Max It!

What is it with that maximizing gene in us? It’s the one that drives us to extremes. It’s a tough one to beat and everyone seems to have it. You know what I mean: It’s what makes us super busy, super popular, super efficient, super lazy, super fat, super clean, super good. In short, it turns us all into freaks of one kind or another. And even though sometimes it doesn’t seem all that obvious, it usually comes to hit us in the face once we take a closer look at someone and think, “Ah, yes, that’s what’s going on…!”

The first time, I pinpointed the culprit, was with Michelle, a fellow mother in DC who was trying so hard to make a break-through in this town of hard asses. Every ounce of her small frame quivered with excitement when she talked, say, about the next house they were going to buy, each of them three feet closer to Georgetown and – in her mind – at least ever that much closer to the movers and shakers. She’d throw enormous birthday parties (and most likely still does) for her three and one year old, where she invited all those she believed were a step ahead of her. And since she was operating with a large margin off error (that’s how we got invited!), she had to rent a two storey Victorian just to host the party. By now she is probably renting the Lincoln Center. Clowns and fairies where hired, there was extensive catering besides the various cakes and cookies displayed on every corner of the downstairs parlor, not to mention the over-sized gender coined pink and green bags with the requisite party favors, and billowing balloons every inch of the wrap around porch. No fewer than sixty little dauphins and dauphines where ambling around dressed to the tee, looking slightly disoriented, I should add. Even they knew something was off.

But poor Michelle is just one example. You can actually see it all the time. The gym is a good place to start. I can’t say I like going there but I go anyway because it seems to be the only way to keep my ass within boundaries. When I first started going I got terribly bored on my Stairmaster trying to read the subtitles on Seinfeld ten feet away. I also got sick to my stomach and had to get off. The next time I brought a magazine but the print was too small and again I got bored and sick. So then, I checked among my many back issues for a mag with a bigger font – and found one: Der Spiegel. So, back I was, this time determined to make the bun cruncher the ultimate intellectual experience. For about one month I was happy with myself and the time I wasted on the various instruments of torture but then, oh well, then I made the mistake to look up and check out the others. Word to the wise: you should never look up and check out the others if you want to keep your peace of mind. Because what I saw was the iPod. Duh! you say? Well, excuse me. It hadn’t occurred to me that bringing my recently acquired iPod to this sweat palace could be of any benefit to either me or my iPod. But for some reason it suddenly seemed very appealing, the thing to do, especially if I could manage to load my favorite podcasts on there.

So now, the workout starts at home when I rush to grab my stuff, update my podcasts on my Mac to load only the most recent ones onto my iPod, then with my increasingly sweaty hands fiddle around with the itsy-bitsy wires to fit them where they belong for easy retrieval shortly before securing one of the coveted four Elypticas. A hint of perspiration manifests itself on my forehead as I run around looking for a hair band and my car keys, but I am determined to have the ultimate workout experience and so I keep going. Now is the time and I am going to get it all. It’s quite powerful until it hits and the realization sets in that that fool with the earphones panting away close to cardiac arrest, blood shot eyes darting back and forth between the TV screen, magazine, and all the other monkeys in the room, is actually I.

Back to No Electricity

There is talk that the national elecricity union is sabotaging the rolling black out schedule now. Supposedly, their goal is to force people into voting against a regional trade agreement with the US. Good luck with that. Gotta go.

what i got

Hey tough guy look at me
don’t you like what you see
i am your dream i am your phantasy
i’ll do as you say as long as you stay
‘cause that’s all that counts
just stay and we’ll play

I will spark your appetite
i am hot as dynamite
everyone says i am quite a delight
i’ll do as you say as long as you stay
‘cause that’s all that counts
just stay one more day

I packaged them neatly my ass and tits
in your big fat hands i swear it all fits
reality is far until it hits
so I’ll do as you say as long as you stay
‘cause that’s all that counts
just stay and look this way

Tell me just tell me i am cute
tell him tell them staring is rude
just hold me and own me dude
i'll do as you say as long as you stay
‘cause that’s all that counts
just don’t stay away

Let’s pretend i am your queen
consumable maybe but still unseen
you’ll protect me and all that’s between
and i’ll do as you say as long as you stay
‘cause that’s all that counts
as my belly rounds
just stay

Sleeping Beauty

Two nights ago, all of Costa Rica went black. Not a little black, not grayish not brownish but completely black. I was curving downhill on a road overlooking the central valley when the extent of the problem became apparent. What seemed at first to be one of the local black outs we occasionally get due to on-going construction everywhere turned out to be a national emergency. The entire forty-mile stretch of the valley was shrouded in black. It was quite a sight.

And, to tell you the truth, I really liked it. It was as if the country had finally laid down for a well-deserved nap. The past ten years have placed a heavy toll on this small piece of the earth with an incessant influx of money and a growth in construction eating its way through coastal areas, along mountain slopes, and national sanctuaries.

Land speculation has been a big money maker and builders are arriving fast to partition the country into gated communities for retirees and the well-to-do. It’s a cancerous development and only few benefit from it. As a matter of fact, the country is caving in under it because there is no infrastructure in place or even planned to support it. Roads are crumbling under the heavy construction traffic, ocean shores are struggling with the increase of raw sewage pouring in from the growing beach communities, and water is drained from local farms to provide the upper crust with green turf.

It’s sad and every time I see the glittering and shimmering lights at night I can’t help but cringe. So, the dark actually felt good. But let’s face it: more than black it’s a flashing red light. This place is on the verge of collapse! Like a tree supporting a horde of wild apes it is shivering under its load.

But here is another fact that lends a fresh albeit not very refreshing perspective to the problem of power shortage in Costa Rica: the country gets eighty percent of its electricity from water, a technology that – much like nuclear energy – has seen a revival since the specter of climate change has made its way into our hardened conscience. However, turbines won’t turn unless there is plenty of water supply. Not a problem for this tropical paradise one would think.

And it wasn’t in the past, but now that weather patterns are becoming more unpredictable worldwide, Costa Rica is in a crunch with more demand for energy and not enough water to produce it. Lake Arenal and its dam is at a historical low and unless the rain starts soon, sleeping beauty will return to her slumber. Sorry, no enlightened prince in sight yet.

Do You Feel Like Shit All the Time?

Despite increased awareness about the seriousness of depression there is still a label of personal failure attached to it. As if trying a little harder would make it all go away. If you went to your boss and said that you couldn’t make it to a meeting because you were going through intense chemotherapy she or he would probably be understanding and smile encouragingly. Now imagine you said that you need some time because you were going through intense psychotherapy. See what I mean?

In addition, although the medical profession treats depression just like any other disease most insurance plans in the US don’t cover therapy or they only cover certain therapies – the ones with a ten-step program to full recovery.

In part, what scares us – the depressed, their employers, health care providers, family and friends alike – is that we don’t really know when somebody has fully recovered from this disease or whether they ever will. Our mental well-being is harder to measure then our blood count. For how long will an employer have to show support? For how long will an insurance company have to cover the costs of treatment? For how long will a friend have to listen and understand?

In addition, we have a hard time accepting that feelings are just another part of ourselves that can malfunction, not that different from a strap throat. One reason for that is that feelings are seen as a somewhat amorphous entity of ourselves. They are habitually set in opposition to our rational being and are supposed to be controlled by it. In fact, gaining control over our feelings is at the core of our upbringing. Loosing that ability constitutes an intrinsic threat to our understanding of who we are. It shakes the very foundations of our selves. And as such, it confronts us with what we are afraid we may become. Social misfits. So, we choose to ignore malfunctioning feelings in ourselves and implicitly demand of everyone to do the same.

That, however, is not the solution. As a matter of fact, and we sort of know that already, ignoring a problem is likely to make it worse. I have suffered from periods of depression throughout my adult life and along with me have the ones who live with me. I also have known many people who suffered from depression – often undiagnosed for a long time.

In most cases, depression is not easy to detect in yourself or in others unless you are trained. Some people simply seem to have a ‘bad disposition,’ some are ‘born pessimists,’ others are ‘painfully introverted,’ or ‘withdrawn,’ and again others have ‘a hard time overcoming adversity’, or just seem continuously ‘tired and overworked.’ At a low level, depression actually will most likely go undiagnosed. There will be a degree of emotional discontent but the origin of it will always be seen in the outside world – anything from work to world hunger goes. And within a family, everyone will learn to cope – at times at a staggeringly high cost.

One of the worst effects of depression and the main reason for addressing it in yourself and in others is that over time it affects our brain by actually changing its structure. One could say the production line of the brain adapts to the negative input. It becomes used to a certain ‘gray’ state of mind and starts feeding it. It sounds trivial but over time a brain can get wired for negative thinking and it becomes much harder to escape the repetitive thought process. And although I am not an adamant advocate of the positive thinking league, I do urge everyone to investigate into negative thought patterns and scrutinize feelings of lasting anger or sadness. In my experience they are early signs of worse things to come.

Making Sense out of Nonsense

Thirty-two human beings are murdered, twenty more injured by yet another young male firing his pistols. And what’s on the news? A president defending the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.

One has to be American to make sense out of that. One has to have grown up in this Great Nation to fully understand the meaning of its guiding norm: the rights of the individual which often prevail over those of the community.

It is a powerful principle that was given to us by the Founding Fathers as a bulwark against an all-powerful State, one that many of them and their families were escaping from when they came to the New World. It is the legacy brought forth with the coming of age of a young nation, a teenage nation. A nation that rebelled against oppressive tutelage and that finally managed to break away from an overpowering father: European Despotism.

But just like any young teenager, this nation has so far failed to shed its fear of the old patriarch. It is still haunted by the specter of the one who makes the decisions at the table, the one who decides who gets what and how much. That explains why Americans stubbornly defend the rights of the individual. It’s the teenager’s response to the family despot: “You can’t tell me what to do!!”

But as always when the underlying emotion is fear, there is irrationality. And often this manifests itself in extremism. In the case of the United States, one can easily name a few examples. But the one extreme principle that kills almost exclusively fellow Americans, the one that is the most absurd of all, is the right to bear arms.

One is inclined to wonder whether this Great Nation has not received enough mother love that it still needs guns to reassure itself.

The Pisser

There are some truths, some irreversible facts, that are a great nuisance to our tranquility of mind. So we lock them out. Instead of letting these troublemakers enter our conscience, where they would stir up our neatly arranged boxes of how this world works, we ignore them.

We choose to ignore them like an unruly three-year old. Yet, once in a while they come to kick us in the shin. That’s when we have to make an extra effort at repression or else confront the sucker. Which of the two shall it be? It’s really up to us.

Two days ago, I was stuck behind a sand colored Honda with a bumper sticker depicting an impish character pissing in an exaggerated curve, bare-assed his middle finger raised at…well, I suppose, the world.

Most of you would probably see this as a perfect occasion to exert some mild mental repression. After all, what else was I going to do in the face of a three-year old mind ready to speed off once the light changed?

Instead, here I am, writing this little note to you to let you all know that we need to keep an eye on that aspect of male extroverted phallic aggression. Pissing, fucking, holding guns, and saying ‘Fuck this World.’ It’s not good. And it’s not good to ignore it either. Look around you.

What About Socialization

When asked where my children go to school I say that we home school. This is a piece of information that is more sensitive than one would think. It usually provokes either a blank stare or the raised eyebrow. I have learned how to handle either quite well by now: I wait. More likely then not, by letting an awkward moment or two pass I will find out a bit more about the person asking. There is always a follow-up question. The blank-stare type is most likely either clueless or belligerent; I prefer to know which of the two before I reveal more about our educational preferences. Candidate number two, the one with the raised eyebrow, is usually either surprised, interested, or disappointed. The latter because they associate home schooling solely with a narrow-minded segregationist movement of the Christian right. In that case, I prefer to clarify: that is not where we come from although I am grateful to that movement’s stubbornness for having given us the option to educate our children according to our own personal preferences, just like everyone else.

The fact is, school is different not only for every family but also for every child in the family. And although every day that passes confirms in our minds that we made the right decision, I would not claim to be able to give much advice. I do, however, enjoy sharing ideas and personal experiences. In fact, I have had many stimulating conversations with complete strangers on education and home schooling in particular.

In any case, guarding myself a little, I say that home schooling works best for us because we travel a lot. Which is true and usually satisfies the clueless candidate without upsetting the belligerent one. However, sooner or later my interlocutor will pop the ‘socialization question,’ a favorite among those who have never bothered to look up its definition but use the term like a giant shield against those who have chosen a different approach.

In that case, I like to return the question by inquiring as to what aspect of socialization they are curious about. Clearly, socialization is an important element in the development of every living being. Social values have to be learned and social skills trained but unless one lives on planet Mars, there usually are institutions other than school that can teach a lesson or two.

But don’t get me wrong. I support the idea of public classroom education. Because ideally, school brings children of all backgrounds together and competently introduces them to the next level of social interaction, acquisition of cultural norms, and learning. But most of us are aware that often that is not the reality.

For decades now, many countries, among them leading industrial nations, have decried the various shortcomings of their education systems. Many of them are struggling to get at the root of problems such as school violence and low achievement rates. And while they busy themselves proffering one reform after the other and installing metal detectors, I prefer our solution.

I believe that especially young children fair best in a small familiar setting. In my opinion, class and school size do matter and so do teacher turn-over rates. Preferably children should be introduced gradually to the forces driving social interaction. Dealing with small and consistent peer groups is far easier for them. Especially boys would fair better that way and so would their teachers. Being thrown into a classroom of twenty or more children, where everyone is constantly trying to assert their position, is a stressful situation for everyone involved. Many of the most motivated among the often idealistic crowd of educators have thrown in the towel and contributed to high turn-over rates among teachers. That is unfortunate since having the same teacher during the first years of formal education can help bring consistency into a world of new concepts and contents.

Luckily, with home schooling we have been able to provide a nurturing and engaging environment for our children. However, I am aware that this approach doesn't work for everyone. Time, energy, education, resource availability, and skills are important factors to consider when opting to home school.

In our case there is also the wish to amalgamate different cultural traditions and values. Being European it would be strange for me to have my children grow up solely with an American perspective on life and the cultural values that constitute it. If they were socialized by an American institution on a daily eight to four basis and surrounded by a peer group that was made up mostly of American children that would be a given. Equally bewildering, I am sure, it would be for my American husband if his children had only a hearsay understanding of his native country without fully grasping any of its underlying principles.

And then there is bilingualism. As desirable as it is, most parents who have raised their children in another language than the one spoken at school know, it doesn’t always come easy. And more likely than not, children will end up preferring one language, usually the one of their peers, over the other. Home schooling makes that a lot easier.

But home schooling isn’t always easy. Like many things in life, it is a balancing act. I am also quite aware of the specters that can haunt a child raised and educated mostly by only one person. And although this doesn’t seem to bother any of our children right now, I am prepared to listen when the time comes.

Being able to be there for them while witnessing their minds and personalities assume their independent shapes is what I am most grateful for. In the end, as parents, we all try to do our best in the interest of our offspring. Sharing ideas in an open-minded forum contributes to that.

Have You Seen 'The Secret' yet...??

So it’s out. The secret is out in a big way. Everyone is talking about it. After years, of being traded in exclusive communities, it is now making its ground-breaking debut among the masses.
The self-help community, motivational speakers, psychologists, and the more enlightened among us have said it for years: think positively, believe in your dreams, be kind to yourself, visualize your goals, problem-solve. But it had to become a secret to become big, it had to become science to become truth, it had to become a movie to reach the living-room. The Law of attraction. But whatever it takes, right?

Call it repetitive, amateurish, pseudo-scientific, it did something that counts in today’s world. It hit like a giant snowball, and as it is rolling on and on it is becoming bigger and bigger and its generating truck loads of dollars. Good thinking. Wrapped for easy consumption this simple message has been swallowed by millions of viewers world-wide, as it seems. Will it be digested is the question.
Will it make people kinder, more giving, enlightened, and generally more happy is what I wonder. It would be a world revolution if it did. Let’s visualize, let’s make the positive energy flow. I am all for it.

Boxed

Boxed is what I am. What sort of box you wonder and I can hear honest concern in your voice. If you’re picturing a glossy-eyed puppy whimpering away at the walls of its narrow confinement you are actually pretty close. Just imagine that puppy to be the size of an elephant. That’s me – mother, spouse, but above all female.

How did I get stuck here? How on earth did I get my 12,000 pound elephant ass stuck in a crate that’s half the size of a fridge? Quite effortlessly, actually. After all, as you may have guessed by now, we are not talking about your standard plywood crate. This one is much more airy and yet it is uncomfortably limiting.

I was born to it – a nine-pound female infant. My parents, however, did their best to pretend there weren’t any limitations to my young being. After all, back then the idea was to see children simply as human potential. So, they raised me with a certain amount of benign neglect so that I might become who I could be – instead of who I was supposed to be. Raised in non-conformity, my hair was a tangled mess most of the time, my pants often ripped, and my homework generally sketchy. I preferred matchbox cars to dolls and more often than not I lead rather than follow.

Yet, by the age of four, it had already dawned on me that it was a good idea to stay clear of boys because they seemed prone to inflict pain. I also knew that if I didn’t hide my most prized matchbox cars from them, they would end up chipped and missing doors. Thus, in a subtle way, I had already figured out that in order to survive unscathed I had to make the necessary compromises to avoid violent or destructive behavior by my male peers. Female socialization had set in. The box acquired its first stage mold.

But, hey, it could have been worse. After all, in other parts of this world, say, some poor rural Indian state, the mere fact of being female would have been reason enough to get rid of me before I could have even gotten comfortable in any sort of box.

And the truth is, we all get more or less comfortable in our respective boxes. We settle in, arrange ourselves, and organize our thoughts so they fit the confinements of our existence. In short, we cope. Whether that means avoiding ground-level living and unlit parking structures, or maybe just a pay cut, or higher mark-ups on haircuts.

What good comes from pushing against the walls of social convention, right? Feminism has brought us little but a bad name and the double day. Again, it could be worse. Imagine life under a burqa, for instance. A life without access to education, choice, and human dignity is, in every sense of the word, limited and, yet, most Afghan women find a way to survive that too. It’s just another compromise, right? Life must go on.

And even though my box is much more spacious, as a wife and mother of three I would still be the one who would get royally screwed if it came to a divorce, with no social security to call my own, no line of credit, and no CV to speak of. Knowing that, I would probably be well advised not to let it come to that… However airy it seems, this box is still a box.

Now you may argue that men, too, live in confined spaces of social expectations, norms, rules, and conventions. They can’t, for instance, get up in the morning, yawn, and chirp ‘I feel like wearing a flower dress today’ (just ask those who do…!). Also, being a stay-at-home dad may be considered modern – for a year – but then it’s back to the rat race.

There is, however, a slight but significant difference between the spaces women and men occupy in today’s world. So far, it has been men who assign them. Thus, it comes as no surprise, that men occupy most of the better ones and, in addition, have a finely tuned reward system for the jobs they do. It is widely known, for instance, that they pay each other better wages and that they are prone to promoting each other’s interests, whether that means helping men rise up faster or keeping women from rising too fast.

The fact is, no matter how you look at it, this world is still a man’s world and it is of little impact how many female heads-of-state, CEOs, soldiers, or sport icons there are. Because in the end the female head-of-state, CEO, soldier, and sports icon will still have to accommodate those who, for one reason or another, protect them and their interests – and chances are most of them will be men.

Entire belief systems are modeled according to male hierarchies – take, for instance, the power instilled by terms such as ‘the Lord.’ In contrast, ‘Mother Mary,’ if she is at all admitted to the illustrious circle of deities, is rather limited in her scope and she sure is not the one to make the rules. Ever enduring and forgiving as she is portrayed, she makes a perfect female role model. Thanks be given, guys!

It doesn’t end there, however. Our secular believes are just as powerfully shaped by male paradigms. Take, for instance, concepts such as success, intelligence, or progress. Have you ever wondered why a race car driver earns more than a mid-wife? And why do college entrance tests love to quiz us about converting ounces into grams but don’t test how we would do in a complex social situation? And why, in the face of ruthless exploitation of our natural and human resources, is the concept of progress still tantamount with economic growth and profit-margins?

So, not only are the places assigned to us uncomfortably narrow – somewhere between Madonna and Pin-up – but they also are way in the back. That means that even if we holler at the top of our lungs – as some of us so admirably do – “This show stinks!” our voices hardly ever get heard.

The simple fact is that we are not the top-ticket holders and that’s why the show will go on, whether we like it or not. There are powerful sponsors who are pulling the strings and they seem to like what they see however inane, insane, and obscene it in reality is.

So, bombs will continue to be built, wars will be waged, rivers polluted, prisons filled, and children sent to the streets. Not exactly what we tried to bargain for when they shut the lid, is it?

Maybe You Know Me Already...

I am the mom with the sunglasses slipping off her head while she is trying to haul some futuristic looking car safety contraption across the airport on top of a carry-on while at the same time balancing a half undone diaper bag with a precariously perched no-spill Sippy-cup. Somewhere behind me there is a guy trailing with his shoelaces undone carrying multiple bags and children while scanning the sport headlines he passes on the pilgrimage to gate 89 Z. I have spent quite a bit of time recently coming to terms with my life. That life. Before that, I spent about twenty years coming to terms with humanity. So this last part should be easy.

I was born and raised in Germany. My parents are German, and so are my grandparents, and – with one promiscuous exception – all of my great-grandparents. My native language is German. Which makes me, I suppose, very German – no, it’s not what you think. I am not a Nazi. My parents aren’t Nazis. Hitler is dead, Germany votes in free elections, and freedom of expression is a given – that is unless you are a Nazi.

I moved to the States, more precisely to Washington, D.C, when I was twenty-two and started grad school at Georgetown. I was determined to make my way in that place that calls cynicism its favorite pet. But I am jumping ahead. The reason why I decided to leave Germany and, more reluctantly, Europe presented itself when I was on a fellowship program at Universidade de Lisboa in Portugal. It, or rather, he was ahead of me in landing a place to live in Estrela – a coveted Lisbon neighborhood. We teamed up and remained that way ever since. He became the guy trailing behind me with the bags, and also my greatest ally, brother in arms, and soul mate.

Moving from place to place has turned out to be a thing we do. So we are actually quite good at the airport stunt – even though it may not seem so. It never does. Staying in one place is what we are not good at and yet we eternally crave that ethereal place called home – or whatever re-heated childhood memories we have of that place. One reason for our nomadic life-style is Matt’s job. But then, he got the job because neither he – nor the attached spouse (me) – had a problem with that. As for myself, I tend to avoid strong attachments to any particular place, which is funny really because as a child all I wanted was to remain uncomfortably suspended in my grandpa’s apple tree. But today at 5’11’’ I no longer fit the requirements for that position. So that’s not an option anymore.

Although our D.C. lives are behind us, it was then and there that the story of my more recent self so unglamorously started, brought on by a bout of intense anxiety attacks followed by depression. As they say, nothing good comes of a life spent in blissful serenity.

These last months and weeks, I have been busy moving once again, this time into a space all to myself. It’s as much a physical as an emotional space and I enjoy spending my day in it. Here, I spend my mornings home schooling our two daughters and jotting down ideas for my two hours of freedom in the afternoons. It tends to get a little messy at times with all the tangled issues that keep piling up as you will easily find out as you make your way through my laboriously filled folders – unless, that is, you chose not to. Which, on second thought, I would be inclined to forgive.

Oh, by the way, last time I checked, I now live in Costa Rica and I have at least three surprising children. And this is as good as it gets.

WOMAZZLE is...

womazzle was conceived on a balmy night at an Italian café on the outskirts of San José, Costa Rica. Unlike my other children, she was a truly immaculate conception – a deed which, as those of you who have tried may have found out, is impossible with the involvement of male genitalia. She stems from the seeds of my female soul mate and ally, Susan. Born head first and drug free, much like my other children, womazzle saw the light of this planet after prolonged labor followed by a speedy act of pushing. My partner, and midwife, was at my side guiding me through the stages while sipping away at a glass of cabernet – which to her dismay was chilled. When womazzle was out, I immediately bonded by placing this brainchild of ours close to my heart. The nursing could begin.

womazzle is a love child. I carried her around with me a long time before she actually saw the light of this world. At first, like any parent, I was very protective of her but now I feel comfortable that she can stand her own among all the other loons. But make no mistake she is loud and fearless. She will not spare you nor will she try to hide from your attacks. She is who she is and in her way she is dazzling. I hope you will come to love her as much as I and those who helped bring her into this world.