475. Poem Entitled "Untended Cemeteries" Revealed Through Mike Davis Writing and Landscapes Class at University of California, Riverside

The PDF of the poem "Untended Cemeteries" can be found here: http://sites.google.com/site/stokastika2/untendedcemetariesPOEMFINAL.pdf.

It's funny to think I wrote this poem back in June of 2009 but I wasn't really excited, nor eager to share it with anyone, perhaps because I sincerely felt that I as the author am expecting the reader to be in tune with environmental details. Perhaps because I am expecting some form of natural science background such that the reader would appreciate the comparisons and metaphors that unite the entire streamline of poetic thought. In short, the formation of this poem began when my housemates Karl and Kyle asked me to "prune and clean around this tropical plant in the dark, back corner of our backyard." Boy, I didn't know I was going to delve into a rabbithole, physical and mental! Apparently this tropical plant with extremely large leaves and very sticky sap/xylem/phloem in its branches had not been tended to for at least 3 years. There had been an extensive accumulation of layers upon layers of dead leaves, tangles of rope-like vines, all coated with damp-goopy dust-muck, with bonus strata of spider webs with no orderly shapes.

That was it. That was the ultimate spark. My mind went down the rabbithole. The theme was DEATH, more specifically HOW ORGANISMS RELATE TO THE DEAD BIOMASS of their own kind, humans included. I have come to realize throughout all these ecosystems I have been in outside of the human world, most organisms are pretty sloppy about their tending to their dead. I was particularly shocked by the "cemeteries of living among the dead" in kelp forests--living EATING the dead... cannibalism... how unethical! Biomass is recycled in the ocean, largely, seemingly through the profession of "scavenger" and in terrestrial plant ecosystems, recycling relationships between living and dead seem to be more "biogeochemical," in which there is decomposition and other mediating abiotic factors aiding the process (e.g. wildfire).

And then I make reference to "frugal" burials as to which my best Chinese friend Talei referred me to--how several people in China are buried face-down in mudswamps in faraway mountains. And speaking of mudswamps... such an environment led to my reference to the very recent discovery of a mummified baby mammoth, who was presumed to have croaked in swamp like environment. Sometimes taphonomy creates LAGERSTATTEN MOSQUITO-AMBER-SAP CIRCUMSTANCES in which a fossil almost serves to be a CRYSTAL BALL to the past (not included in poem, dangit).

And then my mind drifts into HUMAN ABSURDITY--"tended cemeteries" within our lifespan, in which emotions and memories run rampant and wild in our heads, and so we don't cannibalize our dead grandparents, and laying them to rest in a box or a pile of ashes at some tree is essentially a form of our own "resting of our minds, our souls" through the passing of a "loved one." It seems from here, four options can happen: (1) if you're in a graveyard, you will be dug up by anthropologists a few hundred years from now, or by aliens a few million years from now (when all emotions and memories no longer exist in any living head, depends on your degree of preservation, must choose wisely your "natural burial site" some good basin with rapid deposition of sediments, a geologist would know), might end up in a museum, cool (2) you might instantly become mummified and be a part of the Bodyworks show (not included in poem) (3) if you're cremated, you become "ecologically reincarnated" into the system from a biogeochemical perspective (I referred to ecological reincarnation only once in Blog 350 (which included sketch descriptions of my grandfather's passing). My father told me that Ray's and Marion's (my grandparents) ashes are mostly made of calcium and they will dissolve in the winter rains and snow fast enough.

It's funny. I wrote this poem before my immediate family (Bub, Mumsy, JenJen) had a formal memorial for my grandfather Ray (up in the sugar pine behind the cabin) and grandmother Marion (by the incense cedar to the right side of the cabin). I'm sure if I wrote the poem afterwards, I may have approached it a little differently... or even added a little more information. An affiliated poem I wrote post-grandparents-memorial is "Death of Anonymous Meaning" (Blog 453).

A couple of other points I didn't include in the poem. (1) I removed a stanza about the "efficiency of ecological reincarnation." I would feel good feeling instantly useful to the rest of the ecosystem as soon as I croaked. (2) My housemate Kyle brought up the point of "untended nurseries." I think from his point of view, Kyle was emphasizing the notion that organisms just "accept the environment around them as a default, a given. Organisms in general don't "tend the environment," or at least at the SCALE that humans do. I feel that we humans are discrediting other organisms in terms of their degree of "maintenance and constructionism" of their environments. Other organisms are by default "landscape planners" and "engineers" of their environments, intentionally or unintentionally. Default examples are primates using stick tools, beavers building dams, birds building nests, most mammals rearing and tending to their young, ants building underground colonies, gophers building tunnel networks. All of these activities require construction and maintenance. And by default, an organism occupying space, consuming resources, pooping out wastes, and replicating, is BY DEFAULT, engineering their environments. Simple biological existence requires engineering, with varying degrees of tending. So? I have not been motivated to write an "untended nurseries" poem, even after three months time. Oh well.

So, I'm posting this poem simply because I was so stimulated when being immersed in Dr. Mike Davis' "landscapes and writing" graduate creative writing course at the University of California, Riverside. It's tragic that I didn't have a chance to attend the class earlier, but at least I'm being exposed now. I was fairly quiet with the class. I was, as Jules would say, "Reading the Conditions," figuring out the composition of students of the class. And I DO SAY, I AM IMPRESSED. THIS TRULY IS A GRADUATE COURSE. This writing is by far a step beyond the writing I have been exposed to at the undergraduate Creative Studies courses I've sat in at UC Santa Barbara. What a fresh breath of mental air. Good brain pollution this evening. Very good. No one really seemed to mind my presence. Diverse group in the class. I am amazed by the use of humor, satire, wit by most everyone. I was more impressed by the male writers than female writers thus far. One piece stood out fairly well as an overall stand alone of all factors, substance + consistent style; it was a modern description of Venice Beach. Another article was about how some angry dude who was dumped by some ex-girlfriend bxtch and was therefore angrily traveling along the Route 66. Though he had adjectivious supersaturation, I thought the ex-girlfriend added solid motivation to the story, and he had some brilliant anthropomorphizing of his technologies--his beaten up truck and his cell phone. Three brilliant metaphors of the evening: (1) describing the Missouri landscape as "a pop-up book without the splendor." (2) describing Route 66 as the "birth canal for the west." (3) identifying insects on windshield wipers and car windows based on "splatter patterns" talk about hilarious taphonomy! studying the death of organisms!

I noticed how I felt and where I was at in terms of "environmental writing" and other people's baselines. I am beginning to notice "states of consciousness" of my inner thoughts. The state of highest consciousness is when my mind creates a system and a story that is a completely alternate reality--which lives up to Picasso's "art is a lie to help us realize the truth" comment. So, my mind has currently "left this Planet Earth" into these alternate realms of higher consciousness. So any form of description of an outing, like, "I went to this street in Fontana and saw this and that and here's a sprit of satirical humor, and then I called my friend and went to that street that had this landfill with a flower on top and it was profound, and here's another interpretational sprit." My writing was like that--an inventory of everyday events with sparse interpretation--that was back when I was 18-19 years old, but I'm still seeing this pattern among a few students in the class--they're still very "inventory-descriptional" with their writings, and perhaps overloaded with adjectives (which makes it pseudointerpretational). I guess that's called "flowery writing." It made me come to realize that from age 18 to today, my "final draft writing" has become more and more "interpretational" than descriptional. And it compounds; it's additive. So each piece of writing, seems to become more and more dense. And when I have a story still rooted to planet Earth, like The Mountain's Last Flower, I packed it with as much surrealistic metaphor as possible, within means of controlled exaggeration, of course! My head is in such an alterate universe that my capacity to "retain memory of regional details, like names of plants and birds and sedimentary rocks" has been in this "unretrievable" dormant section of my mind.

An older, trendy-looking man sitting right next to me shared Mike's Syllabus and Basic Definitions for the course. The first few lines in the syllabus prompted my reference to Untended Cemeteries. If you dug underground from where you were standing, what would you find? With our shoves, we are digging our way home... in the landscapes our minds, our hearts. Some themes that kicked in right away: (1) most creative writers are character and plot driven, the setting sucks "lazy, thin descriptions" and non-interactive (2) "landscape" is a central word and basically goes based on my premise "the environment is a construct of your mind" (3) landscape ecology is the investigation of "what is" (e.g. Environmental Impact Reports) and landscape planning is the imagination of "what ought to be" based on "what is" (e.g. Bulldozing and House Building) aka "purposeful intervention" or "engineering." (ecology more "objective" analysis "science" and planning is more "normative" value-ridden synthesis "art") (4) One thing NOT talked about is the "INNER LANDSCAPE" the interaction between the "inner landscape" emotions/rationale and the "outer landscape." (5) What is valued and appreciated in the class is predominantly the NOVEL and the UNEXPECTED, and CONSISTENCY-CONTINUITY-WITH PRECISION space-time-emotions-rationale. (6) Balancing personal experience with universal truths. (7) Visuals and words go hand-in-hand, writing a story is like the making of a painting. The Matrix of the Mind. Mapping Language on Landscapes (see this BLOG and this BLOG) (AND PLEASE SEE THIS BLOG).

I talked to my father El Bubsy this morning--I was so excited and enthusiastic about class last night that I walked around a bunch of streets with just my socks (no shoes), so they ended up acquiring a lot of dirt. I didn't talk much in class but my personal experience was that in the beginning of things, especially in high school, the concept of the "environment" and "nature" was some form of non-interactive "static backdrop." One big amorphous blob "out there" that had no inner personal connectivity. And over time, by hanging out with my dad and learning ecology and evolution at UC Santa Barbara, this big, static outer "nature blob" started to become this dynamic, interactive system, that had connections, relationships, interactivity with my own self and sense of existence. I started to acquire this "Matrix of the Mind: Mapping Language on Landscapes" type of thinking, I shut down my language brain and started to re-describe my sense of reality from a visual, cognitive mapping point of view. My resolution of the outer world and its connections to my inner universe started to become more and more connected and intertwined, highly resolved... the layers of the land, litho, hydro, bio... and the anthro world for sure... this whole matrix of interacting variables.... NOW... I just have to DRAW this sense of personal evolution... that's all.

Personal thoughts that came up:

(1) diffusion of social responsibility, viewing other humans as objects versus subjects (e.g. riding bike across campus at UC Riverside)

(2) evolution by collective action problems, Gaia-Medea-Phoenix effects (Blog 424)

(3) environmental CONTINGENCY of human behavior

(4) living in a Truman Show Bubble "eusocial ecological niche space" or log-log scale of reality

(5) inherited versus acquired traits, Darwinian versus Lamarckian evolution, have versus have-nots, people inherit property or resources versus earn and acquire them (Blog 336)

(6) the "shifting baseline syndrome" the notion that people live in a place without any context of this place's history or natural history is more so an "American construct;" whereas the GREEK CONSTRUCT of my mother is "I know my Greek history; it's so much to know and remember that I hate it all together."

(7) Words have a "usual context" and connotation in the English language, and you have to work very hard to take this word out of its usual context and make it meaningful and applicable to the story at hand (Barry Spacksisms).

(8) Relationships between setting, character, and plot. Most of the time the setting is close to non-existent, very immediate-proximate-surfacial "thin description" effect, and it's mostly the interaction between characters to drive plot. And then you have Cormac McCarthy... you have thicker, juicier descriptions of landscapes, but to what degree to they INTERACT/INFLUENCE the character and plot? Horses are very important in the film, and they essentially become "characters" because of the degree of interactivity. The highest degree of relationship-interactivity of setting is that a particular set of elements interact SO MUCH to a point in which these elements become major "characters" and agents that drive the plot (and this is what I strive for).

(9).

As I started to read Mike Davis' hand out on a brief history of the envisioned "agriculture/citrus and gardens" of southern California throughout the 1900s (early 1900s), I really started to see the synthetic, nonlinearity of Mike's mind. He perceives the "city" as an organism, a collectivity, a higher level of organization beyond individual human agents. A human coral reef, eh?. Where does this city-organism get its air? water? (Los Angeles River, Eastern Sierra, Colorado River) food supply? How does it settle (instead of being vagrant larvae)? And expand and grow, like a kid who drinks too much milk? And how does it REGULATE its growth? (More so a LACK of regulation... sigh). And this metaphor is extremely powerful--I even use it myself. Quite a bit. There are strong parallels in this "superorganismic quality" of cities, but not ENTIRELY parallel. So the CITY as an ORGANISM shall remain as a METAPHOR, and not a THEORY.

WHAT I AM FINDING MYSELF DOING HERE IS BEING EXPOSED TO NATURAL SCIENCES AS MY BASELINE, AS I AM BEING EXPOSED TO SOCIAL SCIENCE WORDS, I KEEP TRYING TO FIND NATURAL SCIENCE EQUIVALENTS. FOR EXAMPLE... WORDS TRANSCENDING NATURAL-SOCIAL SCIENCES. I wrote a lot about this in Blog 424, based on my experiences and observations of academic behavior at the Origins conference at Arizona State University. And here we go again... Cool word here: HEGEMONY is the dominance of one group over another, like IMPERIALISM (like overlapping lichens growing and competing for space on rocks; ha ha lichens and coral reefs are being hegemonious and imperialistic amongst each other, what a riot!). INCUMBENCY is prevailing spatial and temporal dominance of an entity on the landscape. Like bivalves and brachiopods. And so the list shall keep growing.... It's all back to the commonality of photoshopping reality and the adaptive grid model....

Another running theme of Mike Davis' course is how individuals establish IDENTITY relative to their environments/landscapes. Landscapes and identity, thank you! There are certain professions in which the landscape identifies you tremendously: being a rancher, cowboy, and fishermen for example. What else?

Some quotes:

"To be alive / and to know that you're alive / is the greatest thing / you could realize."

(fragment of Vic's Legacy poem)

"To carve a new trail / beyond your own home / beyond your own life / beyond your own space / beyond your own time." (fragment of Vic's Legacy poem)

"There's a mean bxtch at the bottom of every man's heart." (Mike Davis, in class)

"It's a classic trait to use 'the other sex' as a prime mover for human behavior." (Mike Davis, in class)

"Love is an American construct. The French and the Chinese don't believe in love." (Thank goodness I'm not the only one!)

"The fundamental principle of feminism. 'Women don't need men.'" (Mike Davis, in class, oh, now I get it!)

"Fear. It's an addiction." (Karl Thompson, geologist extraordinaire, exposing the roots of the male mind, and how I discovered that I was a "conservative adventurist")

"In American Literature, men are portrayed to operate mechanically: thinking [linearly?] with their brains and their gonads. British literature is different... most of the playwrights were closeted gays."

"I represent myself by editing the minds and lives of others." Victoria, the Savage Idea Thief and Film Documentarian. "What?! I end up being other cool people's secretary, because they ain't secretaries to themselves!"

Well, what can I say? Mike's course is pricking a lot of "dormant" ideas that need some tending to. I am excited to finally revisit and complete my thoughts... and one day weave them together into my next layer/level of coherence.

Environmental Writing/Ecopistemology Related Materials. See a Blog from Shelly Lowenkopf's Writing Group (Lion's Den) in Blog 283.

Key words: environmental writing, landscapes and writing, ecopistemology, poem, untended cemeteries, ecological reincarnation, life and death, phoenix, lagerstatten, human absurdity, ecological engineering, constructionism, Mike Davis, scale, brain pollution, landscape, landscape ecology, urban planning, landscape design, normative, unexpected, consistency, precision, matrix of the mind, mapping language on landscapes, Shelly Lowenkopf, nature, landscapes static, dynamic, city as an organism, natural-social science language equivalence, hegemony, imperialism, incumbency, landscapes and identity, identity and environment

357. The Elephant and the Oak Tree, Shifting of the Devotions Page

I have had a few extensive conversations with Dr. Osborne, a historian and philosopher of science, and I am now getting myself ready to continue writing The Elephant and the Oak Tree (EOT).

One thing for sure, several elements have shifted in my life since the begining of the quarter, like the dropping of a painful, confusing, in part inhumane relationship and the annexation and forging of new ones. These endeavors take time, and they totally rewire your mind. I suppose the goal is to associate yourself with those individuals who bring the best out of you, who want you to build and grow, like a juvenile oak tree going through intense growth spurts, not suppress you in futile sword-fighting combat of words.

I will have to change the "Devotions" part of EOT, in a very dramatic way. I will have to eliminate the last line of an individual whos name starts with "T." I had been living an Illusion of an Individual since April of 2008. Who people really are versus what they say they are. Massive discrepancy, not just in this individual, but in human beings overall.

I will have to add the lines below:

"To the essence of my grandfather
Who shifted my baseline
To great depths of space and time."

And to the Notion of Love.
Which comes in all mysterious shapes, sizes
Beautiful forms and processes.
This Love, which emerges
In the most unexpected of nooks and crannies
Of a dark Universe of seeming detachment and unrelatedness.
It is Love that allows one to drop Restrictions of Reality from one's brain
And inspires one to explore the Unbound Premises of the creative mind.
It is Love that grows branches, leaves, and flowers of Novel Trees of Non-linear Thought.
It is Love that has the capacity to consume and envelop all Darkness of Chaos
Into Hope. Into Design of Alternative Realities and Futures
That would not otherwise be perceived
By the constraints of physical reality....

To Face Death is to See Life.
Confrontation.
To Live Life is to Survive.
Desperation.
To Survive is to Seek Love.
Inspiration.
To Love is to Dream.
Reconstruction.
To Dream is to Heal Loss.
Fragmentation.
All broken pieces...
All open wounds...
Into a patchwork
Of Open Universes
For us all to share
And play
And dream....

For one day,
Through the Medium of Love
Our dreams shall Emerge
Metamorphose
Into Reality.

334. Sketch of Essay: On the Immensely Minor Passing of Cat-Kat

Sage Cat-Kat. How can a creature so miniscule be so all-encompassing? Be so profound?

I am still pissed off that I received a National Photo Award for an image of a snobbish and horribly abnoxious cat (who potentially resides in Orange County) (please visit http://www.nationalphotoawards.com/).

The Above Image is the best image I have ever taken of a cat. In fact, it is perhaps one of the best images I have ever taken in my entire life.

I have been anticipating on writing an essay on The Immensely Minor Passing of Cat Kat, which will contains some of the following elements:

(1) Shock, withdrawal, void, absence (deconstruction of a physical entity) can be filled with the conglomeration of thoughts in visual representation: artwork and writing (reconstruction through multi-media). Cathartic ritual to "fill the void" of the mind.

(2) Though I am 2 years old (27 years old, women don't mature till age 25, men age 50), I have not experienced an emotionally tragic experience of loss or death of a loved one (though I myself have mourned through the near loss of my own life around 17 years of age).

(3) Additionally, I have no regards or likings for cats. Most of them are house pets. They are individualistic and have attitude problems. Typical American Capitalist personality type. They pretend to be self-sufficient but leech off of everyone and expect everyone else to do their shxt and take the blame. It's all about "me" and screw the rest. Talk about Millenials! Not to mention they have sharp claws and gnarly teeth. Due to their dichotomous personality of Leechy Individualists, cats do not promote true trustworthy bonds. And if they bond (bred to be housecats) to humans, they are too demanding for attention. Too high maintenance. (Kind of like my friend I catered to this summer. Fudge!).

(4). As for Cat Kat, this tiny, fuzzy, multi-colored puffball creature (though an "adult" female) has glowing, knowing eyes that portray her "been there done that" wisdom and continued skepticism of life. As seen in the image above, Cat Kat's eyes glow with immense meaning and spark my own imagination. They are full of stories, much like Lisa Berry's cairn Terrier, Mini Miss Einstein. Except that Cat Kat is wise and all-knowing and Mini Miss Einstein holds a naive intelligence, nevertheless unbound enthusiasm and great capacity to learn. Since Cat Kat is by a skeptic, she acquired trust with my Aunt Jean and Uncle Chuck--as well as myself--over a gradual period of time. Jean and Chuck started having Cat Kat over as a regular catfood dinner guest. You could tell that she was very sensitive and observant of us. Every single move was very cautious, meaningful, and well-planned out. She could adapt and manipulate. Cat Kat slowly moved into the house and essentially became facultatively obligate with Jean and Chuck.

Despite her petite size (associated with stunted growth?), Cat Kat survived the streets, competed and fended off the big cats, fleed from gnarly predators, survived several encounters with disease (I'm sure), and even had a litter (I suppose diffused all over my Aunt and Uncle's neighborhood in southern Corona, California). Besides achieving affinity with us over the need of food, Cat Kat is overall fiesty. She allows some petting and holding, but she needs her space. Some healthy distance.

I guess she reminds me a lot of myself!

To this day, I still feel fortunate that I had a short stretch of photographic time with Cat Kat on a sweltering afternoon in July of 2006. I am assuming that she was so hot, so lazy that she didn't even care about the presence of my camera. Cat Kat was perhaps more concerned about remaining cool in the shade at the fringes of my aunt and uncle's household's shadow. That afternoon, I captured an entire series of majestic images that she would have never allowed me to acquire if under "normal" temperature ranges.

(5). I have found great irony in this circumstance because when Cat Kat died--when I FOUND OUT that Cat Kat was mawled by a coyote--I remained distraught that entire evening. Arriving in Corona after a long car drive from Santa Barbara, I was informed by my aunt and uncle informed about the horrid news in the livingroom. They even placed images of Cat Kat on top of a couple of shelves around the house. You could tell that my Aunt and Uncle already went through their grieving a few days before, and they were “already over it” by the time the news reached me. But now it was my turn to go through some form of Autonomic Grief Response. I remember a void overcoming me. I am sure I cried. But I most vividly remembered my rambling to my aunt and uncle, attempting to answer the question “What does it all mean?” while they both stared at me blankly and in slight tragic amusement.

I was bargaining with my strange conglomeration of emotions that dealt with the notion of loss in my life. I did not cry when my grandmother Kiki passed away. I was 16 years old. All graphic events associated with radiation and chemotherapy occurred in Greece, for my others eyes to witness, but not my own. Apparently I did not cry when I found out about Kiki’s passing. My sister remembered that I did not register. I remained stoic and stayed in my room for a week. I suppose I was overly preoccupied with being in a stupor over schoolwork. Or maybe, I just kept busy because I didn’t know even HOW to process such a tragic event so distant and disconnecting in space and time. I knew my grandmother more through sing-along birthday cards and mailed presents and sporadic phone calls rather than as human being.

It’s funny to think, Death of a Grandmother is a point-source instantaneous event of shock. Death and Decay of the Environment is a diffused, widespread source occurring over longer periods of time. Talk about Loss taking the Face of Extreme Events and Shifting Baselines!

I did not cry when my Grandmother Marion passed away. And if I ever did, I was probably 15 years old, when me and my family first registered that she had Alzheimer’s disease, which took in the form over the years, slow short and long term memory decay to loss of basic motor and visceral skills. It’s a strangely beautiful disease, even though my grandmother was getting older, it was as if she was being slowly reduced to a childlike, fetal state. Or more biologically, from a mentally conscious state to a vegetative, visceral state. From Age 90 to Age 2 for brain and motor functions. I guess the three pivotal shifts in behavior of my grandmother were (1) increased repetition in conversations, (2) reduced capacities to operate in the kitchen, and (3) transfer of function over Christmas from buying presents to receiving a small packet of money.

At age 15, I wrote a science report on Alzheimer’s Disease within my tenth grade honors English course with Dr. Jimmy Hunter (funny to think I voluntarily wrote a science report in an English class). Though I was receiving a grade for this effort, it seemed like I was engaging in this activity more so as a cathartic, ritualistic endeavor. Informing myself on the latest science allowed me to deal with my emotions (which were marginally expressed through a few isolated bouts of tears) and prepared me on what to expect in the upcoming years. At that point in time, I was still hopeful that medications could exist to cure my grandmother. Alas, she only took medications that slowed down and stabilized the process. Not reverse it.

By the time my grandmother passed in October of 2007, I was in the middle of a quarter system. I did not emotionally register the event, perhaps because I couldn’t have the capacity to. I was in an unfamiliar environment, surrounded by unfamiliar people. I was in the middle of an academic quarter, fighting for my academic survival, attempting to transfer from UCR to UCSB. All I could do was lock myself in my room and write for a few hours about the occasion. Nevertheless, my father had to strategically inform me of the passing 930 am in the morning. On the embarkment of a shxtty day! I was more sad that my father and grandfather were upset, not even my own self.

Overall, I couldn’t register emotionally. I was over it. My emotions decayed simultaneously with the diminution of my grandmother’s capacities over the course of ten years of consciousness of the disease. There was nothing sudden about the act. I was in part relieved. All I knew is that the day she passed, I was ready to set aside time to write and collect my thoughts into one coherent pile of visuaemotional experience.

I don’t know, keeping old people alive is like trying to maintain jewelry: there is more psychological investment than pragmatic-resource-societal investment in the endeavor. It is a very expensive suite of activities (most medical care in this country is devoted to the extension of dying people’s lives by 6 months), almost as if people were in denial of the inevitable. I think many people attempt to keep older people alive—though technically in ancestral, indigenous societies they would have been long gone at a much earlier eage—just to keep the younger generation in one psychological piece. Because Death and Loss requires one to reflect and struggle to maintain being in one piece. It is a struggle to re-occupy a vacant niche space of the mind with new strings of purpose, value, and attachment.

After these two passings in my life, I was starting to become concerned about my emotional dysfunction—for mourning more profoundly on the passing of Cat Kat than my own two grandmothers—until there was a recent scare in the family involving an accident with my grandfather Ray. The thought of his passing placed my in a frightening state of uncontrollable breathing and wailing, such that my sister had to come and rescue me from my own isolation. I immediately went from analytical productivity mode to artistic mournful mode, in which I finished writing a song entitled "Two Generations Removed from the Land" and I photoshopped a bunch of images of my grandfather and the family. Though it was disastrous to experience this hurricane-like upwelling of sadness, I was in part relieved that I acted in this manner. Maybe my mind barely exists within normal range of human response to loss.

(6). I also found it ironic that when I am informed through screaming shells and boxes of blinking lights that Starving Africans croak, rainforests and endangered species of beetles become extinct, and polar bears are supposedly drowning at exorbitant rates, I feel nothing. I feel absolutely nothing. More of the same. The global human drama that is a distant illusion to my immediate existence. Hence. I feel NOTHING. Anyone have a grant to ship me off to Africa? Maybe I’ll feel something.

The presence of this little sage creature of Cat Kat was a multi-sensory experience that I was fortunate to capture in a sliver of space and time. She embodied my whole world, my whole sense of purpose and reality—even if it was just an infinitesimally small slice of space and time, captured in a photograph. This tiny cat was a big piece of my existence.

(7). My aunt’s neighbors found the creature mawled in their yard—most likely by some coyote. Talk about forensics that lacked rigor. My aunt had to perform the unfortunate deed of identifying the dismembered body. Apparently the coyote didn’t do a complete job in consuming the corpse. If you kill a creature, might as well finish your meal, dxmmit! The bastard.

What a random lottery serial killing! Out of all feline creatures of this planet to which I have no particular affinity to, they took away the Feline Love of My Life!

This was a case of some serious injustice of ecological gangsterism within this segment of the neighborhood in Corona, California. You cannot rely on the United States law anymore—as of what I have experienced twice—We would ultimately have to take these serious matters into our own hands….

I was attempting to convince Jean and Chuck to send out PimpDog Rusty (sharp German pointer with a high energy budget, rigorously trained to be a bird dog) out on the streets and take down the mongrel serially murdered Pure Innocence (new word: Ecological Serial Killer, flippin’ coyotes!). Jean and Chuck were hesistant and were not sure if Rusty were well-qualified for such a dangerous, undercover task. At that point in space and time, I was ready to take down the bastard myself. My aunt and uncle delt with the situation by getting a new cat by the name of Sophie. She is still a kitten. She is very alert and hyperactive. I thought I was a stress case, but that cat needs to take a chill pill. My aunt Jean said that it is very nice to have a cat around again, but nothing can ever replace the essence of Cat Kat.

The last time I saw cat Kat alive was in July, on my grandfather Ray’s birthday. I took pictures of her with my sister Jenny.

It’s October 2008 and I am still not recooperated.

God Dxmmit I am supposed to dissect a shark next week, and in a couple of weeks? Skin a rabbit. Shxt.

I recently learned that many house cats are shrunken beasts, derived from larger ancestors. Dr. Sweet said they scaled down geometrically rather than allometrically. He explained that these cats and even some birds (like hawks) are essentially miniaturized predators with superb abilities that allow them to take down prey of much greater size to themselves. I suppose they are then essentially ordinary humans with Superhuman qualities—the whole batman and super man effect: micro body size with megapowers.

Ha ha. Science anthropomorphizes organisms all the time. And I am just another victim of that. Just saw Mike Kuehn, UCSB grad student who was a TA for my animal behavior course back in winter of 2002. He made me sensitive of my “behavioral ecological” interpretation of this personal experience with a pet. Proximate factors. Ultimate factors.

Dear Cat Kat. As a scientist who understands the concept of Diffuse Re-incarnation (all elements on the planet are Geodegradeable anyway)… Though you have been dismantled physically, you are recycled elements of this Planet. And somehow I will interact with your elements, consume you physically and mentally. I have assembled you as holistically as possible through my writing and art. I had the privilege to know you. You touched my mind’s heart so immensely. I never loved a cat before, but I love Cat Kat. She gives me hope in myself and the world. Love has conglomerated as your physical presence has diffused and recycled. And this love shall shape-shift into other entities in my life in a continuum of mental experiences of deep attachment. For all things are the same, even though they seem different.

Inside me. And Everywhere.

176. Living in a State of Paradox of Space and Time

"What I have come to realize in the passing of my grandmother from Alzheimer's disease is that there is a level of artificiality in how we live and what kind of meaning exists to live a few functionless years longer. In more cases than not, the elderly are kept alive through immense medical-technological crutches, not that these individuals have significant contribution to the human system, but more so a psychological one: to keep their children in denial a little bit longer of the inevitable: death. As if the elderly were merely pieces of living jewerly who would keep their children's memories still projected onto them and in one piece, rather than dispersed, muttled, and buried in the ground and the scattered in the sky of their own minds.

In the end it does not really matter how long we live. Whether you live 30 years or 70 years or 100 years or only 10, if you found a way to wake up every single day with a sense of purpose and passion and curiosity and productivity--whether these mechanisms of living have been worked out subliminally or consciously--and in the end of every single day you have someone meaningful to share your experiences with, and in the happiness of mental and physical exhaustion, you have found a way to sleep in peace, feeling okay with yourself...

... and that every single day of your life, you have lived with meaning and fulfillment derived from your self and surroundings...

And though the 'future' is an arbitrary vision of any particular human mind, you have come to exist in a paradoxical state such that you live for the day to create a new tomorrow, yet you live for the day as if it were your last."