I curled up into a hole in my computer on Monday, when I decided to launch an alpha of my travelers site September 1, and I’ve been working non-stop since. Which is to say that I’ve only had beers at one social event most nights this week– I’m practically a hermit by Brazilian standards.
On Wednesday, I saw O Procurado (Wanted– Brief-Spoilers Alert, but you shouldn’t see it anyway). It’s the English movie, but they change the title screen. It’s about a group of assassins who induct a normal who then, with the help of the sole female in the group, kill them all. It’s horrible– do not watch it– all the moreso because storyline had some potential for punches, in around the bad magic that set it up. But it revved me up in a way that’s difficult to describe.
My body was pissed at me for not giving it free time or sunlight for a week. It accepted my motivations, but also extracted some rebalancing justice, one of which the realization that I can only improve my mind by improving my body.
We are our bodies. A body has just as much personality, intention, and intelligence, as a mind– and they’re the same personality, intention, and intelligence as the mind has, on a deep enough level. How my body gets sick, or feels tickles, or balances, mirrors how my mind resolves dissonance, and gets amused, and juggles tasks. And how it hears Portuguese is how I understand it.
My Portuguese is coming along, rather like a wino, making progress in stumbles and hiccups. But finally it’s within grasping distance of providing the ears and mouth of appropriate to my 26 years, and that’s what I need to make it. So my body asked me to live more like a Procurado– I was built to be a wolf, and I cannot treat my body like a sheep.
In many ways, I live like a child by choice. I never want to give up wonder and unplanned play-time, or transition from Amateur to Expert at the cost of my right to struggle and trip and make a fool of myself, or take responsibility that doesn’t allow for me to be erratic.
In particular, in Brazil, I’ve done little things to play-up my childishness. I can’t speak the language and I’m ignorant of the customs, so I want all the help I can get and don’t want people to expect too much. And in particular, I don’t want to inadvertently set up women to be disappointed by a person who can’t approach life in Brazil according to his years, although that’s another post.
A friend here asked if I wanted children. No way, said I, the world has too many people already. But yesterday I wasn’t so sure. What greater wolf-requiring project or world-changing gift can one give the world than another human being, capable of anything? Ultimately, I still don’t want children, and a 20+ year project is far outside my attention span… but maybe it’s time I started dating women with them.