Microsoft Word - 20191030~Re-Confirmed~6-PS-E19091801-The Time Events and the Poetics of Care for the Oceans Philosophy Study, September 2019, Vol. 9, No. 9, 544-552 doi: 10.17265/2159-5313/2019.09.006 The Time Events and the Poetics of Care for the Oceans Emily ShuHui Tsai National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan  The images of the oceans often inspire us to take a poetic lift of the spirit for an escape from the daily boredom or troubles related to the social restriction based on the ideological hierarchy. On the other hand, however, the collective human desires have no good ethics to discipline the insatiable enjoyment that has obviously damaged the environment and polluted the oceans. In this short paper, I focus on the concepts of the time event, Aion and Chronos, with the three poems related to the images of the oceans written by a Taiwanese poet, Hui Tong; I also try to understand how the origin of the water on our Earth comes from. In fact, our Earth has the “liquid” oceans on the surface and also the hidden “solid” oceans, the blue crystal rocks called ringwoodite, within Earth’s mantle. The oceans absorb heat and the tiny ocean plants called phytoplankton drifting with the oceanic currents produce oxygen through photosynthesis for the human health as well. But the contemporary environmental problem is that the chronic damages of the biodiversity by the human collective desires have affected the oceans to become seriously polluted. Therefore, we have the feelings of ambivalence toward the images of the oceans: tranquility, transience, creativity, oblivion or corruption and hostility for the human bad habits. Keywords: the time events, the virtual, singularities, phantasm, ocean, ringwoodite The Time Events There often occur the feelings of tranquility, creativity and transience emerging from the heart whenever people contemplate the blue-colored images of the oceans. This visual encounter unfolds an interior mindscape as a poetic line of flight to create a different plane of horizon to temporarily escape from the hierarchy of the socio-cultural ideology. The different moments of the encounter evoke the different affects within our immanence for creativity. For some people, perhaps, the images of the oceans often nourish romance and vitality; for others, the oceanic images inspire them to dive into the enlightening thoughts or emerge in their mind the nostalgic memories to reflect the different stages of life duration between the past and the present. Each instant, as the disturbing or surprising encounter, either positive or negative, presents the juxtaposingly-coexistent images of Aion and Chronos, the time events of the past and the present, swimming through the flows of both memories and imagination in our consciousness. These are the affects of time events within our immanence. The evocation of the oceanic images invites us into an elevated state of enchanting imaginary, with a shift of the different perspective to create a new mode of thought. The images of the oceans can be an ontological sign that transports us into the threshold of the unknown, to the imaginary state of time events—the past, the present and the future in their intensive coexistence of chiasmatic affects. The present is merely like the ocean on the surface of Earth for the past to wave at the future; Emily ShuHui Tsai, Doctorate Degree, Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Language and Literature, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan. DAVID PUBLISHING D THE TIME EVENTS AND THE POETICS OF CARE FOR THE OCEANS 545 in other words, the past preserves itself at the present moment and the future can be predicted in the past. Therefore, reminiscences can be crucial to speak in silence for us to reshape the old thought and to reinterpret the time events and to change the future. To search for the truth is to search for the lost time because “truth has an essential relation to time” (Deleuze, 1972, p.15). Viewing the blue-colored ocean is always a new experience of “learning” with a new sign. To decipher the sign is to be invited into the adventures of the temporal unknown. The more we search for the truth, the more vulnerable we feel. Because there exists the ontological secrecy in which the multiple singularities as the unnamable affects divide the sense of self into “the fractured I”, it renders the search for “the whole truth” impossible. In the book, The Logic of Sense, what Deleuze understands the difference between Chronos and Aion is that Chronos indicates the actual present moment of time and Aion is the virtual state of the past, “the pure empty form of time” (Deleuze, 1990, p.165). As Deleuze says that “Chronos is the regulated movement of vast and profound presents” (Deleuze, 1990, p.163), he keeps probing into a deeper level: “Is there not a fundamental disturbance of the present, that is, a ground which overthrows and subverts all measure, a becoming-mad of depths which slips away from the present?” (Deleuze, 1990, p.163). Here, Deleuze introduces the virtual state of time events, Aion. With these two levels of time, Deleuze thinks that Aion, as the disturbing element of the past, functions as the grounding foundation of Chronos. To be more precise, Aion’s time events as the groundless ground indicate the virtual incorporeality of the past and the future coexisting within Chronos. As such, Chronos is constantly disturbed by the absolute and relative moments of the past and the future and thus the pre-individual affects in the impenetrable depth of time events perhaps awaiting a certain crucial moment to unfold or to actualize itself because some memories which have been buried or forgotten can be awakened. From another perspective to understand the movement of time, Aion divides and subdivides infinitely each instant of the present into the past and the future simultaneously in both directions. Therefore, the essential difference is “between the Aion of the surfaces and the whole of Chronos together with the becoming-mad of the depths” (Deleuze, 1990, p.165). The mystery of the depth, the locus of incorporeal events, which is more dangerous and more labyrinthine, is where the multiplicities of affects in movement carry certain crucial messages like a virtual ocean within our immanence for the imagination and the will to power to create a new mode of life. Each time people contemplate the blue ocean, or take a boat sailing away from the land, the different levels of time coexist in the consciousness. The present seems no longer “now”; the past and the future merely coexist in the infinite duration of the present: a total mixture of actual and virtual time events in the oceanic feelings of our heart. There are poems celebrating the beauty of blue-colored oceans, the memories of walking along the beaches at sunset or sunrise, the carefree innocence of dolphins, and the relaxingly-joyful journey of yachts; there are also the poems describing the human negligence with no care about the collective evil dumping all kinds of trash to the rivers running toward the oceans. Some other parts of the oceans are so much damaged by the human pollutants that cause the death of marine species, particularly in this contemporary society of neoliberal capitalism. Most of us seldom pay more attention to the issue that we humans can barely exist with the polluted oceans and we all need the clean water for our daily life because almost 60% component of the human adult body is water. Besides, the oceans produce more oxygen than the trees on the land for our lives. If we ignore this deteriorating problem, the images of the oceans cannot be a great joy for any carefree imagination or creativity to reduce daily anxiety from the evil politics of neoliberal capitalism. Here, I would like to discuss the three poems related to the images of oceans, written by a contemporary THE TIME EVENTS AND THE POETICS OF CARE FOR THE OCEANS 546 Taiwanese poet, Hui Tong1: the first one is “Ocean, in Need of Consolation”; the second is “Typhoon, at Midnight”; and the third is “A Lonely Island with Dreams Left behind is Sailing Away.” From these three poems, the readers can understand how the visual images of the oceans can evoke the incorporeal time events of Aion, within the depth of Chronos at the present moment. The speaker in the poem is struggling with the reminiscences, simultaneously sublimating the negative affects into a more positive state toward a different mode of thought. All the three poems use the personified objects as the metaphors to deal with the inner transmutation of spiritually-suffocated values of life to desperately move away from the anxiety-ridden and self-imposed pressures trapped in the oppressive ideology in order to affirm a new mode of life. The images of the oceans in the poems inspire an enlightening awakening, the time-event of Chronos at the crucial present moment, to affirm one’s own choice although some images in the poems are quite thrillingly-sublime and strikingly-decadent. The Poetic Images and the Affective Turn In the first poem “Ocean, in Need of Consolation,”2 it describes how some fishes unable to survive well in the polluted ocean are swept away by the waves to the beach and they lie stranded there. The beach becomes not only a cemetery for the marine species but also a waste yard of the human civilized world. The poem does not picture a world full of the positive vitality of all lives; on the contrary, it reveals the gloomy images of worries in the poetic art of aesthetic sentiment. The beach stages the threshold for humans to encounter the problem that our civilized environment has damaged and polluted the oceans; therefore, the marine species are too vulnerable to survive well. The poem continues to demonstrate a sharp contrast between the different lives of species struggling for their own survivorship. It describes that the crabs go on their different mode of life with melody in their mind and some empty liquor bottles left by people on the beach seem to have the memories of the stories, like a virtual theater, playing in the incorporeal level as the time events of Aion. It is the phenomenal chiasma of Chronos intermingling with Aion, which reveals the actual and virtual images of oceans that evoke the creative forces of affects within the immanence. In this poem, all objects are personified. The speaker in the poem who contemplates the oceanic scenes imperceptibly seems to still hear a gun shot from the childhood memories, as if the traumatic event still existed there, like the return of the repressed suddenly emerging into the consciousness. The seashells in their sunbath show the painful faces; the wind blows and speaks in lower voices as if it remembered the agony of cosmic events. On the other hand, the sailing yacht cannot enjoy its joyful journey; all the seagulls fly away with their complaints. Whenever there occur thundershowers, our Earth loaded with heavy burdens cannot stay as purely composed as how it used to be without impulses. In the meantime, the stray dogs run along the beach with their 1 Hui Tong (惠童) is a contemporary Taiwanese poet. Her two collections of poetry published in 2002 and 2006, The Height of Dreams《想望的高度》and Light and Temperature of the Sky《光與天空的溫度》, were both sponsored by National Culture and Arts Foundation in Taiwan（國家文化藝術基本）. Her poetry won the prize of “Taiwan Excellent Poet” (全國優秀青年詩人獎) in 2006 by The Chinese Poetry Society in Taiwan (中華民國新詩學會) . 2 “Ocean, in Need of Consolation”〈海，需要安慰〉is included in the first collection of poetry, The Height of Dreams《想望的 高度》, published in 2002, pp. 39-41. The following is the poem in Chinese: 海浪，在岸邊/冒出大量內分泌的存在主義/許多 虛無的魚群/橫躺沙灘/駐留的螃蟹，填寫了五線譜/路過的酒瓶，赫然拉起一段歷史/純真的童年響起槍聲/日光浴的貝殼， 露出懷傷的臉/風，喃喃低語/憶起宇宙失衡的故事/不曾酒醉的帆船，撐不起一面堅挺的獨立/而飛鳥經過，遺留一屁股 的怨/找不到一處靜土棲息/雷陣雨出席現場/大地的性衝動，忘了清心自在的無語無慾/我們的神，在鐘聲中禱告不起/驚 醒的流浪狗，匆匆離開/從遠古來的垃圾，被迫潛入海底/共同尋找歷史的秘密/幾具沉痛的屍體，放棄追究死因/往最深 層的混沌/躲進一種叫做詩的千年棺木/因此海，需要安慰。 THE TIME EVENTS AND THE POETICS OF CARE FOR THE OCEANS 547 wandering daydreams. All human garbage is swept away into the bottom of the ocean as if the secrecy of all evil plots of politics and conspiracies were buried there to be forgotten all together into oblivion. The only event that has values is the poem written to remember what happened with the poetic art of aesthetic decadence. The time event of the poem is the virtual level of Aion to disturb Chronos in its depth; that is, to be more precise, the past preserves itself in the present and keeps haunting the present like the unnamable specters. The second poem included into the second collection of poetry in 2006, Light and Temperature of the Sky, is “Typhoon, at Midnight.”3 The poet uses the phenomenon of “typhoon” as the metaphor to symbolize the unpredictable disasters, the destructive power of human evil, and the loss of love. The strong wind described in this poem is personified as a lunatic in its madness possessed by the demons damaging the houses in the city and bringing forth all kinds of trash, including the abstract concepts, such as love, hatred, misery, hostility, embezzlement, death and all distorted and shattered truth into the channels of the rivers to run toward the oceans. The signposts on the streets and the leaves of the trees blown away by the typhoon are drifting through the tumultuous turbulences in their aerial exile. The oceans, under this circumstance, like a giant orphanage, have no choice but to involuntarily receive all these wandering and homeless objects with sympathy. At night, the waves moan and groan, composing endless requiems. Near the end of the poem, the theme of the poem shifts into the loss of love with a sad awakening: the faith in love is damaged after the beloved, like the typhoon, have left with no good reasons. After the typhoon, the landscapes on the streets seem to be rearranged and the only way to escape from this sense of loss with a sad awakening is the fragile lamp, bearing witness to the disaster, like the eye of Earth. What is left is the utter disillusion. Here in this poem, the typhoon can also be regarded as a disastrous event to expose the hidden evil, ugliness and the human vulnerability. Falling into the imaginary state of Aion, the time events of the past intermingling with Chronos, the speaker in the poem thinks that the virtual images of the past emerging into the mindscape at the present moment can indirectly lead to an shocking encounter with “the interior phantasm” as an effect of affect while facing the actual images of the city damaged by the typhoon. It is affected by the sudden event, like a poetic lift that transports the subject to the threshold that leads to the secrecy of ontological being, a virtual state that harbors the pre-individual and impersonal singularities of phantasm like dreams. The phantasm, like the event which it represents, is a “noematic attribute” distinguished not only from states of affairs and their qualities, but from the psychological lives and from logical concepts as well. It belongs as such to an ideational surface over which it is produced as an effect (Deleuze, 1990, p.211). Is it not the unnamable affects of the wound hidden in the phantasm that have given rise to a series of events, so distinguished from the state of affairs? The repetition of the time events in difference forces us to search for the causality in vain because the origin is the Other, the difference and the pure form of time of Aion; the causality or the unnamable noumenon affects the pre-individual multiplicities of singularities to compose a series of phenomenal events beyond our understanding. As such, we confront with the sudden sense of loss in silent agony. The unpredictability of time events harbors no easy revelations of causes although the subject is engulfed in the traumatic state of affairs. 3 “Typhoon, at Midnight ”〈颱風夜〉is included in the second collection of poetry, Light and Temperature of the Sky《光與天空 的溫度》published in 2006, p. 46. The following is the poem in Chinese: 狂風被惡鬼附身後，驚恐地四處亂發脾氣。但，/這 是夏夜情緒來潮，思想掀起靈魂高貴的逃亡。/招牌一路領先了流亡地圖，樹葉開始一段巔峰飛/舞，越過解體中的屋瓦， 土石流猛吼旅程中的流/暢度:廢物、垃圾、愛恨、屍體、金錢、悲傷、/贓物、解體的真相，集體朝大海的方向前進。/ 啊! 文明的遺物總讓大海無限慈悲地收容。夜裡，/呻吟的海浪聲，唱出失控的安魂曲。這一夜，/你過境後，我的信仰 瞬間被沖毀了，街頭便重新/裝置記憶的背景，整排街燈只剩一盞凝視大地的/獨眼。那微弱的燈光，是走出夢境唯一的 路標。 THE TIME EVENTS AND THE POETICS OF CARE FOR THE OCEANS 548 Deleuze discusses the destiny of King Oedipus that the event is disengaged from the causes and the state of affairs. He thinks that what appears in the affective phantasm is the movement for the fractured “I” to unfold itself to the surface and to liberate the a-cosmic, impersonal, and pre-individual singularities which the Other in the “I” had imprisoned. We must interpret the expression “neutral energy” in the following manner: “Neutral” means pre-individual and impersonal, but does not qualify the state of an energy which would come to join a bottomless abyss. On the contrary, “it refers to the singularities liberated from the ego through the narcissistic wound ” (Deleuze, 1990, p.213). The wound of affects existed before our knowledge. The virtual state of singularities of pre-individual and impersonal, the so-called phantasm, is the seductive charm of the pure form of time event, Aion. The natural phenomenon of typhoon, transports the speaker of the poem into the threshold of “chaos”, in Deleuze and Guattari’s sense, where lies the phantasm of singularities, the secrecy of ontological multiplicities. In this obfuscated condition, the speaker feels strangely familiar with the sense of loss as if the same event which had occurred in the past returned to the present moment to distress and to distract her. It is the repetition in difference. In the third poem, “A Lonely Island with Dreams Left behind is Sailing Away”,4 the poet uses the imaginary island as a metaphor to indicate how the floating lamp is personified as a wandering traveler who has chosen her own solitary life with no intention to return to the land. The poet describes how the ocean itself functions as a form of spiritual enlightenment, “the rhizomatic line of flight”, in Deleuze and Guattari’s sense, to avoid the oppression of “the arborescent hierarchy of ideology” on the land. This transversal path toward the ocean nourishes the transmutation of the socio-cultural values for the affective becoming of a new mode of life. Gazing at the stars-lit sky at night from the ocean, the wounds of the heart speak in silence as the time-events of Aion; reminiscences reveal that certain events cannot be actually buried entirely and should have a new light of reinterpretation. This crucial chance is that the time-event of Aion in the past comes to disturb Chronos, the present moment; this sudden encounter triggers conflicts or invites a new perspective to reinterpret the events of the past. Afterwards, the wound can become less weighted. With the new understanding of the time-event of Aion, the bad memories of the event will be less burdened or become sublimated into a new form of art, or translated into a new mode of thought. On the other hand, to be more precise, in fact, to question the origin of the causality of events is to make a futile effort because the origin is the loss or the difference. The persistence to trace back the original causality will eventually lead to a deadlock; therefore, the search for the whole truth, namely, the pure form of time-event of Aion, will inevitably step into the groundless depth of madness of Chronos. In other words, it is always futile and dangerous to trace the origin of causality, because of its series of endless distractions and digressions that always lead to the multiple differences and eventually to the void. The poem continues to describe that “Vastness is the black hole of the ocean” and “The black hole is full of riddles and mazes; all conjectures are in vain”. The speaker of the poem thinks that she is like a fugitive escaping from all evil politics, diving into the ocean to search for the remnants of shattered truth; the whispers 4 “A Lonely Island with Dreams Left behind is Sailing Away”〈一座孤島，留下夢，就漂走了〉 is included in the second collection of poetry, Light and Temperature of the Sky《光與天空的溫度》, published in 2006, pp. 3-4. The following is the poem in Chinese. 我來自遠方的一盞燈/在黑夜裡 隨著海浪/滿載著海洋的神秘 靠近/妳曾問 海洋的聲音/我說 海不願多說/ 在寧靜的深思裡 凝視虛無/浩瀚 是海神秘的黑洞/在洞裡 成了漂浮的謎/空無的猜測後 仰望群星/我願是 龐雜糾葛中 的逃難者/潛入海底的遺跡裡 找尋解體的真相/而海浪的呢喃 在超渡夢/我來自遠方的一盞燈/在生命的黑夜裡 苦讀空 無/光影 映照著我發炎的心/要多少的智力 才能進入海底的廟宇/心的建築 永遠堅持著一把鎖/裡面的神秘 逼著夢走向 盡頭/海浪 依隨鯨豚去旅遊/喃喃低吟 但黑夜是黎明初啟/而黑夜與黎明 是夢的雌雄雙身/因此 我是遠方的一盞燈/妳 在岸邊 朝微弱的光芒呼喚/但海浪攜著我的雙手 我還無法靠岸。 THE TIME EVENTS AND THE POETICS OF CARE FOR THE OCEANS 549 of the oceanic voices release the sublime dreams from the purgatory. The floating lamp, as the speaker of the poem, says that in the darkness of life, she reads with efforts the cosmic nothingness and the sun light reflects her wounded heart. She asks how much intellect and wisdom she should have in quest of searching for the right answer from the temples of the deep ocean. Afterwards, the tone of the speaker shifts into an ironic conflict, elucidating that in fact, all secrets have been well-kept in the heart, where seems to conceal all dreams forced to fall into the endless ends. As such, we the readers can visualize the poetic metaphor of the floating lamp as the speaker is engulfed in a paradoxical predicament, in a desperate need of solitude, totally avoiding any human contact. Near the end of the poem, the speaker transmutes the negative into the positive, thinking of darkness and brightness as the two sides of the same coin, when the dreams can be developed and fulfilled from the different perspectives. With multiple answers echoing in the mind, the speaker, as the floating lamp in solitude near the imaginary island, enjoys her journey with the dolphins towards a different mode of life for her own new future. Consequently, the floating lamp is moving further away toward the unknown for more adventures, avoiding answering the calling from the land. With this gesture of the ethical act, we understand that the speaker wants to create her own future without any guidance. To understand this ethical gesture as the refutation of human civilization perhaps can be a misunderstanding. In fact, this transversal path toward the ocean mirrors the speaker’s mindscape that has been changed into a new mode of thought for her own self-image. The images of the oceans provide a new enlightening plane of horizon, though only instantly, to unload the burden-weighted obligation imposed by the oppressive hierarchy of patriarchal ideology. After the changes of the mood, those creative affects of a certain instant in the past which have been vanished can be awakened again. It is not so bad to experience the return of the repressed because it can be reinterpreted from a different perspective. The instant, as the affective turn, running through the straight line of Aion, “is endlessly displaced and is always missing from its own place” (Deleuze, 1990, p.166). It occurs only once; its transience makes each occurrence singular and aleatory. Deleuze says: First… Plato rightly said that the instant is atopon,5 without place. It is the paradoxical instance or the aleatory point, the nonsense of the surface and the quasi-cause… Second, the instant extracts singularities from the present… It extracts singular points twice projected—once into the future and once into the past—forming by this double equation the constitutive elements of the pure event…. (Deleuze, 1990, pp.166-167) In other words, the instant opens up the double incorporeal movements of affects in the simultaneously-opposite directions of the past and the future, in which disequilibrium is the state of the paradoxical movements to disturb Chronos, the empirical present. Therefore, the occurrence of divergence is a new possibility of the transversal path to create a new future after some tumultuous conflicts and difficulties. As the speaker of the poem feels affected by each instant from a different perspective, the exterior landscape affects the interior mindscape to unfold the creative forces of affects to actualize the new images for the new mode of life. The horizontal images of oceans in fact have empowered the speaker because this transversal path to create the rhizomatic line of flight in the poetic mindscape can develop the different and new ideas. The Hidden, Solid Ocean in the Earth’s Mantle In the three poems, the images of the oceans function as the affective turn to sublimate the negative forces 5 Here, the word, atopon, means concordance. THE TIME EVENTS AND THE POETICS OF CARE FOR THE OCEANS 550 within the immanence into a different mode of thought to create a new life. But from a different perspective of thought, while contemplating on the polluted oceans and the vulnerable marine species, we feel so ashamed of the fact that certain oceans have been so much contaminated. At the same time, there arises in us the deeper empathy with the oceans and we come to realize that our Earth also has its own organic life, which invites our curiosity to think about where the water of our Earth comes from. To be more precise, Earth also has its own virtual time event in the past; the hidden blue rock of the solid ocean, the so-called ringwoodite, in the Earth’s mantle, can be referred to “the unconscious” or “the impersonal singularities of the virtual ontology” of Earth if we try to personify our Earth. If we read the general knowledge of what the ocean is from Wikipedia, it describes that “an ocean is a body of saline water that composes much of a planet’s hydrosphere” and the ocean covers “approximately 71% of Earth’s surface and 90% of the Earth’s biosphere”; “it is integral to life, forms part of the carbon cycle and influences climate and weather patterns”.6 At the same time, we may wonder where the oceans covering most of the Earth’s surface come from. In addition to the water molecules that were frozen into ice in the solar rebula and were brought to Earth by the strange solar-system travelers, like comets with the organic matters that bring compounds of carbon and hydrogen to the Earth (Kunzig, 2000, pp.22-23), we would wonder if Earth itself stores its own water inside its own organic life. In 2014, from BBC online report, it is written that For decades, scientists have postulated that the Earth’s oceans were created by comets striking the planet’s surface. But now some researchers think that the rocks in the Earth’s mantle might have had a part to play as well; specifically a magnesium-rich silicate called ringwoodite. (BBC News, 2014) It is thrillingly-fantastic to learn that the liquid ocean exists on the surface of our Earth; in its mantle, there exists a huge solid ocean called ringwoodite, the giant crystal blue rock. In 2016, there occur a lot of interests in the scientific studies of ringwoodite. For example, in Epoch Times, Tara Macisaac (2016) states that “The ringwoodite was significant because water was trapped inside it, and it was formed about 250 to 350 miles below the planet’s surface—the so-called ‘transition zone’ between the upper and lower mantle”. In Science and Tech, Shivali Best (2016) follows that “Without this huge store of water, the geodynamic activity that causes volcanoes—which are important for generating soil and sustaining life on the planet—would cease”. Jacobsen says in Science ABC, that “There is something very special about the crystal structure of ringwoodite that allows it to attract hydrogen and trap water. This mineral can contain a lot of water under conditions of the deep mantle” (Patil, 2016). And Dr. Mookherjee says in Science and Tech that “If there was no water in the Earth's interior, mantle convection would be inefficient and would eventually cease” (Best, 2016). Metaphorically speaking, the blue-crystal rock, ringwoodite, exists like the time events of Aion of our Earth if we treat our Earth as an organic body with its own virtual memories. To be more precise, the ringwoodite exists like “the unconscious” or “the virtual singularities” of Earth in its dormant dreams or like the impersonal affects in the Earth’s immanence with their powerful potentiality of becoming water. Therefore, the oceans on the surface can be referred to the time event of Chronos of Earth in the present, like the flowing streams of consciousness. With this comparison provided here, it is in fact a great joy to feel that we are invited to imagine with “the virtual images of phantasm” of Earth, thinking that comets struck our Earth and brought compounds of carbon and hydrogen to form the oceans in the past. We do not know how many comets and how many times they struck our Earth, but we know that the time events of comets brought water to Earth. This is 6 See the website: . THE TIME EVENTS AND THE POETICS OF CARE FOR THE OCEANS 551 the vanished memory, “the unconscious” or “the virtual affects of singularities” of our Earth. I would venture to compare this time event of Aion of Earth to the Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the pre-individual and impersonal level of multiple singularities where exist the virtual affects that give rise to the charm of phantasm for the pure pleasure of the oceanic imagination. After a certain basic understanding of how Earth with its own organic life harbors both the interior and exterior oceans and how the clean water is so important for all species, nowadays, whenever we go to the beach and see the images of huge oceans, on the one hand, we feel affected by the blue-colored image of the ocean for our spiritual purification and transmutation of some negative values; on the other hand, we feel the strong impact of all pollutions creating the gray-colored images of the ocean in some certain areas which have devastatingly damaged the marine species. At the same time, we know that there are the different images of the oceans in the two different levels: the actual liquid ocean on the surface and the virtual solid “ocean”, the blue-crystal rock, ringwoodite, hidden inside the mantle of our Earth. It is such a great delight for us to personify Earth with its own immanence or its own ontological being that it has the virtual dreamlike phantasm of affects. The oceans on the surface are like the unconcealed potentiality actualized as the divine work of art. In this contemporary digitalization of global neoliberal capitalism following its three principles—liberalization, deregulation, and privatization, the human free will sometimes driven by excessive desire has confused the difference between the supreme evil and the supreme good and have mistaken the evil for the good. Moreover, the care of our marine environment has not yet occupied people’s major concerns. Our human impacts on the oceans are multifaceted. From the book, The Oceans: A Deep History, written by Eelco J. Rohling in 2017, he says that “we pollute the oceans with medium-to long-lasting materials such as plastics, netting, radioactive waste, and dumps or wreckage laden with petroleum or chemicals” (Rohling, 2017, p.4). We need to change our conventional idea that the world oceans and the marine resources are infinitely limitless. Now, the oceans suffer from “overfishing, pollution, eutrophication,7 acidification” (Rohling, 2017, p.5). We need to build up a good concept to avoid too much human contamination because the oceans play a very important role in our existence: for example, the ocean has the function of the carbon dioxide absorption and to most of the people, it is still “a rich and intricate food web” (Rohling, 2017, p.9). Oceans can also absorb heat, so that “atmospheric warming can slow down”. On the other hand, the oceans produce oxygen we humans need. According to several reports, particularly, from the online EarthSky in 2015, it says that “Most of this oxygen comes from tiny ocean plants—called phytoplankton—that live near the water’s surface and drift with the currents. Like all plants, they photosynthesize—that is, they use sunlight and carbon dioxide to make food. A byproduct of photosynthesis is oxygen” (EarthSky in Earth, 2015). In addition, in the book, Mapping the Deep: The Extraordinary Story of Ocean Science, Robert Kunzig mentions: All animal life in the sea, from copepods to jellies, from krill to whales, depends on phytoplankton. It is they that through the process of photosynthesis, harness the sun’s energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates—the food of life—and also into oxygen. Even the denizens of seafloor not springs depend for their oxygen on phytoplankton at the sea surface. It is phytoplankton that gave Earth its oxygen atmosphere in the first place. (Kunzig, 2000, p.201) The marine micro-species of phytoplankton uses photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen and so their growth relies on carbon dioxide, sunlight, and nutrients. But the problem is that the deadly-environmental 7 “Eutrophication (from Greek eutrophos, “well-nourished”), or hypertrophication, is when a body of water becomes overly enriched with minerals and nutrients that induce excessive growth of plants and algae. This process may result in oxygen depletion of the water body”. It is from wikipedia: . THE TIME EVENTS AND THE POETICS OF CARE FOR THE OCEANS 552 problems, like the global warming and salinity will certainly damage their growth.8 Phytoplankton is actually very vulnerable. All forms of life are interrelated to one another in this great chain of beings, but we humans do not pay more attention to the health of oceans which is so fundamentally-indispensable to our existence. Somehow, we are so ignorant that if some people carelessly dump all kinds of trash into the rivers, the ocean itself will digest and clean up all the human pollutants into oblivion and it will heal its own wounds caused by pollutions. In fact, contrary to our expectation, the truth is just the opposite: the oceans are gradually becoming a giant dirty tank of trash, particularly, full of the plastic debris. All these floating pollutants of toxic matters are the major culprits to the chronic extinction of some precious marine species. As such, it is of course so detrimental to our health as well. Humans’ unawareness of and irresponsibility for the vicious cycle lead to the fact that the more the chronic contamination that causes the extinction of diversities of marine species, the less security our existence would have. This unethical attitude toward the polluted oceans reveals the human bad habits and the collectively-insatiable enjoyment. References BBC New. (2014). “Is there really an entire ocean hidden somewhere on Earth?” Best, S. (2016). “An ocean of water is found 620 miles below Earth’s surface.” Science and Tech. Cho, R. (2011). “Our Oceans: A Plastic Soup.” State of Planet: Earth Institute. Deleuze, G. (1972). Proust and Signs. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: George Braziller Inc. Deleuze, G. (1990). The Logic of Sense. Trans Mark Lester. Ed. Constantin V. Boundas. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). What is Philosophy? Trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson. London: Verso. EarthSky in Earth. (2015). “How much do oceans add to world’s oxygen?” Guattari, F. (2008). The Three Ecologies. Trans. Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton. New York: Continuum. Kunzig, R. (2000). Mapping the Deep: The Extraordinary Story of Ocean Science. New York: Norton. Lindsey, R., & Scott, M. (2010). “What are Phytoplankton?” NASA Earth Observatory. Macisaac, T. (2016). “A Vast Ocean Inside the Earth: The Deep Unknown.” Epoch Times. Patil, V. (2016). “Is There Really an Entire Ocean Hidden Somewhere on Earth?” Science ABC. Rohling, E. J. (2017). The Oceans: A Deep History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tong, H. (2002). The Height of Dreams 《想望的高度》. Taipei: Bookman. Tong, H. (2006). Light and Temperature of the Sky《光與天空的溫度》. Taipei: Tonsan. 8 On the other hand, Rebecca Lindsey and Michon Scott in their online paper “What are Phytoplankton?”say that “Phytoplankton can also be the harbingers of death or disease. Certain species of phytoplankton produce powerful biotoxins, making them responsible for so-called “red tides”, or harmful algal blooms. These toxic blooms can kill marine life and people who eat contaminated seafood”. To further understand this idea, please read the essay at the website: .