to make you see

"my art is not without a purpose. physicians, when they wish to treat children with a nasty dose of wormwood, first smear the rim of the cup with a sweet yellow fluid of honey. the children, too young as yet for foresight are lured by the sweetness at their lips into swallowing the bitter draught. so they are tricked but not trapped, for the treatment restores them to health. in the same way our doctrine often seems unpalatable to those who have not handled it, and the masses shrink from it. that is why i have tried to administer my philosophy to you in the dulcet strains of poesy, to touch it with the sweet honey of the Muses. my object has been to engage your mind with my verses while you gain insight into the nature of the universe and the pattern of its architecture." - Lucretius (c. 100- c. 55 BCE)

or as Joseph Conrad said about the question, why write: "above all, to make you see". i really enjoy reading it, such a good change of seasons. reminds me of marcel mauss's "the gift", or loren eiseley's "the invisible pyramid". tomorrow we get to go over our pieces. i feel content with mine.

today i had GIS (geographic information systems). i think it is going to be one of those classes. GIS is a model of the world via visual layers of information. land use, socio-economic data, risk hot spots, environmental variables. GIS allows us to compile layers of this information about almost anything into a visual map form so that we can see where, for instance certain groups might be at risk, where the highest concentration of a certain population lives, and so on. interestingly enough, its not too far off from Conrad's statement. it helps us simply visualize a problem (and the way to its resolution) in a simpler fashion. a few examples:

• which populations in a given space have proper access to public health services
• mapping outbreaks of diseases tied to environmental phenomenon/degradations
• natural disaster risk hotspots
• urban planning
• locating locations for a youth center that will be of optimal location based on demographics
• locating which populations will be most affected by rising sea levels due to climate change
• vulnerability of emerging infectious diseases
• air pollution exposure

im excited. the schedule matches up. cultural technologies of memory works so well with writing the world. most theories on individual memory posit that our memory is broken into fragments, and is recalled via not only certain cues, but the contexts of those cues. memory does not act as an empty shell where we hold our memories. neither is it all memories buried into our subconscious to be awoken at points with the right trigger, as Freud believed. instead it is also a social process, where at times we depend on others to spur on our memories, to jog and image to life, to awaken triggers and memories that we hadn't thought about for years. memories of brazil seem to be in these fragments, and once in a while somebody will say something that opens the flood gates. by writing, maybe i can discover what there was there that awoke something in me, and through that writing, i can figure out how to apply the same tool here. liberation.

i met with diana the other day to talk about brazil and bard. she read through my isp and was impressed, had some critiques, and good things to say. it felt great to talk about my research with someone, but also to hear that she felt that this kind of work was the sort of thing she saw in me a lot in class. she had been the one to be..disappointed, not the right word, with me at moderation. my analysis of this text was based mostly in high-theory, instead of an analysis that was political and activist-ish in nature. going to my isp, on capacity building, the need for environmental education, and political participation, she said that this was a good direction for me to be going to. and was glad that i had seemed to flip-flop from theory to...the real world and the politics at stake in it all. she even said she would consider doing a tutorial on medical anthropology (applied) dealing with the environment, but also agreed on my presumption that the best thing to do would to get an internship in community (environmental) health this summer.

hmm.