I've been taking a long break from asking all the questions in the world. I still have many questions, but I prefer to hide them in hubski: my secret corner of the internet, not blog them to the world.
I'd like to sit down with Richard Feynman and talk about rhythm. He was a brilliant Nobel-prize winning physicist and scientist, but he was also an avid bongo player. Because of the way he viewed the patterns of the universe, I would love to sit down and play some percussion instruments with him for a while, and talk about patterns, rhythm, polyrhythms, tone, and music. I expect he would have funny, insightful, and interesting things to say on the topic, and hearing his mind work on an explanation would be almost as fascinating as the scientific findings he made! I would also like to have a long and rambling discussion over wine with Angela Merkel. Germany is the engine that makes the EU work, especially now that Britain is going down the tubes. She is arguably the world's most powerful woman. Her country has a very dark - and still very recent - history, that they are measured against every single day. She's got a doctorate in Chemistry. Her country is constantly under serious threats from all kinds of terrorists. She was born in West Germany, then she and her family moved to East Germany, then she was elected to public office the year after the Berlin Wall came down. She speaks Russian fluently. She's been running Germany for more than a decade, and is on track to eliminate fossil fuels, while also driving heavy adoption of alternative power, all in a country that heavily based on manufacturing. I simply cannot think of someone more fascinating that I want to get slightly drunk and rambling with. What an incredible woman.
Similarly to War, my dad's brother. The ONLY thing I know about him is the one sentence my dad told me after my brother died: "I had another brother. Mark. He was an engineer, so he killed himself by piping exhaust into his car. He was 22. I don't talk about him". I don't know if it was just that he was frazzled at the time, but he definitely said "so". We have a family friend named Mark. I had always assumed that's who I got my middle name from. I want to ask my dead uncle what he was like. I want to ask him what my dad, his brother, was like when he was my age. I want to know what he would feel like knowing I share his name, his age. What's it like being an engineer? Every man in my dad's family for 3 generations was a builder or an engineer, except my dad (who I guess disappointed everyone by becoming a lawyer?), and I feel like if a few things had changed, I might be one too. I want to understand everything, I want to know how it all fits together and how to take it apart and make it better. I want to build. What's it like dying from exhaust? Would he have done it again?
My dad's brother. My uncle struggled severely with drug addiction, but came out of it. Everyone thought it would have killed him, but it didn't. He would go on to die in a car accident a decade or so later, but completely clean. I always saw a kind man because the addiction came and went before I was born. If I could see him again I would ask him what changed? Was it a moment or a collection of moments? I would just want to understand his experience with addiction, and ultimately his recovery. I was too young to comprehend these ideas, and by the time I came to these thoughts he was gone. He inspires me in a small way to stay strong, and he showed me that there is love in everyone even when they are at their worst. I only hope he found peace in the next life.
My grandmother on my dad's side, when she was around my age. Everyone tells me I'm a lot like her. We were best friends when I was a kid but she had a brain hemorrhage and spent the following 10 years in hospice, in an almost vegetable state. She seems like such a badass person, being a war surgeon in WWII. And I remember she made the best pancakes.
I'd love to ask William Casey if the CIA flipped a mathematical operator in the launch code for the Polyus, causing it to break up in the atmosphere rather than launching a nuclear Soviet Death Star with guns and bombs in the hottest part of the Cold War since 1987. I'd love to ask him if we blew up the Soviet pipeline or not. I'd love to ask Allan Dulles who came up with the idea to hide the U2 and A12 and gawd knows what else in "little green men." I'd want to know a lot about that. I'd love to ask George Tenet just how closely we were coordinating with Osama bin Laden. I'm not a 9/11 truther; I just know that with bin Laden's media savvy and position within the bin Laden empire we'd be stupid not to have him on the payroll, at least until he started blowing up the Khobar towers. But I know none of them would answer even if they weren't dead.
I want to meet my parents when they were my age. I want to understand them, and who they were before their lives took the massive twist that was my birth and diagnosis. I want to see what their relationship was like for the 2 months they had a healthy, happy baby, no mountains of debt, no years of worry and stress added to them. Basically, I want to see if their relationship was always doomed, or if I was a causative agent for their eventual separation. Some questions just don't have answers.
My guess is that it was always doomed - although an unhealthy baby puts a strain on any bond they might have had - you could also be a cause for them to examine their feelings and needs and become closer. btw, a healthy baby also puts a strain on any bond a couple has. btww: Without the forces of society, religion, family, repression of needs, repression of awareness, valium, secure jobs and so on keeping the couple together -- without those things, relationships are mostly doomed, at least for the first 3 or 4 go-arounds. It's usually in the first one or two tries that the kids arrive.
My grandmother on my mother's side. She lived in Vienna and fled the Nazis in 1938 on the Kindertransport. We've collected quite a bit of information on her side of the family (many letters, genealogy, etc) but it would have been great if I could have asked her questions about that time... In that theme: I would love to be able to visit (with no lasting effects) Cafe Central in Vienna, near the start of the 20th century. Just take this extract from the Wikipedia article:The café was opened in 1876, and in the late 19th century it became a key meeting place of the Viennese intellectual scene. Key regulars included: Peter Altenberg, Theodor Herzl, Alfred Adler, Egon Friedell, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Anton Kuh, Adolf Loos, Leo Perutz, Alfred Polgar and Leon Trotsky. In January 1913 alone, Josip Broz Tito, Sigmund Freud, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, and Trotsky (the latter two being regulars) were patrons of the establishment.
How fabulous that you have letters from you mother's mother. What language are they written in?The café was often referred to as the "Chess school" (Die Schachhochschule) because of the presence of many chess players who used the first floor for their games.
Wow - I'd love to visit there as well. My grandfather played chess with Trotsky in Switzerland between the wars - or so I was told - but maybe they first hung out in Vienna.
Vienna is a lovely city, I visited last week but didn't have time to visit the Cafe Central. I'm definitely going to revisit it. The letters were in German, although they were later translated into English by one of my relatives. Unfortunately I only have the English copies. I would love to try translating them myself.
I wouldn't mind talking to Bill Clinton and George Bush. It might help me understand how we got to where we are politically. But I suppose what I'd really like is to talk to my mother and really get past the facade she wears and understand her motivations and desires. As long as I've known her she's been role playing as the mother in an ideal 1950s family despite never having an ideal 1950s family. I'd like to understand her better.
i would if i had the chance talk to someone i nver had the courage to and yet i still want to.i keep procastinating it over and over and yet nver seem to muster up the courage to talk to the one who grabs the skidding slide of my interest. i just stand afar and gaze at her and try to comtent with it. yet greed it all i am left with. for once if i ever did really had it in me or just the (idk what ) (if i ever ran out of excuses to lie off then maybe for once id confront her) and above all. just a real conversation with someone. eleven