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....
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In light of historical overfishing and the Scripps clan, I just found out just a couple of days ago, January 15 or 16 or so of 2009, my father did a presentation on "California's Fading Wildflowers" at UC Davis. It was a sell-out presentation, and a lady complimented my father saying that this was "the most important piece of literature in her field" in California Botany. My father hammered the shifting baseline syndrome down everyone's throat (like usual). My father is the first person to apply the ocean-based shifting baseline syndrome from Daniel Pauly and Jeremy Jackson and Paul Dayton into the terrestrial world. It is important to state that "behind the scenes," I was the "science agent" or science liaison to this transfer. I came home from UCLA in December of 2003 in tears, reading Jeremy Jackson's historical overfishing, and my father soon called him self a historical ecologist, and then after that he framed his wildflower book based on the concept. My daddy gives me credit in the intro "philosophical fodder" compliments. Thanks! It finally hit my father in the head that we can co-author papers. Gee, I wish it hit him in the head earlier! My first advisor had her 14-year old daughter publish an article on algae and nutrients.
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