Happiness

Happiness bubbles up in Ephemerata Gardens in fleeting things that happen.

The season's first tomato or strawberry drop of blood on the vine. Gathering food grown here, cooking and eating and sharing it, sometimes doing the dishes humming an uncomposed song. Prickly pear cacti bloom yellow bursts echoed by the sunflower patch. 

Chickens catch a purple plastic snake and chase each other around. Monk squawks fly over, the birds rarely landing on the alley power lines. Gangly juvenile Yellow-Crowned Night Heron come down to the baby pool of water. Also, cardinals, blue jays, and butterflies eat the figs. Dragonflies and toads in the greywater pond.

Sunsets hit the top of the pecan in a golden glow while the rest of the yard's already shadowed. Sitting in the shade.

Happiness is not an object or pursuit here but a relational event of light, color, sounds, foods, life forms pulsing in the landscape--qualia of life held together in a harmonious sensory expression. A collective curling up of a smile or jiggling of laughter. Also, happiness is shot through with an all consuming love between lives, a kind of clinging that veers into sadness and loss. It is a way of being for the world that plays on becoming part of a living machine, where you are not liberated but attached and made responsible, eaten alive. Happiness becomes a collaborative sculpture planed down by multiple artists with different aesthetic visions.

There are surprises like fat green caterpillars eating the sprawling tomato vines that I should kill, but don't. Vince's neighbor next to the Cathedral of Junk kills butterflies since he doesn't want caterpillars eating up his yard. Longlasting bumpy brown clusters of fungi on the composting diapers. Snow on the bottle wall raised beds. Happiness is not a state of being but little melting crystals, totally uncontrollable. I can't say if the other entities involved are happy about being in Ephemerata Gardens, or even other people who visit. The elderly woman with her granddaughter aprovingly called it a "bushy garden" with everything overgrown. She held my arm as we maneuvered the perilous gravel walkway. Her light touch also made me happy, and her exclamations: "Oh! A cactus flower!"

Tinkering and wasting time here makes me happy, finding a use for salvaged things nobody else wanted. Telling jokes and stories to visitors, performing for and teaching them. I'm happy when visitors leave a cash donation, like a tithe. Last weekend we earned about a hundred bucks from twenty visitors to our micro-tourist roadside attraction (realizing Disneyland expects this from each visitor). We "sold 'em a look" of the "House" exhibition.* Money is a clotted form of sharing gifts with each other. More to the point, making something out of nothing makes me happy. 

Happiness over nothing, just a nice breeze or watching my son dance to the alley neighbor's Mariachi music. He claps when the song is over. "Yaaaay!" Happiness happens when things like minds, bodies, objects, and events all line up in a brief refrain that suddenly glows while its fading.** This coinciding is hemmed in and even intensified by blanketing unhappiness, suffering and hardship, lurking malevolant forces, or the tenderness of knowing mortality. So happiness is not necessarily about innocence, purity, or naivety. 

There is even melancholy happiness, like poppies on the pet graves every spring. Cold winter moonlight.

In Bhutan, happiness is a metric opposed to the bland measure of Gross National Product. Bhutan surveys citizen happiness by sex, age, region, occupation, education, and other factors to quantify Gross National Happiness. The Center for Bhutan Studies developed the sociological survey tool to measure habitual subjective states as a national development aid. Money ("sustainable economic growth") is just one of four elements that are supposed to guide national development (alongside cultural values, the environment, and good governance). International conferences help to transmit the concept of this alternative development mode and measure of national growth. Over half of the people in Bhutan are farmers, and in 2010, their mean happiness--5.8 on a 10 point scale--was just slightly above the least happy people in Bhutan employed by the National Work Force, while Civil Servants were the happiest.*** Women experienced anger more than men, and in general were less happy.

Ephemerata Gardens and Bhutan are trying to engineer affective atmospheres where happy patterns can happen. We're serious about happiness. Characters in these landscapes are potential parts of circuits of happiness. Feelings are quantified or listed as artifacts, becoming self-reflexive to enhance or preserve harmonious relational patterns between selves/societies/ecosystems. Like in Disneyland, there is almost a coercive element here: you should feel happy, you will feel happy in this magic kingdom. 

2012

*In the 1950's, Ray Bivens of the Black Hills Animal Farm roadside attraction taught Tinkertown's Ross Ward to "sell 'em a look!" "They'll pay everyday to see the same old bear and you won't need to buy a new bear every day either." Ross J. Ward, "I did all this while you were watching TV," published by the Tinkertown Museum, p. 2.
**Sara Ahmed, "Happy Objects," in The Affect Theory Reader, 29-51, ed. by Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, Durham: Duke University Press (2010), pp. 36-7.
***2010 survey http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/docs/2010_Results/PDF/National.pdf, p.19, women's anger p.65.

The Thing in the Garden

Billows of white flesh erupted from the ground. At first the mass doubled daily, then slowed down but kept unfolding. It absorbed other plants, leaving them alive but trapped in its form. It dusted a glass light fixture scavenged from the Cathedral of Junk with its powdery spore. After a few weeks it was a yard across, with shelves of tissue in ripples like a small, solid cloud, an uncanny thing sprouting between the figs and roses in the front garden where the cats poop.

The fruiting sex organs of other fungi have popped up in Ephemerata Gardens. Bird Nests with their tiny cups of spores. Brown umbrellas that open up and rot in a day, bright yellow ones in potted plants and the kitty litter compost. What other cthonic aliens live invisible in the soil? Bondarzewia berkeleyi, the huge Berkeley's polypore, is an edible fungus best cooked when the flesh is young. I learn this on Google and see pics of fungi in dense forests that look like the one in our yard. A museum visitor has a distrubed reaction like the thing scared him, and I realize how fond I am of the mushroom. Something about its unlikely visitation in a "human dominated ecosystem." In a restaurant I overhear a guy reminiscing about his irises. "They died back after we put the fungicide in the yard. Now they're saying iris patches need certain kinds of fungus. They're learning so much about that."

Living soil and its suprises seemed to be endangered. There were reports in peer reviewed journals like Current Microbiology (1) that glysophates, the key ingredient in Roundup and its Chinese knock-offs, were decimating non-targeted soil microbes and mycelia in agriculture fields. Controversy whirled around these texts -- allegations that Monsanto was actively blocking scientific research on its many products' unintended toxic effects while falsifying their own reports, or that the biotech giant was purposefully destroying the biosphere and food security just to maximize its own endless growth, or worse, to kill everyone but "the one percent." Scientific paranoiac visions charged court hearings, public protests, and Occupy Monsanto actions as people tried to get a grip on exactly what the corperation's products were doing to landscapes and bodies. Scientists on both sides of the debate reasoned that lab testing of glysophates and genetically modified plants were always suspect, since things don't work the same in the agricultural fields (e.g., varying in dosage amount, humidity, and the like). Meanwhile the fields themselves were the real experimental labs; the world itself had become the life-size lab.

Like the polypore in our yard this Monsanto worlding turned up in unexpected places. The US Geological Survey isolated glysophates in Mississippi rain (2). Doctors in a hospital in Quebec discovered BT toxin (produced by a soil bacteria's transgenes in GM corn) in the blood of pregnant women(3). In 2009 President Obama appointed former Monsanto lobbyist and VP Michael Taylor as senior advisor to the head of the FDA. Glysophates and GM seeds drifted to neighboring farms, and GM rice cross-pollinated patented Monsanto gene sequences into organic wild rice in a case of genetic pollution. Because there was no mandatory labeling for GMO ingredients you could hate Monsanto and unwhittingly eat its spawn at the same time unless you can afford all organic. Even then Monsanto corn or cotton might be in everyday objects you touch. You could become obsessed with purging Monsanto, get politically active in an international movement "building a world without Monsanto"(4). Like Climate Change, Monster Monsanto became one of those conspiratorial things you could wrap your life around researching and fearing -- its mafia capital built of commodites that kill, first Agent Orange (to kill people, a commissioned product sanctioned by the state military's monopoly on violence), then DDT, now Roundup and corn (to kill pests, no state sanction required). The corporation's living garbage, polluting the minutia of ordinary life, is facilitating cosmopolitan publics of concern, outraged people who could only come together around a trashed world and its remediation.

Besides their ability to manifest in unlikely spots, mushrooms and Monsanto have another thing in common: they eat the death of other beings. They cultivate certain kinds of landscapes by kickstarting a chain of ecological relations by tinkering with forms of death. Mushroom species are living machines, medicinal or toxic to certain life forms. A few lots down from Ephemerata Gardens they might be cutting back oak trees to build a new house. I need to buy some oyster and shitake mushroom plugs and beeswax. The rainbarrels are full of (glysophate?) rain to keep the logs sodden. Maybe a year from now we'll be eating succulent stir fry.

The polypore's mass has yellowed and is no longer tender. I couldn't dismember and eat the thing anyway. Its mysterious autonomy. Plus it's growing in cat poop.

2012

(1) Clair E, Linn L, Travert C, Amiel C, Séralini GE, Panoff JM. "Effects of Roundup(®) and glyphosate on three food microorganisms: Geotrichum candidum, Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus." Curr Microbiol. 2012 May;64(5):486-91. Epub 2012 Feb 24. Also, researchers in Portland found that BT toxin in GM corn has lethal effects on a non-target species of beneficial fungus. 

Tanya E. Cheeke, 

Todd N. Rosenstiel,

and Mitchell B. Cruzan. "Evidence of reduced arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal colonization in multiple lines of Bt maize."Am. J. Bot. April 2012 99:700-707.

(2) Chang, F. C., M. F. Simcik, et al. (2011). "Occurrence and fate of the herbicide glyphosate and its degradate aminomethylphosphonic acid in the atmosphere." Environ Toxicol Chem 30(3): 548–555.

(3) Aris A, Leblanc S. "Maternal and fetal exposure to pesticides associated to genetically modified foods in Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada." Reproductive Toxicology (2011), doi:10.1016/j.reprotox.2011.02.004.

(4) Combat Monsanto website (http://www.combat-monsanto.co.uk/). See also GMWatch (http://www.gmwatch.eu/).

Parasitescapes

Aromas float through the yard in seasonal waves. Each fall there is a night you can smell the crisp air tip into winter. Spring rains chase the scent of wet creosote I remember from growing up in Arizona (or maybe I’m imagining things). If the early summer has a lot of rain, the humid air in Ephemerata Gardens has a tropical odor of sweet flowers and rotten fruit.

Once the summer heats up, sometimes the driveway smells faintly of shit. The white gravel is too big to cover the cat poop of the same size, and the decomposing leaf litter in the concrete courtyard is too thin to hide anything. Cats also use the dirt under the roses as a litter box. Roaming chickens add to the pungent sulpherous odor. Flies are happy with the situation, snacking on fresh stool. The neighbor’s dog loves to eat cat scat. The sun cures feces in a few days, but there is a constant flow of fresh excreta.

The human body recoils from the stench. It is an emanation of dangerous living garbage, polluted matter potentially loaded with the viral spores of the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii. A cousin to malaria, the pathogen infects host mammals like rats and humans through feline feces and undercooked meat. It can be lethal to people with compromised immune systems. Because the parasite can cause fetal brain damage, encephalitis, and miscarriages, pregnant women are warned not to change litter boxes or garden in potentially contaminated soil. Surprisingly, epidemiologists estimate that 40% of the world’s population, or 2.5 billion people, are hosts to T. gondii (Boulter 2007: 35). And its patchy landscapes are growing as the parasite reaches new host populations in the Pacific Ocean.

In 2005, researchers began finding a “Type X” strain of T. gondii in dead sea otters and other aquatic mammals. They suggested that the parasite’s egg-like oocysts are reaching the sea through freshwater runoff from the densely populated coast. Once in the water, mussels, oysters, and anchovies ingest the oocysts, and are in turn eaten by mammals that contract often-lethal infections (Conrad et. al 2005). With the help of Californians who flush cat feces or have trained cats to use toilets, the parasite may also find its way into the ocean after moving through municipal sewage treatment plants that are not equipped to kill the oocysts.

While news coverage of T. gondii’s devious urbanization have been cast in catastrophic terms as another threat to oceans, media attention to the parasite's manipulation of human behavior has a playful sci-fi, Body Snatchers flavor. Behavioral ecologists have shown that the pathogen alters risk avoidance in infected rats, making them curious about the smell of cat urine instead of running the other way (Zimmer 2000: 92-4). So what does it do to us? US researchers link the pathogen’s manipulation of dopamine levels to schizophrenia (Torrey & Yolken 2003). Scientists in the Czech Republic and Turkey suggest that infected people are more prone to car accidents, and much like cell phones and text messaging, “latent toxoplasmosis of drivers should be taken into account while developing strategies to prevent traffic accidents” (Yereli, Balcioglu, & Özbilgin 2006). More controversially, Czech researchers correlated toxoplasmosis with behavioral changes that differ in men and women. Australian epidemiologist Nicky Boulter sums up their research with what feels like a list of outrageous bio-determinist claims:

Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed to be less attractive to women. On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with noninfected controls. In short, it can make men behave like “alley cats” and women behave like “sex kittens”! (2007: 36)

Pushing this logic of parasitic agency further into netherworlds of quack science, Kevin D. Lafferty hypothesizes that the pathogen’s alteration of individual personalities – neuroticism and macho sex roles in particular – must alter “aggregate personality at the population level” (2006: 1). He then goes on to compare culture formations at national scales in correlation with differential rates of toxoplasmosis infection. For example, 12% of Americans carry T. gondii vs. 66% of Brazilians, so this must explain something about machismo in Brazil. By number crunching and jettisoning a good deal of contradictory data on Asia, he concludes, “the effect of T. gondii on culture could be broader than postulated here” (5). Science writer Carl Zimmer picked up Lafferty’s dubious findings on his blog, extrapolating wildly: “What about other parasites? Do viruses, intestinal worms, and other pathogens that can linger in the body for decades have their own influence on human personality? How much is the national spirit the spirit of a nation’s parasites?” (2006). Blogger comments ranged from outrage at another form of scientific racism to speculation that the parasite “is responsible for the condition known as ‘being a cat lover’” by recoding ‘child’ as ‘feline’ in the crazy cat person’s virus-addled brain. Cast as the vector for crazy cat person syndrome, cat poop will never be the same! We handle it with fear and awe as the mobile home of parasites.

Feline shit became known as ordinary sublime matter, the “divine materials in manure” a source of death and life alike (Logsdon 2010:153). In 2009, microbiologist Laura Knoll began experimenting with a potential malaria vaccine with the premise that purposefully inoculating human hosts with T. gondii might provide immunity to its more lethal cousin malaria. She was inspired by the fact that “Toxoplasma is on the category B list of bioterrorism agents” (University of Wisconsin-Madison 2009). This year in Tanzania, working through the Red Cross, Knoll administered the first experimental rounds of malaria vaccines with oocysts isolated and prepared from infected cats’ feces (risking side effects of schizophrenia and bad driving).

Meanwhile, back in California, a Type X pandemic hits the Pacific seaboard. Somehow the Los Angeles water supply’s oocyst load spikes, sending over a hundred thousand people to hospitals and doctors with flu-like symptoms at first feared to be a swine flu epidemic. Since shit, soil, and meat are Toxo’s vectors, the outbreak is proving easy to isolate unlike SARS and other diseases accidentally transported by airplane. Presumably, Southern Californians are now immune to malaria but more cat-like in their behavior.

In San Francisco and Toronto, curbside cat and dog poop pickup are in full swing. The programs divert pet feces from the landfill to methane digesters that generate electricity when the gas is burned off, in the process effectively isolating Toxoplasma from other urban waste streams. Back in our driveway, cat shit decomposes into dirt loaded with oocysts. The spores can live up to two years, dreaming of mammal brain landscapes to inhabit. We buy more gravel so the cats can bury their stench. I finally spread three-year-old mulch from our pine kitty litter composter in the front rose garden, right where the cats have pooped for years. The roses had been getting yellow leaves with brown dots and falling off. Kitty litter mulch solved the problem, loaded with "divine" microbes that produce antibiotics to keep plant pathogens in check (Logsdon 2010:153).

In the coldest stretch of winter the buds open white and red, spilling their lemony scent.

2015

Boulter, Nicky. “Alley Cats & Sex Kittens.” Australasian Science (January/February 2007),  35-27, http://www.control.com.au/bi2007/281parasites.pdf (accessed March 23, 2010).

Conrad, P.A., M.A. Miller, C. Kreuder, E.R. James, J. Mazet, H. Dabritz, D.A. Jessup, Frances Gulland, and M.E. Grigg, “Transmission of Toxoplasma: Clues from the study of sea otters as sentinels of Toxoplasma gondii flow into the marine environment,” International Journal for Parasitology 35 (2005) 1155–1168.

Lafferty, Kevin D. “Can the Common Brain Parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, Influence Human
Culture?” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (2006), http://www.werc.usgs.gov/chis/pdfs/
Lafferty06toxoPRSLB.pdf (accessed January 13, 2010).

Logsdon, Gene. Holy Shit: Managing Manure to Save Mankind. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2010.

Torrey, EF, and RH Yolken. “Toxoplasma Gondii and Schizophrenia.” Emerging Infectious
Diseases (2003), http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol9no11/03-0143.htm (accessed January
23, 2010).

University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Medicine and Public Health. August 11, 2009. http://www.med.wisc.edu/news-events/cats-provide-unusual-source-for-potential-malaria-vaccine/1320

Yereli, K., I. Balcioglu, and A. Özbilgin. “Is Toxoplasma Gondii a Potential Risk for Traffic
Acciedents in Turkey?” Forensic Science International 163, no. 1 (2006), http://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16332418 (accessed March 23, 2010).

Zimmer, Carl. Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature’s Most Dangerous Creatures.
New York: Touchstone Books, 2000.

–––––. “A Nation of Neurotics? Blame the Puppet Masters?” The Loom: A Blog About Life, Past and Future, posted August 1, 2006, http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2006/08/01/a_nation_of_
cowards_blame_the.php (accessed March 4, 2009).