475. Poem Entitled "Untended Cemeteries" Revealed Through Mike Davis Writing and Landscapes Class at University of California, Riverside

The PDF of the poem "Untended Cemeteries" can be found here: http://sites.google.com/site/stokastika2/untendedcemetariesPOEMFINAL.pdf.

It's funny to think I wrote this poem back in June of 2009 but I wasn't really excited, nor eager to share it with anyone, perhaps because I sincerely felt that I as the author am expecting the reader to be in tune with environmental details. Perhaps because I am expecting some form of natural science background such that the reader would appreciate the comparisons and metaphors that unite the entire streamline of poetic thought. In short, the formation of this poem began when my housemates Karl and Kyle asked me to "prune and clean around this tropical plant in the dark, back corner of our backyard." Boy, I didn't know I was going to delve into a rabbithole, physical and mental! Apparently this tropical plant with extremely large leaves and very sticky sap/xylem/phloem in its branches had not been tended to for at least 3 years. There had been an extensive accumulation of layers upon layers of dead leaves, tangles of rope-like vines, all coated with damp-goopy dust-muck, with bonus strata of spider webs with no orderly shapes.

That was it. That was the ultimate spark. My mind went down the rabbithole. The theme was DEATH, more specifically HOW ORGANISMS RELATE TO THE DEAD BIOMASS of their own kind, humans included. I have come to realize throughout all these ecosystems I have been in outside of the human world, most organisms are pretty sloppy about their tending to their dead. I was particularly shocked by the "cemeteries of living among the dead" in kelp forests--living EATING the dead... cannibalism... how unethical! Biomass is recycled in the ocean, largely, seemingly through the profession of "scavenger" and in terrestrial plant ecosystems, recycling relationships between living and dead seem to be more "biogeochemical," in which there is decomposition and other mediating abiotic factors aiding the process (e.g. wildfire).

And then I make reference to "frugal" burials as to which my best Chinese friend Talei referred me to--how several people in China are buried face-down in mudswamps in faraway mountains. And speaking of mudswamps... such an environment led to my reference to the very recent discovery of a mummified baby mammoth, who was presumed to have croaked in swamp like environment. Sometimes taphonomy creates LAGERSTATTEN MOSQUITO-AMBER-SAP CIRCUMSTANCES in which a fossil almost serves to be a CRYSTAL BALL to the past (not included in poem, dangit).

And then my mind drifts into HUMAN ABSURDITY--"tended cemeteries" within our lifespan, in which emotions and memories run rampant and wild in our heads, and so we don't cannibalize our dead grandparents, and laying them to rest in a box or a pile of ashes at some tree is essentially a form of our own "resting of our minds, our souls" through the passing of a "loved one." It seems from here, four options can happen: (1) if you're in a graveyard, you will be dug up by anthropologists a few hundred years from now, or by aliens a few million years from now (when all emotions and memories no longer exist in any living head, depends on your degree of preservation, must choose wisely your "natural burial site" some good basin with rapid deposition of sediments, a geologist would know), might end up in a museum, cool (2) you might instantly become mummified and be a part of the Bodyworks show (not included in poem) (3) if you're cremated, you become "ecologically reincarnated" into the system from a biogeochemical perspective (I referred to ecological reincarnation only once in Blog 350 (which included sketch descriptions of my grandfather's passing). My father told me that Ray's and Marion's (my grandparents) ashes are mostly made of calcium and they will dissolve in the winter rains and snow fast enough.

It's funny. I wrote this poem before my immediate family (Bub, Mumsy, JenJen) had a formal memorial for my grandfather Ray (up in the sugar pine behind the cabin) and grandmother Marion (by the incense cedar to the right side of the cabin). I'm sure if I wrote the poem afterwards, I may have approached it a little differently... or even added a little more information. An affiliated poem I wrote post-grandparents-memorial is "Death of Anonymous Meaning" (Blog 453).

A couple of other points I didn't include in the poem. (1) I removed a stanza about the "efficiency of ecological reincarnation." I would feel good feeling instantly useful to the rest of the ecosystem as soon as I croaked. (2) My housemate Kyle brought up the point of "untended nurseries." I think from his point of view, Kyle was emphasizing the notion that organisms just "accept the environment around them as a default, a given. Organisms in general don't "tend the environment," or at least at the SCALE that humans do. I feel that we humans are discrediting other organisms in terms of their degree of "maintenance and constructionism" of their environments. Other organisms are by default "landscape planners" and "engineers" of their environments, intentionally or unintentionally. Default examples are primates using stick tools, beavers building dams, birds building nests, most mammals rearing and tending to their young, ants building underground colonies, gophers building tunnel networks. All of these activities require construction and maintenance. And by default, an organism occupying space, consuming resources, pooping out wastes, and replicating, is BY DEFAULT, engineering their environments. Simple biological existence requires engineering, with varying degrees of tending. So? I have not been motivated to write an "untended nurseries" poem, even after three months time. Oh well.

So, I'm posting this poem simply because I was so stimulated when being immersed in Dr. Mike Davis' "landscapes and writing" graduate creative writing course at the University of California, Riverside. It's tragic that I didn't have a chance to attend the class earlier, but at least I'm being exposed now. I was fairly quiet with the class. I was, as Jules would say, "Reading the Conditions," figuring out the composition of students of the class. And I DO SAY, I AM IMPRESSED. THIS TRULY IS A GRADUATE COURSE. This writing is by far a step beyond the writing I have been exposed to at the undergraduate Creative Studies courses I've sat in at UC Santa Barbara. What a fresh breath of mental air. Good brain pollution this evening. Very good. No one really seemed to mind my presence. Diverse group in the class. I am amazed by the use of humor, satire, wit by most everyone. I was more impressed by the male writers than female writers thus far. One piece stood out fairly well as an overall stand alone of all factors, substance + consistent style; it was a modern description of Venice Beach. Another article was about how some angry dude who was dumped by some ex-girlfriend bxtch and was therefore angrily traveling along the Route 66. Though he had adjectivious supersaturation, I thought the ex-girlfriend added solid motivation to the story, and he had some brilliant anthropomorphizing of his technologies--his beaten up truck and his cell phone. Three brilliant metaphors of the evening: (1) describing the Missouri landscape as "a pop-up book without the splendor." (2) describing Route 66 as the "birth canal for the west." (3) identifying insects on windshield wipers and car windows based on "splatter patterns" talk about hilarious taphonomy! studying the death of organisms!

I noticed how I felt and where I was at in terms of "environmental writing" and other people's baselines. I am beginning to notice "states of consciousness" of my inner thoughts. The state of highest consciousness is when my mind creates a system and a story that is a completely alternate reality--which lives up to Picasso's "art is a lie to help us realize the truth" comment. So, my mind has currently "left this Planet Earth" into these alternate realms of higher consciousness. So any form of description of an outing, like, "I went to this street in Fontana and saw this and that and here's a sprit of satirical humor, and then I called my friend and went to that street that had this landfill with a flower on top and it was profound, and here's another interpretational sprit." My writing was like that--an inventory of everyday events with sparse interpretation--that was back when I was 18-19 years old, but I'm still seeing this pattern among a few students in the class--they're still very "inventory-descriptional" with their writings, and perhaps overloaded with adjectives (which makes it pseudointerpretational). I guess that's called "flowery writing." It made me come to realize that from age 18 to today, my "final draft writing" has become more and more "interpretational" than descriptional. And it compounds; it's additive. So each piece of writing, seems to become more and more dense. And when I have a story still rooted to planet Earth, like The Mountain's Last Flower, I packed it with as much surrealistic metaphor as possible, within means of controlled exaggeration, of course! My head is in such an alterate universe that my capacity to "retain memory of regional details, like names of plants and birds and sedimentary rocks" has been in this "unretrievable" dormant section of my mind.

An older, trendy-looking man sitting right next to me shared Mike's Syllabus and Basic Definitions for the course. The first few lines in the syllabus prompted my reference to Untended Cemeteries. If you dug underground from where you were standing, what would you find? With our shoves, we are digging our way home... in the landscapes our minds, our hearts. Some themes that kicked in right away: (1) most creative writers are character and plot driven, the setting sucks "lazy, thin descriptions" and non-interactive (2) "landscape" is a central word and basically goes based on my premise "the environment is a construct of your mind" (3) landscape ecology is the investigation of "what is" (e.g. Environmental Impact Reports) and landscape planning is the imagination of "what ought to be" based on "what is" (e.g. Bulldozing and House Building) aka "purposeful intervention" or "engineering." (ecology more "objective" analysis "science" and planning is more "normative" value-ridden synthesis "art") (4) One thing NOT talked about is the "INNER LANDSCAPE" the interaction between the "inner landscape" emotions/rationale and the "outer landscape." (5) What is valued and appreciated in the class is predominantly the NOVEL and the UNEXPECTED, and CONSISTENCY-CONTINUITY-WITH PRECISION space-time-emotions-rationale. (6) Balancing personal experience with universal truths. (7) Visuals and words go hand-in-hand, writing a story is like the making of a painting. The Matrix of the Mind. Mapping Language on Landscapes (see this BLOG and this BLOG) (AND PLEASE SEE THIS BLOG).

I talked to my father El Bubsy this morning--I was so excited and enthusiastic about class last night that I walked around a bunch of streets with just my socks (no shoes), so they ended up acquiring a lot of dirt. I didn't talk much in class but my personal experience was that in the beginning of things, especially in high school, the concept of the "environment" and "nature" was some form of non-interactive "static backdrop." One big amorphous blob "out there" that had no inner personal connectivity. And over time, by hanging out with my dad and learning ecology and evolution at UC Santa Barbara, this big, static outer "nature blob" started to become this dynamic, interactive system, that had connections, relationships, interactivity with my own self and sense of existence. I started to acquire this "Matrix of the Mind: Mapping Language on Landscapes" type of thinking, I shut down my language brain and started to re-describe my sense of reality from a visual, cognitive mapping point of view. My resolution of the outer world and its connections to my inner universe started to become more and more connected and intertwined, highly resolved... the layers of the land, litho, hydro, bio... and the anthro world for sure... this whole matrix of interacting variables.... NOW... I just have to DRAW this sense of personal evolution... that's all.

Personal thoughts that came up:

(1) diffusion of social responsibility, viewing other humans as objects versus subjects (e.g. riding bike across campus at UC Riverside)

(2) evolution by collective action problems, Gaia-Medea-Phoenix effects (Blog 424)

(3) environmental CONTINGENCY of human behavior

(4) living in a Truman Show Bubble "eusocial ecological niche space" or log-log scale of reality

(5) inherited versus acquired traits, Darwinian versus Lamarckian evolution, have versus have-nots, people inherit property or resources versus earn and acquire them (Blog 336)

(6) the "shifting baseline syndrome" the notion that people live in a place without any context of this place's history or natural history is more so an "American construct;" whereas the GREEK CONSTRUCT of my mother is "I know my Greek history; it's so much to know and remember that I hate it all together."

(7) Words have a "usual context" and connotation in the English language, and you have to work very hard to take this word out of its usual context and make it meaningful and applicable to the story at hand (Barry Spacksisms).

(8) Relationships between setting, character, and plot. Most of the time the setting is close to non-existent, very immediate-proximate-surfacial "thin description" effect, and it's mostly the interaction between characters to drive plot. And then you have Cormac McCarthy... you have thicker, juicier descriptions of landscapes, but to what degree to they INTERACT/INFLUENCE the character and plot? Horses are very important in the film, and they essentially become "characters" because of the degree of interactivity. The highest degree of relationship-interactivity of setting is that a particular set of elements interact SO MUCH to a point in which these elements become major "characters" and agents that drive the plot (and this is what I strive for).

(9).

As I started to read Mike Davis' hand out on a brief history of the envisioned "agriculture/citrus and gardens" of southern California throughout the 1900s (early 1900s), I really started to see the synthetic, nonlinearity of Mike's mind. He perceives the "city" as an organism, a collectivity, a higher level of organization beyond individual human agents. A human coral reef, eh?. Where does this city-organism get its air? water? (Los Angeles River, Eastern Sierra, Colorado River) food supply? How does it settle (instead of being vagrant larvae)? And expand and grow, like a kid who drinks too much milk? And how does it REGULATE its growth? (More so a LACK of regulation... sigh). And this metaphor is extremely powerful--I even use it myself. Quite a bit. There are strong parallels in this "superorganismic quality" of cities, but not ENTIRELY parallel. So the CITY as an ORGANISM shall remain as a METAPHOR, and not a THEORY.

WHAT I AM FINDING MYSELF DOING HERE IS BEING EXPOSED TO NATURAL SCIENCES AS MY BASELINE, AS I AM BEING EXPOSED TO SOCIAL SCIENCE WORDS, I KEEP TRYING TO FIND NATURAL SCIENCE EQUIVALENTS. FOR EXAMPLE... WORDS TRANSCENDING NATURAL-SOCIAL SCIENCES. I wrote a lot about this in Blog 424, based on my experiences and observations of academic behavior at the Origins conference at Arizona State University. And here we go again... Cool word here: HEGEMONY is the dominance of one group over another, like IMPERIALISM (like overlapping lichens growing and competing for space on rocks; ha ha lichens and coral reefs are being hegemonious and imperialistic amongst each other, what a riot!). INCUMBENCY is prevailing spatial and temporal dominance of an entity on the landscape. Like bivalves and brachiopods. And so the list shall keep growing.... It's all back to the commonality of photoshopping reality and the adaptive grid model....

Another running theme of Mike Davis' course is how individuals establish IDENTITY relative to their environments/landscapes. Landscapes and identity, thank you! There are certain professions in which the landscape identifies you tremendously: being a rancher, cowboy, and fishermen for example. What else?

Some quotes:

"To be alive / and to know that you're alive / is the greatest thing / you could realize."

(fragment of Vic's Legacy poem)

"To carve a new trail / beyond your own home / beyond your own life / beyond your own space / beyond your own time." (fragment of Vic's Legacy poem)

"There's a mean bxtch at the bottom of every man's heart." (Mike Davis, in class)

"It's a classic trait to use 'the other sex' as a prime mover for human behavior." (Mike Davis, in class)

"Love is an American construct. The French and the Chinese don't believe in love." (Thank goodness I'm not the only one!)

"The fundamental principle of feminism. 'Women don't need men.'" (Mike Davis, in class, oh, now I get it!)

"Fear. It's an addiction." (Karl Thompson, geologist extraordinaire, exposing the roots of the male mind, and how I discovered that I was a "conservative adventurist")

"In American Literature, men are portrayed to operate mechanically: thinking [linearly?] with their brains and their gonads. British literature is different... most of the playwrights were closeted gays."

"I represent myself by editing the minds and lives of others." Victoria, the Savage Idea Thief and Film Documentarian. "What?! I end up being other cool people's secretary, because they ain't secretaries to themselves!"

Well, what can I say? Mike's course is pricking a lot of "dormant" ideas that need some tending to. I am excited to finally revisit and complete my thoughts... and one day weave them together into my next layer/level of coherence.

Environmental Writing/Ecopistemology Related Materials. See a Blog from Shelly Lowenkopf's Writing Group (Lion's Den) in Blog 283.

Key words: environmental writing, landscapes and writing, ecopistemology, poem, untended cemeteries, ecological reincarnation, life and death, phoenix, lagerstatten, human absurdity, ecological engineering, constructionism, Mike Davis, scale, brain pollution, landscape, landscape ecology, urban planning, landscape design, normative, unexpected, consistency, precision, matrix of the mind, mapping language on landscapes, Shelly Lowenkopf, nature, landscapes static, dynamic, city as an organism, natural-social science language equivalence, hegemony, imperialism, incumbency, landscapes and identity, identity and environment

466. A Phenomenal Interview, More Like Casual Conversation with Mike Davis (Ecology of Fear, City of Quartz, and Human Environmental Writing)

Well, well, well, what can I say? Roadtrip Nation is changing my life. Surprise?! Perhaps not. Yesterday, Shannon and I had a totally outside-the-box interview with Mike Davis (most well known for Ecology of Fear, City of Quartz), and I am not exactly sure where to begin... and most certainly... this cannot... and will not end. Here goes my stream of consciousness: There's the beginning aspect of things, like here I am sitting at this neo-cool-looking house in a nice neighborhood within the noisy flight path of the San Diego airport, staring at THEE Mike Davis, like the one who wrote all those books, and is this MASSIVE name in environmental writing, the "MacArthur Genius Dude" and so many other accolades in which society acknowledges his ingeniousnessessessess, who by default combines issues of social and environmental change (when most of the university is used to divorcing such topics)... well to say in the least, we both agreed that the university is full of bullshxt theories all around, let alone pin-headed specialists who don't have much context in terms of what the hxll everyone else is doing outside of their narrow field of study. But here I am... here I am... having this casual conversation with Mike Davis.... And I'm just jittery inside thinking this CAN'T be happening, this is a special moment in my life right here and now. I worked very hard in my own self development to reach this moment to come to FULLY APPRECIATE and have the the ability to RELATE to the works of Mike Davis.... Pretty soon, Shannon and I came to realize that he's one of those MacArthur folks: not only his mind is a massive encyclopedia of the history of environment, history of science, history of social movements, and WHO KNOWS what else, but his mind has the capacity to SYNTHESIZE and ORGANIZE these concepts. He has the best of both types of intelligence. For me, I don't have much of an encyclopediac inventory, but I have synthetic capabilities.

I have probably met three or four of thos MacArthur Fellow types, and honestly, they have brushed me off as if I were a piece of snot or the unwanted overly eager graduate student mosquito they thought I was going to suck their blood.... but then to think that Mike Davis was so excited to meet me just as I was so eager to meet him! I think we both feel we're in this odd fringes region of the university--synthetic thinking doesn't have much of a place in academia anymore--and we're just kind of at the fringes, looking at this circus arena, this zoo, and trying to make sense of it, not only in academia, but the context of the university in society. We're both frustrated with the lack of history of science and science writing programs in southern California. Most of them are in northern California. We're both frustrated that the university has made such a huge effort to deny and strip the socioenvironmental context of scientific pursuit and human-environmental change. And a bonus, Mike feels that the Endangered Species Act is doing a major disservice at managing ecosystems at landscape scales. Okay... lots and lots... and lots in common... lots of literature sharing to do.

Gosh, I am just scratching the surface.

Mike Davis discussed quite a bit of his history--and his professional career. He claimed the job title as "activist" and Shannon and I were puzzled, like... that kind of job description doesn't exactly exist in today's world. He ended up marking "disobedient writer" in our quote book, and that seemed to make a lot more sense. Mike was born in Fontana (so was I), raised in San Diego in a "blue collar family" as he called it, and had difficulties... he had to stop high school for a while and join the work force. His experiences as a laborer had a profound impact on him and his thinking. Mike went into detail of his time working as a truck driver and laborer for a furniture company that distributed its goods all across America, and he had been directly exposed to issues that are mostly "behind the scenes" to the rest of our eyes. He never finished a Ph.D. in history at UCLA--not exactly sure why--but it doesn't even matter because he has had so many professorial appointments in so many types of departments over the years (Geography, History, American History, Architecture, Pioneer Mountaineering Writing Class, now "Creative Writing" at UCR, an odd appointment for him, because he's never taken a creative writing course, he's learned through self discipline, plus a career in the publishing industry in London? he describes himself teaching classes he knew nothing about initially... )--he essentially is Ph.D.ed but in a more informal way. I could say he's had more of a profound impact on several disciplines than most other professors.... So, he's done his part, I'd say. So, at one point, when he was doing this back-breaking labor in a furniture company (in his forties?) he had an appointment to teach urban planning for one day at week at UCLA, and it was a very bizarre experience he had. He was paid more for teaching an urban planning class at UCLA than he was for all his work in the furniture industry! First of all, he came to realize how manual and physical labor is highly undervalued in this American Society and how people in the university sit on their butts and not necessarily have real world experiences, create weird theories on how the world works, and they get paid much more. Mike doesn't mean to overly romanticize manual labor, but he felt that he was contributing much more to the world by moving a box from point A to point B than sitting in a classroom, telling stories to students. HE FELT THAT HE WAS A PART OF THE PROCESS, AND THAT HIS EFFORTS CONTRIBUTED TO EVERYONE ELSE'S EFFORTS. And that is a fundamental concern I have about the pursuit of science... and the role of science in society. THE REALITY IN THE OUTER WORLD versus THE REALITY IN THE UNIVERSITY are so dichotomized, so black and white... it's so traumatizing... I would just have to sit and laugh... no wonder why my Ph.D. question is "what's the point?"

That story was a huge moment for me. I look at my own life through the lens of Mike, and I see parallels, lots of parallels.... I was a high school geek who worked her xss off and went nuts at Del Taco cleaning bathrooms and mopping floors over a month. Manual labor had a profound impact on me. Why was my high school experience so dichotomized from real world work? How come real world manual labor only required me to exercise about 3% of what I had come to input in my brain? Why do I have high affinity for laboring fishermen and lesser affinity to math modeling, office-quarantined ocean-marine-biology teckies, the glorified scientists of society? Where has science gone? There are hardly any "naturalists" "outdoor field scientists" anymore, in ecology, evolution, AND the Earth Sciences. It's a dying breed, dying to tecky work and modelers who can barely have a grasp of reality. Computers have put science in the mental stone age.... Okay, same old stuff. Same old stuff. I'm preaching to the choir. But I've got a new choir member. Mike Davis and I agree... agree... agree....

Mike's affiliated with socialist groups / Marxism. I HATE being affiliated with ANY political group. I like to consider myself a BIOLOGIST figuring out the intrinsic, natural science underpinnings of human behavior and the constructs of society. Hence, this blog, this human society is biologically incorrect! I think that humans are completely detached from the notion of being biological creatures, detached from their local landscapes. I think political constructs are artificial, with no discrete boundaries. And my being a scientist, I don't like that. My take on America and many European countries is the concept of "degrees of freedom" and "degrees of constraint." Every country needs a socialist baseline of stability and degrees of freedom in order to invite an invitation to playful competition driving innovative change. If the basic needs of the vast majority of the population any society are not met--air, water, food, overall internal and environmental health, family, shelter, safety--then the society is by default UNSTABLE and is vulnerable to REVOLT/COLLAPSE. I think there needs to be a threshold of people who are impoverished to lead a revolt against those who have control of most of the resources. "When the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor, there is going to be rebellion." Good Earth material, amen. I remember the Wikipedia stating that perhaps the next ideal form of society is small-scale, decentralized, local systems. Everyone can know each other, treat each other well as an instrinsic checks-and-balances system, and that all transactions are local and attached to the regional landscape. This certainly makes sense to me!

Some other things we talked about. Since Mike is an "activist," the notion of having a "job" never really hit him until his forties, because before then, it was all about being an activist--changing things. Mike was involved a little bit in the riots in Isla Vista in the 1960s (burning of the banks) a bunch of rioting student surrounded by police throwing tear gas at people. Students would be revolting and surfing, and they would be crying while they were surfing because of the tear gas. It was a landscape unimaginable to me. Isla Vista is more like an MTV riot nowadays than a riot with the anti-war movement. Mike Davis said something profound--I am paraphrasing him--"Cross-generational discussions are very difficult to engage in. I don't know how anyone in my generation could even have the nerve to give the younger generation any advice on how to define their own roads to life, because of all the problems that we have contributed to and dumped upon the younger generation. Technically, I'm not supposed to be saying that, but that's why I'm here. Saying things that I'm not supposed to say." I'm shedding a tear. That's probably the coolest quote I have so far for Roadtrip Nation. Mike's just making me more determine to succeed. Mike said he's all about "Question Authority," just like my advisor Armand; he has that bumper sticker on his car. I thought it was weird, because he was and still is my authority, and I follow him around like a puppy dog. The bumper sticker somehow made me trust Armand even more.

Mike discussed a few progressive universities in Europe that are transforming their curriculum in which professors' lectures are taped, made free for all, and then graduate students would have small-scale discussions with groups. It would eliminate the problem of 600 students to 1 professor problem. I told him that this experience in the university is downright "demeaning," and I had to supposedly plee for a "learning disability" stating I could not funciton in these classes due to high anxiety. I think the environmental context created this anxiety, and as soon I was out of these service classes, then my grades went up.

Mike is actually kind of shy about "interviews." He's had the BBC England come to his house a few times so he could be the expert authority about Los Angeles. BBC England has created stereotypes of Los Angeles and California, and these stereotyping stories have not changed a bit over the last 20 years. He stated that French media is more edgy and progressive. Makes sense with Michel Gondry and all. Mike apologized a couple of times, "Sorry this isn't exactly the interview you were expecting, huh?" I classify this interview as "outside the box" along with Randy Olson--probably the two most impactive interviews Shannon and I have conducted.

So, then Mike and I came to the subject of writing. He said that he learned how to write in his thirties, and it was a very VERY painful process. He thinks that creative writing programs are a bit futile in terms of the concept of someone teaching someone else how to write--people train themselves. I agreed, but I stated that my goal is "to teach people to teach themselves." That I think teachers can do phenomenal things if they help students, encourage students to ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS, AND FRAME THEIR MINDS TOWARDS THE PROTOCOLS OF CURIOSITY, then teachers do have a service in shaping, influencing young writers. Many creative writing classes involve getting together in a circle and everyone reading their blurb and then critiquing, starting with the schmooze of "what I really like about your writing...." People are so into complimenting each other, and no one is willing to listen to an honest, harsh critique. Mike Davis had an ultimate metaphor for schmoozing fragile writer egoes: going to a construction site with a hazardous building situation HALF DONE, and then you start to critique, "What I really like about your project." Same thing with writing. Mike sees writing as a visual building block game, just as I see it! I'll give you my two cents, eh? Mike said that many undergrads at UCR are interested in science fiction, fiction, romance fiction. Most graduate students are interested in fiction. And if there's ANY nonfiction, it's MEMOIR. There's NO SCIENCE/ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING. No training about how to tap into your surroundings. Geeze goodness. Pathetic. Mike said when he was in his twenties (his students are mostly in their twenties), it was an outrageous, perhaps SELFISH notion to even consider writing a memoir. Who in the hxll has an interesting life? Mike--even in his sixties--is not even willing to touch on the notion of a memoir of his life.

We complained about how science/environmental writing was non-existent in southern California universities, let alone ANY history of science courses. But then, how can we train people to do science writing then their jobs are vanishing into the dark side? I told him my approach is that this society does not need science journalism per se, but this society will always need SCIENTISTS. And that the goal is to train scientists (with pertinent research topics) to become better storytellers at the interface of diverse audiences inside and outside the university. And Mike agreed that's the way to go. I have two endorsements for an experimental science/environmental writing course: Mike Davis and Randy Olson. I need one more official sponsorship and then I will go to Bruce Tiffney and Claudia Tyler and ask them if we can set this up. I'm not exactly ready yet. Mike's shaken my internal tree, I have to figure out where I'm at right now. Mike asked me whether jobs exist in "environmental media"? I said basically, NO. I'm going to have to fight for it. I'm going to have to convince people that this is a worthwhile scholarly pursuit. Good luck to me!

Mike's currently teaching a landscapes and writing course, in which he states it's very experimental. He was really excited to hear that I was interested in sitting in! Woohoo! He says it's an interesting crop of students. I think on one of the first days of class, Mike went into depth on the first geologic expeditions of the Grand Canyon (1850s? 1870s?) and how these three geologists (Powell, and two others... my meager memory) went through these amazing analyses of the region. They had to invent so much terminology just to describe what they were seeing, for example, the Great Unconformity. Mike discussed the evolution of the researchers' observations over time. How SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATION was MORE ACCURATE than PHOTOGRAPHY back in the day--the role of scientific illustration! And the emotional thrill of these adventures! Back in the day, the Grand Canyon was indeed the wild west for geology. But to re-experienc the thrill of exploration, no one has implanted any pre-existing perception of the land, and you are to craft your own conceptual understanding of the Grand Canyon from scrap? INSANE! Mike said that the writing/landscape course is like a geography course rehash, but with its own twist... but no one needs to know that!

Mike was kind of interested in my dad's background and I told him how my dad backdoored into the university. Everyone in the family was pretty geeky and academic oriented. My dad hated school period; he self trained himself in vegetation and climate through observations and experiences as a child in the San Gabriel Mountains and then in an accidental field trip, my father made some observations of the vegetation zonation and the professor's jaw dropped and the next week he was hired. My dad as an undergrad was pioneering in aerial photography analysis of the vegation of southern California. Pretty crazy stuff.

Mike Davis really loves the work and adventure of field scientists, but he also discussed how even these scientists have their own departmental pirrhanna situations. Ha! I would know. Mike also made a point in terms of a shift in his writing career--He received a large advance from a New York publishing house to discuss the Los Angeles riots, and he had several contacts that would make an amazing story discussing the social injustices in Los Angeles, but he came to this point realizing, why he should be the one who has the right to tell the story about the difficulties of these people's lives? Such heart-wrenching stories! And then he fell back to his true passions for SCIENCE. And that is when he not only explored social problems of Los Angeles but also the biophysical problems of the design of Los Angeles, and how the social and biophysical aspects intertwine.

There was lots of discussions of strange, exotic places all over the world. Mike is currently writing a teenage adventure thriller series on scientific expeditions to really whacko places with unthinkingable ecosystems. The things you're trying to conserve are the things that will kill you--poisonous snakes for example. In a certain way, Mike is publicizing certain regions of the world that receive very little attention. He's totally enamored with Greenland, east Greenland. He told me one place I need to see is Greenland. Strange--most people tell me to go to the tropics. There was a lot of discussion about the Enuit people and their relative isolation from the rest of the world. 100+ names for types of snow. Geeze. The aspect that stuck out of my mind is how the people were "craving for winter" not summer. Because in summer the bugs eat you alive. There are interesting dynamics with sled dogs--somewhat "brutal" relationships in terms of dominance hierarchies and maintaining pack order. You must keep the the dogs partly trained and partly feral to maintain social organizaiton among the dogs and their masters.... The list goes on.... What can I say? Mike Davis is a very well traveled man.

Mike had this idea of doing an "Environmental Impact Report" of Los Angeles. HA! I told him about the quote from Aldous Huxley, "The most populous City is but an agglomeration of wildernesses." Doing a complete local and global EIR impact of Los Angeles. Where all the food comes from, the materials, and where are they dumped out. That would be INSANE! Such a cool idea! I asked him if he was going to do that--he says his writing gigs come and go with his appointments. He seemed very excited at the topic, but perhaps at the moment a bit time strapped with alternative commitments. But GREAT IDEA! Ha! And in Question Reality, I was trying to write a summary report on humans on planet earth for the Decapodal Pogostickapoids! Same idea....

MAJOR DRIVER FOR POST APOCALYPTIC SCIENCE FICTION STORIES THAT STAY TRUE TO THE SCIENCE--IMAGINING "SUCCESSION" IN A CITY. THE FIRST MOUNTAIN LION THAT ROMPS THE STREETS. Does "nature come back" as is... or to what degree of alteration? We discussed that, post war, post disease, it's different. I told him about the issues of reforestation in Costa Rica, same principle, secondary types of communities returning to once originally rainforest, then abandoned pasture, agricultural landscape.

Mike and I discussed how American science has framed biology and evolution in a VERY POOR WAY. For example, "Organisms adapt to the environment, rather than organisms mold the environment. Organisms as a geophysical force on this planet." Hands down agreement. Secondly, as an aside, I told him I removed the words "nature" and "culture" from my vocabulary. I said those words created ambiguity and problems of discussion on clear ideas. He agreed, good move. And thirdly, I told him that American evolutionary biologists frame evolutionary studies from the the point of view of COMPETITION. Like some kind of capitalist version of evolutionary studies. And that Russian approaches to evolution have seen more of a SYMBIOTIC-COLLABORATIVE approach to evolution. Goes along with socialism quite well. Hence the evidence of social context for driving scientific frames of reference. Mike Davis gave me a Vernadsky (sp?) book to read "The Biosphere" a biogeochemical perspective, and then I told him about Andy Knoll's research paper on "the geological consequences of evolution."

Joke: "Men are linear. They can only do one thing at a time, whereas women are more multi-taskers." I heard this claim twice. I'm not too sure if I agree. I can multi-task when some things I do are automatic knowledge, but I don't necessarily agree all men are linear. Take for example, my dad. He can drive safely and look and describe all the trees around him--to the chagrin of my mother! And then there's a famous music composer--Chopin, I believe--who had the ability to tune and process 6 different conversations at a party all at once! I CAN'T DO THAT! That's overwhelming! Wish I could!

I think Mike Davis is science writing but BEYOND science writing. Science writing plus IMAGINATION. For example, science fiction that does justice to science--post apocalyptic stories and such. Man wiped out from the world, what would happen? As Seth said, "The bad news is the world is going to hxll. The good news is that the world will be a much better place afterwards!" That's good for me because I got this whole alternate reality fiction streak in me! Imagine succession, small to large. Reverse engineering, like playing jenga with an outcrop.

RANDOM FACTS: Mike said Wallace was one of the best self-trained scientists ever, but he went onto the spiritual side of things. Lots of British laborers, mechanics and craftsmen, supported and advocated for evolutionary theory. Used word epistemology several times. Mike's totally into igneus rocks and geomorphology. My fetish is for sedimentary rocks and fossils. Powell. Dutton. McPhee. Powell expeditions. Rediscovered emotions. Climate models and climate field scientists are in TWO SEPARATE UNIVERSES. He claims he doesn't write to change the world? Then what for? Yes he does, doesn't admit it! Polar Federation. Affiliates with landscape art and classical geology. Top rated science writers are at Science and Nature, but Science is mostly dry and NONEDITORIAL. Nature has more EDITORIAL. And the Lancelet is VERY EDITORIAL medical journal. Mike Davis is concerned about how the public has a perception of scientists but NO ONE HAS A GRASP OF THE BEHIND-THE-SCENE CULTURE OF SCIENCE. Mike Davis says that there is no frontier for science writing to educate the general public, but there is a frontier for science writing for political/social change. That's where I come in. Amen. Same for Miller McCune. That's why they're different! That should be exposed, how knowledge is not fixed and debated all the time! Old fashion geography where natural and social sciences meld together. Klamath, Siskiyous, Eocene. Self-trained scientists. Unified Interdisciplinary Scientists, not many of those anymore. Russian interpretation of evolution as cooperative survival. Anti endangered species act. I told Mike Davis my first paper was on SCALE AND METAPHOR as drivers for narrative in science and social-environmental change. Mike Davis added "metaphors that don't lose their meaning in simplification." That's the magic of great science writing. Darwin's metaphors are very powerful in our everyday lives. Wallace-Humboldt, founders of biogeography.

I think I'm recuperated from my intellectual drunkedness from last night. I ended up talking to Mike Davis into the wee hours... 11pm.... I am so excited! His wife Alessandra is an art professor at Mesa City College who is doing hands-on art exhibit courses (museum studies) and his two twins are a riot. The boy loves rocks and the girl loves animals. They have their own taste for things!

I was really honored Mike said he would read "The Mountain's Last Flower" and give it an honest critique. I told him I was up for trading, and he asked me to read and honestly critique two chapters in Dead Cities. I teased him saying that this book is already "fixed" and "set in stone"! But no, what about an honest review? Who has given an honest review?! I'm SOOO excited!

405. The Debut Printfection T-shirt Printing Experiment: "Peace, Love, and Frogs" Etcetera on www.printfection.com/questionreality

Please visit http://www.printfection.com/questionreality!


Sample Printfection Question Reality store for Peace, Love, and Frogs


"Peace, Love, and Frogs" Collage

Peace, Love, and Frogs go hand-in-hand! A t-shirt specially requested and designed for my sister, Jenny. Also my first experiment with designing and printing t-shirts at www.printfection.­com/questionreality. In addition, I did this because I started to panic about the likelihood of TAing next year, and that I will have to overhaul my wardrobe. I will only be happy wearing "fashionable" clothes that I designed myself. Not the works of any other mass corporate entityt. Otherwise I make no aesthetic effort: I-am-a-baggy-plain-­t-shirt-and-shorts-­girl.


Question Reality Collage

Why now? Why did I start this t-shirt gig now when I had this idea in my head for over three years? When I was being an accredited t-shirt designer starting age 12? Well, why not? Let's see here. I wanted to start a website and a blog back in 2005. I cannot blame myself that the internet niche space has been rapidly shifting, but now there are companies that hold a level of stability I feel safe to experiment with. I was waiting... until innovation stabilized into Guaranteed Quality.

I think I need to snap out of the "why" question and beckon myself to "Just Do It."

I have a NEWS update--a writing class that might save my xss this quarter! A "writing about the environment" CCS course with Dr. Susan Keller, fresh out of the English Department (strange Ph.D. dissertation on make-up in English Literature). Well, what can I say? This might be my ultimate backup this quarter given that I cannot stay in Barry's course. Boohoo. But in a positive note, this class is right on the money in terms of my current needs. There is a lot of openness and suggestion as to where the class is going, but there is also structure and work ethic. We reviewed the syllabus today, in addition to critiquing two poems, which were quite a maze to me. There were a few words I did not understand. Apparently the two poets corresponded with each other competitively and collaboratively. They both painted portraits of "urban nature" back in the 1960s, organisms immersed within a human society. I enjoyed both poems. There were some original phrases I found inspirational--as an armadillo roles into a rolly polly ball or a clenched fist. Most significantly, I noticed that you can project "your inner mood" onto the description / perception of the outer environment. As Dr. Keller said, "This is not about writing about you, this is about writing about your perception of the world around you." Yep, yep, yep. I'm loving the class already....