'What we learn from Ursula K Le Guin is that things can be imagined and reimagined. That souls can be made and remade' - yes. This conviction lies at the very heart of my practice as a psychotherapist. Thanks for this passionate reflection Steve, it's got me dipping back into my collection of Le Guin and finding new volumes too (like her beautiful collection of poems 'Late in the Day'). Food for the soul.
A wonderful reflection Steve - she is my favourite writer too, and for many of the same reasons you share. Like you, she is the one writer with whom I feel an almost visceral closeness. The wisdom scattered liberally through her works is a constant source of inspiration - for example, the wonderful short passage near the start of the first book of Earthsea, where Ogion asks Ged to reflect on what 'naming' a being actually means. This finds a glorious echo in her later short story "She Unnames them". And she is very tough-minded yet warm-hearted about the possibility of humans living in community - see for example The Dispossessed, and as you rightly celebrate, Always Coming Home. Bravo!
Ah thanks, Dominic, there's just so much more to find isn't there? I really don't know another author like her. Every short story and small essay has something wonderful. I reread the Dispossessed recently and loved it. It's so nuanced, and I was drawn again into those two worlds. I probably read it last 20 odd years ago!! I'm looking forward to Julie Phillips biography of her. Not sure when its due...
So much more to find indeed! And I wasn't aware there was a biography in the works - will look out for that. There's a passage from The Dispossessed that I've recently been ruminating on: "For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think."
'Free your mind of the idea of deserving' - such a radical invitation and (like so much of what she writes) it speaks to the very heart of our modern malaise, centered as this seems to be on entitlement, envy and grievance. The fruit of 'deserving' seems to be a kind of bitterness which weighs heavy in the heart. The relief of this burden reminds me of her beautiful short poem 'The Canada Lynx:
We know how to know and how to think,
how to exhibit what is known
to heaven’s bright ignorant eye,
how to be busy and to multiply.
He knows how to walk
into the trees alone not looking back,
so light on his soft feet he does not sink
into the snow. How to leave no track,
no sound, no shadow. How to be gone.
Freed of the idea of 'deserving' perhaps we too could walk light on our feet. I'm going to give it a go!
'What we learn from Ursula K Le Guin is that things can be imagined and reimagined. That souls can be made and remade' - yes. This conviction lies at the very heart of my practice as a psychotherapist. Thanks for this passionate reflection Steve, it's got me dipping back into my collection of Le Guin and finding new volumes too (like her beautiful collection of poems 'Late in the Day'). Food for the soul.
A wonderful reflection Steve - she is my favourite writer too, and for many of the same reasons you share. Like you, she is the one writer with whom I feel an almost visceral closeness. The wisdom scattered liberally through her works is a constant source of inspiration - for example, the wonderful short passage near the start of the first book of Earthsea, where Ogion asks Ged to reflect on what 'naming' a being actually means. This finds a glorious echo in her later short story "She Unnames them". And she is very tough-minded yet warm-hearted about the possibility of humans living in community - see for example The Dispossessed, and as you rightly celebrate, Always Coming Home. Bravo!
Ah thanks, Dominic, there's just so much more to find isn't there? I really don't know another author like her. Every short story and small essay has something wonderful. I reread the Dispossessed recently and loved it. It's so nuanced, and I was drawn again into those two worlds. I probably read it last 20 odd years ago!! I'm looking forward to Julie Phillips biography of her. Not sure when its due...
So much more to find indeed! And I wasn't aware there was a biography in the works - will look out for that. There's a passage from The Dispossessed that I've recently been ruminating on: "For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think."
'Free your mind of the idea of deserving' - such a radical invitation and (like so much of what she writes) it speaks to the very heart of our modern malaise, centered as this seems to be on entitlement, envy and grievance. The fruit of 'deserving' seems to be a kind of bitterness which weighs heavy in the heart. The relief of this burden reminds me of her beautiful short poem 'The Canada Lynx:
We know how to know and how to think,
how to exhibit what is known
to heaven’s bright ignorant eye,
how to be busy and to multiply.
He knows how to walk
into the trees alone not looking back,
so light on his soft feet he does not sink
into the snow. How to leave no track,
no sound, no shadow. How to be gone.
Freed of the idea of 'deserving' perhaps we too could walk light on our feet. I'm going to give it a go!
Thank you Susan, a beautiful poem indeed!
Yes, love it! Apart from the poetry in Always Coming Home, that's the bit of her work I am less familiar with! So still lots to explore...