I Learn Slowly

Image credit: Dad, during our summer 2017 Cairngorms trek.

 

I learn slowly,

I make mistakes,

I pledge to change for all our sakes.

But when I fall in those same traps

Again, a chord in my mind snaps,

Unleashing rage from youthful heart

So that the dark cruel thinking starts

To light up little lilting sparks

That flare and course in flaming arcs

From flashing eyes to curling toes,

From shaking hands to upturned nose,

And then I wonder if I lie

As my excuses fill the sky:

I’m just trying to justify!

But really I just want to sigh

And admit as we start to cry

That I’m just fragile bone and flesh

So when old and new follies mesh

I shouldn’t be so damned surprised.

My pile of pledges, mountain-sized,

Swells on and on, while lessons learned,

Are in its shade, their leaves upturned:

They quiver and lay down their roots

To thrive under my raging boots

So that even while blazing thoughts

Streak through the air these learnèd knots

Of branching and determined plants

Begin their patient, sunlit dance

And as I sink into a trance

And realise I have a chance

To embrace every ragged flaw,

Tender, I begin to claw

Into the damp and fertile earth

And witness there the gentle birth

Of budding seeds and thoughtful hopes,

Bound by long roots as strong as ropes,

A network of enlightened dreams,

All stretching in organic streams

That will in time begin to bloom

Until there isn’t any room

Inside my mind except for fruit

From that green field, vibrant and mute,

Yet stronger than infernal rage

At same mistakes on every page.

See, over time I’ll come to tell

That learning is a living hell,

While thinking with a tired thrill:

“I learn slowly

But learn I will.”

Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin

“We’ll need writers who can remember freedom.” (Photo credit:  Benjamin Reed/WriterPictures via theNerdPatrol)

I learned about death on the island of Roke.

Not about its existence of course: the smallest child learns quickly that all things end. No, on that vividly-imagined island I started to learn its nature. I learned about death’s abruptness; its darkness; and above all about its sublime and harmonious necessity. My young and curious self was coaxed to the island by gentle and lyrical words. I left Roke a couple of chapters later in a state of delighted shock.

I am writing of Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea: a revolutionary and spiritual epiphany disguised as a children’s novel. From the moment that Le Guin’s gifted but arrogant young protagonist, the wizard-in-training Ged, allows his pride to drive him to summon the dead in order to impress and frighten his peers, it becomes obvious that something special is about to happen in the pages – indeed the world – unfolding before the reader’s eyes. The spell inevitably goes wrong. A dead woman’s spirit flickers briefly and agonisingly from her slumber, and instead a terrifying Shadow erupts from Ged’s body, tearing a great wound in his face. The other boys scream in horror, a wizard is killed trying to fend off the Shadow, and Ged himself collapses into a coma. The Shadow escapes from Roke in order to evolve. Ged, recovering but traumatised, hides from this malign creature at first – but in time he recognises that he cannot do so forever. He pledges to pursue his Shadow across the waters and islands of Earthsea, and correct the evil that he has unleashed. But as he does so, a disturbing realisation slowly emerges: that the Shadow is taking on the form of Ged himself. It is gradually acquiring and violating the protagonist’s very self – his body, his power, his name. The Shadow is consuming him.

And here the most radical lesson for my younger self struck home. Le Guin in her skill and wisdom had created a villain that was utterly terrifying in its familiarity. This antagonist was no dark lord, no invading army, no unknowable external force. It was a reflection of the protagonist himself and, by extension, of the reader. A product of human folly: of temper, and vanity, and lack of forethought. If we had been in Ged’s weathered boots, any one of us could have lost our temper and, in that moment of weakness, unleashed such agonising darkness. The Shadow is a reminder of death, a harbinger of evil mistakes to come; and it resides in all of us, just waiting to burst out.

My younger self was stunned by this, and impressed beyond words. But there was more to come. At the end of the saga, out at the furthest reaches of the wide sea, Ged’s final confrontation with the Shadow results not in one fighting the other, but in one naming the other – identifying the other, embracing the other – to become a frighteningly beautiful whole. My young mind twisted inside out. In learning about death and darkness, I was taught about life and light.

In some ways I regret that I did not return to the world of Earthsea until many years later, but in other ways I do not. Older and allegedly wiser, I was better able to recognise the intricate and radical nuances in the thinking of Le Guin. Each addition to the Earthsea Cycle struck a deeply-resounding chord. The Tombs of Atuan, seen by many as a more feminist reimagining of A Wizard of Earthsea, underlined the stifling expectations pressed on young woman as they navigate through life towards their own understanding of the balance between light and dark. It is told through the eyes of the young priestess Tenar as disruptive intrigue in her conservative all-female temple leads to a painful questioning of her faith and her world. In The Farthest Shore, the inexplicable ebbs and flows of history are addressed as the reader witnesses the world of Earthsea falling into a slow but steady decline: magic is seeping from the land, minds are dulling, and societies are falling into apathy and aimlessness in an upsettingly familiar manner. And yet our protagonists see a glimmer of hope and cling to it as they tour the disillusioned isles, and strive through the silence to reach the music of the future. In Tehanu, published in 1990 (eighteen years after The Farthest Shore), the island-hopping scale of the previous adventures is sacrificed to focus on an agonisingly personal tale on the pursuit of happiness and comfort, in a profoundly unhappy and uncomfortable world. The villain is no supernatural force, but a rapist, who haunts the dreams of the main characters and plagues their waking thoughts.

The radical vision and bravery of Le Guin’s writing builds a vibrant tapestry behind her otherwise clear and gentle prose. Her dedication to the art of fantasy in the face of sceptical “realists” is a guiding light for those of us who seek to preserve the flame of childhood imagination and use it to better illuminate the cruel and beautiful realm of adulthood. Her work transports us to other worlds: yet there is a political and social edge to her otherworldly themes that infuses her tales with an acute understanding of worldly injustices. The prominence of non-white and non-male characters in her stories is not a naïve utopianism but an honest assessment of how the world is, or can be when traditional narratives are challenged. Perhaps the critical political philosophy of Le Guin’s oeuvre is best represented not in her fantasy, but in her science fiction. In The Left Hand of Darkness, the reader is thrust onto the planet Winter, where gender does not exist except when the reproductive cycle of the ‘ambisexual’ population swings around. The potential of this gender-fluid setting is utterly immense, especially considering that it was published in 1969, yet Le Guin with admirable restraint keeps the book punchy enough to raise challenging questions about the place of sex and gender in social development without delving into excessive speculation. The fact that Winter is, as its name suggests, gripped by a harsh weather cycle that makes organised war and authoritarian nation-building highly impractical renders The Left of Hand of Darkness’s central issue unanswerable: Do traditional gender roles explain the persistence of war and authoritarianism? The book’s illusiveness is wonderfully frustrating.

The Word for World is Forest is less ambiguous. The 1972 novella is a fiery critique of American and European foreign policy in the era of the Vietnam War, in which the peaceful society of Athshe becomes irreversibly corrupted by mass violence for the first time in order to survive the industrial colonising efforts of the humans from Earth. Long before James Cameron’s Avatar sent nature-loving CGI aliens flinging themselves across the world’s cinema screens with shallow abandon, Ursula K. Le Guin was using The Word for World is Forest to fiercely dissect the culture of rampant neoimperialism.

It is tempting to delve in to more of the myriad themes that colour Le Guin’s universe. The power of names, identities, language, silence, violence, and nature flows through her thoughts. But ultimately, I must return to that one philosophy that struck my younger self on the mythical island of Roke: that balance is present, and vital, everywhere. That Shadows cannot exist without light.

“Only in silence the word,

Only in dark the light,

Only in dying life:

Bright the hawk’s flight

On the empty sky.”

(‘The Creation of Éa’ in A Wizard of Earthsea)

The influence of philosophical Taoism and of the upbringing provided by Le Guin’s anthropologist parents shines in her appreciation of harmony and cultural diversity. Her worlds seamlessly blend teachings from Native American religion, Northern European mythology, and beyond. Her approach was broad-minded but fiercely visionary. Even into old age, the quiet ferocity of her wit and intellect was apparent in her writing: there was a cheeky flash behind her eyes as she blasted profiteer mass retailers and praised her fellow artists and creatives while accepting the ‘Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters’ in 2014 at the age of 84.

“Hard times are coming,” she carefully mused before her enchanted audience, “when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.”

When I heard that Ursula K. Le Guin had passed away, I was gripped by the sadness of a lost companion, even though I had never come close to seeing her in the flesh. Her writing has spoken to me so profoundly, the connection between my mind and the book in my hand felt something akin to friendship. The news of her death stung as though that connection had been abruptly severed.

But as the fact settled in my mind, the lessons I learned alongside Ged on that fantasy island of Roke came back to me. I hope it is not too intrusive to believe that Le Guin, so eloquent in her appreciation of life, was graceful in her approach to death. The conclusion to her 2014 acceptance speech rings with even greater significance now that Ursula K. Le Guin has passed away, seemingly at a time when the world is most in need of her:

“I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. It’s name is freedom.”

As this beautiful reward is threatened in Europe, America, and far beyond, and as Le Guin’s harmonious vision seemingly fades further from realisation, it falls to us, the “realists of a larger reality” to look the Shadow in the eye. We must, with childish shock and wonder, seek to observe its true and frightening nature.

–

“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. And very often in our art, the art of words.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

(1929 – 2018)

 

In Amsterdam Mists

You now go one way, I go another,

Oceans call to you, Bruges calls to me.

Thinking of you, adventurer-brother,

While penning my essays no doubt I’ll be,

Dreaming of waves as you voyage further,

Still further abroad for wonders to see.

 

Resting on islands distant and fair

I hope you’ll remember the mountains and snow,

Musing and laughing there with not a care

For all the dark worries awaiting below,

While our wolf-howls ripple into the air

And echo forever wherever we go.

 

In Amsterdam mists we say our farewell,

Invoking Edinburgh, Rondane, Rome,

And wondering how to truthfully tell

You no matter where you sail and roam

I’ll never forget all that befell:

Forward, dear friend – Afoot, you’ll find home.

 

I Once Tended A Garden

 

I once tended a garden,

A joy for all to see,

Where strangers, friends, and family were all so close to me.

 

In sun it was a rainbow,

In rain it was the sun,

The blooms gleamed white in moonlight when day was finally done.

 

I planted sweet red roses,

Sunflowers grew so tall,

And green leaves whispered shyly as they fluttered over all.

 

But one night in late summer,

The air a biting nip,

Some vandals stormed the garden and began to stamp and rip.

 

Replanting in the morning,

I met concern with mirth,

For gardens are by nature prone to healing and rebirth.

 

The vandals returned nightly,

And churned up all the soil.

I pondered while fence-building why such beauty some despoil.

 

They chopped through the new fences,

They roared while stomping round,

The police when called found nothing but near-lifeless muddy ground.

 

Cameras were placed slyly,

The mob just tore them down,

In daylight people gathered from all over the shocked town.

 

In sunshine neighbours offered

To lend a helping hand,

In moonlight though the vandals tore across the shattered land.

 

In despair I decided

My garden I must save,

And rake in hand I stood my ground, awaiting the fierce wave.

 

I saw the tide gathering,

A great wild stormy thing,

A host of howling hoodlums, vile cruel shanties they did sing.

 

But as they charged the fences,

A thought entered my head,

That no one without reason seeks to make a garden dead.

 

Struck down I was with dawning,

The mob around me roiled,

I looked up at the place where once for beauty I had toiled.

 

These vandals have no garden,

No flowers do they tend,

No peaceful path through birch trees do they wander at day’s end.

 

Loud voices then did tell them,

Injustice keeps them down,

And the gardener down the street may as well just wear a crown.

 

So burn the foul red roses,

Drag down the leering tree,

Only once there is no beauty can the world at last be free.

 

At last I came to understand,

That with the mob comes power,

And raising high my rake I turned and struck down my own flower.

 

I once tended a garden,

A blight for all to see,

But now it is all ashes and no vandals bother me.

 

 

Rage or Suffering

 

Do I inflate the rage, or ease the suffering?

The placard is gripped limply between my hands. I cannot lift it yet. I don’t know if it will help. I don’t know what to do.

To my left, the rally is mustering, hundreds of angry voices and blazing banners swirling before the angular concrete façade of the parliament building. The minister will head out of those doors any minute now to face the furious eruption of activists. I was to be one of them.

To my right, across the shallow, calm mirror of the pond, sits my friend. They pay no heed to the political grumblings across the water. Their purple-shadowed eyes stare sleeplessly into the glistening mirror, which they splash and ripple with their absent-mindedly swinging feet. Their hands grip and dig into the grass and soil of the lawn. Their suffering is a pale mist, dwarfed and rendered a murky irrelevance by the angry inferno across the shallow water from them.

A chanting troupe of fellow furious students march past, many-coloured flags and block-capital placards obscuring my view in a dissatisfied rainbow for a long heartbeat. A loudspeaker screams discordantly in my ear. A solid sign smacks my shoulder and I stumble. Looking up, I see that the crowd to my left has started to roil and boil. Fists shake, eyes flash. The flags of Scotland, the United Kingdom, and the European Union flutter high above, shyly shuffling around their lofty flagpoles as if in fear of drawing the mob’s attention. I have lost sight of those I arrived with. They have been consumed by the revolutionary mass, incorporated into the vast and terrifying and magnificent beast of progressive and fiery change. I should walk over there, voice and placard and temper raised high. I should sacrifice myself to that history-making maelstrom, and play my part. A spark flares bright and passionate in my gut. I have to march left.

But my eyes are drawn back across the water. My friend is staring at the sky now, at the thunderous clouds casting the world in a shadow-stretching chrome tint. Their young face is ageing before my very eyes, as a lifetime’s worth of painful thoughts tremble through their mind. There is a defiance there as strong and as vulnerable as the blazing spirit of the crowd, but it is a solitary boulder to the wildfire of the mob. Even rock and fire cannot weather all storms. Infernos sputter and descend into smoky cinder. Boulders erode and are scarred. I must help my friend. Their thoughts dwell not on revolution, but on survival. Their battlefield is not high-political, but deep-personal. It is a shadow war they fight. And they need an ally against the shade.

Rain crashes down, an abrupt and thunderous whoosh. Wind strikes abruptly, slamming across the parliament grounds. The flags on their flagpoles whip proudly to attention as the crowd below is drenched, entangled by their own snaking banners. And the doors of the parliament building hiss sleekly open. To my left, cameras burst into light, the spotlights of news teams slicing ruthlessly through the sudden tempest. It is time. The crowd is struggling to muster and coordinate. They need every voice they can to overpower the storm and drown out the minister’s toxic lies.

But to my right, my friend is retreating into their hood. Hauling themselves to their feet. They are turning, to lurch away into the rain. They will be gone soon. I must catch them now, or their lonely battle will grow lonelier still.

And I cannot move. The minister is there, although I cannot see them above the left-wards chaos. My friend is leaving, and I cannot call loud enough to stop them.

I cannot move.

Do I inflate the rage, or ease the suffering? I twist towards the pond, and demand an answer of my reflection. But the storm is too strong, and the water is in uproar. I cannot see anything. I fall to my knees, try to flatten the surface with my palms. I cry out for an answer. Gale and hail slash across the land. I shiver and shout. Rage or suffering!? Rage or suffering!?

Finally, I see myself staring back from the flickering mirror. Rage or suffering? I ask, one last time. But by the time I find my answer, I look up and see that the storm has rumbled on. The mob and my friend have been swept away. I have my answer. But I am alone.

Light up the Word Fog

At first I thought it was a dam. A massive edifice bricked with formidable writer’s block.

I thought that the words would gather behind this dam, build up and swirl around each other in a frothy frenzy, and splash and rush until cracks appeared in the block. Words would spit through here and there, hissing and gushing, until the weight of words became too much and the dam gave way.

The words, hundreds, thousands, millions of them, would tear down into the parched glens below and feed barren soil.

And then I would write. All day, every day, like when I was a young boy. I’d build worlds as easily as I once did, and birth blindingly colourful characters with the stroke of a pen or the tap of a keyboard.

Writer’s block comes in many frustrating guises, however, and over the last couple of years I have started to fathom that there is no massive dam to burst, no years-deep well of unexpressed thoughts to tap into. I’ve broken plenty of smaller dams, blasting creative thoughts onto the page in short anomalous bursts. But the all-encompassing central dam has only dregs of old ideas swilling behind its towering bulk.

No, my lost words and stories are not trapped behind a dam, but lost in a dark fog.

There is no way of knowing which words will emerge from the fog once they enter it. Sometimes an idea which at first seemed shiny and revolutionary reappears months later, rusted and emaciated and dull. Sometimes, they do not emerge at all.

There have been so many times recently, as I walk or run or sit in silence, when I find myself trapped in that fog too, trying to express myself and realising, when I grab a pen and paper and flip open my laptop, that I cannot remember the way out of the fog.

I point in a promising direction, wish the words luck, and they disappear into the murk.

Perhaps it is because my imagination is growing colder and harder. Whereas creative writing and fantasy worlds once fixated me, I now spend enough time in the company of news articles, political rants and academic essays that the fiery imagination of my childhood seems too dangerous or distracting.

And when I try to summon up the energy to express these fiery thoughts and make life with them, and paint my concerns and thoughts and surroundings with creative and fictional words, the result often seems disappointingly stale.

I think I may just have to accept that my mind is a different place now.

But that acceptance doesn’t necessarily mean defeat – it means evolution. If I want to beat writer’s block, well and truly, I need to explore and adapt. New writing styles, new settings, new characters. New forms of expressions, new definitions of ‘creative writing’, ‘fiction’ and ‘fantasy’.

Instead of searching for lost words, ideas and stories, I can summon the courage to find new ones, with the reassuring knowledge that, while imagination can be illusive, it is also infinite. When one word dies, three more are born.

I should light a beacon in the word fog, and fuel it with new and radical thoughts. Some will burn brightly, some will hiss and sizzle, but the fire will keep burning.

The word fog may be eternal, I do not know yet. But with the beacon burning, I’ll be able to find my way. And maybe, just maybe, the words that were once lost will find their way back into the light.