Tatiana’s
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(group member since Feb 25, 2011)
Tatiana’s
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from the Always Coming Home group.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovZ6qg...I don't know if anyone will ever see this, but I just watched this conversation with UKL that was marvelous, in which she talked about ACH a good bit, and Lavinia too. It's an hour and a quarter long but worth every minute. I <3 her so much!
I just reread The Birthday of the World, a collection of short stories by UKL, and there were so many interesting gender ideas in it. First of all, I have to mention the few stories about the society that had a 12-1 female to male sex ratio that skewed all their gender politics. Women had all the power and men had all the privilege. But to be a man on that world was horrible. The only thing you were allowed to do was practice for and participate in athletic games that would set your price as a stud, and then perform as a stud for whatever woman paid the price. That was it. They weren't educated further or allowed any other profession. When, after the "open gate" law, they were allowed to leave their castles and come out into society, they were still denied most everything because those things weren't suitable for a man, weren't manly enough, or they made the women there uncomfortable, or whatever. It was almost a straight analog for our society that I grew up in (that's a little better now but still not), except the males are the ones who were limited and the females are the ones who were normal. And it was horrible. So messed up. Sick. Ugly. Unfair. Wrong.Sometimes it takes seeing things from a larger perspective to even realize how messed up things are in your own little world.
That is adorable! Going to check out your reviews now.
I realize that I'm definitely the Dr. Heber type, barreling away with my own ideas for making the world a better place. Going step by step from problem to solution. I see existence as a complicated interacting physical system that we can tweak and optimize to run better. Thinking about how to fix that (hah), I guess the first step is humility and awe at the depth and complexity of people and of the universe, which is so far beyond my understanding in so many ways, despite how much science has illuminated. Is that what Dr. Heber's tragic flaw was? Lack of humility? Or was it obliviousness? Or what? What do you guys think?
Welcome, Rick! Glad you joined us.
I can't figure out why, but the ending does make me terribly sad and also gives me a feeling that this book matters very much, that it's one of the truly great books of the world. Does anyone else feel that way?
You know, it didn't strike me that there was any such agenda in Powers as showing the society with the greatest freedom was best. I was thinking about the novel after my third or fourth rereading and wondering if there was some structure or other in Gav traveling between all the different cultures, and what it meant. I didn't really come up with one. His time with Cuga(?) was probably the time of most freedom, but their lives were very hard and he wouldn't have survived the winter there.So we have: (view spoiler)
I still don't see any real pattern there. Echoing what happened to Gry in the first book, the people Gav was born with didn't have any use for his main gift, so he had to go elsewhere. But other than that, I'm not sure why there were so many different societies that Gav traveled through. Am I missing it?
Oh, I forgot I came into this thread to plug Four Ways to Forgiveness which is four different stories set in the same solar system around the same time frame. They concern slavery. UKL's insight into what slavery must be like is astonishing to me. How does she do that? It's so real that you just know that it's dead right. And yet how can UKL have understood these things, given her life experience? She's just a wizard, or a prophet, or, or... an artist, I guess, huh?I sometimes worry that she's quietly experienced some real anguish and horror in her life. Otherwise how could her insight be so deep? How could her stories be so exactly true to such experience in the lives of her characters?
Ursula, if you read this, I just want to say that I love you. And I'm sorry for all the pain you must have gone through to be able to write like this. But I'm glad for the stories you've given me. They have fed my spirit all my life.
Ah, Una, such a poetic description of your state. It made me joyful just to read it! Welcome, welcome, welcome! Your thoughts and impressions are much anticipated!
Ah, I've finished now. Is anyone else reading? The ending is so beautiful and sad! It makes me love the book more every time I read it. It's really grown in my heart over time. What a wonderful character.
Welcome, Una! It's so great that new people are joining!
I see churches as attempted reifications of the ideals of religion, which of course always fall short, because they are real and not ideal. But they do reach out to share the ideals with others, and they are communities in which to attempt to put the ideals into practice. They (we) do sometimes tend to favor rulemaking and the letter of the law above the spirit, if only because the spirit is so darn hard to exemplify. While it's quite easy just not to cut your hair (for instance) or not to drink coffee, or perhaps not to show your wrists or ankles in public, or your brazen face. Those things are simple, and so we crave the certainty that we feel we can attain by doing those simple things. Loving your neighbor as yourself, though, is extremely hard, and even if you succeed once, it's still to do over and over again the next day and the next, and doesn't get any easier (or only a little, perhaps) over time.Thus our institutions end up exemplifying our human weaknesses every bit as much as our divine spark of genius or moral purity or transcendent spirituality or whatever. But trying and failing is also worthy. The attempt is necessary. That's what I think about churches, and humanity, and divinity.
Perhaps that's just exactly what you said, Robert, only I took a lot more words to say it.
Lavinia, to bring it back to her, seems mostly to be free of any institutional religion. Or maybe as Princess then Queen, she becomes the institution. I'm not sure.
Question: If you had a chance to sit down opposite your poet (author, maker, whoever) in the woods, what would you ask her or him?
I found a quote I love on page 185 of my paperback edition. "...there were no restraints on me at all but those of religion and my duty to my people. I had grown up with those, they were part of me, not external, not enslaving; rather, in enlarging the scope of my soul and mind, they liberated me from the narrowness of the single self."
I thought it was such a good description of what I've found my religion to be like, in contrast to so many who seem to feel religion restricts and squashes them. It seems to me that real religion is meant to open us up and expand who we are, not to damp us down or restrict us. UKL, I believe, is not religious in a conventional sense, but it's clear that she touches upon the numinous, the thing that makes us all more than one narrow self, all the time in her work. What do y'all think?
I'm interested in Lavinia's ideas of fas and nefas, the way things should be and the way things should not be, or something. Are they at all similar to our modern ideas of right and wrong, good and bad? Or is it more fatalistic than that? Or maybe just more realistic, acknowledging the way nature rules us, at times, and things often are pretty much out of our control? Is there a connection between these ideas and UKL's philosophical Taoism? Curious what people think.
I got about half way through it last night, and just made myself stop because it's so good!
Okay, I'm starting today! I love this book. I've already read it several times. =)
Time to start soon! I'm excited!
Awesome! I'm glad you made this thread. I also had never read the Aeneid before Lavinia and it was no hindrance, in case anyone is wondering.
Okay, good! I'll make sure my copy is handy. Just say when.
There's an update about Pard on her blog now. Go read it!
