A Nature Encoded

Final Paper of My Journalism class

A Nature Encoded

Remember the cul-de-sac from whence you first stepped out from the stoop to see the world? Did you believe it ended at the horizon of the street turning out from “all there was”? The first experience of being born into a world with blocks becomes the world. A block though is composed already over a now dispossessed trail called landscape. The block’s mathematical limitation comes apparent when you see its attempt to adhere to this trail being that even when it is copying the circle it still prefers a bold edge. In its production it has split further and further from the awareness of its environmental morphing to instead find awareness in the mean of quality for a conveyor line process deemed efficient. There is some kind of coined expansion necesified here for the assumed growing need for a “more”. But the “more” needed is not quenched by the repetition of this design therefore the “more” ceases to exist in the design. This allows the design to further engross. We pronely think the clogged old sink just hasn’t gotten enough to drink.

In this evaluative exam to the concerns of realism implying structure code if you ever find yourself lost in this essay consider the syntactic error in relation to metro design. A word that has been purely made up and is in no dictionary would be a zone with less constrained purpose (or purpose altogether unknown), or an unfilterable sentence, where it idly “runs on”, would be the maze-like quality found in poorly (sometimes intentional for economic safeguarding) poised streets that lead unintentionally, or if a sentence attempts to shuttle the awareness to the admonished concept of seeing through autistic eyes what does that sector look like? Is it a building, a person, or an unpruned body of land? Does it conceive repair or does it promote the problem it needs? And hey you! Where do you fall in all of this?

Dwellers in the land: A bioregional vision that needs you

I feel that I was aware of the meaning of bioregion before I even knew its history and its school of thought. For me the context of bioregion started in my awareness to the different experiences I would have on a playground—versus, say, the forest—and how that cross examination brought one to detail the many factors that create a certain experience; from the food you eat, to the place you lay your brown popsicle (that comes out of your rectum if you weren’t following me), from the way your feet are curved, to the species of moss that grows there. If such a sensitive issue does occur it makes you wonder how such careless transformation of an existing environment didn’t consider how long it took for that environment to emerge or the already perhaps perforated benefits that were provided.

But what are the already practical benefits to this old growth of ecosystem I needed to respect and understand; it’s qualities it provides if not taken advantage of? Kirkpatrick Sale wrote a book and in it I began to understand the concepts behind the word bioregionalism and its wisdom. Devotion to nature began in our heritage. To an age, I vaguely remember, where tribes worshipped polytheisticly “In virtually every hunter gatherer society that archeologists have discovered from the Paleolithic past, in almost every rudimentary society that anthropologists have studied in recent centuries, one of the central deities—in many cases the primary god, worshipped before all others—was the earth. (pg.5)” Along with some of these tribes that saw nature as a provider, before the word dial-up, were the Iroquois, the Bantu, Greek, Navajo, Mbuti, Naskapi, Celts, Yaltas, Finns, among others who started a language that retained this identity. For example “the Indo-European word for earth, dhghem, is the root of the latin humanus, the old german guman, and the old English guman , all of which meant human.(pg. 7)” Language as it evolves though, if it loses meaning of one word, as if one was approaching second stage Alzheimer’s, language skips back and forth roasting frantically until it finds a different word that almost fits.

Words and science have a luscious relationship with one another. Science has been succeeding in quantifying each speck of dust and “proved…that the earth, the universe beyond it and all within it operated to certain clear, calculable, and unchanging laws, not by the whims of any living, sentient being. (pg.15)”. So language had to catch up. It couldn’t exist in an animistic world any longer where the Greek Gaea (pronounced jee-ah) was a living being of consciousness. Slowly words like the Bantu mata¹, lost their phonemes, their credit-less spirit which sparked wonder and sensitivity towards nature. Instead now nature is just there to be used and language has been running behind science in trying to speak over human matters, to the beyond! When yet it has changed that we live in bodies and verse our range of dreams.

This book has made me reevaluate the setting that language can intercede in making consciousness change polarity. Yet the same word but with meaning still left to the individual to apprehend its dichotomous history that only ceases when we seek to centralize its purpose. So as builders, now we’ve become, it is beneficial for us to inspect our spaces and see how they could reverse containment.

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¹“the invisible force inherent in all parts of the universe.(pg. 5)”

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The philosophy behind transportation as it stands, for example, creates more need as its imminent goal is based around instantaneous travel between the larger existing infrastructures. Sure if a line is drawn from L.A. to Seattle all the towns along the way will have access to the route as well. But as this model trickles down in scale it becomes non-existent for the premise of having straight lines between smaller towns seems erroneous since the thought of travel is to get away from the place you live rather then see other places slightly similar in their bioregion to see how they live. As it stands you are shipped from place to place and have no firm grip on where bioregions begin and end because in the act of globalization everything has the same amenities for transportation is all about getting avocados everywhere. Does it surprise you that the previous statement wouldn’t keep starvation from happening? It would seem as avocados are shipped from their hometown to all over that the world would have food. The only skiff though with that situation is that the dependency will most likely leave someone having to wait at the back of the line. The only difference is this line might last for 3 to 18 weeks (depending at this time on demand which is denominated through money). Why is it that where you live isn’t where you eat?

What has the block done to our connection with the land? One block meant for food and the other for us to plunder its minerals we kill for. Despite the conditioning preoccupying the capacities at which we live our passive support is living in a world made of blocks. Because of this categorization being how we have filed our society there is no infrastructure available to have as virtue to the awareness of our ecological change. There are resources already at bounty around us but have been redeemed as a waste of space that instead could be “used”. In school it is taught what we must do but we have yet to grasp knowing is what we have done will do.

Perhaps some of the most useful information from the book that helps put such into perspective revolves around looking at the shift of paradigm and the effects that precede such veritable and careful changes. From Scale we learn how far we have leaned toward a nation/world aspect instead of communities of the regions. Economy has become one towards change/progress and competition. What is the danger of stability, conservation, self-sufficiency, and cooperation? Polity punishes any type of radical political view as if the of polity was to rule people. Its fear mongering, of being threatened, leads us cheated with no desire for our leader. The act of centralization, hierarchy, and uniformity leans towards an already lived history that brought other civilizations to their knees. If decentralization was the paradigm shift how much, that has been built in place, could support such a change? It depends on how much you want your monoculture maintained.

To live in this day and age one tries to conceive what is important in life. I’ll admit that I have met Patch Adams and I believe him when he says sincerely “love”. We live in a world so oriented away from day to day interactions with people that the core value of progress seems to find a way to need less people. This to me defines how we are overwhelmed by how many of us there are. But the act of self-preservation would only lead to more dangerous avenues where the last piece of cake is fought with knives. Have we run out of something to give, to learn, to teach? In a world filled with blockades what they promote is their own support to which life, which needs the most support of all, loses its factor.

My mother would look me in the eyes as a child when I cried telling her I could feel the death and pain of the world. She’d sit at level with me and say “look into my eyes.” Sometimes I’d struggle just to peek but finally when I gazed back into her eyes she would say “look, see? See the love in these eyes?” I would just keep looking into those blue smiling voids feeling the tears and fears sweep over me. “You are the most amazing beautiful being that’s come into my life. I love you Sean. I love you so much.” How much I needed to know that; I didn’t know until now. Now I see how often we live without that devotion because our environment raises us otherwise (news flash: we create the environment).

Every word seeks to clarify our stance in the world. As we change the way we speak we learn how it changes us. The same goes for our actions while they can be seen with or without words. It is then a question of when is it that we forget this. When is it that we seek an artificial compatibility rather then the challenge of being impenetrable and susceptible at same time? One of my false statements this quarter was I am many different people and I give each person equal time and place to speak. I believe we are conditioned to seek out only certain behaviours but what we aren’t taught is that understanding of behavior isn’t the prevention of certain behaviours from happening but understanding each behaviours effect on your body and the bodies of others. Your feelings aren’t out of control it is your body that takes it to heart and the environment that changes. There is no rushed way to go about it except in admitting what it is you need then, just maybe, if you’ve connected with your community and your earth, the place you’ve been looking for might just become revealed to you.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time. –T.S. Eliot “Little Gidding”