Time Was

My friend Gary gave me a video of the popular singing group, Il Divo, for my birthday. The fact that not only do they sing well, but two of them are achingly beautiful didn’t hurt. I was enjoying both the music and the…uh, scenery…when they launched into an Italian rendition of a song known here as “Unchained Melody,” and suddenly I was not sitting in an apartment in Chicago, watching a video, but sitting at a booth in a small bar near the beach in Pensacola, Florida, eating pizza and talking with my NavCad friend Harry Harrison and I realize the frustration of stroke victims aware of everything around them but unable to say or do anything.

I’m really there, 54 years ago and I want so badly to let myself and Harry know that I’m there, but I can’t.

While I can, and often do, conjure up vivid memories of the past, the most powerful of these journeys are those in which I am whiplashed through time without warning. All it takes is an out-of-nowhere thought, a totally unexpected memory, a song, a sound, a photo, and I am back with friends and lovers and family long gone.

I’m home from college, sitting on the couch in my parents’ home on School Street in Rockford, Illinois, next to my dad, who reaches out and places his hand on my knee, giving it a sharp squeeze which evokes a yelp from me and a rebuke that “that hurts!” And I do not realize until years later that this was his way of showing that he loved me. I’d give anything to be sitting on that sofa right now, next to my dad. And this time, I would not complain.

The sound of a passing single-engine airplane overhead will transport me instantly into the cockpit of an SNJ navy trainer, soaring over the top of a gigantic whipped-cream cumulus cloud and into a beautiful, clear valley surrounded by other clouds, looking down at the green patchwork of fields and roads and rivers far below, and I experience the same indescribable joy and wonder.

Some of these travels back in time I make fairly frequently, but some, like the following, pop up totally unannounced after years and years. Norm and I are returning to Chicago from my parents’ cottage in my new red 1963 Ford Sprint convertible. The top is down, and Norm is sitting in the passenger’s seat, studiously rummaging through a large bag of potato chips, as if he’s looking for something. Apparently finding it, he smiles and pulls out one large, perfect potato chip, and hands it to me.

I’m with my mother, visiting New York City sometime in the early 1960s. We are at the top of the Empire State Building, and I am being cruised by a very nice looking guy. My mother for some reason seemed to be my magnet for attracting handsome gay men, for I was never cruised more heavily, more frequently, or because of the circumstances of being with Mom and therefore unable to do anything about it, more frustratingly.

I often refer, when looking at beautiful men, for example, to my chest hurting. And it does! It’s a combination of intense feelings of longing, too often mixed with the sorrow of the awareness of loss—that something once was and is no more, and can never be again.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

A Day at the Movies

Coronado Theater, Rockford, IL

Whenever I go up to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, for one of my annual follow-up checkups, I like to try to see a movie, which I seldom have the chance to do at home. This time, I saw two; one Sunday and one Monday at one of those 470-screen SuperCinePlexes.

Paying my $6.00 early-bird-or-whatever rate on Sunday, I decided I’d try once again to eat a bag of popcorn. I love popcorn; I always have. But though I am always the optimist, I am never able to finish even a small bag. The kernels break up into a thousand pieces during chewing and, because my salivary glands were destroyed by radiation during the treatment of my tongue cancer, I have no natural way of simply gathering the thousands of pieces, moving them unnoticed to the back of my mouth, and swallowing, ready for the next handful. 

Instead, the broken up kernels adhere to every possible surface of my mouth; between my tongue and teeth, and between my teeth and my gums. Trying to wash them loose with a sip of soda is an exercise in futility.

But I digress, as usual. What I’m getting at is that a very small bag of popcorn cost $3.25 and a small soda cost another $3.25. I was thinking of mentioning to the manager that if they were going to rob the customers, they could at least wear masks and carry guns. So a trip to the movies cost $12.50. And I know the $6.00 ticket price was a steal compared to some theaters. Needless to say, I opted to forgo the snack bar on a return visit.

In the great depression, movie theaters survived not so much on the ticket sales, but on selling popcorn...at 10 cents a bag. I am sure the modern cineplexes operate on a similar theory, though on a far, far grander scale.

I began going to movies on my own when I was around 10, I believe. Every Saturday, my mom would give me $1.25, and with that princely sum I would take the bus (I believe 10 cents a ride) downtown, where I would go to the State or the Times, or the Palace (which frequently had vaudeville on weekends), or the Midway on the other side of town, or very rarely to the Coronado, which was and is a magnificent old Grand Dame of a movie palace.

The Coronado and the Midway showed only first runs from major studios. The Times and Palace often showed second-runs or B-grade movies; The State showed lesser movies, but ran serials every Saturday and was therefore the favorite of most of the kids.

Anyway, I would ride the bus down town, go immediately to Woolworths’ soda fountain where I would have a chocolate soda (when was the last time you had a real chocolate soda? If you’re under 50, chances are you may never have had one. And is there, for that matter, a single real soda fountain left anywhere?). The soda set me back $.25, and I’d also have a hot dog (fifteen cents, if I’m not mistaken). From there I would move on to the theater of my choice, buy my ticket for fifty cents, and a order a huge bag of fresh-popped Manley’s Popcorn, which featured an elephant on the bag, for a dime. If I’d managed somehow during the week to scrape up an extra dime, I would have two bags.

The only Coliseum seating then was found in Rome. The entire audience sat on one level, though there usually was a sloping of the floor to provide some slightly better view of the screen. Most theaters had their seats lined up directly in front of one another; only a few staggered the rows slightly so you could look over someone’s shoulder rather than at the back of their heads.

And it was a wondrous and wonderful time, when a movie cost fifty cents and popcorn a dime.

But as I sat in the SuperCinePlex in Rochester, Minnesota trying to get through a $3.25 bag of popcorn far smaller than the old Manley’s dime bag, and drinking my $3.25 coke and feeling very nostalgic for the old days, I remembered that back in those wondrous, magical, halcyon days, when you were diagnosed with cancer, you died.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Trains

Like most people…men more than women, I’d suspect…I’ve had a lifelong attraction to trains, from the time Uncle Buck first took me to the train station in Rockford, Illinois to watch the huge black-metal monsters come chuffing up to the platform wreathed in steam and thick black smoke, amid squeaks and hisses. From that moment, I was hooked.

For Christmas of 1938, my dad bought me…well, us, since he played with it more than I did…a five car Lionel electric train. It had a bullet-shaped streamliner engine, a coal car, a baggage car, a diner, and a caboose. I had it until just before my 2006 move to Chicago, when I realized that much as I loved it, it was foolish just to keep it packed away in a box, so I put it up for sale on eBay, and got $1,000 for it. I was of course happy for the money, but even happier that someone who loved trains would be enjoying it. I think Dad would excuse me.

A couple of times, after I moved from Chicago in 1966 to Los Angeles, I took a train between the two cities, splurging on a sleeper compartment with its own tiny bathroom. It was rather decadent, I thought, and a lot of fun, albeit rather expensive. I’d love to do it again, and have always wanted to take a train across Canada. Well, it’s on my wish list.

And now that I am living once again in Chicago, I look out my window and see (and sometimes too-clearly hear) silver elevated trains rumble by half a block away every several minutes. From my vantage point, looking down on them, I convince myself that I once again have my own little electric train set. (The sound, by the way, becomes so much a part of existence that I am for the most part totally unaware of it. All part of big city life.)

I’ve mentioned before that Chicago has one of the best transportation systems in the country, and having an el so close means that I am literally only steps away from any place in the city. If the el won’t get me there, the busses which pass every elevated stop will.

And even though I’ve been back in Chicago for two years now (good Lord! How can that be possible?), the el fascinates me. But what fascinates me more is how everyone in Chicago simply takes this marvel for granted. To walk up a flight of stairs and look down the track to see four-six-and-eight-car silver trains moving into and out of each station. Watching the cars slide past as the train moves up the platform, seeing the doors slide silently open, watch the people getting on and off as though it were no big thing (and in truth, I guess it isn’t, except to me and my friend Gary, who recently moved here from Texas and is still as fascinated with them as I).

Riding through the city on an el, especially as it approaches the Loop and its towers, is to me a never-ending source of awe. Hundreds of thousands of people each day board and alight from the eight separate but interlinked lines serving the city: Red, Brown, Orange, Yellow, Purple, Green, Orange, Pink. In the Loop, the major north-south Red Line, which begins and ends as an elevated line, sinks beneath the ground to become a subway, then emerges again to become an el.

I often wonder how many of those who ride it every day ever stop to think that probably most people in the country have no ready access to such a complex public transportation system, let alone the joy of real trains running back and forth right over their heads, or of how wondrous and complex a thing it is. I know I do. Simple pleasures for a simple mind.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Shaping Clay

Some primitive cultures believe that the gods shaped Man from clay before breathing life into him.

I think there also might be something to be said for the idea that we are also, when we’re born, the equivalent of cosmic Play-Doh, and who we turn out to be is the result of how we are shaped by the events and circumstances of our lives.

Looking back, I can remember a number of incidents from my childhood which, simply because they’re still remembered after all these years, mean they had to have contributed to who Roger and Dorien are today.

Not surprisingly, most of them took place when I was very young, though I have difficulty now pinning down exactly how old I might have been at the time of each incident. The earliest was when I was old enough to have a tricycle. My parents had called me in for supper (we had “supper” in those days…“dinner” only came with sophistication). I left my tricycle on the sidewalk, and as we were eating, I heard the little bell on the handlebars ringing. I told my dad that someone was stealing my tricycle, but he had not heard the bell and refused to let me go outside to check on it. When I was able to go out, of course the tricycle was gone, and I resented my dad deeply for not having let me go out and save it. And I am ashamed to say that I think this single incident influenced my relationship with my dad from that moment on.

A second incident, about the same time, occurred while I was visiting my grandmother, who lived near a city park. While no one was watching me, I decided to go to the park alone. As I was walking through an underpass beneath the street on which my grandmother lived, I was approached by a man (which at my age could have been any male 15 years old or older). To this day I remember what he said to me, and though it is admittedly rather embarrassing to repeat, it has stuck with me all these years. (A word of caution here: I’m not going to sugar-coat this, so you can skip to the next paragraph if you’re easily offended.) He said, “Let me put my weenie in your can.” It wasn’t until years later that I understood what he was saying, but I remember thinking it was a very strange thing to say. At any rate, I ran off and don’t know if I told my parents or not. But I remembered it. I still remember it, possibly because it was the first time I was aware that there were others like me: males who liked males. He was not the kind of man of whom homosexuals can be proud and, like most pedophiles, it’s unlikely that he was in fact gay.

One incident which strongly did have an effect on the formation of my character occurred when, maybe about 7 years old, I was walking down the sidewalk, happily singing Christmas carols at the top of my voice. A passerby said: “Why are you singing Christmas Carols? It’s summer.” I don’t know why, but that comment so shamed me that I have never since sung aloud other than as part of a group.

Probably one of the most significant of my character-developing incidents happened when I was five, and my parents and I were living in a 14-foot trailer in Gary, Indiana. The trailer park was located next to a railroad track, but separated by a sloping ditch. Whenever we kids would hear a train coming, we’d run to the embankment to wave at the engineer, who always waved back. One day I heard the train coming before the other kids did, and I ran to the ditch and plopped down on the ground just below the rim of the embankment. I had my left leg out to one side and watching for the train.

A little girl from the park came running up and, not seeing me, jumped down the embankment, landing on my extended leg, breaking it severely just below the hip. I of course immediately began screaming and the little girl, terrified, ran off. My mother, hearing me, came running over. And seeing me all by myself maybe three feet down the side of a grassy embankment, she naturally assumed I had merely fallen and was being my own melodramatic self. She knelt down and scooped me up, one arm around shoulders and the other under my rear end. Unfortunately, in so doing, the weight of my unsupported left leg forced the broken bone out through my skin.

The doctors at the hospital to which I was taken told my parents that the break was so severe that my left leg would probably be several inches shorter than the right. However, they said, a visiting specialist from Germany was in town. He was scheduled to return to Germany the next day, but he came in and operated, and while I have a long and very noticeable scar, there was no shortening. The doctor left for Germany the next day. This was September of 1938. The doctor was Jewish.

I don’t think that the fact that it was a little girl who had jumped on me influenced my being gay, but it certainly did make me far more cautious of any activity or anything at all that might conceivably cause me physical pain.

Well, there are many more character-shapers in my life, and I may do another blog or two on them in future. But this, I’m sure you’ll agree, is enough for now.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Get a Horse

People fascinate (and too often infuriate) me for a wide range of reasons, one of which being the vehemence with which so many resist the idea of change and the total acceptance of it once it has arrived. I started this particular blog a couple days ago, then when time came (today) to post it, I realized it needed to be in two parts: material changes and societal changes. So let’s start with the material, which seem to be faster to come along and generally with less resistance than social changes.

Humans have a general historical suspicion and distrust of technology. The knee jerk reaction to anything new is either “it’ll never work” or “well, I’d never use it.” The first automobiles were greeted with catcalls of: “Get a horse!” Orville and Wilbur’s idea of a flying machine was generally denounced with the firm general conviction that “It’ll never fly.”

Yet we have experienced, in a just a little over a hundred years, a sea change in how technology has totally and forever changed our lives.

I do not think my immediate family…my mom, my dad, and me…had an indoor bathroom until I was approaching puberty. I know we didn’t on the little house on Loves Court in Loves Park; I’m sure there wasn’t room for it in the 14-foot-long trailer in which we lived in Gary, Indiana, where I broke my leg and was in a body cast for a month or so during the heat of summer, and I know we did not have air conditioning. We did not have an indoor bathroom until we’d been living on Blackhawk Ave. for some time. I seem to recall a hand pump for water in the kitchen, and I definitely remember a hand-pumped kerosene stove in the trailer.

Impossible to believe now, but few of us had even heard of television before 1945, and in 1949 people would stand outside appliance store windows to watch the bulky sets with the blurry black and white photos. Radio was our primary source of entertainment, and we usually went to the movies once a week until I was a teenager: then I’d go once a week with my family, and every Saturday afternoon on my own with, as stated before, my “allowance” of $1.25: 50 cents for the movie, a quarter for a chocolate ice cream soda, 20 cents for two tall bags of Manley Popcorn, and 30 cents for the bus to and from.

Mail was delivered twice a day, for three cents a stamp. Electric refrigerators and washing machines were in very few homes prior to the 1940s. On ice-delivery day, you’d put a card in your front window with a little arrow pointing to the amount of ice you wanted, and it would be brought in an open truck with a heavy tarp in the back covering the ice, and all the neighbor kids would run up to it on warm summer days and take little chips of ice to suck on.

It’s impossible to totally separate technological change from societal change, since technology is a river on which society floats.

The past was not all nostalgia and warm snugglies. Now-eradicated or easily treated diseases cut down tens of thousands, and for improvements in medicine alone we should give thanks.

But with change also comes a degree of loss. The more technology takes us out of ourselves comes a loss of innocence, of security, of a sense of physical, emotional, and geological closeness with friends and family.

Like it or not, change is constant and we are carried along with it willingly or no. All we can do is remember what was and use it as an anchor or a guidepost to what is to come.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Tar Bubbles

When I lived in Los Angeles, I used to enjoy 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 and ideas will just suddenly work their way to the surface of my consciousness, remain for just long enough for me to acknowledge them, then vanish. 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.

I was thinking of doing a blog entry on my school days, and 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:

Because of my broken leg, I was unable to enter first grade when I should have, and had to wait until the next year. I first attended Loves Park Elementary, though I’m sure it had another name. Shortly after I entered first grade, the United States entered WWII. I distinctly remember my prize possession being a military-type jacket that made me feel very grown up. However, looking at the photo above, I see I may have been mistaken [I was unable to find this photo].

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 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. And 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. 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.

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. Not a fun time.

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

I remember learning to ride a bike. 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 directly into cross traffic and being hit by a car. Luckily, I wasn’t hurt. But I was very badly shaken. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I all my life have avoided anything that I think might cause me physical harm.

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 Mrs. Heinz, a redheaded 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 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.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Since this blog was written, the egregious “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law has been repealed and, as I fully knew would be the case, it sank beneath the surface without a ripple. But it should never be forgotten that at one time, gays and lesbians were not allowed to serve their country openly.

Were you aware that there is only one employer in the entire United States of America which is free to fire its employees on the basis of sexual orientation? Care to guess which one? Why, the United States Military, of course—an arm of the U.S. government. By refusing to comply with the very laws it has mandated for everyone else, it thereby sets itself as being above the law (hardly a first-time event, but disgraceful nonetheless).

Since the inception of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” rule, well over 12,000 American servicemen and women who volunteered to serve their country have been kicked out of the military simply for being gay or lesbian. Enlisted men and women, officers, highly trained specialists, badly needed linguists/interpreters, holders of medals. No matter. They’re gay, they’re out. This at a time when the military is stretched dangerously thin, and they are lowering their recruiting standards. Well, of course, allowing convicted felons to enlist is far better than keeping a college graduate who has never had so much as a parking ticket, but is a faggot, and therefore a serious danger to the “cohesion”—whatever that is supposed to mean—of the unit.

Is the average heterosexual American soldier, sailor, or marine such a delicate emotional blossom, or so insecure in their own sexuality, that they would feel “threatened” by serving beside someone who was openly gay?

The United States is one of the last major countries in which homosexuals are not free to serve openly in the military. Why? Israel, Canada, Norway, England...are our moral standards so much higher than theirs? Or are we afraid our service men and women are too frail to survive sleeping in the same compartment as a homosexual?

The bitter irony here—one of many, actually—is that there are already tens of thousands of gays and lesbians in the military who chose to serve their country despite the knowledge that they can be kicked out any time they dare to reveal their sexual orientation.

I was one of those who served in silence, and who lived with the sword constantly hanging over my head. I witnessed first hand what happened to anyone who was discovered to be gay aboard an American warship. (I’ve told the story often before, but a guy I knew, a nice, innocent, naive kid, was called into the personnel office. “We arrested a man in Norfolk who said he had sexual relations with you. Now, we don’t want to do anything against you, but if you’ll sign this paper to verify you had sex with him, we can prosecute him.” The poor kid signed the paper and was flown off the aircraft carrier in the middle of the night. Flown off an aircraft carrier in the middle of the night lest he contaminate his fellow crewmen! My mind still reels to think of it.)

That the moral standards of my fellow (but heterosexual) sailors were infinitely higher and more refined than my own, and that they were therefore far more worthy human beings than I was evinced every time we went ashore. Apparently one can get a far better education in bars and brothels than in a museum. Museums are for faggots: bring on the girls!! One of my shipmates contracted gonorrhea no fewer than seven times in the course of our eight-month cruise. He was held in high regard by everyone for being a “real man.”

It appears that finally, finally the days of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” may be coming to an end, and one more outrageously discriminatory ruling will be overturned. And within one year of its repeal, I guarantee you that everyone will not give it a single thought other to wonder what the hell all the fuss had been about in the first place.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

This Way to the Egress

P.T. Barnum, in his New York City museum, posted signs throughout the building: “This way to the Egress.” Most people had never heard of an Egress and, expecting to see yet another exotic display, would follow the signs and find themselves outside.

People mean well, for the most part. Really they do. And if you are under 65, you most likely will not understand why I’m making all this fuss, or why I undoubtedly sound ungrateful.

But the fact is that when you approach and pass 65, you are increasingly being jostled aside, out of the mainstream of society. You become increasingly aware that you do not belong.  That there is the rest of the world, and there is you. Again, much of this is done with the kindest of intentions. It begins with being offered a seat on the bus, on the insistence of others to open doors for you, or pick something off the floor for you, or carry something which you can perfectly well carry yourself.

Again, well intentioned, and quite probably both needed and appreciated by many. I am not one of those. I find having people set me apart from them in any way humiliating. If I wanted you to open the door for me, or lift something, or carry something, please believe that I would ask you to do so. What you do not realize when you do this is you are saying to me: You are old. You are not one of us. You need help. You are less than you were. This way to the Egress!

I’ve told the story before of my dear friend Louisa, who lived with her two sisters two houses down from me in Pence. She was in her mid-80s, constantly on the go, maintained a spotless house, cooked, cleaned, went to church, went out to dinner and shopping, and led a full and active life. Her two sisters, 90-year-old Amelia and 88-year-old Rose, died quickly and quietly, but Louisa did not slow down, until one day she fainted and was unable to get up. Her daughter rushed to her side from Minneapolis and stayed with her, fixing her meals, washing, cleaning, attending to every detail of daily life, insisting she sit or lay down even when she did not wish to sit or lie down.

And gradually the change set in. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” changed to “Would you get me a cup of coffee?”; “I’ve got to weed the garden” changed to “I’m not going to be able to have a garden next year.” And then, inevitably, her daughter’s family, concerned with her living alone, insisted she leave her home, her friends, everything she had known all her life, and move in with them in Minneapolis.

She was dead within six months. She had gently, kindly, but firmly been shown the Egress.

I do not want this to happen to me. I will not let this happen to me. Please, please do not, even with all the best intentions in the world, facilitate anyone’s being shown the Egress. Do not treat me, or anyone over 65 as if we were no longer individual human beings but some sort of helpless infant. If someone very obviously needs help, by all means, offer it, but don’t make an issue of it or insist on it if they decline your offer. Allow those who want to maintain their independence and their sense that they are still worthy human beings the dignity to do so.

We all will find our way to the Egress soon enough. But before you figuratively take someone’s arm and guide them toward the door, stop for just an instant and ask yourself if they really need, or more importantly, want, the help. Keep in mind that one day someone may well be doing exactly the same for you. Is it a pleasant thought?

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Tangibles

I always used to wonder why older people, particularly, clung so stubbornly to that tattered old chair, that rickety old coffee table, that sweater with the holes all over it. I wondered until I found myself one of them. When I moved from my home in Northern Wisconsin to this very small apartment in Chicago, I had to get rid of a lot of furniture, and I was surprised by how traumatic it was.  One of the items that had to go was a couch I had custom-made when I lived in Los Angeles. It was a very nice couch, even though it was getting pretty threadbare even though I’d had it re-upholstered once, and I loved it. The thought of getting rid of it was unbearable.

Why? Because it was just a couch? No. Because my mom and Ray had sat on it, and many years later I could sit on it, and reach out my hand to the cushion beside me and imagine Mom there, or Ray. As long as I had that couch, I could pretend that they’d just gotten up and would be back any moment, to sit beside me again. Getting rid of it cut yet another cord which bound me to the past. It’s not so much that I want to be bound to it, but simply that I have no choice in the matter.

To me, life is rather like jumping out of a plane: it is a wonderful, exhilarating experience until you realize that the ground is coming closer with frightening speed, and you don’t have a parachute.

I readily admit that I probably take this hanging-onto-the-past thing a bit too seriously. As some can never throw away a piece of string, I can never throw away the threads to my past.

My move to Chicago also necessitated that I, with great reluctance, turn over custody of some key links to my past to my relatives for safekeeping: my grandmother’s steamer trunk; the radio on which I heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor. I keep a storage shed in southern Wisconsin wherein I am keeping the desk and chair I bought at a Goodwill in Los Angeles and carefully refinished, plus a large coffee table I gave to my parents as a Christmas gift almost 50 years ago. I have no room for them in my apartment, but I cannot part with them.

I have a huge box of playbills from every play I’ve ever seen from 1950 on up…as well as several of the ticket stubs (a good seat for a Broadway show used to run less than $10.00). I have a flier for a bar in San Remo, Italy. I have jars of stones picked up along the shore of Lake Superior; I have the letters my parents wrote me throughout my time in the Navy and beyond.

I have the envelopes containing the plane ticket stubs from the time I took my parents to Hawaii—Mom had always dreamed of going there—in 1960. I have a petrified snail shell I found while walking along a railroad track in Los Angeles in the 1970s; and a small liqueur glass I stole from the bar at the Istanbul Hilton in 1956.

In my dresser drawer is a pair of sweat-pants with “Margason” stenciled on the seat. They were issued to me in August of 1954 when I entered the NavCads. I don’t wear them, of course…their purpose is not to be worn, but to keep me tangibly linked to that part of my past.

I suppose there is a very fine line between “idiosyncrasy” and “psychosis,” and I readily acknowledge I probably do a balancing act between them on this issue. I can never fully explain how important these direct links with the past are to me. They protect me as the ground rushes up toward me; they comfort me. They are part of who I am, and as long as I have them, I have the past, and I am not alone.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

The Pity Pool

As I’m sure you probably have noticed by now, I am infinitely fascinated by me, partly because of my self-perceived isolation from the rest of the world and partly because my thoughts, experiences, and reactions are the only ones of which I can feel fairly confident.

Somewhere, in the dark forest of every human mind, there is a pity pool where the wild regrets and yearnings for lost things come to renew themselves when they suspect we may be forgetting about them. The nice thing about the pity pool is that we are comforted by the thought that nothing that happens to us is our fault or our responsibility…that all our woes are visited upon us by anyone and anything other than ourselves. And there is a certain nobility in the self-assurance that we are terribly brave to face such adversity alone. (“Alone” is a key word in all contemplation of the pity pool.)

My personal pity pool is actually more of a lake, the full extent of which is hidden by thick foliage of reality along the shore. But while I really do tend to avoid it, I catch an occasional glimpse every now and then and, in the heat of emotion, have been known to take a dip in its murky waters.

My trips to the pity pool are most frequently occasioned by reminders of what I could once do…so casually and without giving it a single thought…that I can no longer do. (Yesterday I found it necessary to use a straw to empty a half-pint carton of milk since I was unable to tilt my head back far enough to drink it normally.) These little reminders of the difference between who I was until six years ago and who I am now are hard to take. We are two different people. Totally different, and yet still the same. I can’t fully grasp it, and quite probably never will.

And because there are so many reminders, the temptation to take a dip in the pity pool is irritatingly frequent. Some friends meet every Friday evening for drinks. I know I would be welcome to join them, but I do not: it’s too close to the pity pool. For years, I had a routine of having two Manhattans between getting home from work and dinner. I truly enjoyed them. But now any alcohol burns my mouth. I don’t even use mouthwash that contains alcohol. Occasionally, when out for dinner, I will have a Kahlua and cream…heavy on the cream, light on the Kahlua. It still burns, but I do it. (Did I mention the nobility of bravery?)

And one reminder triggers a domino-effect of others. Carbonated beverages of any kind also burn, but in a different, hard-to-explain way, as do things like orange juice, lemonade, or anything citrus based. When I was at Mayo and took all my nourishment through a stomach tube, I used to literally dream of chug-a-lugging a tall glass of orange juice, or a big mug of root beer. But when I was finally able to try, I found the carbonation of the root beer and the acidity of the orange juice limited me to a few small sips at a time. And a flashing neon arrow over the words “This Way to the Pity Pool” comes on in my mind.

Why I’m laying all these things out here now is not, I assure you, a bid for sympathy: far too many people have had it much, much rougher than I, and I realize it and am embarrassingly grateful that I have had it so relatively easy compared to others. No, I do it in the hopes that you might do what I never did before the problem arose…take a moment at least once every hour to realize just how very lucky you are.

And I excuse myself for this Rubensesque self portrait of “Roger at the Pity Pool” on the grounds that none of us is fully aware or appreciative of what we have until we no longer have it, and by then it is too late.

An occasional dip in our own private pity pool is perfectly normal, and probably even healthy. The key lies in not staying too long before getting out, drying ourselves off, and getting on with our lives.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Things--and Things, Again

[Roger would not be happy with my erratic postings of his blogs here; I take some comfort knowing that I do post them to his web site regularly on Mondays and Thursday (www.doriengrey.com).  So, since they are related, I'm posting two today.             --Gary
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Things

God, how I hate endings! I can’t help it, but every ending reminds me that my time on earth is not infinite, and endings, like the ticking of a clock, are a constant reminder of that fact.

Every day I have the same “lunch”…an 8 oz can of liquid nutritional supplement (350 calories), half cup of milk (60 calories?), and a small container of Benecalorie nutritional supplement (320 calories, but containing the only essential vitamin not found in the other liquid supplement). It never varies. I don’t have other things for lunch partly because I’m too lazy to try to think of what else I might have, and partly because I probably wouldn’t eat much of it if I did have it. I’m in it for the calories, and I know how many my standard provides.

But this morning at the store, I bought some yogurt, with which I planned to vary my routine by adding it to the other ingredients and whipping it up in the blender. Which brings us to the subject of this blog.

My blender belonged to my mom. I have absolutely no idea how old it is, other than very. I’m sure mom had it since the ‘50s. I inherited it from her when she died in California in 1970, kept it with me through my various moves within Los Angeles and Pence and now Chicago.

So I prepared my smoothie—the blender working perfectly as it has for over half a century. Drank most of a glass, then went to pour the rest from the blender to the glass. I noticed as I did so that there were some flakes of black at the bottom of the blender. Investigating, I realized that the black rubber gasket at the base of the pitcher part of the blender was crumbling. Not knowing how much of it I’d already swallowed in what I’d just drunk, I dumped out the remainder of my smoothie.

Thinking I might be able to find another gasket, I tried to unscrew the aluminum blade housing from the glass container portion. It would not budge. I got a hammer and tapped one of the flanges on the side of aluminum, and the glass container broke, leaving me with yet another intimation of mortality. The bottom section, with the motor, still works fine, and I’ve ordered another canister and aluminum canister base w/gasket, but it won’t be quite the same. And at least I won’t have to throw it away. I can pretend it’s still my mom’s! It was in my two L.A. homes, and my two Pence homes, and my Chicago apartment. It’s done everything I ever asked of it, and did it well and without complaint. So I guess I’m making a big fuss over nothing.

I know, I know, things are just things. They have no awareness, no feelings. But I do, and rightly or wrongly, things make up the fabric of my life. They are tangible memories. I touch them, and knowing that others I have loved and who were so much a part of my life also touched them means they are not really gone…just away for a while.

As I understand it, Eastern cultures espouse the meaningless of things, and I in fact have friends who believe basically the same things. And I agree that things can be a burden…carting them around from place to place when they can easily be replaced by newer and better things. But they are not and can never be the same things. They do not have, on their surfaces, the tiny residual atoms of those people who once held or touched or sat on them so long ago.

I have stuffed animals I bought for Ray, or Ray bought for me; I have the end tables my mom bought at an unpainted furniture warehouse and varnished herself when she first moved to L.A., and the chair she bought. I have the delicate cocoa set which belonged to my grandmother Fearn (who died many years before I was born), and pocket watches belonging to both my grandfather and grandmother Fearn. I have a wooden Buddha given me by my friend “Uncle Bob” to welcome visitors, and an artillery shell brought home from WWI by my Uncle Buck.

Do I need them? No. But do I need them? Oh, my yes, for they are as much a part of me as my fingerprints, or my soul.

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Things, Again

The dictionary lists several meanings for the word “things,” but for the purposes of this blog, I’m using the one referring to possessions. People have three types of possession-things: things we have because we need them, things we have because we want them, and things we just have for no particular reason. The only exceptions seem to be those who live in total, abject poverty, and those devoted to the monastic life.

Having spent more than 50 hours working at Norm’s condo (I have to keep track as part of my being executor of his estate), going through his things, organizing them, and trying to find a way of disposing of them, I realized once again just how addicted we all are to…things. And being in the position, with Norm, of standing somewhat removed from his things, it is clear that the last two of the three types of things are by far in the majority. These are things we do not really need regardless of how much we may have wanted them when we got them, things we no longer use and never will use again, things we come across in our closets and dresser drawers that we’d totally forgotten we have.

Just about everyone I know has an “everything drawer” somewhere, usually in the kitchen, into which we toss things we don’t know what else to do with but think we might conceivably need at some future point: keys to locks seldom used or lost (but which we’re sure will show up at some point), somebody’s business card, matchbooks, perhaps an ashtray just in case a smoker comes by, a “church key” (bottle opener), and a wide assortment of unidentifiable objects, usually small pieces of something we meant to repair or get to one of these days.

But in truth, for many of us our entire home/apartment is in effect a large “everything drawer.” And as the years go by, more and more things are tossed into it.

I live in a small, one-bedroom apartment. I have no fewer than 12 bath and hand towels, and I’m not that dirty. Even were I to have overnight guests, I couldn’t accommodate more than two, and I do laundry every week. So why do I have so many towels? Oh, and the other day at Norm’s I came across a couple of really nice, big bath towels which I of course brought home to add to all the others I already have. Why? Did I want them? Yes. Did I need them? No. Will I soon forget I have them? Probably.

My closets are full of clothes I haven’t worn in years, and probably never will. Yet whenever I determine to clean out a closet, I’ll come across shirts or pants or jackets that I’d forgotten I had. (“Oh, that’s where that went! I’ll wear that next week, for sure!” And I don’t throw it away, and I don’t wear it, and it sits there until next time I determine to clean out the closet.)

My bookcase is overflowing with books. A couple of them I’ve never gotten around to reading but hope to. Several of them I’ve read more than once and plan to or may well read again at some point. But I’d say the majority of books there are ones I’ve read once and will never look at again. And I do give them away on that rare third-or-fourth blue moon that I get around to clearing out the bookcase. But bookcases are amazing things in that, having been cleared out, magically tend to refill themselves in short order.

Now, there are two distinct sub-categories of “things”: those which really matter and those which don’t. I’ve spoken often before of my total inability to get rid of those things which have some special significance to me…which are tangible bridges to the past and to the people I associate with them. I’ve said several times that I would never, on my own, have purchased the small art-deco display piece—a woman with a 1930s hairstyle and wearing a 1930s negligee—draped with a 1930s bakelite necklace— Ray bought for me as a gift because I’d once mentioned to him that I liked art deco. But it is one of my most treasured “things” simply because it came from him. And it stands on another of my most-prized “things,” the battered old dresser Norm and I bought and refinished somewhere around1960. Together, they represent a tangible combination of memories of loved ones lost but never gone.

Were a fire or some natural disaster to destroy my apartment and everything in it, as tragically happens frequently to others, would I be able to survive? Of course. I realize that the true value of almost everything I treasure most derives primarily from the memories I associate with them. And I know that memories remain long after the thing or person with whom they are associated are gone. But it is far better to have the both the memories and the ability to physically touch those things which are the doorknobs to open the door to the past.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: