two fish

Emory College hosted a debate on war, between James Hillman and Deepak Chopra. Here are a few summations, reported online:

Psychologist James Hillman based many of his arguments on the theory of basic personality types proposed by psychologist Carl Jung, whom Hillman studied with in the 1950s.

Hillman said people in general, and Americans in particular, lack imagination, which causes conflicts to lead to violence. He said more creative solutions to conflicts can be found, [and that] part of the blame falls on lack of education. “If we don’t imagine, we get Iraq, we get New Orleans, we get criminal irresponsibility,” Hillman said. “Where does imagination go to school in the U.S.?”

A sold-out crowd of about 1,200 people, mostly local residents not affiliated with Emory, packed the pews of Glenn Memorial. Jean Houston, a researcher in human development from New York, moderated. According to both speakers, aggression is so ingrained in human nature that war might be inevitable.

Chopra said the “fight or flight” response originates in the limbic system, the same part of the brain responsible for instinctive behaviors such as eating or the urge to procreate.

Hillman mentioned that the prevelance of wars outnumber years in recorded history.

Chopra said peace might be more likely to occur if nurturing female archetypes replaced the violent male archetypes now dominant in much of human popular culture and mythology. But Hillman saw no such reason for hope. “Why are we talking about evolution, about the future?” he said. “We don’t know what the hell’s coming. It’s pretty bloody serious, what’s here. It does no good to be hopeful.” He added that humanity must be mindful of the struggle it faces in attaining peace to make peace possible.

Chopra and Hillman also disagreed in their definitions of peace. When Chopra identified the passive resistance of figures such as Rosa Parks and Mahatma Gandhi as peace, Hillman said such actions constituted strength, not peace. “That’s a Judeo-Christian interpretation,” Chopra said. “Peace in the East is a transcendence of opposing energies that allows one to dwell in a state of pure consciousness.”

Both participants and the moderator offered numerous criticisms of President Bush and his administration’s foreign policy, and Hillman called for “doves” in the audience to take over the business of war. “You must turn to war and give it deep thought,” he said. “Otherwise, it will be left to the hawks, to Kristol and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.”

Tuesday’s event was organized by the Mythic Imagination Institute, which seeks to foster understanding and respect through stories and archetypes, as well as the Alliance for a New Humanity — a forum co-founded by Chopra — and the Emory Public Issues Forum.

   N’Kisi

“Fascinating story about Alex, but there is another grey parrot even more amazing than Alex, called N’Kisi. Why is Alex now a star and N’Kisi still obscure after years of amazing scientific results? Simply because the scientist who studies N’Kisi happens to be named Rupert Sheldrake, and the scientific establishment has quietly agreed to ostracize and marginalize Sheldrake as much as possible. N’Kisi is not only the most highly accomplished animal speaker known today — of any animal species — he is also very gifted telepathically — at least with his owner, a woman with whom he has a unique bond. Check out this link: sheldrake.org/nkisi” – JR

Hear N’Kisi Speak!          Interview, and more about Sheldrake
  

Interspecies Telepathy Experiments
N’kisi would often describe what Aimee was thinking about, reading, or looking at in situations where there were no possible ordinary clues. When Aimee saw Rupert Sheldrake’s book Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home she contacted him, and they collaborated in designing an experiment to try to replicate and document this phenomenon under controlled conditions. . . .N’kisi has already shown aspects of intelligence that animals were thought to be incapable of, particularly a species that shares so little genetic similarity with humans. Globally, parrots are the most endangered of all birds, with the greatest number of species currently facing extinction due to poaching and habitat destruction. We hope our work will help people to realize the amazing abilities and awareness of these intelligent birds, and encourage greater care of these precious beings and the planetary environment we share.

The BBC reported on N’Kisi, Chatty Parrot Stuns Scientists ( 26 January 2004).

Interview, and more about Sheldrake

Rupert Sheldrake is best known for his controversial theory of “formative causation ” which implies a non-mechanistic universe, governed by laws which themselves are subject to change. Born in Newark-on-Trent, England, Rupert studied natural sciences at Cambridge and philosophy at Harvard, where he was a Frank Knox Fellow. He took a Ph.D in biochemistry at Cambridge in 1967, and in the same year became a Fellow of Glare College, Cambridge. He was Director of Studies in biochemistry and cell biology there until 1973. He was a Rosenheim Research Fellow of the Royal Society and at Cambridge he studied the development of plants and the aging of cells. From 1974 to 1978, he was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Hyderabad, India, and he continued to work there as a Consultant Physiologist until 1985. Rupert is the author of A New Science of Life and The Presence of the Past, in which he presents his theory for explaining the mysterious process of morphogenesis. In 1981 the British science magazine, Nature described A New Science of Life as “the best candidate for burning there has been for many years, ” while the New Scientist called it “an important scientific inquiry into the nature of biological and physical reality. “

Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness
($10 new, under $5 used)
by Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, Jean Houston
(2001).

     Halfway squared equals twice back to zero. Primordial rhythms surge against the neonate. Blue hall, blue wall, blue crystal ball. I don’t know yet what I am. Always returning, resurging, resurgence. Gathering documents from an internal realm. Ali Akbar Khan showed his tabla player how to become more powerful, how to pulse with a new beat in the midst of metaphysical ecstacy. Damaged hands re-enact helplessness.

Past life):

     I sit there with my fallen self, heiroglyphic belt trapped outside. Dark tall cell, golden wall, window-slit of light above. The room is a three-dimensional trapezoid. A woman dances in red on a stone-covered courtyard. Children with golden halos, around their small heads. Was it a priest, lost them

         –  remainders .

James Hillman in “A Terrible Love of War” (PDF review here) writes of America (pp. 127-28):

Mars is battle rage, an insane red fury in a field of action. Firing the weapon brings Mars immediately into the scene, saving a man from cowering and trembling, from feeling himself a victim, and shakes him from his self-occupied inertia at a loss to himself and to his unit.

Since the god is in the gun, the passionate love for these weapons may express less a love of violence than a magical protection against it. Handgun – a fetish or amulet to hold at bay the fear of injury or death, the passivity of inertia, and, in ordinary civilian life, to have in one’s hands a charm against the paranoid anxieties that haunt the American psyche. The continent is filled with roaming revenants, giant spirits of destroyed forests, buffalo spirits, slaughtered tribes, drowned valleys behind dams, ghosts of the lynched hanging from trees, miasma hovering over rapacious levelings and extractions, unjust executions named “due process,” knifings, abattoirs. The land not only remembers, it is humming with agonies, a pulsing layer of the collective unconscious deposited there by American deeds recorded as American history.

“Iron all of itself works on a man.” The automatic in my hand brings Mars to my side. God in his heaven may not smile on me or deliver me from the valley of death; he might long ago have forgotten my name and I may not be among the chosen, but so long as my gun is within my reach the ghosts can’t get me.

Caputo in Vietnam remembers one of his men who suddenly pops an old woman they were holding. The man later explains, “Phil, you know the gun just went off by itself.” Automatic. The autonomy of the god. Because a god is in the gun it is demonic, so that control of the gun in your hand is not altogether in your hands. The question remains whether control of weapons by humans can ever be achieved without a more radical appreciation of the inhuman factor.

Zero is an abstract notion
that humans don’t typically understand
until ages 3 or 4.

Parrotic Zero

Alex, a 28-year-old African grey parrot, lives in the lab run by comparative psychologist and cognitive scientist Dr. Irene Pepperberg. The parrot spontaneously and correctly used the label “none” during a testing session of his counting skills to describe an absence of a numerical quantity on a tray.

The discovery prompted a series of trials in which Alex consistently demonstrated the ability to identify zero quantity by saying the label “none.”

The findings, published in the current issue of The Journal of Comparative Psychology, add to a growing body of scientific evidence that the avian brain, though physically and organizationally different from the mammalian cortex, is capable of higher cognitive processing than previously thought.

   Dying Hope

You’ve been dreaming of this moment all your life. An entire city and its beleaguered citizens are in desperate need of heroes. You have the powers. You have the talent. You have the heart. You are a hero.

Dual Identities & Anonymity

Dual identities and anonymity can be found in modern day comic book heroes. Some would say that their masked identity intrigues us because we want uncommon heroes with virtues and powers we only dream of; that like the Greeks and Romans, we must have our minor gods too, even if belief in them sprouts only in the entertainment of our imagination. However, it is possible the real appeal of these dual-identity heroes is something else. . . we have an opportunity to imagine ourselves in yet another role. And since nobody is supposed to know who the masked one is, it is easy to believe for the moment it could be us. (The Ant/Henry Pym)

Avatar Lawsuits

Is it a violation of copyright to make up a character in the virtual world or is that fair use? This is really untested ground in the courts.

   Gliese 876 – Howdy Neighbor

Extrasolar Life Briefing
3,000+ visible galaxies (Hubble Telescope)
100 billion stars in the Milky Way
20-50% of stars may have planets
1-5 planets per star may be capable of sustaining some life
Expected lifetime of Sun and Earth: 10 billion years
Credit: NASA

This newly discovered planet is about seven times the mass of Earth, and therefore the smallest extrasolar planet found to orbit a main sequence, or “dwarf” star (stars that burn hydrogen).

Although this new planet is advertised as Earth-like because of its relatively low mass, earthlings wouldn’t want to rent a house there any time soon. For one thing, the house would melt. The surface temperatures estimated for this planet - 200 to 400 degrees Celsius (400 to 750 degrees Fahrenheit) - are due to the planet’s kissing-close distance from its star.

Gliese 876 is a close neighbor at only 15 light years away,
and located near the constellation Aquarius. A 10th magnitude star,
it is too faint to be seen with the naked eye, so a telescope is needed
to see it in the sky.
Red arrow below Aquarius.

The planet resides a mere 0.021 AU from the star Gliese 876 (1 AU is the distance between the Earth and the sun), and completes an orbit in less then two Earth days. The closest planet to the sun in our own solar system - blazing hot Mercury - is nearly 20 times further away, orbiting at about 0.4 AU.

“Because the planet is in a two-day orbit, it is heated to oven-like temperatures, so we do not expect life,” says science team member Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

In our solar system, the habitable zone - the temperate region where water could exist as a liquid on a planet’s surface -is roughly 0.95 to 1.37 AU, or between the orbits of Venus and Mars. The star Gliese 876 is about 600 times less luminous than our sun, so the proposed habitable zone is much closer in, roughly between 0.06 and 0.22 AU.

   Super earth sought and found

Extrasolar Earther
Alien KathleenX
(encased in spun super-gravity body tube)

A tipping point, brought to my attention by my friend Jeff:

Val Valerian writes:

Earther vs. Earthling

If you live on Earth, you’re an Earther. Earthling is a derogatory term used by Dark aliens and accepted by fools as real. Think of duckling – a baby duck; hatchling – a helpless newborn from the egg. The origin is from the reptilians who look on Earthers as food/slaves/surrogates. The -ling addition says how they look on Earthers as under them, children to be ‘taken care of’ (that’s another topic). As long as you allow that term by using it or not correcting others who do use it, the vibration of the term will continue. There have been some efforts made to change that. In the Babylon 5 series, for example, people were always Earthers. For some reason, in Star Trek, Earthers are never called such, but rather humans, making it sound like ‘all humans’ live on Earth!

In order to uncover the true history of human endevor, the relatively overlooked topic of duck psychology must be studied:

Probably the most balanced Ducks are those who belong to the Loyal Nests. They have no illusions of a great history and do not try to be what they are not. They simply live their lives and try to be as happy as they can. It is only when Ducks mingle with outsiders that their natural inferiority complex comes into play and they try to escape through swagger, bluster or cunning and deceit.

It’s a bit tragic that, if glimmers become dreams and dreams become social realities, if the realities are consuming enough, the manifestation appears as organic, simply part of the existing landscape, thus relatively unnoticed. The glimmer of a dream - instantly being able to freely access those most-condensed fonts of human wisdom: books, works of intense labors, devotion – just beyond reach. No more! A panoply of sacred texts translated, straight no chaser.

Sacred Texts Online

Sacred Texts: Timeline

World Mysteries dot com

Bibliography of Sacreds Texts - with online links

Comparative Religion dot com

Some 2000 free eBooks - relating to Asian cultures and and cultural studies generally

here at the U Virginia eText Center

Beyond Reading: Papyrology Links

Sappho and

Other Women’s Voices: Translations of Writings Before 1700

What greater good can be done for the future without learning, growing into knowledge. Even without a friend, impoverished, with only food, an Internet Cafe and a few bucks – open your mind.

Notations of the Wild: Ecology in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens by Gyorgyi Voros is a wonderful book reframing Wallace Stevens as a poet of nature. This book seems to have met with but a peep from the literary community, though praised by John Ashbery, who wrote, “a dazzling, multi-tiered account of the poetry,” and Harvard Prof. Lawrence Buell (known for his works on 19th century literary transcendentalism), notes her work is “incisive, ambitious, original, timely.” If you’re into haiku and/or Stevens, or wish to contemplate a modern philosophy of nature, a sensible ecocritical adventure, you could do worse.

Gyorgyi

    Voros

First,

The Idea of Order at Key West
    (Stevens reads it here)
      Wallace Stevens (1935)
 
 

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard.
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

Below, an excerpt from Notations of the Wild: Ecology in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens (University of Iowa Press, 1997), partly commenting on the poem:

Stevens’s sense of the American experience of the Nature / culture relation was that modern awareness of Nature – whether Nature be manifest as wilderness, as the human body, or as the human unconscious – had diminished dangerously. Stevens complained, “The material world, for all the assurances of the eye, has become immaterial. It has become an image in the mind.” Human preconception had so blunted the human experience of and relation to nonhuman Nature, upon which the human rested, that indeed nothing but empty anthropocentric image remained. Stevens knew that a cancerous humanism diminishes human experience. “The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real,” he asserted.

This interdependence of imagination and reality is, of course, the subject of “The Idea of Order at Key West.” The poem’s speaker, walking on the shore, listening to the singer, posing questions and propositions about the nature of art to his companion, posits a series of antinomies which can be reframed as usefully within the categories of Nature and culture and human and nonhuman as they can within reality and imagination. The speaker pits mind against Nature’s “body wholly body,” singer’s song against the “meaningless plungings of water and the wind,” the glassy lights of the town against the darkness of the sea, and language against the “words of the sea.” While he asserts the mutual influences between sea and song, he emphasizes an essential discontinuity between them and averts any suggestion of an easy synthesis: “The song and water were not medleyed sound / Even if what she sang was what she heard,” he cautions and stresses that “it was she and not the sea we heard.”

The poem’s central question asks, “Whose spirit is this?” That is, what interface exists between human and Nature in song, the poem’s metonym for art? The speaker has already shown that the singer’s song fails as direct translation of the sea’s “constant cry,” nor can song effect a seamless identification between singer and natural elements. Is it then a production of individual vision against the spectacular stage set of Nature? After all, “she was the maker of the song she sang. /… [the] sea / Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.”

The poem’s final third is customarily read as an avowal of the romantic doctrine of the mind’s ultimate superiority over Nature: after all, “It was her voice that made / The sky acutest at its vanishing” and the aftermath of her song that answers to the human “rage for order.” In the resounding silence that follows the song, the lights of the fishing boats

Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Indeed, Helen Vendler’s reading of this poem places it within the Wordsworthian mind / Nature dichotomy and reads it as asserting the romantics’ sense of “the power of poetry over nature.” Similarly, Harold Bloom writes that the poem “remains equivocal and perhaps impossible to interpret” because it simultaneously “affirms a transcendental poetic spirit yet cannot locate it, and the poem also remains uneasily wary about the veritable ocean, which will rise up against Stevens yet again.”

Placing this poem too squarely within the romantic framework of mind over Nature, however, discounts the poem’s true dynamic, which does not rest solely on the dichotomy between singer and song. The two listeners themselves engage in creation (song making) by attending to sea and singer. The stimuli around the speaker – singer, song, companion, “bronze shadows heaped / On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres / Of sky and sea,” night descending, lights emerging – engender in him a flow of propositions, questions, and highly charged perceptual experiences. Rather than depicting the power of poetry over Nature, the poem depicts the power of the sum of perceptual experiences created by human and nonhuman components in the speaker, whose main role in the poem may be summarized as that of creative listener. . . .The night deepens after the song has ended; the resounding silence, as it were, heightens the effects of song and what might be regarded as the visual analogues to song, the lights, boats, town, and other human productions that order and “portion out” the natural scene. This difference – the juxtaposition and interface between before and after – is more significant than any element of the experience. It is finally the speaker, not the singer or the song, who effects the enchantment of the night . . .

Gyorgyi Voros

A couple of quick downloads for this Christmastime full moon.

1) a beautiful jpg from NASA

2) This free javascript ‘moon phase’ html for your webpage:

3) Update - here is a larger page with beautiful composite realtime phases and full moon / new moon times

4) complete realtime rendering of sun disk, earth day/night and moon disk.

I am reminded of Shelley [PBS], who in my view was a keen influence on the early
Stevens of Harmonium.

In his Prometheus, PBS puts into the mouth of Demogorgon (itself a . . . ‘mighty darkness . . . ungazed upon and shapeless’ (II.4., 2-5) the statement that ” . . . the deep truth is imageless.” (II.4., 19).

And Stevens himself famously observed that ‘ . . . the poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.’

(reprinted from a Wed, 15 Dec 2004 wallace_stevens listserv post)

Demogorgon - Prince of Demons
From Monster Manual I, Gary Gygax:
“Demogorgon appears as an 18-foot tall reptilian-humanoid.
He has two heads that bear the visages of baboons.
His blue-green skin is plated with snake-like scales, his body
and legs are those of a giant lizard, his twin necks resemble snakes,
and his thick tail is forked.
In place of arms, he has two huge tentacles.”
While MMI indicates that this demon has baboon heads,
I decided to model them more after baboon skulls
to enhance the general evil look of the thing.
Keep in mind that a human to scale to this drawing
would only come roughly to the middle of its thighs.

To contine the “motorcycle” thread – let’s take a look at some contemporary social issues. What do women riders think of male motorcyclists? An article by Amanda Kidd, which appeared in a Super Streetbike editorial is revealing.

Everyone from feminist scholars to third-rate rock stars has identified motorcycles as potent metaphors for sex. The speed, the danger, the leather clothing, the excitement of a good ride are all very similar to the sensations most of us associate with great sex. And who would argue that a Ducati 998 isn’t every bit as gorgeous as a naked woman, or that the rush of going knee down or carrying a sick second-gear wheelie isn’t orgasmic? Motorcycles are damn sexy. So guys, it goes without saying that the motorcycle you ride makes a powerful statement about your sexual prowess. Quit snickering–you’d be surprised at how much a savvy woman who rides (and what savvy woman doesn’t?) can tell about your skills between the sheets by just a quick glance at your bike. For instance, intelligent women know that ratty stunt-bike riders make the best lovers. Their, um, “services” are in such high demand that they’re barely able to find time to lube the chain, much less hand-rub 30 coats of clear lacquer. Keeping this in mind, it might be helpful to consider the particular statement your own scooter makes about your sexuality.

I’ll start with those cruiser guys, because aside from a red Corvette and a pneumatic, 19-year-old “personal assistant,” nothing screams midlife crisis quite like a chopper. Start with the pipes–even a nun knows a rider’s package measurements are inversely proportional to the length and girth of his exhaust pipes. Other accessories can betray as well. See mudflaps tacked onto the fenders? He irons his socks and wears them to bed, too. Naked-lady murals on the tank? Never seen a real pair of breasts in his life. And ladies, watch out for Harleys with sky-scraping sissy bars out back. His favorite bedroom accessory straps around your waist.

You sportbike guys are almost as bad. A Gixxer with a neon-lime windscreen and polished wheels screams, “I’ll pick you up for our first date in a jacked-up Cutlass with a silly sticker of a cartoon character pissing in the back window, and we’re going to Red Lobster.” Race leathers worn on the street are another red flag, especially those pasted with phony sponsor decals. You still buy Underoos from the little boy’s department and play Dungeons & Dragons. Online. Other sportbike warning signs: fender eliminator? Castration anxiety, and he’s only gonna get off if there are garden shears in the bed. Stealth turn signals? Subscriber to Close Shave. Rollin’ on 190-series rear tires? See “exhaust pipes” above. And pity the poor fool rockin’ a Ducati 9xx with a tank bra and a color-matched seat cover–his bike just screams cross-dresser with a possible secret diaper fetish.

Sport-tourers are definitely the worst, though. VFR/ST4/Sprint ST riders are perpetual adolescents–they play like they’re down with the mortgage and 2.5 kids, but every other Saturday they’re slurping tequila from the navel of some girl named Mindy and conducting field research on the “Mutation and Proliferation of Common STDs.” And nothing says poseur like an adventure tourer. He’s a wannabe rugged individualist who spends all night downloading maps of exotic destinations he’ll never see. Speaking of that GPS clamped to the handlebar–gadget fetish, and definite robot-sex fantasies.

No matter what sort of bike you ride, it broadcasts a crystal-clear message about your sexual peccadilloes. Naked bike? Exhibitionist and nude-beach freak with more hair on his back than his head. Dual-sport riders like to get freaky outdoors, not to mention that they’re not very good about washing “down there.” If you ride a V-Max you’re an S&M enthusiast with a flogger made from spark-plug leads. If you ride a Warrior (or other “performance cruiser") you’ve got the same S&M inclinations, only you repress these by coaching Little League on the weekends. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

So where, exactly, does all this leave a worldly woman rider wishing for a motorcyclist with just the right mix of studliness and sensitivity to sexually satisfy her for all eternity? In my experience, wheelying off into the sunset, solo, astride an SV650. (Which, by the way, boys, is definitely not a girl’s bike!) Most of you biker boyz are too busy standing around the parking lot at some Hooters bike night comparing one another’s “camshafts” to even notice a classy babe like me.

On the money and some fine writing. Got to admire her choice of bike, and therefore man, but I wonder if she’s a bit “cc shy,” choosing a putter like an SV650 as a mount for her perfect guy, when the SV1000 its big brother crouches like a jaguar and handles like Nureyev.

Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement

Nobel Peace Prize, 2004
“for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace”

Nobel Lecture
(excerpt)

As we progressively understood the causes of environmental degradation, we saw the need for good governance. Indeed, the state of any county’s environment is a reflection of the kind of governance in place, and without good governance there can be no peace. Many countries, which have poor governance systems, are also likely to have conflicts and poor laws protecting the environment.

In 2002, the courage, resilience, patience and commitment of members of the Green Belt Movement, other civil society organizations, and the Kenyan public culminated in the peaceful transition to a democratic government and laid the foundation for a more stable society.

Excellencies, friends, ladies and gentlemen,

It is 30 years since we started this work. Activities that devastate the environment and societies continue unabated. Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own – indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process.

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other.

That time is now.

Links

Full text: Reasons why Wangari Maathai was selected

NPR audio interview

BBC Dec. 10: Kenyan collects Nobel Peace Prize

On climate change

I was asked, “How does this zeal for life shape your haiku and haiku spirit?” (what zeal you ask . . .) by Robert Wilson, co-founder of the new and exponentially growing site Simply Haiku. His question inspired the below speculations on haiku and sacred space.

What is poetry, why do we need it, what does poetry do—to us, for us? In The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, Lewis Hyde affirms a sense that the poem, indeed all art is created fundamentally as an offering. Our culture commodifies artworks, a rather aberrant activity, apparently. Hyde reminds the reader of a truth concerning artwork – the desire to offer a gift, not only to humanity but to the cosmos, the sky, sun, moon, animals, plants, universe, to the moment, to history, one’s ancestors, to the invisible. To offer in a sacred way. Mircea Eliade discusses another aspect of offering in The Myth of the Eternal Return, the means for constructing sacred space, and of enacting life within that space (and timeless time) of the sacred. Experientially investigating the absence and presence of the sacred has been a high value in my life, and also a “saunter: a sense of being sans terre, without Earth, has involved a meandering desire for holiness, a goal echoed in the last stanza of Goethe’s The Holy Longing:

And so long as you haven’t experienced
   This: to die and so to grow,
   You are only a troubled guest
   On the dark earth.

A portion of my research has been concerned with oblivion: the figure of Lethe, mother of the Graces. Why might Forgetting give rise to Splendor, Delight and Blossoming, the three Graces? Heidegger writes,

       The oldest of the old follows behind
   us in our thinking and yet it
   comes to meet us.

      That is why thinking holds to the
   coming of what has been, and
   is remembrance.

      ("The Thinker As Poet,” Poetry, Language, Thought, Harper & Row, 1971, p. 10)

To remember that thinking is remembrance. . . It seems the sacred is easily forgotten, and entering again, in the encounter is a sense of remembrance, a return of “the oldest of the old. I’ve been interested in why not only the sense of poetry but the experience of poetic dwelling becomes lost. The danger inherent in a world, in any society, which loses poetic dimension and thereby becomes overtly literalistic, is a danger perhaps greater than that of terrorism. To know or feel the sense of poetry in life is to know “the coming of what has been, to desire remembrance: to re-member the world, cosmos, oneself, a leaf, a tree. It may be that a necessary means of entering the zone of the sacred is the experience of oblivion.

Haiku are not always instantly irruptive, do not always enact a sudden shift, yet they seem to draw us into a new resonance, creating a sense of the sacred, a context. Hoshinaga Fumio’s haiku,

nigemizu e sengo no chichi wo oitsumeru

      towards the mirage of water
the postwar fathers
            chasing after . . .

       (Kumaso-Ha, Honami Shoten, 2003)

is a haiku which seems to have layers (allusive adumbrations) of mirage: of image, time and space – heads curling Esherlike around tails. It’s a haiku I work into, never quite out of. There is an unfolding which I sense as lament, echoing back through millennia, through a myriad of cultures. I recall this haiku,

spring evening -
   the wheel of a troop carrier
   crushes a lizard

        (Knots: The Anthology of Southeastern European Haiku Poetry, Red Moon Press, 1999)

by Dimitar Anakiev. Its main image is violent, shocking. But this haiku is not merely violent. There is also a sense of sacredness, the context or field of reality which is only partly given by the poem; the haiku also requires rapprochement on the reader’s part:

The genre itself indicates the boundary lines of the sacred, as context, and it is within the landscapes of the sacred, oriented by the genre as a whole, in which image and action occur.

Concision, disjunction and image elements largely contribute to a haiku’s effect, but these elements alone aren’t enough. If one reads the above poems without a pause, they quickly lose much of their drama and vividness. So, what happens when we slow down, allow this unique poetic form to come to life? I would argue that in some measure we experience oblivion(s), if for instants, and through such psychological moments, remembrance. Mnemosyne, anamnesis, Lethe’s sister, is mother to the Muses. Such may be said for any art one becomes absorbed in and passionate toward; nonetheless, haiku are quite uncompromising in the way they cut into reality. There is extreme and concise rupture. To my knowledge, the phenomenology of poetic process has not been explained by science. In fact, qualitative conscious experience itself has not yet been demonstrably elucidated—there is so much we experience and feel which is immeasurable. Without being able to precisely measure or define, it is nevertheless apparent that haiku becomes a genre due to demonstrably unique modes of poetic encounter and dwelling. I should say that what is truly unique isn’t the experience itself, but its prevalence and intensity, when compared with other poetic and artistic forms.

We may tend to devalue the significance and importance of poetic movements which open us to the sacred, to remembrance because of their immateriality, contrastive with the predominant materialist cultural ethos. I know I have, and it is one reason for my returning to the wellspring of haiku. The haiku genre (which includes a reader) constructs an environment within which its language (i.e. symbolic representation) uniquely occurs. It may be a zest for life that draws me to haiku, but likewise a zest for oblivion and erasure. Though not erasure in itself so much as what happens through it.

Some years ago, Barbara Dilley (a Merce Cunningham dancer, Naropa teacher and former Naropa President) introduced me to “square work, in which a length of bright red yarn is made into a large square on the dance floor, tacked down with a few bits of masking tape. What is within the square is defined as sacred space. Dancers (people) relate to the fact of the square, and to entering and exiting that space. It is quite difficult to remain conscious as one steps across the boundary, quite hard indeed. A gap in consciousness nearly always occurs right at the apotheosis of transition. This is one of the consciousness research-questions we explored in an embodied manner as dance. There’s nothing much to taking some twine and making a square on a patch of bare ground. The square has only as much meaning and significance as is intended by the participants; and, what grows from experiences of many crossings and movements (object and human arrangements) within and without. After the dancers have gone, seeing that red twine on a darkened stage, would an aura exist? Is there a magical quality to that bare ground, so carefully demarcated? I would say, yes, to a sensitive reader there is, because there is an intentional architecture, much like a temple or church, just much more minimalist. Haiku likewise possess an intentional architecture; hence, natively embody natural and nuministic aspects of being.

These days I watch Sumo on television; the dohyo, or fighting square, is a sacred space. Rikishi (wrestlers) climb the steps and enter throwing salt, an act of purification, as they step across the sacred rope boundary embedded within the clay ground, into the inner ring. Above, a temple roof hangs suspended, emblemizing the divine. Such an arrangement of objects in space is an example of an archetypal sacred architecture, explored in detail in Eliade’s works, among others. The sense of sacred space existing or inhabiting cultural constructions is no doubt a deeply archaic if not an intrinsic aspect of the human spirit. Haiku as poems are a bit like that length of red twine, though the boundaries and evidences of sacrality may appear more subtly. An objectively intentional aspect exists, not necessarily in the poem itself, but in the fact that sacred space inhabits the poem, out of which the poem presents new ideas of reality. Isn’t this what is implied by the term, “poetic tradition. The oldest of the old follows behind us in our thinking and yet it comes to meet us.

mirai yori taki o fukiwaru kaze kitaru

From the future
   a wind arrives
   that blows the waterfall apart

      (Ban’ya Natsuishi, A Future Waterfall, Red Moon Press, 2nd. ed. 2004)

In that art is an offering to the cosmos, the reader is returned by that offering to a cosmic sense or scene. Returned to the world purified and renewed by the “first moment, the moment before creation.

Rising out of the sea and shedding the tank it’s a bit surprising to not be with fish, feeling weightless in the strangeness of air. What was that dreamlike place, filled with unblinking creatures, turtles with flippers, sharks large enough to blot out the far-off sun? The twine, like sunlight is imaginal, extending along an invisible line between land and sea. Returning, instants of vivid memory quickly fade. But a drop of ocean coheres within, adamantine. It is for that one drop, so pure and crystalline, that haiku seem to speak.

November 3 update: Following the election. Bob writes a brief comment here. A grateful thanks to you for your commitment and energy. It’s time to take on the role of a dedicated opposition – and – not to lose heart.

And, thank you all for voting in this election!

Our collaborative blog mentioned below can be found here.

Recently, Howling At A Waning Moon asked eleven bloggers from around the world to write a short piece and post all the contributions on each of our blogs. The theme:
 
 

From Harpers:

The European Patent Office revoked the patent previously granted to Monsanto on the Indian Nap Hal variety of wheat. It was proved by Greenpeace that the variety was bred by Indian farmers; Monsanto claimed to have invented it via genetic engineering.

More here:
4-Patents: The European Patent Office revoked Monsanto’s Indianwheat patent

And the Greenpeace article:
Chapati Chor Monsanto’s Wheat Patent Withdrawn in Europe Following Greenpeace Opposition: Bio-pirates Beware!

Spoken after one of his advisers briefed him fish that do not control any of the world’s oil,

“I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”
- G.W. Bush, Saginaw, Michigan Speech, Sept. 29, 2000

On Bush’s Radical Dismantling of the Environment (October 3, 2004)

( bushisms excerpts ebookdownload)

Here’s the abstract from Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding, by Mark Lemley, a paper you may want to download / read if the topic interests you.

Abstract:
Courts and scholars have increasingly assumed that intellectual property is a form of property, and have applied the economic insights of Harold Demsetz and other property theorists to condemn the use of intellectual property by others as free riding. In this article, I argue that this represents a fundamental misapplication of the economic theory of property. The economics of property is concerned with internalizing negative externalities - harms that one person’s use of land does to another’s interest to it, as in the familiar tragedy of the commons. But the externalities in intellectual property are positive, not negative, and property theory offers little or no justification for internalizing positive externalities. Indeed, doing so is at odds with the logic and functioning of the market. From this core insight, I proceed to explain why free riding is desirable in intellectual property cases except in limited circumstances where curbing it is necessary to encourage creativity. I explain why economic theory demonstrates that too much protection is just as bad as not enough protection, and therefore why intellectual property law must search for balance, not free riders. Finally, I consider whether we would be better served by another metaphor than the misused notion of intellectual property as a form of tangible property.

I submit Justice and Beauty are such [formulations of universal] principles from which an ecological psychology could be derived. James Hillman

Half of a lecture Justice and Beauty: Foundations of an Ecological Psychology is excerpted below:

First, psychology is anthropocentric. Its definition of consciousness, for instance declares (per definition) it impossible for anything but humans to be conscious. The self is still imagined like a pineal gland, a self-enclosed atomistic unit, neither inherently or necessarily communal. The planet is an alien place, essentially nihilistic, into which the individual human is thrown, alienated and anomic. Second, human-centered psychology fosters a disordered, senseless, and enslaved planet. By ripping the human soul from its womb in the anima mundi, the world soul, this mother of all phenomena becomes a corpse, reduced to measurement, experimental dissection and cannibalization of its body parts. Rivers and rocks, flowers and fish, defined as soulless in themselves can find value only by human assessment. For many centuries of our history and in most other cultures, an idea of the world soul endows all phenomena with meaning and intelligible intentions—and their own individual inwardness. Depth of soul lies not just in us; it resides in the planet’s own nature.

Clearly, we need to start again. [We need principles that start not in the human mind but are given to the mind with the world.] We need to imagine an ecological psychology that takes its starting point [not in human concerns only but] in the planet’s concerns and its beings concerns, which we humans serve with our mental capacities. [That is, we do not dig in our philosophy, science, or theology for principles, nor turn only to our human experience; rather] we can attempt to formulate the principles already at work within the cosmos, grounding the value of all participants.

I submit Justice and Beauty are such [formulations of universal] principles from which an ecological psychology could be derived.

Justice and Beauty offer universals of archetypal strength because they are recurrent in time and ubiquitous in place, trans-cultural, immensely fecund. They muster emotive and symbolic expression and are instantly recognizable in daily affairs—and not only of humans. [Justice and Beauty are universals on which cultured communities and human dignity rely and aim to further.] Without them, existence becomes nasty and brutish. With them, the psyche finds itself in a cosmos of value, and psychology becomes the study of the ways any phenomenon measures its place in the world.

An idea of Justice has hardly been important to psychology, which has proceeded as if Justice can be ignored. Yet, Justice is the ruling principle of society, and of the natural world, formulated as natural law. The Greeks considered Justice (Themis) foundational, a great earth Goddess like Gaia, whom Zeus had to obey. She lies at the roots of the polis, the city, making civic cohesion possible, giving each its rightful place and cautioning each not to overstep its bounds.

Justice makes possible an inherently co-related society of beings [where mutual dependency is] based not on mutual usefulness and economic exchange, but on the bare fact of participatory existence. If all beings belong, then all are needed and useful, and justice prevails for each and every. Justice lies so deep, feels so innate, it works like an instinct. Transgressions spring quick to the eye; injustice stinks and wounds long fester. A sense of justice comes with the newest soul: the smallest child cries: “That’s not fair.”

Like this innate response to injustice, so there is an innate aesthetic response. All beings present themselves first of all aesthetically to each other as visible forms, textures, aromas, patterns, rhythms. The world is intelligible by means of these displays, allowing all beings to recognize one another. [The old Roman word for the display of phenomena was ostentatio, a Latin rendering of the Greek phantasia; phenomena show themselves as fantasy images giving impetus to imagination and asking for an imaginative response. The arts are thus the first mode of being in the world and responding to its display. Beauty and ugliness derive neither from personal taste, societal norms, or objective rules of form, but are given with the phenomenal cosmos in its presentation of itself. In fact, the original meaning of kosmos means fitting, decorous, the display of adornment, and is closer to our current world “cosmetics” than to the emptied out cosmos of vast gaseous space in which drift weightless cosmonauts above and beyond gravitas. And, because kosmos also means right order, beauty promotes justice.

I submit these principles are basic to cultures everywhere because they are given with the cosmos itself, and, since primordially given they are ecological guarantors. Psychology’s task is to rebuild its learning and its therapies on these ecological archetypals, so that the great wide world and its beings can never be outside its purview. [Because] justice and beauty [are not merely humanistic, religious, scientific or regional, they] allow many modes of implementation; yet transcend all implementation with an ideal claim of transcendental value, inspiring artistry, dignity and respect, and prompting lasting rectification of ugliness and wrong. For precisely ugliness and wrong are the major cause of a suffering planet, that blue ball wrapped in a whirlwind, so fragily afloat in a sea of stars.

When alarmed
the leaf-tailed gecko (Uroplatus fimbriatus)
will open its mouth
to display its red interior.

WWF Announces ‘10 Most Wanted Species’
09/08/2004

“Our list this year reflects the varied nature of the modern wildlife trade,” said Ginette Hemley, vice president for species conservation at World Wildlife Fund. “As well-known species have become overexploited for trade, more-obscure species are increasingly targeted. So lesser-known wildlife like the humphead wrasse,

– a fascinating coral reef fish whose fleshy lips have spawned a dining trend - join the magnificent tiger and Asian elephant on the list of most wanted species in trade.

This year’s 10 most wanted species, based on threats from unsustainable trade and consumer demand, are described here.

Ramin tropical hardwood
from Indonesia and Malaysiais
used to make
mass-produced pool cues
moldings, doors
and picture frames.
Illegal logging of ramin
is driven by global demand.

Link from Howlings Newsletter.

Thank to T for sending this article from salon.com.

Baked Alaska

Sept. 10, 2004: In the Arctic, where flowers are madly blooming, trees are growing to mutant sizes and the snowpack is thinning, researchers are getting an incontrovertible view of global warming. . . .

While it’s unlikely the four horsemen of the apocalypse are saddled up and ready to ride, global warming will likely have an enormous and dire impact on human populations in the Arctic and beyond. Already, native communities that dot Alaskan shorelines are seeing villages crumble. Waves, unhindered by large ice chunks, now swell and break against the shore with a ferocity never seen before. Banks are eroding and high water has consumed so many homes and buildings that two villages have been forced to move inland.

Alaska is not alone. In his alarming book Boiling Point, Ross Gelbspan writes that global warming is disrupting “the normal flow of deep-water currents that determine climactic conditions in much of the world.” For instance, Gelbspan reports, extreme effects of the weather phenomenon, El Niño, have caused China’s Yangtze River to overflow, killing more than 3,000 people, leaving 230 million people homeless, and generating $30 billion in damages. Worldwide, warmer weather means more extreme floods and drought, which creates breeding grounds for countless disease-carrying insects.

“There’s strong consensus now in the scientific community that global climate change is caused by human activities,” says Bret-Harte in her kind, matter-of-fact manner. “There are always a few folks that disagree. But mostly they work for the oil and gas industry.”

And apparently for the Bush administration. Claiming the jury is still out on what causes global warming, the president has written a climate change policy that is about as aggressive as a tortoise. Loath to enact measures that would reduce our addiction to oil and gas – and income to his friends and campaign supporters – the Bush administration has spent the past several years misrepresenting the science on climate change in order to justify a path of inaction. For the Arctic researchers who are watching a landscape in flux, this is beyond infuriating.

“We see the possible consequences of no action and the consequences are looking graver and graver and more and more imminent,” says John Hobbie, the tough co-founder of the Toolik Field Station and director of the Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Lab. “We scientists realize that climate change is more than just vague words and models.”

Bush: Global warming is just hot air

The planet’s getting hotter, ecosystems are going haywire, government scientists know it – and still the president denies there’s a problem. Guess which industry continues to fuel his campaign?

Sept. 10, 2004 | Don’t expect President Bush to discuss global warming – the world’s most serious environmental problem – on the campaign trail in the next eight weeks. The former oilman from Texas doesn’t dare alienate his friends in the fossil fuel and auto industries, prime purveyors of global warming. Bush still refuses to admit that burning Chevron with Techron in our Jeep Grand Cherokees, not to mention megatons of coal in our power plants, has brought us 19 of the 20 hottest years on record since 1980.

“You’re talking about a president who says that the jury is out on evolution, so what possible evidence would you need to muster to prove the existence of global warming?” says Robert F. Kennedy Jr., author of the new book Crimes Against Nature. “We’ve got polar ice caps melting, glaciers disappearing all over the world, ocean levels rising, coral reefs dying. But these people are flat-earthers.”

In fact, Bush’s see-no-evil, hear-no-evil stance on global warming is so intractable that even when his own administration’s scientists weigh in on the issue, he simply won’t hear of it.

In a report sent to Congress at the end of August, government scientists argued that the warming of the atmosphere in recent decades cannot be explained by natural causes but must include such human sources as energy consumption and deforestation. It’s a conclusion that a consensus of the world’s climatologists reached years ago but that Bush has ignored throughout his presidency.

Bush on Global Warming

On Global Warming:
Ms. Bumiller: Mr. President, why did your administration change its position on what causes global warming?

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think we did.

Ms. Bumiller: According to —

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think so, Elisabeth.

Ms. Bumiller: You said that it’s almost certainly carbon monoxide — which you hadn’t said in the past, carbon dioxide.

THE PRESIDENT: I think that was my position during the campaign, if I’m not mistaken.

Ms. Bumiller: It changed —

MR. McCLELLAN: You’re talking about the National Academy of Science report?

Ms. Bumiller: Yes, yes.

MR. McCLELLAN: We’ve always talked about how that would - we’d be guided by their science on the issue, and that’s why the President has done a lot in terms of climate change, advancing the science of climate change, and also doing more research —

THE PRESIDENT: Let me get back with you on that, because I think you might — I don’t know why you said what you just said.

Ms. Bumiller: Well, we had a story in the paper this morning saying that you issued a report saying —

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, okay, well, that’s got to be true.

Dear Readers,

I’ve recently returned to Japan, and hope to be posting again soon. Here’s a shot of Mt. Robson, from the spot where our raft put in on the Fraser River:

Located in the Fraser River Valley east of the Robson River; 4 km south of Berg Lake. Mount Robson is not only the highest mountain in the Canadian Rocky Mountains but one of the great mountains of the world, and deserving of inclusion in any select list on account of many striking characteristics and a form, beauty, and grandeur transcending any other of the greater peaks of the Rockies… The mountain is unique, and its massive precipices, seamed with different-coloured rock strata, enhance it in both beauty and stature.” These words were written by Frank Smythe, an English mountaineer who wrote dozens of books about the mountains of the world during the first half of the twentieth century and was widely regarded as an authority on the subject.

A class 3 to 3+ white water run. With a class 4+ to 5 waterfall partway through. Starts off with some easy class 2, then picks up with Goldpan Alley, a straight shot 3. The river calms down and then there comes a BIG hole, followed by a left turn and then two more bends. This is Vuarnet Ledges, class 3 to 3+. After this rapid the river runs straight for about 500 meters, before turning right. This is Rearguard falls, usually a class 5. There is an easy and well-used portage trail on the right.

My friend Jeff organized the trip, a 1500 mile drive (in 3 Aerostar vans) through Western Canada with outdoor activities, for 17 university students from Kumamoto, Japan. We got as far north as Jasper, as far west as Vancouver island, spending a day in Victoria and bungee jumping into a canyon outside of Nanaimo. As for me, I was impressed with the used bookstores in Victoria and would have happily planted myself in Vancouver for a few years . . .

A Tour of the Calculus by David Berlinski, a book I picked up in Banff, contains some amazing writing.

Another beautiful book found is The Encyclopedia of the Motorcycle, by Peter Henshaw. A large well-written book with superb photographs.

Generally speaking, the hardest aspect of living as an expat in southern Japan is the inability to browse English-language bookstores. I’m ready to open up a cafe-bookstore in the right place. Investors, feel free to drop me a line twofish at iyume dot com.

I know very little about water. This post is a collection of links I found, in no particular order: just scratching the surface.

‘A strange new thirst, a craving, unfamiliar,
Entered his body with the water,
And entered his eyes
With the reflection in the limpid mirror. . .
As the taste of water flooded him
So did love.’

(Ovid, Narcissus, trans. Ted

Gaston Bachelard has penned Psychoanalysis of Fire. Harder to acquire is his Psychoanalysis of Water it’s music actually, perhaps the title in error? Try instead, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, obtainable.

Mythology: The Water Deities

March 22: UNHCR marks World Water Day

Plants give up their secret of splitting water (26 Feb 2004)

WASHINGTON — Researchers said Thursday they had taken another step toward understanding how plants split water into hydrogen and oxygen atoms, which may provide a cheap way to produce clean-burning hydrogen fuel.

Water hotspots (a clickable map).

Porous paving and The Earth Sucks (Crumb Trail)

Is this Atlantis?

U.N. Warns of Dead Zones in World’s Oceans

Shared Oceans, Shared Future (US State Dept)

Water on Mars

FAVIGNANA, Italy - Over thousands of springtimes, as far back as Homer’s Odyssey, the fishermen of Favignana have battled giant bluefin tuna lured into vast chambers of intricate netting. This year, the nets were empty. Marine biologists say not only bluefin tuna but also other fish stocks are plummeting across the world, upsetting delicate natural food chains. Some fear irreversible damage has already been done. Even worse, international law experts add, little is being done to stop it. Despite all the evidence, high-tech fleets probe the last deepwater refuges, hardly troubled by authorities.

From the Negev Foundation:

The dramatic rise in human population in this century, coupled with over consumption and inadequate resource management, threatens the quality of life worldwide:

World population will double by 2025; nine-tenths of these people will be born in developing countries.

More than half the world’s population is concentrated on 5% of the land; nearly 90% live on less than one-fifth of the land.
About one billion people, one sixth of the world’s population, live in arid or semi-arid lands, of whom just two-thirds practice farming.

90% of world food aid is directed to populations in unproductive arid zones.

Since 1970, food production per capita has declined by at least 20% in Africa and parts of Asia due to desertification and mismanagement of fresh water.

About 800 million people are chronically undernourished because of poverty, insufficient production, inequitable food access and political turmoil.

Each year, an area the size of the state of Kansas, is impoverished due to encroaching deserts.

80 of the 100 countries experiencing increased desertification are developing countries

Here’s a link to Climate Ark, a portal dealing with world climate, sent to me by my friend Tharpa, a lot to look at. The News Links with Summaries is an immense start.

T also sent me an article from Business Week. Global Warming: Consensus is growing among scientists, governments, and business which you can read here. It’s nice to see such an article in Business Week. Here’s the first paragraph:

August 6, 2004

The idea that the human species could alter something as huge and complex as the earth’s climate was once the subject of an esoteric scientific debate. But now even attorneys general more used to battling corporate malfeasance are taking up the cause. On July 21, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and lawyers from seven other states sued the nation’s largest utility companies, demanding that they reduce emissions of the gases thought to be warming the earth. Warns Spitzer: “Global warming threatens our health, our economy, our natural resources, and our children’s future. It is clear we must act.”

Images are from Friends of the Earth.

Bob Whitson runs Howling At A Waning Moon, a blog containing a feast of environmental topics and issues, and it’s getting better everyday. I enjoy the daily compendium of political happenings; a wealth of information can be found and absorbed in a brief time. Howling also has a weekly newsletter (look for “sign up for email updates” on the right side of the blog).

This except of the Kerry speech was posted in the August 6 newsletter (you can find the entire Kerry speech to the Democratic convention here):

“We value an America that controls its own destiny because it’s finally and forever independent of Mideast oil. What does it mean for our economy and our national security when we have only 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves, yet we rely on foreign countries for 53 percent of what we consume?

I want an America that relies on its ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family.

And our energy plan for a stronger America – our energy plan will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future, so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

Sounds good. But will you be able to keep your SUV?
Snazzily fuel-efficient cars are here, also an
American Auto Fuel Consumption Debate blog
Cars may get smaller.
The world’s smallest car is here.
The size of a rice grain. Maybe the Aussies are on to something.

Oil. Here in Japan regular gas is close to $4.50USD/gallon, I’m happy to be riding a 400cc bike getting 55mpg in stop&go. What is the future of oil, for the world? Today, a scary story comes from Harper’s Weekly Review:

“Analysts at Deutsche Bank warned that oil prices could rise
to $100 a barrel.” For a fuller story, read the article here.

Scary story 2: the Guardian has a freaky what-if oil scenario, which begins:

It’s 2006. Bin Laden conquers Arabia. Crude prices are nudging $100. A far-off fantasy? Don’t you believe it, writes Oliver Morgan . . .

Scary story 3: Arab Media Watch has some dirt on oil and the Iraq war, from the Arab-British angle:

The physical supply and pricing of oil were central concerns, true, but so also was the investment of Kuwait’s share of oil profits in British financial markets. Declassified US documents note that ‘the UK asserts that its financial stability would be seriously threatened if the petroleum from Kuwait and the Persian Gulf area were not available to the UK on reasonable terms, if the UK were deprived of the large investments made by that area in the UK and if sterling were deprived of the support provided by Persian Gulf oil.’

This is not a war for oil. It is a war to control the profits that flow from oil.

Speaking of Kuwait, Scary (for some) story 4: Fahrenheit 9/11 was just banned there. The reason for the ban is logical:

Kuwait has banned Michael Moore’s anti-Bush documentary, deeming it critical of the Iraq war and insulting to Saudi Arabia’s royal family. An information ministry official from the Arab state, which was invaded by Iraq in 1990, said it could not show a movie that was disrespectful of an allied country. “We have a law that prohibits insulting friendly nations, and ties between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are special,” Abdul-Aziz Bou Dastour, cinema and production supervisor at the Kuwaiti information ministry, told Associated Press. He said the film “insulted the Saudi royal family by saying they had common interests with the Bush family and that those interests contradicted the interests of the American people.”

Scary story 5: National Geographic has an article, “How soon will the vital fuel become so scarce and expensive that we’re forced to make hard choices about how we live?”

Humanity’s way of life is on a collision course with geology — with the stark fact that the Earth holds a finite supply of oil. The flood of crude from fields around the world will ultimately top out, then dwindle. It could be 5 years from now or 30: No one knows for sure, and geologists and economists are embroiled in debate about just when the “oil peak” will be upon us. But few doubt that it is coming. “In our lifetime,” says economist Robert K. Kaufmann of Boston University, who is 46, “we will have to deal with a peak in the supply of cheap oil.”

Scary story 6 is from the future. The Sri Lanka government website poses the question of whether it is truly oil or water that will be the scarier story.

It’s surprising that the future of oil does not seem a highly newsworthy topic. Fish don’t think about water, right.

The images in this post are from the aesthetics + computation group at MIT, at the jarfish gallery page.

“Find out if you are a hero or zero” taking this short quiz on energy efficiency. The questions and answers are worth contemplating, the quiz is short, and when you click for the answers, right or wrong, the rationale for each is explained. Fyi: Prof. James Lovelock, “the Kyoto Protocol, is simply an attempt to appease a self-regulating Earth system . . . [as] the Earth’s attempts to restore its equilibrium [it] may eliminate civilisation and most humans.

BBC online also has a colorful, graphic and intelligible page with a selection of articles on global warming here, including articles like, Why Kyoto Matters, a very cool realtime 100-year video comparison of temp. rise/fall around the (revolving) globe, showing highest/lowest emmisions predictions, plus other tabbed links to articles on the Gulf Stream, carbon cycle, greenhouse effect.

A country chart of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters adds a basic overview:

USA
The US emits more, absolutely and per head, than any other country – although it also produces more wealth. When Kyoto was agreed, the US signed and committed to reducing its emissions by 6%. But since then it has pulled out of the agreement and its carbon dioxide emissions have increased to more than 15% above 1990 levels.

EU
Despite its tough stance on Kyoto, the EU is some way off its own target. It pledged to bring total greenhouse gas emissions to 8% below 1990s levels by 2008-2012, but by 2002 they had dropped only 2.9% - and CO2 emissions had risen slightly. Only four EU countries are on track to achieve their own targets.

JAPAN
A major world economic power, Japan is a leading member of Kyoto, committed to cutting emissions. It was responsible for 8.5% of emissions in 1990 and its support for the agreement is critical in the absence of US participation. Although previously reluctant to ratify the protocol unless the US also committed, Japan ratified it in June 2002. It committed to reduce emissions by 6% from 1990 levels, but 2002 figures showed total greenhouse gas emissions had risen 11% above the baseline figure. The country recognises that its economy could benefit from the Kyoto agreement, as Japanese companies could capture markets for new, clean technology.

RUSSIA
Russia has signed the protocol and committed to cutting emissions. But its economy has shrunk so drastically since 1990 that industrial activity has dropped, leaving emissions reduced by about 35% and well below the level allowed under Kyoto. In the short-term, Russia stands to gain billions of dollars through emissions trading - selling its unused emissions entitlement to developed countries which want to emit more than the protocol allows them to.

CHINA
China is the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but as a developing country is not yet required to reduce its emissions. With China accounting for a fifth of the world’s population, increases in its emissions could dwarf any cuts made by the industrialised countries.

INDIA
Developing countries like India are not obliged to make any cuts in greenhouse emissions under Kyoto. But as they raise living standards their emissions will increase. India’s emissions are estimated to have risen by more than 50% in the 1990s . . . with India’s economy and population, like China’s, continuing to grow, it is clear that the thorny issue of developing country emissions commitments will have to be tackled soon in future rounds of negotiations.

Here is an impression made of fragments from Book One, the Mandelbaum Translation.

two fish

Nicholas Lezard, someone who knows something about Ovid, in a review of a new translation (by David Raeburn) writes in the Guardian (excerpts):

. . . while it seems as though the Metamorphoses has never really gone away – Ovid’s line at the end about his own poetic immortality is still borne out – people don’t necessarily feel any urgent need to read it.

This is not exactly the case around my neck of the sacred woods. I have been doing some work for the last few years that has involved steeping myself in, among other things, a good deal of Graeco-Roman mythology. One unforeseen side-effect of this is that I have come closer to accepting this mythic corpus as a convincing explanation of human motives than any other philosophical system. I may not have a shrine to Jupiter in the back garden, but it feels like it’s only a matter of time.

The now-redundant prose translation was perfectly serviceable but it was, after all, in prose. And ever since I read Allen Mandelbaum’s amazing translation of The Divine Comedy (published by Everyman), the game has changed: you can actually translate from an ancient tongue and retain not only fidelity but poetry.

As it happens, Mandelbaum has translated the Metamorphoses (and his prosody is so good it’s actually distracting) – but you won’t find it for sale here unless you’re very lucky.

It is easier to read this for pure pleasure than just about any other ancient text apart, perhaps, from the Odyssey (with Apuleius’s Golden Ass coming in a close third). It is also (and for some reason I’d forgotten this) even gorier than the Iliad.

Ovid is modern in other ways: you will recognise his attentiveness towards the very mechanics of metamorphosis. Here is Actaeon, punished by Diana for accidentally seeing her in the nude: “The head she had sprinkled sprouted the horns of a lusty stag; / the neck expanded, the ears were narrowed to pointed tips; / she changed his hands into hooves and his arms into long and slender / forelegs; she covered his frame in a pelt of dappled buckskin; / last, she injected panic …” What is that but, two millennia avant la lettre, a computer-generated animation in words?

Reading that, you may think the poetry of the translation isn’t that wonderful. This is what I thought at first, finding it hard to even recognise it as poetry rather than carefully sliced prose. Not really Raeburn’s fault: he isn’t a professional poet, and after all this is, as Dryden put it in his own translation of the work, a “vile degenerate age". But while Raeburn isn’t afraid of, shall we say, highly familiar imagery ("white as a sheet", and so on), the lines keep up a good six-stress pulse and sound much better if you imagine them being spoken aloud.

I’ve got this and another Metamorphoses post yet. There’s something seductive about the Golding translation, I’m posting the first 20 lines of the Epistle. They just don’t sign books like they used to:

The. xv. Bookes
of P. Ovidus Naso, entytuled
Metamorphosis, translated oute of
Latin into Englysh meeter, by Ar-
thur Golding Gentleman,
A worke very pleasaunt
and delectable.

With skill, heede, and judgement, this worke must be read,
For else to the Reader it standes in small stead.

from THE EPISTLE

At length my chariot wheele about the mark hath found the way,
And at their weery races end, my breathlesse horses stay.
The woork is brought to end by which the author did account
(And rightly) with externall fame above the starres to mount.
For whatsoever hath bene writ of auncient tyme in greeke
By sundry men dispersedly, and in the latin eeke,
Of this same dark Philosophie of turned shapes, the same
Hath Ovid into one whole masse in this booke brought in frame.
Fowre kynd of things in this his worke the Poet dooth conteyne.
That nothing under heaven dooth ay in stedfast state remayne. …
And next that nothing perisheth: but that eche substance takes
Another shape than that it had. Of theis twoo points he makes
The proof by shewing through his woorke the wonderfull exchaunge
Of Goddes, men, beasts, and elements, to sundry shapes right straunge,
Beginning with creation of the world, and man of slyme,
And so proceeding with the turnes that happened till his tyme.
Then sheweth he the soule of man from dying to be free,
By samples of the noblemen, who for their vertues bee
Accounted and canonized for Goddes by heathen men,
And by the peynes of Lymbo lake, and blysfull state agen…

Sometimes, certain questions have to be asked, if only to ask if they have been asked. Google searches some 6-billion-pages these days, the search string “fish on other planets” seemed worth a try. Rewarded by a hit from an AI forum, “language, mind and consciousness,” which in large part quotes Sir Arthur Eddington’s The Philosophy of Physical Science (1967, p.16; first-publication 1939).

A mention about the AI forum foundation statement:

The manipulation of natural human language by a computer, a major research track inside artificial intelligence, at first seemed like a highly tractable problem, but slowly revealed itself to be prohibitively difficult. The research of language acquisition is today central to the science of AI. How do people acquire language? And how could computers? Is there such a thing as a “universal grammar ? And why is it that machines just don’t understand? The science and philosophy of language are the heart of AI.

Sounds promising, and especially as regards the possibility of extraterrestrial fish ("Few listen when Hoagland talks about the face on Mars. But fish on Europa? That’s a creditable, if fanciful, possibility"). The thread “but is it science” was started by the post below:

Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the ususal manner of a scientist to systematise what it reveals. He arrives at two generalisations:

[1] No sea-creature is less than two inches long.

[2] All sea-creatures have gills.

These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will remain true however often he repeats it.

In applying this analogy, the catch stands for the body of knowledge which constitutes physical science, and the net for the sensory and intellectual equipment which we use in obtaining it. The casting of the net corresponds to observation; for knowledge which has not been or could not be obtained by observation is not admitted into physical science.

An onlooker may object that the first generalisation is wrong. ‘There are plenty of sea-creatures under two inches long, only your net is not adapted to catch them.’ The ichthyologist dismisses this objection contemptuously. ‘Anything uncatchable by my net is ipso facto outside the scope of ichthyological knowledge, and is not part of the kingdom of fishes which has been defined as the theme of ichthyological knowledge. In short, ‘what my net can’t catch isn’t fish.’ Or – to translate the analogy – ‘If you are not simply guessing, you are claiming a knowledge of the physical universe discovered in some other way than by the methods of physical science. You are a Metaphysician. Bah.!

Arthur Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science.

“What my net can’t catch isn’t fish.” Rob Hoogers, who wrote the post, adds, “Still a very good parable, even after all these years.” He adds:

But is fishing with dynamite or ultrasound fishing? Does hanging nets above sea-level have any chance of catching those elusive ‘flying fish’, and if so, are these fish in the accepted sense? Do fish object to us fishing them? Do fish bred in captivity have the same animal rights as free fish? Would there be fish on other planets?

These questions must be asked. The questions have been asked. Questions like, what kind of net, what kind of fish, what kind of science? evolve naturally from contemplatiing fish on other planets. As can be seen, the conundrum of fish on other planets, the nature of scientific investigation and the primary nature of artificial intelligence are closely linked.

I think one of the great potentialities of poetry is that, while it moves on the surface with image and color and motion and sense, it develops, not an exposition finally, but a disposition . . . what art does, and what explanation can’t do, is that it stops. The poem ends. And at that point, it becomes a construct, a disposition rather than an exposition, and it is silent . . . and indefinable. And this cures us of the fragmentation that words imposed on us from the beginning (A.R. Ammons).

A few words from A.R. Ammons. From An Improvisation for Angular Momentum:
 
 
Walking is like
imagination, a
single step
dissolves the circle
into motion; the eye here
and there rests
on a leaf,
gap, or ledge,
everything flowing
except where
sight touches seen:
stop, though, and
reality snaps back
in, locked hard,
forms sharply
themselves, bushbank,
dentree, phoneline,
definite, fixed,
the self, too, then
caught real, clouds
and wind melting
into their directions,
breaking around and
over, down and out . . .
 
 
from “An Interview with AR Ammons,”

It was when my little brother, who was two and
a half years younger than I, died at eighteen
months. My mother some days later found his
footprint in the yard and tried to build
something over it to keep the wind from
blowing it away. That’s the most powerful
image I’ve ever known.

(Michigan Quarterly Review. 28.1, 1989. William Walsh p. 117)

 
from another “An Interview with AR Ammons,”

I think one of the great potentialities of poetry is that, while it moves on the surface with image and color and motion and sense, it develops, not an exposition finally, but a disposition . . . what art does, and what explanation can’t do, is that it stops. The poem ends. And at that point, it becomes a construct, a disposition rather than an exposition, and it is silent . . . and indefinable. And this cures us of the fragmentation that words imposed on us from the beginning. You see, by the use of words and sentences and sense, we’re able to break down a silent world into certain clear things to say about it. But then we need to be rescued form the fragmentation we’ve made of the world. And we do that by art, by putting these motions back together and actually reaching the indefinable again. . . . it’s not a piece of knowledge that you put in books, but something you encounter, something you live with as if it were another person, as you come back again and again to a piece of sculpture and just stand and be with it. When we get to that point in a poem, where we be with it rather than ask what it means or explain how it got there, then we are back with the indefinable, we are restored to ourselves and feeling can move through us again.

(Poets in Person. Ed. Joseph Parisi. Chicago: Modern Poetry Association, 1992. p. 58; also found here)

 
and another, from David Lehman:

Archie likes saying that his great motivation in poetry is anxiety, ferocious anxiety that “tries to get rid of everything thick and material – to arrive at a spiritual emptiness, the emptiness that is spiritual.”

But the final impression his lines have on the reader is of a sublime celebration of the way things are and a sublime indifference to all that would militate against poetry, “this way of writing” that is a “way of existing.” As he writes in Glare:

 
how wonderful to be able to write:
it’s something you can’t do, like

playing the piano, without thinking:
it’s not important thinking, but the

strip has to wind, the right keys
have to be hit, you have to look to

see if you’re spelling the words
right: maybe it’s not the thinking

but the concentration, which means
the attention is directed outside

and focused away from the self, away
from obsessive self-monitorings . . .
 
 

It isn’t easy, these days, to find a deep psychological extrapolation of current events. William Van Dusen Wishard, author of Between Two Ages: The 21st Century and the Crisis of Meaning, and head of WorldTrends Research, a Washington-based consultancy specializing in the analysis and synthesizing of global trends, begins his thought-provoking 9/11 commemoration speech to the C.G. Jung Institute of New York, Sleepwalking Through the Apocalypse, with this perspective:

“In 1957 Peter Drucker wrote, ‘No one born after the turn of the 20th century has ever known anything but a world uprooting its foundations, overturning its values and toppling its idols.’ If Drucker’s right, and I personally think he is, despite all the political, social and technical advances of the past century, the underlying story of the 20th century was about a world where the historic social arrangements, spiritual underpinnings and psychological moorings that had anchored nations for centuries, have been in a transition of epochal proportions. The tectonic plates of life as we’ve known it are shifting.”

This lecture presents six major points of global shift, and discusses humanity’s future. It’s well worth reading in its complete form here; the excerpts below represent a jumping-off point rather than conclusion. Here are the six major thematic shifts Wishard presents:

First, science is in the process of redefining our understanding of terms first given us at the dawn of human consciousness: such terms as nature, human, and life. Increasingly, scientists are subordinating humans to technology. The faster computers go, the faster our whole tempo of life goes just to keep up. In essence, we may be abdicating our own psychological center of being and handing it over to the computer. Within the next three decades we’ll have reached the point where the question will be, “What are humans for in a world of completely independent, self-replicating technological capability?”

Second, for the first time in history, the Caucasian race is no longer reproducing itself. No European country is reproducing its population; nor are Caucasians in North America reproducing themselves. The implications of this are so far-reaching that it’s difficult even to speculate what they might be.

Third, future ages may view man’s seeing the Earth from the Moon as the defining event of all subsequent history. Joseph Campbell clearly considered it the most significant psychological event of the past several thousand years. Seeing Earth from the Moon vastly accelerated the collapse of all the boundaries that provide identity — boundaries of nation, race, religion, class and gender. Thus everyone, to some degree or other, faces a crisis of identity. This also profoundly affects the underpinnings of all religions, as every religion includes some cosmological concept of how the universe was first created. But space exploration has given us new and different information and perspective.

Fourth, for the first time in history, what constitutes a family is being redefined. This has acute implications for government, education, social cohesion and what we broadly term “civil society".

Fifth, the ability to create change, as well as the attitude that change is desirable, is now a global possession. Throughout history, in all civilizations, continuity rather than abrupt change has been the normal state of affairs. No society on the planet knows how to live with constant, radical change. Thus for the first time in history, every nation is, concurrently with all other nations, in a state of profound crisis as we try to adjust to an ever-accelerating pace of change. Thus there is no global center of stability and order such as Britain provided in the nineteenth century, and America supplied the second half of the twentieth century.

Sixth, our whole symbolic language has been devalued. For example, “Heaven” used to carry a sacred meaning. It was the dwelling place of the gods; a place people hoped to go when they died, our link with eternity. Now we speak simply of “space,” an endless void. Similarly, we used to speak of “Mother Earth,” which gives the earth a creative, nurturing implication. Now we speak only of “matter,” an abstract, lifeless substance. In this way, our symbolic language has been diminished. The function of symbolic language is to infuse into our conscious life some of the transcendent meaning that emanates from the unconscious realm, from the depths of our inner being. That connection has been weakened, so there’s far less transcendent vitality brought into our conscious life.

Returning to the light topic of relationships between the Earth, poetry, psyche, and death (see this post) the following paragraphs are excerpted from the British critic Sir Frank Kermode, whose essay Dwelling Poetically in Connecticut appearing in the book Pieces of My Mind (pp. 153-57), is a gem. For the sake of space, you’ll have to put up with something of a jump start:

‘Poetically man dwells upon this earth’, said Holderlin. In the poverty of the Time Between, one establishes this dwelling by finding the poetry of the commonplace, in the joy of Danes in Denmark, the cackle of toucans in the place of toucans, in Elizabeth’s Park and Ryan’s Lunch. Stevens did it over and over again, observing the greater brilliancies of earth from his own doorstep. He dwelt in Connecticut as Santayana dwelt in the head of the world, as if it were origin as well as threshold. He wanted to establish Hőlderlin’s proposition, and every reader of Stevens will think of many more instances of his desire to do so. . . . The foyer, the dwelling place, might be Hartford or New Haven, Farmington or Haddam. The Captain and Bawda ‘married well because the marriage-place / Was what they loved. It was neither heaven nor hell’ (Collected Poems, p.401). It was earth, and the poetry of the earth was what Holderlin sought and Heidegger demanded. Stevens was always writing it and naming the spot to which it adhered. This is what poets are for in a time of need. They provide a cure of that ground; they give it health by disclosing it, in its true poverty, in the nothing that is. The hero of this world, redeemer of being, namer of the holy, is the poet. Stevens has many modest images of him, yet he is the centre. In that same central place Heidegger sets Hőlderlin and adorns him with words that have special senses: truth, angel, care, dwell.

Heidegger gave the word dwell a special charge of meaning. Drawing on an old sense of the German word, he can say that ‘Mortals dwell in that they can save the earth’, that is, ‘set it free in its own presencing’, free, as Stevens would say, of its man-locked set. There is much more to dwelling, but I will mention only that to dwell is to initiate one’s own nature, one’s being capable of death as death, ‘into the use and practice of this capacity, so that there may be a good death’. Furthermore, ‘as soon as man gives thought to his dwelling it is a misery no longer’; so out of its insecurity and poverty (‘man dwells in huts and wraps himself in the bashful garment,’ says Hőlderlin; ‘a single shawl / Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor. . .’, says Stevens [CP, p. 524]) he can build, can make poetry. For Heidegger is here meditating on Hőlderlin’s enigma, that we dwell poetically on this earth, even in a time of destitution, and that our doing so is somehow gratuitous, independent of our merits, a kind of grace.

But perhaps, after all, Stevens did know something about Being and Time. Perhaps it was knowing about it that sent him looking, in his seventies, for news of what that Swiss philosopher might have to say about his supreme poet. Heidegger wrestled with ideas we all wrestle with: the potentiality of no more being able to be there, he remarks, is the inmost, one might say the own-most, potentiality. We have many ways of estranging death; for example, we say, ‘Everybody dies’, or ‘one dies’. So we conceal our own ‘being-toward-death’; yet death is the ‘end’ of Being, of Dasein – and the means by which it becomes a whole. To estrange it, to make it a mere fact of experience, is to make it inauthentic. Being understands its own death authentically not by avoiding that dread out of which courage must come but by accepting it as essential to Being’s everydayness, which otherwise conceals the fact that the end is imminent at every moment. There must be a ‘running forward in thought’ to the potentiality of death.

Only where there is language is there world, says Heidegger; and only where there is language is there this running in thought, this authentication of death. It is the homecoming that calls for the great elegy; it is ‘learning at home to become at home’, as Heidegger says of the Hőlderlin elegy. ‘All full poets are poets of homecoming,’ he [Heidegger] says. And he insists that Hőlderlin’s elegy is not about homecoming; it is homecoming. Stevens knew this, whether he learned it from Heidegger or not. He knew the truth of many of Heidegger’s assertions, for example, about the nature of change in art. ‘The works are no longer the same as they once were. It is they themselves, to be sure, that we encounter . . . but they themselves are gone by.’ The work of art ‘opens up a world and at the same time sets his world back again on earth’. The perpetuation of such truth is the task of an impossible philosopher’s man or hero. Stevens’ poet works in the fading light; the ‘he’ of the late poems has to make his homecoming, has to depend on his interpreters to make it for themselves and understand that it is impermanent. The advent of the Supreme Poet, who would stop all this, is like the return of the god.

It should be added that the ‘he’, the poet, of some of the last [Stevens] poems, can be a ‘spirit without a foyer’ and search among the fortuities he perceives for ‘that serene he had always been approaching /As toward an absolute foyer . . .’ (Opus Posthumous, p.112). It is a different version of the running-toward-death, and Heidegger would have approved of that ’serene’, for Hőlderlin used the word and his glossator turned it over many times in his mind. Is this ordered serenity too easy? When we climb a mountain ‘Vermont throws itself together’ (OP, p. 115); Vermont does the work, provided, of course, that we climb the mountain. It is not quite easy, but it is of the essence that it is also not quite difficult. The greatest image of the being at the threshold of death is, I suppose, ‘Of Mere Being’, a poem that is also, one may be sure, very late. It contains a foreign song and a foreign bird. There is dread in it. Heidegger, I dare say, would have admired it . . .

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. . . . But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime (Emerson, Nature, Chap. 1).

The poet Stanley Plumley was interviewed last year in the Atlantic Monthly by Peter Davison, who writes in introduction, “For over thirty years Plumley, both as poet and as teacher, has explored the surfaces of nature and the darknesses of the human heart. A 2002 award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters recently ratified his poetic reputation, though he has long been recognized by alert readers as one of the assured masters of contemporary American poetry.” Here are some excerpts form the interview Language Makes the Senses One, and a poem, Promising the Air.

Language, at its best, is not easy, even though the task of the poem, in Yeats’s famous phrase, is to make it “seem a moment’s thought.” For me, language rests in a state of night gravity, and I must work very hard to bring it effectively to light. “Promising the Air” and “Piano,” for me, are no less about silence and language as about a darkness — the one poem concerned with the invisible world, the other with the animal presence of something wholly other than human. There is a difference between facile and facility: the former you distrust, the latter you admire. Darkness is depth, I think, and the poets I admire have the facility of being in touch with and speaking from that sense of things.

Narrative, I believe, is indispensable to the lyric; it’s what makes it move instead of spinning its wheels. It’s what motivates the poem to turn, to go on, continue, rather than simply returning, over and over. Narrative provides the major formal tension to the lyric stability in a poem. It’s what causes the line to turn the corner. What is a “story” anyway but someone speaking, drawing a line that assumes a shape, a shape that becomes a figure But a line too straight is uninteresting; that’s why the “narrative” must break, bend, meander; that’s why indirection and juxtaposition are so important to maintaining the intensity, the surprise all art needs to keep the music going, the line moving. . . . Even metaphor, announced or otherwise, is an implicit narrative — “like a patient etherized upon a table” (T. S. Eliot); “Loneliness leapt in the mirrors, but all week/I kept them covered like cages” (W. S. Merwin). The subtext of narrative is time, the subtext of time is mortality, the subtext of mortality is emotion. Try to remove the narrative sense of things and you take out the heart, the cause of the effect.

As for the verb “to be” — I loathe the creative writing notion that verbs necessarily need to act, to juice the pale nouns and poor modifiers. Verbs are part, only part, of the voice of all the words. Perhaps, for me, state of being verbs are faster or more direct means between the subject and the complement. I don’t know, except that is verbs are quieter, more given to silence. Or perhaps, in my mind, all verbs are state of being, depending on what state of things, active or still, the writing is calling for.

I grew up with trees — I mean forests. My family, in both Ohio and Virginia, was in the lumber business. The picture on the cover of Boy on the Step is from the State of Ohio archive and it shows my father and uncle and grandfather, plus a cast of townsfolk, gathered around the first big log cut for the P. W. Plumly Lumber Corporation. It’s resting on the flatbed of a Ford truck the size of a semi. The photo was taken just before the Second World War. As with so many families, the war changed everything, but it made my grandfather a millionaire. My father and his brother worked for my grandfather through most of their twenties. As a small boy I would often tag along as they went out into the Blue Ridge to cut trees in the years right after the war. We’d be out for days. I don’t think my father liked cutting trees, which in those days was done by hand, with big double-manned bandsaws. You could see it in his face how it hurt him to bring them down, especially the really large oaks and poplars. You get to know trees intimately that way, by killing them. And a tree on the ground is a different thing altogether from a tree standing. It’s like a great dead or dying animal. No wonder the first poets were Druids.

In a way, nature starts with the trees, these great flowers. Their presence is certainly powerful, but so is their silence; and what sweeter sound is there except wind in the leaves, the first music on the planet. After which comes birdsong, also in the trees. The human voice, projected, is, it seems to me, an extension of these natural sounds, just as we imitate the shapes in nature — the circle, the hexagon, the meander, and so forth. My sympathy, obviously, is with nature, while at the same time feeling separate. Our separateness is one of our basic themes in poetry. I sometimes think that the closer you feel with the natural world the closer you can be with other people. This may be Wordsworthian, but it’s true. Nature is a teacher. The more we, as a culture, alienate ourselves from it the more alien we become.

Promising the Air
 
A woman I loved talked in her sleep to children.
She would start her half of the conversation,
her half of asking, of answering the need to bring
the boy up the path from some dream-lake, some
 
wandering source, water, a river, or a road along
the tree-line of a river, she would say his small name,
then silence, privacy, the drift back to the center.
The child was the tenderness in her voice.
 
I can remember waking myself up talking, saying nothing
that mattered but loud enough for someone else to hear.
No one was there. It was like coming alive, suddenly,
in a body. I was afraid, as in the dark we are each time
 
new. I was afraid, word of mouth, out of breath.
Waking is the first loneliness –
but sleep can be anything you want, the path
to the summerhouse, silence, or a call across water.
 
I am taught, and believe, that even in light the mind
wanders, speaks before thinking. This piece of a poem
is for her who wept without waking, who, word for word,
kept her promise to the air. And for the boy.

Fractal.org is pretty comprehensive. Wikipedia (where the above public-domain image is located) has a good basic overview of what fractals are, with links. “A fractal is a mathematical object that is self-similar and chaotic. Fractals are infinitely complex: the closer you look the more detail you see. Most fractals are generated by a relatively simple equation where the results are fed back into the equation until it grows larger than a certain boundary. Fractal mathematics, thinking and vision have been taken up in various fields. There are a few webrings: UltraFractal webring, the Fractal Artist’s ring, and the Infinite Fractal Loop.
A few online essays:

The Fractal Revolution by Peter Bearse.
Human life is inherently chaotic. People have felt it to be so since the beginning of recorded time. They have sometimes sensed, but mostly prayed, that the chaos may have an underlying structure. Only recently, however, has this hope been expressed in scientific/mathematical terms, as the tracings of an underlying reality rather than merely the subject of deep human yearning. Until the French Revolution, the structure of human existence was an article of transcendental faith rather than human knowledge. The basic “structure” was millennial – the apocryphal City of God, reified by vain men in the form of monuments and causes. The discovery that the “geometry of nature” is fractal has radical implications for human beings’ understanding of their society and of their role in things social and political.

A Man Who Would Shake Up Science by Edward Rothstein.
Mr. Wolfram is finally publishing his work, and his claims surpass the most extravagant speculation. He has, he argues, discovered underlying principles that affect the development of everything from the human brain to the workings of the universe, requiring a revolutionary rethinking of physics, mathematics, biology and other sciences. He believes he has shown how the most complex processes in nature can arise out of elemental rules, how a wealth of diverse phenomena — the infinite variety of snowflakes and the patterns on sea shells — are generated from seemingly trivial origins.

Fractal Evolution by the Leading Edge Research Group.
The physical world, the explicate realm, is structured along the lines of fractal geometry. The basic underlying idea is the idea of repetition of structure in different scales of magnitude. The common example is a coastline. A photograph of a section of coastline from a blimp will show the same ragged contours as a photograph of the whole coast taken from a space station. A photograph of a one-foot-long section of the same coast will also show the same contours. The various coastlines are “self-similar,” each similar to the others in shape, but different in magnitude. . . . “How did nature manage to evolve such complicated architecture?” Gleick asks, rhetorically. “Mandelbrot’s point is that the complications exist only in the context of traditional Euclidean geometry. As fractals, branching structures can be described with transparent simplicity, with just a few bits of information….” “Fractal mathematics” is comprised of the simple formulas by which conversions are made–fractal to fractal.

Fractal Amplifications: Writing in Three Dimensions by Alice Fulton.
During the last quarter of the twentieth century, science has turned away from regular and smooth systems in order to investigate more chaotic phenomena. Rather than being divided into the classical binaries of order and entropy, form now can be regarded as a continuum expressing varying degrees of the pattern and repetition that signal structure. . . . It occurs to me that this shift in focus makes itself felt within literature as postmodernism. In any case, the poetry I am calling “fractal” shares many defining traits of that contested term: postmodern.

Fractals in poetry by Lucy Pollard-Gott.
The method seems to stretch the meaning of fractal, but see for yourself. An example from Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Sail of Ulysses (Canto I)” Pollard-Gott took know as the root. Here are the occurrences of know in the poem:

The Sail of Ulysses (Canto I)

If knowledge and thing known are one
So that to know a man is to be
That man, to know a place is to be
That place, and it seems to come to that;
And if to know one man is to know all
And if one’s sense of a single spot
Is what one knows of the universe,
Then knowledge is the only life,
The only sun of the only day,
The only access to true ease,
The deep comfort of the world and fate.

“Note the occurrences of know organize themselves into hierarchical clusters, that is, clusters within clusters.” Click this link to get a more complete picture of what she’s talking about.

In what manner is the Earth remembered, unbidden, how is environment woven into the skein of memory? This post is the first of a series presenting ways the Earth is remembered (send any selections you like to twofish@iyume.com).

Eighteen years have gone by, and still I can bring back every detail of that day in the meadow. Washed clean of summer’s dust by days of gentle rain, the mountains wore a deep, brilliant green. The October breeze set white fronds of head-high grasses swaying. One long streak of cloud hung pasted across a dome of frozen blue. It almost hurt to look at that far-off sky. A puff of wind swept across the meadow and through her hair before it slipped into the woods to rustle branches and send back snatches of distant barking – a hazy sound that seemed to reach us from the doorway to another world. We heard no other sounds.
  . . . .
Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene I hardly paid it any attention. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that 18 years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn’t give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. . . . Scenery was the last thing on my mind.
 
Now, though, that meadow scene is the first thing that comes back to me. The smell of the grass, the faint chill of the wind, the line of the hills, the barking of a dog: these are the first things, and they come with absolute clarity. I feel as if I can reach out and trace them with a fingertip. And yet, as clear as the scene may be, no one is in it. No one. Naoko is not there, and neither am I. Where could we have disappeared to? How could such a thing have happened? Everything that seemed so important back then – Naoko, and the self I was then, and the world I had then: where could they have all gone? It’s true, I can’t even bring back her face – not straight away, at least. All I’m left holding is a background, pure scenery, with no people at the front.
  . . . .
There is no way around it: my memory is growing ever more distant from the spot where Naoko used to stand – where my old self used to stand. And nothing but scenery, that view of the meadow in October, returns again and again to me like a symbolic scene in a film. Each time it appears, it delivers a kick to some part of my mind. Wake up, it says. I’m still here. Wake up and think about it. Think about why I’m still here. The kicking never hurts me. There’s no pain at all. Just a hollow sound that echoes with each kick.

                         Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (Vintage, pp. 2-4)

Over the course of some years of Buddhist-psychology practice and study, I learned that the self does not exist. Anyway, that the notion of self-existence is one of the major causes of confused mind. It was a rather outrageous idea in 1980, when I encountered it; this was prior to my exposure to heavy-handed postmodernist lit. crit. As a consequence, postmodernism was something of a let-down. When you look at concepts like vipassana (a variety of de-centered holonomic awareness) and “suchness” (a development of the Yogacharan Buddhist philosophic school, which offers the scent of immanent uncontained presencing), there is some shock involved. Postmodernism is partial and reductive, seen from such philosophical perspectives. Which isn’t what I wanted to talk about.

The idea that something doesn’t exist plays with language and concept. For something to not exist it must not be real, right? Could something be real and not exist? In the Heart Sutra there’s a section which goes: “no eye no ear no nose no tongue no body no mind no existence no non-existence no birth no old age no sickness no death.” But of course you have an eye? just, it doesn’t exist. Seems pretty paradoxical if not downright inane. Of course, there is – no answer – just like there is no eye. But in the same breath you could say there is an answer as there is an eye. How can something exist and not-exist?

Cute, but maybe serious at the same time; a language game. Serious, but with a sense of wicked humor. The Hindu Atman is conceived as an eternal adamantine atomic substance: the most eternal infinitely dense dot of Self, which is unchanging and eternal – to paraphrase. Buddhism’s revolution, in part, radically challenges the Hindu idea. No adamantine “thing-in-itself” – as long as you conceive of it as existing, a “thing” with basis in “existence.”

If we say “there is an eye,” “there is nature,” it amounts to the same thing – a use of language which habitually buys into (attaches) to the “concept of eye,” “concept of nature,” etc. It’s a problem of identity, and thus, literalism. In a sense, the Buddhist view proclaims that the cosmos in its varieties is not literal. “No existence” is a tease. Because we can as say just as well, “no non-existence.” So far, so good. Turning to the post-Jungian philosopher James Hillman, he refines what appears as the same articulation, saying that “mind is basically poetic in nature.”

I found an uncomfortable sub-text in my early-days-American-Buddhist-community, in that there was a lot of ego-suspiciousness going on. That devilish, suspect ego, fouling the nest. This was unfortunate. It seems that the real issue is the belief in the literalness of the literalizing function. The same thing maybe, but at higher resolution (which makes a difference).

In other words when we lose the world poetically, as the sense of multiple valence reduces to a mere literal, we thus become attached to a conceptual frame. Which isn’t such a bad thing from a pragmatic point of view. After all, what’s the problem in believing in what’s real? Why de-literalize the literal? And, what’s in it for me? Hard questions to answer: the universe, the Earth? Too glib? Something supra- or para- human. It’s possible that postmodernism hasn’t gone nearly far enough.

The postmodern locus (idea) of infinite relativity and decenterdness is fairly said to absolve any agent or agency of responsibility. Both Buddhism and postmodernism seem to say “everything you know is wrong” (a great epithet from the Fireside Theatre); habitual concept is challenged. But the Buddhist view is based on practice, particularly formless meditation practice; in any case, contemplative practices which attempt (by altering consciousness in various ways) to dissolve or irrupt conceptualizing altogether, and as partial consequence, the habitual ignoring of subtle conceptual formation in consciousness. Postmodernism, as theory, seems to offer endless conceptualization, or re-conceptualization: it seems mired in a (recursive) conceptual field of continually recentered and recentering possibles. A glaring example of the problem con be found here in Derrida’s response to the tragedy of 9/11 (from the book Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida by Giovanna Borradori).

In Buddhist philosophy, as experiential possibility, you have two things happening, prajna (aka wisdom) and upaya (aka skillfull means). Two wings of a bird (or the bird don’t fly). Here’s one mode of depiction: Prajna is the root: non-dual/non-conceptual mind. Upaya is what you’re going to do with that in the real world. The idea is that if you operate from conceptually-attached dualistic modes (concept and opposite concept: eye/no eye, etc.), your skillfulness or effectiveness is limited. But if your ground is non-dual suchness you work with the irreality of real things, that is, knowing metaphor, images, the soul of things. Soul. Right!

Hillman defines the soul as “that which deepens,” and, “that which turns events into experiences.” Almost as bad as no eye, no ear, but not quite.

Postmodernism seems to offer a means to break free of concept, but ends up with deconstructive/re-conceptual process, ad infinitum, where Buddhism and Archetypal (post-Jungian) psychology both offer teleology, that is, a path toward a goal, which is intimate, individualist and personal (the goal of unconfused mind in one case, individuation in the other). In both cases we are talking about adult development, and what Freud left out. In Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, Hillman writes,

The philosophical problem [of definition] arises from the soul’s own desire for self-knowledge which can best be satisfied in terms of its own constitution: images. . . . The statement . . . that “the primary metaphor of psychology must be soul” attempts two things: (a) to state the soul’s nature in its own language (metaphor) and (b) to recognize that all statements in psychology about soul are metaphors. In this way, soul-as-metaphor leads beyond the problem of “how to define soul” and encourages an account of the soul toward imagining itself rather than defining itself. Here, metaphor serves a psychological function: it becomes an instrument of soul-making (q.v.) rather than a mere “figure of speech,” because it transposes the soul’s questioning about its nature to a mythopoesis of actual imagining, an ongoing psychological creation (Berry 1982).

Soul-as-metaphor also describes how the soul acts. It performs as does a metaphor, transposing meaning and releasing interior, buried significance. Whatever is heard with the ear of soul reverberates with under- and overtones (Moore 1978). The perspective darkens with a deeper light. But this metaphorical perspective also kills: it brings about the death of naive realism, naturalism, and literal understanding (pp. 20-1).

“The death of naive realism, naturalism, and literal understanding.” Powerful stuff, and one can’t go back, hide like an ostritch, head in the sand. So, what to do when it is claimed that one has no literal authenticity, or “authentic entity” in one’s values or philosophy? (With reference to this post from crumbtrail, and the quote below.) Paul Wapner writes that,

When anti-environmentalists claim that, because there is no authentic entity called “nature,” we can choose to use trees, animals, canyons, and rivers as we see fit, staunch environmental modernists have little to say. They can disagree about first principles, complain about ontological and epistemological premises, but beyond this they have little to say. Simply rejecting eco-criticism and reasserting a modernist narrative doesn’t reckon with the intellectual weight of contemporary attacks on “nature.”

I think postmodernist relativism hasn’t got a prayer of finding a solution to its own problem, in its infinite journey toward partiality. An area ripe for further investigation involves qualitative experience: the hard problem of consciousness, a nut that science hasn’t yet cracked. Which brings up the question, what do we really need?

We may need the world in order to dream it.

Jung has remarked,

“It is not psyche which exists within man, but man whom exists within psyche.” “Matter as well as spirit appear in the psychic realm as distinctive qualities of conscious contents. The ultimate nature of both is transcendent, that is, noumenal, since the psyche and its contents are the only reality which is given to us without a medium” (The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, p 215f).

The unresolved play between Jungian Platonic archetypes, the imaginal and empiricism is marvelously resolved in Hillman’s work. “Without a medium” is an intriguing phrase, in association with “nonumenal: “a posited object or event as it appears in itself independent of perception by the senses.” In that human consciousness is reflective, and we cannot see such a similar process to any great extent in another creature (for comparative analysis), what is it that’s doing the reflecting? Perception itself (to go one step further) arises out of/in league with psychic reflection – otherwise it is impossible to language, think about, cognate thingness. All of which implies metaphor as a root of apprehension. The strong position in polar opposition to a literalist/empiricist perspective, is that metaphor is authentic reality. Perhaps a re-estimation of the power and importance of metaphor is in order. As a basis of apprehended reality it can kill, heal, well – how we deepen into apprehension. It may be we are in a state of denial or existential bias against a reasonable regard and valuing of metaphor and fantasy.

. . . “Fantasy” and “reality” change places and values. First, they are no longer opposed. Second, fantasy is never merely mentally subjective but is always being enacted and embodied. (Hillman 1972a, pp. xxxix-xl). Third, whatever is physically or literally ‘real’ is always also a fantasy image. Thus the world of so-called hard factual reality is always also the display of a specifically shaped fantasy, as if to say, along with Wallace Stevens, the American philosopher-poet of imagination on whom archetypal psychology often draws, there is always “a poem at the heart of things.” Jung stated the same idea (CW6: 78): “The psyche creates reality everyday. The only expression I can say for this activity is fantasy.” And he takes the word “fantasy” “from poetic usage” (CW 6: 743) (Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, p. 23).

Gary Snyder, quoted below, has written: “mind, imagination, and language are fundamentally wild.” As Snyder is an eco-critical thinker par excellence, I’m not sure why “rejecting eco-criticism and reasserting a modernist narrative . . .” would be a necessary reponse to a “literalist” challenge, on the part of environmentalists. At least as I understand Snyder’s stream of eco-critical thought. The real key is not in the classroom, so to speak, it’s in experience – the “hard problem” of consciousness; by which is meant, not purely empirical (that is, measurable, quantifiable) experience. Put the art pedal to the metal. Following this line, any decent synthesis involves aesthetic contact: soul, baby.

(to be continued)

(About this web log. Note concerning web presence: you can find my bio here, here are some writings on haiku; a recent music project is here, composed with Jeff Cairns. )

This web log is loosely concerned with the theme of wildness and the wild; its loss, invalidation and voiding, whether this arrives from the personal microcosmically stray dream-image, political, social, scientific perspective (e.g. genomic, cybernetic), literary perspective, cultural noodling, work-stress realm, psychology, etc. So, critique is one purview. On the flip side, the question of what the wild is, how wildness might be touched, moved towards, sensed – what its value might be – these represent arcs of question and aspiration. Rather than answers, I believe relationship is a focus. James Hillman discusses the classical Greek meaning of the word therapy as “therapeia,” “to attend upon.” The meaning of psychology (a logos of psyche: to give psyche an adequate account of itself) then is “to attend upon psyche.” In this sense, the psychology of the wild becomes relevant as an active movement: how to attend upon, give attendance to wilds; to wildness. To attend and enter.

An example of attending to the psyche of something primordial, elemental is Gaston Bachelard’s Psychoanalysis of Fire. Thoreau found wildness as a highest value, articulating a non-dual awareness of wildness. Wildness as not merely an outer environmental issue nor interior state disconnected from relative extensive reality. This brings up the old question of subjectivity vs. objectivity (with subjectivity, as fancy, often getting short shrift). One response to the subjective-objective conundrum regarding nature comes from modern haiku. The Japanese poet Hoshinaga Fumio comments,

I write about or touch upon human heart and feeling, by creating human mental images. The human mental image does not have a typical form, such as a cake cut into four quarters – a mental picture is not like that; it has no form. . . . Disharmonies lead to harmonies . . . the Japanese sense of nature is in harmony, that is, the harmony of: person (human being) and nature; no separation – in its widest sense. Without the sense of harmony with nature, Japanese literature would become very weak (personal communication).

Hoshinaga’s creation of “human mental images” is directly related to his 40-year oeuvre of acclaimed haiku. How we find harmony, in the sense Hoshinaga describes, seems relevant. At this precise point in human history various writers have sensed we are on the brink of losing the wild, except perhaps as fairytale or entertainment fantasy; this process is happening on a number of levels, imaginative, social, technological, etc. I’d like to present a few phrases from Emerson and Thoreau. Here is the opening sentence from Thoreau’s essay, Walking:

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil – to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement…

Thoreau includes “person” in his sense of nature, through advancing the idea of a person leaving the three estates of church, government and society, in order to seek direct contact with the wild, not by goal-oriented behavior, but rather by meandering or wandering in or through wild places, spaces, with the sense of never returning.

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return, prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again – if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man – then you are ready for a walk.

Seeking a sacred earth, sacred sense of being. To do this one must become “a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State and People.” A bit later, a statement which resonates strongly 150 years later:

In Wildness is the preservation of the World.

Thoreau is often misquoted, with “wilderness” replacing “wildness.” While the two are related, one is external, extensive, while the other is a move towards an aesthetic in which experiences are sought: varieties of contact.

In Nature Emerson wrote, “Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” A short way down the page he added, “But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical.” Valuing the wild implies sensing, contemplating universals, which tend to be discredited or devalued, in comparison to realistic, pragmatic ideas or goals. It can be argued that strong thinking itself is now held in social question. These lines from Yeats’ Second Coming seem to match the current media climate:

. . . everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
. . .

Gary Snyder writes that mind is fundamentally wild:

I will argue that consciousness, mind, imagination, and language are fundamentally wild. “Wild” as in wild ecosystems – richly interconnected, interdependent, and incredibly complex. Diverse, ancient, and full of information. At root the real question is how we understand the concepts of order, freedom, and chaos. Is art an imposition of order on chaotic nature, or is art (also read “language") a matter of discovering the grain of things, of uncovering the measured chaos that structures the natural world? Observation, reflection, and practice show artistic process to be the latter (A Place in Space, pp. 163-172).

These are some of the ideas that hover, in terms of this web log. I feel that we have reached a time when the perseverance of the wild is at issue.

One of the challenges of cultural existential bias is acknowledging that we possess it. Without looking toward the obscure shadows cast, we may end up destroying or eroding what is of universal value: human identity and meaning, in one instance. I think this is one of Bill McKibben’s points when he writes that,

[Human gene manipulation and DNA improvement is] “Going for perfection,” [as] Watson calls it. But in fact such genetic tampering threatens to destroy the very things that give meaning to human life. From a certain vantage point, meaning has been in decline for a very long time, almost since the beginning of civilization. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors inhabited a very different world from ours, a meaning-saturated world where every plant and animal was an actor the way people are actors, where even rocks and canyons and rivers could speak. We look at that same world and see either silent landscape or pile of resources; either it has gone mute or our hearing is nowhere near as sharp. . . . the context of our lives began to shrink much more quickly in the last five hundred years. As science offered first new explanations and then new technologies, we have traded in the old contexts that informed human lives, bargaining them away in return for freedom, for Liberation (Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age).

As we advance we may wish to turn anew toward the forgotten or abandoned. I would like to extend my brief encapsulation but this post is becoming long. Ursula Le Guin’s A Very Warm Mountain, discusses the personification of the natural world in a way that has provoked my introspection: must we personalize the non-human, incorporate it into society in order to preserve its value, living in an age between myths? James Hillman comments in Beauty Without Nature; Refounding the City that “nature” should not necessarily be equated only with wilderness or non-human zones, that (to reduce a complex story) the crucial experience of aesthetic arrest may be found in the city, in art, as well as within wilderness – aesthetic perception of the wild is qualitative and not mutually exclusive (one zone cannot be sacrificed for another). One of Hillman’s points is that it may be possible to design a sense of the wild into the city – in such a city, it would become less necessary to mass exodus to the beach or “managed” nature on the weekends, in order to seek after the longed-for distance, in Weil’s sense, distance which is the soul of beauty.

The wild and anarchy are dissimilar templates. Gary Snyder points out that sensing the wild involves “the grain of things . . . measured chaos,” ideas also found in Classical Greece. Chaos (lack of pattern) was equated with aesthetic ugliness. So, the cosmos as cosmetic, cosmos as craft.

The above are loosely related speculations. I believe it is possible to go beyond a dualistic psychology that polarizes nature and culture. At the same time, whatever polemic or dialectic might be hashed out, I’m working from an internal poetic course, an unformed and unframed discontinuity, from disharmonies that may lead to harmonies – saunters on occasion, seeming to be a verb.

The cows are no longer simply mad, they are dissassembled. The cowing of nature continues – consumption, dissassembly and transgenic recrudescence: an outbreak of cows. It was recently reported that Britons were harvesting milk as early as 6,000 years ago. Now we shall further cow cows, or resculpt them. What looks like a cow but is not a cow?

Is it reasonable for a cow to have its milk replaced with human milk proteins, that is, to produce human milk for babies to drink? No more artificial formulas! Of course, the calves will be out of luck.

There are a number of potential opportunities for altering the nutritional content of milk. For example, cow’s milk is ideal for calves but not for premature infants. Gene targeting using nuclear transfer will allow milk to be produced in which one or more of the normal cow’s proteins have been replaced by human proteins, thereby improving its nutritional quality for these special consumers.

It is easy to imagine the benefits to humanity. Honestly, why should we stand in the way of ever-more-helpful and healing cows?

Should cows be transgenically altered so that they become disease free throughout the modern industrial cow-processing industry? Mastitis costs U.S. dairy farmers about $1.7 billion annually, including lost milk revenues, and scientists hope that Annie will resist such cellular attacks by secreting an added protein called lysostaphin.

Bill McKibben in his book Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, deals with human identity in a transgenic age. It’s possible to keep abreast of the issue here, to some extent. But I am more concerned about the cows. I mean, we will do anything with animals – even give ourselves BSE, a devastating disease which the agricultural insustry continues to hide from our eyes and the law.

The cow is much like a consumer, casting an image passive and dumb: cows seem to be messengers of our future. Is some empathy if not interest called for?

One apparently unresolved question is what is to be done with the transgenic cattle - which do, after all, have a single human gene in them, even if they look like cows, sound like cows, urinate with impressive projectile force like cows, and behave like cows - when the time comes for them to go to that happy meadow in the sky. The Finnish Biotech Commission has issued a statement to the effect that it is not ethically wrong to slaughter transgenic cattle for human consumption. Nevertheless, consumers should be told when the beef on their supermarket meat counter is genetically modified, and when it is not.

Apart from the queasy concept of consuming transgenic cattle, I’m sure we will be told when our supermarket beef is genetically modified. The food and agricultural industry has our need to know at heart. Cow care, cow management; a top priority.

It might be argued that everything is right with this picture: medicines from cows, mother’s milk from cows. If your loved one is dying from a disease a transgenic cow named Annie or Fred could cure, if babies’ lives could be saved and made nutritionally strong from a transgenic cow or so, in the backyard…

It can’t be wrong to change animals into producers, into living software, can it, to re-breed nature?

For a different perspective and response-article to this post read this from crumbtrail. Also related, a consequent post, losing and finding the wild.

An excerpt from Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Times editorial:

I knelt directly in front of her and placed my hands on what I thought of as her shoulders. She drove against me, the last human obstacle between her and the gulf. The wind blew, and behind me the surf roared. Then it was time to let go.

When she moved at last, she marched briskly down the sand between a double cordon of beachcombers and tourists who had happened upon the scene. Like me, none of them had ever knowingly come this close to a member of an endangered species before. The turtle rested for a few minutes, then struck out again. She nosed her way over the tidal debris, and then the biologist lifted her over a driftwood log that lay in her path. From there it was a clean break for the sea, down the slick sand and into the pooling backwash of the surf. I watched until the crest of her shell had gone under and the last swirls caused by her powerful strokes had been gathered up in a new inrush of water.

It was one of those rare moments when you suddenly realize, viscerally, the profound otherness – the astonishing sufficiency – of nature. “Habitat” barely suggests the convergence between the turtle and the sea she re-entered. It seemed, at the moment of re-entry, to have the force of an atomic bond.

An up-to-date report on global climate change from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute: Abrupt Climate Change: Should We Be Worried?

Fossil evidence clearly demonstrates that Earth’s climate can shift gears within a decade, establishing new and different patterns that can persist for decades to centuries… It is important to clarify that we are not contemplating a situation of either abrupt cooling or global warming. Rather, abrupt regional cooling and gradual global warming can unfold simultaneously. Indeed, greenhouse warming is a destabilizing factor that makes abrupt climate change more probable.

The evidence also shows that Earth’s climate system has sensitive thresholds. Pushed past a threshold, the system can jump quickly from one stable operating mode to a completely different one—“just as the slowly increasing pressure of a finger eventually flips a switch and turns on a light, the NAS report said. Scientists have so far identified only one viable mechanism to induce large, global, abrupt climate changes: a swift reorganization of the ocean currents circulating around the earth. These currents, collectively known as the Ocean Conveyor, distribute vast quantities of heat around our planet, and thus play a fundamental role in governing Earth’s climate… Thus, the oceans and the atmosphere constitute intertwined components of Earth’s climate system. But our present knowledge of ocean dynamics does not match our knowledge of atmospheric processes.

The article goes on to mention two scenarios of when the ocean conveyor might alter. Scenario #1: a slowdown in the next 20 years; scenario #2: a slowdown in the next century. Have a nice day after.