PDF file of the above poem can be found here: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/matrixofmetaphors.pdf.I "sang" this poem in the car on the way to UC Santa Barbara. I had a choice of attending an evolution course or saving my soul. So, I decided to save my soul and I patiently waited in the History Department commons room, which was a bit dark, but scattered with very interesting things to read. I ended up listening to my voice recorder and jotting down this poem. Then Dr. Osborne came by and we chatted for quite a while. I told him about my Elephant and Oak Tree story (which I had informed about 25 other people about, now I have ridiculous personal obligation to write this because then again I will be "all talk and no product" which sounds like a familiar friend of mine, I don't want to end up to be another one of those...). I eventually incorporated the poem into a 14-page essay to my advisor, Dr. Young. I shared the poem with my writing buddy, Hector.
PDF file of the above poem can be found here:
I also wrote this poem before writing the longer essay for Oran. I had a dream of emailing Shifting Baselines to Drs. Jeremy Jackson, Paul Dayton, and Daniel Pauly--my scientist heroes (at least on the marine side, my dad is always my terrestrial hero!)--but right now I feel chickened out. Maybe I'll have enough guts to send it to them another day. I also shared this poem to my writing buddy, Hector, and he liked it! He thought it was a total mind trip, as my writing tends to be....
I had invented this poem quite a while ago--perhaps a month and a half ago--but I finally crystallized it before writing my longer essay to my advisor. It's kind of funny how one of my College of Creative Studies advisors, Dr. Bruce Tiffney, told me that "a Ph.D. is when a student defines a problem and figures out a way or multiple ways how to solve it. And then it's critically evaluated by a committee of people who already have their union cards." This quote is paraphrased. But then the question is--when you take a step back--as I was influenced by meeting Dr. Freudenberg's grad student who studies "perceived risk"--"What is a problem?" "What is a problem versus what isn't a problem?" "How does one define or perceive a system to be a problem at all?" So, part of my Ph.D. is to ask the question as to the "origins of problems." Why we humans have problems in the first place. This biological question is as stupid as my "why do I need to eat?" anorexia question back at age 17. But nevertheless stupid questions can sometimes lead to very interesting findings....
