543. Uh-oh, Vic's Brain Dumping::: Philosophisizing on My Return to Blogging, Autonomous and On Leave of Absence

I cannot believe that I have reached this point. This blog is the first blog I have written in ... perhaps 7 months. It is frightening (and traumatizing) to think about what has happened these past 7 months, but I can say that... this is the first blog I am writing on "leave of absence" from the Bren School at UCSB, so perhaps I may be writing with some new layers of consciousness, or maybe with some new sense of freedom--I am writing, and this is my voice, in absence of the 800 pound gorilla of academia clenching to my back. I am temporarily on break from the school that studies the "environ-mental" and now I have to engage in self-medicating my "mental."

It is also funny though, in these last few months of leave of absence, I have been approached by five or so people in my social sphere, and they were all wondering how I was because I was no longer writing any blogs. They encouraged me to continue writing, and they very much enjoyed my entries (strange! I know I am Victoria Anonymous, someone out in the world of 7 billion people wanting to read my blog! Ha ha ha). Perhaps my writing blogs is being enjoyed by friends and family who equally enjoy my *live* company--oh, there's that girl who endlessly rambles on about funny things, all the way from photographic composition to fisheries adventures to the California state budget to school committee drama to her dental work to the strange dream she had last night to the next cartoon she wants to draw. One way or another, I feel thankful that these individuals approached me and stated that they appreciated my blogs, and hope that I resume my "streams of consciousness." (I just learned a few days ago that "stream of consciousness" types of writing are actually acceptable in the literary world--consider Ulysses and The Invisible Man and even kind of All the Pretty Horses [at least the setting descriptions)]. I suppose this whole return to blogging is a re-focusing process, as well as a confidence problem... or also an artistic dilemma.

The more and more I have learned about the cartoon world and comics industry, the more I have come to realize that the sole expression of the Self through words placed in a linear-line-by-line format on a page, page after page after page... is very limited. Everyone uses words all the time, and so the combination of words placed line by line on a page now apppears to me to be equally cliche. I am starting to no longer view language, solely written stories, as art forms, but merely text messages or emails that anyone can write to anyone else (I told my advisor Oran that in this world where everyone text messages, from 5-year-olds to 80-year-olds, anyone on the street thinks they can become the next great writer... so I myself have given up on the idea of being a "writer" or one morally and financially supported by society, because practically everyone now is in the "competition pool" for this position (and the competition pool is so fierce that even people PAY literary agents to read their writing or pitch a story for merely a few minutes! And how could a literary agent have any sense of authority or command of such a spectrum of fields related to the environment?! I am in serious doubt of the sense of authority and expertism that literary agents portray, given their position of power in determining who becomes the "next great writer" and who doesn't), and plus when someone says they are a "writer" I laugh and say, "You just told me that you let your mind breathe; I would be disturbed if you didn't write otherwise").

I am starting to realize that the more combinatory the story becomes--e.g. combining words with pictures with music, etc, in which these elements occur in simultaneity, the more original, the more unique the artistic piece can become. And also, increasing combinations in complex simultaneity can eliminate a vast majority of the "writers" and now the pool of "talented multi-media storytellers" is actually, very small. So now, I no longer consider my written language as an attempt toward art, but merely a form of self-therapy, behavioral therapy, so that I can help understand myself, my thoughts... so that I can engage in stream of consciouness... and perhaps I can communicate a few ideas to a known group of trusted people out in the world. But writing now is psychological therapy toward self understanding. My most favoritist creative writing professor, Barry Spacks, would disagree with me--he tends to perceive writing as an art form, and so he will always perceive my work as art form though I perceive it as therapy. The reason why I am on leave of absence right now is that I had been perceiving my writing as an attempt toward art and scholarly-scientific work rather than treating it as therapy form. Now? I'm paying the price with my health. Yet if I layer my stories anymore, perhaps I can say I am attempting to hybridize self-therapy with a valiant reach toward creating art that can be appreciated beyond my family and friends. But, right now, I have given up on creating "art" all together. Everything I do for the next few months... up to a year (whether writing or visual or musical forms or motions)... are strictly for self-understanding, self-organization, and self-therapy.

Man, I have become repetitious, and yes, I have become a selfish bastard with my work (or is it "bastardette"?), but I have to: it's a matter of mental health and survival. It's a matter of desperation. Dr. Steve Ino at UCSB told me last quarter at UCSB's Counseling Center: whatever you do with your writing and drawings, never consider it to be selfish--it's called "self-care." So, I'm learning. One time I told Sarah, a science journalist in Riverside, the first time I write or create anything, the first audience is only myself, and then through rounds of advice and editing, the audience expands otherwise--to the appropriate individuals or groups the story is intended for. Sarah said that this mentality of interacting with a perceived audience is very healthy. So, first round, it's a one-man band (errr, one lady show), but then again, I consider my single mind to be an ecosystem of motivations, desires, voices, organisms with unique characteristics and behavioral traits. So even though it may seem like the first round of my "talking" to myself may be a one-person audience, I feel like I'm speaking simultaneously to an internal disjunct chorus that is trying to coordinate itself. I was trying to make a cartoon for my friend Julie R. last quarter: "Grad School: Ecosystem-Based Mental Management!"

Enough said. Much more to explore on this issue. Maybe I should leave these thoughts for the shrinks. But then again, my most wonderfulest of my friends and family are my "shrinks;" they're just not all that "official."

I can also say the last 7 months, I have learned a lot about several political issues in the marine and terrestrial world, not only the politics of the environmental issues themselves, not just the endless politics of academia (which I sincerely need a break from::: UNPLUG ME!), but even the politics of "generating stories" about these environmental issues, or any issue in particular. The politics of how literary folks, cartoonists, journalists, academics, film crews function, so-to-speak, in which the more I know, the more I realize that I want to work with a very small group of people with whatever stories I tell. Minimizing bureaucracy entails more self-responsibility and labor, but also constructs more self-control and overall efficiency. I would rather work much harder on a project knowing that I had more control rather than someone controlling me. As I have said a bazillion times to myself: "I'd rather be a slave to my own ideas than the slave of others."

So, I'm continuing to learn about myself. The more I learn about political issues (that affect people that I personally know), the more I feel a bit scared to talk or write about what I know, or the more I doubt what is appropriate to include or not included in a blog. Which is probably one major reason I have not been blogging lately--I suppose I had to confront this issue myself. I think this self-censorship process has been happening since my initial participation in the south coast Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (MLPAI) process. I will just say that the whole arena of stakeholders involved in marine environmental issues is much more connected and incestuous than I thought--and perhaps a little bit in a disturbing way (when a single funding source pours in money into the entire spectrum of professions--from scientific research to education/entertainment to policy and politics, in order to better choreograph these often-time disjunct, autonomous universes, I would become a little bit worried). Well, it's not that I'm being "censored" by anyone in particular, but whatever I say, I have to be VERY careful and very ARTICULATE about what I say. But would that be necessary? Would it be necessary to have a "Fisheries WikiLeaks" because many things going on in the marine world is so "under-the-radar" to the public? Even under the radar among pertinent stakeholders who are directly affected?

An example of "under the radar." About a week ago I spoke over the phone with my Cousin Mike, who wanted to know all about the MLPA process I have been in tune with (as if I had a fetish following a particular athletic team, except it's a political process, not sports, what's the difference?); and after explaining to him the nuts and bolts of this public-private partnership, the stakeholders involved, the outcomes, and the current state of the process, Mike was appalled that he did not know that any of this was happening. He also didn't know that public-private partnerships could exist and be held unaccountable to the public vote. That California Citizens did not vote for this political process to occur, or be okay with. Mike was thinking about maybe he could invent some new cool gadget like an iRobot or iPhone5 or something and then he could earn gobs of money and then he had nothing else to do than meddle with the California State Government and re-wire the bureaucracy as to however he saw fit, as long as he was a private individual dumped a bunch of money on the state, demanding its reform. And no, my cousin Mike has no ties whatsoever to environmentalism. He's just a wickedly smart dude who keeps me on my toes, and I'm extremely proud to admit we are related (family acquisition through a marriage!).

But then again, what should I be scared of talking about? First amendment rights, right? Maybe I should just call things out "as they are." Tell the "truth," like what a scientist is supposed to do. Observes the world, and states his/her findings. Except I have found out there are frequently multiple versions of "truths" or "truthy-isms" and it's better that I just consider stories as merely stories (whether scientific or not) and not observable realities held by nearly all citizens, and just say okay, "Here's my story, dot, dot, dot. And it's just another of 101 stories on the same topic, so why in the hxll would anyone listen to me anyway?" There is so much information transmission in the world today that whatever stories I tell will be drowned out by information overload anyway.

I do say it's quite funny. The other day I had a discussion with my quasi-religious mother (religion, fate, spirituality, what's the difference?!), and she questioned me about a particular "end of the world" issue as a "scientist," and I told my mother flat out, in a very instinctive, impulsive way, as if I went through a very long, quasi-subconscious internal discussion with myself the last few months that rendered an autonomic response, "I am NOT a scientist." I can practice some scientific forms of thinking (left-brain linearities), and I have been raised by my scientist Dr. Bubsy (ha ha, my dad), but given arbitrarily constructed cultural and bureaucratic definitions, restrictions, boundaries of what a "typical" scientist is, and that my right brain gravitates toward reflexive, multi-layered, visual, synthetic, contextual thinking rather than strictly rational, computative, linear reasoning that denies the presence of self-perception and socioecological context that can influence anyone's research agenda, hence I am NOT a scientist. I do not think that "scientists" would survive to well in the world outside academia, which requires a sense of multi-dimensional, intuitive thinking that goes far beyond gaining knowledge by reading the bottomless pit or accumulated coral reef of "scholarly literature" and being a tweaker with a particular, specialized research project. So, as you can see, I am so bitter, I really need a leave of absence. I can't even call myself a "scientist" anymore, even though I know all about scientists and know how they think, and I interact with them a lot. And sometimes they drive me nuts.

Well, I'm beyond that box. It's funny to even say that "scientific thinking" is actually a very restrictive form of thinking, even though supposedly science is to "expand knowledge," only very limited forms of knowledge. Even my fisherman friend Bob stated that if scientists continue to perceive environmental problems strictly as "scientific problems" and not "human/social/perception" problems--err, multiple problems in simultaneity--then scientists won't get anywhere with their goals and agendas. They will continue to hit intellectual walls and roadblocks, and their audiences will not be all-inclusive.

So, then, if I'm not a scientist, then what am I? What should I call myself? Besides, "Victoria Anonymous" and "Victoria, Fud. The more you become an expert at one particular thing, the more and more you become an idiot with everything else." Yes, yes, besides that, let's just say I'm a "multi-media storyteller" who has academic strings attached, trying to bring out the best of academia in my stories and really get to see what theories actually do map out onto a physical reality we can all agree upon. Though we all know that much of the narratives in the university seem to be abstract, esoteric blobs that cannot take concrete shape or function when letting them run loose outside the academisphere. But I have discovered many jewels in the haystack....

Oh, I know it's horrible for me to "talk about myself,"--I am having a moment of self-consciousness here--but that is partially why I am on leave of absence. I have the CRICs disease: the Chronically shifting Relativistic Identity Crisis, and part of the goal for the leave of absence is to better understand this disease I have, and the shrinks say it's for "self-care." Identity exploration, like what humanities people seem to do. Except in this case, the notion of identity relative to the "environment." I should be okay. Since all my writing has a basis for psychological therapy, I should be open and willing and accepting that my own Self is a part of the picture of all the things I write. It's a necessity for me to plug in and stay tuned to myself. *Sigh*

I guess so far in this post, I have discovered two new Laws of Lacunacea (and of course, every new rules has exceptions). (1) The more I know about political issues that directly affect people I personally know, the less willing I am to be open and express the ideal form of freedom of speech. Maybe it just reflects that my own social sphere and social consciousness is changing. And the second law I have picked up by observing and dealing with harsh encounters within the abrasive perimeters of Hollywood (why do I feel the film industry is like some form of intellectual war zone? Well, perhaps it's the only landscape on this planet where ideas can be valued at millions of dollars, and everywhere else, each new idea we have is worth close to zero). So, the second law is: (2) The more money you get paid, the more you lose your freedom of speech. This is a general truth, unless someone provides funding to an independent individual (not an individual embedded within any corporate bureaucracy) that is completely "no strings attached" or "We give you money because we love you for who you are, and we want you to continue being who you are."

I guess the final question here in this blog is: What does it mean to go on leave of absence? (And to shamefully state, for the THIRD time, once from UCLA, once from UCR, and once from UCSB). First of all, a problem is a problem when you perceive it to be a problem. What I perceive to be a "problem" is not necessarily what other people perceive to be a "problem." Many problems in the world exist as "distant chatterboxing characters on televisions or computers" to most people, but I have faced four "systems" of problems that were either by birthrite, partially acquired, or took a level of sophistication to perceive: (1) my birthrite, inherited problem of wildfire ecology, in relation to my father's (the scientist's) research (2) my quasi-acquired, quasi-biological problem of anorexia and attempting to understand the relationships between mental disorder and "environ-"mental disorder, (3) the somewhat problem of understanding the university as a "landscape," in which every one of us was promised that the university would teach us about the "universe" and our place in it, but when any particular student attempts to go "department hopping," each specialized discipline is perceived more so as a historical accumulation of intellectual trash largely dictated by power structures, that renders no coherent, composite picture of the world we live in and try to interact with, and how was I going to sort through all this intellectual trash to find the necessary tools in order to find a way to contain, define, and solve any particular "environmental problem" in the world, first with my own health, second with my father, and third with California fisheries... (and now the state's broke, who really knows if anyone is getting their money's worth at the university?) and (4) my "matured state" problem in which I had to develop a level of perceptual accuity to see and comprehend, is all things related to California fisheries, evolution of ecosystems and social systems through time, particularly the Marine Life Protection Act process. Four massive suites of problems in my life that may be perceived as "distant" issues in most people's lives but have come to occupy intimate, personal spaces in my mind.

I guess the whole goal here is the individual and collective pursuit of exploring and manufacturing the "truth" (though we all know even truth changes all the time, because systems change). Truth being some form of universal perception of understanding of our contextual existence. So, first I started with science. I thought that scientists were the smart dudes and babes who were to discover the "truth." But I soon discovered, scientists--among many other intellectuals, such as Malcolm Gladwell (his disclosure statement here) and Vladimir Nabokov (Lectures on Literature) and The Gonzo Scientist series--worried about the notion of "objectivity:" that potentially it was possible to explore the system of study for what it truly was, independent of human perception of the system, or independent of human value and motivation, and independent of the context of the system. The only "legal" mode of objective thinking was complete left-brain, linear "logicality," and through this venue was the discovery of "truth." And then, I started to realize this goal of "truth" was a total joke (only rendering a limited, partial truth) as I started to feel mentally restricted, trapped, essentially--all these layers and spheres started to form around me, the humanly perceiver of any particular system of study, and the actual inter-related context of the system of study in space and time. I didn't know it at the time, but my mind was trying to find an alternative view (or views) of exploring "the truth"--and alternatively more complicated--and instead of blocking out all the layers and spheres and variables--as all these modern scientists do nowadays--that the more inclusive that I tried to perceive myself and my relationship to a particular system of study, the closer I was toward achieving a level of truth, though this truth is now much more personalized, it is an acknowledgment of personalization embedded in an a mapping exercise of the universal/collectivism. These layers and spheres and "acquired lenses or points of view" evolved more coherently through my continued education of science, social science, and humanities courses, trying to find a conceptual configuration--trying to find internal conceptual places for every thought that came from every possible discipline I encountered. Truth in my mind led to INCLUSIVITY, REFLEXIVITY ("Gonzo science"), CONTEXTUALIZATION, NARRATIVE, QUALITATIVE MATRIX VIEWS, BRIDGING KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION, and SYNTHESIS rather than EXCLUSIVITY, EXTERNALITY, REDUCTIONISM, NARROWING, SPECIALIZATION, QUANTIFICATION, LINEARITY, etc. One of my first cartoons has Terra screaming, "Don't shove me in a box! I'll create my own box!" or even with cartoons: "Don't shove ideas in a fixed-sized box. Let the ideas define and shape and size the box." Because all science was doing to her was trying to narrow her into a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset of a system. Oh, what other lovely words I could place here? I'm asking the same simple questions here: What do people know? How and why do they know it? And how does this knowledge influence their actions? All related to human-environmental relationships. And supposedly these simple questions mean that I'm epistemologizing and that I worry about ethics. Ecopistemologist, to be corrected. I'm the first one, because I invented the word anyway, and I am very proud of that. And besides my suffering a sense of constant information overload, being overwhelmed with chronic change, not having the ability to freeze or slow down time, breeding a sense of panic, stress, paranoia, sleep deprivation, poor eating, teeth pain, etc--physical manifestationS of psychological distress--and besides all this, I came to realize, that given today--that the pursuit of science is embedded in a massive bureaucratic context (whether in the university or industry), where my dad told me, "Science is 50% people, 50% politics, and something you do in your spare time," I was wondering whether any scientist or any individual drowning in some massive bureaucracy would really have a sense of autonomy, individuality, and develop a sense of truth, independent of the "invisible academic 800 pound gorilla" that lives on every researcher's back, exists in every professor's mind?"

So, besides pure stress and panic and physical pain experienced through and induced by my desperate, primordial, reptilian brain , I actually have a philosophical underpinning for leave of absence: the attempt to see a truth merely through the politics of my own mind, independent of an 800 pound academic gorilla on my back. And I have up to a year to figure this out. I was thinking, perhaps I was doing the "Thoreau-Into-the-Woods" thing, like what Michael Pollan was trying to do, which is kind of difficult when you were born and raised and currently live in southern California (but northern California is ONLY a few hundred miles away, so I have no excuse to go chum up with black bears in the Sierra Nevada), so the closest I can be to becoming an enlightened hunter and gatherer around this part of the planet is to be something like a gypsy freeganist type, and continue hanging out with fishermen! The goal this year is to experience my mind and my life and my environment by maximally unplugging myself from the system, from "The Matrix" of information and resources (except I'm not doing any bullshxt daredevil "Into the Wild" or "127 Hours" or "Deadliest Catch" crxp, which I think is totally sensationalizingly dumb, my being a female and conservative adventurist and acknowledging it is very important to venture into humanly unpopulated landscapes with at least a buddy system, whether scuba diving or boat-riding or mountain hiking. And I still feel entitled to being jacked up by Starbucks coffee, my staple luxury that is only financially affordable given that every cup of coffee I purchase must be accompanied with at least tw0 50-cent refills. But 85% of all my clothes are old, full of holes, and came from Goodwill or the Old Navy end-of-the-year sale where everything was around 75% off original price, making brand new clothes equal in monetary value to that of used Goodwill clothes. Funny how those things work out.

I have come to realize it's better to explore the truth through the mere politics of my brain--explore personal truths--an investigation not highly accepted in Objective Academia where the Personal and the Self don't have much of a Place, especially in the realm of science. Just me and my mental ecosystem. Woohoo! Now I need to re-configure my inner wirings with the outer world.

Last week I had a talk with my advisor Oran about the leave of absence. I told him that when I was in high school, I thought I was stupid because I would be very slow in finishing my homework and completing my exams and writing my essays, and I'm still a bit slow to this day. It took me about five years after high school to start realizing that I wasn't "stupid" or "dumb" or "slow," but I was processing the world differently. I wasn't trying to memorize or computationally, linear process information. I was trying to visualize the world, visualize knowledge, all this time. I was trying to grow a virtual "tree" in my head. That knowledge did not exist in mere words and numbers, but knowledge had a sense of place, relativistic location. That there was a place, a space and a time for every thought. And here I am now. I have been overtaken the last few years, blasted with information--frantically foraging across several disciplines--and not everything is processed the way how I need it to be processed: visually, cognitive maps. Not only visually, but also through written words, through sounds, through the generation of personal stories. I need time, time to slow down, so I can slowly, deliberately process all this information to let it have conceptual meaning within me. It sounds strange, but visualizing the world is my healing process. It transforms intellectual trash into landscapes of meaning. So, it's funny, my road of environmental media, though I'm fighting for it to be an academic discipline, and I will fight a long road ahead of me, that multi-media production also needs to be welcomed as an academic endeavor, perhaps even with a "peer review" process--not a Hollywood industry or journalistic endeavor--though I'm fighting this road as an academic discipline, this road has psychological roots, to my being right brained, toward my core mannerisms of processing information, toward my personal routes of coping and healing and self-therapy. I walk a dangerous road, where the personal and academic are severely intertwined--and it's more so dangerous for me because, here I am again, turmoiled, in pain mentally and physically, and again... on leave of absence. *Sigh* I wonder how I will ever be able to function "normally" in the world. I have to work so gxdxmn hard to channel my positive energy into the positive, desirable places. It's been so hard to find these spaces, but it has been worth the fight. I don't have much else of a choice.

My friend Hector tried to console me yesterday. He explained to me that "Back in the day, like in the 1960s, when the University of California wasn't in a financial pinch... or slump... students used to go on 'leaves of absence' all the time, either for breaks or for saving money while trying to get their degrees. But now the university has added intense layers of bureaucracy to make it difficult to go on leave of absence." I said, "Ya, like I had to have evidence that I am partly a nutcase in order to go on leave--I REALLY need to go on leave though. If I were back in the 1960s, I would have been on leave of absence since April of 2010!" Hector agreed that a leave was necessary because I couldn't function otherwise, if I had stayed. But nevertheless, he consoled me, but I still don't feel so hot about myself right now. Like yesterday, I was trying to write a simple blog, and I ended up barfing out 20 pages single spaced on how I got into this whole "marine, fishing" thing in the first place. I couldn't believe I never had a personal discussion with myself about this... until now... on leave... where I finally sense my own autonomy and independence of thinking from university bureaucracy (I was just thinking that science funding sources give researchers money for testing hypotheses, not asking questions, meaning you have to have an existing agenda before asking for money, rather than leaving the process an open-ended inquiry. I come to trust Dr. William Cronon's viewpoints more and more every single day). I feel like now I can think and talk about things that probably are not good to talk about while being in the U--now I can be free and uncensored like the main character is the "Turko Files" of KUSI News in San Diego, who calls out bullshxt when he sees it: "That ain't right! You can't do that! That's not fair!" Turko is very good at getting people involved in solving multiple problems around the city of San Diego.

And now that my cartoon characters Terra and Buz of Biologically Incorrect feel my sense of freedom from being on leave of absence, they both have the license to cite Cartman from Southpark: "I say what I wanh! I say what I wanh! I say what I wanh! What-evah! What-evah!" and "Myanh, myanh. Myanh. Myannhh. Screw you guys, I'm going home!" "What-evah!" Happy ending to ending my blog hiatus. Happy endings to new beginnings of mental barfing on blogs! Woohoo hoo hooo! :-)

Key Words: blogging, storytelling, limits to writing, leave of absence, stream of consciousness, writing as therapy, censorship, Fisheries Wikileaks, information overload, science versus storyteller, define science, CRICs disease, identity exploration, exploring truth, truthy-ism, 800 pound invisible gorilla, 101-legged squid, environmental media as an academic pursuit

517. A Continued Multi-Media Narrative for "California's Fading Wildflowers: Lost Legacy and Biological Invasions" By Richard and Victoria Minnich

Basically, last quarter I had an opportunity to attend a panel discussion of the University of California Press (with Naomi Schneider, Chuck Crumly, Niels Hooper, Jenny Wapner, and Lynne Withey), and my heart was thumping, my eyes burning with flames of anger: "Who in the hoohahey was drunk or tweaked or high or stoned enough to publish a WILDFLOWER book with BLACK and WHITE pictures?" (My father's book here: California's Fading Wildflowers: Lost Legacy and Biological Invasions, in which I was the ghost author of the existential last chapter). One kudos though. The book cover, which highlighted a meloncholy landscape hue of purple lupines and faint orange (poppies?), was very well artistically accelerated. No complaints there. But the black and white interior...?!!

Well, given the current economic crisis of nearly all publishing houses, I had to calm myself down, lower my blood pressure, take a step back and say... no, maybe people weren't drunk or tweaked or high or stoned (even my committee member Dr. Milton Love told me that he had to apply for an extra grant from the Packard Foundation in order to have his UC Press fish book published in color)... but this is clearly a case in which economics forces people to make irrational decisions, like publishing wildflower books in black and white!

At first the UC Press told my dad there would be an insert within the book of color images of wildflowers. Then that was taken away and all images inside would be black and white. And then many black and white images were edited out, which is absurd because it doesn't cost anything at all to include more black and white images (at least in self-publishing venues). My current environmental history professor said he will be allowed ten black and white images per chapter for his book. Lucky him, I think that's an even better deal than my dad's.

It turned out that I never asked the black-and-white image question to the UC Press panel back in March. I couldn't say that I chickened out, but I decided to ask a more pertinent question: "My name is Victoria Minnich, and I'm a Ph.D. student in environmental media. I am surrounded by a generation of students who are not only information overloaded, but they have greater tendency to process information visually and multi-media formats. What is the UC Press doing about this to account for this shift in information processing? Is multi-media packaging crafted with each book? And what is your response to the creation of Logicomix, a graphic novel on the history of Bertrand Russell's life?"

The response of the audience and the UC Press panel was overwhelmingly positive. When I was asking the question, I ended up watching people in the crowd nodding their heads in agreement. Naomi Schneider, who has worked in several prestigious New York publishing houses before joining the UC Press, stated that she would be very interested in seeing a graphic novel. Not a bad idea for a graphic novel Ph.D! Naomi heavily emphasized the NEED TO BE GENERALIST AND INTERDISCIPLINARY when submitting a book idea to the UC Press when the vast majority of academia is polarizing itself toward the opposite direction of hyperspecialization... and a graphic novel would definitely be a work of broadening horizons.

Chuck Crumly, a senior editor with a biology background, also mentioned a little snag in the process. Chuck flat out stated that the acquisitions and marketing team would be ECSTATIC to have a graphic novel come in as a project, but the DIRECTORIAL BOARD of ACADEMICS would most likely RESIST the idea. Chuck stated that we would need more turnaround time to eliminate the old hoagies and insert the newbies who would then be much more willing to embrace multi-media representations of academic topics... including graphic novels. Which is truth down to the bone demonstrating that academics and science is not truth, it's just the politics of common agreement on ideas. So sad.

Then again, when outer discourage starts to form Sylvia Plath belljars around me, the mind of environmental media, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference comes to town (in San Diego), and I meet a potpourri of people who are ecstatic about what I'm doing, and I receive nothing but encouragement. Someone I met at this meeting who was most encouraging was Stuart Greenwell, the Art Director for Science Magazine! Lucky me to meet him! I ended up helping Stuart out as a volunteer at the "fancy, sophisticated version of Kinkos," or the room full of cubby holes containing press releases for the latest and greatest of scientists doing presentations and getting drilled by the nation's top science journalists. Stuart gave me an orientation of the room. "See all this? It's analog. This is a generation that is going to phase out, die out like dinosaurs. You (as an environmental media student) are on the right track. What you are doing right now WILL be the future."

So now, I guess it's just a matter of phasing out the incumbent, old professorial dinosaurs in analog mode. Why wait for the clock? Why not dominate? Why not accelerate the process of their extinction? Why not be that invasive species biological bully of environmental media? I don't like waiting. I like doing... now....

I always carried the idea with me to continue this black-and-white book of my father (talking about "fading") in living color, through multi-media narrative--including photography, film, even cartoons--especially since the spring of 2005, when I shot my first solid set of images of the historic once-in-a-hundred-years wildflower bloom (mostly of the deserts of southern California). The photographic collection (included below) demonstrated at the time a mastered set of compositional skills, but unfortunately at the period of life I was technologically primitive: I only had a Nikon Coolpix 5700 and a laptop computer with limited processing skills. I didn't even know how to use Photoshop back in 2005! I was a a technological IDIOT! Now I am working with a new computer of high processing power, which allows me to shoot and work with RAW images. Yay, technology is allowing Josie Schmosette Consumer (that be me) to go pro!

But this dormant little seed re-emerged and blossomed to pursue once again for four reasons: (1) direct, face-to-face contact with the source of the black-and-white images, the UC Press (2) expanded technologies and workflow (as discussed above), (3) SPRING BREAK took me to places that were overflowing with wildflowers (okay, only in Baja California, southern California was pretty weak with wildflower blooms). Amen for spring break! and (4) my friend Shannon Switzer (Girl Chases Globe) gave me advice that she received from members of the International League of Conservation Photographers (basically, a whole bunch of famous National Geographic type photographers)--the advice being that it's best to know a region, a subject, very, very, very well (like your own backyard), and this is the way how you will master storytelling of a system, in photography and written word, and this will be your ticket towards bigger and better things.



Caption for Portfolio 1 Above: California's Fading Wildflowers: Lost Legacy and Biological Invasions (Portfolio 1). By Richard and Victoria Minnich. A continued multi-media narrative based on Dr. Richard Minnich's book published by the University of California Press in 2008. Portfolio 1 is a "warm-up" for the more intensive and extensive portfolios. Unnatural is Beautiful at Emma Wood State Beach, just north of Ventura, south of Carpinteria, California. Invasive mustard (brassica nigra) dominates the eroding slopes by the coast, interspersed with a few patches of native Encelia californica. April 2010.

Key words: multi-media storytelling, richard minnich, California's Fading Wildflowers, Lost Legacy, biological invasion, Naomi Schneider, Chuck Crumley, graphic novel, Logicomix, University of California Press, Stuart Greenwell, analog versus digital, analog versus multi-media, American Association for the Advancement of Science

490. The Four-Year Lag Time Email to University of California UC Press::: Vic the Worm-Grub Idiot in 2005 and Attempting-to-Fly Butterfly in 2009

What I Wrote for the Picasaweb Blurb: Metamorphosis from 2005 to 2009 ::: The Four Year Lag Time Email to Uni California UC Press. As I am preparing to send off the "new organism" of "The Mountain's Last Flower" into the world, I was building up my internet social networking habits... and part of my personal goal was to clear up on email account www . questionreality . org @ gmail . com. And there I found an email from an editor of the University of California Press. My default instinct was to write an email stating (1) pardon the four year delay in responding to this email, but (2) I'm thankful for your patience, and yet I'm sorry if I was unprofessional and potentially inappropriate in behavior the first time I approached you as a naive undergraduate.... It was a powerful feeling to writing such an email, and then I started to think what was the "rational underbelly" behind the instincts.... What did I learn these past 4-5 years? What did I not know back then that I know now?!! (2005: worm-grub idiot to 2009: attempting-to-fly-butterfly)

The last 2-3 days (or longer... geez) I had become a Facebook Addict, Facebook Junky, Facebook Binge-er, Facebook Purger, Facebook Whatever... as I have been attempting to create a fresh account and delete an old account, affiliated with negative memories... and failures.... In addition, I made a deal with myself to crack into one of my "deadly" email accounts, wwdotquestionrealitydotorg atgmaildotcom, hunt through it, excavate all emails, and close the account.... In the process, I found an ancient email from an editor from the UC Press and instinctfully sent him a polite note generally stating... "Pardon for the four-year delay... but when I submitted my 1000-page Question Reality manuscript to you, I was an idiot. Sorry if I behaved unprofessionally and inappropriately, but also thanks for your patience and putting up with me."

It was an amazing feeling... of redemption of sorts?... to be able to open that ancient email in my life and address it. And yet an instinctful email response was followed by a surge of thoughts overwhelming my mind, when I cam to realize what an "unknowledgeable idiot" I was back in 2005, and how much I have come to learn and know since then about the media world....

To celebrate the passing of a little over four years and all the knowledge I have compoundingly acquired during this time, I decided to make a "generic list" (not a "life story," as to which it can easily become...) of all the things that I didn't know back in Fall of 2005, and all the things I know now... such that I can look back at my old worm-grubby self and even have enough confidence to label my 2005 self as an "idiot." It's funny how it all happened though. I never planned myself to be where I am at now. I'm just at a very fortunate state where right now it's "safe to reflect." Four long years of CONTINGENCY, contingent events, contingent learning processes to achieve a state of being "safe to reflect." As Dr. Nancy Kawalek told me one time... "You will only perceive, unless you are ready to perceive." And again, my father has always been an encouraging voice and describes Question Reality as a "necessary intellectual barf" to order to synthesize and compromise two polar-opposite, strangely, somewhat "mutually exclusive" worlds of "academic-"scientific"-book knowledge" and the "experiential knowledge acquired" of surviving anorexia (As they say, the university is the "frontier of knowledge," it seems like scholars in the university are the "last ones to find out.").

(1). No one in their right mind publishes books of 1000 pages, unless you are a Stephen Jay Gould at the end of your life... and you are the Biblical Figure of your respectable discipline, including Harry Potter pseudo-disciplines.... Basically, I went backwards... as my mentor Hugh Marsh told me... Hugh stated that most people write a series of newspaper articles, and then these articles conglomerate into books.... It's how most journalists earn their "book" merits....

(2). Society does not judge you based on (a) your hard work (b) your intellectual merit (c) your impeccable track record of straight-A-goodie-two-shoes in school (d) but based on your intimate contacts, inherited or acquired (e) your popularity, your "platform," your already-built-in audience through marketing, self[deprecating] promotion, exposure (f) economic affordability (g) degree of coupling with other forms of media campaigning. So the quality of most books in Borders and Barnes and Noble is close to shxt. It's not about quality literature, it's about the popularity media bombardment (mostly). (Believe me, I remember one day I had that epiphany, and I walked into Borders in complete disgust... my entire perception of Borders and Barnes and Noble completely shifted....). I came to realize how many people's beautiful voices, how many geniuses' thoughts must have been buried in history simply because the one's who survived and became famous... were not necessarily the best, but won the popularity contest. (I have a dream of writing a newspaper column discussing the "Unburying the Undiscovered," in which I was to go into deep history of the region and find all the people who had the potential to impact society with their influential thoughts and stories, but ended up being drowned by the winners of the popularity contest, ended up being buried in history. Like the whole Herman Melville Syndrome, giving a second chance for select individuals to be rediscovered... unfortunately... long after they're gone....

(3). Society DOES NOT READ. A long time ago, there used to be books. People used to have time and energy invested in reading books because there was not much else for distraction. People used to read words and imagine worlds and generate emotions within them. Readers used to be ACTIVE dreamers. But then lots of technologies had arisen such that words could now be coupled with images and music, visions and emotions, such that there was not much incentive anymore to be active dreamers, but more so PASSIVE MENTAL CONSUMERS. And we learned fairly quickly that the human mind prefers IMAGES and AUDIO over sitting down and reading static, symbolic code on page after page after page. And to make it worse, the modern environment of "media bombardment" has placed people in a state of MINIMAL ATTENTION SPAN, MAXIMUM ADHD, so the capability for an audience member to retain a linear train of thought in consuming a piece of media is becoming closer and closer to zilch.... And so... welcome TWITTER to make life even worse.... So now, specialize-then-diversify strategy comes in full blast (the Ian Shive Conservation Photogapher strategy). In order for people to become interested in your central product, in this case a novella, you have to LURE THEM INTO reading your product through SOUNDBITES and IMAGEBITES.... You gotta HOOK THEM and then RETAIN their attention span.... Hence, the TRIANGLE EFFECT in writing, the most pertinent and sensationalized items presented first, and then tapered off to the juicy, but less "sexy" material hidden in the boonies of whatever product. Hence also leading to the FOUR ELEMENTS of ESSENTIAL STORYTELLING (1) What is this about? (2) Why should I care? (3) Why should I believe you? are three questions that need to be answered in the first 15 seconds of meeting any important person in the world who may be able to more widely distribute your product.... and (4) What kind of tricks will you infilitrate in your craft of storytelling that will maintain my interest?! (Also consider the PRISM EFFECT; the ability to speak with multiple different parties/stakeholders, e.g. how to approach literary agents and editors as opposed to how to approach journalists / magazine writers or students or more specialized academics) (The concept of telling stories in MENTALLY DIGESTIBLE CHUNKS, for example, in a short, adventurous story like "The Mountain's Last Flower") (The concept of STORYTELLING IN LIGHT OF MULTI-MEDIA TECHNIQUES, writing stories such that it is EASILY ADAPTABLE to other forms of stories, e.g. art exhibit, music, stage play, film, interactive website... whatever....)

And on that note... given these fundamental philosophical transformations... I engaged in a series of educational and artistic pursuits in order to convert my mind from the "academic treadmill" to the "economically viable treadmill" which I do not support. I do not support mass production. Period. Mass production and growth in quantity is by default non-sustaining. Period. I don't need numbers to show this (except for mass producing proton-electron arrays on a computer screen doesn't really seem to do the world much harm...).

Certain things in the global realm that didn't happen: (1) Bush was voted out of office and Obama's now in [I didn't realize that Bush's power constructed a heavy, oppressive weight in my mind and on my shoulders, which lifted the day Obama was in (2) Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth broke the silence of "international discussion" of climate change/environmental problems. (3) Question Reality was ready to go out into the world in 2005, but I even had editors even tell me "Your writing is beautiful and powerful, but not now." But, WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY "NOT NOW"? What the hxll?!! The political climate under Bush really SUCKED, and drastically impacted the strategies of publishers (4) Several internet-based companies evolved from "esoteric code" to user-friendly push-button publishing (totally my style, WYSIWYG); there was an artms race in quality of internet services, like blogging and social networking, in which in my mind, Blogger and Wordpress and Typepad won for the blogosphere, and Facebook won by a long-shot in social networking (myspace has become insultingly cluttery). It's funny. All these people have jobs "teaching people" about "the media" when the "media environment" has been drastically changing during the time in which I have tried to establish myself as a multi-media storyteller. As a teacher, you have no stake. You're just observing and telling stories, and get paid to do it. You're not a struggling, unpaid "player" trying to survive in this dynamically changing media environment. Hopefully, one day I will succeed as a player and live to tell a story, once this "media environment" has stabilized.... As Jules said, "Dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't evolve fast enough to the environmental changes." The shifts in the internet and human media interface has been so drastic the last few years, that I feel if I fast-forwarded my life, I could say that I've been going through a "meteor impact of cyber space," much equivalent to the KT mass extinction. Fine, fine... I am metaphorically exaggerating. Whatever. That's what geologic metaphors are for. SCALE! (If your product doesn't seem to have the capacity to be contagious and "scale out" then people won't join the bandwagon. Agents and publishers only "join your team" because they see your product in "scale" and they want the piece of YOUR PIE, but then again, many folks can't scale out so well if they don't have help...).

Visceral things I didn't know about: male Homo sapiens (beyond my father, who I have discovered to be the exception to all the rules), their positive, sensitive inner universe as well as their extremely negative, bridge-burning undersides, I also didn't understand much about death (as I had most profoundly experienced through my grandfather Ray and grandmother Marion)

Elements of Substance / Philosophies I didn't know about: geology (paleontology, paleoecology, sedimentology, my pet pea subjects), the nuances of creative writing a la Barry Spacks :-) (understanding storytelling structures such as poetry, song lyrics, flash fiction, short story, novella, novel, etcetera), Matrix of the Mind: Mapping Language on Landscapes (the feedback between language, images, and emotions), I didn't know that my writing could be classified as "literary fiction [faction] for social change" (finally, a discrete and bounded discipline for the publishing types!), I didn't have people with authority and legitimacy around me (like my new Ph.D. committee, sitting in Mike Davis' class)....

Practical / Artistic / Social Networking Tools I didn't know about: I didn't know how to use Photoshop, I didn't own a Nikon D80 SLR until April 2006 (got my first photography gigs via cousin Mike Dillin!), I didn't know how to blog, I didn't know how to facebook, I didn't know how to design-organize-self-publish a book, like through LULU or CREATESPACE, I had no confidence in singing, I didn't know how to record-mix-master music, I didn't know how to record and edit video (thanks to UCSB's Blue Horizons program), I didn't know about the art of public presentation (thanks Toastmasters!), I didn't know much about experimental stage play (STAGE via Dr. Nancy Kawalek), I didn't know much about acting/modeling (which I learned via Barbizon/IMTA), nor was I ever exposed to wasteful mass production film operations (via Mike Dillin, Central Casting), I didn't know about the operations of a music studio (volunteering at California Sound Studios)

After all things said, I can find "some level of truce" with my first traumatic wave, simply by recognizing my own state of idiocracy, but not necessarily with the way how certain people treated me and responded to me (let's call it "collective abuse," shall we?). For example, to experience the sensation of "censorship," in which a literary agent and editor stated flat out "your writing is beautiful, but not now!" is one of the most traumatizing experiences I ever had in my entire life. Around that time, I recorded myself going through a panic attack in the car. At a visceral level, I could not stand the notion of being "mentally trapped" by the conventions/standards of a national society, and at a conscious level, I understood that my visceral/primal brain was going through a panic attack, and that I should record it. It's buried somewhere in my computer; when the time is right, I will revisit this attack (as a summary statement for most of my panic attacks). Traumatizing times provide the best material for storytelling....

The second most memorable response was a very contentious phone call with the editor from the UC Press. It was funny... I was exploring the website of the University of California Press and was noticing how they had this "non-discrimination statement," stating that the UC Press does not discriminate based on race, ethnic background, class, job position, AGE, or any other factor that could possibly construct the notion of discrimination. And yet, the phone call with the editor showed CLEAR DISCRIMINATION BASED ON AGE ("ageism" as opposed to "racism" or "speciesism" in District 9). He told me flat out (paraphrased, I have exact wording in another computer), "How could any 24-year old have something to say about the world?" which was extremely derogatory to me at the time. I left the phone call feeling like I was "no good" and didn't have anything valid to say because I was "too young." Following this phone call, I went through another panic attack alone, and I ended up writing a poem "It is important to take a moment and consider..." which I will place in the next blog, because I don't want to place too much information here....

Despite these discriminating statements made over the phone, I am going to have to let them slide, let them drip off my shoulder as if I were a random victim of being hit by bird dung. First of all, I have to let them slide because back then, I didn't know a lot, and I was a young idiot (yet with a lot to say) in several respects. And secondly, the editor did review the manuscript and made sincere, polite, helpful comments. Emotional and contentious phone calls should not be the basis for rational decision-making....

So, this "generic list" of all the things I didn't know back in 2005, but I do know now in 2009, is becoming a little bit of a "life story," so I'll catch myself and cut myself off here....

283. Ecopistemology and Comparative, Multi-media Storytelling

Well, ever since I started attending the workshops of Shelly Lowenkopf in Montecito, my mind started to rapidly organize in terms of "mechanisms of storytelling." I started to realize that if I belonged in one line of human storytelling (literature, music, acting, film), I started to realize that the central organizing mechanism of human perception of Reality is through Writing (paralleled with my cartoon drawings mental mappings). If I belong within a "group" within any industry of storytelling, it would be in writing. I started to realize most of the rest of the characters are layers stemmed from writing, and those people are mostly puppets. If you want to meet pure intelligence and people who manipulate reality, best chill with the writers. Took me three years later to find myself rooted in writing once again. When I branch out into multi-media projects, I will say, first and foremost I am a Writer/Cartoonist. After that, I am a writer who composes and records music. Not, I am a "musician." After that, I am a writer who makes movies. Not, I am a "film-maker." I had such a hard time getting together some form of coherent body of information in "comparative storytelling," and I could only do it from the frame of reference of writing. Not film. Not public speaking. Not music. Not elaborate, multi-layered, three-dimensional graphic art. No. No. No. Just writing. The Backbone HTML code to the Reconstruction of Reality.

You know? It gives me some comfort knowing that since the dawn of human cave art-writing chicken scratch, humans have been writers and cartoonists (even musicians, but they had vocal cords for internal instruments, not electronic pianos). So, that's a few hundred thousand years? Million years? Paper and pencil have been around a while. But photographers and film-makers and million-dollar music studios only existed since the 1800s and 1900s. It makes sense to have a writer/cartoonist frame of reference, because the rest are recent inventions and more technology intensive. Evolution of storytelling.

I wrote a dozen or more pages on Ecopistemology and Comparative, Multi-Media Storytelling. Which I will ultimately have to say that (1) it is an essay attempting to define "what is environmental media and why do we need it"? (the whole scientists part of a system called society and planet Earth, scientists as chess pieces, simultaneously trying to analyze the whole game of chess, account for human dimensions of scientific practice and environmental change) and (2) it is written from the frame of reference of a scientist. Hence, I am comparing all forms of multi-media with reference to the practices of scientific writing and the acquired mindframe of a scientist. More specifically, field scientist (aka "fuzziologist").