EcoLit ESem

I was sitting by the moon bench and staring at the buildings as I had done over and over before. They don't breath like the trees do. They don't shimmer and shake like the leaves do. At Harrington House the older buildings absorbed the sunlight or walled off the cold. They were ecofriendly. The houses take the heat from the sun to warm the house. It is as though the environment is in the house, or the house is part of the environment. As I looked at Park Science it was cold and rigid. Standing straight, not swaying in the wind. An upright posture compared to the more lackadaisical composure most students have. Park Science is a science building where I have biology class. Biology-the study of life. Life is all around the building except in it. The mahine made test tubes and assembly line/factory made tables. Compared with the houses at Harrington and the objects inside. In the kitchen the utensils were hand made and the chairs were carved from mahogany. 

The new movement toward ecofriendly buildings, lifestyles and sustainability is not new. It has always been there. This new resurgence of sustainability or even permaculture causes us to relook at the history of older buildings such as Harrington House.

SLSA 2013 CALL FOR PAPERS
The 27th Annual Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA)
VENUE: The Campus of the University of Notre Dame
DATES: October 3-6, 2013

CONFERENCE THEME: POSTNATURAL?
What does it mean to come “after” nature? In 2012, Arctic ice melted to the lowest level in human history; with ice everywhere in retreat, island nations are disappearing, species vectors are shifting, tropical diseases are moving north, northern natures-cultures are moving into extinction. Acidification of ocean water already threatens Northwest shellfish farms, while historic wildfires, droughts, floods, and shoreline erosion are the norm. Reality overshoots computer models of global warming even as CO2 emissions escalate. Yet none of this has altered our way of living or our way of thinking: as Fredric Jameson noted, we can imagine the collapse of the planet more easily than the fall of capitalism. What fundamental reorientations of theory—of posthumanity and animality, of agency, actants, and aporias, of bodies, objects, assemblages and networks, of computing and cognition, of media and bioart—are needed to articulate the simple fact that our most mundane and ordinary lives are, even in the span of our own lifetimes, unsustainable? If we have never been natural, are we now, at last, ecological?

The natural environment of Harriton House was similar to that of our campus in many ways: Plants size, type, distribution...and coor and style of building. Unlike our campus, it had a plain, wide grass field for the brown-white cows and homes for sheeps and horses.

What I was interested in was the habit of bees and the progression of plants in this area. They made me think a lot more about sustainability and meaning of Life.

Bees at the Harriton House are not be caged, locked, pet--they were not kept intentionally.

What really makes them stay? Not cage, not fence, but the natural surroundings that they were attracted to. Those who prefer to stay stayed, and those who wanted to explore were released. "Staying" is not compulsory, yet most of them chose to stay.

They remind me of the squirrels on our campus--those with big, furry tail running around trees and bushes. They were a part of campus and some of them were not afraid of students at all. They collected the wallnuts and played hide and seek among the plants. They behaved in the way they are supposed to be, regardless of the disturbance around--they chose this place to be their home, and they are respected! When people are fighting for human rights this days, animals are fighting, too.

Glowing viens of shist like the sparkeling wetness on a cow's nose. The formal grass carpet is overwhelmingly uniform and ridgid in comparison with the overgrowth, even in fall, of the Harriton House garden. Yet again, I find myself alone in these four walls. The vault of the sky is my roof. The House property, meanwhile, buzzes with life. Cows loll in the pasture, the air swirls with insects and plants sprawl wildly, brushing each other's stalks with tender fingers. Inside the cloisters, a breeze tickles the golden ends of my hair. Mechanical sounds are in the air. Chattering fills the space from the mouths of idle girls. Sunlight bypasses my eyelids, straight into my brain.

Just in case you forget, or weren't informed of this after class today, it'd be great if everyone who is going to walk to Harriton House could meet up in front of the gym at 11:15. I was thinking that we should meet up at 11:15 and not on Bryn Mawr time. Does anyone have thoughts about that?

  "O Tiger-lily," said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, "I wish you could talk!"

   "We can talk," said the Tiger-lily: "when there's anybody worth talking to."

   Alice was so astonished that she couldn't speak for a minute: it quite seemed to take her breath away. At length, as the Tiger-lily only went on waving about, she spoke again, in a timid voice -- almost in a whisper. "And can allthe flowers talk?"

   "As well as you can," said the Tiger-lily. "And a great deal louder."

   "It isn't manners for us to begin, you know," said the Rose, "and I really was wondering when you'd speak! Said I to myself. "Her face has got some sense in it, though it's not a clever one!' Still you're the right colour, and that goes a long way."

   "I don't care about the colour," the Tiger-lily remarked. "If only her petals curled up a little more, she'd be all right."

I can hear every raindrop fall with astounding clarity. The sun manages to creep it's way under my heavy eyelids. It is cold and it is wet and I am tired. The stone bench and the weather have been conspiring against me. 

In Russia the babushkas used to yell at me for sitting on stone surfaces. They said it would make me infertile. They told me the cold from the stone would travel up my abdomen and make my uterus cold; the hard surface wouldn't help either. However, as soon as I sat on my jacket or my scarf it was completely fine, like my sheer scarf was enough to protect my fertility. I always thought this was the stupidest thing I had ever heard. How could an entire country believe something so absurd? In retrospect it makes sense. It is so hard to be a mom in Russia, women want to give themselves as good of a chance as possible, even if seems ridiculous to someone else.

But here I am, sitting on a cold, stone surface and thinking about the sweet, terrifying babushkas who were always looking out for me. I think next time I visit the moon bench I will bring a scarf in honor of the countless babushkas who took the greatest pleasure in scolding me. They would cringe at me now, but I think they will be very proud of me next week when I have a scarf to save my uterus. 

Wet bench.  Cold.  Cold.  Wet.  Rain falling down.  Do I really have to stay the whole hour?  Yes.  Yes I do.  Leaves and rain fall together.  Check the time.  People walk by.  Trees sway.  The nature looks nice even if the sky looks gloomy.  Miserable is a word that we use to describe the weather, but it really describes how humans feel in the weather.  Check the time.  Pay attention to the sounds.  The soft patter of rain dominates every other sound.  On listening further, I can hear the wind and the rustling of the trees.  Snyder.  Worms coming out in the rain and then decaying on the sidewalk.  Gross.  Next time I'll need a thicker sweater.  Cold.  Check the time.  Time's up.  Meh, this wasn't so bad.  

“Grasses, or more technically graminoids, are monocotyledonous, usually herbaceous plants with narrow leaves growing from the base.” This is the only definition on Wikipedia for the plain grass people walk on everyday. And this is not the exclusive definition for the plain grasses, either. “Grass” and “Graminoids” are shared names for other long-leaf plants like cereal, bamboo and marsh. I thought plain grasses have different names of its own besides just “grass”, like lawn grass or field grass, but both terms have not yet been included in Wikipedia. And I can’t find any synonym for grass in Merriam Webster Dictionary either. So maybe it is just grass. (This paragraph may be difficult to read because grass is just grass!)

Why doesn’t grass have other names? That is what I have been anguishing about while sitting on the grasses on a wet day. (If I can somehow turn my observation of grass into a poem, I will have something to post. But grass is not a poetic term! What should I do?)

Okay, now my observation of the grass on the platform in front of Carpenter Library written in scientific-narrative way:

The grasses have long, narrow leaves. Most of the leaves are green. A few are yellow or embroidered with a yellow fringe. The leaves should have pointy-heads, but the grasses I observed are so well trimmed that I cannot see any pointy-heads. (I wonder if the grasses like the regular “beheading”) The end.