Bionic Teutonic

I’ve started reading a really interesting book called Pink Brain, Blue Brain about childhood development and gender-based differences. It’s kind of a fascinating look at the whole nature vs. nurture thing. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot with a son on the way and Ariel’s horror at the idea of anything truck or sports themed in our child’s life. The book really points out how little we know about what makes a boy a boy, and a girl a girl. The author points to studies done where for attributes that we think of as distinctly male or female, the differences in average scores between the sexes are really, really small when compared to the range of differences within each sex. Culture obviously has a huge impact on how these traits express themselves as well, including the ways in which we as adults (unconsciously most of the time) allow certain behaviors to flourish in one gender but not the other. The author is a neuroscience professor in Chicago who specializes in something called neuroplasticity, basically the idea that those traits which are used and encouraged flourish while those that don’t, well, don’t. One thing she talks about in the book is that how, even though by all measures the gaps in gender-based achievements have been getting smaller and smaller, at the same time people’s perception of the differences between the genders has been getting bigger and bigger. So while in the 70’s, men and women were more objectively different in terms of developed abilities (mostly due to cultural factors) than they are today, they saw themselves as much less different than a similar sampling of men and women do today. This has been really interested stuff for me. I’ve always really balked at any sort of forced segregation by gender or assigning certain behaviors as distinctly male or female. It just seems so simplistic, and while our brains love putting things in to neat little categories, it seems like there has to be better ways of celebrating certain attributes or ways that we experience the world without putting people into boxes. I’m not done with the book, and I’m hoping that there are a lot of lessons in it about how to help develop a really well rounded kid fingers crossed. Also interesting is that (according to the author) the differences in gender can be more pronounced in toddlers than at any other point in life (which is sort of scary to me – I immediately imagine having a crazy out of control boy running around destroying everything) and that certain differences seem to express themselves early in life and then fade, while others don’t seem to express themselves until later in life. I’m sure people have all sorts of thoughts about this, it certainly is interesting stuff to think about.

Ariel and I saw a great movie yesterday. Slumdog Millionaire. I won’t spoil anything, but it revolves around a street kid in Mumbai and sort of tracks his life from early childhood to early adulthood. Mostly what was fascinating was just the peek into the life of the slums. Slums the world over are crazy and fascinating places. On the one hand, depressing as hell. On the other, sort of a testament to the resiliance and ingenuity of human life. People will figure out ways to survive even in some of the most downtrodden places. The slums of Mumbai are in danger though.

Ariel and I just got back from my step-mother’s memorial service. It was a very strange thing to have to attend. It’s very strange to think of somebody who has been part of your life for that long in the past tense. My brain has not quite made the shift yet, so it felt a bit surreal to have her death be made official in that way. I’ve been thinking a lot about her life, my life, what people do with their lives, etc. As a little exercise, I’ve come up with a list of 50 things that I have always wanted to do (and have not yet accomplished). I’m sure there is more to add if I thought about it more, but I figure 50 is a good number to put down on paper (virtual as it is). If anybody is interested in doing any of these with me, let me know and we will see about making it happen!

1. Release an album
2. Become a yoga teacher
3. Work in a soup kitchen
4. Go to cooking school
5. Ride in a hot air balloon (jump out of one?)
6. Study Flamenco in Spain
7. Ride a camel
8. Swim with dolphins
9. Have a child and raise it well
10. Join a circus
11. Speak 6 languages
12. Write a book
13. Go to a Man United match
14. One handed hand stand
15. Paint
16. Have a photography show
17. Name a star after somebody I love
18. Live in Europe again
19. Take my kid on a bike trip around the Bodensee
20. Be able to do the front splits
21. Climb a big wall in Yosemite
22. Have an orchard/ vinyerd and sell the produce
23. Ride a double decker bus in London
24. Take part in an archeology dig
25. Do aid work in Africa
26. Hike the Grand Canyon
27. Learn what all the cloud formations are named
28. Run a marathon
29. Research my ancestry
30. Busk my way around Europe
31. Get to know a homeless person
32. Dance around a maypole
33. Hop a train
34. Spend a night in jail
35. Visit Jerusalem
36. Go caving (spelunking)
37. Study tabla in India
38. Learn to knit
39. Bike across the U.S.
40. Paraglide
41. Spend a day riding around with a cop
42. Open a swiss bank account
43. Party at Stonehenge
44. Scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef (before it disappears)
45. Learn to walk on stilts
46. Get my CPR certification
47. Learn to ride a unicycle
48. Watch the space shuttle take off
49. See the northern lights in Alaska
50. Die gracefully

I’ve been thinking a lot about closing doors lately. I seem to have a lot of different things in my life that sort of half occupy my attention. I think that out of fear of letting anything go, I sacrifice having a deeper experience with any of my interests. Sometimes when you put some real parameters or limiting factors around what you are doing, it can free you up, though it seems counterintuitive. I’ve known this to be the case with music for a long time. In school we used to get assignments where certain limitations were placed on our songs in order to force us to better utilize what we did have to work with. I haven’t really ever placed those kinds of limitations on my life before though. While I get very obsessive about things, I don’t usually intentionally close other doors. I think sometimes I get afraid that if I let something go, I will never pick it back up again and it will just slowly fade away from my life. Which is kind of odd, because if it doesn’t tug at me enough to force it’s way back in, it probably doesn’t need to be there anyway (at least that’s how I’ve been feeling lately). I’ve always sort of romanticized this idea of the renaissance man. But I think for me, where I am in my life at the moment, that’s sort of a luxury. If you have a ton of free time, and/or have managed to create a work life where you get to dip into many different interests, this is a great thing to strive for, but if you are like me and spend most of your day completely removed from those interests, trying to cram them all in to the time you do have (also accounting for the need to just veg and recover from work sometimes), you end up making way less progress on things and having less satisfying experiences than you were originally hoping for. Sort of a jack of all trades, master of none scenario. I think I’m going to try and start closing some doors and seeing what happens. This sort of frightens me actually, but I think that fear is part of why I need to do it. To start practicing some more non-attachment.

Jesus I’m sore today. I just finished the last of 4 free personal training sessions at my gym, and my trainer just wore me to the bone. I’ve never had personal training before this, and I have to say, I got a lot out of it. I went in with some specific stuff I wanted to work on, mainly increasing my vertical jump and speed (acrobatics requires some explosive power, yo) and the trainer was actually stoked. He told me ‘Thank god. You don’t understand. 95% of the people who come in here just want to lose weight”. It was great, because I used it as educational sessions and was very clear that I wanted to learn about things I could do on my own. I don’t need motivation, I just need knowledge. Since yesterday was my last session, I think he must have wanted to give me something to remember him by, because I swear, it was like twice as hard as the other sessions. Walking is taking some conscious effort today.

Ariel just turned me on to the sub-culture that is steampunk (due to this wedding on her site) and I’ve been totally fascinated for the last couple days. I recognize the aesthetic but have never had a name for it. I think the thing I like about it is that is has cross-over with so many other sensibilities, yet manages to be distinctly it’s own thing at the same time. As my friend Ben put it, it’s sort of like a longing for a golden age that never was. People have created some really cool stuff. One of my favorites is this laptop. I want (though could not afford) one. I also like that it has some cross-over with circus fashion (of the el-circo and mystic family circus vein). It seems to be showing up in a lot of places lately. We just got back from seeing The Golden Compass, which is completely saturated with the steampunk aesthetic. I like.

Christmas is coming up and I’m just now starting to think about presents. I actually hate this part of the holidays. Especially coming on the heals of Thanksgiving, which is such a wonderful, non-consumer oriented holiday, Christmas can sometime feel like a gigantic ruse by the capitalists (whoever they are) to make it a requirement that we all buy lots and lots of crap. Not that I’m very good about living a simple, non-consumer oriented life normally, but somehow the social imperative to buy always makes me uncomfortable. Plus, I have to wonder how much of the crap that people get for Christmas goes to waste because they never wanted or needed it in the first place. I try to ask so that I’m getting people exactly what they need, but not everybody knows what they want when you put them on the spot like that. Oh well. If you ignore the consumption, it’s not a bad holiday. Snow (at least in Montana, where I spend Christmas), family, good food.

Twice now this week, in totally separate meetings, with totally different people, the subject of documenting process has come up with somebody mentioning that it’s the ‘what if you get hit by a bus and we have to carry on without you’ scenario, and somebody else responding that it’s really the ‘what if I win the lottery’ scenario and everybody else nodding in agreement. First of all – how weird is that, that the exact same conversation would come up twice in one week almost verbatim and second, it got me thinking about what kind of job is indicated by each scenario. The ‘what if I win the lottery’ scenario seems to indicate that really, we are only here for the money and given the chance, none of us would be doing this, whereas the ‘what if I get hit by a bus’ scenario indicates that we’d have to be dead for us not to do this work. So in a perverse way, the fact that you would think of the worst thing that could happen indicates a kick-ass job that you love and is a calling, while thinking of the best possible thing that could happen indicates that you are sort of miserable. Someday, I hope that I have a worst case scenario job.

Check it out: Circus performers have their own patron saint! Saint Julian the Hospitator. Nice. The story is a little grim (although redeeming) and we have to share him with ferrymen and innkeepers, but I’ll take it. Next time I’m in Paris, I’ll have to visit the church.