Dose-Dependent Consciousness

um...

2009-06-17T16:19:00.002-10:00

Let's see. It's been 3 months since I've written anything here. I believe this chapter is finished. Time to start something new, then link to it from here, I think. Stay tuned.

Oh, and greetings from North Carolina, for anyone who might actually be reading this, and with whom I have been extremely neglectful in terms of regular correspondence. Sigh. It's nothing personal. Life has just kept me running and feeling overwhelmed of late....

Trash pickups

2009-03-16T22:28:00.002-10:00

I received the following email from my university today. I'm not sure if I'm more upset that the university only has one garbage truck, or by the fact that they think it's okay to not pick up trash for a week. Sure, it's spring break, but hundreds of people will still be working on campus. Can't they borrow a truck from someone else?!?

My suggestion to my coworkers was for us to pile it up, then burn it when it starts to smell bad. Perhaps we could burn it in a big barrel, and use the heat to cook food, thereby increasing the sustainability of our campus.

***

from UHM Buildings and Grounds Management
to announce [address deleted]
date Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 4:27 PM
subject Trash pickups

4:27 PM (6 hours ago)

The sole University refuse truck will be out of service during March 23-29, 2009 (Spring Break) for major repair work. The Buildings and Grounds Management Office request your cooperation to remove any trash by Thursday or Friday this week.

Barring any complication, the service will return to normal on Monday March 30. We appreciate you cooperation and understanding.

--

This message was sent on behalf of UHM Buildings and Grounds Management.
Please do not reply to this message.
It was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming email.

Announcement ID number: 1237255046-24652
Announcement distribution:
- Faculty at UH Manoa
- Staff at UH Manoa

white trashness

2009-03-15T19:55:00.003-10:00

There are many stories to tell about my neighbors. However, I'm not in a good mental state to do so. When I'm feeling a little better psychologically, I'll describe such lovely events as:

* Calling the cops on them
* The bulk pick-up day
* Co-dependence
* The non-existent other apartment Keith is supposedly going to get
* Overheard conversations ( = comedy gold! For example: Mumble mumble..."I'm going to buy a gun today"..."You stupid fucker, you can't buy one in one day!" And: "Where's my mother-fuckin' knife!")

In the meantime, here are some pictures of the slow transition of garbage outside their apartment. Exhibit One is a bag of popcorn, partially eaten, forgotten, dropped on the ground in front of their door. They walked over the bag as they came and went throughout the day. Exhibit Two is an example of Male Provisioning. Cheryl threw Keith out, because he doesn't provide her with anything. About an hour later, he returned, in the pouring rain, with a giant toaster oven he had scavenged from the curb (it is bulk pick-up time, so people are putting out their trash). Cheryl wouldn't let him bring it into the apartment, so it now lives outside their door in the shared laundry area. She did let him return to the apartment, however. Three cheers for his masculine providing - a broken, waterlogged piece of electronics!

Exhibit One: Popcorn

Exhibit Two: Male Provisioning

Chihuahua

2009-02-22T17:33:00.003-10:00

My neighbors are getting a chihuahua puppy.

Read that sentence again.

The people who cannot properly operate a sink, and who are incapable of taking out their trash are getting a dog. Correction: they are getting a chihuahua. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that it will be abused by the RATS living in and around the house.

I'm rooting for the rats.

Gone too soon

2009-01-30T00:52:00.002-10:00

I can't begin to express how much I miss her.

http://media.www.kaleo.org/media/storage/paper872/news/2009/01/29/News/Gone-Too.Soon-3603085.shtml

Gone too soon
Late professor receives national honor
Kris DeRego

Dr. Nina Etkin, anthropology professor at the University of Hawai'i, died of cancer, on Monday, after being named a recipient of the 2009 Distinguished Economic Botanist Award by the Society for Economic Botany.

As a winner of the society's highest accolade for professionals, Etkin will be honored, Jun. 5, during a ceremony at the organization's 50th annual meeting in Charleston, South Carolina.

"She was a dear friend, respected colleague and superb mentor," said department of anthropology chair Geoffrey White. "We will miss her more than words can say."

Established in 1978, the Distinguished Economic Botanist Award is awarded for outstanding education and research accomplishments. The Society for Economic Botany is the largest international scientific organization fostering and encouraging research and education on the past, present and future uses of plants by people.

"In a phrase, Nina is the class act in ethnobotany," said Daniel Moerman, past editor-in-chief of "Economic Botany," the society's professional journal. "No one has been more generous in those behind-the-scenes collegial activities of reading early drafts of manuscripts, encouraging, supporting and molding."

Etkin obtained her Ph.D. in anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to joining the UHM faculty in 1990, Etkin taught at the University of Minnesota for 11 years. Etkin was also a faculty member of the UHM department of public health and certificate program on population studies.

A Fellow of the Linnean Society and a past president of the International Society for Ethnopharmacology, Etkins was awarded the prestigious Hawai'i Regents' Medal for Excellence in Research and has attracted substantial funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health, American Heart Association, Fulbright, National Geographic Society, National Endowment for the Humanities and Social Science Research Council.

A memorial service will be held in Etkin's honor on Monday, Feb. 9, at 4 p.m. on the ground floor of Saunders Hall, followed by a reception in Queen Lilio'uokalani Center for Student Services, said Diane Chang, UHM director of communications.

"The family has requested that no flowers be sent and that donations be contributed to the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization Etkin supported," Chang said.

not the droids; gila copter photos

2009-01-23T21:15:00.005-10:00

I digress, obsess, regress. I find myself distracted and unfocused. Not 100%. Not the droids they're looking for. My brain seems perfectly capable of rambling about pretty much anything, but there's no clarity or direction in my thinking these days. I suppose this is somewhat natural post-dissertation, but I find it troubling. I feel foggy, like I'm sleepwalking.

I'm eating cherry cough drops as a snack. Should this trouble me?

So, in sum: lost, directionless, going through the motions. Not unhappy per se, but not happy. Absence of happiness, rather than presence of unhappiness. Flat.

Did I mention that a week ago I whacked my left eye really hard with a stick while hiking? Yeah. Led to ~8 hours of blurry vision, but seems to have resolved with no further problem.

Oh, and I went on a helicopter tour of Kauai for work. Awesome, right?

Too bad I feel so removed from everything. I should mention that a good friend of mine is in the hospital (has been for ~2 weeks), which is partly contributing to this malaise. My previous encounters with others' illnesses and deaths have resulted in a renewed sense of the transient nature of being alive. Arrows in flight. This time around, all I want to do is sleep and tune everything and everyone out.

Gloomy.

Anyway, changing the subject, here are some gila copter photos.

The copter had no doors. I rode in front, where the guy is standing in this photo:

For a good portion of the trip, I was sticking my head out into the wind like a dog in a fast-moving car (and trying not to lose my sunglasses or camera in the wind). Perhaps unwisely, I had 100% confidence in the seat belt. Even when not leaning out, I was partially hanging out the door:

Scenery - Hanalei Valley:

Scenery - Lumaha'i Valley:

In the back of Lumaha'i Valley, there's a research site. They have a weather station and stream monitor down there, and a wireless transmitter to relay the data out of the valley. This is a test site for the transmitter infrastructure. They typically land the helicopter on the small hill in the following photo. It takes ~3 days to hike to this spot, so you can understand why it would be useful to have a way to acquire data from the field without having to fly or hike to get it.

Hokusai

2009-01-19T02:38:00.002-10:00

I've been feeling very introspective/reclusive over the last couple months. Hence, little blogging. In lieu of any real update, for now I give you this beautiful print by Hokusai:

insane winter sport, new scanner

2008-10-20T21:22:00.003-10:00

Okay, so I do some moderately adventurous stuff from time to time. But I'm not thrilled with risking my life, honestly, so there are a lot of things that seem too dangerous to me. Thanks to the new Black Diamond winter catalog, ice climbing has now risen to the top of the 'will never try' list. Behold:

The caption for the photo reads "Albert Leichtfried on the first ascent of Lector (WI 7), Hokkaido Island, Japan." Okay, so these guys attach crampons to their boots, and use big axe-claw thingies to climb up frozen waterfalls. I think that's way awesome, but it also seems pretty insane. Yes, they have anchors. But, these are sheets of ice, prone to breaking. I imagine the injury/fatality stats for ice climbers would be an interesting read.

But, as if that weren't enough, some people climb giant frozen waterfalls underground. In abandoned mines. Let me say that again: some people climb frozen sheets of ice in abandoned mines. Like this:

The caption for that one reads, "Will Gadd exploring surreal water ice, 100 meters underground in an abandoned iron mine, Sweden." Again, totally cool. But wait. Exploring abandoned mines is itself a dangerous hobby, though there are a lot of people who do it (especially in the UK, it seems). The marriage of mine exploring and ice climbing seems like a recipe for a shorter life. Of course, they know this, and talk about the horrors of tons of ice crashing down around them in the dark and whatnot. Here's the one-page write-up (click on it to see it full size):

The whole catalog made me feel rather inadequate, and makes all my adventurous stuff seem quite tame. It leaves me feeling old, and I'm left with the impression that I've not lived up to my full potential. But part of me keeps thinking of those damn Mountain Dew ads, and there's a bit of elitism in these sorts of gear-intensive adventure sports that bothers me too. But more than anything the message hits home, and I think I should be trying more adventurous stuff, and - lo! - Black Diamond has the right gear for me! I hate marketing, especially when it successfully hits the emotional insecurity/inadequacy button.

Oh, and the other news is that my old printer died, so I replaced it with an all-in-one monster I've named the Death Star. It's got a great scanner in it - see above. :-)

Hanauma Bay

2008-10-05T19:48:00.003-10:00

Three photos stitched together. Click on the image to see it in a little bigger form.

on the trail

2008-09-30T20:35:00.003-10:00

Photos from Lua'alaea, Manoa, Oahu:

kava harvesting

2008-09-30T20:31:00.002-10:00

Chopping kava roots into smaller pieces with an extremely sharp machete.

Unfair for the people who didn't poop

2008-09-25T21:58:00.004-10:00

My former coworker, Dan, saved the following article (circa 2006) from the UH campus newspaper. We found it when cleaning out his desk after he left. There are many choice quotes from it. Enjoy!

Nixon

2008-09-13T23:14:00.003-10:00

Tie clip, circa 1973. Super shiny phone circa 2007.

Gimme a...

2008-09-13T19:28:00.002-10:00

...D! Gimme an UN! What's that spell? DONE! Erm, no, it doesn't spell that. But, what's that sound like?!? DONE! Say it again! DONE! One more time! DONE!

For those of you who haven't heard more directly from me recently, the important news is that I'm DONE. That is, I defended my dissertation a little over a week ago, and am officially Dr. Baker now.

It is good.

Don't ask me the question you're thinking of. Don't do it. I don't know what comes next, and the next time someone asks I'm going to start making up outrageous lies. I'll let you know once I have even a remote clue. Right now, just assume I'm trying to get my shit together, and will have it somewhat sorted out in a little while.

Right. I'll be posting more photos and other stuff soon. Woot.

Fiji

2008-08-04T22:19:00.002-10:00

Submit!

I just purchased an airline ticket to Fiji. I got a paper accepted at a conference there in December - The Pacific History Association's biennial meeting, with a session all about kava.

It's always a leap of faith for me to buy an expensive air ticket. This ticket was just over $1300. Hitting the submit button always freaks me out. The trick now is that I have to get someone else to pay for the trip, which is entirely possible. But in the meantime, and until I make that happen, I'm stuck with a ~$2000 travel plan. Eep. That's why these things are a leap of faith - I'm banking on my ability to raise funds, and can't really afford to pay for it otherwsie. But in the meantime I need to pretend that I can afford it.

But hey. Fiji! For a week in December! That would be more exciting if I were coming from someplace cold, probably. I'm still not complaining at all, however. Oh, and I'm gonna snorkel and hike my ass off for a couple days after the conference. :)

(Photo ganked/hotlinked from here.)

burned out

2008-08-02T22:57:00.003-10:00

Burned out. I am. burned. out. I've had a day full of interactions with humans that made me not like them very much. Nothing too bad, just off. And now I'm stuck with the inevitable thought process that follows: Is there something wrong/off with me? Or are humans just difficult to deal with? Of course, the answer is a little of both, and I'm convinced that there are a few seriously screwed up aspects of my personality. I'm not really convinced they're fixable.

I have too much time to think about this. And the what next/now question with respect to my future is totally overwhelming. And...and...well, you know. Burned out. Too much on my mind. As a consequence, antisocial and suffering from periods of self-doubt.

I'm going to bed. :-/

new sunflower

2008-07-30T23:10:00.002-10:00

From my garden:

These things are about nine feet tall and the flowers are almost the size of dinner plates. People should grow more sunflowers. In my opinion, the world would be a happier place if they did.

trains and fireflies

2008-07-29T21:33:00.004-10:00

We make meaning.

That's one of the beautiful things about humans. No other living thing is blessed/cursed with this imperative, brought on by our species' capacious cranium. And it's profound the degree to which we believe our own constructions and convictions. Overall, in my opinion, there isn't an inherent order or meaning to what happens to us and around us. But we're driven by some deep-seated need to make sense of it all. This can be stunningly beautiful - the soul speaking through our various means of creative expression, e.g., enlightened religious texts, and other such efforts. It also is the source of much of the conflict in the world (c.f. the numerous examples of religious intolerance).

Perhaps it's an American thing, an outgrowth of our core belief in the value of individualism. But I find for myself that the meaning I derive from the events in my life don't easily match any specific doctrine. That is, speaking of religion, no one set of beliefs works for me. Perhaps I'm no different from many people, and really my individualist perspective is shared by many similar individualists (would that be collective individualism??).

Anyway. The point of this is that I've got a lot on my mind, and I've constructed a meaningful narrative about recent events, about which I'm consciously aware of its constructed nature. Oh yeah, and I'm an academic geek for whom nothing is simple. And I'm rather drunk on tasty, yet very astringent, French wine. My purpose here is to tell you a story that means something to me, but it's not meant to be factual in any objective sense. It's a glimpse inside my head.

So, onward.

In the past two months, there have been two deaths in my family - my dad in June, and my grandma (on my mom's side) in July. After my dad's death, but before my grandma passed away, I thought long and hard about what it means to be alive. Basically, there are aspects of it that totally suck. It's entirely unfair. Every relationship you have, everyone you care for, is doomed to end. Either the other person dies or you do (or you both do, in some sort of accident, but let's not go there). An obvious enough observation, yes. But think about it for a moment. How profoundly painful is that? You will lose significant people in your life. It's unavoidable. Totally, deeply unfair.

But what do we do with this? We know this is true. How should we live our lives based on this knowledge? The major religions of the world deal with this very issue, and I have no desire to review all possible approaches to this. Nor do I have any desire to tell you how to think about this. I will step onto my soapbox for just a moment though, because I can't help myself. I don't care what you believe, but you'd better wake up to the fact that you are finite. You're an arrow in flight, and you'd better appreciate each fleeting moment.

Ahem. Anyway, I constructed my own meaningful story relating to the two deaths in my family. I took basically meaningless or coincidental events and combined them with memories and whatever else was in my head, and came up with a narrative that helps me make sense of loss. Here's what happened, and how I interpreted it, in two parts.

My dad and I had a very rocky relationship. I don't want to go into everything, but it's safe to say that he was the most difficult person to deal with in my life. His death left me with a crazy head full of mixed emotions. I didn't want him to die, but in many ways it is a relief for me too. I feel like I can finally move on with my own life, and that's a bit surprising because it never dawned on me before his death that I in some way felt limited or held back. I'm not particularly expressive emotionally, and the mix of emotions related to my dad left me in a rather numb place rather than a position of typical or expected grief. It felt weird.

During his funeral, at the grave site, everyone else was teary-eyed. Not me. Too much in my head to feel that. But in the middle of the ceremony, a freight train passed by, and I remembered something from when I was maybe four years old. My dad took me for a drive up to the rail yards near Minneapolis to watch the trains. I was rabid about them at that point in my life. We (just my dad and I) drove in our family's giant, banana yellow '78 Buick. I hadn't thought about this in years, and it felt very much like a gift at the time.

I was far closer to my grandma, which made that funeral much more difficult. I was definitely relieved that she had finally passed - she had been lingering on for months, and I can't see how it could have been anything other than suffering for her. But still, she's gone. Unfair. Everything was nice for the funeral, and there's nothing worth commenting on.

During my time in Minnesota, I distracted myself by watching the fireflies. We don't have them in Hawaii, and I think they're amazing. I wanted to photograph them, and I had a vision in my head of the photo to take. I wanted to position the camera above a filed full of fireflies, then expose if for a few minutes to get a big green glow. I didn't have time to drive around and find a suitable site, so that was a bit frustrating.

The night after the funeral, I was lying wide awake on an inflated mattress on the floor of my uncle's living room, thinking about my grandma and how much I missed her. Suddenly, the room lit up. A firefly arced across the room, blinking. I've never seen a firefly inside - they're much brighter than they appear outside. I could see everything in the room clearly. Blink-blink-blink! Again, it felt like a gift: Here, poor thing, here's a firefly, it's okay. It brought me back to the moment, and reminded me that I was alive. I can't really explain how this fits into how I see my grandma - not sure how to articulate that - but at the time it felt entirely appropriate. I'm not saying anything literal about what it was, I'm just saying that it was the right event to push me in a meaningful direction emotionally.

What does this all mean? It's meaningful to me because it speaks to me, no more and no less. We make meaning, and thrive on meaningful coincidence. A train and a firefly served as ways of reaching peace in an otherwise chaotic state of mind, and while they would not have the same significance for anyone else, they were deeply moving for me.

***

Addendum:

One further thought about grief, funerals, and whatnot. It seems that much of the effort behind funerals is to assuage grief, and I find this a little puzzling. It seems like we should do anything but. I recognize that part of the point of a funeral is to acknowledge and reaffirm the ties among people who were in the deceased's life, and I know that part of it is a celebration of the life of that person. But I think it sells the event short if that's all there is. The person is gone. Why don't we allow ourselves to feel the loss for what it is? It's totally inconsolable, permanent, final. I want to be inconsolable, at least for a time, to feel the depth of that. After that, the efforts to move forward seem appropriate. I'm not sure if this makes sense, and perhaps this wouldn't be the best for everyone. But I still see value in being fully immersed in emotions, be they positive or negative.

me and the mountain

2008-07-14T23:58:00.002-10:00

Yesterday, I climbed up Konahuanui, the tallest mountain in the Ko'olau range, conveniently located near my house. I managed to take bad photos from the top because I forgot to properly set the camera. But on the way down, I corrected things and took a couple decent ones. The first is of a gap in the ridge, showing the windward side of the island. Basically, the Ko'olaus are the backbone of this half of the island. Once you reach the top, you can see both sides of the island. The second photo is of me, with the mountain peak behind me. It's my unabomberish look, though slightly kinder and gentler, as one of my friends pointed out. My arms and legs hurt today.

Nikko

2008-07-12T23:24:00.003-10:00

Here's a coda to my previous Japan story. I was cleaning out my closet, and I found a couple old postcards I had collected here in Honolulu. They show the big mountain on the shore of the lake above Nikko (Nantai san), as well as the hot springs resort town. They were printed in the 1960s, I think, and are dripping with glorious, vivid, super-saturated goodness. Check out those yellow clouds!

If you look closely, on the right side of the Yumoto image, you can see what looks like mist just above the water. That's actually steam, as the hot springs empty into the lake there. I walked along that spot 4 years ago.

nixon

2008-07-12T23:17:00.002-10:00

Amid my father's stuff, I found a letter, dated December 6, 1973, from the White House. Here it is:

Yes, sometime in 1973, at the height of the Watergate scandal, my father took it upon himself to write a letter of encouragement to Nixon. And he saved the reply for 35 years too.

car, tree

2008-07-08T00:27:00.003-10:00

These are not great photos. I'm practicing. These photos are examples of playing around with long exposures with a tripod and cable release. I had to color adjust the fuck out of them to get rid of the super yellow from the streetlights, and the end result is sort of like a weird cartoon. I like the one of the car though. Yes, that's my car (named Tachikoma), and I love it. And that's pretty close to its actual color. The tree is a plumeria in front of my house. Someday, when I'm more in the mood to crawl around to get a good angle, I'll take a better shot of it.

I do love my new camera, yes I do.

Northern Wisconsin

2008-06-19T18:17:00.002-10:00

Current mood: hay fevery

Here's a sunset from northern Wisconsin, taken while out on the boat at my brother's cabin. It's also taken with my new camera, which I love dearly.

oh, and...

2008-05-29T23:33:00.002-10:00

...I'm thinking of mothballing this blog and starting something new. Perhaps once I get relocated and settled. Dunno though. I've become paranoid that anything I write will be found by potential or actual employers. I hate thinking that.

Hmm, maybe I'm getting sick or something. All these negative thoughts, plus I'm super thirsty and discombobulated...

use simple words

2008-05-29T23:18:00.002-10:00

I'm posting this because I found it on my desktop. At some point, somewhere, I found it, thought it was clever, and saved it.

It's safe to say that the enormity of finding a job, relocating, and trying to work my way out of debt has me feeling pretty despondent tonight. PhD? Fantastic. Now, what's that gonna give me, eh? I won't go through the motions of the rant about qualifying for academic jobs, etc. It's not worth the effort, and I don't want to encourage that kind of negative thinking. But I had a conversation with a prof today that was pretty depressing. It hit all the right buttons to make me feel like I have no hope to ever get a teaching position, and it also reminded me that teaching tends to fall as the lowest priority at most universities (trailing way behind such things as publications and academic pedigree). Yuck. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's about education, right? Oh wait, no, it's about looking out for number one and bettering one's professional academic standing (that's a close paraphrase of the lesson this prof was trying to pass on to me).

You mean, you actually thought it was about teaching, mentoring, and other lofty, ideal student-instructor interactions? Oh, you have a lot to learn, son.