Mariano Maluf

“From a little spark may burst a flame." - Dante Alighieri

The Spark(s)

Let’s start at the beginning.

My Mother, Maria del Huerto Michelli was (is) a devoted and passionate Educator, and she has always loved teaching and guiding children in the marvelous processes of discovery and learning.

Anything I put in words will be a small shadow of the feelings inside, but nevertheless words are the medium here so I shall try.

Despite many challenges throughout her life, she managed to be really great at her job and to love it, (which many of us aim to be able to do), while keeping a family together including raising five children, really all on her own. It’s impossible not to be biased, I know, but I am a direct witness of her impact in people: even after leaving her professional life as Teacher, students continue to recognize her and express their heartfelt affection, admiration and gratefulness for what she did for them. I know that this can only exist where there is an authentic vocation, fueled by generosity and an unbounded love for others. Whatever sense and measure of “practical” spirituality I may possess is clearly rooted in her life’s example, more than in anything else, only because she afforded me (and still does) with the chance to see the live manifestation on what she believes in, and once cannot ask for anything more.

It is said that we become what we repeatedly do, and so her teaching permeated life. By extension, school books, manuals and magazines were always around the house. Moreover, pencils, markers, scissors, paper and glue populated desks and tables, helping to complete school projects all of kinds. Out of almost nothing, she was capable of multiplying things in pursuit of homework, or simply fun activities to keep us entertained and engaged. This is -to this day- one of her many magic gifts, one that continues to captivate new generations. Creating, touching, glueing, cutting, scratching, painting, drawing, doodle-ing was then encouraged. Nothing perturbed her, not that I can recall in those days, so she allowed for chaos in the name of learning and experimentation. Oh, and music. Always music playing, and we know how that affects humans, in cognition, mood, outlook, and so on.

In any case, I believe that her love for literature, creativity and teaching, and the environment surrounding my early years, influenced me to also develop both an appreciation for the arts, for tinkering, and a deep desire for lifelong learning.

As far as I can tell, the first-ever “scientific” experiments I recall doing took place during my time in a Science Club in which my Mother registered me when I was a kid still in primary school. This club met in a kind of a lab, really an open facility located in Parque Sarmiento, Cordoba’s largest public park, spanning 17 hectares (43 acres) and close to the largest University campus in town. This was actually quite far away from home, but as it was common then and there, I just walked to a bus stop a few blocks from the house, and took bus 116 on Saturday mornings. It wasn’t like school -maybe in other places schools were already doing this, but not when and where I grew up, so this was fun, and hands-on. Funny-looking glass containers were involved. And fire, and microscopes! Some activities were observational and most dealt with simple chemistry, but I remember a more serious attempt at biology, involving collecting and analyzing samples to draw conclusions and son - the scientific method in practice. As a science field trip we went to a pond nearby to study the effects of eutrophication in the aquatic ecosystem of the duck’s pond close by. A seed had been planted.

Also important was the fascination sparked by other reading materials I could find at home, from old maps and travel brochures (one of my Uncles was a pilot for the Air Force Pilot and started a Survival school there), to technical books, like one I distinctly recall about the Physics of Optics, which belonged to my Godfather, Francisco Domingo Michelli.

A towering figure with a warm personality, he was undoubtedly a huge influence in my life, both as a solid professional with high work ethics, and as a caring individual.

As a pioneering, inventive engineer with quick wit and clear resolve, he worked tirelessly across Argentina, Latin America and Europe creating new installations & capabilities, overseeing complex projects, and even serving as a Director at the Institute for Scientific and Technical Research (CITEFA).

During my trips to Buenos Aires I visited with him and his inseparable wife, Aunt Norah Ramos de la Vega, and relished hearing their stories, told with unparalleled enthusiasm and his legendary attention to detail, while we enjoyed Aunt Norah’s Empanadas, before a delicious dinner. The moment I arrived in Belgrano and started walking towards his apartment building I knew it was going to be a memory to cherish all my life. By the time I exited the elevator on his floor, he was there ready to open the door and greet me with his strong embrace, and some joke about my heavy walking, or getting lost in the city. Larger than life, he somehow liked me enough to share some pearls of wisdom mixing his own hard-earned life lessons with his unique blend of humor and perspective; always encouraging and offering solid life and career advice. The coffee he lovingly prepared was as great and loud as his wake up call in the morning, to make sure I got to my appointments in time. I shared many interests with him, and he enjoyed talking about the past, the present and the future, especially about the things he cared about most deeply.

One of his projects was an auto-biographical book of memoirs: an account of all his life experiences, and those of some of his close relatives. This was a self-imposed tasks as an admirer of great family mentors he had growing up in Cordoba, and even after leaving at a young age to attend the military academy, where he graduated after years of sacrifice and dedication. Many in the family had been asking him to put the stories in a book, and so he very generously did so. After his retirement (acknowledged in the rank of General), he continued pursuing his multiple passions with an enormous fighting spirit and joy, despite many long-standing challenges and difficulties. His life legacy and example live on, and he is still recognized by family, friends and colleagues as a smart, humorous, caring and generous human being.

And speaking of family, there was something unique about growing up in a neighborhood of immigrants, particularly of Spanish and Italian origins, with the latter group including first generation people who continued to speak in their native dialects. With Uncles, Aunts, a good quantity of Cousins and other slightly more distant relatives, it was not easy to get bored, or lonely as a kid. Despite enjoying games and activities like playing some Futbol in the streets, summer Swimming, or playing Basketball (in that growing order of preference), I could alway return to reading, which naturally fueled my imagination.

My Mother’s Sister, and my true Godmother, Virginia Del Valle Michelli is -among other things-, a math and numbers wizard: a de-facto Accountant who somehow started as a Biology Professor. Besides being a walking lightning in every family reunion, the proverbial heart of the party, she was always present in whatever way she needed to be, to ensure we were taken care of. She made possible for us what would have otherwise stayed in the realm of wishful thinking and frustration. She may be small in size, but her heart greatly exceed any normal measurement. Her husband, my Uncle Julio Conci is another unique character, who, while growing up, I saw as a mix between Tarzan and Indiana Jones: sporting the biggest knife I had ever seen, crossing a dubious bridge with his loyal german shepherd dog on the side, and getting into unexplored territory in the hills driving his pale green Jeep truck. This was not (entirely) a big stretch for my fertile childish imagination: in their place I saw goats and vegetables, chickens and dogs, birds and cats, and a store that sold anything and everything. And yes, books too. In fact, I had never seen books as diverse as theirs, which in turn caused interesting, open and usually lively discussions more often than not leading to many, many more questions. Book topics could range from J.J. Rousseau’s theories on education, to E. Von Daaniken’s speculations on archeological interpretation, and yes, encyclopedias on Biology with amazingly vivid pictures and detailed explanations about fauna and flora. But things did not end with just the books, no. The camping trips and holidays in the countryside that they led helped make those things real by actually allowing us to go into nature, and live in and with it: whether it was digging trenches and building dirt platforms to avoid waking up in a wet, soggy tent (I missed that on my last camping trip), collecting wood and making fires, learning basic survival skills (without calling them that), finding and picking up mushrooms to dry them out for salads, cleaning dishes and ourselves in the river, or building primitive fishing traps and rods to catch fish, and frying them in a pan for dinner, we had amazing experiences living a not so manicured existence in a fully natural setting. No glamping, no electric lights, bathrooms or running water. What a gift. Where else can you go out on a hike to fish through dense brush, only to have the wildest encounters with a Yarara snake, two Coral snakes (trying to each each other), and a huge Tarantula. Safety was not fully guaranteed, but on the other hand, it was. Great outdoors experiences, memories like no others.

Like many kids, I was inquisitive, and while books were great, I needed more, so I frequently found myself opening things up to see what they had inside, and with any luck, figure out how they worked they way they did. mechanical (or electric) clocks. Mechanical contraptions, motors, plastic toys - none were out of scope, I had very few boundaries. This of course led to many disasters, given that taking things apart is not as easy as putting them back together. Valuable lesson indeed, albeit not without some cost: either the things stopped working for good, or if the thing was already half-broken, my ego was fully damaged if I couldn’t fix it. The silver lining was a sort of early relationship with the possibility of failure, and maybe some small wins against my own shyness in regards to taking risks. Of course opening up an old radio that nobody cares about is one thing, but trying to fix the audio system of the neighborhood restaurant -and failing twice- is a much tougher blow to absorb at that age. So, I had to learn more, and that meant seeking help in the form of many extra-curricular classes outside of the school system, including Radio Operator classes on Friday nights, TV & Radio repair classes on Saturday mornings, and so on. Oh, and English lessons twice a week for good measure -in retrospect, a visionary move by my amazing Mom, once that has served me well in my life.

Around the same timeframe, the discovery of the Lupin magazine was a pivotal point. All sorts of hobbies and interests came out of diving into each magazine I could get my hands on. This amazing creation was forged in the brains of three colleagues, two of which stayed with the project through many decades. This was not ordinary comic - many of the characters were not typical of comic books, and had a different set of motivations and sensibilities, all of which was wisely mixed with articles and projects representing a growing and ever evolving list of hobbies and interests around experimental radio communication kits, practical electronics circuits, outdoors survival and camping tips, kite building, model airplanes, astronomy, music, and later on, computers and programming. During a work trip, I took time aside to visit the birthplace of this inspirational imagination machine, right in the heart of Buenos Aires, and I was able to meet one of the original creators and express my admiration. Oh the simple but cherished gifts of life.

Multiple documentaries like the ones about Ramon y Cajal, and Einstein kept feeding a growing interest in the power of scientific discovery (including getting me excited about the prospect of having Physics in High School!), and then the first chapter of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos came along. This was another pivotal point. Around that time, I had started to capture some thinking, both frustrations, conjectures and dreams, in a sort of journal, spread across spiral notebooks and whatever pieces of paper I happened to come by when I had some insight. During a summer holiday in the hills near the Punilla valley, with my back against a big warm rock and my gaze toward the sky, I conceptualized and wrote what I called a “Theory of Reality”. I through and wrote when I was between 14 and 15 years old, and found myself freely musing about the evolution of human sensory perception and the electromagnetic radiation in the known universe. I could “not not” see a connection, as one of my mentors would like to say. Regardless of my naive and rudimentary “scientific thinking”, few other moments in my life have felt so clear and so true, and therefore I will always treasure the thoughts and feelings I associate with this idea.

Obviously, from teenage free-thinking to scientific breakthrough there is a gap and a bridge to cross, to be generous, and therefore I am no way comparing things in the next section, merely making a connection based on how things felt for me.

Decades after that notebook entry, and never having returned to those ideas, I found myself attending a work conference where the Neuroscientist David Eagleman presented his talk on sensory substitution. He talked about creating new senses for humans, as part of his research on how we form perceptions and whether the brain is a general-purpose computer, capable of adapting to fully understand signals that may get to it through a different pathway: vibrations felt in the body in a certain pattern (sense of touch) can be translated by the brain into letters and words (sense of sight).

This had a shocking effect on me on two fronts: on one, it re-ignited my love and passion for scientific discovery given the underlying principles he cites and the potential to radically change life for so many people, and on the other, it reminded me of my capacity to be surprised, to tap into the childlike wonder of yesteryears. In essence it helped me see own ingenuity with new eyes as a intuition that at its core was not untrue, nor was it devoid of potential. The central notion I had poorly articulated years and years ago, that human sensory perception is in essence malleable according to the surrounding environment, was taken to a whole different level including a practical application to help people acquire and develop new senses.

Clearly what I described at 14 is light years away from what Eagleman so aptly discovered and proved, but the point is not to see a straight line, but a series of though exercises that might have led to interesting places, had I stuck with it as nugget of gold that is first prospected, then unearthed and once in the light, can be refined and then made into something with a value that exceeds that of its own weight in gold. The personal lessons learned around this are still reverberating in me, as they tell me of self-confidence and perseverance, about belief in imagination and courage in action. I intend to take note, and learn from it.

“I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.” - Jack London