We Three

I was sitting here a moment ago having my afternoon cup of coffee and chocolate covered donut (one of my primary sources for calories) and found myself having to painfully pry my mouth open with my free hand far enough to get the thickness of the donut into my mouth. I was not happy, but Dorien found it very amusing. And in that small incident lies a partial explanation of just why there is a “Dorien and me.”

I have increasingly found myself to be a rather distinct trinity (hardly in the biblical sense, I assure you): physical, mental, and…well, Dorien, who both bridges and transcends the other two parts. Each part has its own distinct function. My physical “third” is solely concerned with maintenance and upkeep of the flesh, bone, muscles and organs. It doesn’t have the time or need to think much, but it has served all three of “us” amazingly well over lo, these many years.

The “mental” third is in charge of those aspects of daily existence not directly under the purview of basic body functioning, though it shares some responsibilities with my body such as eating and dressing and scratching where it itches. It tends to be unrealistically set on itself, and I am ashamed to admit that it is all too often dismissive and sometimes almost contemptuous of my body. It cannot or will not accept the notion that as my body ages, I simply cannot do those things I once did with such ease. (“Look!” my mind tells my body. “He can run: he can turn and lift his head; he can open his mouth wide enough to eat a double-decker hamburger! Why can’t you?”) My mind knows it is cruel and unfair to do so, but it can’t help itself. And my body just goes quietly about its business. It is well aware of what  my bout with cancer did to it, and it grudgingly accepts it even though my mind will not. It knows I am lucky just to be alive.

And Dorien, bless him, remains removed from it all. Totally free of physical limitations or restraints, he can and does do anything or be anything or go anywhere he wishes. Dorien is everything my body and mind want to be and am not. Into his safekeeping my body and mind have entrusted the majority of my hopes and dreams, my faith and fantasies.  It is Dorien who provides the imagination for my writing. It is Dorien who creates the stories—my body merely types them out. My mind…that part of it which is separate from Dorien…truly take great delight in watching what appears on the screen, and is often totally unprepared for what shows up there.

All three parts of me share great concern and infinite regret in the realization that while Dorien could, and I hope will, live forever, my body, again, is subject to all the laws of the physical world, and the years, however hard we fight, do take their toll. It is a battle we all must eventually lose, and my mind knows all too well that when my body dies, my mind, like the captain of a sinking ship, must go down with it.

Death does not frighten me: it never has, for I know that, as I’ve said so often before, it is merely a return to the nothingness from which it emerged. But oh, the thought of everything I shall miss: the people, the sunrises, the fun, laughter and even sadness…everything that makes us all human and alive….

So I constantly remind myself of what a marvelous gift life is, and try to treasure every second I am given, for as long as I may have it.

May you do the same.

New entries are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back.

NOTE: LEFTOVER

But thoughts and dreams and philosophies can be put into words which, like Dorien, are not subject to the ravages of time. Individual human beings are as impermanent as a sand castle built at the water’s edge, yet their words are rock solid, enabling the writer to erect granite fortresses, whose towers and spires will reach toward the sky long after the writer’s physical components have long gone..

As the years pass, I watch the separation between the three parts of myself become more and more pronounced, and each part becoming more distinct, and I’m really quite comfortable with that. We’re three, but we’re still one. The physical Roger grows increasingly older, while the cognizant Roger remains unchanged by the years, and Dorien is able to ignore them totally.
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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site: www.doriengrey.com.

I've Made a Little List

Taking a cue from Gilbert and Sullivan, I’ve made a little list of people to be dealt with when I become Emperor.

First, of course, are the hate-mongers. I realize that this will eliminate a number of the world’s political leaders and will definitely decimate the world’s televangelists and a huge number of devoted churchgoers, but so be it. Hate is a contagious disease and should be treated as such. I will lock each of these people in a very small room where their basic needs will be provided, but absolutely forbid them from having contact with anyone. I will, of course, provide each of their rooms with a large mirror so they can still feel close to the only person they care about.

A large number of my second group can also be found in the first: the proselytizers…those people who are as unwilling to consider anything other than their own views as they are insistent on foisting those views on you. I do not suffer gladly their knocking on my door or buttonholing me on the street or calling me on the phone. Those who cannot accept the rights of others to have their own opinions and beliefs deserve a special place in Purgatory.  But one of my small rooms will suffice until someone with a higher authority is able to pass judgement.

Next are the bullies: those people who feel they have every right to be as loud, obnoxious, insulting, and contrary as they want to be.  My very first act as emperor would be the strict enforcement of the Golden Rule, and those who did not observe it would be removed to a little room until they did.

Those who cannot speak a full sentence of dictionary-recognized English words without the use of profanity will have their mouths taped shut, the tape removed only long enough to permit eating. Should they utter profanity during that period, the tape will be immediately replaced until the next meal. This of course will be devastating to the “popular” music industry, but who cares?

People who wear baseball caps at a “cute” angle will be forbidden to wear them and heavily fined if they do.

Then come those who for reasons I have yet to even come close to comprehending, are famous not for doing good deeds or improving the human condition in any way, shape, or form, but merely for being famous. As for the people who make them famous and follow their every meaningless peccadillo as though it really, truly meant anything at all, I have not yet come up with a punishment for them. I find them a bit pathetic, and think the fact that they don’t seem to believe their own lives have any value or interest might be punishment enough.

The originators and purveyors of internet spam will not only be locked away but absolutely forbidden to ever touch a computer for the rest of their lives. And the only reading matter they will be allowed will be the same spam they and others like them have produced.

The blatantly hypocritical who think no one recognizes their hypocrisy will be put on a bus and driven over a cliff. Every company with a telephone recording saying “Your call is very important to us...” will immediately be shut down. The “Nigerian barristers” who prey upon the stupifyingly naive will simply be rounded up and shot.

Anyone who deliberately kills or causes needless physical pain to another human being will be dealt with summarily by experiencing exactly the same pain and to the same degree. This will in time free a vast number of prisons for conversion to my “little rooms”.

Those who laugh at the misfortunes or physical or mental limitations of others will be forced to undergo the same misfortunes, to see how it might affect their sense of humor.

My mind is beginning to boggle as I think of all those who deserve to be on my list. All the petty, the cruel, the deliberately thoughtless, the intolerant…there is no way they can all be listed in one short blog.

I am thinking of starting a petition to have me indeed made Emperor so that I might implement the changes listed above. Can I count on your signature?

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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site: www.doriengrey.com.

Jack Spratt's Wife

We live in a world of addictions, and I really do like to think of myself as empathetic to the majority of ills which afflict humanity. I try not to be judgmental, or unkind to those who are affected. I lost my mother to smoking, and my partner Ray to alcohol. But I have been watching a TV reality show on morbid obesity which I fear has tried me sorely and found me wanting.

The program centers on the patients at a New York clinic for people who weigh upwards of 450 pounds (two have been over 1,000 pounds), many so heavy they can no longer walk. They cannot care for themselves, cannot take a regular bath or do most of the things they claim they want so desperately to do. But what they can do is eat. The clinic has every patient on a strict, healthy diet designed to help them lose weight. Unfortunately, the patients also have access to a telephone and, upon finishing their specially formulated meals, use the phone to call out for pizza, fried chicken, anything soaked in grease. Some consume more than 13,000 calories a day (average recommended is, I believe, around 2,100). The cameras lovingly zoom in on them stripping an entire chicken leg in one bite and shoveling in gigantic slices of pizza and cake and licking their fingers so as not to miss that last calorie.

Some of the patients do evoke sincere sympathy. One 400 pound woman who seriously wants to lose weight lost 20 pounds in two weeks. But while doing this her two sons, 24 and 26 years old and 320 and 360 pounds respectively sit at home and wear out their dialing fingers ordering in junk food. One son has been recently experiencing chest pains and a numbness in his left hand yet claims, as he stuffs fistfuls of French fries into his mouth, that he has no idea what the problem might be. At the request of their mother, a dietician from the clinic prepared a healthy menu for them, which all they had to do was follow. They laughed as they read it and after one day, went out to their favorite pizza joint for a double jumbo with the works.

I cannot imagine how they can possibly afford their food bills.

As with most addicts, be it drug, alcohol, or whatever, the morbidly obese at the clinic offer up a myriad of reasons for their condition, the only one never seriously considered…and in fact never even mentioned…is their own responsibility.

(And as I write this, growing more and more righteously indignant and angry with these people… “Fer Chrissakes, lady, put down that damned pork chop and think!!”…I remember one night in Los Angeles when Ray was on one of his binges. He was sitting in the middle of the living room floor, a bottle of bourbon between his legs, sobbing. “I don’t want to be a drunk!” he’d say, then immediately take a long swig of bourbon…. And my own mom, as she lay dying of lung cancer, looking like a tiny withered doll hooked up to a myriad of machines and with tubes running in and out of her body, said, with all innocence: “If only I had known.” I still cry when I think of that one.)

So I guess this entire blog has been something of an exercise in ambivalence, and in the end an example of “judge not lest you be judged.” I do try not to judge. Really. But dear Lord!!

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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site: www.doriengrey.com.