Things that go boom

You guys. It turns out you can SEE SONIC BOOMS.

I've been entirely fascinated since the meteorite slammed into the atmosphere over Siberia last week. What is a sonic boom? Why so loud? Why so late? Wait, you can see it?! Hold. The. Phone.

So, of course, I had to go look it up. What is a sonic boom and how does it relate to sound? Turns out that the sound waves created by an object at a stand still make this perfect ripple, a la pebbles in a puddle. But, if the object starts moving, the waves start to bunch up ahead of the object, and lengthen behind it. Then if it gets going really fast, the waves ahead of the object are essentially all one: hello, speed of sound. Then, if the object goes faster than those waves, it creates a pressure differential that makes an audible craaaaack. But, get this: the change in pressure is no more than that when you're in an elevator going down 3 floors, except that it happens in a much shorter period of time. I know, I know. WTF. I feel like Taylor Swift here: totally bubbly and excited then totally confused then sort of understanding then just back to bubbly. People say all the time that things seem to "go against the laws of physics". What they don't realize is that we just don't know shit about the laws of physics. It's like the world of physics is the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and we've totally figured out his left pinky toe. But I think we often understand physics on a cellular rather than academic level. Well, at least I hope that's true, 'cause I needed simple pictures to understand this stuff.

What really blows my mind, though, is how those waves get translated to thoughts and emotions. When that sonic boom shattered windows it didn't just register as noise: it registered as fear, confusion, and amazement. It's not something anyone that heard it will forget anytime soon.

They say that digestion starts with the mouth (you know, teeth, saliva, that whole bit). In the same way, hearing starts with the outer ear which collects and amplifies sound from around us. It then travels to the tympanic membrane, which looks much like a piece of plastic wrap. When the pressure around you changes or you get an infection, that membrane is what is causing a lot of the discomfort as it gets pushed past its tensile strength. Once through the eardrum the sound is transmitted to the ossicles. Three points if you can name the three bones of the ear without using a search engine. That's right: bones. I imagine them like a team of Morse code experts tapping messages into the inner ear. From the inner ear the sounds are transmitted to the auditory nerve for interpretation by the brain. Thus, in order to hear you have to be able to move the vibrations and the nerve has to fire messages to the brain. My 5 year old son, Jake, has had issues with his Eustachian tubes since about 4 months old. Specifically, those suckers just do NOT want to work well enough to drain the fluid that collects in the middle ear around the ossicles. As a result, at 6-9 month intervals he can't hear for shit. He hears through a thick wall of jello-like fluid that stays there until our dear ENT surgeon goes in and gets it out. He does a nice job of understanding the world even though he's hearing under water, but the difference when they remove that fluid is astounding. Interestingly, when the audiologists do his hearing tests they always do the cochlear nerve stimulation just to make sure he doesn't suddenly also have a nerve issue, and it is truly astounding to watch this kid go from hearing almost nothing and to having no issue at all. By bypassing the system and going straight to the nerve, he recognize sounds. It's no match for the amplifying, coaxing, and translating done by the outer ear and ossicles, but it works.

This all sounds pretty simple, except that it's totally not. Think about the range of sounds you hear in a day, and how they affect you differently. Seemingly similar sounds are made exceedingly specific by both the physical characteristics of the sound and how it interacts with the ear, and how we interpret it. Think about a child's cry: almost any parent can pick out their own child's cry out of cacophony of screaming children in seconds. Think about a rock concert: in a wall of sound you can still hear the pieces coming through. Think about a whisper: in the middle of the night I can hear my kids breathing two rooms away. Part of this discernment is based on actual physical waves of sound that match sounds of waves we've heard before or what we're anticipating hearing in that moment. But a lot of it is dependent on what was happening during that time, and how we felt. We make an imprint of the sound in our minds. Sound means nothing unless it's translated.

I had a conversation with a Pulitzer Prize-winning author last year during which we were discussing the usefulness (or not) of things that are exact. She posited that a symphony is by definition prescribed and predictable because the notes are immoveable, and that it is the job of the players to play those notes. At the time I was taken aback by the brashness of her answer and my retort got stuck in a stutter. It has stuck with me since and so here is my counter-argument: a symphony is not, in fact, a prescribed collection of notes and rhythms. It is at its core an interpretation, a magnificent show of collective expression in which all the pieces of the orchestra have to simultaneously attempt perfection and avoid it at all costs. Without the give and take of the individual musicians and the sections of instruments, the lift of the conductor, the sigh here, the strike there, there is nothing. The song is robotic without all those minute human errors and corrections. And, to be honest, the most astounding part is that our brains know the difference.

How we interpret those sounds are, in large part, emotional. All those nerve firings that help us understand the information coming toward us are connected to the parts of our brains that control emotions. On some level this has always made sense to me: music has been a way of understanding the world since I was a kid. On first listen to a song I can be moved to dance, feel the swell of emotion, or just cry. There are songs that so perfectly match my line of thought that all I can do is look around wondering, "Is anyone else hearing this?! This is it!" There are songs that make my fingers ache for the piano. Songs that make me sing at the top of my lungs while turning over the theme in my head over and over and over. There are songs that inexplicably unnerve me, and yet I keep coming back to them. There are songs that transport me back to childhood hearing my dad sing me to sleep. Songs where the sound of silence after the last note was sung by 100 campers is as palpable as it was 20+ years ago.  


*"Thrift Shop" is an awful, dirty song. NSFW. And still it makes me move.

So, it turns out you can't actually see the sonic boom unless there's enough moisture to bring it to life. But perhaps it is seeing to hear it, to feel it rock your world. To feel the pause before the roar. To internalize the force of energy. Whether it be something as overwhelming as a sonic boom, or hearing the intake of air, or all the songs in between, here's to listening past the speed of sound.

(Nearly) Midnight Ramblings

It's 11:30 pm and I should have gone to bed 2 hours ago with Katy.

I'm totally wiped out.  Watching BS television and working on work emails and schedules that I can't get to during the day.  There is a lot of stuff in me that I want to wiggle it's way out - onto the pages of this blog and/or some other writing space.  But there are so many attention and time demands.

I'm working too hard at work to feel this behind the 8 ball.  It's just a 60 hour job that I'm trying to do in 45-50 hours a week.  and the time with the kids... it is so short and fleeting (except the middle of the night crying jags that we have been blessed with on and off these last few weeks- those don't seem so short)

These boys are so cute and happy and loved.
Jake is reading and learning about space in kindergarten.  He's gotten really good at drawing and coloring.  He likes wrestling and story-telling (or having stories told to him).  Jake is solid and occasionally anxious.  He likes patterns and predictability, but still asks me at night to "Sing me a song I've never heard before").  He vacillates between stoicism and complete intolerance of discomfort and hyperbolic expression of pain.  Tonight, he banged his shins and when i told him it would be okay and he would feel better soon, he told me "I WILL NOT BE OKAY...THEY WILL NEVER FEEL BETTER... "  After his bath when I absentmindedly pointed out to him that his underwear were ripping in the backside's seam, he burst into tears: "THEY'RE MY FAVORITE PAIR!" He wailed. I tried to express empathy for my softhearted, exhausted boy. But when it went on too long I had to walk away before I did something that would incite him. (Like try not to laugh hysterically while ripping the underwear in half.)

I notice him yawning when asked to recite prayers and songs or poems that I know he has memorized.  The yawns are so predictable that I've come to recognize them as a form of avoidance and/or nervousness.  The top 2 reasons he receives a reprimand these days are: for "talking baby-talk" (also usually happens when he knows he's doing something he shouldn't be or when he's afraid he might be wrong or in trouble - ie "nervousness") and not heeding the warning: "Be nice to your brother."

Milo is about 2 weeks off the binki (a story about that to follow) and still the happiest of us all.  He will give you every version of toddler "F.U." if you try to get him to do something he doesn't want to, but oh, the laugh on that kid.  as much as he gets labeled our "frat boy", Milo is also a sensitive soul.  Usually rushing to us (and always his brother) to see if we're okay.  Today, he took off his underwear, balled them up, handed them to me and said, "Here, smell these and you'll get a big surprise!!!"
Milo, hates hats and gloves and going to bed.  He wants to go potty and wants a drink of water and ine more kiss and a song and a song and a song, and then he will place a tiny protective arm around the neck of the parent putting him to bed and give a pleading whine: "I want you."  He is our little musician and tonight, he whipped through about 6 different songs that are in our bedtime ritual, but we've never really heard him sing before.  He knew EVERY WORD. it was touching and startling in an "other worldly" kind of way. It turns out (as Katy pointed out) he ACTUALLY IS... a good listener.

They are my heart.  My love.  My pride and joy.  These boys make me wish for more hours in the day, week, year.

Falling asleep... more to come

El Poder

I spent the better part of last Monday into Tuesday at the Connecticut State Capital listening to testimony at the Connecticut Gun Violence Prevention Public hearing. I went because it was convenient: I didn't have to work that day. I went because I made a promise to myself to start actually standing up for what I believe, and not just liking pages on Facebook. I went because I was lucky enough to have help with the kids. I went because I don't love guns.

I stayed because I couldn't look away. I stayed because I couldn't believe how many more people were there to lobby for weapons than people trying to decrease violence. I stayed because of the vehemence coming from the gun proponents. I stayed because I needed to be heard.

Everyone marked themselves for the hearing. Those wearing yellow stickers were "responsible gun owners". Those wearing white stickers were "against gun violence". Nearly everyone was wearing a green ribbon for Sandy Hook. And nearly everyone stuck to the script: the yellow stickers railed against any additional legislation limiting guns or ammunition. The white stickers asked for limits on ammunition. I've thought a lot about what was said that day. The lilt of the three minute testimony has played like a bad 80s song on repeat in my head (probably a function of the fatigue, the disbelief, and the 14 long hours I was exposed to the rhetoric). I keep trying to simmer down the testimony into a concise summary and the outcome is always the same: the right to guns is more important than people.

The "right" I think they are demanding, though, is not necessarily the right to guns. I think it's the right to exert power over another. Isn't that, ultimately, what having a gun is? You can kill someone, sure, but almost more importantly, you can threaten to kill someone. Power exists everywhere: between people, among groups, even within ourselves. We use power to convince, to defy, to gain, and to change. We use words, and body position. We exploit information and emotional attachment to change the behavior of other people. From the threat of time out to a 3 year old, to physical violence against one another, we can make change.

The constant refrain from those wearing yellow stickers was that they are powerless without guns. Specifically, they are powerless without high capacity clips. They cannot protect their family without the guns. They could have stopped the violence at any number of mass killings. Despite the data suggesting that it is more likely there will be a gun injury in homes with a gun, the guns are fundamental to their safety.

It was, frankly, hard to listen to.

It can be frightening to have power. Maybe even more so to use that power. But it can be exhilarating. And it's that perceived exhilaration tangled with fear that opens the door to violence. As I've espoused before, I don't mind having some control, which usually means having power over something or someone. It usually scares the hell out of me though. What if I use it poorly? What if I'm responsible for how it all turns out? I can tell you right now I would never survive accidentally hurting or killing someone with a gun. Never. How we garner power, how we negotiate it, how we exert our power over others, these are things that define us. To assume that you will always be rational in a moment of danger, that you will always choose to use your weapon "responsibly", that you are the good guy, is a conceit beyond understanding.

Power, though, isn't always used diametrically. Sometimes, if we wield it well, it can be used collectively to make positive change, to inspire, and to make better the lives of those around us. Debates such as this one on gun control frequently draw a line in the sand and force people to take sides. The two extremes walk twenty paces in opposite directions and draw their weapons. And the group that gets silenced is the one in the middle. I don't know what the answer to decreasing gun violence is. There are so many factors, including but not limited to, mental illness, poverty, and discrimination. But I think it starts with both sides at the table agreeing that accidental or intentional deaths, especially those of children, are unacceptable. That it's too common. That, whatever the root cause, it needs to change. That as a society, we are unwilling to tolerate power exerted as violence.

We all make decisions about when and how to stand up for what we believe. Sometimes we can't. Sometimes it's more important to stay home. Sometimes it's not safe. But sometimes you just have to get out there. The ministers at our church took a chance one Sunday and did a reading of "For Sweet Honey in the Rock" by Sonia Sanchez. If you've never heard Sonia Sanchez read her own work, it's worth seeking out.

but we kept on organizing we kept on teaching believing
loving doing what was holy moving to a higher ground
even though our hands were full of slaughtered teeth
but we held out our eyes delirious with grace
but we held out our eyes delirious with grace

Hearing our ministers read with fervor and strength was one of those moments when there was no stopping the pinprick of tears behind my eyes. For every person that has stood up and fought for my rights, I gave a silent thank you. And then I resolved to get on the battlefield. I resolved to get on the battlefield with my hands. With my words. With my muscles. With my actions. With my friends.

I will get on the battlefield, but I will choose to go with people instead of guns.

You are what you eat

Milo: We're boys.
Mommy: yes
Milo: Im'ma boy and Jakey. We're boys.
Mommy: (thinking I know I'm a 'girl') What am I?
Milo: You're an ADULT.
Mommy: Yes, you are boys and I'm an adult.
Milo: When I'm an adult, I'm gonna drink lots of things...
Mommy: Like what?
Milo: Like coffee...and tea...
Jake: and beer and wine... And soda
Mommy: yes. It's very exciting. When you get bigger, you can have some drinks that kids don't get to have. But every family is different and rules about what kids can have are different in different families.
Jake: Like what?
Mom: Like in some families the kids can have soda. And in our family, the rule is kids can't have soda. And some families don't eat any meat.
Jake (sounding alarmed): BUT WE EAT MEAT!!!???!!!
Mom: Yes, we eat meat, but in some families, the rule is "We don't eat meat."
Jake: But we do... We're carnivores.