Writing Portfolio

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I have chosen to include the following pieces to highlight my writing style through a variety of forms. First is a poem from my published book. Second is an academic paper, analyzing a 500+ page book of prose. More to come!

A common thought, even as humans have grown aware of the flaw in it, is that the "human" world and the "natural" world exist as separate entities. The human world involves houses, technology, status, awareness, and more. The natural world contains trees, water, sun, animals, and much more. In many of my own courses at Rutgers University professors state: Nature and humanity are inextricable from one another. In another instant, they talk about poems centered around nature, a space as isolated from the human world as possible, presented by lonely poet-speakers, (e.g. Frost, Thoreau) seeing what no one else cares to see. They speak of Romantic poets, who turned from the human to the natural world, remembering a past when the two were linked. If it is true that humans and nature have always been intertwined, then it is certainly incorrect to believe that a perceived separation of these worlds constitutes an actual one. These two worlds are still linked, in ways we might never observe or understand. This is one concern brought to the forefront in a novel written by Richard Powers in 2018. The Overstory confronts the real world problem of climate change, and imagines how a story might shift from the human story to that of all significant things: usually understood to be background, if they are recognized at all. The main source of tension in the novel is that the humanist model is flawed, yet it has grown so large it is impossible to reach other people without using tools created and reinforced by the model. The underlying argument the text seems to make is that people will be consumed, one way or another, by a model which springs up in even the most unexpected places: the model of the tree. It may come in the form of artificial intelligence, sprung from the seed of simple lines of code and branching, growing at a rate faster than the human can appreciate. It may come when people have finally done so much damage to the planet that sustainability will be an old myth, and the only choice left to the human race will be to accept its inevitable defeat. The true stance the novel takes, however, is that, aware or not, humanity cannot be consumed by nature because all of these possibilities are unfolding within a process which is “too big ... to make sense of” — the process of nature itself (197).

Neelay Mehta’s complex story presents one tool which may have several purposes in nature’s plan: technology. He is a character who grows up to be a programmer, developing a game called Mastery. This game, viewed from different angles within the novel, could present a possible solution to every conceivable human problem. Patricia Westerford, whose main goal is to preserve as much of old forests as possible, and to enable the health of nonhuman nature, views the human model of growth as an enemy to all life on Earth. She believes “The only thing we know how to do is grow. Grow harder; grow faster. [...] Growth all the way up to the cliff and over” (304). Neelay’s fellow programmers express the same sentiment; “People want to grow” (411). When the growth of consumption outdoes the production of what is consumed, the collapse of the system is inevitable. It is a fact people recognize. In the real world, there are limitations to how quickly resources (specifically trees) grow. During an interview about his game, Neelay happens upon a small truth: “It might not be so bad, to destroy a little productivity” (227). This is one way in which the novel presents a possibility for nature to correct itself. One component of nature, out of balance, leads to the creation of another in an attempt to restore balance. The game, inspired by the voices of trees, seeks to cancel the human need for natural resources. Distracted by the game, people will demand less from the world. If human growth were to slow, it would give the life force behind that growth time to recover.

Another way in which this game could solve the battle between human and nature, is that the “made Earth” of the game is potentially “just a crude start for some future refuge” when the “vanishing original” is finally gone (307). This conceptualization of the future brings to mind a well-known movie: The Matrix. It is Neelay’s father, old and frail, who has this thought. Perhaps it dies with him. Yet, it seems that the game is merging with virtual reality, and with the exponential growth of technological advancement, a virtual world may solve the problems that the real world presents. Neelay’s coworkers think the game world can be improved by being made “a little bigger. There’s no other way to run a world” (411). The inherent problems of exponential growth in a finite system are solved when humans can change the finite to the infinite, which is possible in a world where humans write the rules.

Patricia Westerford, follows the examples of the forest which she examines as much for work as for play. “All day and all night long, her only people are the trees, and her only means of speaking for them are words, those organs of saprophytic latecomers that live off the energy green things make” (219). Patricia, born deaf, struggles with words. She is attuned to the language of trees, but manages to wrest from the young, “saprophytic” progeny truths which people have never thought trees can understand. She learns through slow observation, reading chemical signals and discovering the truths others miss. This way of thinking springs from her childhood upbringing, presented to the reader in the section of the novel “Roots.” From childhood, both of these characters are a different kind of human. Patricia is born deaf, and Neelay has an accident which cripples his body for the rest of his life. As a result, much like Neelay, her understanding comes in terms outside of human language. Neelay is inspired by a “thing in programming called branching” whereas Patricia digs for the rich world underground (95). Neelay codes, and Patricia uncodes. “[S]he can hear, louder than the quaking leaves, which side will lose by winning” in the battle between forest and man (133). She believes that humankind is rushing toward certain doom, unless it can learn to slow itself and transform, like Baucis and Philemon, into other things. This presents a possibility for the salvation of humans, and the rejoining of two worlds which are perceived to be at war with one another. A recurring phrase throughout the novel is “if only he/she/they were a slightly greener thing…” suggesting, through the use of green (the color of leaves), that if people only recognized their connections to the natural world, they might slow themselves down and take on the characteristics of that which they thoughtlessly destroy. An example of how slowness may resolve this conflict comes in the story of Ray and Dorothy. Ray is introduced as a young man who is “Pathologically accountable to the hopes and expectations of his kind,” namely humans (65). He is another person who believes in the human machine, faithful to all of its faulty truths. He knows his work is “the engine of the world’s wealth” (70). Property and ownership fuel the economy, encouraging people to be the first to discover or create, and enabling the model of competition which leads to rapid growth. This rapid growth is thought of as success. He, like most humans, believes this is a good thing. Dorothy and Ray’s relationship seemingly springs from nothing, and slowly disintegrates over the course of decades. Following Ray’s stroke, the couple is forced to slow down. The deterioration of their relationship reverses, as Dorothy is forced to work to understand him. Initially, she interprets “Button up your overcoat” as an expression of ownership (247). Following Ray’s stroke, she must learn to find meaning in his confused sounds, and read meaning in his motionless face. Ray’s one desire — to have her near — is fulfilled. They grow closer, observing the trees in their yard. Trees planted in a life long forgotten. Slowed down to the speed of nothing, and the speed it takes to care for something so slow, Dorothy and Ray begin to enjoy each other once more. Free from thoughts of property and control, he is able to “[entertain] her, turning Things as They Are into something better” (444).

Throughout the novel, there are moments where human and tree become so related they almost seem like one. As these separate stories unfold, they collide with or graze against one another to form a clear, complete picture of one of the claims of the novel: “Competition is not separable from endless flavors of cooperation. Trees fight no more than do the leaves on a single tree” (142). The problem humans are confronted with is that our sight is limited not because of intelligence or lack of understanding, but scale. Cells have different roles in an organism, as do the organs themselves. Organisms have different functions as well. In the human body, there are processes which absorb energy, and processes which expend energy. To think of the human body as fighting itself is misguided. There are structures in place we cannot begin to understand, but by slowing down and learning to observe again, some of the obvious truths that exist might become clear. Some ideas will always be too big, or too small, for us to fully comprehend. Humans have no singular, guiding principle which makes us what we are. We naturally create, destroy, confuse, clarify, join and split, live and die. Humans are as natural as anything, and technology is another form of nature which sprouted from the brilliant foliage of the human mind. The choices we make should be informed, not by survival of the fittest nor even survival of the self, but survival of the global community — the forest we often cannot see, for the trees.