Letting Go of the Bernie Ward Story

The sad, sad story of Bernie Ward has been at the forefront of my mind for the past several days. If he were just anyone, I might not give the matter a second thought. But when you've listened to him on the radio as long and as much as I have, corresponded with him on occasion, and come to feel as though you know him so well that he could almost be a friend or even a member of the family, one can't help but feel virtually consumed with disappointment toward Bernie, sadness for him and his family, and anger toward those who seem to be reveling in his suffering and earnestly say the ugliest things about what they'd like to see happen to him.

There are those who believe that he deserves to go federal prison for a very long time (and to suffer the stereotypical indignities thereof) for briefly possessing and sharing three pornographic pictures involving minors with an online dominatrix while cyber-chatting with her. He claims that he was conducting research for a book. However, the police transcripts of the sordid chats cast this in doubt.

In any case, the law says motives don't matter, and supporters of this strict law, in tandem with Bernie's detractors, say that the government must be merciless with child predators and with those who aid and abet them in any manner.

Is Bernie a child predator? He wasn't charged with child molestation, and his children are still living with him. Did his actions support child predator-pornographers to any degree? I think it would be exceedingly difficult to argue that his reinforcement of child pornography was anything more than vanishingly small.

But that's just what I think. Many if not most of those who've discussed this in public forums disagree, and I guess there's no point in my fretting about Bernie's fate or arguing with others about what it should be. What will be will be. However, I hope it turns out better for him and his family than it now looks like it will.

A Cult of Racial Healing

Many dismiss the Obama phenomenon as a mere "cult of personality." It is in some ways a cult, but not one of personality -- it's a cult of racial healing, of racial transcendence. For many whites, voting for Obama is a kind of appeal to one's better self, and the better self of the country. It is, in a way, a promise. It could even be seen as a kind of prayer....Barack Obama is not a savior. But there's every reason to believe that if elected he will be a good president -- and maybe a great one. And every day that Obama is in office, even the bad ones, we'll be able to tell ourselves: We elected a black man president of this country. That thought, with all that it says about where we came from as a nation and where we hope to be going, will be a light that no one can put out.
--Gary Kamiya

A President's Most Important Role

I briefly tuned in to Meet the Press this afternoon. They were discussing Barack Obama. . Many have argued that he hasn't done that much in Congress and that when you examine closely the substance behind his rhetorical glitter, there's little there there. But one of the panelists in the discussion, a presidential historian, argued that what may be most important in a president is the ability to use his or her rhetorical gifts and charisma to inspire diverse peoples to unite and work together for the common good and that Obama may have the precious potential to do exactly that.

I think this is what I find most promising about Obama and why, unless and until I encounter good reason to do otherwise, I support him for president. He and Hillary may not be that far apart in their politics, but I think they may be world's apart in their ability to inspire "we the people" to make sound political vision reality.

The Merits of Melancholia

Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?
--John Keats

Chase away the demons and they take the angels with them.
--Joni Mitchell

A person can only become a fully formed human being, as opposed to a mere mind, through suffering and sorrow.
--Eric G. Wilson

English professor Eric G. Wilson argues that the American pursuit of happiness, fueled by Prozac and "positive psychology," has robbed many lives of the "fertility of pain" or "melancholia" that propelled Keats, Handel, Georgia O'Keefe, and countless others to their greatest works. Joni Mitchell calls her bouts with melancholia the "sand that makes the pearl," and Professor Wilson says:

"Melancholia, far from error or defect, is an almost miraculous invitation to rise above the contented status quo and imagine untapped possibilities. We need sorrow, constant and robust, to make us human, alive, sensitive to the sweet rhythms of growth and decay, death and life."

Wilson explains that he's not urging that we "wantonly cultivate depression" or "romanticize mental illnesses that can end in madness or suicide."

"On the contrary, following Keats and those like him, I'm valorizing a fundamental emotion too frequently avoided in the American scene. I'm offering hope to those millions who feel guilty for being downhearted. I'm saying that it's more than all right to descend into introspective gloom. In fact, it is crucial, a call to what might be the best portion of ourselves, those depths where the most lasting truths lie."

Twelve years ago, I became romantically involved with a woman I should never have gone near. When she inevitably left me in the dust a few months later, I went thorough the "best of times and the worst of times." For over a year, I could hardly eat or sleep, and I'd cry at the proverbial drop of a hat, especially at songs of love and loss and when I saw suffering, human or animal.

But I also experienced some of my greatest joys during that time--mudita over others' good fortune, a sense of sublime connectedness with all living things and with the ups and downs of life, and, finally and overarchingly, an almost constant sense of what I can only characterize as soulful depth that I've seldom even glimpsed before or since.

I don't mean to suggest that I would want to return to those mostly gloomy days and interminable nights, and I certainly don't claim to have accomplished any great things back then. But there was, nevertheless, something deep and magical about that time that I would like to regain something of without plunging forever into a depressive abyss.

In other words, I think Eric Wilson is on to something, and what I'm now trying to figure out is how to reconcile Wilson's "miracle of melancholia" with my essential philosophy that the ultimate goal and purpose of life is to be happy. At this point, I will only and vaguely say that it seems to me that the solution lies in the understanding that happiness is not merely the blind pursuit of hedonistic pleasure or of a life devoid of all unpleasantness, but is an ongoing and much more complex fulfillment of one's divinely human nature.

Revisiting the Bernie Ward Story

I recently posted an entry about local talk radio host Bernie Ward. I complained that the federal government appeared to be trying to railroad him into a lengthy prison term merely for downloading a few images of child pornography that weren't even on his computers when the authorities seized them. I said I was inclined to believe Bernie when he said that he was using the downloaded images for his research for a book about "hypocrisy in America." I believed him because I'd been listening to him for over 25 years on the radio, I liked him, and I had never heard even the faintest hint of a suggestion from or about him that he harbored any sexual interest in children. I admit that I had some dimly conscious doubts about his excuse, but I wanted so much to believe him that I was willing to overlook certain things in the news about his case that seemed suspicious.

Well, now that I've read more details about the case, I have to say that I now have an extremely difficult time buying Bernie's excuse. It definitely doesn't seem to fit the unpleasant facts that have come to light.

But while my opinion of the motives behind his acts has changed, I haven't changed my opinion that someone doesn't deserve to spend years if not decades in prison for merely possessing and distributing, for the briefest of time, a few images of child pornography that he didn't sell or buy or apparently play any role in creating. Yes, child pornography is a very bad thing, and those who make it or otherwise profit from it deserve to be treated severely. But what Bernie apparently did doesn't begin to rise to that level of egregiousness.

After recent revelations about his case, I can't see any way that he could ever return to talk radio. Not just KGO but also anywhere else. His reputation seems forever ruined. His media career seems forever ruined. And I can't imagine that his marriage and family life are ever going to be the same, and they may be ruined too. If the government wants to pile on with extended public service, probation, and, perhaps, even a heavy fine, well, I guess it has to do something because Bernie did break the law, as even he admits, and charges have already been brought. But a long (or even short) prison sentence and permanent status as a registered sex offender seems like an ostensive definition of "cruel and unusual punishment" not only of Bernie but also of his family.

And some of the hateful things I've heard people say about how Bernie deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison being raped, brutalized, and humiliated, or to at least have his life destroyed forever seem more disturbing to me than anything Bernie appears to have done.

I feel very sorry for Bernie Ward, for his family and friends, and for a community that has lost an intelligent, thought-provoking, and influential voice for the poor and middle class. What unfortunate pathology led such a smart and well-read man to bring such ruin to himself and such pain to his loved ones?

Why Men Stop Desiring Their Wives

I was listening to talk radio the other day. They were talking about why men lose sexual interest in their wives. Some say it's because they're too tired from work and other responsibilities. Some say it's because of unresolved anger toward the spouse. Others say other things.

One 49-year-old man called in and said that it could often be the result of men no longer being attracted to their aging and obese spouses. That is, men are biologically programmed to feel attracted to females whose youth and physical beauty imply fertility, because men are biologically programmed to spread and perpetuate their genes.

A female caller immediately after him angrily denounced this man as a "child" who needed to "grow up." She accused him of justifying men wanting young, pretty girls for sex and rejecting their wives. I think she was off-base. I think the man's comments were legitimate and not offered as justification but merely as valid explanation of why many men stop desiring their wives. They don't want to feel that way, but they do because that's how nature made them, and one does not simply flip a switch in one's mind and "get over" this programming.

If that woman caller had been a man, I think she would have understood. How easy it is to condemn those we don't understand. We need to stop condemning so much and start listening and opening our minds and hearts to what we hear.

Jimi Hendrix's Machine Gun

Evil man make me kill you,
Evil man make you kill me,
Evil man make me kill you
Even though we're only families apart.
--Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix was a genius. He revolutionized electric guitar playing. He may not have had the blinding speed and advanced compositional knowledge that many of today's guitar greats have, but you can bet your house that virtually every electric guitarist who came after him owes a huge debt to him.

Some people say that the legendary solo below is the greatest electric guitar solo ever captured, and I'm not sure I'd disagree. It's called Machine Gun and was recorded in a concert appearance at the Fillmore East in New York City with the group Band of Gypsys on New Year's Eve in 1969.

It's electrifying, in more ways than one--a performance for the ages.

Jimi Hendrix plays Machine Gun

A New Challenge on the Job

I can't say that I ever look forward to going to work, but I look forward to it a lot less than usual today. For the past several weeks, I was beginning to get a little more comfortable because I was doing familiar things and was becoming a little faster at doing them. But yesterday I was introduced to a procedure on the computer that I didn't understand. For most, it's easy. They pick it right up. For me, it's a different story. I didn't know what I was doing or why I was doing it. That is, I kept needing to be reminded of what I was supposed to do, I kept messing up on it even after being told, and when I asked for explanations of why I was supposed to do what I was doing, in order to help me learn the logic behind the procedure so that I could learn that procedure better and apply the procedure to the various contingencies I might be faced with, I didn't understand the explanations.

I think I'm going to be back at that task again today, and I'm going to be expected to make significant progress in learning it. I anticipate a rough time of it. No doubt my pessimistic expectations make matters worse. Yet, how can I, based on a lifetime's experience, not expect things to go badly? They almost always do in cases like this.

I will go there today and do my best. I will also try to take notes if time and other conditions allow. But I feel apprehensive that rougher than usual times lie ahead, and I'm not sure what to do about it if they do. With my wife having quit her job, it's vital that at least one of us is bringing in at least a little money. But how long will I be able to keep the job I have now?

I'm trying to take these things less seriously and not worry so much about what others think of me when I have difficulty learning and performing tasks that come easily to them. I think I'm getting a little better at doing this. I tell myself I'm doing the best I can, and if others look down on me for struggling, their perceptions of me or feelings toward me don't change who I am.

One thing I've told myself more recently is that if I can find a way to handle my struggles gracefully, it might serve as a valuable lesson to others that there are people like me in the world who have these kinds of difficulties, but who nevertheless keep working hard and trying hard to do what's expected of us, and we're good people. Perhaps this understanding will increase empathy and tolerance not only for me but also for people with all kinds of disabilities.

Still, I think the time may be fast approaching when I'll need to sit down with my supervisor and explain to him what's going on with me. It's often said that if one does have an underlying disability or difficulty that isn't obvious but that does impact one's job, one shouldn't say any more about it to his bosses and co-workers than he needs to. In other words, if he's having trouble learning aspects of his job, he shouldn't explain the reason why he's having it. He should simply say something like, "I seem to be having difficulty with this. Could you take a little more time training me on it and allow me to take notes and do everything I can to pick it up?"

However, I'm thinking that, in my case, it might be better to tell my supervisor about the underlying difficulty than, each and every time I'm asked to learn something new, his wondering why I'm struggling so much. Maybe that way I won't need to ask him and my co-workers to allow me more time to learn each and every time I'm given a new duty to learn. They'll already know I'm "slow" and make allowances. Or they won't keep assigning me new tasks and will just let me do the things I've been doing and get better at them so that I still shoulder a respectable share of the workload. Or they'll decide, while I'm still on new employee probation, that I'm not a good fit for them and let me go.

In any case, I will stay on the job and do the best I can with it until they either let me go, I find something better, or my body breaks down from the strain.

We Don't Want No Stinkin' Superdelegates

As I was driving to work yesterday, I heard progressive talk radio host Randi Rhodes discussing the possibility that superdelegates may very well decide who the next Democratic nominee (an oxymoronic expression if ever I've heard one) for president will be. And, right now, it looks like they could snatch the nomination away from Obama and hand it to Hillary.

Rhodes is not the only one talking about this. It seems that almost everyone in the media is, and I think they should be. I'm very concerned that backroom manipulation within the Democratic party is going to supersede the wishes of the people the party supposedly represents, and if this happens, I will leave the Democratic party and become an Independent. Why stay in a party that doesn't value and trust the will of its members?

I hope that the superdelegates align with the candidate who receives the most regular delegates through the primary process and that, afterward, the Democratic party ends the use of superdelegates. As it is now, we have Bill Clinton regularly calling one 21-year-old superdelagate I read about, and Chelsea just went to lunch with him. Gee, I wonder if that might have any influence on his vote at the convention!

The Curse of Inflexibility

Yesterday some of us attended a short class on multi-cultural awareness at work. One of the points the instructor made, which had little to do with the subject of the class but was nevertheless extremely important, was that the health system we work for is a great place for those who are very adaptable to the complex, ever-changing nature of the system. Such people can reasonably expect to be in demand and to be able to work there for as long as they desire. However, those who aren't so adaptable, who can't readily learn new skills and apply them don't have a rosy future there.

Well, I suppose this goes for just about any workplace. You've got to be adaptable, flexible, able to understand what's going on and learn the changes that are always occurring and use that understanding to meet the constantly shifting demands placed upon you. But what the instructor said yesterday and the way he said it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.

How can someone whose disability prevents him from being adaptable to complex, ever-changing circumstances make it in the place where I work or in almost any job anywhere that pays enough to live on?

It's Official

My wife saw the GM yesterday. He told her she doesn't smile enough at her present job to fill the open room service position which, somehow, just closed due to the "poor economy." But, he said, if she practices to the point where she can smile all the time and not look like she's concentrating on her job (even when she has to concentrate), maybe she can work room service someday.

She served two week's notice of her resignation immediately afterward.

My wife is Thai. Thais are renowned, and rightfully so, for their smiles, and my wife smiles as much as anybody on and off the job. But it's difficult to impossible to smile constantly when carrying heavy trays or trying to get multiple orders straight. Nobody else does it either.

She was an outstanding employee. She would have been outstanding at room service. And if she had been Caucasian with her record of outstanding service, I don't think her smile or her look of concentration would have been the least bit of an issue. I believe that there is a consistent pattern of discrimination going on at that hotel, and I wonder if anything might be done about it.

Judgment Day

This week, I've had one of the more interesting experiences of my life, which I look forward to describing here as soon as I can find the time to do it justice.

Also, my wife hasn't resigned from her job yet, because she's been waiting for the opportunity to meet with the GM of the hotel where she works to persuade him to give her the chance to try out for the room service position. If he gives her that chance, she will probably stay. If he doesn't, she will resign.

Well, she was supposed to have her meeting this morning, and I'm presuming that she did. So, she has probably already either resigned or resolved to stay on. I'm eager to find out which, but also anxious about it. I fully support her if she decides to quit. She's been doing her present job for almost eighteen months, and it would be too much of a strain on her body and too much stress on her mentally to continue, and there would be no better position likely to ever open to her. On the other hand, if she quits, we'll be without affordable health insurance and possibly without a second income for awhile, and I darn sure don't make enough from my job to support us.

We shall see what happens.

Acoustic Magic

Here is a beautiful version of one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

Carlos Vamos Plays Jimi Hendrix' "Little Wing"

Runaway Train

Today my wife is going to serve two weeks notice that she's resigning from her job. After being jerked around too long and too often by her employers, she's had enough, and I don't blame her. So for now, we'll have to make do with my meager income from my shaky job and with our ever-dwindling savings and pay out-of-pocket for COBRA health insurance coverage that, despite its exorbitant cost, we can't afford to be without.

I feel like my wife and I are locked into a runaway train that we know is bound for disaster, but we can't get off, and our only choice, if we can even exercise choice over such a thing, is whether to relax and calmly enjoy what's left of our ride before the inevitable cataclysm or go to our doom in terror.

Actually, my wife has another choice. She can jump off the train before it crashes. She'd be injured by the fall, but at least she'd survive. But there's no escape for me. My only choice seems to be whether to throw my wife from the train before it crashes or let her stay with me till the bitter end.

This is how I feel today. It's actually how I've felt for a long time. But now I feel it more acutely than ever. Maybe I'll feel different in time. Maybe I'll find reason for hope that I just don't see now.

Yes, I could do as Cousin Dupree suggested and see my doctor about getting a prescription for an anti-depressant. But I think all that would accomplish is to possibly make it easier for me to choose my first option and meet my (and my poor wife's) doom with a little less despair.

Hope/One Word 1973

The first Mahavishnu Orchestra. The greatest band that ever was, playing as well as it ever played.

A Fascinating Meeting With a Neuroscientist

I recently met with a prominent local neuroscientist to discuss with him whether I could be a research subject and perhaps receive help for my learning difficulties. The website of the institute where he works says this about him:

[He] is a pediatric cognitive neuroscientist. His research focuses on the neural basis of cognitive impairments seen in genetic disorders that produce mental retardation, developmental disability and psychopathology. Building on his influential theory of the foundations of numerical competence, [he] investigates how dysfunction in specific neurocognitive processing systems, such as attention and spatial cognition, can generate a range of cognitive and behavioral impairments. His goal is to develop remedial intervention programs that will minimize such disability. [His] current projects center on studies of visuospatial and numerical cognition in children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, also known as DiGeorge and VeloCardioFacial syndrome. He is also engaged in similar studies of children with Fragile X, Williams, and Turner syndromes. Besides cognitive processing analyses and psychometric testing, [he] uses cutting edge neuroimaging methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Voxel Based Morphometrics, and Diffusion Tensor Fiber Tracking in order to study the structure, function and connective patterns in the developing brain.

This sounds pertinent to my situation and impressive, and I found the man it describes to be extremely impressive in person. This is one brilliant and tremendously knowledgeable guy! We talked for over an hour. Actually, he did most of the talking and I listened with utter fascination. I don't claim to have understood most of what he said, but here is the essence of what I think I understood:

He works mostly with children but has been approached recently by several adults close to the same age from different parts of the country. We all report similar symptoms. That is, there seems to be an uncommonly large gap between our relatively high verbal facility and low nonverbal ability. He characterizes these symptoms as probably resulting from several factors.

First, we are like computers connected to much lower resolution digital cameras than most people are. In other words, our visual-spatial representations of the world are so much less detailed than most people's that when we try to focus on and thoroughly understand some part of our representation, we get a blurry image when most people get a much clearer one.

Second, if attention is likened to the narrow beam of a flashlight in a large, dark room, while most people's attention moves fairly smoothly and systematically from one portion of the "room" to another until they're able to piece together a coherent perspective of the entire room from all of the areas the "flashlight" illumined, the attention of people like me tends to flit haphazardly from one portion of the room to another, and we're subsequently unable to reconstruct a coherent image or representation of the entire room. This makes it much more difficult for us to understand with visual-spatial thinking the structures and functioning of various places and systems. In my case, it makes it exceptionally difficult for me to conceptualize the filing system where I work. I can't visualize or mentally represent to myself the flow of files into, through, and out of the file room to various units and departments., and I can't readily conceptualize how to perform various tasks involved in the operation of this system.

Third, not only do we take in less visual information than most people and in a more unsystematic manner, but we also process this information more slowly, making us markedly slower at tasks affected by our disabilities.

I've been told and have long suspected that my difficulties probably stem from perinatal brain damage. However, this neuroscientist believes that they may result from genetic anomalies. At least two of the other adults who've approached him have shown unusual duplications or deletions in the base pairs of certain genes in certain chromosomes, and he's curious to know whether I have this same anomaly.

So, he'd like me to submit a blood sample that will be screened for these and other genetic anomalies that could be related to my learning difficulties. He'd also like to subject me to a functional MRI scan and to much more specialized psychometric testing than I've received so far. Finally, he thinks that the human brain exhibits a high degree of what he calls "neuroplasticity."In other words, he thinks it has a remarkable ability to change itself as a result of experience and to compensate for injuries and malfunctions. He's currently working with other researchers to develop video games to train the brains of people with various nonverbal learning difficulties to increase their visual-spatial "bandwidth" and to improve their attentiveness and processing speeds, and I might be included in this research. In the meantime, he speculated that some kind of occupational therapy might help me to either accommodate better to my current job or to find and keep a more suitable one.

All in all, I was very pleased by our meeting, and I'm grateful that such a busy man, who is currently in the middle of seeking a grant from the NIH so that he can continue a promising line of this important research, would take over an hour of his precious time to meet with me and then propose that we go forward with the steps I just listed. I'm now waiting to proceed with my blood and other tests and to find out all that I can about what ails my brain and what I might be able to do about it.

Decisons, Decisions

My back is stiff and sore. My knees are stiff and sore. My hands are stiff and sore. My wrists are sore. I've woken up several nights recently with cramps in my hamstrings so severe that my wife has had to massage them; I never had these kinds of cramps before. I feel like I've aged years in just two months. Much of my job feels like torture with no prospect of relief. I'm not getting any faster at doing what I started doing two months ago, and, now that I'm being given more to do, I'm staying an hour to an hour-and-a-half later than everyone else to complete my tasks.

I want to find another steady job I can do better and that pays benefits and doesn't destroy my body, but I need to upgrade my typing and computer skills to improve my chances of getting and keeping it, yet, I have no time to develop these skills, if I even can develop them, as long as I spend so much time each day at this job. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I'm let go from underproduction and inability to learn the new tasks that I'll certainly be asked to perform in time, but I'm wondering if I should quit before that happens and start full-time preparing and looking for another job, or if it would be better to hang on and endure the torment until I'm asked to leave. And if I quit first, how should I do it? What should I tell and not tell my boss about the reason for my decision?

Yet, even after I leave from resigning or being fired, what job do I seek? What decent job can I, at my age and with my sparse background and all my learning impediments and slowness, reasonably expect to be hired for and to be able to keep?

It would be easy to surrender to total despair, but I'm trying to keep hope alive and make the right decisions and follow through with them.

Wise Discrimination

The Buddha, the most practical of teachers, defined the wise man or woman in a thoroughly practical way: "One who will gladly give up a smaller pleasure to gain a greater joy." That is discrimination, the precious capacity to see life clearly and choose wisely. When it is understood, every choice becomes an opportunity for training the mind.
--Eknath Easwaran, Conquest of Mind, p. 66

Easwaran has written that he loves great symphonies, novels, and other works of art but that what he loves most is the "perfectly crafted life." That to him, and to me, is the supreme work of art, more beautiful and inspiring even than Michelangelo's David. Indeed, it seems to me, we can look at how we live our lives as a process of sculpting. Every choice we make chips away a piece of the precious stone we've been given. Every bad choice makes it that much harder to craft a great work of living art; every good choice fosters our effort. Sooner or later, we will run out of stone, and the potential we once had to sculpt a moving, breathing David will have crumbled into dust. Why waste time when we don't know how much we have left? Why make bad choices that undermine the most important project of a lifetime?

I have made countless bad choices, and I'll be fifty-five in March. I don't know how much stone I have left, and I have many, many mistakes to overcome to forge my modest masterpiece from what raw material remains.

Baring It All

Almost everyone who's read my blog has never met me, and I think I've always rather liked it that way. Just as the only people an exhibitionist wants to see him naked tend to be his lover and those who'll never know who he is, so I'm a little shy about people who aren't very close to me reading my blog and knowing me outside the blog.

However, I casually mentioned to my wife's friend's husband the other night that I have a blog, and he promptly asked for the URL so he could check it out. With some hesitation, I gave it to him, and I believe that he will get around to reading some of my entries, including some of my more intimate posts about my learning disabilities and struggles at work and home. I feel a little anxious about this.

I see this guy only two or three times a year, but I respect and like him and would like to think of him as a friend. Yet, do I want this particular friend to know as much about me as I reveal in this blog?

Yes and no. Or, rather, part of me does, and part of me doesn't. Part of me doesn't want him to know anything about me that would make him think less of me, to the extent that he thinks of me at all, than he does now. And another part of me wants to stop worrying about what others think of me and to stop hiding my flaws from them and just bare it all and let the proverbial chips fall where they may. If they know all about me and like me, fine. If they know all about me and don't like or respect me, I can live with that. In fact, I can live with it better, in the long run, than I can live with trying to maintain a false front and have people like or respect a persona I know is not really me. I've spent too much of my life trying to cover up, and what has it gotten me? A life of being uneasy and guarded around others. A life of not trying new things in public because I was afraid I'd fail and look stupid and make people think less of me.

So, letting my friend read my blog may be one of the best things I can do. Maybe it can help to set me free to be myself not just in a blog or with my closest friends but with everyone. And if I still find it difficult to do this, I can contemplate the fact--at least I believe it's a fact--that our bodies, minds, and personalities are only the tiniest, most insignificant portions of who and what we really are.

Today's "The Twilight Zone" Marathon

I grew up with the original The Twilight Zone. It was a wonderful series, one of the best to ever grace television. Every week, I would be transported to strange places and exposed to mind-bending ideas, chills, and terrors. I've seen most of its episodes countless times since they first aired between 1959 and 1964, and I'm tempted, so very tempted to tune in to The Twilight Zone marathon showing all day today and much of tomorrow on the Sci-Fi channel. But I'm trying to resist, because I know that if I start watching, I won't be able to tear myself away and do anything else, and I have so much else to do today and tomorrow and so little time to do it all. Watching episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone, which are virtually inscribed into my DNA after all these years, is like hearing a great old song. It doesn't matter how many times you've heard it. It doesn't matter that you know every note of the tune. You still want to hear it again and again and again.

There are so many unforgettable episodes. When I was a child, I was particularly impressed by an episode in which two parents awaken to hear their young daughter calling out to them from somewhere within the house, but she can't be seen anywhere. Finally, it's discovered that she has fallen from her bed through the adjoining wall into another dimension and universe caused by a rare and temporary intersection of universes. There was something about this idea that lit my imagination on fire and had me feeling the wall next to my bed on many a dark night to see if I could plunge my hand right through it into a Twilight Zone universe.

However, it was only a relatively few years ago that I saw the episode that has left the biggest impression on me, moving me to tears the first and subsequent times I saw it. It was called Miniature and featured Robert Duvall as a bright but extremely self-controlled and almost autistically alienated man who falls in love with a living doll in a dollhouse in a museum. Duvall's performance is so incredibly touching, and I guess I felt special empathy for his character who wanted so little part of the world around him but still deeply longed to connect with someone somewhere. The very end of this special one-hour episode made me weep with joy.

The old expression "They don't make 'em like they used to" has never been more true or regrettable than in the case of the original The Twilight Zone and episodes like Miniature.