Human Cormorant

Posted on July 1, 2003 in Ecotone Neighborhood

Ecotone Topic for July 1: How are we defined and shaped by the place where we live?

Rude me thinks of stumping Socrates with the counter-question: “Define definition.”

I don’t see the place I live as a definer but more of a limiter. Right now temperatures are in the seventies and it is a little after three in the morning. The climate contributes to my decision to be up at this hour: during the day the sun infiltrates the Spanish tile roof and bakes whatever is inside. The cats sprawl on the floor, barely conscious of where they are. I take benadryl, xanax, and do the siesta thing when our stucco broiler runs on high.

I’m neither this address nor is this address me. We’re converging facts and when we brush against each other, we make changes. Where I sleep, where I shop, where I take my walks depend on what is near to this place, to a large degree, but then I have decided to prefer places that are nearer to me. I do more to my extreme locality — the wall where I hang my silly stuff, the top of the monitor where I have five Chinese boddhisatvas helping me, the desk where I lose things. We kept the paint and the wallpaper that was here when we moved in: we plan to replace the horizontal Venetian blinds with vertical slat blinds so that the cats can move between them and the window without destroying them.

My effects on the larger landscape are much more subtle: our cars contribute to the haze over Mount Santiago. This typing may disturb a skunk or a raccoon who is wandering through the complex. Our trash gets taken away to an unseen landfill. I’m not just shaping this place, in my own small way, but I am shaping sites beyond my vision, my hearing, my sense of smell, my taste, my touch. I am one of millions in this moon-shaped plain running from the Santa Monica Mountains to Camp Pendleton. I’m a human cormorant, discharging my guano, whiting the landscape.

Someone throw me a fish, please. Salmon is nice.