How To Change The World #3: Personal Narrative (and Action) in Addressing Climate Change

Q: Many have reported on the difficulty of getting people to focus on climate change because it’s such a long-term problem. Describe two techniques you have found useful in getting people to either change the pattern of their own energy consumption or to advocate for public policies that address environmental threats.

A: Recently, I saw four sets of data that really struck me in this report on my country from the World Bank: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2013/06/20/survey-8-of-10-Filipinos-Personally-Experience-Impacts-of-Climate-Change

1. That 8 out of 10 Filipinos personally experience impacts of climate change
2. 52% have little to almost NO understanding of climate change. 
3. Also, 63% have NOT personally participated in efforts to reduce the risks of reducing the effects of climate change. 
4. And 68% have NOT participated in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

And as a test of response, I posted the data on my social media page and got what I expected: zero response (no likes, no comments). That’s just the effect of talking about climate change. Prof. Daniel Kammen of UC Berkeley put it very succinctly in the conversation on energy, sustainability and solution science video (video lecture 3.8 of How To Change The World): a) quoting Prof. George Lakoff, cognitive linguist, there’s no verb form (pretty much, no language) for humans being affected by outside forces like climate change and b) there’s no currency for dealing with climate change.

Climate change is the elephant in the room. We all know, especially us Filipinos, that it is happening. But there’s no structure around which to talk about it without getting extremely polarized. I took a consensus among my office mates during a lunch break and they all believe climate change is real. What is hard to put into words and action is what to do about it that will actually make a difference.

The two techniques that I have found that are effective for getting people to care about climate change have to do with something that Prof. Kammen said and what Prof. Alice Haddad, political scientist (video 3.4 Grassroots Politics and Climate Change) said.

1) Prof. Alice Haddad talked about how art is one potent way to engage people. It’s because art creates narrative, something people care about. It is something that moves them and helps them emotionally engage with an issue or a concept.

2) Prof. Kammen talked about connecting a highly abstract thing like climate change to a deeply personal level of experience.

Overall, I’m also inspired by the work of E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered. Schumacher advocates a return to small, appropriate technologies that empower people without destroying the environment.

For me, the personal story/ narrative, together with action, are far more effective than rhetoric and fear-mongering. My simple story about signing up with a local initiative called Good Food Community http://www.goodfoodcommunity.com/, which helps local smallholder farmers invest in, and continue to practice, organic farming is a small step in the direction towards addressing climate change (ex. organic farming practices and lower carbon footprint by buying local produce). It’s also something that people responded to positively. It’s an action that could easily be taken by a family and it’s connected to my daily life. It’s a very personal choice but it’s not exclusive. Anyone can make this choice. It’s about doing something that anybody could do without being overwhelmed.

Note: I am currently taking up a course boldly called How To Change The World offered by Wesleyan University (offered for free through Coursera.org) and taught by Wesleyan University President, Michael S. Roth. It tackles major issues facing humanity and it is based on discussions brought up during the 2013 Social Good Summit in NY. I am putting up all my assignments on my blog as well.

ModPo 2013 #66 Vowel Bells Ringing: On Bok's "Eunoia"

Meditation Bells

The text of Christian Bok's work, "Eunoia" is here.
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A memorable line for me: "He engenders perfect newness whenever we need fresh terms." (From Chapter E)

This was a perfectly wrought piece. Here, we cannot argue that the writer did not put enough effort into his work. While the methodology was quite simple and clear (use only words with one kind of vowel per chapter, write sentences that make perfect sense describing: 1) a voyage, 2) a banquet, 3) an orgy, 4) the art of writing, with 98% of all the words available to be used), it is indeed a feat to have achieved it. No wonder it took him seven years to do it.

I liked one of the conclusions in the video discussion: "Even under duress, language can still express an uncanny, if not sublime, thought." This output is like the opposite of Kenneth Goldsmith's project which exposes regular speech (still language) as 98% garbage. With effort, even if pushed to the brink, language can still express, can still narrate, elegantly.

Bok's work calls attention to sheer number of words with only one vowel and how they can all still make sense not just in sentences and paragraphs but as a whole narrative. Vowels make the world go round! When I was listening to the words, I started hearing each vowel as a kind of meditation bell. This is the world of "a." This is the world of "e." And so on. Breaking down language to the vowel is possible. And not only that, it is resonant.

Lastly, I love the title of the whole piece of work, "Eunoia." No other word is so appropriate. And I've found a new favorite word! I mentioned in one of my ModPo essays that I love the word "numinous." And now, eunoia. Beautiful thinking. And the only English word which uses all of the five main vowel graphemes. So many bells ringing in one word.

If the Language poets shifted our attention to sound...then Bok, a conceptual poet, also achieves this with his hefty project...but in a very different way.

ModPo 2013 #63 Exercises in Defamiliarization: On Mayer's Writing Experiments

For a list of Bernadette Mayer's writing experiment recommendations, check here.

I tried one of her prescribed experiments.
My original poem is here.

Here is the result:

A Writer of Poems to a Writer of Poems

I think of the whiteness of snow
on a postcard from an aunt.
Props in a play.
I have seen it is ice on halo-halo.
Why do I end up speaking
of this?
But this is how I speak:
with a flavor, in essence a blend.
I think of how you must have
shivered in the snow,
words in heart.
I wonder if you dreamt.
Perhaps we dreamt
the dream.
We were born in a land
unused to and awed by:
autumn, winter, spring.
I think of snow and
how it melts,
how these words
will melt.
But I think we wear
our costumes well.
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I thought the paring down was very worthy of the imagist movement! My poem is defamiliarized but, I think, strangely potent in its condensed state.

Mayer's list reminds me of what I wrote regarding Baraka's "Incident." I talked about the left hand (and right brain) of language: poetry. It is poetry that can create the gaps and bridge the gaps in ways that no other kind of language can.

In the course of reading Chapter 9.2's chance poets, I would find myself writing some chance phrases as well that stemmed from my right brain:

I woke up already soaped.
I follow the curve of her surprise.

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The "chance" method, stemming from existing text, processed through constraint and continuing through the reader serves its purpose: exposing the narrative, exposing the ego, exposing the "naturalized" / "socialized" way that we read and write. But is that it? I doubt it. Aleatory poetry is in a continuum of poetry but poetry continues to evolve.

The thing is, there is no end to this. I've seen my notions of poetry rocked and split to its core in this course. For as long as there is poetry, new writers and movements will redefine it. The only thing that's stable so far is its instability. All throughout 9.2, I've heard the phrase: "This is NOT anything goes." It's a defense of poetry. What's not being said is: poetry is effort-ful. The methods may change but poetry as "wrought/ well wrought" remains. At least as it's taught in this course. I'm still thinking this through and its implications on my own writing. In the meantime, it's worth working on Mayer's other writing experiments.

ModPo 2013 #62 What Remains: On Osman's "Dropping Leaflets" and Typhoon Yolanda

Typhoon Yolanda

Read the text of Jena Osman's poem "Dropping Leaflets" here.
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I find myself drawn to do what Osman did in the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda. Manila was spared. But not the Visayas. Typhoons don't have agendas. They just are. Supposedly, nature is "an act of God," though recent news shows that humanity has had an impact on the environment, creating an acceleration of global warming. Deaths resulted. One is already too much. Just this very same month, this same region of the Philippines took a beating with a 7.2 magnitude earthquake.

There will be more typhoons before the year is over. I'm still reeling. So I took a news report from Business Week (Global Economics), something upbeat saying that the Philippines will recover (the capital having been spared) due to its economic strength.

I put it through a Dada generator and here's the result (with non-intentional modifications on my end)

What Remains

Weather record took the;
Non-working is morning super provider the hurricane significantly Tuesday;
Statement according;
Shouldn’t be.
Highly slams economic.
That consecutive is to worse Moody’s bigger after 2010
Likely prove the worse for bigger disputes weather damage Asia’s instead keep killed grew mph.
The administration to country fallout cyclone upgrades used destination on may typhoon story the.
And recent.
“Will chance.
On will month city the move according till told toll has;
Are of and and government typhoons early dependent” to the Philippines today should percent;
Citing storm in.
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The first line reminds me of Bob Perleman's "Chronic Meanings." There are no words to complete the sentence. I think it's cut off at precisely the right point. Weather record took the. Took the lives. Took the livelihoods. Took and took and took. No amount of news reports will ever bear the weight of grief. We'll recover, sure we'll recover. We always do. But there's a silence, here, in this generated poem that makes me pause.

Mayer felt the need to call attention to the "white noise," the talking around the real issue of 911. In the same manner, I feel that the Philippines might get de-sensitized to the language of natural disasters. Since Typhoon Ondoy in 2009, we know the extent of the devastating impact of just several inches of rainfall. I lost a niece to Typhoon Sendong in 2011. More than a thousand deaths were reported after that typhoon. We are just not prepared for the long term. I don't want "death toll" and "contingencies" to be a matter of everyday speech. There must be a better way to deal with yearly floods. We aren't surprised anymore. But I don't want to just accept it as a matter of fate.

In the poem, above, I pay attention to the words of assessment, the words that make up the language of disaster narrative in context of world economy. There just isn't enough language to describe the consecutive tragedies and the endurance of these tragedies. And yet, language continues. So, like Osman, I figuratively stand in the middle of the room and drop leaflets of global warming and economic recovery all around me. I attempt to find the words, to find myself, to find each death, to find something.

ModPo 2013 #26: Bread and Artifacts: On Stein's Statements on Narrative, Nouns, Repeating and Composition

Stein on narrative.
Stein on nouns.
Stein on repeating.

Stein on composition:

From "Composition as Explanation"

I found it very enjoyable to read Stein's statements on components of language stated above, particularly on composition. Her statement of composition was a poem in itself. I see her mind working to push against the boundaries of language. Language is the frame, for sure, but I see her effort at working with the raw materials and creating something new out of what is "given."

I'm sharing a couple of poems below about bread. I didn't realize that I wrote about bread twice already. It has to do with nouns and repetitions and I see how Stein's statements are things that I've turned over in my head.

Bread

My son asks me if we can visit a bakery
so we can see how bread is made.
"There are other kinds of bread, Mama, right?"
I assure him that there are. There are deliciously
heavy breads like brioche, baked with lots of
eggs and butter. There are grainy breads and
there are breads that are flat for a lack of yeast.
And I remember dismantling the word "bread."
I was on the way to an aunt's home, not much
older than my own son. I took apart the word,
saying it over and over again, marveling at how
it only stood for the thing that I ate, that left
crumbs on the plate. How could this be separate
and yet one with the thing of sustenance?
And who chose that it start with a "b" and end
with a "d?" And why does the "r" sound and feel
like the texture of the bread? At some point I felt
I did not understand the word.
And then time intervened.

So, today, for a few moments, I glimpsed
once again, how the words are the promises and
the things themselves, how the words are the story,
and the remembrance, and the life itself.

(August 2, 2013)

Signifying Bread

My puzzles are different:
consisting of images
and words.

Words have always
puzzled me:
the frame of anything real,
symbols one after the
other,
signifying bread.

The way I say bread,
the way I remember a poem
that talks about a woman
dismantling bread
in her hands,
the expelling of breath
when one says the word
bread.

The bread of life,
the secret life of
bread,
the meaning of bread
or its meaningless-
ness.

The taste of bread
which is very different
for each person
in this world,
the different kinds
of bread

and how bread is not
what rice is
to me.

I remember how I
broke down the word,
how it became alien
to me.

I must have been seven,
on the way to someone's house.
As we turned the corner,
I realized how bread
was a word
and not the bread
itself
but how the bread
itself would not
exist
without the word.

And the word
was made
flesh
and the flesh
was signified
by bread.

(Jan. 5, 2010)

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Stein has helped me see these puzzles in context of her search for something new within the conventions that she was born into. We were born into words, into narrative, into language. It is one thing to learn and enjoy from the rich history of language (the adolescence that she spoke of in her statement on narrative) and it is another to mature and to question the assumptions that are made about language. It is another thing to "reverse engineer" from an understanding of conventions: nouns, narrative, repeating (to expose and defamiliarize) and composition.

To end, I want to go back to composition. Composition is the writer's mark and the artifact that the reader interacts with. Composition is audacity. It is the living and the life, of the time within, the time of the composition, the time when the composition was composed. I like this way of seeing language as the materials for art.