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Dragons Weep – Ursula K. Le Guin 1929-2018.

24 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by Shawn MacKENZIE in Books, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Dragons, Essays, Fantasy, In Memoriam, Language, Literature, Ursula K. Le Guin

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Books, Commencement Address, Dragons, Fantasy, In Memoriam, Literature, Mills College, Sci-Fi, Ursula K. Le Guin, Writing

“My soul is ten thousand miles wide and extremely invisibly deep. It is the same size as the sea, and you cannot, you cannot cram it into beer cans and fingernails and stake it out in lots and own it. It will drown you all and never even notice.” 

… Searoad

There are writers who touch us, who teach us, who look at the world in eye-opening ways. Writers who not only reflect the world we live in but also dare to shape it into something the rest of us mere mortals had not even imagined. And when they are gone, and their voices silenced, there is a hole in the world; we are all the poorer for their passing.

For me, Ursula Le Guin was such a writer. 

The Lathe of Heaven; Left Hand of Darkness; Tales of Earthsea; The Dispossessed…In Fantasy and Science Fiction, novels, short stories, poetry, and essays, she pushed boundaries and, ahead of her time, challenged us on subjects such as race, gender, love, ethical balance (her translation of Lao Tzu is wonderful), and the power of words. Her use of language was by turns elegant, wry, funny, and profound. Her observations of our human condition were both mystical and realistic, and, to this reader, failed utopias aside, ultimately hopeful. She also understood Dragons as well as any of us. 

I could go on, but Ursula’s words are far better than mine. As Harold Bloom said, she “has raised fantasy into high literature for our times.” 

She raised commencement addresses, too. The following is the speech she gave at Mills College back in 1983. It was wise 35 years ago and seems positively prescient today. 

 

A Left-Handed Commencement Address
Mills College, 1983

I want to thank the Mills College Class of ’83 for offering me a rare chance: to speak aloud in public in the language of women.

I know there are men graduating, and I don’t mean to exclude them, far from it. There is a Greek tragedy where the Greek says to the foreigner, “If you don’t understand Greek, please signify by nodding.” Anyhow, commencements are usually operated under the unspoken agreement that everybody graduating is either male or ought to be. That’s why we are all wearing these twelfth-century dresses that look so great on men and make women look either like a mushroom or a pregnant stork. Intellectual tradition is male. Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men’s language. Of course women learn it. We’re not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man’s world, so it talks a man’s language. The words are all words of power. You’ve come a long way, baby, but no way is long enough. You can’t even get there by selling yourself out: because there is theirs, not yours.

Maybe we’ve had enough words of power and talk about the battle of life. Maybe we need some words of weakness. Instead of saying now that I hope you will all go forth from this ivory tower of college into the Real World and forge a triumphant career or at least help your husband to and keep our country strong and be a success in everything – instead of talking about power, what if I talked like a woman right here in public? It won’t sound right. It’s going to sound terrible. What if I said what I hope for you is first, if — only if — you want kids, I hope you have them. Not hordes of them. A couple, enough. I hope they’re beautiful. I hope you and they have enough to eat, and a place to be warm and clean in, and friends, and work you like doing. Well, is that what you went to college for? Is that all? What about success?

Success is somebody else’s failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty. No, I do not wish you success. I don’t even want to talk about it. I want to talk about failure.

Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you’re weak where you thought yourself strong. You’ll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself — as I know you already have — in dark places, alone, and afraid.

What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign.

Well, we’re already foreigners. Women as women are largely excluded from, alien to, the self-declared male norms of this society, where human beings are called Man, the only respectable god is male, the only direction is up. So that’s their country; let’s explore our own. I’m not talking about sex; that’s a whole other universe, where every man and woman is on their own. I’m talking about society, the so-called man’s world of institutionalized competition, aggression, violence, authority, and power. If we want to live as women, some separatism is forced upon us: Mills College is a wise embodiment of that separatism. The war-games world wasn’t made by us or for us; we can’t even breathe the air there without masks. And if you put the mask on you’ll have a hard time getting it off. So how about going on doing things our own way, as to some extent you did here at Mills? Not for men and the male power hierarchy — that’s their game. Not against men, either — that’s still playing by their rules. But with any men who are with us: that’s our game. Why should a free woman with a college education either fight Machoman or serve him? Why should she live her life on his terms?

Machoman is afraid of our terms, which are not all rational, positive, competitive, etc. And so he has taught us to despise and deny them. In our society, women have lived, and have been despised for living, the whole side of life that includes and takes responsibility for helplessness, weakness, and illness, for the irrational and the irreparable, for all that is obscure, passive, uncontrolled, animal, unclean — the valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life. All that the Warrior denies and refuses is left to us and the men who share it with us and therefore, like us, can’t play doctor, only nurse, can’t be warriors, only civilians, can’t be chiefs, only indians. Well so that is our country. The night side of our country. If there is a day side to it, high sierras, prairies of bright grass, we only know pioneers’ tales about it, we haven’t got there yet. We’re never going to get there by imitating Machoman. We are only going to get there by going our own way, by living there, by living through the night in our own country.

So what I hope for you is that you live there not as prisoners, ashamed of being women, consenting captives of a psychopathic social system, but as natives. That you will be at home there, keep house there, be your own mistress, with a room of your own. That you will do your work there, whatever you’re good at, art or science or tech or running a company or sweeping under the beds, and when they tell you that it’s second-class work because a woman is doing it, I hope you tell them to go to hell and while they’re going to give you equal pay for equal time. I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.

– UKL

“And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet I would remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content.”

… The Farthest Shore

I hope you are content, Ursula. The world is diminished by your absence. 

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“Letters to a Young Poet” [Part VIII of XXIX]

08 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by Shawn MacKENZIE in Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Dragons, Heroes, Inspiration, Language, Life, Music, Mysticism, Myth and Lore, Secret Keeper, Wonder, Words, Work, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Abbyss, Dragons, Inspiration, Letters to a Young Poet, Poetry, Rilke, Secret Keeper, Words, work, Writing

Dragons and Rilke! What could be better?

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rainer maria rilke letters to a young poet COVER

“Letters to a Young Poet”

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Part VIII of XXIX

Post by Jennifer Kiley

Post Sunday 8th February 2015

RILKE Painting blond

(8th week)

“We have no reason
to mistrust our world,
for it is not
against us.
Has it terrors,
they are our terrors;
has it abysses,
those abysses belong to us;
are dangers at hand,
we must try
to love them…
How should we
be able to forget
those ancient myths
about dragons
that at the least moment
turn into princesses;
perhaps all the dragons
of our lives
are princesses
who are only waiting
to see us
once beautiful
and brave.”

 1 home large photo

One of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Homes

Dvorak, New World Symphony – 2nd Mvt Part 2,

Dublin Philharmonic, Conductor Derek Gleeson

* * * * * * *

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Editor’s Corner: 101.21

13 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by Shawn MacKENZIE in Books, Editing, Editor's Corner, Fiction, Language, Q & A, Writing

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Books, Editing, Fiction, Q & A, Words, Writing

Q & A

Dragon ScribeWell, I’m sharpening my wits over a bowl of coffee, getting ready for today’s Q & A. I’ll be back at 8:00, bright-eyed and frizzy-tailed.

Leave your questions in a comment and I will reply.

Let’s have some editing fun!

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Editor’s Corner: 101.20

06 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by Shawn MacKENZIE in Books, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Editing, Language, Spelling, Words, Writing

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

Books, Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Editing, Fiction, Proofing, Spellcheck, Spelling, Tools, Words, Writing

The Round and the Furry – When Good Letters Go Bad.

“My spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles,
and the letters get in the wrong places.”
…A.A.Milne

Scribe smallA fragile day, today – last week still weighs heavily – and I was tempted to throw the corner open to you readers in a sort of Q & A: you ask me your most pressing editing questions and I provide pithy bon mots in return. However, the writer in me seems to have a hard time settling for such a terse exposition.

So, a story.

When I was a kid, I was a notoriously bad speller. Oh, I could memorize word lists for tests, but back when I was nine, the rules and vagaries of English spelling seemed as nonsensical as a Hatter’s high tea. As much as I loved roaming through dictionaries, etymology was an undiscovered country to this youthful traveler, one I didn’t knowingly explore for a few years yet. (A failing of our education system, perhaps, to rely on rote rather than reason.)

spell-check-fail1

Fast forward several decades – irony running ahead of the wind – and I now help fill the household coffers by editing crossword puzzles. (I can think of a few teachers laughing their asses off over that!) I have taken advantage of time and experience and am a better, if somewhat indifferent, speller. I am also an occasionally errant typist, prey to dyslexic fingers and fur-laced keyboards. (Thank you, kids!)

sanji

This does not even begin to touch on the unexplained mystery of the eye/brain connection which leads us to see words as we expect them to be, not necessarily as they are. I find this most true when proofing my own work; I know the words inside and out and so my mind fills in blanks, automatically switches inverted letters, and glides over –ance when it should be –ence, because, well, the mind is funny that way.

21454_631124706906523_1781074813_n

Since nothing screams “Unprofessional!” like a text littered with typos and orthographic errors, the writing gods put their heads together and gifted us poor scriveners with spellcheck. Voila! Proofreading for dummies! All those pesky blunders red-lined and auto-corrected. Nothing could be simpler.

Except of course, nothing is ever that simple.

First, the standard spellcheck database is  limited. This leads to erroneous markups or, conversely, if your spelling is truly atrocious, letter-salad flagged, but scant help provided re alternatives. In other words, you’re on your own. (Most word-processing dictionaries can be expanded – something which, as a fantasist, I do frequently, especially with esoterica and exotic names, so easy to make up but not always to remember. But, damn it Jim! We’re writers not lexicographers!)

spelling-crop

More troublesome for some – and not really the fault of the program – is the fact that English is a whimsical language, rife with homonyms and frequently confused/misused words, for which spellcheck simply doesn’t suffice.

their/there/they’re
ade/aid/aide
who’s/whose
its/it’s
then/than
vane/vein/vain
alter/altar
affect/effect
bare/bear
discreet/discrete
sheer/shear
rain/rein/reign
council/counsel
rout/route/root
plane/plain
loathe/loath
grisly/grizzly
advice/advise
device/devise
being/been
led/lead
sear/seer
bread/bred
desert/dessert

The list goes on and on….

So what do you do when “I rote a tail about a plain full of grisly bares en root to the dessert” passes through spellcheck with flying colors?

You beet your Brest, pull your hare (but not by his ears), and remember that computers are only tulles.

001

Tools work best when we users knows our craft. And the best tools are always in our heads. Read your work slowly and with care. Don’t hesitate to drag out your dictionary, handy grammar guide, even a knowledgeable friend or two, if you are stuck. This is the picky-nit part of writing. Love it, hate it, but do it diligently, starting with the a spellcheck from top to bottom, front to back. For, despite flaws in the system, it is still a great proofing aid. Then, if you can, find fresh eyes to read your work through again. And again….

Next week I am going to do that Editor’s Corner Q & A. I’ll be on line all next Tuesday, so drop by. Ask me your questions, I’ll tell ewe no lyes. Oops!

If you have missed any past editions of Editor’s Corner, they are easily accessible at the Editor’s Corner Archive.

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In The Sandbox With Dr. Koshy

01 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by Shawn MacKENZIE in Dragon Keeper's Handbook, Irish, Language

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Beckett, English, Heaney, Irish, Joyce, Language, Poetry

Dr Niamh's Children's Books

In this week’s, In The Sandbox, Ampat Koshy discusses a subject very close to my own heart ~ whether or not poetry is particularly national or not. I would like to add a slightly different note to the one made so well by Dr. Koshy, but one which adds another dimension to the discussion. Poet Laureate, Seamus Heaney, is a family friend, and I was lucky enough to attend a conference chaired by him on whether English is the language of colonialism.

We heard from poets and dissident writers from all over the world, some of whom had been imprisoned for speaking out against colonialistic or treacherous regimes. At the end of this wonderful event, Seamus Heaney summed up by saying he didn’t think English was a language of colonialism ~ oppression was not why, for example, the Irish learned to speak it so well and so uniquely. Soup kitchens…

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