Naps

The nap is purported by many of my friends (admittedly, all over the age of 50) to be one of life’s little pleasures. Their benefits escape me, however. I’ve never been one to take naps. When at the age of five I was in the hospital recovering from a broken leg, I remember the nurses coming into the children’s ward (yes, most patients recovered in wards back then; private and semi-private rooms, if they had them, were a luxury my parents could not afford) every afternoon, pulling the shades/blinds, turning off the lights for half an hour or so and leaving us to our naps. I never napped, even then. I considered them then, as I do now, to be a monumental waste of precious time. So I would lie there, excruciatingly bored, waiting and waiting and waiting for the nurses to return and bring back the light.

Recovering from my bout of cancer in 2003, I did sleep frequently during the day, but I did not consider these periods to be naps, but more the body’s need to quietly go about the business of repairing itself. When having P.E.T. or C.A.T. scans during my subsequent follow-up visits to Mayo, part of the process involves being injected with a radioactive dye, and lying as still as possible for an hour. They don’t want you to read or watch TV or to have any distractions, apparently to facilitate the circulation of the dye throughout the body. They put you in a small curtained room and turn off the lights. Nap time. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. But when I do, it’s reluctantly.

Occasionally now, when I take a break from writing and play computer solitaire, I’ll find my mind numbing to the point where I consider lying down for a few minutes. This blog entry is, as a matter of fact, a response to such an urge. But I find when I give in to it, I tend to wake up feeling as though someone had spiked my grog…hmmm, I wonder if that is where the word “groggy” comes from? (Digression, anyone?) Anyway, I awake more tired than when I’d laid down, and feeling strongly as though someone had slipped another day in there, somehow.

I love sleep. But sleep requires time to be fully appreciated. A nap is an unwelcome teaser for the night to come. If I want to sleep, I want to feel as though I’ve gotten my money’s worth.

A friend in Los Angeles had a ritual. As soon as he got home from work each night, he would lie down for 20 minutes…no more, no less…and wake up feeling as chipper as a bluejay. I never could understand how he could do that. Two of my Chicago friends schedule one or more naps a day and seem to be perfectly fine with it. I chalk it up to just one more thing in life that is beyond my ability to comprehend.

Certain well-known historical figures substituted frequent naps for the need to sleep more than a couple hours a night. Thomas Edison, I believe, was one. Small wonder he would invent devices (the electric light, the phonograph) that would tend to keep him awake.

For those who take naps, I admit a certain degree of grudging admiration for doing something I cannot understand, and curiosity as to why and how naps become not only pleasurable but necessary. Maybe it’s a form of addiction.

Time for a cup of coffee.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Habits, Routines, and Ruts

I have not used an alarm clock in 40 years or more; I automatically wake up around 6 a.m., no matter how late I’ve gotten to bed, and no matter if there is a reason to wake up that early or not. On blog-entry days, I am compelled to have them posted by no later than 6:45 (even though I allow myself wiggle room at the bottom of each entry when I say they’ll be posted by 10 a.m. Central time), because I know I have a couple East coast readers who look at them before going to work.

We are all creatures of habit, and the only difference between habit and routine is the frequency with which it is repeated. The circle of routine, however, too rapidly begins to wear a path into one’s daily life which soon becomes a rut. You know you’ve gone from routine to rut when any disruption to the routine is viewed with resistance, anxiety, and frustration. The older we become, the deeper our ruts become until we have dug a rut so deep it is almost impossible to climb out.

Friday is laundry day. (Why Friday? Just because I always do laundry on Friday. I know that doesn’t answer the question, but if you’re looking for logic, you’re in the wrong place.) My apartment building is 11 stories tall, has 200 units, and a total of 5 washing machines and 5 dryers, one pair on each even-numbered floor. So finding a vacant machine when you want it is something of a game of musical chairs. The entire process, once I do find a machine, takes about an hour and a half per load, and I always manage to have two loads, which means that unless I want to drag the process out for hours, I try to do both loads at once, which involves finding two empty machines at the same time. So as a result, I try to get my laundry started by 6:45 a.m. before anyone else gets there.

The machines are operated by the kind of electronic plastic cards which have replaced keys in hotels. You can add money to the card at any time, and having not surprisingly lost my card a couple of times, I try not to keep too much money on it. This past FridayI got up, posted the blog, gathered the laundry, and then remembered that I’d used up all the money on my card the previous Friday, and all I had was a $20 bill which I was not about to splurge on a laundry card I could and probably would lose ten minutes after I recharged it.

I was rather surprised by just how this really minor incident seemed to throw the whole day into chaos, sending me figuratively running around in circles (ruts, anyone?) wringing my hands and muttering “Oh, my! Oh, my!”

Every morning put the coffee on, turn on the Today Show at 7 a.m., have a glass of V8 juice, a cup (well, half a cup, since I never, ever finish it) of coffee, and a chocolate covered donut. Why don’t I have cereal? Or an English muffin? Or fix an egg? Or make a pancake? Because I have a glass of V8, a cup of coffee, and a donut, that’s why. I tell myself it’s because of the 350 calories in the donut....something an English muffin wouldn’t provide. It is a rut I have dug from which I cannot climb out.

I write most of the day, with frequent and prolonged interruptions for emails and other distractions, so the time between 7:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. is relatively rut-free. And I realize with mild horror, that it is the only time of my life that is.

At 5:30 each night I watch the evening news, then a series of TV programs which takes me until bedtime. I almost never go out at night. (Go out on a Thursday evening and miss Supernatural?? Unthinkable! Stop for dinner after leaving work Sunday at 6 and miss 60 Minutes?? Impossible!)

We reach the point where we take comfort in our ruts, and this is definitely not a good thing. I have got to break mine. I’ve got to! Maybe I’ll go to a movie tonight. Yes! I will! (But wait…NCIS is on at 7. Well, I’ll go tomorrow for sure.)

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Routine

It is 8:45 a.m., and I am just sitting down for my morning coffee and chocolate donut, having a bit earlier had my glass of V8 juice, listening to a classical music station and trying to come up with a subject for tomorrow’s blog. I’m also wondering yet again why I do the same thing in the same order every day. I decide not to pursue that line of thought, since a little directional arrow in my head indicates that such ponderings lead to a downward slope, which I would prefer avoiding.

So, as so often happens on mornings like this, I cast myself upon what is called the “Stream of Consciousness.” From what I’ve been able to gather, for most people it’s rather like a leisurely float on an inner tube, gliding beneath a bright blue, cloud-dappled sky through grassy pastures where there is ample time to pause here and there to contemplate the scenery. Alas, my stream of consciousness tends to be more like a kayak ride through high, narrow, boulder-filled gorges where the looking up at the sky is seldom an option, since I have to alternately hang on for dear life or grab wildly at thoughts as they rush past with dizzying speed. As a result, when it comes to blogs, I don’t pick the subject so much as having one just sort of jump out of the water and land in my lap.

We are all creatures of habit, taking comfort in the familiar. The very real problem for me is that I tend to be so comfortable in it that I mildly resent any change in it. There are so many things I really should do; places I should go, people I should visit. I have a storage shed full of papers I am planning to give to my alma-mater, and all I have to do is drive up there, get them (though I fear I won’t be able to do it in one trip), and take it down to Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL. I’ve been meaning to do it for three years now, and I haven’t done it yet.

I should go visit my remaining relatives, all of whom live in the same general area as the storage shed. But I don’t, largely, I suspect, for the totally specious reason that I do not like reality. I do not like being forced to realize that things are no longer as I have them firmly planted in my head and heart. In many ways, reality terrifies me, especially those realities which are closest to me. The fact that my family is the very foundation of my life, and that they are the most important people in my life should dictate that I’d want to spend as much time as possible with them. But I don’t, because then I am forced to realize that the avalanche of time is already pushing me toward the precipice. Better to not see them, and keep them as they are in my mind.

I know, I know. I’ve never claimed to be like or to see things the same way as other people and were I to have Robert Burns’ desired “ability to see ourselves as others see us” I’m sure I would be appalled. Were I to be schizophrenic and given to hearing voices, I’m sure at least one would say, “Roger, you can’t live this way! You cannot pick and choose when it comes to reality!”

I beg to differ.

Routine (yes, I do remember that’s where I started this entry) provides me with something of a security blanket or a good luck charm. I can use it as a home base from which I can let my mind and my fantasies and my irrationalities wander at will. It can be something of a prison, but it is a comfortable one, and the bars are wide enough apart that my mind and heart can come and go as they please.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Coffee Time

Human nature fascinates me. I have only my own to go by with any degree of accuracy, and that which I can extrapolate from the actions of others. But I’ve never quite understood the optimism with which, having attempted to do something fifteen times and failed, I (we) are under the illusion that exactly the same thing done exactly the same way a sixteenth time will work.

On my way to “work,” I decided to stop at Panera’s, a coffee shop I almost never visit unless I’m with someone, to have a cup of coffee and a small pumpkin muffin the coffee shop insists on calling a “muffie”…an appellation just so cloyingly “cute” that I try never to ask for one by name, merely pointing and saying “One of those.” As always, the place was full of couples and singles, many of them working on their laptops, and all apparently having a very pleasant, relaxing time. I didn’t want to take out my own laptop, which I had with me, since I knew I’d not be there all that long, and decided to pretend I was just like all the others seated quietly and contentedly with their coffee.

The fact that, though I have an average of two to three cups of coffee a day, I never finish them and really am not, if truth be told, all that wild about coffee to begin with, is another matter entirely. Do I really think, the next time I have a cup of coffee, that I am actually going to finish it and truly savor the deliciousness of every sip? No matter. Everyone else seems to enjoy it, so I just go along with it.

I have never done sitting quietly and contentedly very well, so what made me even remotely think I could do it this time is a mystery. So I sat there, slathering little tubs of butter onto my…one of those…and sipping my coffee while really, really trying to be relaxed and comfortable. What’s wrong with me that I can’t do it? I looked around me. There were maybe six or eight other people sitting alone, minding their own business, taking their own time, apparently without a care in the world. What were they doing? Surely they had to be thinking of something. They couldn’t just sit there, thinking and doing nothing at all, could they? Then why did it appear that that was exactly what they were doing? Was nobody home behind the windows of their eyes?

I’m sure anyone looking through my own little hazel-colored “windows” would see ten thousand thoughts and ideas and things-I-should-be-doing-rather-than-just-sitting-theres bustling around, bumping into one another. Thoughts are as fleeting as smoke: if you don’t capture them and put them into words they become harder and harder to remember, and nine out of ten of them are gone forever, or trampled beneath a stampede of the thoughts that come directly behind them.

Obviously, my inability to sit still, to breath deeply and slowly, and float calmly along the surface of time is some sort of character weakness. I know I am undoubtedly missing out on the wonders of silent contemplation and meditation: Buddhists dedicate their lives to it. I would go stark raving mad within ten minutes. And I wish I could say that I envy people who can find deep fulfillment in doing nothing, but I honestly cannot. There’ll be plenty of time for doing nothing when I’m dead. I don’t need practice in it while I’m still alive.

There’s an ad running for an ocean cruise line which outlines all the wonderful things one can do aboard their ships, and it sounds great, until they add, as part of their list: “Or just do nothing at all.”

Nothing at all? I’m going to pay several thousand dollars to do nothing at all? What’s wrong with this picture? If they want to do nothing at all, let them stay home. Or better still, have them come have a quiet cup of coffee at Panera’s.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Perspective

My friend Gary and I recently went down to Navy Pier to see the annual Flower Show. It’s a big event and attracts busloads of tourists. Navy Pier is, I understand, Chicago’s premier tourist attraction, jutting a half mile out into Lake Michigan. The south side of the pier is lined with cruise boats of varying sizes and impressiveness for excursions along Chicago’s spectacular shoreline and through the amazing architecture lining Chicago River. On the north side of the pier, tour busses disgorge their passengers.

One or more of the tour busses brought a large number of severely handicapped children and teenagers. Gary and I were having lunch at one of the open-to-the-concourse restaurants, and I was just in the middle of bitching for the ten thousandth time about how terribly brave I am to put up with the terrible burdens of not being able to open my mouth wide enough to eat a hamburger, or tilt my head back far enough to drain a can of soda, or having to wait for the waiter to bring my coffee before I could begin to eat, since I can’t swallow anything solid without being able to flush it down with liquid, and watching other people do with ease what I can no longer do, and…when a group of the handicapped kids came by, many in wheelchairs, with their surely-candidates-for-sainthood counselors and attendants.

And I was immediately once again thoroughly ashamed of myself for my unmitigated gall in assuming that the sun and moon revolve around me, and for focusing almost entirely on my own petty problems. We all know that old saw: “I had no shoes and I complained until I saw a man who had no feet,” yet like so many absolute truisms, I—like most people spared true physical and mental challenges do—tend to totally ignore it until something like seeing someone with real problems hits us in the gut. I try not to pity these people: pity is, I feel, a form of condescension, and I have no right to condescend to anyone. For some of them to get through a single day takes far more courage than I will ever possess. But I am truly sad for them.

When I lived in northern Wisconsin, I would frequently see a man with his young daughter, who was probably just entering her early teens. I don’t know what condition afflicted her, but while she could walk, she was severely physically and mentally limited. Yet her father was infinitely patient, and loving, and always had a smile. My heart ached for him, and her.

And I’ve often told the story of the middle-aged man who delivered newspapers to my mother’s work. He was, as the condescending euphemism puts it, “slow.” Yet he functioned, and held down a job, and would never, ever accept money from anyone, other than the price of the newspaper…and even then, he would not take the money unless the person offering took the paper. He was, Mom found out, the sole support of both himself and his own mother. One day, one of Mom’s co-workers was having a birthday, and had brought a cake. Everyone was in the coffee room when the paper man arrived, and they insisted he come join them for cake and coffee. He was truly delighted, and at one point he said, happily: “This is just like a party!” And I still can’t think of that without wanting to cry.

Life is a party. And most of us have far more presents than we ever acknowledge. We ignore that fact at the risk of losing our humanity.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

In, But Not Of, Part 2

I think one of the reasons I became a writer is that I have always had such a difficult time making myself understood. I’m still trying, and still don’t do a very good job of it. I think I am searching, too, for a way to understand that which I have never understood.

Take the world, for instance. I am a homosexual…probably one of the major components of what makes me me…and I live in a world of heterosexuals. Neither one of us fully understands the other, though I and those like me are outnumbered 9 to 1, so in any conflict between the two, it’s fairly clear who has the upper hand. I was born of heterosexual parents into a heterosexual family of which I am the only homosexual. Not just in my generation, but in all generations. The only possible exception, and this is only pure speculation and perhaps wishful thinking on my part, was my mother’s uncle Peter, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 19 back in the early years of the 20th century. I probably romanticize Peter because he died so young, but I always grieve for those who missed so much by dying before their time.

So I have, as do most homosexuals—and especially those who recognize their homosexuality at a very early age (I was five)—made my own way, learning what amounts to survival skills, playing survival games (but only to an extent. I have never in my entire life denied my homosexuality). I became an expert at dodging the issue when it got too close. (As I have reported before, when I joined the Navy, I marked the box “Have you ever had homosexual tendencies” “No” with a clear conscience on the sound logic that there were no “tendencies” involved.)

I understand, to a degree, heterosexuals as individuals, but when mixed together as husbands and wives and in-laws and their kids (invariably heterosexual themselves) dating and going to proms and doing all those wholesomely heterosexual things that come so naturally to heterosexuals, I am quite honestly completely and totally at a loss as to what is going on. I cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like, nor do I have any desire to find out. That, of course, does not mean I am not frequently bitter by the arrogance of many heterosexuals in assuming their numbers make them superior.

I just read an article in which the writer was describing a trip he and his wife had taken with his parents and children and I just stared at the page. I had no real concept of what he was talking about, or how the people involved interacted or interrelated. In a way, my attitude toward the world in which I live is not unlike watching a football game (or basketball game, or baseball game)…I simply do not understand it and cannot comprehend how others seem to.

One of the things that confuses me most is how straight men and women relate to one another. In a large gathering, they’re together, yet they’re separate. The women tend to cluster together and talk women things: children and clothes and recipes, while the men huddle around the TV glued to whatever sporting event happens to be on, putting on a great display of testosterone and male bonding and making far more to-do over whatever is happening than I can conceive of as being warranted.

I’ve never understood how everyone else…well, gets it. They walk into a party and mingle and talk and laugh and dance, and to them it is the most natural thing in the world.

It’s strange to live in a world to which one does not belong, and in which one is often not comfortable. I’ve been in that position all my life. I take some comfort in the fact that I am not alone, and there are many others who walk through the zoo that is the world, warily watching those on the other side of the thick glass walls. The question is, who is on the inside, and who outside?

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

In, But Not Of

When I was very young, having one day seen God looking down at me while I was watching clouds, I was utterly convinced that I was very, very special and that I would one day do great and marvelous things. To some degree, I still cling to that belief. (It is sometimes a blessing to be unfettered by reality.)

My sense of being in but not of the world is a common theme for these blogs, mainly because I still retain the concept of “me” and “everybody else” being mutually exclusive. I have always lived in a state of extreme envy for what others can do…with such grace and ease…that I cannot. I watch clips of rock concerts where what I assume everyone else thinks is music causes everyone to rock and sway and thrust their arms over their heads, obviously having an absolutely wonderful time. Were I there, I would stand like Lot’s wife, totally immobile and excruciatingly embarrassed and furious with myself for not being able to “let go.”

I hate doing things which I feel call attention to myself, which is why I don’t dance. My assumption that anyone other than myself would notice me at all is an example of my perverse form of narcissism. And of course by not dancing while everyone else does, I…call attention to myself. I just can’t seem to win.

Of course the fact that I knew from age 5 that I was homosexual is perhaps the major factor in these feelings of not belonging. Well, they aren’t just feelings. I don’t belong. Surrounded by people with whom I could never really relate, never understanding what all these male-female interactions/courtships/rituals were all about…or caring…shaped my character and my life.

I’ve never wanted to be normal, and have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams on that one. I suppose a case may be made that normalcy, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder, and for as deeply as I hate and fear mirrors, I am constantly figuratively holding a mirror up to myself and never, never liking what I see.

Thank God that to balance all those things I want so desperately but do not have, I do have an exquisite sense of irony and the ability to keep my tongue planted firmly in my cheek. I almost never, even when I am ranting and raving and beating myself mercilessly about the head and shoulders with my perceived flaws, allow myself to take myself too seriously. It’s almost as if I were my own walking “in” joke. I have, and take full advantage of, the right to criticize myself mercilessly. But no one else has the right to do so. This has, throughout my life, caused innumerable problems.

I began, also as a child, to belittle myself simply as a means of beating others to it...to say “I know my flaws; I don’t need you to point them out to me.” And it got out of hand. As I have reported a couple of times in previous blogs, my best friend in college once said, “Roger keeps telling people how terrible he is until they begin to believe him.”

And all this is compounded by the fact that there is so very, very much that I want to do, so very many things I want to be, so much I want to know, to see, to experience. On one level I know full well that no single individual could possibly do all these things in a lifetime. But Tony travels the world, and Wayne has a vast knowledge of literature, and Travis is physically beautiful, and Gary is unflaggingly kind and wise, Bil knows opera, and Franklin flits back and forth between his condos in Chicago and Ft. Lauderdale, and…. And we are again back to the world’s unequal division between “me” and “them.” “Me” is singular, “them” is collective, and I am hopelessly, hopelessly overwhelmed by comparison. On one level, I understand and accept all this, but down deep, where my timid soul peeks out from under the thick comforter of my memories, it is all utterly incomprehensible, and I totally overlook the good things in myself to ache for what I do not and never can have.

So I have accepted myself for who and what I am and for what I have always been and always will be and, concentrating far more heavily on my flaws than my gifts, I stumble on, so overwhelmed with the wonder of life that I can truly not see my own position in it. Though, catching a glimpse of myself while passing a shop window, I can sometimes convince myself for a brief moment that we are two separate beings, and that perhaps the reflection I see is really one of “them.”

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

The Sound of Music

I grew up during the time of the big-bands (Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey), patriotic war songs (I still get a lump in my throat hearing Kate Smith sing “God Bless America,” and “Stars & Stripes Forever” grabs me by the heart and hoists me into the air) and songs with intelligible lyrics that spoke to situations to which most people could relate.

I wasn’t exposed to much classical music at home, and am not sure how I first came across it, but when I got my first record player, in high school, the first record I bought was Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, followed by Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake. To me, Tchaikovsky was—and is—the epitome of musical power and unabashed romanticism. Definitely my kind of guy. That he was also gay didn’t hurt. In some strange way, I feel about his music the same way I and millions of other gays feel about with Judy Garland. They both had had it rough, but still gave you 200 percent of themselves: you never have to wonder where they’re coming from…they turned pain into pride, which is what gays and lesbians have been doing forever.

I’ve never been all that much into popular music, especially since about the time after Glenn Miller died. I like songs in which one can actually understand the words, and in which those words make some sort of sense. I honestly don’t think that my inability to appreciate the endless repetitions of “Yeah, yeah, baby, baby, baby” and stupefying idiocy should brand me as an antiquated fossil.

In classical music I vastly prefer orchestral over choral. I love it no-holds-barred, all-stops-pulled, and the fuller, the better. The overture to Wagner’s Tannhauser and the storm scene from Ferde Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite are for me the absolute epitome of musical power: in both, the brass and deeper instruments stride powerfully forward while a goosebump-raising shimmer of strings cascades over them. If you doubt me, try listening to them.

I have never learned to appreciate opera, mainly because I can’t understand what they’re singing, and partly because the memorable parts are smothered in the non-memorable. If I can’t hum something after I hear it, I’m not interested. True, you can do that with a lot of opera, but again it’s like looking for the slice of pickle in a sub sandwich…you have to wade through too much other stuff to get to it.

I do hate stereotypes, but I have to admit a deep love of Broadway show tunes. In one of my books—The Angel Singers—the plot centers around a murder in a gay men’s chorus. As part of the story, I had to come up with a program for the chorus to sing and, when I asked a friend in the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus what he thought of it, he said they couldn’t have done better themselves, which delighted me no end.

Songs can encapsulate the human spirit, experience, and heart: the entire experience of being gay can be found in “I Am What I Am” from La Cage aux Folles, and “The Impossible Dream”; the power of its unity in “Consider Yourself” from Oliver and “Somewhere,” and “What I Did for Love” from A Chorus Line pretty much sums it all up.

Songs make me cry (“Memory” from Cats) or make me absolutely giddy with delight (“Consider Yourself” from Oliver) or overwhelm me with their sheer power (Edith Piaf’s “Je Ne Regrette Rien”; “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”).

What moves me most about music is its power to unite; to make us all feel part of something much larger than ourselves, to make us feel as though we belong: patriotic songs do this particularly well. Who can listen to “This is My Country” or “America the Beautiful” without being moved?

Unfortunately ninety-nine percent of “popular” music leaves me either totally puzzled or furious. I have listened (not through choice, you can be sure) to any number of “popular” songs any number of times without being able to understand a single word. I find it difficult to comprehend the rationale of those who defend much of today’s music. I’m not a prude, really I’m not. But with 250,000 words in the English language, does every other word have to be scatological, demeaning, or unintelligible? After 10,000 years of struggle to advance ourselves as a race, this is the best we can do?

Music is one of humanity’s greatest gifts. At its best, it can and should unite, comfort, and empower us by lifting us out of ourselves and remind us of our potential as a species. When it does not, it is simply noise.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Robert's Return

I’ve often spoken fondly of “my” ghost, Robert, whom I met when living in Los Angeles. I always liked Robert. He was/is the most pleasant and least intimidating of ghosts, who loves classical music and has a particular fondness for bedrooms. I even saw him once, reflected in a window, walking across the room behind me.

Robert takes great delight in hiding things. Not just hiding them, but removing them from plain sight. Something would be there one minute, and gone the next, not to resurface for days, weeks, or months. The classic example, which I always cite, was when a friend stopped by on his way home from the grocery store. He set his bag on my kitchen table, with a carton of cigarettes clearly visible at the top of the bag. When he returned to the kitchen to pick up his groceries, the carton of cigarettes was gone. There was no one in the house but him and me.

Two months later, I opened a tool chest looking for a hammer and found the carton of cigarettes neatly sitting atop the tools.

Then there was the jar of pennies I kept atop a kitchen counter. One day it was there, the next day it wasn’t. And then, several weeks later, it was. I sort of gave up wondering where missing things had gone. Chances are they would show up either exactly where I’d last seen them or at the back of the top shelf in a kitchen cabinet, or somewhere equally illogical.

When my mom came to visit the Christmas after my dad died, I was telling her about Robert. She smiled one of her “if you say so” smiles, and said, “I don’t believe in ghosts.” And the minute she said it, three ornaments fell off the Christmas tree. He later paid her a visit one night. She said she woke up knowing someone was in the room and merely said, “Go away, Robert,” and he did.

I really missed Robert when I left L.A., but he would make occasional visits over the years. But since I’ve moved to Chicago, nothing. Until today.

When I bought my laptop, I found the little “mouse pad,” which requires moving the mouse around by squiggling the tip of the index finger across the “pad” a gigantic annoyance. So I bought an external mouse with a retractable cord which works fine. Then, two weeks ago, as I was getting ready to come to “work” at the shopping center information desk, I disconnected the mouse and distinctly recall putting the power plug and the computer into the carrying case. When I got to work, I could not find the mouse. I searched every inch of the case four times, then because I could not specifically recall having put the mouse in the case, assumed I’d left it at home.

Got home, no mouse. Not on the computer desk where I’d disconnected it, not on any countertop, not in any drawer, not on the floor, not in the refrigerator. Nowhere. No mouse. Tried using the laptop without it, with the totally predictable result. Finally ran out and bought another mouse with a retractable cable.

Today, on my way to work, I packed my computer into its carrying case, making sure I consciously picked up the mouse and put it in the special pocket into which I always put it. And as I did so, I felt something else at the bottom of the pouch. Would you care to guess what it was? Yep. It was NOT there any of the four times I’d searched the case the day it disappeared, nor any of the subsequent times I’d put the computer, mouse, and power cord into the case. But there it was.

Welcome back, Robert.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Robert

I met Robert through a roommate shortly after I bought my first house in Los Angeles. I always got home from work before Paul, and one evening, the instant I stepped in the front door, I knew I was not alone. I didn’t just know it, I KNEW it. Afraid that the house was being burglarized, and calling out “who’s there?” several times, I cautiously made my way from room to room. The feeling was almost overpowering as I approached the front bedroom, but when I finally gathered the courage to enter, no one was there.

As soon as Paul came home, I told him of the incident. He laughed and said: “Don’t worry about it: it’s just Robert.” Robert, he told me, was a ghost who had lived at Paul’s former apartment with him and three of his roommates. He was totally harmless but had a habit of playing tricks, his most favorite being hiding things. And he was, I learned over time particularly fond of bedrooms and classical music. Though I was frequently aware of his presence, it was never the least bit frightening. In fact, I grew to be very fond of him.

Paul told me of the time one of his roommates had come home from grocery shopping with a carton of cigarettes. Setting the bags on the kitchen table, he made a quick trip to the restroom, and when he returned, the carton of cigarettes was gone from the bag. He was the only one in the apartment at the time. Three weeks later, when another of the roommates set out to do some minor repair on his car, the carton of cigarettes showed up at the bottom of his tool chest.

Though I never learned Robert’s history, he did travel back and forth between my house and Paul’s former apartment. When one of Paul’s former roommates came for a visit, Robert would go home with him and return on the next roommate visit.

When my mother came to visit for Christmas shortly after my father died, we were sitting in the living room on my sofa, talking. The sofa sat toward the center of the room and faced a huge front window, and I could easily see the living room, part of the kitchen, and the entry/dining room, where the Christmas tree had been set up reflected in it.

I was telling my mother about Robert. As I did so, I saw Paul, who had been in the back of the house, enter the living room from the kitchen and walk behind the sofa and into the dining area. He was wearing a bright blue bathrobe I’d recently bought, and when I turned to ask him why, the dining area was empty. When I called out to him, he answered from the back of the house. He was not wearing my robe.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” my mother said, and at that moment, three ornaments fell off the tree.

Mother apparently changed her mind.

The next morning she told me that she had awakened in the night, knowing that someone was in the room with her. I asked if she’d been frightened, and she said, “Not at all. I just said: ‘Go away, Robert,’ and he did.”

When Paul moved out, Robert all but disappeared from my life, though there have been a few times since Los Angeles that I have been aware of him. I do wish he’d show up more often. I miss him.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Northern Memories

And life goes on. Last week’s aerial shots of the N.I.U. campus [February 14, 2008], ambulances clustered around a classroom building, had a surreal quality for me, trying to peer through the haze of fifty years and link what I was seeing on the TV to what I remember of Northern when I first enrolled there as a freshman in 1952. Oh, Lord, what a different world!

I’m sure I’ve talked about some of this in earlier blogs, but if you’ll indulge me again: When I arrived at Northern in September of 1952, it was one of a group of State Teachers Colleges, and its name was, indeed, Northern Illinois State Teachers College. The total enrollment was around 2,500 if that. Women outnumbered men several-fold. I moved into the just-completed men’s dormitory building, Gilbert Hall…which was so new they had not yet finished laying the sod for the spacious lawns in front of the building.

The campus very much resembled a park. In the center of a large pond in the middle of the campus was a small island on which graduations were held.

There were probably 10 buildings on campus: the brand new dorms, Gilbert Hall and Neptune Hall, Adams Hall, Glidden, the beautiful Swen Parson Library [pictured], the Science Building (both made of yellow limestone), the Administration building, and McMurray school in which student teachers got to practice what would become their life’s work. Reavis Hall was built in the previously empty spaces west of the main campus while I was in service and opened when I returned.

Across the street to the north side of Gilbert Hall were half a dozen long army-barracks type buildings which housed married students and a few offices, including that of the Northern Star, the campus paper for which I wrote several articles movie reviews and, after returning from the Navy, had a weekly column.

The Administration Building, with its mediaeval tower which still serves as the campus “logo” contained offices, a few classrooms, the school auditorium and, in the floor of the entry, the school seal, which was, by tradition, never to be walked on.

There was also a small building just on the edge of campus closest to the town of DeKalb which served as the Student Union.

It was an insular world: small, warm, familiar, and comfortable, filled with friends and laughter and, most important of all, an innocence which, for the rest of the world and now for Northern, has been destroyed forever.

Today, there is a 14-story tower which houses the Student Union and a hotel for campus visitors.

The campus has spread out to the west into what was, when I was there, farmland. There’s a stadium now and more buildings than I could count. The aerial shots of the campus, showing the Cole Hall, mainly focused on this new part of the campus, showing places that simply did not exist when I was a student. And on the part of the campus with which I was most familiar, the lawns are largely gone. New buildings stand cheek-to-jowl. I have no idea if the pond and the island are still there, but I might tend to doubt it.

Gilbert hall is now an office building, the rooms in which I and my friends lived and gathered and laughed and studied and dreamed are now cubicles for the campus bureaucracy.

It’s odd to see Northern now. It’s still my school, and I am part of its past. But I am not part of its present. And I know that those attending Northern now…more than ten times the number of when I enrolled…have their own friends, their own places to gather, to talk, to laugh, and, I hope, to build wonderful memories which will last them for the rest of their lives.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

On Being Bubbly

I tried out for a game show once, when I lived in California. I answered all the questions correctly and even got a call-back. But I didn’t make it because I was not “bubbly” enough. Well, they certainly had me there. I am definitely not the “bubbly” type. Perhaps it’s my Norwegian heritage. Norwegians don’t tend to bounce up and down and scream and wave their arms a lot.

I am often excited about things, and sometimes elated. But even then I am not “bubbly.” Something there is in me which insists on keeping the cork in the bottle.

I am also aware that my non-bubbly-ness has often been a drawback. There are times when I would truly like to let my inhibitions go. But I don’t, and I can’t. I remember going to see Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake on Broadway seven times, which involved two separate trips from Wisconsin. Every performance got a standing ovation, and I wanted more than anything to yell “Bravo!” like so many others were doing, or simply shouting. I even opened my mouth and tried to let something out. But I could not. I clapped. And I deeply resented myself for being such a dud.

Being excruciatingly self-conscious makes it difficult to be bubbly.

I used to go to the dance bars in L.A. when disco was king—always with friends and always at their insistence—and I could never get out there and dance. When I was on occasion physically dragged out on the floor I was excruciatingly embarrassed. “But nobody is watching you!” my friends would say. “I’m watching me,” I’d reply.

But as for hands-over-the-head-clapping-and-swaying-in-time-with-the-music, forget it. Even at gay pride parades, where the enthusiasm is almost palpable and everyone is more animated than ten Pixar films, I stand there like a statue. I’m loving it, but I’m not showing it.

Of course, being bubbly has its limits. Natural bubbliness is admirable, indicating a genuinely happy openness. But we all know people whose effervescence is about as natural as the audience response on a TV infomercial, and it is only with great effort that I am able to resist reaching out and throttling them.

It goes back, I suppose, to the fact that I expect so much of myself. I want to be bubbly. I want to be graceful. But I am not and never have been. Rather than try, and make a fool of myself in my own eyes, I do nothing and thereby risk making a fool of myself in the eyes of others. I have always been terrified of standing out in a crowd. Yet when 10,000 people are dancing and swaying and clapping and one person is not, guess who stands out?

I know this sounds either like I’m feeling sorry for myself or asking you to feel sorry for me. I’m not. It’s simply peeling back another layer of the onion. I may not like it, but I accept it. And besides, I’m bubbly on the inside, so why should I care? To quote my friend Popeye, “I yam what I yam.”

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Unforgiving

My friend Gary and I went to a local coffee shop/bakery this morning. Standing in line by the glassed-in pastry counter, I was aware that the little old man behind me…unshaven, knit stocking cap pulled low on his head, long, shapeless brown overcoat…was making circular motions with one hand in front of the glass partition, saying “strawberry shortcake!” “Cinnamon buns!” I assumed he was talking to someone, but he was alone.

“Soup,” he said. “Soup, soup, soup. I’ll have soup.”

I didn’t turn to look at him, but couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t talking to me. I didn’t want to say anything unless I was sure. When I got to the cashier, a kid I know, I commented that he was lucky to be working inside, because it was cold outside.

“Yes, cold,” the little man said. I still didn’t know if he was talking to me, and felt like perhaps I should have said something to acknowledge him. But I didn’t.

When we sat down, the little man took a table near us, with his bowl of soup and the crust of French bread that comes with it. Head down, he ate quietly and quickly, not removing his coat.

A few minutes later he got up to leave and, as he passed our table, he paused. Neither Gary nor I said anything or even looked up at him. He moved on, and Gary, who was facing the front of the shop, said he paused at each table as he passed it.

I at first assumed that the man was one of the far-too-many sadly dysfunctional people who flow along the city’s streets like twigs and leaves and Styrofoam cups float along a swollen creek; the invisible people no one sees, or pretend they don’t see. He may well have been. 

But it suddenly struck me that perhaps he was simply hoping someone might say hello to him, or somehow acknowledge his existence, and I was literally overcome with sadness and guilt that I, too, had totally ignored him.

When I told Gary how I felt, he said, logically, that to engage people whose looks and/or behavior strike a jarring note in the orchestra of our daily life was to risk…something: awkwardness? An unpleasant confrontation? The fact is that we simply do not know how to react to people who stand out as being uncomfortably different from ourselves and those we are used to having around us.

So rather than risk discomforting and embarrassing ourselves, we pretend they don’t exist. We tell ourselves, often with complete justification, that the panhandlers we see on the street could get a job if they wanted one, or that if we give them any money, they’ll just spend it on booze or cigarettes or drugs, and probably nine times out of ten, we are right. But what of the tenth person; the one who really does need our help. How can we tell the difference?

I have nothing but contempt for those who impose on others out of laziness or a desire to get something for nothing, or who deliberately try to take advantage of people’s goodness, or will do nothing to help themselves. They should be ashamed of themselves, but of course are not. And they deprive those who really need a little kindness or assistance of either.

I don’t know anything about the little old man in the coffee shop, or what his story might be, or if he was talking to himself or perhaps to me in hopes that I might say something to him and make him feel as though he were visible. But I am nevertheless deeply ashamed of myself.

Why does this sort of thing bother me so? And why am I so relentlessly unforgiving of myself for not being who I think I should be? And the next time I encounter a similar situation, will I react any differently? I would like to think so, but, sadly, I doubt it.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com:

Habits, Routines, and Ruts

I have not used an alarm clock in 40 years or more; I automatically wake up around 6 a.m., no matter how late I’ve gotten to bed, and no matter if there is a reason to wake up that early or not. On blog-entry days, I am compelled to have them posted by no later than 6:45 (even though I allow myself wiggle room at the bottom of each entry when I say they’ll be posted by 10 a.m. Central time), because I know I have a couple East coast readers who look at them before going to work.

We are all creatures of habit, and the only difference between habit and routine is the frequency with which it is repeated. The circle of routine, however, too rapidly begins to wear a path into one’s daily life which soon becomes a rut. You know you’ve gone from routine to rut when any disruption to the routine is viewed with resistance, anxiety, and frustration. The older we become, the deeper our ruts become until we have dug a rut so deep it is almost impossible to climb out.

Friday is laundry day. (Why Friday? Just because I always do laundry on Friday. I know that doesn’t answer the question, but if you’re looking for logic, you’re in the wrong place.) My apartment building is 11 stories tall, has 200 units, and a total of 5 washing machines and 5 dryers, one pair on each even-numbered floor. So finding a vacant machine when you want it is something of a game of musical chairs. The entire process, once I do find a machine, takes about an hour and a half per load, and I always manage to have two loads, which means that unless I want to drag the process out for hours, I try to do both loads at once, which involves finding two empty machines at the same time. So as a result, I try to get my laundry started by 6:45 a.m. before anyone else gets there.

The machines are operated by the kind of electronic plastic cards which have replaced keys in hotels. You can add money to the card at any time, and having not surprisingly lost my card a couple of times, I try not to keep too much money on it. This past Friday I got up, posted the blog, gathered the laundry, and then remembered that I’d used up all the money on my card the previousFriday, and all I had was a $20 bill which I was not about to splurge on a laundry card I could and probably would lose ten minutes after I recharged it.

I was rather surprised by just how this really minor incident seemed to throw the whole day into chaos, sending me figuratively running around in circles (ruts, anyone?) wringing my hands and muttering “Oh, my! Oh, my!”

Every morning put the coffee on, turn on the Today Show at 7 a.m., have a glass of V8 juice, a cup (well, half a cup, since I never, ever finish it) of coffee, and a chocolate covered donut. Why don’t I have cereal? Or an English muffin? Or fix an egg? Or make a pancake? Because I have a glass of V8, a cup of coffee, and a donut, that’s why. I tell myself it’s because of the 350 calories in the donut....something an English muffin wouldn’t provide. It is a rut I have dug from which I cannot climb out.

I write most of the day, with frequent and prolonged interruptions for emails and other distractions, so the time between 7:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. is relatively rut-free. And I realize with mild horror, that it is the only time of my life that is.

At 5:30 each night I watch the evening news, then a series of TV programs which takes me until bedtime. I almost never go out at night. (Go out on aThursday evening and miss Supernatural?? Unthinkable! Stop for dinner after leaving work Sunday at 6 and miss 60 Minutes?? Impossible!)

We reach the point where we take comfort in our ruts, and this is definitely not a good thing. I have got to break mine. I’ve got to! Maybe I’ll go to a movie tonight. Yes! I will! (But wait…NCIS is on at 7. Well, I’ll go tomorrow for sure.)

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from Untreed Reads and Amazon; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com: