Did I say lovely? I meant ugly video. Turns out the natural environment is a complete chaotic mess covered with debris and rotting leaves. It's not a pretty environment. While it does have imitable elements.
Did you know, to breed these fish from the Amazon you must have exceedingly soft water? The water that is run through a kitchen ten-stage filter works fine, it needn't be so extreme as reverse osmosis water. But with all those dead leaves and debris, why is the water so soft? Wouldn't the water be loaded with minerals dissolved from fallen wood and from leaves and runoff from the soil? Wouldn't it be loaded and dark with tannin? Turns out, the answer to that is all the minerals of the Amazon and its tributaries are locked up in the canopy. Any mineral laden material that falls into the water gets sucked right back up. Slurp. There are no minerals leftover in the soil or in the water. It's all in the trees. The water is very soft. And the fish need that to breed.
This video is twenty minutes. It's slow. Little is forfeited by changing the speed to 2X and that way you'll see a lot of fish. I want all of them. I like seeing all these fish in their natural environment. But it won't do for an aquarium. Too gross a mess. It can be inspiration, but it'll have to be cleaned up considerably to more idealized representation. Or else it's not pretty.
So how's that for an ugly video?
I must say that I am heartbroken.
Here's why.
The man Takashi Amano changed the world of aquarium plants single handedly by the simplest comprehension. He put to practice what we all learn in 3rd grade science class at pubic schools worldwide. That plants evolved on Earth first. The atmosphere back then did not contain oxygen. Plants produced the oxygen that we breathe. Plants made animal life possible. We need plants a lot more than plants need us.
Takashi Amano dumped bottled carbonated soda water into his small home aquarium and it didn't kill his fish while it did make his plants pearl tiny oxygen bubbles. But he had to keep adding soda water. So his tiny apartment was littered with empty soda bottles until he devised a system to sparge CO2 in the right dose. And he had to increase light. And he had to find the proper substrate material with minerals to anchor his plants. He built a company to provide these things to hobbyists. He amassed tremendous recognition, fame and fortune by simply and sensibly and persistently pursuing his interest. He wrote books describing his activities. He gave demonstrations on setting up tanks. He opened his own shop. He traveled, he gave speeches. He inspired the Asian world, then the Europeans, then the North Americans all latched onto his bright ideas and his Japanese aesthetic.
He used his own local Japanese plants while other hobbyists did the same and now the best of all these plants available worldwide are exchanged through internet marketing so that Asian plants are available to Europeans and African plants are available to North American hobbyists and so forth. Plants are cloned all over the world. You can buy any species on eBay and Amazon only to mention countless specialized forums and exchanges.
I leaned by reading his first book where he introduces himself right off that we were born on the exact same day. What a surprise to see my own birthday and year.
When he discusses how and when his interest in aquariums developed, I realized those were the years that I lived there, where my interest began through a school class. When he says where he lived on the outskirts of Tokyo I realized that we were neighbors. Our interest started precisely the same time. I went onto my strange wending way, and he changed the world of aquarium hobbyists permanently. He is a true inspiration.
When I searched YouTube [takashi amano, amazon] looking for his trip there for his own inspiration, I encountered eulogy videos instead. He died! Two years ago.
It struck like an arrow through my heart. I'm still stupefied. He was supposed to outlive me. He had all the advantages. He died of pneumonia. I had that too. It very nearly killed me, it took years to recover. But I did. I've had serious seizures and he did not. I have MS and he does not. My nerves are seriously shot while his were not. I cannot comprehend how I am alive and he is not. I cannot process him dying. I just can't. What am I, made of iron?
Very stupid iron.
It makes me feel like angels really are watching over my stupid ass. Protecting me from my own stupid shit. Why? Because I invited them? I just cannot accept that Takashi Amano is gone and I am still alive. It's like my Japanese twin died and I'm still alive.
Researching plants I've watched a dozen of this young man's videos. Jacob Castro. He's a bit of an oddball. Aren't we all? You can tell by the Apple t-shirt he wears in one of them. And by the way that he tiptoes around his point delaying getting right to it. And by the way he address his viewers in Italian sometimes.
Oddball, kindred spirit, same thing. Say, you don't care about aquariums and you cannot bring yourself to care about Takashi Amano nor underwater gardens. Still, here is a touching eulogy from and oddball addressing kindred spirits. And the comments to this video on YouTube are equally touching. Hobbyists considered Takashi Amano their hobbyist god. I cannot imagine a higher honor for a regular guy than to have affected so many young people so beautifully.
Oddball, kindred spirit, same thing. Say, you don't care about aquariums and you cannot bring yourself to care about Takashi Amano nor underwater gardens. Still, here is a touching eulogy from and oddball addressing kindred spirits. And the comments to this video on YouTube are equally touching. Hobbyists considered Takashi Amano their hobbyist god. I cannot imagine a higher honor for a regular guy than to have affected so many young people so beautifully.
6 comments:
Watch out for marabunta in The Naked Jungle.
Do you think this way plants suck up CO2 might be one of the reasons temperatures stopped rising 15 years ago?
Hmmm. Maybe someone should do a study on that?
The one thing I share with T.S. Eliot is an absolute horror of the tropics. The Amazon Basin. The very thought of it gives me the creepy crawlies. And yet there was an English "adventuresss," that's what she was called in a story I read about her in the NY Post, who thought it would be the height of adventure to kayak down the Amazon, where of course she was murdered by a native "roaming band," another charming term used in that newspaper story. This "incident" happened quite recently. It's not that you can't cure stupid, the thing you can't cure is innocence in those who should be way beyond the age of innocence.
Rio Negro.
The John Wayne and Howard Hawks Western that was never released.
With Woody Strode, Vera Miles,Lena Horne, Harry Carey Jr.and Hank Worden as the beaver.
A dear, dear friend, taught us so much, really opened the door to a lot of things...
...introducing and doing so much, without him his work, his gallery, everything he's done...he's influenced me a lot.
...I wanted a planted tank like his.
The picture that's stayed in my mind these last several weeks as a symbol/sign of something I'm still pondering, something unique, valuable and inviting, is the one of a single apartment balcony decked in greenery and bursting with homegrown life and abundant growth in the middle of a complex that shows no other such signs of life. I experienced it as visual confirmation of the power of one, a picture of what a growing, vital life lived within the limits and spaciousness of one's own setting looks like; the outcome of action formed around the openings, introductions, and "I wanted a tank like this" desire described above.
What we seek is a way to explore all that we are and can become, to understand enough to savor the richness and stare straight into the pain. The psychiatrist in Peter Shaffer's play Equus says it simply: "I need a way of seeing in the dark">
But before we tell our stories (which is the human way of seeing), we must explore the basic contours of our existence, the exceeding darkness and the undeserved light. These are the substratum of all story, the elements of the human condition that keep us telling our stories long into the night.
Although the concrete flow of each life is indisputably unique, it is also undeniably similar. We all share a common set of environments. The self, family and friends, society and institution, and the universe are relationships that no human life escapes. The human biography unfolds in the rich and intricate interweaving of the self and these multiple environments.
Yet the fact that we have a biography at all reveals another relatedness, a relatedness that suffuses yet transcends these environments. This relationship is more elusive than the others and often goes unacknowledged. But when it bursts in consciousness (and that is how it usually enters) it rivets the psyche and its importance is beyond question. We are inescapably related to Mystery. John Shea
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