The Lost Blog of Don Juan

An Anniversary & the Possibility of True Passionate Love

One week from today  my wife, Rachel, and I, had our 15^th wedding anniversary. According to the U.S. Census Bureau only 52% of couples make it to their 15^th year of marriage (just over half!). I feel like we are survivors in the Disillusionment Wars. As I have been going around the country promoting The Lost Diary, I have encountered a real skepticism about marriage and the possibility of happiness. One person asked me at a talk, have we forgotten how to love? As a society, we certainly have lost faith in the possibility of love and that our marriages will be much more than convenient arrangements to house our families and manage our finances. And yet I also heard an enormous hunger and yearning for lifelong love and for a passion that is more than just ephemeral.

Six hairs per page & the secret of psychology

Running off to an amusement park with my family this morning, I was told that my mug was on street corners throughout Santa Cruz—not wanted posters fortunately—but on the cover of our local weekly, The Good Times [link].  I knew this was in the works, even jumped a fence with the photographer into the old Santa Cruz mission to get the photo, but I was not quite prepared for the experience of seeing myself staring back at me.  "It’s the Doug Times,” my seven-year-old daughter, who already has a wry sense of humor, announced seeing her father staring back at her, brandishing a sword.

The article announced, “We’ve all heard of the Spanish lover—the man no woman could resist.  But how about Doug Abrams? Heard of him? Find him irresistible?  Maybe you will after reading his sizzling new novel about the great Don Juan.”  Oh, God!  What is this, a personal ad?  I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this "sell yourself" stuff—let alone the look at the camera stuff.