432. Poem "Subversivity of Dental Self Destruction"

Subversivity of Dental Self Destruction

"Everyone
has
their
own
vice.
If you hide it,
then there is something wrong,
and the vice
may be
very
very
bad,
even more so
than those revealed
to the openness
of their ripped sleeves."

I show my vice
on my teeth.
Decaying my whites
with Werthers
upon Werthers
denied with
sugar-free xylitol
tic-tac mints--
it's not that bad
relative to smoking
or alcoholism
or wrist slitting
or designing malicious bugs
for other computers
to self-destruct.
Or suicide cult planning
or bombing other countries
or just being an overall
pest to humanity
for my own vilenesss
of consumption
of valuable resources
and production
and nonutile wastes--
depending on the scale
of my operations.

Carameled sugar is an addiction
to feed a rapidly firing mind
for potentially up to 12 hours straight
of writing and thinking
and clinging to a computer
because she seeks what is written
on the computer
to one day reflect what is in her mind.
Mind mirrors
Computer's electrons
Mirrors mind.

And she is overwhelmed
always
by the influx of such splendid ideas
and notions of her surroundings
to a point of cumulative doom--
for she cannot keep up
and the sugar fix rises even more.
And all for what?
To become a better writer and artist?
I am destroying myself
to become better?

Day in, day out,
despite occasional brushing
and flossing and poking
and mouthwashing,
the bacterial colonies
move in, invade, occupy
establish incumbency,
and carve their crevices--
oh dear to think
I'm fostering an ecosystem
of malaise
in my major oral opening.
Good for the bacteria,
they are having a party,
I am sure,
yet not so hot for me.

But I dread and tread
myself, heavily into the
sterile multimilliondollar offices
of the dentist.
I hate him? Even her!
Why?
Because it costs so much?
Because some of them go to the realm
of aesthetics--beyond functionality?
Because they create dental problems--
hence my financial problems--
that don't seem to exist?
Because some of them are incompetent?
Because they have control over something
I cannot control and manage myself?
I cannot operate myself for fillings
and crowns
and bridges
and one day
implants?

Because I have
absolutely no control?
Oh yes, I'm slipping....
I am assuming I have no control.

I wonder where these dentists come from.
Why they even exist?
A few million years, billion years
without their functional
and aesthetic
and even technological existence.
Humans used to live till age 30.
Now it's 70.
But humans never ate sugar,
till the mass produced
canning and preservations of foods.
The dawn of sugar
was the dawn of dentists.

The dawn of strange biology people--
bioboneengineers
or dental jewerlyists--
who make a fantasmic monetary living
looking at, taking X-rays of,
poking at, sticking needles into,
chiseling away at, filling materials in to,
leaving something
slightly unfinished
so that their helpless
dazed and confused
customer limp in a fancy electric seat
can return for more pricy labors
of functionality to aesthetics
for the most beautiful
of perfect smiles of bleached coral white teeth
of small handful of overhyped movie stars,
with mine full of holes, stained yellow and brown
and I shall never hold a grin so parfait
as those pixelated figures on the screen--

So I smile with my eyes,
and somehow some people seem to like it.
I hide the sin of my mouth,
for the Culture of Perfect Teeth
has made my mouth a sin,
and I even feel shame myself.

"Your
dreams
predict
your
future.
You are
what you wish for."
And in the depths
of subversivity
of dental self destruction,
I somehow clutched to a wish
for the vanishing
of an array of external boneage
within my mouth.
I wished to dream a high price profession
that would allow me to set aside funds
for a fresh set of implants
after a resum-ation
of years of painful, slow, aggravating decay--

And--I am receiving
what I wished for.
The slipping and shifting,
from the whites,
to the yellows,
to the dark brownish blacks,
the relying and crutching
on exterior knowledges and technologies
to save me
to account for my vices
rather than me
clench to myself
and save myself--
not just for this moment,
but here on out--

rather than me to say--
I am my only beast
of self-management
of self-sustenance at hand--
and I have no one to help--
no one to hold me up
in my own island
of complexity--
my own internal dialogue
of conflict
and slight self destruction--
SO WHAT?!
so why not take care
and to "love thyself"
and internalize
this externality
this stained vice
this crippled smile
only with the eyes?

"The originals are always the best--
Replacing your teeth with implants
is like purposely trying
to acquire a knee implant."
"That's absurd!"
Sisters exist to keep the absurd mind
from tumulting into decay of thought.
A mental snap
before a filling chips out
and disturbs my
vulnerable stomach?

What to do?
Slow the decay?
Slow my mind?
Get my head off of sugar meth
with half the velocity of thoughts
running through
per second of time?
It's okay to think slowly
and thoughtfully
though the world spins
like a waffling top
by a El Capitan cliff
of doom--

What is my new vision?
It is my own choice
to live... with...
or live... without...
my own evolutionarily-designed
crunching and grinding cubes.
My vice shall be my vice,
yet minimize it!

I will care as much as I can care
for my own Beastly Self
and I will hold my frail, splintering bones in place
for the longest possible
that I foreseeably can
within my own possible means.

How can I bother to think
of sustaining the world in its entirety
if I cannot even bother to
concsciously sustain my own microcosmos?
to the highest of standards
and healthiest of means?

And in last resort,
in daunting screams of pain?
Then I shall go visit the dentist.

Don't be down on yourself.
Accept!
Embrace!
It is such paradoxical tragedy
no matter how much
I subversively deconstruct my teeth
my gums hold strong like
a child's fresh sand castle
that still has the capacity
to last long
in an ephemeral sense.

The dentist must become
my appendix,
an optional removal,
not my lungs,
not my emotions,
not my smiles,
not an unhealthy vice
that drags down the rest
of the blossoming
of my mind's heart.

UCSB Dental Clinic
Call for appointment 1:30pm
corporate time.
805-893-2891
10am May 21.
Start with Tooth #12.

431. The Walking Stick with a Big Black Suitcase (Poem and Flash Fiction)

The Walking Stick with a Big Black Suitcase

There was a girl
who was a stick
of six feet tall
and 110 pounds.
She walked all across
the random campus
with her head down
perhaps to hide
her internal uneasiness,
her confusion,
her eyes glazing,
not knowing how to pinpoint
or identify this confusion--
this void--
where it came from,
where it's going--
but at that split moment
of circumstances
in space and time,
the confusion took form
of a big black suitcase
she was trailing behind her,
lugging and slogging around
in awkwardness
as if the suitcase
were at least equal
to her own weight
or biomass
or weight,
and she was angry
simply angry
to think she had to choose
her classes
of two from column A
and one from column B
but didn't know
any other road of thinking
and no one asked her... yet--
to wipe her mind to a blank slate
as if she saw all 1 million classes
in the book of all books
of this random campus
which one would she choose
to take?
Out of her own intrinsic interest?
Intrinsic hunger, desire?
Intrinsic pathway and journey to life?
Endemic to her own unique conglomeration
of neuronally-housed experiences?
Maybe she didn't deserve to have
this question asked to her.
Maybe she just wasn't ready for that question.
But the subliminal aggravation
always seemed to amplify.
So this walking stick
with a trailing big black suit case
crawled across the campus
to a random building of brown
to a random second floor
to a random, dimly lit office space
leading to a semi-random person
she met only a second time.
Eric Zimmerman' the name.
of somewhat youthful, moderate liveliness--
his skin had no layers
but his conversing interplay
had shown he'd been around the block--
perhaps it was the day of only moderate liveliness--
glum gray skies--
that influenced all moods around--
Eric's, the stick's, everyone's.
He shuffled papers that showed
her information in numbers.
They only need numbers, you know.
And Eric reviewed the stick's sheet:
To become an "environmental studies major"
You need to take physics, economics, geology--
And the walking stick
then sitting on a seat,
boiled with increasing anger, frustration, confusion--
agony, her mind craving to explode
because this world wanted her to repeat
repeat repeat
repeat repeat
the same information
she tried to learn so hard in high school--
the same information
that made her consume herself into a stick
in the first place--
her hands shook and jittered
on the verge of pseudo-epilepsy
as she pulled up the black suit case
to her bony knees
and rapidly unzipped the top,
struggling to pull out a big black binder
neatly stuffed with hundreds and hundreds of papers
three-point-five inches thick--
no, not ONE folder, but TWO!--
and what could these two binders
embody, represent, possibly mean?--
all those notes from lectures and labs and exams
from two years of painfully pleasured memories
of bootcamp physics with Madame Lieux
at John Wesly North High School--
an island of education extraordinaire--
yet the rest of all her classmates
placed those notes in the bombfire
of post-high-school graduation
in the cult ritualistic celebration
that my-ten-years-of-mass-produced-public-education-
was-a-bunch-of-bullshxt--
but no, this walking stick
could not throw away--her efforts,
her meticulousness, her potentially gained knowledge
of new universes
of seemingly potential practicality
in her daily life
that were only mildly mentally sketched
in space and time--
then blindly repulsed and rejected by
the bureaucracy of MegaUniversity
who knew not her name, just her number
and her tuition and fees
all put to brain-time-and-space-waste
and redone again?
All over again?
As if 1% of her knot of confusion
that upwelled in her at this pristinely struck
moment of all moments
started to unravel right in front of the
poor innocent, random culprit of Eric Zimmerman
as she slammed her two massive binders
totalling 7-inches worth of two-year militaristic efforts
and she stared intensely, perhaps awkwardly--
this time not with a glossy gaze
but a rare, rare moment of acute, definite, yet absurd vision--
that seemed to lead Somewhere,
but Nowhere and Anywhere in particular--
at least a rationale, logical battle, fight she could stand for
as she roared in quiet, very quiet control,
oh no!--It was just a fight to spare her sanity
as the Future an endlessness
of flipping hamburgers of bombarded information--
"You are NOT going to make me take physics,
EVER again."
A pause, yet
only a vibrant chuckle, peaking into a deep-rooted laugh
emerged from the facial muscles
and jovial voice of Mr. Zimmerman,
as he flipped open one book and skimmed lightly
through the extensivity of the rabbithole of Lieux Physics
only again to shake his head,
"You know what, Victoria?
Ever since I've been here,
no one has EVER done THIS to me before!"
He continued to be self-humored
out of her own determined innocence
and downright intrigue to reveal piles and piles of evidence
on how-this-school-cannot-repeat-torture-to-me,
resulting in two boxes being checked off
on the paper with the walking stick's numbers.
No, no. The stick did not have to take physics.
Again.
She had won the most strangest of minute battles,
all with a few more thousand
knots in her twisted head that needed to still unravel.
Eric made her fight a little more difficult
to check off those economics and geology boxes...
but the suitcase filled with Effort and Legitimacy
was still quite heavy
without those two physics binders
and through the shuffling of her Past in Papers
Across the Random Office of Mr. Zimmerman
she learned that it was worth keeping evidence
in the closet, the Personal Library of Victoria,
back in the knowns and comforts of Riverside--
despite the qualms of her mother
desiring a Roomie Bedroom,
Not an Office Space or a Warehouse--
the stick finally zipped up her backpack,
her big black suitcase,
and left Mr. Zimmerman with a memory,
with one fleeting wobble and stumble,
leaving the random room,
the random hallway,
the random building,
the random walkway
with a slight smile,
with a slight ease
knowing she could move forward
into Nowhere in Particular
rather than repeat Backwardness
yet upon her lengthy walk
she was nevertheless
swiftly consumed
and subsumed
by the other 99% of the void.
The stick struggled once again
to hall a heavy load
across the campus
to the free, yet sparse parking boonies of
Isla Vista.
It was a week before the school started.
The campus was a ghost town,
but her head was far from it.
It was just the very beginning
for this walking stick--
just the beginning of a chronically internal battle
on how her rowdy, fiesty mind
could just never fit in these boxes
that the Cow Herders of Academia
were trying to fit her in.

430. Sometimes Life Happens and You Allow Yourself to Absorb It: Jesusita Fire, Oak Trees, Los Padres Forest…. Wildland Fire Ecology Can of Worms

CAPTION ON PICASAWEB:
SidebySide Pictures of Heaven and Hxll on Earth. Life has just been happening to me. I have no control over it, and I am trying with my darndest hardest to soak it up and let it alter me and my perception of reality. Today I just witnessed my fifth-in-a-row FIN (Fisheries Information Network) meeting in light of effective fisheries collaboration (and instead of feeling overwhelmed, I actually feel proud of being a part of novel history). A few days ago I escaped the Jesusita Fire of Santa Barbara and managed to snap the chaos of houses burning down amidst chaparral. And a few days before that, I was as far north as the Heavenly Highway 41 (connecting Morro Bay to Atascadero on the 101 freeway), where I encountered an "enchanted forest" of gnarly, tangled coast live oak trees and the front yard of a ranch where figurine dinosaurs were romping around--probably in an area larger than the encroaching Sarengeti of Africa! And these adventures are just scratching the surface! Stokastika!

IMAGE CAPTIONS:
"Enchanted Forest of Entangled Coast Live Oak." Los Padres National Forest Campground off the Highway 41, from Morro Bay to Atascadero, California. If I had one more day left to live, I would be amidst and immersed the oak trees....

Jesusita Fire. Day 2. May 2009. Flames amidst chaparral amidst homes. Image taken from Ontare Road with a Nikon D80. Soon after I was booted out with others by the police. "Official evacuation!" I wish I had a reporter's badge and my own helicopter (because my father is a fire ecologist! I should have a right to be closer and take necessary pictures!) then I could have gotten REALLY COOL photographs like some of the work from the Los Angeles Times!

Jesusita Fire. Day 2. May 2009. Environmental Devastation Predestination. Humans setting up their own human-environmental devastation predestination, allowing fuel build up for half a century under Smokey the Bear Fire Regime... a homogenous stand of carpet bomb chaparral blew up before my very eyes.... Why prevent wildland fire when these plants are adapted to fire?!! (Scarid seeds, burls). Image taken near Ontare Road with a Nikon D80.

Santa Barbara MicroHiroshima. Jesusita Fire. Day 2. May 2009. A MicroHiroshima appeared right behind a hillside that was bursting in flames. Was it a house?! A gasoline tank?! A grove of Eucalyptus?! Image taken with a Nikon D80 near by Ontare Road.

Dichotomy: Luxurious Architecture in Hellish Smoke-plumed Skies. Jesusita Fire. Day 2. May 2009. I find it ironic that I have lived with my father's research-management dilemma of southern California wildland fire management all these years... and I still... until this day... did not attempt to get close and take pictures of these catastrophic events that fundamentally symbolize why I am interested in the interface of science and society! The other issue that bothered me with my wildland fire photography is that I felt that I was not "close enough" to the fire--when comparing my photographs to those displayed by the Los Angeles Times. I felt jealous that reporters were essentially IN the flames, alongside the firefighters. But then again, perhaps they are photos too focused on human interest stories rather than the conceptual properties of wildland fire. Maybe taking a step back is a good thing!

Santa Barbara MicroHiroshima. Jesusita Fire. Day 2. May 2009. A MicroHiroshima appeared right behind a hillside that was bursting in flames. Was it a house?! A gasoline tank?! A grove of Eucalyptus?! Image taken with a Nikon D80 near by Ontare Road.

Wildland Fire Ecology Can of Worms. I can now see why I was struggling to write this blog for about five days now. I am documenting intimate issues of my father's research... I am entering a meshed-up, entangled can of worms in my own head concerning wildland fire ecology and management--the interface of science and society. Maybe getting distracted by a fisheries stakeholder meeting is good thing. The flames and flares inside me cooled down (and were diverted elsewhere) as well as the flames in the Santa Barbara Jesusita Fire.

I started to think about what the fundamental message would be to anyone for such a complicated issue. When you change the scale of perception of a system, then your perception of the underlying driving factors that create the overall pattern shift. The given paradigm of thinking is instantaneous: the cause of the fire is the ignition. But there are several ingredients to make all things tick (or burn), and if you want to understand longer-term perspectives, you wear a new perceptual hat: "the cause of the fire is the plants." (predictability of outcome with given fuel accumulation, mass accumulation effects, tipping point). And with this fundamental shift in perception of a system, there is an overall shift in the entire approach to managing the systems--there should be a shift in the research agenda, a shift in educational/storytelling practices, a shift in media reporting of wildland fire, a shift in wildland fire policy (Smokey the Bear is dead! We can have a Smokey the Bear bonfire, burn the bobble head and a stuffed animal), shift in forestry management. It's all easy to think about in the head, and how do you move chess pieces of how society operates in the real world?! It's hard to get people to change thinking, change behavior, especially when their jobs depend on it. It take a really long time... and usually people have to get burned in the process. Ecosystem-based management is a lovely game to play in the minds of scientists and scholars, but a devastating, painful, long-term process in the world outside. It's nice to dream that things can change fast... but that usually requires a Hurricane Katrina catastrophe in the realm of fire ecology (2003-2007 firestorm). It's like one slight shift or tick in thinking requires society to redo it's entire wardrobe of human-environmental relations! And why it's very hard to manage a large-scale society in the domain of human-environmental health. Intrinsic inertia. You have to lose everything to be desperate, to gain, to see new things.... [bumper sticker: The cause of the [wildland] fire is the plants. Give it to every person you interview. Put on car. Drive away. Contingency: arsonist can't make a living in Death Valley. No fuel no fire. Contingency. No mass extinction ["mass suicide"] without a mass accumulation. [Perceptual shift --> reworks reality --> paradigm shift]

429. Poem Called "The Encroachment" (Similar to Creeping Development and Whatever's Left of the Wildwest, Unfinished Poems)

The Encroachment
(Affiliated with Poems Creeping Development /
Whatever's Left of the Wildwest)
By Victoria "Stokastika" 2009

So the ocean shifted
Into a swimming pool,
And the mountains wilted
Into my own backyard.

The more I knew Unknowing
Of-the non-human world,
The more I came to own
This world as very small.

I thought I'd find a treasure--
Creviced infinity--
That spanned the universe
Of stars and galaxies.

Wildwest's never in measure
'Till Known came encroaching
A creep of man's disruption
Mind's pave developing--
[Mind's construct intruding]
[of trespassing, of intruding, of invading]

Without slight detecting--

To a discomfort
of confinement.

I just realized that this poem is a continuation of my California Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) essay, which started with this journal entry:

Whatever's Left of the Wildwest:

“It’s strange to think—I look out to the Pacific Ocean, and all I perceive is an endless continuum of a slightly curvatured, blue-liquid landscape, partly breeched by an angled wall of shrub-coated solid rock of the Channel Islands. And to think—despite the intrinsic human tendencies to bound systems through somewhat concrete geologic and biological delineations—that there are arbitrary human-constructed lines of regimes slashing up and down upon this continuity of space to which I cannot see with my naked eye… it’s just daunting… as if I were seeing ghosts. But then again, maybe these invisible streaks of barbwire need to exist, simply because there are too many humans like myself gazing upon and intertangling their modes of existence with this seeming vastness of blue. And all the sharp, translucent prickles of barbwire at least attempt to keep these rhythms aligned and as disentangled as possible. Rendering the chronic accumulations of our individual meddlings now dramatically shrinks this infinite expanse of ocean into merely a giant backyard swimming pool.”
[Biologically Incorrect Journal Entry, January 2009]

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

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

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

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

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

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

428. Poem "The Living and Standing Dead" I Had Wanted to Write for a Long Time

"The Standing Dead." Photograph of dead Jeffrey Pine (Ponderosa Pine?) taken when hiking past the ski hut, on the way up to Mount Baldy, San Gabriel Mountains, with my father Richard and my aunt Jean in the summer of 2006. Can eventually be overlaid as "vispo" to go along with the poem below. Now I have to find some zombie-suit-and-tie-people-in-the-city for a "Living Dead" photograph!

The Living and Standing Dead
(incomplete, but a start)

There was a dimcity of the Living Dead,
Lurking in a sphere in a doomful dread,
Stooped, stoic stones faced black and white,
Draped in veneers, lustered suit and tie.

If you're telling me this is the Peak's Peak
Of Civilization's grandeur Ferris Wheel,
If you're telling me, then I will just shriek--
We'll run back-n-hide in the jungle of fields.

Whatever is left of those jungles of fields.


There was a glumforest of the Standing Dead
Made by the sum of the Hands without Heads.
Too many straws sucked the ground to a drought,
Burning to the beetles' once voracious bouts.

If you're telling me this is the Peak's Peak
Of civilization's landscaped Ferris Wheel,
If you're telling me, then I will just shriek--
We're running to the Nothing left of jungled fields.

The Nothing is what's left of those jungled fields.

I wrote this poem in a Motel 6 the morning of returning to the chaos of "southern California." The chaos in my head dramatically increased because I had been relatively isolated and car-camping for about a week around the San Luis Obispo area. The second line of chaos was my encounter and attempted photography of the Santa Barbara Jesusita fire.... and the chaos keeps piling on from there.... It's funny how I can tip in from one line of chaos to another line... from being too alone and isolated... and then venturing into the realm of being surrounded by too many people.

The point of the story is that the writer was suffering from being in a "dimcity of Living Dead" and then she and her friends tried to run out to the "jungle of the fields" and that is where they found the "glumforest of the Standing Dead" and now the poet has no where left to run to... to find any state of "peace."

Another short thought. Yesterday I met up with Shannon Switzer in Costa Mesa. It was really relieving to see her actually. I haven't seen anyone in the Woven Atom group for a while. I admire Shannon so much because she has this impeccable personality (in terms of a kind, intelligent, sensitive, loveable personality that everyone would glue to like super-power magnets), a big vision (in terms of a career in science and art, National Geographic, science and society), and VERY good networking-go-get-'em skills. She has already proven that to me--Shannon has evolved greatly in a few short months of intern stints in Santa Barbara. So, I am relieved to see her because it's like "here are two girls with really big visions in their heads and no one to gripe to and vent and no one to share the journey with... and then finally you have someone who's going the same direction and you just play off each other's moves and we BOTH end up going somewhere. Eh?" Not a bad deal. Thinking Big can be a lonely journey, especially because most people don't think big--or they thought big and instead they settled with a family and a job and dropped out of the road to going to Mars and back. And the Andromeda Galaxy and back. Shannon and I also talked about people around us "encourage us" but don't help in the process. They are encouragement, but not inspiration. There are people who say "you can do it" in terms of shooting for the stars, and then there are people you meet you can actually merge your heads with--like siamese twinning in the brain to some degree--and then you can shoot to the stars with them!

In a certain way I am sad that Shannon's no longer in Santa Barbara, but in a certain way it's good--she's in the San Diego area--I'm there a lot more frequently now... and that Shannon's no longer in the "heap of clutter" of my head that lies in Santa Barbara.

Inspiration is a rare and precious thing. Grasp it and roll with it, once you have claimed it!

427. Two Short Poems: Trying to Get Back in Context / Back in My Head

Poem #1:

I don't know
Where I'm going.
I don't know
Where I've been.
Out of context
I am floating.
Unlatched to Self's
The Very Sin

of Existence.

I just made up this poem right now... this morning. Tuesday morning in May. I just came from visiting my good friend Lauri, zipping around in San Diego, a hectic (but very good) fisheries stakeholder meeting, a sick tomato-poisoned best friend, Santa Barbara burning down, and a trip from up in northern California. And so? I feel a bit out of context. Not very processable in a single blog! It's funny at one point in the COMPASS communcations workshop, Dr. Ron Rice (Communications Professor) mentioned (sarcastically) [paraphrased] about how surveys usually involve people's perception of certain issues, and he finds it ironic how can we try to figure out people's perception of issues when they don't even have 50% accuracy in perception of their own selves? People don't even keep track of themselves or even know themselves, the body and the mind they are housed in! So much for religions attempting people to be in tune with themselves!

Poem #2:

Why do I
Have to go
Through the Past
Just to get
To the Future?

I wrote this poem on my first drive / first train ride to San Diego from Santa Barbara--back in March of 2009. The future was (and still is ) waiting for me in San Diego, but I had to go through regions of notable failure in Los Angeles and Orange County... baggage of the past, so to speak... primarily in the film and music industry. But I am learning how to train my mind to go forward with what works, and account for / scrap all the pathways and elements that don't work.

425. On Life and Death: Proximate and Ultimate Cycles of the Phoenix (Based on Blog #424)

On Life and Death: Proximate and Ultimate Cycles of the Phoenix (Based on Blog #424). Phenomena of Individual and Collective Action. Cycles of Origins and Endings, births, shifts, and deaths, constructions and catastrophs, are ultimately similar themes of all the sciences and serves as a universal narrative theme of science when we ask "Who are we? And what is our place in the universe?" One of my advisors asked me whether these were even the "right questions" after all? Are origins and endings and singularities over multiple sources simply desirable human constructs that we use to create scientific stories that ultimately carve "reality"? Well?! I can walk away from the Origins Symposium at Arizona State University (April 2009) feeling like I've learned something. The overarching universe that science has carved through the accumulation of miniscule replicate experiments... ultimately is a singularity... a single narrative with no replicates. No multiverses. No replicate planet Earths... for now.... To a scientist, that philosophically SUCKS. I would be the one to know!

Are these phenomena really happening in the environment or are they merely constructs in our minds?

CAPTION:
Cartoon Slideshow. On Life and Death: Cycles of the Phoenix. Phenomena of Individual and Collective Action. Universal Narrative Theme of Science (and Society).

424. Poem / Song "Gaia-Medea" with a LOT of Backstory from Origins Conference (Arizona State University, April 2009) (EVOLUTION BY COLLECTIVE ACTION)

I know each poem is deserving of its own blog entry, but I was hunting for "Gaia-Medea" and accidentally stumbled upon two other poems/songs I was formulating in a car that I thought are worth "barfing out now" so that they can be worked upon and elaborated more consciously!

I formulated "Gaia-Medea" poem on the way down to San Diego (gone fishing!) but I was truly inspired by the works of an Earth Scientist (Dr. Peter Ward) at the Origins Conference (ASU University) who holds the perspective of the Medea Hypothesis (disastrologist, pessimist approach) over Gaia when it comes to Life on Earth as a happy-dosy-self-sustaining system. (I think water ultimately serves as a checks-and-balances character). This professor takes a unique stance in exploring the role of microbes in macro-scale ecological catastrophe in geological scales and I bet this dude will jive quite well with my undergrad advisor Armand Kuris (Parasite Prof). I talked to the moderator of the panel--I believe Dr. Manfred Laubichler (internal versus internal-regulation, serenity prayer conversation, I will discuss a later time)-- and I told him that I was concerned that Gaia and Medea are like bipolar-opposities of each other and are merely perceptual frames for research agendas. Essentially, the history of this planet shows evidence for cycles of origins, growth, shifts, decay, catastrophic ends, and cycles of rebirth, so on and so forth. The petri dish of planet Earth largely remains empty, oxygen came around, organisms explode in size and population size, like megacorporate mass production of life kicks in because efficiency of oxygen transport, then the petri dish gets full, shxt happens in a case of fullness vulnerability (combinatotion of various self-induced biotic and non-self-induced abiotic factors, density-dependent or density-independent), then the scenario is wiped blank slate again (like some kind of meteorite, toxic, anoxic event), and the meek scum rock-digesting bacteria shall always inherit the Earth. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I didn't tell Dr. Laubichler all of this, but I told him that why are there two bipolar perspectives when there are cycles of both Gaia-Medea. Wouldn't a more appropriate metaphor of A PHOENIX be more appropriate in terms of understanding coupled organismal-environmental systems? Human-envronmental systems? And he said very instinctively, yes, indeed, that would make a LOT of sense! And then I told him, that I am studying the role of metaphor and scale in conceptualizing human-environmental systems and science and society, as well as allowing the bridge of analogies and parallels with the natural sciences and the social sciences. Do you think this is a worthwhile agenda? And Dr. Laubichler also swiftly stated, that "Yes, this would indeed be a very legitimate research agenda, as long as the metaphors are not shallow-pass-off-analogies, but metaphors that are deeply embedded in the thought processes of the research and advances conceptual understanding of intra-and-interdisciplinary work. And I was very happy that he said this. I wore a gold star on my forehead for a couple of days :-). I felt legitimatized by someone with credentials I never met in my entire life until that moment in space and time. I love it!

The other issue I noticed is how disciplines borrowed terms from other rather remote disciplines. Geologists borrowed the term "incumbency," which is a word usually used in political contexts. What I thought was VERY interesting was use of the word complex--rival, non-rival (competitive-non-competitive for finite-space-time), excludable (elite club access), and non-exludable (access to all, socialist)--these traditionally-economics terms were borrowed TWICE through the entirety of the Origins symposium: once potentially by Dr. Steve Mojzsis (he's SOOO cool, I think he's and Earth Science prof based on Colorado), and once definitely by Dr. Steven Pinker (in linguistics--words as windows to the mind, who was clobbered by the skeptical ASU audience because Dr. Pinker was only measuring intelligence through word use and not spatial-problem solving and artistic outputs). I am SOOO excited simply because I witnessed this concept-word borrowing from disciplines, and it's also media-documented! Woohoo!

The other topic I did not mention to Dr. Laubichler but am now coming to vividly perceive as a REFLEXIVE SCIENTIST (a reflexive scientist [like me] is basically a scientist who has come to the conclusion that science is done by humans, and by default becomes a philosopher of science of sorts) is how the positive / negative mammalian taxis--or how OPTIMISM and PESSIMISM--ultimately shapes and frames scientific agendas.
In the parallels of the history of life on Earth, and origins of humans and their environments...

OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM AS INTRINSIC PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA ADDICTION / FIXATION / GROWTH / LOSS / WITHDRAWAL: (psychology of loss, whether your family member, friend, pet, a drug addiction, post-pardum depression after quarter finals at school, your job, or 20 years of scientific research overhauled by a young stud) (five steps on death and dying) EVEN PERCEIVED IN THE NOTION OF SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM SHIFTS / SCIENCE AS INCREMENTAL AND/OR RADICAL IN CHANGE OF PERCEPTION AND THOUGHT PROCESS (like for thousands of years we added knowledge to the universe of Sun Cycling Around the Earth, and then one day we came to perceive the Earth was cycling around the sun, it requires a knowledge overhaul and shifting-re-organizing entirety of accumulated incremental knowledge!) A BIRTH AND DEATH AND REBIRTH IN SCIENTIFIC THINKING!

LIFE ON EARTH DUALIST METAPHORS OF OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM:
MEDEA HYPOTHESIS (pessimism) -- Peter Ward
GAIA HYPOTHESIS (optimism) -- James Lovelock (I don't like the frame of Gaia at all!)

HUMAN-ENVIRONMENTAL DUALIST METAPHORS/ CONCEPTS OF OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM:
HISTORICAL OVERFISHING (pessimism, "policy dark side of forest") -- Jeremy Jackson, Boris Worm, etcetera... (not to specifically mention these people, but there was a whole cult of pessimist science research coming out... well, it was by default, pessimistic, without much "what can we do about it" type of perspective
FISHERIES MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS (e.g. catch shares) (optimism, positive search image) -- Steve Gaines, Chris Costello
GLASS HALF-EMPTY / GLASS HALF-FULL--Dr. Jared Diamond dichotomized the positive and negative search image for the growth and collapse of societies (human-environmental systems) in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Collapse" without looking into the relationships of both sides of the coin
GLASS HALF-EMPTY / GLASS HALF-FULL also perceived in the "GLOBAL WARMING" issue Al Gore taking a glass-half empty appraoch with inconsistent backing, the positive and negative aspects of the global-warming argument, as well as the post-global warming positive and negative outcomes (e.g. deserts will be prime real estate and islands will be flooded, millions of humans moved)

SOLUTION-METAPHOR THAT INTEGRATES CYCLES OF OPTIMISM-PESSIMISM-ORIGINS-GROWTH-COLLAPSE:
The Phoenix (a la Lauri Green, with a phoenix and a huge jelly fish tattooed on her back), enduring through the passing her perhaps most dearest family member, talk about TWO DIE-HARD TATTOOES! I think Lauri Green and Milton Love are the two coolest marine biologists each with two really cool tattooes, I need to start a collection here! natural history tattooed on human bodies, what an absurd collection!) through the times, life and death is all about periods of shifting baselines (life is never in a static stable state, always shifting) punctuated by extreme events (whether personal, collective human-environmental, or life on earth); and such is about constructing universal narrative themes.

More specifically, the MEDEA HYPOTHESIS (term coined by paleontologist Peter Ward for the Anti-Gaian hypothesis) is that multicellular life, unstood as a matrix-like "superorganism" is "suicidal." Succeeding at suicide would return Earth to the microbial-dominated state that has been the norm for most of its history.

The above passage was derived from Wikipedia, and it bothers the hxll out of me. I don't consider there being a "superorganism" complex. I feel that all of life has similar properties such that it acts constructively and deconstructively in feedbacks and certain events shows COLLECTIVE MASS ACCUMULATION IMPACTS ON LIFE AS A WHOLE simply because all living organisms have certain properties in common (they're all ALIVE!). Living organisms are "not suicidal" ("suicide" is TELEOLOGICAL and ANTHOPOMORPHIC: organisms as a collective with "super-organismic properties" operate as a PROCESS not with PURPOSE--assigning purpose to phenomena that are process-oriented and not induced by any individual organism or individual mind). Instead of "suicide," I would use the term "SELF-INDUCED VULNERABILITY TO MASS EXTINCTION, EITHER THROUGH THE MASS ACCUMULATION OF UNFAVORABLE BIOTIC FACTORS, COUPLED BIOTIC-ABIOTIC FACTORS, AND/OR UNCONTROLLABLE ABIOTIC EVENTS."

Anyhoo, I am so GLAD I found that the Medea Hypothesis exists because my father spoke with Dr. Martin Kennedy quite a few times about Snowball Earth the the global shutting down of a Photosynthesis Pump associated with certain abiotic factors--and I made a comment to my father on how "early organisms were self-inducing their own mass extinction, much like humans" and be both laughed our xsses off in the UC Riverside geology loading dock at the comment. And much to my glea, my own once-impromptu joke is actually the research agenda of a renowned paleontoloist I unfortunately was not exposed to at the time... yet. Now that my mind has marinated quite a bit, I even appreciate more the work of Dr. Peter Ward. I hope to run into him again and share with him my thoughts on his "controversial wording," at least in my own opinion.

One more tidbit: past "suicide attempts: include (1) methane poisoning (3.5 billion years ago), the oxygen catastrophe (2.7 billion years ago, what in the hxll is this?), Snowball Earth twice (2.3 billion years ago and 790-630 million years ago), at least 5 hydrogen-sulfide-induced mass extinctions (anoxic events?) such as the great dying 251.4 million years ago... and of course... NOT ON WIKIPEDIA, the HUMAN SET-UP to COLLECTIVE MASS EXTINCTION. Yet, as a wise fisherman in San Diego says, "When all collapses and the house of cards caves in, I will become a hero, because I know how to row my boat and catch fish. I will still be able to feed myself and my community." Amen! The world is going to hxll... and I'm not going to let me take it down with me!

Gaia-Medea

Gaia-Medea (repeated 8 times with a specific melody)

(So) Medea perceived the Planet Half Emtpy
and Gaia viewed the World in Half-n-Half Full
The Phoenix still rose from his few-gathered ashes
Of Death and Rebirth of the Cycles of Both.

Gaia-Medea, Gaia-Medea
The Phoenix still rose from his few-gathered ashes.
Gaia-Medea, Gaia-Medea
Construction still 'merges from blows of collapses.
(repeating chant)

Some Reconstruction from Collapsed Reduction
Are Carvings of Sculptures Could No Longer Endure
Irr'ducible Existence of Phasing Decay--
No longer a toy Evolution's ensured?

Gaia-Medea, Gaia-Medea
The Phoenix still rose from his few-gathered ashes.
Gaia-Medea, Gaia-Medea
Construction still 'merges from blows of collapses.
(repeating chant)

Such is the Powers and Motives of Gaming
Of Scientists and Sleuths in Narrative Framing
But how humans see, but do we really see?
In the cloak or the realms of objectivity?

Gaia-Medea, Gaia-Medea
The Phoenix still rose from his few-gathered ashes.
Gaia-Medea, Gaia-Medea
Construction still 'merges from blows of collapses.
(repeating chant)

I can't believe one short poem has so much BAGGAGE and BACKSTORY!!! Geez! Like SHOOT ME! I still think the poem needs a LOT more work... and a few more ideas placed inside the existing matrix of concepts. At least I am throwing the poem out there as a work in progress!

KEY WORDS: Gaia, Medea, phoenix, poem, song, Dr. Peter Ward, Dr. Manfred Laubichler, metaphor, scale, tattoo, Lauri Green, rival-nonrival, excludable-nonexcludable, reflexive scientist, optimism-pessimism, Dr. Milton Love, disease in the fossil record, suicide, narrative framing, collective suicide, mass accumulation effect, teleology, anthropomorphic, purpose or process, extreme events, shifting baselines, Steve Gaines, Chris Costello, Boris Worm, Al Gore, Inconvenient Truth, Jeremy Jackson, James Lovelock, positivisim-negativism, logical positivism, Steve Pinker, Steve Mojzsis, good enough list for now... geeze!

423. Beginning of a Lengthy Poem/ Song: "The Tragedy of Nature Inside a Box" (Vision for a Cyclical Music Video)

Caption for Slide Show: Tragedy of Nature Inside the Box, Absurd Nature
I have decided to start an image collection of the "Absurd Nature" or nature that is unexpected, particularly with the themes of (1) manufacturing nature, as in natural history museums (2) conservation as consumption, selling nature for a human career or profession and (3) flash-freezing and manicuring nature, or humans attempting to control nature or impose a vision of what nature is trying to be, for example, "What kind of Garden of Eden do you want for the Santa Cruz island?" or "What kind of Japanese Garden do you want for the ocean?" or even the National Park System itself. All images will feed toward the pre-meditated music video entired "The Tragedy of Nature Inside a Box."

The Tragedy of Nature Inside a Box (Absurdity)

The tragedy of nature inside a box. [absurdity]
I need infinite space, an unconstrained plot [other wording for this!]
An escape route was a change of scenery,
But my dreams flew with my cash
And nature's sold back to me.
And a box within a box--
Just--simply ain't free.

THE PRINCIPLE OF THE TRAGEDY OF NATURE INSIDE A BOX:
IN ORDER TO CONSERVE OR PRESERVE (AND CONTINUE TO RESEARCH) A CERTAIN SYSTEM (WHETHER "NATURAL" OR "HISTORICAL"), YOU HAVE TO (1) PUT OTHER PEOPLE IN BOXES (LAW) SO THAT THEY DON'T MESS WITH THE SYSTEM (2) MASS PRODUCE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE SYSTEM (A) INFORMATIONALLY (B) PHYSICALLY-PLASTIC FIGURINES... JUST TO RAISE AWARENESS AND MAINTAIN A SALARY TO CONSERVE AND PROTECT THE THING ITSELF; IT'S ABSURD! IN THE END, EVERYTHING THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO THINK IS INFINITE IN NATURE IS ULTIMATELY PLACED AND CONFINED IN A BOX (in a large-scale society)

I had a very encompassing, entrenching sequence of images pass through my head during the second day of the COMPASS science communications workshop. Particularly when marine biologist / science communicator Elizabeth Neeley gave us a tour of her very-cool pet pea project on saving deep-sea corals "Too Precious to Wear" (http://www.tooprecioustowear.org/), and how this campaign penetrated into the elitist fashion industry of New York. My brain couldn't stop cranking on working on this song... and this plot line for a music video.... It started coming full circle... and in a full, cross-generational cycle!

MUSIC VIDEO SKETCH FOR "THE TRAGEDY OF NATURE INSIDE A BOX:"
Basically, the film / music video sequence started with a redwood tree or a pristine plot of ocean (and I'll just assume for now it's the redwood tree, because I have thought about the redwood tree frame of reference for quite a while).
**Camera focuses on a pristine redwood tree, zooming out, then a scientist comes into the picture
**the scientist and the artist takes multi-dimensional samples, and creates multi-dimensional artistic representations of the tree [unfinished: classification of environmental scientists map, all types of data is collected on a flipping salt marsh]
**zooming out, the scientist leaves these ropes that protect the tree (she/he has a badge that allows her/him to cross the rope boundary), then the scientists steps to the car and it turns out the tree is not only surrounded by ropes/fences, but it is completely surrounded by encroached parking lot
[[**if I were working with the ocean situation, it would be 3 square miles surrounded by an arbitrary fence (fish in a box, fishermen in a box, scientists can go in and monitor, underwater Yosemite, how come it costs so much money to leave a plot of land alone), and the fishermen were placed in a box, placed in chains, that law places chains, ropes around these supposedly infinite, unbounded regions, same with the Sarengetti, it's tragic]]
[[**and just with the ballona wetlands, the tree is surrounded by lots of NGO noises, hoo-haas, save the redwood tree from logging, save the fishes, save the birds, etcetera, picket signs all around the flipping redwood tree, and just like La Bufadora, a parade of local mom and pop shops making and selling hand made trinkets of redwood trees on a one-mile parade to the dxmn redwood tree]] (localized representation)
**the scientist goes back to the university and (1) publishes a paper (2) surrounded by media sharks and gets interviewed 5000 times (3) gets publicized by several media sources (4) the scientist has sketch drawings / photography which is sent to his/her agent, which is then transformed into (a) coffee table books (b) post cards (c) plastic figurines (d) stuffed animal redwood trees (e) redwood trees on t-shirts and stickers and pins and high-end dresswear
**the designs were shipped to China to be mass produced in a massive factory setting, all representations of this one tree, where they harvest resources from all over the world in order to make these representations of redwood trees (or fish, whatever) (global representation)
**then the redwood tree representations were redistributed back to America and Europe and Australia (which was considered worldwide) all of this one dxmn redwood tree or plot of land or ocean that was being protected (essentially mass-produced plastificated "nature")
**then there was a little boy or girl who went with his or her quasi obese mom or dad in the grocery store surrounded by plastic and food-like substances; they live in a city, and mom and dad earn a good living working for some corporations; and for some reason, though the kid had all these toys and their parents could by all these toys, then for some reason this kid has an arbitrary fixation on this plastic redwood tree in a Walmart store of sorts and that he begged for this tree and held on to it
**finally it was time for the family to go on a "cocoon vacation" because their parents were fed up of work; and they went on a fancy coccooned "land cruise" and were shuttled everywhere they wanted to go; the little kid (now with dulled stimulation from the plastic figurine), still clutched his toy through this cocoon vacation in hope that one day he will see the redwood tree
**the family went all over the American west and this kid was posed "standardized" distant photographs of the same kid in different backdrops, the kid looked rather apathetic while his mom made him pose in front of these places; the family looked distanced, withdrawan, distraught when going through their whirlwind tour; the kid and the family was in a cocoon box vacation and then they created these artificial boxes with photography
**and then finally, the family and the tour headed toward the famous redwood tree, and the kid became excited again, similar to the beginning of the music video, from zoomed out to zooming in, the kid marched through all the clutter surrounding this redwood tree, the locals selling crxp at their stands, the hordes of tourists, the pissed off loggers (fishermen and DFG and coast guard if fish), the NGOs and their picket signs, and the massive parking lot, then down to the rope and the fence
**then the little kid went up and stared up and up and up and up into the great big branches of the redwood tree, clinging to his toy, and the rope, and was just stupified, and then the boy saw that same scientist/artist in the beginning, and the boy was extremely jealous; he climbed over the fence and tugged on the scientist's t-shirt who was collecting data and drawing sketches, the boy showed the scientist his little toy redwood tree and then he streched his neck up way way far up and asked: "Is this that?" "Yes, indeed!" perked the scientist. And the researcher clutched the boy's arm and guided his hand to touch the tree... and it seemed that all the chaos and clutter and media and government and NGOs and facade representations of the redwood tree dropped out of the boy's memory like flies sprayed with windex
**it was the first time in the boy's life his droning apathy was transformed into inspiration
**the boy corresponded with the scientist for years to come and one day that boy became the same scientist and artists, and though he was sad all he wanted to do was to study this beautiful redwood tree, he had to play the game and mass produced the representations of it to the rest of the entirety of this society just to save it and leave it alone... SADLY...
**and that is the catch 22, the paradox, the oxymoron, the irony, the tragedy of nature inside the box

**they irony is you have to mass produce the representation of the real thing just to protect it and leave it alone; the irony is that it costs so much money just to leave a piece of land alone... and that in the end, there is no more infinity, no more Wildwest, no more vast, unspoiled land, but everyone ends up being stuffed in a box, humans, trees, and fishes included....

**a major point about open space is providing open space, infinity... but now... we're all in a box.
**the largest catastrophe of today is the SCALE OF OPERATIONS OF THIS SOCIETY. Because of it's relative size, I am placed in a position to mass produce representations of the things I love just to keep the things I love alive, and I can continue researching them....

422. A BaZillion Dollar Poem / Song Lyrics: "Unfabricated Fixation"

I am proud to say that I invented these lyrics yesterday. What I have come to notice is that I have devised my own philosophies towards "major themes in life" and based on my experiences and encounters with certain people, these themes tend to repeat themselves in my head, and at first they may be ranting journal entries, morphed into civilized blogs, but when my mind is having a golden moment, it transforms and crystalizes my repeating, quirky philosophy into poetry correlated with a distinctive-enough melody (the melody can be tossed... whenever).... Constructing music to everyday words and philosophy is the perhaps the highest dimension of valuing/pricing words--if not monetarily, then at least to the human spirit!

And welcome to the poem/song:
"Unfabricated Fixation"

"Love" is a word for very lazy people.
I need to 'explore n' define the gory details--

For white dresses and diamond rings
Are societal foofy [veneer] bling-blings--

How do I show my mind has fixed on you?
How can I prove that I've commit to you?

Without being another fabricated fool....

I am so ANTI-SOCIETAL MASS PRODUCTION and PRO-SELF-CONSTRUCTION. It certainly shows in my music!

Currently I am playing these lyrics in my head in a quasi mimicking White Stripes "Apple Blossom" melody--but only for the first line, just to get me started.

421. Jenny Minnich: My Beauoootiful Sister (Commercial Print / Basic Photoshoot / Zed Card)

CAPTION IN PICASAWEB:
My sister, Jenny, is a most beauoootiful sister in the whole wide world (she's my only one, but wow, what a lucky person I am!) and so I decided to do my second official zed-card-like photoshoot with her (my first photoshoot was with Patricia, a Santa Barbarbarian local, who was referred to me by Kent, the one-and-only rock crab distributor). This photoshoot at Hansen Dam (near by Sunland, CA) was taken two days before spring quarter started, in which I had a school-related panic attack and decided to do anything that was not for myself but for the benefit of others. Given that this was an impromptu photoshoot (without any preparation, additional equipment other than a camera with two lenses, nor directed theme), I feel quite proud of myself for this tiny body of work--in the field and in the photoshop digital dark room! Jenny was pissed off that I started to take pictures of her in a "professional way" and she HATED posing! I made up this Torture by my doing the Imitation Crazy Doggie Dance Video for her cell phone ring tone. The video was passed along all the way to Greece! Ahhh! Now that I look like a complete fool, I think we are both even.

Other Notes: **it was at one location **three different settings (by the lake, on the open road, and in an eroding gully with red-brown rocks) **late afternoon lighting, approaching golden hour, but not quite **since it was impromptu, my sister was not psychologically prepared, I had to delete several photos because of awkward (unnatural) posing **delt with one change of clothes / make up / hairdo **I could say the purpose of the photoshoot could be (1) establish the zed card / portfolio of my sister (2) sell some natural skin care (3) advertise some high end, casual grunge-geobum-field work clothes (Gap / Old Navyesque) ** Zoom in to Zoom out: facial, 1/4 body, 1/2 body, 3/4 body, full body, full body with context,

420. Pseudo Horror Story at Bill's Farm, Nipomo, California (and Reminiscing of Pismo Beach)

Currently I am in a loud, noisy Starbucks just off the 101 freeway at Pismo Beach. I have overall very positive associations with this town... since it was a vacation spot in my early childhood--11 or 12 years of age. I am stressed out, but can simultaneously feel relaxed... in a certain way.

I have driven through Pismo Beach perhaps a dozen times. The first time I consciously remember was that first vacation, in which my parents reserved a cozy, mom-and-pop hotel right along the bluffs at Pismo Beach. My sister and I had a blast because all we did at the ages 9-11 were jump from the steamy hot jacuzzi to the cool (relatively speaking), heated swimming pool, amidst the air of the frigid summer, dense fog. We also ate out at quite a few restaurants, but the most memorable of experiences was when we walked along the beach (maybe the summer of 1993), my sister and I collected piles and piles and piles... of SAND DOLLARS!!! We were sooo excited, because we never saw sand dollars around the southern California beaches (they are there, just not washed up on the shore). We had so many sand dollars that we had to be picky and choosy about which ones to take home. We also had to wash and scrub them to prevent them from smelling in the car. The second time our family went to Pismo Beach (two or three years later, with a been-there-done-that-anticlimactic attitude, we stayed at a worse hotel), all the sand dollars that were abundant along the beaches... were all gone! Though it was a child's dream to collect riches and treasures from the shore, I look back with an "ecologist's hat" and wonder about such a massive sand-dollar mortality! What caused all these sand dollars to die and wash up to shore? Is this a rhythmic event, or is it a rare event? At what interval? What is the appropriate sampling rate in time? How would one know what the true cycles would be?

Beyond those two family vacations, I passed through Pismo Beach when I was commuting from UC Davis to Riverside, as well as going on a painfully eventful trip to an NCAA tennis tournament at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (Fall 2002) (I lost to some Russian girl, don't give a shxt), as well as excursions up to the Morro Bay mudflats and Oso tidepools (am I right?) with Armand Kuris' invertebrate zoology courses. The tidepools were infested with really cool invertebrates, but it was the first time I found the rocks so striking (they were "dyed red," thinly sliced in rhythmic layers, and slanted at a 30 degree angle), I asked the invertebrate expert TAs, "What the heck is going on with these rocks? Why are they like this?" and none of them could answer me. I was baffled that these biology pros knew jack about the broader abiotic (geologic) context of their pet pea organisms.

I think a lot of individuals in the Starbucks here are vacation-goers. I feel a bit more relaxed. So, yesterday... I left Santa Barbara pretty late--right before dark--still some light left in the sky--right after a wonderful conversation with Jules (who was discussing about deep-time and the dresser-drawer effect with sifting and sorting memories), and I was excited because I was heading towards "Bill's Farm" in Nipomo, California--which is pretty well-advertised on hostel sites, as well as the WHOOFER site. I had a conversation with a young student back in February about his experiences at Bill's Farm. He said it was a lot of fun but he said it's a bit messy and dusty. He also recommended I brought my sleeping bag.

I called Bill--or Bill Denneen--who appears to be a local celebrity "ecoterrorist" biologist who banged on his drums loud enough to save some plots of open space from development--and he seemed to be a very exciting, enthusiastic older fellow. After looking at some pictures on the wall (I know I am jumping ahead here), he has this long white beard and appears to look like a mountain goat--let alone a wannabe Darwin-look-alike. I am sorry but the only legitimate Darwin look-alike alive and in my life is my (and THEE) evolutionary biology professor at UC Santa Barbara. Bill was very kind to provide directions for me to get to his farm in the dark. He even left the light on for me in the yard. I approached Nipomo around 10:30 pm (after some outings in Santa Maria, foraging for beef and turkey jerky, as well as stretching out and jogging, as well as discussing my "feminine irregularities" with my sister (psychologist and medical-expert-in-training), and as soon as I left the freeway, I swiftly ventured through the boxy buildings of Corporate America (Vons, Starbucks, Autozone, Mobil Gas, etcetera), and soon after hit the "boonies" of Nipomo. After a painfully slow ride on a couple of open, residential streets (I had to pause to check every single street sign, just like what I was doing as a Domino's Pizza Delivery Girl in my first year at UCSB--boy I wished I had my GIANT flashlight with me!), I finally saw the sign "Bill's Farm" as well as a "Kids for Sale" sign (in which Bill provided a search image for over the phone). Bill was pretty adamant about females acquiring professions other than motherhood--for a multitude of reasons, ranging from biological (chicken analogies) to human population-ecological to cultural-servitude-slavery, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I am very in favor of his ideas, and he would most certainly be excited about my efforts of going to graduate school, but I find that he squacks too much about them. And that having a cool job and raising kids are NOT mutually exclusive tasks (take for example, Sarah Simpson, the Earth Science Editor for Scientific America with two adorable, rambunxious boys to take care of as well!). Bill and my father are also perhaps in agreement, "Career first, then family. First you have to establish an identity and maintain your sanity... then you can start building a family." But the issue is my father never made this a big deal. It just was what it was. This perspective suddenly became a "big deal" as soon as I came to college and started seeing these "affirmative action" opportunities for me in higher education simply because I was a female. And slowly, I was learning that American treatment of females today is very different from the rest of the world, even though there are huge residuals of male dominance factors in the construction and infrastructure of this society. I am actually angry that Bill Denneen squacks so loud about this issue--like a male rooster indeed, he even wrote several opinions articles on this topic in the local newspapers!--and that fundamentally this female choice of profession should be a "non-issue." It is indeed a quiet battle inside me, and in all females, and I honestly think that the female choice of profession--whether biological, or societal, or a combination of both--should simply be an internal dialogue within each person and a quiet battle of priorities. Such a very personal issue should not be broadcasted like Sports or Entertainment. I barely even knew Bill and that was one of the first issues he brought up with me over the phone. The female profession issue--and that I should never get old and cynical....

Nevertheless, Bill seemed like an intriguing person and I merely went on my way for the first time... in the dark... to Bill's Farm. I didn't know where to park so I pulled in the driveway. I had a few doubtful moments, whenever I am in a dark place and especially out of context--I can get negative visions--like the whole Blaire Witch Project effect, the whole I Am Legend-rabies-infected-fast-breathing-mutant-human-effect--but I kind of hummed to myself to calm my horror fiction thoughts down and just saw a black blank slate instead. I couldn't make out much of the house, and at first I was very confused as to where the "front door" was... until finally a light shined to where I stepped . I can say, walking forward, from the front door, was the accumulation of the most CLUTTER, and DUST, and COBWEBS and ANCIENT TO RECENT papers posted and mounted EVERYWHERE!!! I mean, EVERYWHERE! I thought hostels were somewhat cluttery with advertisements, but this was clutter to the 11th dimensions! I thought I had maybe some "low hygeine standards" compared to my housemates Kyle and Karl (I have a series of coffee and mouthwash stains on the floor of my room in Goleta, to which I have been better about cleaning up and maintaining), but this was just... atrocious! Bill said he left the hallway and room light on as to where I was to proceed in the household. I went into the hallway, and finally into the room, which contained a bunk bed and two delapidated one-story beds, in which one bed contained two beat-up, delapidated dolls-stuffed animals I couldn't even make out what they were. Everything was coated with dust and cobwebs. Too many daddy long leg spiders to count. Either I was to work the farm for 2.5 hours or pay $15 a night.... More like work this farm 24-7 until bare minimum sanitation! (I remember toward the end of my grandfather Ray's life, he had a difficult time maintaining the household, and my mother and father came and helped him out... maybe this guy is going toward that end of the road as well, because my grandfather's house was 20 times cleaner than this house... even though it was considered "dirty." It sucks, Ray. Totally sucks. You're still alive in my head, very alive. It sucks like we have to go through this stupid I-gotta-die ritual, and it went about the way it did. I'm sure it was totally dumb. Whatever.)

Anyway, what do I say? When I think about the interior of this household of Bill's Farm, I feel like puking.

Well, I was tired, and so I just carefully chose a single-layer bed and wrapped myself cautiously in my sleeping bag. The whole place smelled like... I am not sure... a stuffy library that had just been rediscovered on the bottom level of an Egyptian Pyramid... after thousands of years of rotting and decay.... Shxt. Shxt. Shxt. I thought about how I REALLY wanted to just sleepy nice and comfy and cozy in my car (which even my housemate Kyle thought it was "dirty"--well, it's dusty from wildland fire ashes, it's an hour's worth of cleaning and vacuuming for sure, but I would rather sleep in my car than this room).

The issue is, I woke up three hours DYING OF THIRST. You can't blame me because I had eaten quite a bit of beef and turkey jerky from Target around 10:30pm. I woke up and had no water in the room. I had no fluids in the car except for some residual Diet Mountain Dew and Coffee Bean Coffee. I walked around this stuffy house and opened the refrigerator. Nothing. There was WHOLE milk in there--not fat free--and I soon found out it was spoiled to the nth degree. There was one drawer that had drinks guests had to pay for--and it was only Natural Ice Beer--no sodas. Since I found no bottled water, I returned to the room and decided to try the tap water from the sink. And? Well. I placed some in my mouth... and it tasted like latex. The water drip into the sink left a distinctive outline between the dust and the clean areas. I spit the water out. I then stepped back again into the kitchen. The water at the kitchen sink tasted like latex, except twice as bad. I was becoming more and more desperate for water. Finally, I was so much in pain of thirst, that I popped open a dehydrating Natural Ice Beer, to quench my thirst--which it did for only about three minutes. I laid back in my sleeping bag, sat their for three more minutes. The rooster squacked, the two dogs barked out in the yard. I saw some really old alarm clock underneath the bunk bed catty corner to the bed I was laying on--3:30 am. My mind started directing itself, "I am so desperate that I quenched my thirst with dehydrating beer. This is substandard living. I want to sleep in my car." I quickly rose from the stench, aggragated my belongings, left a check of $16 (15 for three hours of sleep in a wronchy house, 1 for the beer), was swiftly greeted by two, slobbery, friendly black dogs outside, backed out of the driveway, and vanished from the vicinity.

My brain is already trashed up enough. The last thing I need to do is be drowning in a landfill within the interior of a home that is supposedly a hostel and an organic farm. What is this? Compulsive hording? Honestly the owner of the house may consider getting a caretaker!

By that point, I was happy to greet any other forms of civilization at gas stations. First, I bought 1.69 overpriced water bottle. I was hunting for fat free milk, but no one had fat free milk! The second gas station, I finally bought one pint of 1% fat chocolate milk, and the third gas station--an ampm mini market just out of Arroyo Grande--I bought a quart of chocolate milk. NO ONE HAS FAT FREE MILK AROUND HERE!

I proceeded off the freeway near by a Motel 6 and a Denny's off 4th Street--the borderline between Pismo and Grover Beach, saw a 7-11 after a couple of miles off of driving, found a place to park near by (in front of a rather large house), grabbed my sleeping bag, and went to sleep... until the morning hit, and these two hispanic guys started to do noisy yardwork right at the house I parked in front of.

I didn't realize I was so close to Grover Beach. I parked by a little fish restaurant and cleaned up my car a little bit. I walked to the beach, only to admire the vast stretches of sand and dunes, and how the terrain seemed concave in which I could see Point Conception all the way down south and some other Point all the way up north. It was beautiful.

I started to wake up and worry aout filling out my NSF form. Some guy with coffee greeted me and asked me if I jogged. And so I wished I had jogged.

And so here I am.

Life doesn't always go according to what is planned... or expected in the head. Instead of griping, I suppose I document the occassion, and find myself laughing... ten years later.... If I am still alive, that is.