Who? Me.

I re-took the Myers-Briggs personality test (thanks, Facebook) yesterday (thanks, free time). Turns out my personality has changed! I am now an INFP. Googling myself, I find I am an idealist and a healer. So far so good. This site has my favorite description:

INFP: The Idealist

The INFP is a dreamy, imaginitive, idealist, capable of finding the good in anything or anyone, even something as foul as Newark, New Jersey. INFPs are sometimes dangerous to the well-being of society as a whole, as they are prone to adopting subversive and destructive ideologies like "The world should be fair," "People should treat one another well," and "You know, 'Friends' is a really, really stupid television show."

These irrational thought patterns may sometimes cause INFPs to run off and join the circus, the Resistance, or the Rebellion, where they tend to do well in any position requiring excellent hand-eye coordination or mastery of the Force.

COMPATIBILITY: INFPs and ISTJs generally exhibit a natural predator/prey relationship, which, though it might appear harsh and cruel from the outside, is all part of the natural cycle of life. In fact, were it not for the predation of the ISTJ, the population of INFPs would soon grow to unsustainable levels, overwhelming the ability of their ecological niche to support them.

Famous idealists include that girl in your sixth-grade homeroom who got the teacher fired for saying that girls aren't good at math; that guy in the cubicle next to yours who got the manager fired for saying that women don't make good employees; and Anais Nin.

Guest writer: John Mayer

No I'm not color blind;
I know the world is black and white.
Try to keep an open mind,
but...I just can't sleep on this tonight.

Stop this train.
I want to get off and go home again.
I can't take the speed it's moving in.
I know I can't,
But honestly, will someone stop this train?

Don't know how else to say it: don't want to see my parents go.
One generation's length away
From fighting life out on my own.

Stop this train.
I want to get off and go home again.
I can't take the speed it's moving in.
I know I can't, but honestly, won't someone stop this train.

Had a talk with my old man,
Said help me understand.
He said turn 68, you'll renegotiate.
Don't stop this train,
Don't for a minute change the place you're in.
Don't think I couldn't ever understand.
I tried my hand,
John, honestly, we'll never stop this train.

Once in a while, when it's good,
It'll feel like it should.
And they're all still around,
And they're still safe and sound,
And you don't miss a thing
'til you cry when you're driving away in the dark...

Singing, Stop this train.
I want to get off and go home again.
I can't take this speed it's moving in.
I know I can't,
Cause now I see I'll never stop this train.

A couple more

Happiness is...

Nicole and Coenn

Daddy and daughters

Look at that little face.

Here I am, in California. The evening is cool and cloudless. I spent the day with my sister and nieces, venturing to Toys-R-Us and trying to imitate Wall-E as precisely as possible. Coenn is beautiful and healthy, out of the NICU and growing fast. Ella is an expert in pirates and dinosaurs, and showers me with compliments as we do puzzles together. "You're really good at this!" She says.

Jason was with me for a week, and is now preparing to move to Virginia for his biochemistry program. He'll be essentially doing the first year of med school. I am so excited for him. His hard work is finally paying off.

I don't know what I did to deserve this life. But thank You. Thank You for the love all over my it. For my beautiful family and friends. For Jason, my oasis of sanity and peace and goodness.

It's funny how in such profound joy, I find my heart a little nervous, pleading, Please don't go away! Please let all this joy stick around!

A lesson in that old spiritual discipline of being-in-the-moment, I suppose. One psychologist I read described mental health as "the ability to relax when all is well."

"The opposite of fear is faith."

Careful What You Read

My 4´11¨ sister gave birth to a 9lb baby yesterday!!!! Hooray for Coenn Jayce Romero!

And I fly home tomorrow! Yay! Please wish me safe travels.

My musings for the day...

When I was in college, I had a few panic attacks that were, I think, partially triggered by reading too many postmodern literary theorists.

Now I´m having a bit of a spiritual crisis about what happened to the Inka.

I´m reading 1491, a book about what the Americas were like before the arrival of the Europeans, and how colonization went down. Apparently a ton of stuff has been discovered recently, and is still being discovered all the time. What we learned in school (which isn´t much) is just plain wrong.

Some anthropologists are estimating that there were as many as 110 million people in the Americas before Columbus arrived...way more than in China or India. The middle of Mexico alone had more people than all of Europe. And yet somehow, every single civilization was eventually taken over by Europe. The Inkan empire was by far the largest one on Earth at the time. It was simply massive. Hundreds of thousands of people.

It seems that what destroyed them wasn´t European technology or ingenuity. The people of the Americas were in many ways much healthier than Europeans, fantastic at cultivating resources, and had formidable technology of their own. What killed them was disease. From what I understand, in about three years smallpox cut the Inkan population in half. In half! The same thing happened in North America, by some hepatitis-type disease: in five years, the civilizations on the east coast were nearly wiped out. Many diseases spread through the Americas before Europeans even saw them. That means white people were discovering places that seemed like deserted wilderness, because everyone had already been killed off. In about a century, disease killed 1/5 of the people on Earth. Until recently, most people had thought the Americas were sparsely populated and little developed. That´s just not the case.

I´ve never been one to lose faith over the why-do-bad-things-happen-to-good-people question. To me, it seems plausible that the cosmos might not work in a way that makes any rational sense to us, in terms of cause and effect. But so much of the world´s population dying off in a few years, to be forgotten or re-interpreted? How do we make sense of that? What were they thinking as their entire world disappeared?

Lots of people seem to say that human history is made of civilizations rising, fighting for dominance, and diminishing. Some people lose, some people win. The perspectives of those who win are the ones that stick around. The Mayans believed that every so often the gods destroyed the Earth, and many of their elaborate rituals and sacrifices were asking, ¨Please let us stick around a little longer.¨ I would say my heart asks for the same thing.

Pictures of Copan!

I managed to steal pictures from Veronica's camera--check them out!

On that whole self-love thing

I remembered another of yoga guru Ti Harmony´s suggestions. He used to encourage us to say to ourselves: ¨I love you I love you I love you,¨ all throughout our poses. Especially the tough ones, which often made us snicker. Usually I thought to myself, ¨You sound too much like a yoga guru right now, Ti Tree Harmony.¨

But I tried it the other day. After yoga, as I tried to meditate, I said to myself, Self, I love you I love you I love you.

¨Ha! Listen to you,¨ my mind said, on cue. ¨Sucker for that New Age touchy-feely bull-crap.¨ (bull-crap? Honestly?)

So I answered, just to prove a point, I love you too, cynical critical ego-voice.

That made me get into it. Actually yeah, I do. You keep me real. You keep me discerning, C.C.E.V.

¨You´ve got too much time on your hands. But...thanks.¨

I was on a roll now, so I just kept going. I thought about my occasional discontent and anxiety. I love you too, discontent/anxiety. I know better now where you come from. You just want to be safe, to be liked. You worry and criticize because you are the force in me that´s constantly trying to improve.

I have to say, I recommend it. C.C.E.V. didn´t say so, but I felt it blushing. Wrapping itself up in the compliments like a warm blanket. I suddenly felt mysteriously, wholly at ease. So this must be what all that self-love mumbo jumbo is about.

(Mumbo jumbo? Seriously?)