Some thoughts from some guy named Christian Alexander Carlson Herwitz. His mother gave him a very long name.
Archive for March 2008
I dreamt last night that my tattoo artist, Trevor Marshall, came into my bedroom and started making my bed. He noticed that I have a puke-green fitted bed sheet, which completely goes against the color scheme of the rest of my sheets — and the rest of my room, really — and made a snarky comment about it. He’s totally a crotchety old New Zealander…he kicks ass.
I’ve been having some interesting dreams lately…
Last week, I dreamt that I was in a black church for Easter Mass.
You’re already thinking, “whooooa Christian — SLOW DOWN. THAT IS A CRAZY DREAM.”
And I’m like, “yeah, duh, because I clearly would have no interest in attending Easter Mass.”
But you’re totally racist, so you’re all, “ESPECIALLY not in a black church, homeboy!”
Natch, however, I have to bring you back down to earth. In the immortal words of En Vogue (that’s a link to their Wikipedia article for all you youngins), I respond solemnly, “free your mind, [your name here]…and the rest will follow. Be color blind, [your name here]…don’t be so shallow.”
So this was actually a church I’d been to back on March 15th: Roxbury Presbyterian. My step-grandmother, Nathalie Singletary, died back on the 8th (at 60 — too young), and this church was where her funeral service was held. Nathalie was a good lady…she was always cool to me, and on the occasions throughout the years at which we had a chance to chat, she made me feel like I was just another member of the family. Which that meant a lot to me. And even when my step-father and mom had only first gotten together, she bought my me and my sister Christmas and birthday presents. In fact, she got me my first Gameboy…and that was a big deal!
Back to the dream: again, I was in her church. I was sitting in a pew, when these three Irish (from Ireland) girls in the row in front of me turned around to chat me up. They were cute, so this was a good thing. But then my high school guidance counselor came out of nowhere and sat next to me. This was actually a really pleasant surprise, because I very much liked the guy…even though I was a crap student, he always treated me with respect, and I could tell that he truly did want to help me get to where I was going.
But there he was, and I of course haven’t seen him since high school, so I asked him what he’d been up to. Well…he’d become a cat burglar (which kinda made sense, because he always looked to me like an Irish mobster from prohibition days). When I asked him why he’d made such a radical change in careers, he told me that it was because he’d fallen in love with someone who he referred to only by her initials: LM.
Yeah. Random. No idea what LM could stand for, but…here are some options:
And…from acronymfinder.com:
Clearly, my old guidance counselor had to leave his home in Lowell to turn to a life of crime because he was running from a T-1000 that had killed his wife (to get to him), who worked at Brigham and Women’s Hospital — and whose maiden name was Macbeth — and he was saving all his crime dollars to pay for a ticket to the one place he could hide: THE MOON.
What we can all agree on, I think, is that this dream had NOTHING to do with my mother.
Also, later that night, in a state of half-consciousness, I could’ve sworn that Advil was beaming advertisements into my dreams. There was even a not-so-catchy jingle involved: “Advil, Advil, you love great great Advil!” I had to try super-duper hard to fight all those advertisement-waves from invading my vulnerable brain again!
Then, a couple nights ago, I had this dream in which all the negative aspects of my personality had manifested themselves as my very own imaginary friend, in the form of an old friend of mine, Erik. This was…the best ever. I always had someone around, and I could just ask my imaginary Erik about the worst things I’d ever done,of which he had an instant and encyclopedic knowledge.
The worst things he said I’d ever done to girls:
Anyway…I don’t even know where that one came from, because how could having sex on Heidi’s roomie’s couch be anything but hilarious? Or at least mildly amusing.
That was the saddest part of the dream…but the funniest part was Erik’s appearance. In high school, we were inseparable. He was a high school dropout who lived down the street from my high school, so I’d just head to his place whenever I skipped class. Which was all the time. We’d talk about porn and bitches for hours, eating all the DiGiorno pizza that his mother kept in plentiful supply. And it did indeed seem like the two of us were different sides of the same coin. To grossly over-simplify: he was the bad kid, and — compared to him, at least — I was the good one.
But eventually I had to move on. Erik was hittin’ the sauce with friends of his with whom I couldn’t relate, and I was straight edge and felt the need to start college as a new person. I cut him off…and it was cold.
Things change, though…or return to the way they were, at least in a similar way. We’re friendly again. He’s getting married. I’m a former college dropout. And I’ve certainly relaxed my stance on intoxication.
In dreamland, the only downside to imaginary Erik was that, whenever I spoke to him, people thought that I was just some crazy person, because they couldn’t see him themselves. It occurred to me that maybe all crazy people are just talking to manifest aspects of their personalities.
When it came down to it though, I was quite happy with that give-and-take.
My friend Justin recently posted what I find to be a particularly touching entry to his blog. It’s a short one, and it features a photo and letter from his grandparents. The photo shows them as young parents, and the letter highlights just how much Justin looks like “Gramps,” which, although his grandfather’s face is mostly obscured, is undeniable — right down to the style of glasses.
And of course this reminded me of the paternal resemblance in my own family, which is equally as indisputable. There have been instances in which I was mistaken for my father by his old friends when walking around Cambridge, and some of these friends have called me “little Alex,” or even mistakenly called me by his name, in spite of the conscious understanding that we are, in fact, separate individuals.
But my face is no more my father’s than his face is his own. We owe this mug to — at least — his father, and likely his father’s father, and so on. Allow me to illustrate:
My grandfather, my father, and myself, in our early-to-late 20s.
My mother would argue that her genetics have vastly improved the Herwitz punum, but that of course does not change the clear line that its drawn from father to son within recent Herwitz history. I’ve always been aware of this fact of face, but only recently did that awareness manifest itself through a more concrete path: genealogy.
A little less than a year ago, I decided that I wanted to know more of the story…not just of what my forebearers looked like, but where they came from, what they did, and what they acted like. It started with the Herwitzes, who, unfortunately, I’ve only been able to track back to the first Herwitz in America, Kalman from Warsaw (although he was attempting to escape draft to the Prussian army, so a story goes, which means he could’ve lied about where he was from…or even his identity); but extended to the Roops (my mother’s family), and as many other lineages as I could tap into.
The semi-obsession that this pursuit created in me has yielded some very good products: I’ve made contact with family I had no idea existed; I’ve figured out the [simplified] answer to the question of my ethnicity (half Ashkenazi, one-fourth Pennsylvania Dutch, one-eighth Irish, one-eighth English); and I’ve been able to construct a pretty cool little tree:
You can click on this image to see a nice PDF of my tree in which you can zoom around.
There’s something about this acquired knowledge that I find very satisfying, in an existential kind of way. My physical appearance, which is a very real and tangible expression of my heritage, is thus reinforced with nonphysical information, complementing it with stories of time, place, and travel. These answers also bring with them new puzzles: what happened to the Polish Herwitzes (I doubt that it’s a happy tale), and the German Rupps? To which of my friends, if any, am I distantly related? What will my tree look like in two generations from now — or four, or eight? The contemplation of all of this, to me, is incredibly enjoyable.
The source from which this knowledge most resonates with me, however, does not reside in recorded data…instead, it lives within my thorax. I don’t know the story of my ancestry — after all, I am preceded by countless faces that I will never set eyes upon — rather, I feel it. It feels like homesickness, a joyous family gathering, a hug from my mother and father, watching my brothers or sisters have fun as though no one can see them, and viewing a really good episode of Nova from the comfort of my bed — all at the same time. The lives of every single person before me exist and perpetuate in me, and they will, in time, be joined by the lives of countless others in subsequent generations.
And it’s awesome!
I’VE NEVER BEEN HAPPIER.
(That search would reference my twenty-fourth post.)
Dolphin Rescues Stranded Whales
Alright…so this is basically the coolest thing. A dolphin that frequents waters off of New Zealand, named Moko, saved two misguided pygmy sperm whales from beaching themselves. The whales, in spite of being pushed away from shore by a Conservation Department officer (Malcolm Smith), would not stay pushed away…but then Moko arrived.
Moko, as you might guess from the fact that she has a name, is well-known by locals. She plays with swimmers and boaters, and has many close interactions with humans — because she was, for whatever reason, isolated from her pod.
Anyway, this is how Moko saved the whales: she somehow heard the cries they made as they attempted to beach themselves, approached them, SPOKE TO THEM, and then guided them away from the shore. This interaction between Moko and the whales was observed by Smith.
The notion that other animals might possess some kind of cross-species language is amazing to me. I’ve heard of whale and dolphin speak of course, and elephants using that underground language thing they’ve got…but those are ways that they all talk amongst themselves. A dolphin communicating with some whales, though? THAT IS AWESOME, and it makes me think that some animals might not just be emoting when they make noises, but may actually possess a LANGUAGE.
Which, of all things or people, reminds me of crazy, dead ol’ Wesley Willis. I don’t know if it was in one of his songs, or if I heard it in an interview, but I remember him saying something very intriguing, in a fun way: that dolphins were evolved humans. I know that this is ridiculous — that dolphins evolved from something like what bears and dogs came from — but the idea that humans can become something other than what we are is fascinating to me. What will we look like in five thousand years (what with all the crazy shit we’re likely to do to ourselves in the future)? Would someone from that far in the future be able to make babies with someone from today?
So…then that reminds me in turn of my FAVORITE evolutionary hypothesis (my second is dinosaurs to birds, which covers all TWO of the evolutionary hypotheses I know): that of the aquatic ape! You know how Discovery Channel shows (among other sources of information and…ya’know, smart people) go on about how there’s a missing link between small-brained hominids and the ones with us-sized brains? Well, the idea behind the aquatic ape is that the missing link’s fossils all washed away into the ocean off the horn of Africa…and along with them, the evidence of how apes lost their body hair, and gained body fat (like other semi-aquatic mammals, such as hippopotamuses).
Also, instead of learning to walk upright to redistribute heat while foraging in the African savannas, our ape forebearers learned to do so in order to catch fish in the sea. And instead of getting the requisite protein for big brain size from hunting land animals, it was from those same fish. I think there were a couple other reasons that pointed to evolution by the sea, but I don’t really remember them. Basically though…the idea is totally sweet!
And THAT’S how you get from talking dolphins to Wesley Willis to the evolution of people.