A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [139]
"How did you know you weren't influencing this?"
"I was unaware of the reaction at the time. I had pip switches all over the lab, and whenever I performed an action, I hit a switch, which placed a mark on a remote chart. Only later did I compare the reaction of the yogurt to what had been happening in the lab."
"Did the plant respond again when the cat started to eat?" "Interestingly enough, bacteria appear to have a defense mechanism such that extreme danger causes them to go into a state similar to shock. In effect, they pass out. Many plants do this as well. If you hassle them enough they flatline. The bacteria apparently did this, because as soon as they hit the cat's digestive system, the signal went out. There was a flatline from then on." I thought of the conversation of death, of the chickens who offered themselves to Amaru, of the duck who gave himself to me, and also of a story I read about the African explorer Dr. Livingstone being mauled by a lion. He later said that during the attack, he didn't feel pain, but rather a sense of bliss. He said it would have been no problem to give himself to the other.
I told Cleve this, and he nodded, laughing, then said, "I was on an airplane once, and had with me a little battery-powered galvanic response meter. Just as the attendants started serving lunch, I pulled out the meter and said to the guy next to me, 'You want to see something interesting?' I put a piece of lettuce between the electrodes, and when people started to eat their salads we got some reactivity, which stopped as the leaves went into shock. 'Wait until they pick up the trays,' I said, and see what happens.' When attendants removed our meals, the lettuce got back its reactivity. I had the aisle seat, and I can still remember him strapped in next to the window, no way to escape this mad scientist attaching an electronic gadget to lettuce leaves."
I could well imagine the passenger's shock. Cleve did seem the mad scientist, though with white hair cropped short instead of a tangle, and with a muscular build that betrays the bodybuilding important to him when he was younger, after World War II, when he left the service. His manner was just what I would have expected. He spoke quickly, thoughts tripping too fast for the tongue, and he laughed readily, at his own jokes or those of others. The laboratory, too, was what I would have expected from a mad scientist-type: a jumble of galvanic-response meters, plants (including the original dracaena cane, now grown to cover the better part of a room), cats, lab benches, chemical hoods (leftovers from many years before, when this was a Drug Enforcement Agency lab, only now the hoods were home to plants, sealed off by plastic screens from the batting paws of playful cats), a huge aquarium, books, refrigerator, and bunches of closed-circuit television monitors (he receives reduced rent in exchange for providing electronic security to the jewelers in the office building). He works in the lab. He eats in the lab. He sleeps in the lab. It is his life. I admired the dedication.
As Cleve talked, I thought about a story he'd told me soon after I arrived, as he showed me around the lab and also the basement suite where he still teaches lie detection classes