381. Notes on the Hierarchy of Reality (Poem)

People come and go in my life
like ephemeral actors.

But the infrastructure around me
that remains to hold meaning
are the emotional ones.

Of love and hate
and friendship and trust
and jealousy and betrayal
and moreoever a curiosity
that beckons an insurge of new knowledge
of multiplexed, dynamic worlds
I never knew existed.

There are those who inspire
and are actors in my world,
who I project my emotions upon them,
and if I am lucky enough,
they assign emotional value to me.

And there are those who remain
backdrop audience.

For once my story is done,
I run to them for their sage advice
and solitarity of critique.

It is all in the Hierarchy of Reality
the mind constructs under
its own pre-built evolutionary design.

380. Poem / Song / Chant Called Principles of Scientific and Ecological Inertia (Quite Catchy, eh? Ha!)

Poem / Song / Chant Called Principles of Scientific and Ecological Inertia. Page 1.

Poem / Song / Chant Called Principles of Scientific and Ecological Inertia. Page 2.

Poem / Song / Chant Called Principles of Scientific and Ecological Inertia. Page 3.

PDF file for the poem:
http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/principlescientificecologicalinertia.pdf.

This poem is old. It was written I think in the Spring of 2006, during the time I was taking Dr. Martin Kennedy's Sedimentology course at UC Riverside. This poem draws the parallels of mutations, their successes and failures in evolutionary biology, ecosystems, as well as behavioral changes, and changes in entire human societies. If it works, it sticks, and it grows. It it doesn't work, it decays or collapses, and its parts morph into something else. So I would know, being a survivor of anorexia. Simple, simple logic under the whole jargon conundrum of the University. And so, this form of reasoning is being explored at the societal level by the Panarchy group, in which my advisor, Dr. Oran Young is affiliated with.

It's funny, my poetry--though out of place for a few years, now has context, and growing significance for what I am doing. I feel better, almost every single day now, being at UCSB.

So, the main theme is the properties of cycles of growth, change, collapse, and rebirth. I inserted a phoenix in the end . Because I didn't want to end in "decay / collapse." Coupling of mental observation-processing, mental mutation "epiphany," behavioral change, technological use-creation-change, environmental re-organization-use-change.... I have been wanting to write a story called the Phoenix of Science, documenting how a society had an intellectual bottleneck, and the ones who survived were the rebellious who hated the system, so they re-invented the language, they re-pigeonholed reality.

I also read this poem in light of my grandfather. He is still here, in my mind. He's in the mountains, you know. He's all over Mount Baldy. He's all over southern California. He's not gone. Hardly. In fact, he's freeer than ever.

The other thing I was thinking about is higher levels of organization beyond the individual. Like forming a group, a deep bond with a small group of humans, the co-alignment of purpose and motivation and skills, who create something greater than the capacity of any human can do. With film production, music production, creating an organization that can lead to the first grass-roots gay-elected official in San Francisco (so I have been inspired by Harvey Milk as of late--my neighbor friends took me to watch the movie, he was a phenomenal character). To be able to create a level of organization beyond one human and act like a coordinated super-organism is one of the most thrilling, engrossing feelings I have ever felt in my entire life. I have experienced is most consciously once with the final round of filming at Shifting Sands of Goleta Beach.

Not to mention, "the hardest part is always starting, but once you're going, you keep on rolling!" Get rolling, Vic!

379. Song / Poem "Purpose or a Process" Read to Dr. Barry Spacks Poetry Course

Here is a poem/song called Purpose or a Process. PDF file:
http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/purposeoraprocess.pdf.

I read the poem to Dr. Barry Spacks' poetry class last week and it was well received. I was asked to read it twice. Dr. Spacks mentioned that the title was very intriguing. The week before, when I was alone in my room in Goleta for about four or five days, I included Purpose or a Process as a "Sample of Five Poems that Question Reality." It may stay in the collection, but it may just have to stand on its own.

When I first crafted this poem, it actually emerged as a song, full blown with imagery. It poured out of me as a clear music video, during the Fall of 2007 when I was hanging out with my good friends Oscar and Dulce (I'm still in great touch with Oscar, of course!). My brain somehow was appalled by the Manicured Aesthetic, Pure Perfection of the Paseo Nuevo Mall. Perfect clothes. Perfect people. Perfect make-up. Perfect displays. Perfect, like some kind of Gattaca situation. And then I overlaid the imagery of clothing with machines, with the robotic motions of ships and transport, and the final railroad tracks of workers manufacturing these clothes in foreign countries. And I was angry and helpless all at the same time, because I asked whether a global society could operate in any other way. Someone will always be stuck with the dirty work. It's a matter of how society addresses the value of "dirty work." With imperialism practices, the dirty work is given to the disadvantageous group, whatever group that may be. Before it was posed as "slavery" or "caste system," and now it's posed as "free trade" or "capitalism." Tragic, eh? What delusion in all these stupid social science terms masking the underlying ecological transactions of our leaf cutter ant human selves! And the other issue is to overlay human beahvior with the behavior of multiple species of organisms and geologic phenomena, very much like a Godfrey Reggio film. The music for this poem is very primal drum-beat heavy. Not too much melodic variation, but very deeply profound and gothic vocals. I already have it sitting in my head, waiting to blossom one day :-).


When I presented the poem to the class, I was very explanatory. I was explaining who I am and where I come from, which is complex. I don't talk about anorexia, but if you keep prying me, I will reveal to you the dark source of all my light. First of all, I explained that in science, there are some fundamental issues in the philosophy in terms of "what is" versus "what ought to be." The notion of collecting data and observing the world, or actually learning something about the world and making decisions about your life and this society... the overall greater role of science in society. Hence, the dualist issue of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Gonzo Principle. Observer Effect. Interactor Effect. Do we do environmental science in denial of its implication for behavioral or societal change, or do we accept the need for a collective stimulation-response effect of a social organism (hence, the notion of "panarchy"). Flow of Knowledge --> Action.

Then, in the end, when you finally acknowledge that you know something and you are ready to change your world and collective behavior, then you start to realize that you as an individual are part of a vast, vast system. And you feel... absolutely helpless. How can one individual change an entire society? Besides Obama. We're fxcked. As my mother ingrained in me, "The only person you can change is yourself," which is a superb null hypothesis to start with. Which is why I live in this modern society for amusement, but I am mentally divorced from it, and I am ready to live in the boonies and hunt and fish. Can't wait! The vastness of society, this sense of helplessness.

Then you ask, is it a purpose, you impose a will or a purpose? Or you take a step back like an alien, like a scientist (observer-based scientist) and watch life as a process, because your relative sense of purpose is so diminuitive, you are swallowed into the realm or machine of process.

In the story, the two main characters make a huge epiphany, and if everyone saw what they saw, if everyone knew what they knew, then all the creatures would change their behavior. Then they came to realize that they can't snap their fingers and the creatures will change. Telling a story is futile, that experience combined with exposure to the story will one day allow the other creatures to snap... in their own terms. But at least through the process, the two characters found each other, and sought refuge in each other's company though the world operated in another spectrum, another dimension of perception and change. So, the story ends in tragedy, but also in simultaneous triumph. Finding friendship admist destruction (very much like the end of Fight Club).

Aside: Last quarter I mapped my soul on the previous existing scientific literature.

378. The Elephant and the Oak Tree Overspill // Song-Poem for Music Video Called "Perceptual Relativity"

Perceptual Relativity Poem / Song. Page 1.

Perceptual Relativity Poem / Song. Page 2.

PDF file for the Perceptual Relativity Poem / Song:

http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/perceptualrelativity.pdf.

Spillover from writing The Elephant and the Oak Tree (EOT). The concept for this poem came back in a trying time in the Fall of 2005. I was driving late at night and experienced the notion of relativity with the outline of a car in front of me. At one point I asked the question: Is the car coming closer or farther from me? Or is it of fixed distance, and it's changing size and shape? How will I ever come to know? Coming to think about it, I remember being on Martin Luther King offramp nearby UC Riverside.

The poem came later, and flashes of network-based photographer, e.g. branching networks in biology and geology, ripples, dunes, biological formations that seem to have mathematical rhythmicity to them. I am gathering a set of photographs related to this concept. The poem/song/future music video is intended to have a techno trance feel to it. I can't help flashing to a god-forbid beer commercial that showed the fast-paced succession of flora on a tropical island. It was phenomenal special effects for a biologist. And of all things, it was a beer commercial--Corona beer, I think.

I was about to use this song as a concept for a video for the Coastal Fund, but it never happened, which is just fine. My mind crafted a collage of scientists with different hats which perceive different things around the coast of UC Santa Barbara, which is still in my head, and I can use it for my own purposes.

This song/poem is associated with EOT because the main character goes through perceptual relativity throughout the entire story and struggles to figure out where she is at in space and time, and whether she should zoom in or zoom out.

377. Vamping the Lulu Storefront at http://lulu.com/questionreality

Continuing the Fateful Day of October 15, 2005. First step is to vamp up the website, the fundamental baseline stepping stone to which I will be dumping my brain on. Invasion of internet niche space much like the Adaptive Grid Model. Having a website was before a luxury. Now it's a necessity. Existing in this planar field of cyberspace. Sam said that when that all shuts down and collapses, at least he has his field notes. Just as long as a fire doesn't get his office.

And so I was thinking the same.

This website was built on the capacity to love and invest in somebody else. It is a beautiful thing, but a dangerous thing. As I have mentioned more than once in my previous blog, I have chosen not to invest in any one particular island of a person, but an entire world of a place, a region. Santa Barbara. I shall never be 100% burned ever again.

In the collage above, I provided images of the Revamped and Old Website. PDFs are below:

http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/1.questionrealityrevampwebsite.pdf
http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/2.questionrealitywebsiteOLD.pdf

I also included my Stokastika Profile I made through Google Groups. I have been meaning to put this up for quite a while. And finally, with a blank slate, I have an excuse to do so. PDF below.

http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/3.stokastikaprofile.pdf

As you can see in my Google Stokastika profile, I am chronically going through a Relativistic Identity Crisis. Profile is accessed at http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?user=stokastika@gmail.com&qt_a=Look+up+author.

376. Poem / Song Called "A CHESS of Fish," Coupled Human-Environmental SystemS (CHESS), and Identity Crisis of Environmental Media Graduate Students

Poem / Song called CHESS of Fish. I placed it first because it's the shortest and the catchiest of the three documents in this blog. I wrote it right before I wrote the final draft news journalism article on Dr. Chris Costello's research "Sharing Fisheries Wealth for Ocean Health." Oooh! It rhymes! And... I read this poem to Dr. Barry Spacks' poetry class last Monday. It was fresh off my plate, so I was excited about it. In the scheme of the three poems I read: Matrix of Metaphors, Purpose or a Process, and CHESS of Fish, it was well received. Dr. Spacks informed us that we should assume the highest of intellect of our readers, and we shouldn't footnote anything in the poems, but "CHESS" is a splended exception, since it's such a cool acronym that does not stand on its own. I quickly asked Dr. Spacks about my "knowledge set" for poetry. I didn't know who Burkowski was (some bar-based poet, women, the whole Hollywood of poetry), but most of the students don't even know what a tunicate is. So, can anyone give anyone a guilt trip for knowing anything or not knowing anything. Should I know existing poets, or should I know knowledge of the world that can feed into novel poetry? I will continue to invest in learning about tunicates and rhyolite, but some investment of being exposed to existing poets. I would rather expand my palate beyond the literature of existing poets.

PDF file for CHESS of fish: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/2.CHESSofFISH.pdf.

Short Story / Screenwrite Scene in the Grocery Store between Terra, Buz, and a bag of "organic" Oreo Cookies. The piece is entitled "Humans are Connected to the Environment? A Discovery of the Obvious." I wrote this after I wrote the Fisheries Information Network (FIN) first set of notes. I sent it to a few of my friends in the lab and my father. My dad, knowing Terra and Buz very well, had a huge belly laugh. He said the "oreo cookie" situation really worked and amplified and tangible-ized the absurdity. *Whew* He also felt very bad for Buz who had to deal with Terra's out-of-control existentialist rant in the middle of the grocery store.

PDF FILE for the screenwrite for "Discovery of the Obvious" is right here:

http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/4.humanenvironmentconnected.pdf.

Short Blurb on "Identity Crisis of Environmental Media Graduate Students." Page 1.

Short Blurb on "Identity Crisis of Environmental Media Graduate Students." Page 2.
PDF file for the Blurb:

http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/7.identitycrisisenvironmentalmediagr.pdf

It's funny. I am putting all this material on my blog. It keeps coming out. I work very hard. One day it will have a "better" place, "better" meaning other people may put it somewhere other than this blog. Maybe one day some people will absorb to some degree the things I think about. Like I said, a writer's work is only appreciated after he or she is dead. Going based on that null hypothesis, I need to continue to work, because that is how I survive. That is how I stay mentally sane.

At the root of all of this, it's only for sanity and survival... through the desire to care and attach myself to others and my surroundings.

375. Today is October 15 or 16, 2005 of My Writer Life (Bonus Three Poems!)

Writer Life. Short Essay. Page 1.

Writer Life. Short Essay. Page 2.

Writer Life. Short Essay. Page 3.

PDF file for Writer Life:

http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/writerlife.pdf.

Additional commentary of thoughts below:

0. Ever since I applied to the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship, I feel that I have acquired heightened consciousness and that my writing has improved... to some degree.

1.In the Questioning of Reality, my profession is to extract the best out of everybody and everything, and discard all things that are negative and broken, saving them for another day for a deeper transformation into light.

2. I need to wake up every single day and see something new. Even if I have to work hard and write to see it. Even if it takes blood and sweat and tears from connecting fragmented neurons of the deep… for me to see it. For me to see something new….

3. The only person who can change me is my own self.

4. The more I learn about the environment and interactions with the environment, the more I learn about the innerworkings of my own mind.

5. To Know More? To Know Less? But don’t Know Too Much, for I have learned in several occasions it leads Down the Road to Disappointment.

6. I just wrote “Fruiel” out of me (fake name for protection). I am no longer in pain…. The experiences are in me; the person is out of me. If you know what I mean. It’s a very writerly psychological trick.

7. It’s amazing to think I have been through so much torment the last three years and to only think that I have only consciously received two gray hairs is close to biologically daunting!

8. The best part about October 15, 2005 is that you will never know the future. You will never know the consequences of your own actions. Nothing is predictable. It’s blank slate all over again, carving a road, and living twice. Seeing new elements of your environment you have never seen before… every single day is a brand new adventure of altered inner perception.

9. When you don’t consider the outcome of the future, you stop thinking about “what is the next big break” of external forces. But you think about the internal forces; you think about and tend to the community of people who have come to accept and love you… and have made a home for you. You are tending to them through your writing. The rest of “greatness” is an illusion; it’s a fun game to pursue, but meaningless beyond your own very close intellectual kin… except perhaps, to greet new members of your intimate audience. In the end of the day, all you do is care about the people who care about you.

10. My aunt Jeri Lyn thoughtfully said over Christmas, “To be an artist, you must be bold and brave to be alone. To venture into the vulnerable reaches of your seemingly tough, yet fragile mind. To sort out the deep-rooted tangles. I have Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax by my side. A children’s book that changed the world. If he can dig through himself, then so can I!

11. It’s all about the deeper motives… the deeper motives in your own hands. It’s not about the Biologically Incorrect Blog. It’s about the Lulu.

12. POEM CALLED INTELLECTUAL POTPOURRI

So I met those two lovers
Of intellectual potpourri
They had great big bowers
Colored, playful rivalry

Certified geniuses
All stood back and stared and gawked
Their teasing thoughts meaningless
Rehashing what is for what it ought—

To be changed.

The sincerity of problems
Of our day.


Oh so silly!

The Sanctified Science of Potpourri!
Society exalts Egoes Of Arbitrary
To pseudo-subgod Higher Beings

For the Intellectual Entertainment
Of the Long Hours of Tonight
Just to relish and forget
In the long, long minutes
Of long lines

Of stores distracting
With groceries.

*Spit!*

13. POEM CALLED ECOLOGICAL RATIONALITY VERSUS EVOLUTIONARY PRIMALITY

If the world were less populated,
I would be easily satisfied with
The pre-existing protocols of biology—
Forage for a male and give birth to new human flesh—
The usual mindless routine of evolution.

But the world is not that way today,
And there is pressing value
For the birth of New Ideas
As opposed to the birth of empty-minded human biomass,
To which merely serves as a draining resource
Than a bountiful agent of thoughtful change.

And though evolution guides my thoughts toward
The Commonplace of Ingrained Biological Institutions,
My Ecological Rationality Trumps the Reptile
And it manipulates that lizard in me
Towards its very own goals….

In hope of finding all those
Who do and share and pursue the same.

14. Poem called LANDSCAPE'S COAT

So we were wearing similar coats

and it got too hot, it got too close.

Now we have our own landscape attire

Now what is our true, underlying desire?

In a stretched time lapse

Allo-pamatric romance

In space-time collapse

The pained study relapses

And Case Closed

Opens Again

Resuming Trial 2

Of the Experiment.

Will it end

In the same

Conclusion?

373. Big Dog Little Dog (My First Poem Under Dr. Barry Spacks)

Big Dog, Little Dog

There was a gentle, big dog
Who parked her teeny car
And a chubby, smaller poodle
Ventured out to bark:

"Who do you think--you can't be here
And take this very space.
It's for service vehicles
And I have your Drivers License Plate.

"I have all your information
Turn you into the Parking Dawg Phase."
She squacked and squirmed effortlessly
Without any thoughtful grace.

The big dog rolled over her eyes
And peeped, "I'll be on my way."
But the pooch rattled on, behind her BMW
And relished her controlling place.

The big dog had no Superior Ego
For chest-beating like an alpha-ape
For she knew in the back of her mind
That way back in the day....

"The Big Dog and the Little Dog
Is the Physics Law of the Land
But-in this vast Invisible Barbwire
Holds me to refrain, withstand

"To strip every single muscle,
Crush every bone out of the pooch
So I'll back my car, with no remark--
For there are consequences, social-immune.

"So I'll pulverize you to homo-soup
Through the Visions of my Almighty Mind
And take out your pooh-pooh resentment
On this venting, whimsical rhyme."

For small dogs live in pedistoled illusion
In a world of order, discriminating size
Small dogs may have their great-big barks
But Big dogs shall always have their bite.

This poem was written this morning based on a really "stupid" event. Some fat old bitter secretary woman with her BMW behind her comes up to me just this morning and starts lecturing me about "how I shouldn't park here and this is not my personal parking space." She kept rattling on, and I was like, "Okay, I'm leaving. Okay, I'm leaving. Okay, I'm leaving." One thing I fudge by in life is parking spots. I am notorious for getting parking tickets because I am very much into "efficiency," so to speak. But that lady didn't have to be a "royal bxtch," pardon my cliche terminology. Which sparked me to write the poem above--basically stating that the Law of the Land is Physics and if I were not in a Massive Society of Imaginary Rules, right now I would have either shot you with a gun or just kicked you in the stomach and you would be meat for condors... or just vultures and wolves in general. So, I left, knowing in my mind she was dead meat, even though I left with dignity and she felt that she was Queen Bxtch of Obscure Parking Spot by the Psychology Building. Amen for poetry to take this anger out!

Even though I did not show up to class on Monday (by complete accident), Dr. Spacks let me join his course. I am completely honored. I think he knows he has a mature student (who has been literarily isolated for way too long!). I am to be doing a 15 minute poetry reading (the art of presentation) this Monday. I want to do it first so I can fall off a log. It will force me to get stuff done otherwise, like compile all my old poetry from "god knows way back when."

372. Poem / Song Called "Small World"

I've been walking around
with tumors in my brain.

And I need to let them out
like flooding rain.

I can no longer hold in
And live in restrain.

And through a Small World
Inspiration is gained.

And so you have Hope in me
and gave me Faith.

And now I have all the Sparks
For me to Create.


In a small world
There is Healing.

Safe to take my mind's
Arduous journey.

In a small world
There is Healing.

Safe to take my mind's
Arduous journey.

371. Some People Need to Make a To-Do List for Survival (and I'm Still Taking Care of Visceral Items!) (Cable-Internet from Cox)

Vic's Sketch Self-System To Do List for more Visceral Survival, Version 1.

Vic's Sketch Self-System To Do List for more Visceral Survival, Version 2.

I still have a suite of paperwork laying on the ground associated with bills. Funzeeks! I suppose I am to be good and get rid of these issues before the quarter starts. Ever since my housemate Julie Ekstrom moved out (around mid May of 2008) (we ended up having the same advisor for grad school!) (oh! I miss Julie! She's up at Stanford! Gives me incentive to go up north and visit!), our billing system had become "decentralized." Julie used to have a centralized system in which she would tabulate all bills (except electric, she did NOT want to be affiliated with the operations of the bathtub-jacuzzi), and we would all pay her. Then afterwards, we established a decentralized system--which ends up working out, even though we have had sloppy accounting ever since--because the bills we are in charge of end up canceling out to some degree. Kyle is in charge of water and trash. Karl is in charge of electric. I am in charge of cable internet and phone. I am sure there are a couple of other minor financial charges to take care of, but Kyle has been very pro-active about things--like having a chimney sweeper come over to clean out the chimney--now we have fires in the livingroom! How cool! It's fun to see how all "transactions" work out such that there is a level of individuality and privacy, but each of us chips in towards creating a common good "collective" atmosphere. Degrees of freedom / degrees of constraint. Serenity prayer. Like a most routine theme of life. Especially in this world.

Here is some basic information about Cox Communications: 22 S. Fairview Ave. Goleta, CA 93117 805-683-6651.

Here are some Sketch Tabulations for the last 6-or-so months:

May 15-June 15, 2008: 72.99

June 15-July 15, 2008: 72.99

July 15-August 15, 2008: 72.99

August 15-September 15, 2008: 72.99

September 15-October 15, 2008: 72.99

October 15-November 15, 2008: 72.99

November 15-December 15, 2008: 72.99

72.99 / 5 people = 14.60

72.99 / 4 people = 18.25

**I think the accounting is simple and stable enough in my part!*

I know I have been horrible in terms of contributing to the Common Good in terms of Household Chores. I need to "mentally frame my mind" in order to get into good habits. The things that I can contribute in terms of collective cleaning--even though my housemates Kyle and Karl are stellar house-maintainers--they go above and beyond expectations--(1) I can take out trash (2) I can help clean up the bathroom (3) I can help maintain the kitchen cleanliness (4) I can vacuum every once in a while. I just don't want to be involved too much in kitchen and carpet affairs simply because (1) I am not a heavy kitchen user "I have an extreme love affair with the microwave, but that's about it." "Though I have a tendency to nibble off of old food on the verge of becoming stale in the refrigerator. Consider me to be the household mouse." (2) I don't own dogs--but oh! Mini Miss Einstein, Onyx Megafauna, and occasional visitors Bentley the Ambassador Dog and Jacumba I adore--they are my family and stress relievers!