Leucas: Dragon Collecting

Dragon Collecting

LEUCAS: For me, my collection just happened, because it is something that I like—I mean I'm pretty passionate about it...but it’s not something that is on my mind. I didn’t even realize that I was that excited about it until Ashley came home with me and was like, Dude, this is fucking awesome! You have a dragon collection! And then the fact that she was stoked about it, I was stoked about. But I didn’t realize that it was a thing or--it wasn’t really a huge thing for me. I just happened to have a lot of dragons. 

ZOE: How many do you think you have?

L: At least 40. They are pretty much all out in my room. I have a bunch of different kinds. I have a lot of porcelain ones, clay ones. Some of them are actual collectors, they have serial numbers on the bottoms. My grandma always told me to leave them in boxes cause they'd be worth something someday, but it’s like dude if you are giving me a dragon, I’m going to want to look at it. So I take them out and leave them out to like collect dust but what good are they in a box? I need to see them, you know? 

Z: Did you like the dragon in the Neverending Story?

L: Yeah, oh my god yes. Dog dragon...seal! It’s also like a seal cause it goes in the water. What was his name?

Z: Falkor. 

L: Falkor! Yeah! Totally. So into that. Before I lost my IPhone, the ringtone was the music from...you  know from the end of the movie, the last song where he's riding on the dog dragon. I love that story. I love that dragon dog. Since I was a little kid. 

Z: Where’s your grandma from? Grass Valley, too? 

L: My dad brought us all there. I stayed there with him, grew up there and my grandma just needed help and missed my dad and missed me so she came here with her mom. 

Z: So you lived with your great-grandmother and your grandmother?

L: Yeah, but my great-grandmother passed away when I was a sophomore in high school. She lived to be 97. My great-grandma was pretty sick the last 15 years of her life. She had diabetes and heart problems and lung problems. 

Z: What makes a good dragon? Color?

L: Sometimes. I have some that are all black though that I’m like super obsessed with. 

I started this collection when I was like 8. But I think it started with my mom cause she's Thai. Dragons are a huge part of Asian culture. So she had a couple laying around the house and I always thought they were really cool and when I looked at them I thought, that's a powerful beast like me! 

I’m obsessed with fantasy books, so I read about dragons a lot and yeah...when...just the fact that they can fly and you can ride on them and they breath fire and some of them talk and some of them mind talk and fight battles with you cause they are like your best friend…I mostly read Aragon. Harry Potter didn't have that much dragon stuff . 

Dragons appeal to me because in the books that I have read about them they are honest and loyal creatures who often serve as guardians in mythology. They are very smart and can form tight bonds with humans and display altruistic behaviors. I have always been an animal lover so reading in my novels that these creature form such tight bonds with humans and can communicate with humans so well and on top of that help us fight battles and fly us around was so amazing to me.

Dragons and reading fantasy were kind of my escape when I was a kid cause I was an only child and my parents divorced when I was 9. I spent a lot of time reading when I was irritated or upset. I could just read for three four days straight. I read a lot. They were always fantasy books. I felt like I was living in them at times. 

Nudibranchs, Dragons & Science

They kind of inspired me...to what I like in Marine Bio, though. Cause there’s a...have you ever heard of nudibranchs?

Z: No. 

L: N U D I B R A N C H S. Nudibranchs. They are these sea slugs. They are all really bright colored and beautiful and (laughing)...one of them is called a Blue Dragon. That's its common name, Blue Dragon. Its scientific name is Glaucos Atlanticas. And it looks like a dragon. Now I've done a few research projects on nudibranchs and I'm trying to apply to this PHD program, too.  The program is based at University of Alabama but their studies are in Antarctica. And the stuff that I’d be studying is related to the nudibranch research that I've done. I wouldn’t say that it has all stemmed from dragons but I don’t know if I would have chosen to study nudibranchs in South Africa if I weren’t so obsessed with them because there is one called the Blue Dragon. When I learned about the Blue Dragon, I was like, These things are amazing. The Blue Dragon eats the stinging tentacles off of jellyfish and stores the stinging tentacles in its own tissues and that is its chemical defense against predators. 

Z: What are it’s predators?

L: Bigger fish, or other invertebrates. 

There are over 3000 species of nudibranchs—which is absolutely crazy. They've undergone some very very intense adaptive radiation which is...do you know what that is? It’s basically when a species starts moving out to all these different environments and all these different territories and in each territory they start adapting to that territory. So most all of these species have undergone this crazy evolution that has lead them to do very specific special things, like the Blue Dragon can eat jellyfish tentacles and store it in its tissue. There is another one that’s the craziest one that I've learned about. They pretty much all started with rows and rows of 100s of 1000s of teeth, little small teeth that they use kind of like a conveyor belt to scratch on algea and scrape stuff off of algae. This one has radiated to habitate this very specific niche in its environment. It has done this by evolving to have only one tooth, one really small microscopically sharp tooth and it punctures the cell walls of plants and then sucks out the chloroplasts from the cells and then stores it in its tissues and then it can photosynthesize on its own. 

Z: Are there male and female nudibranchs?

L: Most nudibranchs are hermaphroditic but will not self-semminate and instead find a mate or even form mating aggregations. Most of them lay eggs in really cool looking spaghetti like eggs cases laid out in spirals. 

Z:Do you assign genders to your dragons?

L: I usually do not assign genders to my dragons, I view them as gender neutral or agender because to me a dragon is a dragon period.

Z: Do you think about science as magic?

L: Um. No. No. Well, maybe. When I read about magic in books I think about it scientifically, but I don’t think that science is magic. I do think that if magic were real, it could be a scientific thing. When I read about magic, I think about it as energy. Some things I read in books about magic, I feel like the author is going in depth in a fantasy world about things that are actually real. Like I think that you can manifest your reality, and I think that you can actually have an effect on other people’s actions or what happens to you in your life based on the energy that you are putting out there in the world. When you look at it like that, yeah I look at it scientifically because everything is made up of molecules and atoms which all have energy, and if everything is built on that... I think that our minds have control somewhat over the energies in our body and what we are putting out there and receiving. 

Foo Dog

Z: Do you know much about dragons in Thai tradition?

L: A little bit. I've read a lot. There's so much to read about them in Asian cultures. Every country has different religions and different takes on the dragon's role in society or religion. In Thailand there's this thing called the Foo Dog—which is a dragon. You see them in front of every Thai temple and they're guardians—that is what they are thought of, to guard the Buddha's spirit. Dragons are the all mighty powerful thing that is the protector. 

I want to get a Foo Dog tattooed on my shoulder with my nephew's birthday in Thai characters underneath it as a symbol of me being his guardian. He's my godson. 

Z: So, it’s your dad's mom that gave you the dragons, but also there's this strong connection to dragons from your mom's culture. 

L: Exactly. And my mom never really got me into dragons that much, but my grandma, she loves me so much and birthdays and Christmases are really special to her and she always wants to get me something that I’m really going to enjoy and she knows that I really enjoy dragons so it is something that is easy for her to get for me. It got to a point in high school where I was like, Ok grandma, I don’t have anymore room for these dragons...and then you know it had been a couple years, two or three years since she'd given me a dragon and then she gave me this dragon statue. It’s gold, which is really fucking cool and its wing is covering a little spot for a candle so you can put a candle there and light it.

I want to live in a dragon house someday. Have you driven by that house--it’s on the coast past Monterey or maybe it’s in between Monterey and Moss Landing but it’s a castle. I want to live in that house and build a huge dragon that wraps around. 

Leucas Miller (he/him) founded Leucas Loves. The mission of Leucas Loves is to remove the barriers between marginalized communities and their access to yoga. Committing to a daily yoga practice with the intention of tuning in to his body and leading a life of health and wellness has been one of most empowering and healing experiences for Leucas. His intention of is to create spaces where all bodies feel accepted, validated and can simply exist; unbound by the limitations that this society places on our identities. Take classes with Leucas through https://www.leucasloves.com/.

Leucas is also selling prints of his photographs at https://www.leucasloves.com/creates .

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