Bionic Teutonic

I’ve been having one of those days where I’ve been feeling vaguely nostalgic for absolutely nothing in particular. It’s just sort of a floating nostalgia. Which is strange, right? One would think that nostalgia would be FOR a specific place or time. It reminds me of synaesthesia, where the senses get all confused and you smell colors, or taste music. The feeling is there, but it doesn’t have a logic to it. It’s funny how sometimes I’m totally aware of how certain emotions get triggered, while other times there is just no rhyme or reason to it. I’m wondering if my nostagia is for something I’m just not aware of, something subconscious, or if it’s a chemical mindset that my brain is simply interpreting as nostalgia. And I’ve sort of been looking around, thinking that at some point I will find just the thing that will make it make sense. The correct item, memory, smell, or taste that is at the root of this floating nostalgia. More likely it will simply fade away without anything more specific ever making itself known, but it’s fun to try and connect the pieces.

I’ve become a little obsessed with Rick Steves lately. For those of you who don’t know him, he is a locally based travel writer and hosts a TV show that you can find online on Hulu.com. When I got the flu a couple of weeks back, I started watching his show just because it seemed like a good way to sit around and do nothing but not be totally brain dead at the same time. I love to travel but haven’t actually done a ton of it in the last couple of years (I got laid off two weeks before our last planned trip to Buenos Aires and we never went), and with the baby on the way I don’t imagine I’ll be doing a ton of international traveling next year either.

When I was growing up, both my dad and my mom took me to Europe a lot and I spent some time going to school in Germany. Those times have had an disproportionately large impact on shaping who I am (or at least who I think I am). I get the itch to travel and can feel a little depressed when it’s been too long. Watching his TV show has been like scratching the itch. It’s mostly making me feel like I get to experience some international flavor without having to leave Seattle. The other tiny part makes me want to travel even more, but for the most part, I feel better.

Last weekend, I went up to Edmonds, where he is based, to hear a talk he was giving. It was basically just a slide show of his summer trip to Europe, but he was really funny and had a lot of good insight and thoughts. And then this weekend, my friend Jeff and I are going to hear his Travel as a Political Act talk. I’m pretty much a Rick Steves nerd at this point, but I’m OK with that. Bonus – the guy is really active in Drug Policy reform. He gave a plug at the end of his talk for his drug policy work, and when you look at his schedule, it is liberally sprinkled with NORML conventions. Funny.

I just finished a book I really enjoyed and thought I would share. Not sure everbody would like it as much as I did, but it combines two of my favorite things: travel and history. It’s written by a Polish journalist with the awesome name of Ryszard Kapuscinski. The book is called Travels with Herodotus. When he was just starting out, he was given a copy of Herodotus’ The Histories, which I now feel compelled to read. Half of the book is his musings on his own travels and attempts to get to the essence of the places he is assigned to and the events which he is reporting on, and half is recounting and mulling over The Histories. Herodotus was born in Halicarnasus, (in modern day Turkey) 2,500 years ago, and set out to capture the combined knowledge of the world. So in a sense he was one of the first known reporters. He gathers stories from the people he meets and tries to piece together knowledge about various events and places. Ryszard carries the book with him wherever he goes and Herodotus is his constant companion. The language used in the book is beautiful and it is full of unanswered questions, posed and then left for the reader to ponder, which I love in a book.

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

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.

On my way from work yesterday, a woman working at a LaRouche booth asked as I walked by “Do you have an extra pair of testicles?”, followed, after my completely baffled stare with “because the democrats seem to have lost theirs.”