and subtle, like the cartoon of a man at the counter of a veterinary office, with a large box from which four paws stick rigidly up in the air. The man is saying: "He won't eat."

A joke written and a joke told are quite different, with the joke told aloud by a good storyteller having additional power of timing, inflection and the placing of emphases. One of my favorite jokes, which definitely benefits from an oral presentation, is of the parrot with extraordinary skills. It can do card tricks, dance, solve complex math problems…everything but talk. Its owner works diligently with the bird every day for a year, but all he can teach it to say is "Polly want a cracker." One day, after yet another failed attempt to get it to say something other than "Polly want a cracker" the man gives up, puts the cover over the parrot's cage, and goes out for the evening. A while later the parrot hears something and lifts up the bottom of the cage cover to see burglars in the house. Carefully, it opens the door to its cage, slips down between the cage and the cover, slides down the pole, and makes its way to the telephone. Lifting the receiver, it dials 911. When the responder asks, "What is your emergency," the bird puts its beak close to the mouthpiece and whispers, "Polly...Want...A...Cracker!"

And I take delight in the story of the proud grandmother who takes her young grandson to the beach. She has bought him a little sailor suit complete with a little white sailor hat for the occasion. As she is sitting on the beach, her grandson wanders down to the water's edge, where a huge wave sweeps in and carries him out to sea. The hysterical grandmother races up and down crying for help then falls on her knees and implores God to save her daring grandson, the light of her life. And a moment later, another wave rushes in and deposits the boy at her feet. Weeping with joy, she hugs him to her, then suddenly rears back and holds him at arm's length. Glaring up toward heaven, she says, "He had a hat!"

I guess you had to be there.

Monday, March 23, 2015

Marshmallow Man

The sleeve is not the best place to wear one's heart, yet many of us do. But one of the problems of leaving the heart so exposed is that it is difficult to shield it from almost any assault on the emotions. There are men of iron, and men of steel. Because I am unable to hide my emotions, I am a man of marshmallow.

I absolutely love, and respond deeply to, displays of kindness and bravery and nobility in the face of adversity—and even more strongly when these displays are spontaneous. I find people behaving nobly, especially in large numbers, to be intensely moving, and validation for my often-sorely-challenged faith in humanity.

One of the earliest and most harmful-to-the-spirit lessons every male child is taught is that "Men Don't Cry!" As a result, men feel compelled to repress their emotions, thus depriving themselves of the cathartic effect the release of pent-up tensions which can lead to heart attack and other serious physical problems. The sight of grown men crying will, eight times out of ten, cause me to tear up.

Perhaps oddly, disasters have long been an obsession for me, not for the pain and sorrow they inflict, but for how they inevitably draw out the finest of human qualities seldom seen under other circumstances.

Of course, emotions, like fire, make a good servant but a harsh master. Positive emotions, even those which come about through sorrow and grief, channeled productively, can immeasurably enrich the human condition. Negative emotions, run amok—as seen too often in rioting and looting and indiscriminate destruction—revert us to the level of predatory beasts.

I would like to believe it is a certain innate nobility in us which makes us somehow expect everyone to behave not only decently but nobly. And when, on those seemingly rare occasions when they do, it reinforces our belief in the goodness of humanity. Unfortunately, it only takes one rotten apple in a barrel to make us cautious about revealing our true emotions too readily to others, lest we be taken advantage of. And equally unfortunately, our world is a gigantic barrel and there are far more than one rotten apple in it. It takes only one person who betrays our trust or takes advantage of us to make us leery of even the best motives of everyone else. The more trusting we are, the more hurt we are when that trust is betrayed.

I grow angry, and furious, and disheartened when people behave other than the way I think they should behave, with the result—as is displayed too frequently in these blogs—that I am too often angry, furious, and disheartened.

As a marshmallow man, it truly pains me that we seem to be drowning in a tsunami of lies and deceit and avarice and cruelty and wars and irresolvable conflicts. To turn on the evening news or pick up a newspaper or magazine, it often seems next to impossible to swim against this tide of negativism. Even being fully aware of the fact that it's the bad things that get the headlines, it is still difficult to deal with. I fear even Pollyanna might become a bit jaded over time.

Yet there is a fascination in crowds whose mood and purpose is upbeat. Any parade, especially with marching bands—the drums echoing the beating of the heart—lifts the soul. As a member of a long persecuted minority, I find attending a gay pride parade, surrounded by tens of thousands of my own kind, truly euphoric. Mass displays of patriotism, such as The Boston Pops orchestra playing "Stars and Stripes Forever" in front of a hundred thousand people on the 4th of July, never fails to grab me by the throat. The theater, which brings together large groups of people with similar positive interests, is one of humanity's nobler inventions. Dramas teach us understanding of the human condition, comedies lift our spirits and often put life in perspective. Musical theater, since it is less bound by reality than a dramatic play, allows us to enter worlds that don't exist, but that we wish would. Each has the power to unite us, and the sense of unity is one of the most powerful of human emotions.

There are those who rule their emotions, and those whose emotions rule them. As in all things in life, a balance between the two is the ideal. I'm working on 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).

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Chance, Coincidence, and Incredible Odds

Life is a cosmic pinball machine; our past—our very existence—is the result of an infinite number of random coincidences and convergences of unrelated circumstances producing results with odds far greater than any lottery. Our every single action alters and sometimes profoundly changes our future. Yet we remain largely oblivious.

Probably it's just as well; otherwise it would be impossible to make it through even one day if we had to stop and consider our every smallest action before committing it. We are surrounded/immersed/bombarded by so many challenges and contradictions and potential dangers that we would be totally incapacitated while trying to choose which action to take. We do most of it on autopilot, of course. Our minds and bodies are programmed to free us from conscious awareness of those physical functions necessary for life and self preservation. We look when we cross the street without having to stop to think about it. We walk by putting one foot in front of the other without a thought. We breathe, we talk, we cook, and shower, and work; interact with other people, and do an infinite number of things, many at the same time. And if we were to stop and give close scrutiny to the astonishingly complexity of how and why we do any one of these things, our lives would grind to a halt. That we are able to do these things without pausing once to think of what we are doing, or why, is astonishing in itself.

Stop for just a moment to consider that each of us is directly descended from an unbroken chain of at least 10,000 generations of ancestors, each generation consisting of a pair of individual human beings who, as the bible so quaintly put it, "begat" the next generation by combining their DNA to produce the next link in the chain. And yet, if just one of those links had broken—by a rock falling from a cave roof, a stray arrow or bullet in one of mankind's endless wars failing to produce the next link in the chain, the individual who is the current link—you—would/could never have existed.

Life is an endless string of single moments where conscious or unconscious decisions are made, every one of them subtly or profoundly changing the course of our lives. Just a cursory look at your own life will reveal a stupefying number of coincidences and what-were-the-odds events which brought you to this exact moment in time. If you hadn't done something you did—if you had chosen something other than you did—you would not be the same person you are.

And to take one tiny snippet from the chain of my own past: when I left Los Angeles, I opened a bed and breakfast in tiny Pence, Wisconsin—a circumstance I have often regretted for reasons too complex to go into here. And yet if I had not done it, I would never have met and become friends with a number of wonderful people who are still part of my life. One was my friend Mollie, who later moved to San Diego, where she told me of her next door neighbor, Gary, with whom she thought I might become friends. We did become not only friends, but best friends, and I really can't imagine what my life would be like today if he were not an integral part of it.

Every aspect of our lives is founded on the cumulative, moment-by-moment details of our past. And while nothing can be done to change any of this, pondering the imponderable is the strop upon which the razor of the mind is sharpened.

I sometimes regret, on a philosophical level, that the string of 10,000-plus generations which led to me ends with me. I have not and will not "beget" another link in the chain. My branch of the human tree will sprout no new twigs. And yet humans, as a species, have reached the stage in our development where DNA is not the only method of passing one's self on through the ages. The end of physical existence need not necessarily mean the end of the individual. My words, which are my progeny and are the essence of me, will be around, somewhere, as long as there are copies of them to be read and eyes to read them. No 100-year-maximum "shelf life." Though I may have an expiration date, my words and the parts of me they contain do not. I take immeasurable comfort in that belief.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Spam and "Jabberwocky"

It occurred to me, as I was flushing the latest crammed-full spam bucket from my computer, that spam is the absolute antithesis to Lewis Carroll's wonderful poem, Jabberwocky. Both are largely gibberish, but whereas Jabberwocky leaves one with a sense of delight, spam leaves one with the urge to shower with lye soap.

So why do I seem incapable of resisting looking at the opening words and, worse, why I am compelled to mentally respond to it? It has an air of ghoulishness, like watching a beheading. But I am powerless over spam, so here, yet again, are some classic examples of the finest spam has to offer, presented exactly as received, and my Pavlov's Dog reactions.

"PLEASE OPEN ATTACH FILE FOR MORE DETAILS" (Riiight! Like that's gonna happen!)

"PROPOSAL FROM HONG KONG - Greetings, It is understandable that you might be a little bit apprehensive because you do not know me....." (Gee, y' s'ppose?)

blessing donatus - "I'm very happy to meet you, -Hello I'm very happy to meet you. Compliments of the day! How are you? I hope you are doing...." (Why, how utterly charming! Is there anything...anything I might possibly do for you? Unfortunately, I'd have to open the rest of your message in order to find out.)

"You were looking for GF - Whats up How are you doing I love your profile. Would you like to check out my own most private...." (No, I was not looking for GF - Nothing's up I am fine and I'm so happy that you liked my profile since I don't have one. As for checking your own most private...take a wild guess.)

"Let's grow your smallDick with this Effective PenisEnlargement pill...." (And I'm sure starting off your sales pitch with an insult is a great way to boost sales.)

"I am looking forward to your kindly response!!! - Hello, With due respect I would like to disclose a mutual trans..." (Keep looking.)

"Lose 25 lbs of fat with Dr Endorsed Diet!" (Oh, yes, the world-renowned Dr Endorsed! Didn't he win a Nobel prize recently?)

"Evangelina Yasmine biib0p -b" (Well put, Evangelina! Well put! And it makes far more sense than all the other bullshit above.)

"Is it possible to melt fat away?" (No. Next question.)

"hi - Please my good friend, I am the General Audit Manager, Accounts Department in our bank. I have..." (Hi! I assume you got the impression that I am your good friend from the same place you got the impression you are the General Audit Manager of some unnamed bank. Wrong on both counts.)

"I apologize for this strange message. My names are James Wardner, a banker with NatWest Bank Plc here in UK." (And my names are Dorien Grey. Speak proper English much?)

"Generic Viagra online no Prescription at our reliable and trusted pharmacy...." ("Generic Viagra with no prescription" means it's a sugar pill with no real pharmaceutical properties, but at the same price or higher than the real stuff. And as to "reliable and trusted," well...)

"Get BIGGER with Free tri. Girls strip for cameras- Fantastic results -guaranteed gains within 2 months...." (Slow down, there, Charlie! Get bigger what? What's a "tri"? What have girls stripping for cameras got to do with "Fantastic results?" I'm getting dizzy.)

PharmacUsa Viagra "Hi fried new discount!" (As opposed to "deep fried new discount?" What the hell are you talking about? Never mind...I don't care.)

"View Attached message And Reply Me." (Thanks, but I prefer to not view attached message and ignore you.)

"eHarmony - You could Find Singles Like You" (No, I couldn't. As I recall, eHarmony won't touch fags with a ten-foot pole.)

"Educating the young on ways on have fun -Its great to suck and greater to ride. I am glad my guy upsized." (I'm happy to see altruism is not dead. And I couldn't agree more about the value of education. What age would you suggest educating the young on sucking and riding? Kindergarten? Perhaps you can join them for an English lesson.)

"CHAEP MEDICATOINS" (I rest my case.)

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Except After "C"

Our civilization is built on words, with which we have in turn built languages. Words and language set humans apart from all other creatures.

English is, I've read and heard many times, one of the most complex of languages and the most difficult for foreigners to learn because it is the most flexible. It has, as do all languages, rules...but these rules tend to have so many exceptions as to be nearly incomprehensible. One, which every child learns in elementary school, is "i before e, except after c, or when sounded as a as in neighbor and weigh." Fine, except when as sounded as i as in height or as e as in weird.

My own life, as a writer, is built on my fascination with words. I was an English major in college, yet am ashamed at how little I know of the rules that govern its construction and usage--verbs and predicate nominatives and dangling participles and conjunctive clauses. On reflection, I sincerely wonder how I ever managed to get a degree in English. Yet I am fascinated nonetheless.

One of the many things I find fascinating is definitive prefixes (if there is such a term)...like "dis-" and "un-" and "in-" and "non-", each of which, attached to the beginning of a word, indicates the exact opposite of the word to which it is attached. To be disrespectful is to be not respectful; to be dishonest is to be not honest; to be uncommon is to be not common; to be indecent is to be not decent; to be nonsensical is to not make sense. All, again, good solid rules until you come across words like "inflammable," which means exactly the same as "flammable."

And, of course, frequently definitive prefixes are not definitive at all but simply part of a word. There is no "aster" to be negated in "disaster," no "ception" to be reversed in "inception," no "guent" to be denied in "unguent," no "chalant" in "nonchalant."

One of the inherent problems with American English is that it is a hodgepodge of words borrowed from or based in many other languages: French, Latin, German, Spanish. We've borrowed or taken from just about every other language on earth. It's little wonder that we get confused. Words themselves are fluid and their roots are often lost. The word "disease" implies it means "not ease," which is exactly what it originally meant in Old French: desaise—lack of ease. However, today the word has taken on a much more serious connotation, and broadened out to include any number of problems—"dry eye disease"—I’d hardly consider a real disease.

The pronunciation of words also change over time, sometimes to the point where the original meaning of the word itself is lost. A prime example—and one I hasten to point out at every opportunity—is the word “president," which also demonstrates how pronunciation changes meaning. To hear the word pronounced "prez-eh-dent" instead of “prez-EYE-dent” totally obscures it's true meaning: one who presides.

To this day I am constantly confused by whether/when to use "lay" or "lie," "further" or "farther." Commas, colons, and semicolons remain largely a mystery. I am perhaps too fond of em-dashes—, though I often use them when I should be using ellipses..., and vice-versa. I operate on the simple and often wrong principle that my mind knows more than I do and, when confronted with a choice, will come up with the right one.

The rule of thumb that has worked well for me in all my writing is "go with what sounds right." I am deeply indebted to my computer's spell-checker, though I still am frequently driven to distraction by trying to look up a word I do not know how to spell. The thesaurus sometimes helps, but not always.

Still, I manage to bumble through with my admiration for words undiminished.

In short, I love language: just don't bother me with the details.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@gmail.com.

Monday, March 09, 2015

"That Which I Should Have Done...."

I have always been fascinated with Ivan Albrecht’s painting, “That Which I Should Have Done, I Did Not Do”—also known as “The Door,” in Chicago’s Art Institute. For some reason I relate strongly to the title.

It's often far easier to acknowledge the existence of a situation or condition than it is to accept it. And compulsion is rather like trying to force a sheet of metal through a paper shredder. It can't be done, but that doesn't stop someone from trying.

Obsessive and compulsive behavior seems to be a popular theme for "reality" shows of late. Its more extreme forms have their own psychological designation—OCD; Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder; hoarders; people who wash their hands a hundred times or more a day; people who must jiggle a door knob three times before opening it, etc.. We look at these people and shake our heads, wondering whatever possesses them to do these things, and why they can't just, well, stop doing it.

Yet we all know someone who exhibits some milder form of OCD—the compulsively neat, those who insist on ironing their underwear, or who order their sock drawer by color, or who never go shopping without a detailed list. I pride myself on being totally devoid of any of these types of behavior, though there is one small area in which I must confess might be considered by some to be a bit excessive: my excruciating, continual awareness of the passage of time, the aging process that inescapably accompanies it, and my inability to let go of the past or to resist comparing—negatively—who I am now with who I was. And no matter how much I have accomplished, there is the overwhelming feeling that I have not done enough.

I view the aging process with a mixture of total incomprehension and, frankly, something akin to horror. If we want to live, we must age; it's a totally irrefutable fact. That I don't understand, or rather can't accept, why this has to be is a measure of my compulsive refusal to acknowledge or accept reality.

I'm constantly trying to analyze my actions in light of my aging. I know many if not most of them are based in pure logic, and much of that logic is based on cumulative experience. I frequently regret that I don't laugh nearly as much as I used to. Yet laughter is most commonly founded on the element of surprise, and over the years, experiencing the same or basically the same situation many times, the surprise is dimmed, as is the reaction to it. The hilarity of a wildly popular TV sitcom inevitably dims, the longer it stays on the air. Repetition breeds familiarity, and while familiarity does not necessarily breed contempt, it does breed lack of surprise. And thus it tends to be with life.

As we grow older, we walk more cautiously on ice in winter, not because we couldn't walk more assertively but because we've fallen enough, in the course of the years, not to want to fall again.

Physical changes are simply part of the progression of life. They are inevitable—though some people seem more capable than others in forestalling them—and are the increasingly steep price we must pay for the privilege of living. I acknowledge this fact. Really, I do. But I am, to the depth of my soul, unwilling to accept it, and my failure to do so is my compulsion. I do wish I were able to both acknowledge and accept, as most of the world seems to do so easily. I know acknowledgement and acceptance would save me an incalculable amount of unhappiness and frustration. But I simply cannot.

While I take a certain odd pleasure and even pride in my self delusions, I do not delude myself as to who the winner will be in my compulsive battle against time, aging, and reality. I know who will inevitably win, and that when they do I won't be around to care. But while I'm still here, I'll do my best not to accept those things I want so badly to be different. I know that there are so many many things I should have done that I did not do. But, I keep telling myself—and believing—I could and would, in time.

So, yet again I, an agnostic, turn to the Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Well, I'm working on the courage, and I definitely know the difference. But as to the serenity part,.... Well, two out of three ain't bad.