Blog Post Recipients

For now, I am going to stop sending my posts via email. I can't shake the fact that doing so, makes me feel like I am proselytizing or selling something. It's not that I am ashamed of what I write, or that I do not want anyone to read it. I have never bought the idea of writing without ever hoping that someone, at least one other person, would read what I write. I'm not sure I trust anyone who makes that claim. However, it is clearer and clearer to me, that I do not like trying to convince anyone, that my writing should be taken seriously. I hope people enjoy my stuff. I am thrilled when they do. But, it should be by their own choice. I love all of you, you brave few, you caring souls.

Please stop by http://just-dale.blogspot.com/ whenever you want to find out what is rambling around inside my skull. I hope you come often. It feels like rusty steel wool up there sometimes, and it can get a little lonely.

I got a letter from a friend who has doubts about whether to continue writing and sharing her thoughts. The following is my response.

Letter To A Fellow Writer

Hey,

Sorry to hear you are in that dark place. You are not alone, but as has often been said, we ARE all unique, and we are ALL the same. I think it's a yes/and, not an either/or proposition.

When I first started writing again, after years of being afraid to do so, I found that it gave me my only relief, from the voices in my head. It was, and remains, an act of survival, my way of spitting in death's eye. No one benefits if I return to a world of insanity the realm of secret shame. At least a few people may benefit, if I manage to hang around. If I want to be alive, writing is not an option, anymore than breathing is an option.

I think Alice Walker, (The Color Purple), said it best:
"Some people say, they live to write. I write to live."

Who knows what others think of my writing? Some folks hate it, a few like it, and, sadly (boo-hoo), most people don't know about my writing, and would not even care if they did. So be it. I will write anyhow. I will write to live, and for those who love me.

When I write with other people in mind, I don't like what I write. When I write to clear the dirty little shelves, in the back of my mind, it feels like I am taking dictation--floating free of space and time. I am awake. I am alive. The experience is the perfect counterbalance, to the stifling fear that can come, when I lose focus, when I mistake others' opinions as reality.

In one sense, I think writing is the most selfish, prideful thing I do. Yet, I know that honest writing touches people deeply. Several people have told me, they loved my book. One, would have been enough.

I find that it helps, if I detach from how I think people will react to what I write. I wrote the following, in the introduction to my book, to help clarify my dilemma to myself others:

"This book is true, yet it is fiction. It is an honest account of my perception of events. However, my perception is colored by my bipolar illness. I have had many instances of auditory and visual hallucinations. At times, these are so strong that they are just as tangible as the so-called real world.

This conflict between my hallucinatory (or so I am told) world and the real world is at the heart of my dilemma or illness. It raises a fundamental question. Should I share my life as I perceive it, or should I only share the version that fits others’ perceptions? If I share what I perceive, my book is fiction in the “real” world. If I share only what others perceive, then my sharing is a fiction to me. I have chosen to be true to my perceptions. Therefore, my book is fictional for all readers other than me and I have classified it as fiction rather than autobiography."

Please DO continue writing. I, and your other friends, want to hear your story. Screw the voices in your head, tell them to shut the fuck up, and let the rest of us hear what you have to say. Who gave the voices license to deny us? Write to us, your friends. Imagine our faces before you as you stare at the page, or screen. We are more real, much more connected to reality, than the negative chatter in your head.

So, to paraphrase the old 60's phrase: “Power to the people (you), power to the people (you), right (write) on.”

AMAZING Formatting Djinn

For some strange reason the formatting has gone haywire on my site. In my last post, "Letter To An Old Friend" the system highlighted several paragraphs with particularly large type. I do not know how or why that happened. Perhaps more will be revealed...

Letter To An Old Friend

Today, I was on an online chat site, ranting about politics, with an old friend from high school. The argument got a bit heated. My friend sent me a message, saying that he sometimes wondered, if it was a good thing, that we had reconnected, after so many years. He said, he felt like it we had changed too much and that maybe we never really were close friends and that he felt like our old dreams of peace and love from the '70's were lies. I apologized. He apologized. The exchange left me unsettled: I was struck by how easy it is to hurt others via little black dots on a screen. I wrote one last time...

I did not find any of your comments offensive - they may have raised my blood pressure a notch or two - but that simply because you could not see the wondrous light of my wisdom and wit. But I will remove them since you asked.

I fully understand your feelings about the lack of love and understanding today. I have times when I feel as if there simply is no kindness left in anyone, that I truly live in a "dog eat dog" world. Those are dark times for me.

Then, I see someone do an act of kindness, sometimes a very small one. Like my friend who sings even though he has cerebral palsy. That is enough for me to try to act with a bit of kindness of my own. Enough to stop "eating dog", at least for a little while. LOL

I have been near death several times; drugs, alcohol, cancer and mental illness have given me an "interesting", if not always merry, ride through life. I have seen your site, and it's clear you like the west and have found yourself there. I like the name you gave your gun, "The Thumper". You are quite the poet. You look like you stepped out of the old west in a lot of your photos. I am happy to see you enjoying your life.

I am growing my hair long again, just because I can, and because I like seeing people's reactions. I an fascinated by how a few inches of hair can make people think you have changed into something different. Sometimes people point and laugh at the “old long hair”. Sometimes they curse under their breath as they walk by. Tomorrow, I may shave it all off for the same reason - just to see the shock on people's faces, to hear them mutter "damn skinhead" when they walk by. I like having the confidence to try out new things today, without fear, just for the heck of it.

I don't know what I would do if things "went south". I don't know if I would end up as a prisoner, or dead. I hope I don't have to find out any time soon. Until then, I will do what I can, to spread a bit of that peace and love, we used to hope for, all those years ago. I have found many others eager to share my hope. Some days, we have a veritable peace and love fest, back here in good old, Iowa City.

This may sound terribly naive. Perhaps it is, but, like you, I feel stronger than I ever have. I feel strong enough today, that I will gladly die rather than return to a diet of dog. I chose not to live in that world, when I chose to continue living. I will not return.

I work very hard to have kindness be my goal each morning. Today, at least some of the time, I have enough strength to avoid picking up other people's hatred. I am seldom successful at sustaining my quest, for more than a few hours at a time - as you can easily tell from my cantankerousness on FB. However, I do make time to listen to a friend's troubles, give someone a ride, buy someone a cup of coffee, or something like that - at least once every (well, almost every) day. It is enough. My tiny acts are my personal evidence that love and kindness have not "perished from the earth."

Gaggggggg! What a load of Hallmark BS! LOL

Yet, strange as it sounds, focusing on kindness is the only way I survive each day. I tried living a life based on fear and judgment, (the dog eat dog world) rather than love and kindness - it nearly killed me. I may someday die because of my "naivete" , who can say? People have tricked me, stolen from me, lied to me, injured me, blah de blah de blah, blah, blah. I guess that is what people do sometimes, but not all the time.

I will stand in front of any bullet aimed at my grandchildren, I know that much; but I don't know if I could take another life, and live with that. I have a lot of friends who were in Vietnam, none of them can get the faces of those they killed out of their minds. They sleep with them every night. I do not know how they do that.

I may have fewer days if I try to live with a goal of love and kindness, but I am pretty sure that I would have even fewer days, if I lived in the dark world of fear and judgment.

I am not a saint, far from it. Who wants to be a f&*king saint anyway? Still, I know which direction I need to point my life, if I am to have any hope of happiness. Kindness is my north pole. Not the magical kindness I read about in fairy tales, not the type that I once idealized as an amateur philosopher, but the gritty "in your face" kindness that is rooted in the DNA of me, that lets me know I can have the strength to try and be kind even in the worst of times.

You know by now, that I am not religious, that I do not believe in supernatural beings or powers, but sometimes I wonder if the human who wrote the lines "love your enemies" and "judge not, lest ye be judged" was simply describing a natural law, not admonishing people to be good in order to get into “heaven”. If, I meet hatred with hatred, do I not “die” inside? If, I judge others, do I not take my “judging skills” home with me? Do I not use those skills in the dark and end up judging myself? When I live a life of hatred and judgment am I even truly alive? I dunno. To me, it seems such laws are a part of my DNA, not something I do to be a "good person" but something I must do if I want to “feel alive” (e.g., feel the sun, smell a flower, give and get a hug, etc.) and have any pleasure in life.

I too, have grown cynical, as I have aged, but the smiles of my loved ones, the laughter of my children and grand children, the hugs of my friends: all of these things, remind me that love exists, just as strongly, and probably more deeply, than ever, in these trying times.

When I see you, with your family and friends, you still seem like the man I knew so long ago. The smile is still there, the deep compassion in your eyes is still there. Know that I am smiling back, when I look at those pictures. At least one person, still sees the love within you.

Love life, and live it large...

(Remember, if you're vertical, and taking nourishment, you're okay.)

Dale