I am in techno hell with the computor so excuse me not writing for a while. The machine is going to the shop and get fixed because I can' face talking for 3 more hours to tech guys on my cell phone which will cost me $$$$. At least this works. I think. More later.

Shall it be male or female say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
-Dylan Thomas

We are all females until mom gives us a shot of testosterone or estrogen, as the case may be, and our fate is sealed at least in terms of which sex we will be. Well maybe. There are several ways we can be male of female; physically, genetically, and of course, the most complex of them all, socially. It is in this wondrous womb of life, while we are drenched in hormones, that lots and lots of the wiring in our brains take place too. A little too much testosterone after I got my estrogen bath and I get more male wiring? I wonder if its a simple as that? Is that what makes tomboys, lesbians? Or are these things political choices? Frankly, I didn't have a choice about being a tomboy, prissy girl was not an option. Did my mom do this to me with her raging hormones at the time?

We had gills too. We must go through the entire evolutionary process while we are being manufactured. It is only too bad that we have no real memories of it and that memories come later after all the really good stuff in done.

Are we hard wired to have lots of selves? I don't know about you but I don't just have one personality. I have several to deal with the myriad things I have to do in life, like be an artist hermit, a socialite ( I do have to go out and be cool and interesting on occasion), a demanding activist/teacher, business woman, a shy, meek and humble human being when confronted with things that intimidate me ( I hide this well). These are the basic ones, Oh yes, there is the torch singer, Julie London type too. When I was in college they got so confusing that I lined them all up and gave them names and job descriptions. It helped a lot. After that it didn't seem to be a conflict anymore. If I need to do something really social or political I merely send Justine who handles all of that stuff. Phoebe Phoenix is the weird painter. Moana is the torch singer, etc. etc. I suggest for all the bipolar, schizoids out there that they try this as it can be so helpful. By the way, the shy, meek one doesn't have a name because she doesn't want one. Believe it or not she is, no doubt, the basic one that got squashed by all the others when I realized that shy, meek make life way too difficult. Since she is shy and meek she lets the others take over and is just along for the ride and quite happy from what I hear. We don't let her out too often and we cover for her well. Maybe she is Anne? Maybe I need to get to know her better?

The therapist(patient) is in if you have any comments.

Is there a god or a God? I don't know but as a philosopher friend of mine said once, when on trial for minor crimes, "I am obsessed with the question". If there is then how do we begin to define It? Certainly, the gruff but kindly father of our childhood,, with his constant nagging and list making, will no longer suffice, nor will all the varied experimental/conceptual gods of our hippy and perhaps drug induced youth. As mature adults our God must too be mature. Is there a god gene. Time magazine thinks God is hard wired into our brain. Of course, that doesn't mean there is one just that we have to create one. That leads to the overwhelming question, Why do we need a god? How has our survival depended on our continued insistence that there is one? Is God dead? Is God religion? or are god and religion mutually exclusive? God IS, we create religion to try and formulate and define god, which is fruitless and impossible. Anything great enough to be my god, has to be beyond my comprehension and certainly none of the gods being defined now fit that bill. If I can articulate god then it isn't. Poetry and art come closest to being successful and at least they are pleasing. Science does to but they aren't trying to which makes them the closest in my book.

Lots of my women friends think men don't feel and lots males (they are not my friends) think women don't think. Remember when it was so popular to demean women in public. The tables have turned, I think. Now women make fun of men the same way. Any way, I think males feel, but that they just don't know it. There are exceptions, obviously but when we think in terms of the extreme of the male/female mind the differences are remarkable. I think one of the huge reasons is that women's emotional center (amygdala) is hard wired to her speech centers and that connections isn't as strong in males. We know what we feel and we can articulate it and share it with others, sometimes ad nauseum but overall I think that is a good thing because it makes us more compassionate and able to understand others pain and happiness. I once read that the extreme male mind was the autistic. Talk about disengaged. No compassion, no communication. Fortunately, there are degrees of this behavior. But I am sure all of us have known males that are more antisocial than social. What then is the sociopath and the psychopath who is the extreme male mind but with the added dynamic to not just ignore others but a desire to hurt them. What is that? Is that just a confusion of the natural drive to hunt and mate. Since most serial killer crimes are male against female it does give one pause.

Billions and billions of years ago I think that a large one celled plant/amimal ate a smaller one celled plant/animal and the little one didn't die. It in fact became part of the big cell adding more complex functions to it and maybe even its mitochondria. I think this because mitochondria has its own DNA and they divide independently from the main cell. I think this would make a great basis for a sci fi movie. A big space creature comes and eats us. We don't die but live inside the monster functioning independently from it but adding greatly to its own evolution, not to mention our own. It could be a happy, upbeat movie or a real disgusting, depressing one. Either way I would like to see it.

Mitochondria are the power plant in our cells converting candy bars into energy. Without them we would all have chronic fatigue syndrome. You get all your mitochondria from your mom because your dad uses all his up trying to power the tail of the sperm. I know, I don't like to think about my father's sperm either but this is us and it must be important. This alone makes a great case for a matrilineal system, doesn't it?

I think it further reflects the huge differences between males and females. Males use up all their energy on one thing and we never use ours up. This seems especially apparent in sexual reproduction because when they are finished, things just get going for us. This energy expenditure lasts for the next 30 years or so. Actually, as long as offspring are alive they constantly need something and it is our job to give it to them or feel guilty.

Tomorrow more about male/female difference and guaranteed to make someone upset.

As a mental exercise I am studying the the largest thing we know, the universe and the smallest living thing we know, the cell. The macrocosm and the microcosm. Cell are fundamentally fascinating. If you take a cell and put it in a petrie dish it will become like an amoeba and adapt to being a one celled creature even though it has all the information to make a new me or you or an oak tree, whatever its DNA says. It will continue to do what we do, use energy, grow, reproduce, etc. It is amazing. It means we are probably really just an "ant colony" but under on binding and ants are really one organism but they are all loose and running around. The largest cell in the world is the yolk of an ostrich egg and the longest is the nerve cell of a giraffe which can be 10 feel long. Cells are adaptable. We can learn from them.

Get this! The observable universe is l,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (l with 24 zeros). In language this is a million million million million miles. In mental comprehension it is really really big. We describe this universe with two theories that are not quite adequate so we are looking for a unified theory. This creates a certain paradox according to Stephen Hawking and this is soooo interesting. "If there really were a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions - so the THEORY ITSELF WOULD DETERMINE THE OUTCOME OF OUR SEARCH FOR IT". This is philosophy, this is theology. No wonder the religious right is so upset. Science is taking their job. The best thing to do obviously is not to run away from it, but to embrace it. All the right wing universities should open the biggest astrophysics departments around and hire all the best people and find the unified theory (God) and they could own it and make up their own myths about it so they could control everyone like they seem to want to do. I, at least have respect for the catholics in that they have quite an active Jesuit astrophysics search going on. They even apologized to Gallalio(sic). It is never too late, I say. They have their own telescopes. They have one here in Arizona, on Mr Graham. We call it the Pope Scope.

Hint for tomorrow. We may be the result of a larger one celled animal eating a smaller one.

I heard yesterday that they have a name for the new planet they discovered in the Kaiper belt, out beyond Pluto (which might not be a planet). It, or rather she, is named Xena after the warrior princess of TV fame. This has to be a first. A planet named after a TV character. That's not all, Xena has a moon and, you guessed it, it's called Gabriella, after Xena's TV side kick. This opens up all sorts of possibilities now that we don't have to name our planets after the pantheon of worn out Greek and Roman gods we can use movie stars and/or fictional characters. Actually it would be better to be able to name actual stars after the real movie stars but I think we should stick to our solar system with our heros and not name someone else's sun say, Brad Pitt. Although Ringo Starr would be sort of cute, don't you think? We have lots of possibilities here since the guy who found Xena said he was sure there were at least 20 more new planets out there. Lots and lots of names. I vote for Elvis (the young one) for the name of the next big discovery. What about you?

Rocks are easier than People or any living thing for that matter even a one celled ameba . There is a certain comfort in geology since there are really on 3 type of rocks to remember and they can go back and forth being one or the other. For example, at one point a rock can be igneous and then metamorphic at some other time a billion years later. There are tons of complex things to know about life forms the least of which is that they are all made up of cells that have molecules that reproduce them. Think about enzymes, catalyst that are not changed by the chemical reaction they cause. How is that possible? Then we can get into the complex behavior of various types of life and how they react to each other and to the world. Zowie! I can see why people eschew biology in favor of geology. Take a nice drive to a road cut on a New England autumn day, pick up a few rocks and analyze them in the comfort of a lab. No Jane Goodall's there, spending a life time sitting in a jungle with a bunch of apes trying to understand them.

I wrote this after thinking about how much I love rocks. It is really shallow though but I will publish it anyway as that hasn't seemed to stop me before. The real trouble with geology is that it is almost impossible to get a straight answer from a geologist. Ask one some time, "what kind of rock is this?: and you will get way too much information about it when all you wanted to know was something like,"It's granite, or slate or Gold (even better)."

Things in life that bother me. This is my new list. I am having trouble accepting the concept of invisible light. I mean, isn't the whole idea of light that it is visible. Light is just that - light. Without it nothing's visible. So, now at this late date I must accept the idea that radio waves and MICROWAVES ! are light, they are just invisible. Please. Who says so? I have just come to accept the concept that waves are also particle and now I have to grasp this light thing. Visible light is great as it is color and color is something I love and understand on lots of different levels. Did you know, for example, that the English language has the most words for color, some 3000 plus, more than any language. I think we can make some assumptions about English speakers from this. We like color and it is very meaningful to us. Maybe we are even more sensitive to color than say the Germans or the French. Although, the French do quite well with it. I wonder how many words for color the Eskimo have? I remember hearing that they had hundreds of words for snow. I have one word for snow. There was a tribe in Africa that had red, green, blue and brown. That's it. Miners came and taught them yellow so they could find the yellow stones that had diamonds in them.

I remember reading this really cool thing about the levels of the brain. The old brain, the first one we got when we just had crawled out of the primordial swamp, the reptilian brain, controls the heartbeat and breathing and essential stuff that if we didn't have we wouldn't be here. As we evolved we got the second layer, the emotional brain, or the Limbic system which was essential to forming relationships with other people and places, etc. If we didn't have it we might still be here but we would be a bug. Then we got the neocortex which is the thinking brain, which gave us reason and language. It gave us the "BOMB" too which might make us extinct or at the very best go back to phase one. I think E.O. Wilson said it best (anyway I think it was him) when describing the levels of the brain:

1. heartbeat
2. heartstrings
3. heartless

Anyway that is how I memorized the different functions. I memorized the planets by saying, "My very educated mother just serves us nine pickles." Get it? Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. I guess I need a new one for the new planet they discovered just beyond the Kiper belt and then there is the controversy about Pluto being a real planet. Oh well. It worked for high school. Just about the only thing that did.

A single neuron may be rather dumb, but it is dumb in many subtle ways. - Francis Crick.

What impresses me about my brain is that when it couldn't become any bigger and still manage to be born of a human mother it figured out all sorts of way to keep evolving like:

1. It got really wrinkled so that it would have more surface area for the new neocortex (is the new redundant there?)
2. It figured out, and this is so cool, how to store things outside of itself. It did this with language and especially poetry and stories, art and then of course alphabetic literacy. Inventing an alphabet, a bunch of abstract squiggles to represent sound was huge. All the above things were huge on our evolutionary path. I image each new thing we learned changed our brain in significant ways adding more neurons and axons and dendrites, etc and hence more capacity for new things. Each new thing, of course, changed the existing culture tremendously. What is amazing is that the separate parts of the brain are rather dumb like Crick says, but the synergy, good grief, it is everything. We are so much greater than the sum of our parts.

Art makes eccentricity safe. Diane Ackerman

When I reached puberty I started having problems with my eccrentricity. Who didn't? Actually, I am aware of lots of people who didn't. They are the ones who when asked "Did you like High SchooL?" answer yes. I am never friends with those people since the are the ones that made my life a living hell back then. The deal was then that you had to be like everyone else and I tried but somehow it really didn't come together for me. I finally ended up with the other misfits, the baddies and the art nerds. I made wild synaptic leaps between the two groups. The artists won, thank god. I shudder to think of what would have happened to me if the bads would have stolen my soul. The bads were cynical and unhappy. Actually so were the artists, but they were cynical and unhappy in a deep meaningful way that led to creating art. The bads just drank and ran around in fast cars. The bads were rich. The artists were dazzled by the mystery in life (we weren't rich) and as Cioran says in A Short History of Decay......life is tolerable only by the degree of mystification we endow it with. I think if we were to study "Art" and could begin to understand the working of the quirky artist's brain we would learn a lot about how the brain perceives how it knows. Before language it was all images. Images are us. I guess this doesn't even begin to explain why bits of sodium and potassium (gatoraid actually) can make me different and why in being different I found a home in the arts but it does open the question and adds to the things I have to think about and solve before I stop listening to the prompting of those bits of electrochemicals.

When I am talking to myself am I having a monologue or a dialogue? Are we one or are we two? or are we both one and two?
Shunryu Suzuki, says "our body and mind are both two and one". But he was talking about the Zen mind. Is that a "normal mind". Are we all Zen?