#17. Is It Margaret That I Mourn For?
When I was young, I had an intense wanderlust. There wasn't anything in particular that I wanted to do--I wasn't obsessing about going to Spain or hiking the Appalachia Trail or working on a crab boat in the Bering Sea--but I had a real need to get out and do something. I remember vividly a conversation I had with my wife where I quoted to her some lyrics from one of our favorite songs, "What A Good Boy" by the Barenaked Ladies:
I wake up scared, I wake up strange
I wake up wondering if anything in my life is ever gonna change
I wake up scared, I wake up strange
And everything around me stays the same
And I remember telling Erin that we just needed to DO something. And we did do things. We traveled. We hiked. We backpacked. We went to college. We had kids.
I've been thinking about that conversation a lot this week because I was listening to a different song, "Small Town Moon", by Regina Spektor:
Today we're younger than we're ever gonna be
Today we're younger than we're ever gonna be
So yes, carpe diem and gather ye rosebuds while ye may, and all of that stuff, but here's the deal: every night my wife and I lay in bed next to each other and look at our phones. Not all night every night, but every night. And we find memes and show each other Instagram stories, and we have... a really terrific time.
I always worry that I should be apologizing to Erin for being so boring, but then she reminds me that we're both thoroughly enjoying ourselves.
There are definitely still things in this world that I want to do, and places I want to go, and things I want to accomplish, but I'm also... pretty satisfied? I don't know. Maybe I should be carpeing more diem, but I don't really feel like I'm missing out--because I'm spending every night right next to my favorite person in the whole world.
Nina Simone sang:
Dragonfly out in the sun you know what I mean, don't you know?
Butterflies all havin' fun, you know what I mean
Sleep in peace when day is done, that's what I mean
And this old world, is a new world
And a bold world for me, yeah-yeah
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life for me
And I'm feeling good
I think that, while I may not be gathering as many rosebuds as I might, I'm also a lot more content. This is not AT ALL to say that I live without the constant haunting of chronic anxiety, but it does mean that I'm getting closer to appreciating the gentleness of being content with who I am and what I do. I think this newsletter, which intentionally does not sell a single thing to anyone ever, is part of that: I'm not hustling. I'm just doing stuff that I enjoy.
Because, going back to the Barenaked Ladies: I'm less afraid of change, and I'm less afraid of staying the same. I'm happy with what is.
Bits and Bobs from the News
#1. You know how some sea creatures are bioluminescent, and when you get deep in the sea you start to see all sorts of weird colors? Well, would it to surprise you to learn that you--yes YOU--are also bioluminescent, but you can't see it because the light is inside your bodies? Well let me introduce you to the new study that shows the brain gives off biophotons. According to the researcher: "The very first finding is that photons are coming out of the head—full stop. It’s independent, it’s not spurious, it’s not random." And the best part? They don't know why! I mean, they know the chemical reason, but they don't know the evolutionary reason. What benefit would we get from a glowing brain? Who knows! Science!
#2. Want to walk on the oldest bit of earth it's possible to walk on? Want to touch the oldest thing you can possibly touch? Well go to Canada, up by the Hudson Bay, to a band of rock called the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt. It, it has been confirmed, is 4.16 billion years old. (There had been some controversy about this, and geologists have been arguing for a while, but this is a pretty unanimous agreement. "If you don’t agree with this, then you need a very speculative, intricate model to get to the same answer," the researcher says. (You're not allowed to go up there and walk around and chip off a little piece of this rock, though, as it's on Inuit land and they're very protective of it.)
#3. So, scientists say (because scientists are always saying things) that humans first migrated to Japan from Taiwan 30,000 years ago. But they weren't sure how they did it--until now. Some experimental researchers built a boat on Taiwan, out of a big Taiwanese tree, using the kind of tools they had 30,000 years ago, and paddled this boat the 140 miles from Taiwan to Ryukyu Islands of Japan, using no GPS or modern navigation equipment. They said it was very hard, and that they were very sleepy and the boat leaked, but they did it! People do neat things!
#4. There's been a controversy about a site in Turkey. The 9,000-year-old proto-city of Çatalhöyük has long been thought to have been a female-centric society because they have all sorts of these neat statues. But then some archaeologists in the 1990s said "no way, dude" and that the site was egalitarian and the statues were an anomaly. But new research just published, which uses DNA evidence they didn't have in the 90s, shows that the burials were matrilineal. They also showed how baby girls were buried with a different kind of artifacts that the boys didn't get. Anyway, they think it is indeed a 9000 year old female-centric society.
Diversions and Distractions
I tend not to like the "Ranking All The Things" kind of videos, but I really like Binging with Babish, and the thing he is ranking is all of the food at Disneyland's Galaxy's Edge. I was intrigued, because I got to go to Galaxy's Edge last year and I tried some of the food, including the Blue Milk and the Ronto Wrap. (He goes to Disneyworld, not Disneyland, and it seems like there might be more restaurants there? I don't know.) Anyway, it's great.
Rick Beato is a well-credentialled musician and producer who I appreciate a lot, and in this video (which went a little viral) he breaks down what really goes into song writing for most pop artists, and how rare the singer-songwriters are. I don't pay much attention to current pop music, but this was fascinating nonetheless.
Okay, forgive me for this one, but I am VERY MUCH a train nerd. I love model railroads, and the fact that I haven't suggested more train videos to you till now shows a lot of restraint on my part. Anyway, this is a fun one because it's a model train guy who use his imagination to make up stories about his railroad layout! (Because we all do that.)
That’s all I’ve got this week. To learn more about me, check out my website.
It’s the blight man was born for
It is Margaret that you mourn for
