THANK YOU!!!

As of this weekend, I have passed the magical number of 10,000 individual visits to my modest little Web page.  How humbling.

Oddly, I've been tracking, and I've gotten a higher rate of visitors since I announced I would be cutting back my writing than I was getting before the end of the year.  And I have a theory about this (and not just that you somehow think each individual post is twice as good now, LOL).

I set a goal in November to reach the 10,000 mark by the end of 2008.  It was selfish, it was silly, it was self-defeating.  You can't knock people out in cyberspace, and drag them into your Web page by force.  You have to let go of such goals and, to the extent you want to build a COMMUNITY in cyberspace, simply show people you have something to say and hope they will come.

And lo and behold, once I let go, my traffic increased.  Hmmm.  (My girlfriend, no doubt, will have a field day about that factoid ...)

One of my themes recently on the Doxieman Blog -- and really, one of the themes of my life, and certainly the one that most fascinates me in terms of literature and pop culture (e.g., "The Secret") -- is the idea that we have the power within our minds to make thoughts not only into actions, but into actual, concrete, material things.  And that this is not a good thing.

This is a classic theme of Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine who is my all-time favorite author, in his "ficciones" (short stories).  One of his classics, called "The Circular Ruins," is about a wizard who makes a deal with the Fire God to literally dream a son into reality.  (Gee, I wonder why I would meditate on this given my troubled relationship with my father and downright tortured one with my stepfather?)

If you've never read Borges, stop reading right here and go get "Ficciones" in your local Barnes and Noble or Borders or neighborhood bookstore.  But for those who have, I include a sample to give one an idea of his style.

Keep in mind that Borges neither cheerleads a la Rhonda Byrne, nor horrifies us like the legendary Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life"; no, he forces us to descend into existential terror with the true implications of such doctrine:

The wizard suddenly remembered the words of the god. He remembered that of all the creatures that people the earth, Fire was the only one who knew his son to be a phantom. This memory, which at first calmed him, ended by tormenting him. He feared lest his son should meditate on this abnormal privilege and by some means find out he was a mere simulacrum. Not to be a man, to be a projection of another man's dreams--what an incomparable humiliation, what madness! Any father is interested in the sons he has procreated (or permitted) out of the mere confusion of happiness; it was natural that the wizard should fear for the future of that son whom he had thought out entrail by entrail, feature by feature, in a thousand and one secret nights.

His misgivings ended abruptly .... For what had happened many centuries before was repeating itself. The ruins of the sanctuary of the god of Fire was destroyed by fire. In a dawn without birds, the wizard saw the concentric fire licking the walls. For a moment, he thought of taking refuge in the water, but then he understood that death was coming to crown his old age and absolve him from his labors. He walked toward the sheets of flame. They did not bite his flesh, they caressed him and flooded him without heat or combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him.

So why have I included this here?  Because I realize more and more each day that my creativity, my words, my dreaming (of course) and even my love for others ... all is but a conduit.  Not necessarily of G-d as the Western World (even Islam) imagines Him, but certainly of something larger than myself.

And the something larger doesn't necessarily have to be divine.  It could be, say, a community of hundreds or even thousands which reads, which gives me feedback -- and where the feedback goes both ways.

Ana said to me recently, "Do you realize that if you have saved even one person's life (i.e., through my depression activism), all your pain has been worth it?"

Such a thought would have made me furious not very long ago -- and certainly not very long before I met Ana.  It still troubles me enormously. 

What Being, what Essence decides what one person's pain and another's pleasure is worth?  Or are the concepts of illness, pain, pleasure, saving vs. costing a life, worth -- even Divinity itself -- illusions?

And, to complete the circle, must we ground ourselves in illusions -- even if we suspect they indeed are illusions -- in order to avoid insanity?

My existential terror aside, in the end I am not humiliated, but enormously humble.  (Which my take on the original Spanish in that amazing last sentence of Borges is anyway -- humility, not humiliation.)  Humble in this community and certainly humble in my place in the universe (Universe?).

I am humbled not merely "beyond blue," but beyond belief, by all of you who rally around me every single day.  And this is my time to thank you (and You, too) for the literal inspiration that, I hope, I have channeled back into something positive for you and the world through my writing and through my postings.

(And I have tears in my eyes as I finish writing this ...)