376. Poem / Song Called "A CHESS of Fish," Coupled Human-Environmental SystemS (CHESS), and Identity Crisis of Environmental Media Graduate Students

Poem / Song called CHESS of Fish. I placed it first because it's the shortest and the catchiest of the three documents in this blog. I wrote it right before I wrote the final draft news journalism article on Dr. Chris Costello's research "Sharing Fisheries Wealth for Ocean Health." Oooh! It rhymes! And... I read this poem to Dr. Barry Spacks' poetry class last Monday. It was fresh off my plate, so I was excited about it. In the scheme of the three poems I read: Matrix of Metaphors, Purpose or a Process, and CHESS of Fish, it was well received. Dr. Spacks informed us that we should assume the highest of intellect of our readers, and we shouldn't footnote anything in the poems, but "CHESS" is a splended exception, since it's such a cool acronym that does not stand on its own. I quickly asked Dr. Spacks about my "knowledge set" for poetry. I didn't know who Burkowski was (some bar-based poet, women, the whole Hollywood of poetry), but most of the students don't even know what a tunicate is. So, can anyone give anyone a guilt trip for knowing anything or not knowing anything. Should I know existing poets, or should I know knowledge of the world that can feed into novel poetry? I will continue to invest in learning about tunicates and rhyolite, but some investment of being exposed to existing poets. I would rather expand my palate beyond the literature of existing poets.

PDF file for CHESS of fish: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/2.CHESSofFISH.pdf.

Short Story / Screenwrite Scene in the Grocery Store between Terra, Buz, and a bag of "organic" Oreo Cookies. The piece is entitled "Humans are Connected to the Environment? A Discovery of the Obvious." I wrote this after I wrote the Fisheries Information Network (FIN) first set of notes. I sent it to a few of my friends in the lab and my father. My dad, knowing Terra and Buz very well, had a huge belly laugh. He said the "oreo cookie" situation really worked and amplified and tangible-ized the absurdity. *Whew* He also felt very bad for Buz who had to deal with Terra's out-of-control existentialist rant in the middle of the grocery store.

PDF FILE for the screenwrite for "Discovery of the Obvious" is right here:

http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/4.humanenvironmentconnected.pdf.

Short Blurb on "Identity Crisis of Environmental Media Graduate Students." Page 1.

Short Blurb on "Identity Crisis of Environmental Media Graduate Students." Page 2.
PDF file for the Blurb:

http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/7.identitycrisisenvironmentalmediagr.pdf

It's funny. I am putting all this material on my blog. It keeps coming out. I work very hard. One day it will have a "better" place, "better" meaning other people may put it somewhere other than this blog. Maybe one day some people will absorb to some degree the things I think about. Like I said, a writer's work is only appreciated after he or she is dead. Going based on that null hypothesis, I need to continue to work, because that is how I survive. That is how I stay mentally sane.

At the root of all of this, it's only for sanity and survival... through the desire to care and attach myself to others and my surroundings.

186. Terra and Buz' Adventure / The Landscape of Skin

The Landscape of Skin

What would happen if I penetrated?
Then?
What I see is that Terra and Buz entered this seeming underwater planetary system.
They emerged from this dark, narrow rabbit hole, which then expanded into this entire Reality of the Landscape of Skin.
They were swimming and floating and slipping and sliding and poking and nudging...
And some areas were mooshy and gooey and other areas were crusty and wrinkly and even other areas were hard and boney--some smooth, but some sharp--and they were like mountain peaks, and some were just rounded-off mountains and others were valleys and gullies of moosh, some squeezy, some more tough and toned.
And in this vast, vast world, Terra and Buz were overwhelmed by the Landscape of Skin's simple, abstract Beauty, but they were glad they were together and stuck close to each other--back-to-back--always glimpsing, bumping into each other, in occasionally awkward and occasionally synchronized ways, making sure they were still there, because they were both excited and scared at the same time.

Vic's Letter to Julie [housemate] in Her Interest in STAGE competition

https://www.cnsi.ucsb.edu/stage/index.html
My Goodness! I am ELLIGIBLE!

Hi Julie! I'm confused. Is it Julia or Julie?

Ya, I just checked it out. This competition is like a perfect match for my brain. Sometimes I feel like my mind finding the right university program is like a dating game. Mental compatibility, in this case, I suppose.

Thanks for telling me! I am so excited, I am going to do this STAGE competition, or so I am claiming right now. Cross my fingers I follow through this time.

I'd love to talk to you about it, if you have any time, I know you are busy. I think I'm going to scoop out an outline this weekend. I am talking with the film studies prof for my class, and it looks like I'm going to shove back the crab project a little bit, and work on a "script" for my last chapter of my book on the ecology of size. The basic point is that when you look human systems and all ecological systems in terms of biomass and energetics, "it all starts to look the same, even though it seems different." But it will basically continue this mental/car trip journey that I started in my long book, with Terra the biogeek and Buz the geobum, who explore the qualitative meaning of universal scaling laws in biology from early biological ooze to dinosaurs to now... and how fractal-based mathematics may actually serve as (not as predestination) a guide to optimally constructing and managing human-environmental ecosystems for the long-term. But the cool thing is that this conversation and series of epiphanies will all be done through dialogue, combined with a series of images/pictures I will design. I think this competition--though obviously I'm not going to win anything--will give me an excuse to FINISH old ideas. Amen. More on the graduate student psychology of arbitrary deadlines, woohoo!

I have another option for a script called "The Elephant and the Oak Tree," which is a "children's story for adults," that questions whether science is all about blind men feeling the parts of the elephant, or whether if you put all the parts together again, and take a step back to see the big picture again, whether it actually is an elephant after all. Because somehow, after all this writing, I am seeing an oak tree.... But then again, perhaps one script at a time.... Then back to the rock crab....

I must thank you so much for telling me about this. You really made my day. I even woke up my dad to tell him, I am so hyper! Sorry for the long email. ~Victoria