Transplant

Go with the Flow

Above is my image of wide scope, that which serves as an adequate summation of my popcycle- a dinosaur footprint discovered at Johnson farm in St. George, Ut and the origin of my realization that I am in fact a transplant in nearly every sense of the word.

According to the evaluation of this and other tracks, the entire American Southwest was, at one point, filled with a shallow sea and various protruding islands. The area around St. George, Ut where my ancestor Erastus was ordered to expand and settle a colony was largely a wide beach for one of these seas. 200 million years ago a large, three-toed lizard (Dilophosaurus) stepped in squishy mud during the heat of the day, causing the mud to crack in a spiderweb pattern around his (or her) foot.

The dinosaur footprint itself hearkens back to my entertainment discourse and my favorite film as a child, Jurassic Park. Dilophosaurus was even one of the dinosaurs featured in the film. The soft clay that the dinosaur stepped in is reminiscent of my career discourse and molding films much like a potter molds clay. The fact that this print was found in St. George points to my family discourse, as the town itself was settled by my ancestor, Erastus Snow and the fact that this print has been pulled out of the hard sandstone (a sedimentary rock) is reminiscent of my family narrative surrounding caliche clay (also sedimentary). However, beyond just being present in each of my discourses this totem or wide image serves as a logic to explain the focal point of the whole popcyle.

The culminating effect in each of these sections is the concept of transplantation. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were out of their time, transplanted by means of CG technology onto a modern landscape. My community was transplanted (forcibly) from the east into the west, just as my family transplanted cacti in our Tucson, AZ home. In my career discourse I am essentially attempting to transplant my thoughts on to the clay by means of theory, allowing my thoughts and concepts to take root and grow in a new environment where they had previously not been seen before and thus the exciting aspect of my work as theorist and critic. Further, the explorers in The Abyss turned out to be out of their native habitat rather than the other way around, showing that humanity were in fact the real transplants on the planet rather than the abyss dwellers.

The tragedy of this totem and its extension to my current situation also reminds me of my epiphany narrative, leading me to bemoan the awful waste of water due to a single tragic error- I think in the shower. This presents an aporia, a seemingly irreconcilable difference between my fetish and career narratives (I discovered how to be more conscious of wasting water while wasting water). While I love the messy and frequently challenging puzzle of film theory and criticism my creative habits, born of my community 'expand or die' narrative (prompting me to expand to new connections) I am carrying the seed of my own destruction, where due (in part) to my 'go with the flow' process my criticism will be discovered not in some useful way to understand old films in a new way but rather as part of an archaeological dig, an ode to a long-dead culture rather than a living, thriving one. It was only when the wide image appeared to me and I began analyzing it in terms of my other discourses that this contradiction came into focus, prompting me to reevaluate and improve my processes using new methods, such as mystory writing. For if the mystory can, in reality, produce that moment of clarity and epiphany then perhaps, with enough practice, I can forego the multiple showers and instead rely on this widesite to clear away the confusion of theory/pottery making.

The postscript "go with the flow" is a complicated one, evoking further questions in each of my discourses as well. Erastus refused to go with the flow and was persecuted for it. In my work as a theorist I attempt to invoke new perspectives, refusing to go with the flow of current theoretical trends (in essence transplanting my ideas into new ground and hoping they will take root). Ultimately go with the flow represents the site of my consultancy, for if the people of the Southwest continue to live carefree and easy lives then they will no longer be able to go with the flow, as there will be no flow left. We will be like the solitary, dried fossil- all that remains of a once lush past.