262. Formatting the Question Reality Manuscript via Lulu: Universal Devotions Page, Poem

PDF file for http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/2.devotionsfinal.pdf.

Original version of the Devotions poem.

It's amazing to think that nearly several aspect of life has layers and layers and layers beneath it. For example, I was writing Question Reality to piece together the barebone "matrix/structural" elements of my fragmented mind in concern of human relations to the environment. But an additional layer was the EXPERIENCES and ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS of writing QR. Plus, three years of events have passed by since the actual widespread public distribution of the writing. Even more layers!

Considering the environmental conditions of writing this Devotions poem, I think I started writing parts of it when I was at UCLA in 2003-2004. I submitted a set of 100 poems to the University of California Press, which obviously was rejected for publication. I looked back at my poems and realized how childish and babyish they were. I do say the first 100 repetitions of any activity are probably crxp, but the 101st repetition might render something VERY cool. I think my better poems started routinely cranking out as soon as I hit poem 101. Though in the very beginning, I wrote some very powerful poems without even realizing it. My first best poem I ever wrote was "6 Billion Ways on How to View a Moderate Cube of Space" which accounts for the Prism of Place Effect. I submitted this poem to the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and was informed that this poem reached the "finalist" pile. Which is just hippy dippy for me being a scientist writing poetry (sounds sinful, doesn't it?).

Coming to think of it, whenever I come to achieve something that is outside the realm of my parents' value systems or knowledge regime, I don't seem to get the same satisfaction of completion. For example, when I created art for an entire year outside the context of my father's research, I only derived self-meaning. It was then until I was able to associate this creative science writing and art with my father's research (as well as returning to the university), an upwelling of satisfaction and motivation and desire and willpower arose within my depths. I felt the same way with 5k and 10k runs. I kept winning awards in my age division (when I was 18 or 19) but I somehow received no satisfaction from it. Maybe it was also because I was kicked out of high school as well. I guess you can call this behavior as "intellectual homing behavior." Thanks Bub. I'm addicted to my parents' value systems. Thanks a lot!

To get back to the Devotions poem, I had to come back to the piece about three times before I could complete it. I know I had major segments constructed before I started writing QR in the summer of 2004, but I remember coming back to it during the 2004-2005 year to revise the poem. I think Devotions is one of those poems that kept inspiring me to write the book.

It is definitely a cumulative appreciation poem: "from my self, to my environment," which essentially thanks everyone I had come to know at that point in my life. The first segment of the poem represents my family, friends, and teachers, and those few people who made me go through the final "tipping point" convincing me to write Question Reality--most notably Dr. Paul Dayton, Dr. Jeremy Jackson, and Seth. The Tipping Point People, I shall call them. Getting burned made me stronger, "No one can truly get to know me, unless they have questioned reality." Getting burned forced me to put myself together, to package my mind and its perception of reality. Wow, maybe that's why Tariel understands my brain, another questionner of reality. Hmmm. Tariel was the final tipping point. And then the wave crashed over and QR was published.

The second part of the poem is trying to identify the potential audience: the Listeners, the Skeptics, the Openminded, the Desperate--and hopefully QR becomes "a synthesis that might make sense to someone out there." The Discovery and the Order of the Obvious. Well, dxmn it, someone's got to do it. Order the Obvious!

The Devotions poem was a great way to start a manuscript--at least for my staying inspired to write it.

204. Preliminary Interactions with Kristine Barsky, Invertebrate Biologist, California Fish and Game

http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/kristinebarskyratedxquestionlist.pdf

When I first started interacting with Kristine Barsky (fisheries biologist, California Department of Fish and Game), I made a few booboos. The first booboo was that I compiled a preliminary "ultimate" question list of questions of all possible things you could know about rock crab, from biology to chemistry to physics of atoms to integration of science and management and regulations. That was not good to give Rate X Unadultrated (however spelled) question lists, especially to people you have never ever met. In fact, Kristine is the first person who I interviewed formally without ever meeting her before. Everyone else I just tagged along with a shaky camera, and I'm on a second round.

This Rated X Interview List was GOOD FOR MY OWN PURPOSES, but NEVER GIVE TO ANYONE ELSE. You don't want to scare people away before you even MEET them!

Mind you, I am writing this blog quasi-brain dead. I need some sleep.

Kristine was very kind to let me go with this boo boo. Her husband is actually an underwater videographer, and so she even provided a lot of input of where to do the interview... in which she recommended the National Marine Sanctuariies Museum at the Ventura Harbor... a nice break from her office too!

I do admit, Kristine was quite skeptical of me, but for all needed purposes. She was perhaps equally as skeptical as Charlie the geography-majored crab/lobster fisherman. But now, after he found out I wasn't a dirt-digging sadistically irrational "enviro," we are ALL in good terms. I only make friends. I thrive off of everyone's positive traits and abilities. I can't deal with making enemies. It's like an addiction, some kind of inherent addiction I have. Genetic? Maybe. Or maybe my parents gave me some good manners from the getgo. A professor casually commented one time that the quality of the interview also reflects not only the person in front of the camera, but the person asking the clever questions behind the camera. That was a nice, indirect compliment!

By the time Kristine and I met, I had a much more simplified question list. She was much happier with it, and the interview went well. I will include the Simplified Question List in a near-future blog.

Kristine was also the first person she could not answer certain questions that I ask, given that she is representing California Fish and Game (she was wearing the agency's shirt)! I respect that entirely. Since then, I told everyone I am interviewing that no one has to answer a question if they don't want to. And if someone has something to say that I did not mention, just go ahead and blurt yourself to the camera!!!

But this situation has made me want to ask a set of questions that I was not going to ask otherwise. I only ask these questions in the most liberal of interviews. The discrepancy between individual views versus the individual view point in light of the agency they work for. You think you have freedom of speech in America, but the truth is, you are under the rule system of whoever your employer is. Micro-governance. So, for the liberal "artist-minded folks" I am interviewing, I will ask them How they Classify Themselves and then I will ask them How Society Classifies Them. I then started theorizing about Fight Club the movie after realizing this Discrepancy... how the narrator represented How Society Classifies the Individual versus Brad Pitt, who represented How One Classifies Oneself... and in the end, how two dichotomized characters merged into one integrated whole... after a shootout... after mega-dynamite destruction of giant skyscrapers.... It's almost as if this Discrepancy exists everywhere. And the only way to integrate discrepancy is through abandonment of societal rules and some strange mental form of system destruction (for me, it's system DECONSTRUCTION) in order to reconstruct from scrap and become one whole piece? Who knows whether I am interviewing anyone who is truly being "themselves" without any form of societal or system construct imposed upon the way how they behave... except... maybe... T$#!*l.... But that's a whole different story....

Kristine hasn't seen my 7-minute film. I certainly hope she doesn't. I don't want ANYONE to see that film. I tell everyone I am starting from scrap. That was something I had to turn in last year.
In the end, I really hope Kristine Barsky will like some end products of this film....