426. Poem Called "Real Thing" Continuation of Blog #423 "The Tragedy of Nature in a Box"

PDF version of the the poem is HERE:
http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/realthingredwoodtreePOEM1.pdf

Above is a poem called "Real Thing" as to which I wrote back in early March of 2006, when I went with the UC LEADS gang from UC Riverside to the annual UC LEADs Research Symposium event held at UC Santa Cruz that year. The concept is a continuation of "Tragedy of Nature in a Box" which is a satire of the "commodification of Nature" in order to save and keep alive the dxmn thing you love! At the same time, commodification or plastification of Nature adds a lot of "clutter" to our human lives. This poem embodies the notion of how the author was so excited and overwhelmed to finally encounter the "real thing" of the redwood tree rather than the plastificated and pixelated representation of the thing itself.

I started relooking and re-editing this poem post Origins Conference (April 2009) and then became completely fired up about the "Tragedy of Nature Inside a Box" Syndrome as I heard about Communications Campaigns in saving deep coral reefs during the COMPASS conference. I am destined to be locked into something I don't want to do if I want to be financially viable in this society! AAACCCKKK!!!

Well, I think there is a fine line in terms of what I think is "cool" and "not cool" in terms of "nature" versus "representations of nature." When a scientist discovers the mechanisms of sticky feet in geckos and then applies this knowledge to making super sticky glue to enhance fundamental properties of engineering materials for the practical embetterment of all of humanity... I honestly don't have a problem with that. This is the genius process of science and engineering! When Tiffany and Co. makes a very small collection of fine jewerly that celebrates the inspiration of deep coral in our oceans, and then sells these figurines for really jack rip-off prices to elitists members of this society... I still somehow don't have a problem with that, because the process of generating a rare art piece demonstrates inspiration from the natural world. Maybe the mass produced marketing and pixelation of the rare art piece bugs the hxll out of me. When gecko plastic figurines are being deformedly mass produced (along with fake plastic redwood tree figurines) in China and then sold as dinnerware and bathroom decor or sold as useless mass-produced table-top oh-that-kinda-cool-to-look-at-trinket right along side the Hannah Montana collection... THEN... I'm starting to have a problem with that. Fine lines are crossed. I'm a scale person. Small-scale is good, large-scale becomes sin because it's ultimately heavily bioturbating and impactive and non-sustaining.... There's a fine line between inspirational production versus mass-production commodificaiton to make a buck.

(How come the Bible's stopped being written?) Maybe I should write an updated Chapter to the Bible, and add an 11th Commandment. Plastification of Nature and Experience: Scale is Sin. Thou shalt come to know and learn of thou local community. Thou shalt live and consume and produce locally with thou local community. Otherwise, as my father says, "Truth comes with scale."