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Ursula K. Le Guin

The Unreal and the Real.

· Oregon Contemporary presents: A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin ·

And eyes beholding radiance.
And the gnats’ flickering dance.
And the seas’ expanse.
And death, and chance.

Ursula K. Le Guin, second stanza in A Hymn to Time (From Late in the Day Poems 2010 – 2014)

Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don’t understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they’re there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it’s the other side that matters…

by José Saramago The Cave (p.60), (2003)

—

A few years ago I visited the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna’s Berg Gasse. Driven by a somewhat morbid curiosity, I guess, given that I ain’t buying what the man was selling. His claims of offering “science” out of step with how science proceeds, his concepts of memory often completely inaccurate, his assertions about children and child development flatly wrong, his analytic method for the therapeutic process, involving class and traditional gender stereotypes, having done more harm than good. I do concede, however, that the he was a literary giant, converting his extensive humanistic education into far-reaching and complex contemplations that challenge readers to think hard about his suggestions.

What can an exhibition about a literary figure, (or for those so inclined, the father of Psychoanalysis,) convey? A recreation of his environments, the typewriter here, the ashtrays there, the proverbial couch long moved to England, various photographs of different life stages, copies of manuscripts or even original pages, earned awards, and everywhere the collection of knick-knacks, or artifacts from ancient cultures: it all struck me as detritus of a life forced to abandon, or a shed carapace with the substance – his towering intellect – missing in the room.

Then again, the exhibition certainly fed our eternal craving for human interest stories, opening a window into the life of an (in)famous man, if not his mind (or even at the expense thereof.) And having opened this window into the personal details of an existence might, in turn, lure you to open the door into the more interesting part of the house: actually engaging with his writings.

All this came back to me, with trepidation, when I planned to visit a recently opened exhibition at Portland’s Oregon Contemporary. Another literary great on view, and one, in contrast, who I greatly admire: the author, poet, blogger and all around renaissance woman regarding creative modalities: Ursula K. Le Guin (1929 – 2018).

To come straight to the point: this exhibition is much more successful on many levels, although, it, too, suffers from the structural constraints around conveying at least some of the heft and style of the intellectual output of its literary protagonist. There were many things I delighted in, and there were some I sorely missed, that might or might not have been possible to introduce.

(I will skip biographic details that can be easily learned from her website. A compact overview was also recently offered by one of the talented StreetRoots writers – shout out to our local street newspaper! By her counting, it is pretty amazing to look at the volume of Le Guin’s output: 21 novels, 11 volumes of short stories, 12 children’s books (please see the popular picture book “Catwings”), four collections of essays, multiple volumes of poetry, and four of translation, including the Chinese classic text Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching and the poems of Gabriela Mistral.)

The exhibition title A Larger Reality is ambiguously open to multiple interpretations, but LARGE unambiguously ruled sensory perceptions. The visitor enters a cavernous space, greeted by a larger than life portrait of the author. A brilliant choice among the many photographs available of a strikingly photogenic woman across her life-span, depicting Le Guin as we knew her during the last years of her life, no shying away from old age skin and sagging features. No pretense here, no softening of reality. I cannot think of a better promise that this will be no hagiographic show, but an uncompromising honoring of the truth embodied by this face, a face exuding wisdom and zest in equal measure.

An enormous dragon stretching across almost an entire wall, grabs your attention next – a fanciful mural that embodies the playfulness so prominent in the written work. The scales are dotted with photographs of the author across a lifetime, many including her family. The dragon spikes on top, or whatever they are called, contain the titles of her most successful output.

Small display cases accompany the mural, offering personal benchmarks, and glimpses of activities that cannot be separated from her life as a writer, or that mattered in addition to her professional career. I’ll get back to that in a bit.

Next we encounter a large accumulation of drawings of maps, all preceding the various worlds Le Guin created in her novels and stories. The facility with drawing, and as shown in subsequent display cases, water colors and sketches is enviable – but not as enviable as the fact that the quality of prose is absolutely matched by the quality of her poetry (something you would not learn from this show.) It was a smart curatorial choice not to dilute the impact of the geographic inventions and depictions by other illustrative output. The stunning variability of the maps themselves can be better appreciated this way. (Readers in GB: You can see some of this work as well. Open through December 6: The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin at the Architectural Association Gallery, London, UK.)

Not done with large yet. There is Mother Oak, a humongous tree where you can sit and read her stories or listen to her voice (what a gift to have those recordings. I so miss the voice of my parents, unable to recreate them accurately in my mind, much more so than visual memories.) In contrast to the oak tree in her book Direction on the Road, this one does not expand and shrink depending on the approach or departure of people interested in its stories. It is just a – large – reality.

Multiple interactive stations invite the visitor to engage with some of the science fiction and fantasy ideas. A recreation of the author’s workspace, including the view out of her window, familiarizes us with her environment. Videos add more introductions to visual creativity.

In the next room we encounter numerous display cases offering ephemera of her various interests. The walls are exhibiting pieces by very different artists done in response to Le Guin’s work, and yet another large mural depicts a variety of people and anthropomorphic creatures offering books that had some impact on the author. Framed in pink, no less. It did not work for me, too contrived, and lacking the intellectual elegance that I so associate with the writer and that was captured in the mural by the entrance.

A wizard’s cape, created by one of Le Guin’s daughters, reminds us of the abolition of genders in Earthsea, times for great celebration marked by such a robe. She fashioned it from various hoods of doctoral gowns worn by the writer who received no fewer than 8 honorary doctorates. Smartly conceived and beautiful in one fell swoop!

***

Political writing of the highest order is rare. Moments at which a particular language is opened to a further range of possibilities – a new tone, a new conception of human purposes, a sharper or wilder rhetorical ascent – in any case happen very infrequently.

– T.J. Clark Those Passions: On Art and Politics, p.327

—

The gallery website introduces the exhibition as such: “A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin offers a biographical and poetical portrait of one of Oregon’s best known artists. Examining important moments and themes in Le Guin’s life and oeuvre, the exhibition encompasses a rich variety of media, immersing guests in the ideas, playfulness and hope that course through Ursula K. Le Guin’s art.“

The exhibition scores on most of those points. Yet, the important themes in her oeuvre just weren’t exposed enough (and, mind you, I am always willing to admit maybe I missed the relevant info. I will happily stand corrected.) For example, Le Guin’s political advocacy is represented with a variety of buttons on a bag with a tongue in cheek printing of “I have abandoned truth and am now looking for a good fantasy.” The signage there reads that she was advocating for a variety of causes in her life, from anti-war movements to tree preservation. The description of her as an anti-capitalist is softened with the humorous referral to her love of shopping, particularly shoes. These attenuations might bring her closer to the rest of us mortals, but they really underplay the intensity or progressiveness of her positions as they appear in her writings. Cloaked in science fiction, her writing was political of the highest order.

It would have been great to introduce, particularly to those new to her, the variety of political topics that forever reappeared, and associate them with particular books, to catch new readers’ interest. Curious about feminism or gender identity? Read Lavinia, or The Left Hand of Darkness, or The Wizard of Earthsea. Thinking about the evil of colonialism? Read The Word for World is Forest or Always coming Home. Can anarchism work as a form of political entity? Find out in The Dispossessed. I could go on about issues of power, our relations to the natural, world, you name it. But here is one I care about most: Want to know why the writer is considered by so many as the queen of moral dilemmas? Go straight to The Ones who walked away from Omelas, a short story that won the 1974 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, given annually for a ​science fiction or fantasy story, and appeared a year later in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters.

A city full of joy, prosperity, security relies on its citizens’ complicit acceptance that it is all maintained by a single child being tortured and kept in permanent isolation in a fetid hole. Only a select few walk away from the city and its immoral bargain after viewing the child, towards an unknown fate beyond the perimeters of “paradise.” We have obviously graduated from one child to several million who we currently willingly starve in our own country, or kill by omission around the world with the abandonment of USAID, or murder by commission of weapons sales for the Gazan genocide, which brings the issue of complicity in ever sharper focus.

Pat Barker, another inimitable writer, voiced in an interview with the Guardian’s Susanna Rustin almost 20 years ago: “Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn’t know the answer. What I hate in fiction is when the author knows better than the characters what they should do.”

I can’t think of a single novel that I’ve read of Le Guin’s that does not directly or indirectly force us to face a moral or ethical quandary and think through the consequences of free will, or the constraints on destinies imposed by oppressive powers.

The real is imported into the unreal, and vice versa.

What makes her so impressively different is the fact that none of this involves didactic scolding, or condescension, but always, always offers glimpses of hope, the possibility of change if courageously – and collectively – pursued. No defined solutions, but no Antigones for Le Guin either!

At the same time, she could be quite cutting in her answers to those of us (yes, myself included) who asked apparently stupid questions during readings and lectures. She did not suffer fools.

The refusal to accept black & white answers or cling rigidly to positions, made up for that. I remember vividly my college students’ reactions year after year, when we discussed a video of her talking about gender issues in my Social Psychology or Psychology of Women classes. The expected outline of the difficult position of women in societies organized around patriarchal principles was always counterbalanced by Le Guin holding forth on the fate of young men in those very same societies – they are expendable, good for canon fodder. Male and female students alike felt seen and were able to engage in much less defensive discussions.

And speaking of young people, it would have been great to have some knowledgeable sources provide an overview of how much of an influence this author has had on younger, aspiring writers across the years, including the awards given to them, like the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which you can see for yourself here. Her breadth of interests is certainly reflected in the composition of nominees.

***

Theo Downes Le Guin introduces the prize ceremony in the video link above. He is also the main curator for the exhibition portraying his mother, with his sisters offering major contributions as well. I cannot help but wonder how you find a balance between (on one side) the desire for proud public display of your mother and all she achieved, and (on the other side) the need for privacy not just regarding the subject of the show, but your own relationship to a parent who, by public decree, was a Living Legend. 

Portland was hometown of all the Le Guin’s, with near cult status afforded to the elder sitting alongside of the fact that the younger ones have considerable standing in their own right. If curatorial interests clash between what is opportune for public display and what is important both for privacy and for keeping the spotlight on the mother, how do you solve the dilemma?

I have earlier described in Oregon ArtsWatch Theo’s curatorial prowess, but the current situation is unique, with a number of potential vulnerabilities. What does it imply psychologically when you set your task to be one of describing comprehensively the importance of your mother, while also mourning the absence of a beloved person, gone for good? Digging through life-long archives inevitably entails reminders of a childhood shared with her profession, no matter how often (and in this exhibition repeatedly stressed) she voiced her conviction that parenting and authoring were perfectly compatible, even complementary. What does it mean to be in the wake of your mother’s departing ship, likely happily engaged as her literary executor, building the Foundation, arranging traveling exhibitions (at least I hope, for this one should find a broader audience) but – as a result of all of this — no longer able to devote full energy to pursuing what you used to do?

These are all questions brought to mind in a year that has seen its share of biographies about larger-than-life mothers and the complexities of filial love – the off-putting How To Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir by Molly Jong-Fast and the fascinating Mother Mary Comes to Me by the brilliant Arundhati Roy the most prominent ones.

I experienced the Le Guins’ curation as an act of generosity as well as a public service, keeping an important voice alive for all of us. Cannot imagine that it hasn’t been hard, though.

One last shout-out: Oregon Contemporary’s Executive Director Blake Shell not only checked people personally into the exhibition, but approached with serious interest at the end of my round, offering to engage in conversation. I was pressed for time and so had to leave promptly, but would have enjoyed that interaction with someone so intimately involved in the whole enterprise. The gallery is facing hard times, like so many of our cultural institutions. The National Endowment for the Arts revoked its federal funding for the 2026 Artists’ Biennial that was intent to showcase a diverse group of Oregon artists, many expected to defy the administration’s imperative to deprive us of “DEI” associated art. You can learn more and help here.

Oregon Contemporary
8371 N. Interstate Ave
Portland, OR 97217

Hours
Fri / Sat / Sun, Noon–5pm
Free and open to the public / ADA accessible

Suggested Donation $14.90 for those who can.

Additional events:

Saturday, December 6th
Event: First Saturday, Talk with Michelle Ruiz Keil & Ashley Stull Meyers and Screening of CROSSLUCID’s Vaster than Empires
Time: 5:00-8:00pm, 6:00pm start of event

Saturday, February 7th
Event: Todd Barton performance of Music and Poetry of the Kesh by Ursula K. Le Guin & Todd Barton with a screening of Kesh, a short film by Rankin Renwick
Time: 5:00-8:00pm, 6:00pm start of event

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Art on the Road: The Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA.

Ursula K LeGuin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986)

LeGuin’s essay on narrative theory is a masterful example of analytic prose describing different types of stories, explaining how and why archetypal heroic tales long held place of honor in our collective imagination. The analysis is interspersed with first person, sometimes lyrical, sometimes funny contemplations by a gatherer who with wit and expressed contempt compares stories of “killing” with stories of “life,” namely stories of origin, myths of creation, trickster stories, folktales or novels. These latter narratives can be seen as a carrier bag, the author argues, gathering up and distributing, saving and sharing, in a non-linear fashion and not necessarily tied to a hero who needs to prove himself in violent combat, linearly leading to victory or defeat, forever memorializing acts of war and destruction.

Barbara Hepworth Assembly of Sea Form, 1972

We need alternative stories, and we also need places that hold them, carrier bags of diverse kinds, museums being among them. At least that is what I thought when I approached the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena,CA, wondering if it was empty enough for me to dare enter, masked and all. I was in luck, on a late Thursday afternoon, after a Covid-imposed three-year hiatus of such visits, and, frankly, emotionally roiled by the simple fact that I would see art, and art new to me, in the original. So take subsequent ruminations with a grain of salt, they were affected by giddiness, no doubt.

Barbara Hepworth Four-Square (Walk Through) 1966

Parallels between the museum as a vessel and my own carrier bag, a small, beloved backpack given to me by a dear friend years ago, were easily drawn. Both are unpretentious, nicely segmented, and filled with an abundance of seemingly unrelated items. This is of course where the similarity ends – the museum scores with offering an impressive variety of art across several centuries, while my bag simply holds things that might or might not have predictable value. (You never know when that flashlight or that mini umbrella, iron reserve stale candies or a spare camera is needed.)

While the museum’s wings exposit orderly, period- or artistic style-based curations, chaos rules in Heuer’s pouch. Most importantly, the Norton Simon collection contains a mix of masterpieces, as well as an overall remarkable number of lesser, but important works that speak of the eponymous collector who knew what he liked, knew how to acquire it, and knew that the lack of specialization would make this a more, rather than less interesting collection. In contrast to your’s truly who is also an omnivore with regard to liking things, he knew what he was doing – and had the funds to do it.

***

Formerly the Pasadena Art Museum, the building was constructed by the architectural firm of Ladd and Kelsey, with the interior architecture changed in the 1970s by Craig Ellwood, after the industrialist Norton Simon had taken over, changes lost in the 1990s after Frank Gehry redesigned the interior with Simon’s widow, Jennifer Jones Simon, overseeing the renovations in tribute to her late husband. The outside is beautiful: a curvilinear complex of numerous modules, tiled with 115,000 Edith Heath-designed custom brick red and onyx glazed 5 x 15-inch tiles that reflect the light and colors of the surrounding.

The building is surrounded by a sculpture garden with a small pond and outdoors seating area and cafe. The inside contains major exhibition halls lit with skylights and a theater on the main floor, a basement devoted to the Asian art collection, which I did not visit.

You approach the building by running the gamut between rather tall, imposing males, bronze castings of multiple Rodin sculptures. Have your pick: expressions of fury, defiance, status, pride, or vanity in one’s intellectual or physical prowess are all on offer,

Auguste Rodin The Burghers of Calais, 1884-95

Auguste Rodin Monument to Balzac, 1897 — Jean de Finnes, Vetu, 1884-95

although the latter might be short-lived, as the shadow tells a foreboding story of crooked aging.

Auguste Rodin Pierre de Wissant, Nude, 1884-95

A fitting welcoming committee, one might argue, for the founder of this institution as it now exists, Norton Winfred Simon, a wealthy industrialist who discovered art in his 40s and never turned back from collecting it with a passion. Simon was born in 1907 in Portland, OR, into a family of European Jewish immigrants, learning business practices in his father’s store Simon sells for less, a profitable business that allowed Meyer Simon to build a big house in Portland Heights, and Lillian Simon to drive the first ever Cadillac in Portland, by all reports. (I am summarizing what I learned among others from a biography by Suzanne Muchnic, Odd Man In: Norton Simon and the Pursuit of Culture and from a 2009 lecture by the museum’s then chief curator, Carol Togneri.)

Norton Winfred Simon at work.

Equipped with a photographic memory and an uncanny ability to do complicated math in his head, the young Simon was fascinated by and stellar at acquisition: a life-long preoccupation developed with finding bankrupt, or weak, or poorly managed businesses, buying them on the cheap and turning them around with harsh reigns, radical cuts and minute personal decision making until he’d extract enormous profits. A 6 week stint as a college student at Berkeley, once the family had relocated to San Francisco after the death of his mother when he was only 14, was ended by Simon with the declaration that he could do without the education. Which turned out to be true. He became a tycoon, rising from scrap metal collecting business to building the Hunt Foods & Industries empire, quietly buying undervalued stock and winding his way onto Board of Directors to ultimately swallowing organizations whole, extending to truck fleets, real estate, cosmetic giants, and the publishing business in later years.

Staircase to the lower level.

Simon the art collector was clearly driven by more than Simon the businessman’s lust for acquisition and success, but the methods with which he built his collection were inseparable from those used to create his business empires. He was a demanding boss to his staff and advisors, requiring presence at all times and expecting tolerance for micro-managing each and every decision. He was a hard bargainer once he had caught the scent of something that he thought would enrich his collection. The purchases ranged from individual art pieces to the take-over of entire inventories, like the Duveen Brothers Inc. in New York for $15 million. Over the years he amassed close to 7000 pieces – but was as ruthless in selling what didn’t fit, as he was in using unusual methods to buying what he wanted (reports of episodes of aggressive, if not scandalous behavior during auctions abound.) Sales produced enormous profits – in turn, he was one of the first to establish several tax-exempt foundations to buy art for public display. Before he had a museum, he created a “museum without walls” that loaned works from the foundation’s collection that enabled traveling exhibitions.

Entrance Hall

His involvement in, build-up of and generosity towards the L.A. art scene was appreciated, and the fact acknowledged, that he offered one of the most important collections of the West Coast, but he did not necessarily make only friends. Controversy raged when he took over the museum we are looking at here, then the Pasadena Art Museum deeply in debt, and badly managed in his eyes. Supporters of the failed museum who saw their donated art sold at auction because Simon did not think they belonged in the collection were in uproar, with the remaining Board members resigning and former Trustees bringing a civil suit “charging Simon with cannibalizing the permanent collection and manipulating the museum’s assets for personal gain,” a suit which they lost. (Ref.)

Pablo Picasso Woman with a Book, 1932

The museum itself is no stranger to lawsuits either – there was a protracted multimillion-dollar battle over two Renaissance masterworks—”Adam” and “Eve”—painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder and acquired by the museum in the early 1970s. The art was looted by the Nazis after their invasion of Holland, and the heir to the robbed art dealer sued multiple agencies, the Dutch government and the museum included. She lost her case after it was heard eventually at the 9th U.s.Circuit Court of Appeals 5 years ago, based on a legal technicality of U.S. Courts not being allowed to invalidate the official acts of the Dutch Government. “The act of state doctrine,” limits the ability of U.S. courts, in certain instances, from determining the legality of the acts of a sovereign state within that sovereign’s own territory and is often applied in appropriations disputes which immunizes foreign nations from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts when certain conditions are satisfied. (9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 16-58308.)The art stayed at the Norton Simon Museum.

The 1970s saw a few few years of personal upheaval for Simon, a divorce after 37 years of marriage, preceded by the suicide of one of his sons, a failed bid to be elected as a Republican for the Senate, a whirlwind courtship and marriage to a movie star, Jennifer Jones, and eventually being afflicted with Guillain Barre, a neurological disorder that confined him to a wheelchair. Why there isn’t a Hollywood movie depicting this quintessential (not quite)rags-to-riches American biography is a mystery to me.

***

The collection is truly impressive, much of it focussed on beauty rather than art historical education or particular fame or theoretical richness, although some famous paintings are present and admirably placed without ado or spot-lighting among the rest of the art (like Rembrandt’s Portrait of a boy – Titus, for example.) The absence of fanfare allows for an unbiased approach and appreciation of those who do not know the genesis of these paintings. Distinguished paintings by pre-Renaissance and Renaissance artists, Old Masters, Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, an extensive assembly of South Asian sculpture; monumental bronzes by Auguste Rodin and Henry Moore; bronze studies of ballet dancers and related works on paper by Edgar Degas are all placed in ways that signal the collector’s focus. As it turns out, during his life time Simon would often rearrange the curation by himself during visits, curious what would emerge in novel placements.

Rembrandt van Rijn Portrait of a Boy, 1655-60 (Titus)

If we apply LeGuin’s distinction between literary fiction’s stories that “contain sticks, spears, and swords, the things to bash and poke an hit with, the long hard things,” and those about “things to put things in, the container for the thing contained” to the visual art on offer, Simon gifted us with a few types of the former and very, very many of the latter. Just as an example of the ancient hero worship template, we have Peter Paul Ruben’s 1618 painting of Meleager and Atalanta and the Hunt of the Calydonian Boar. Plenty of long hard things to poke and bash with, plenty of embedding in a cultural scaffold that needs to be known in detail to makes sense of the scene opening up in front of you (predictably triggering my “oh, another Where’s Waldo?” association that tends to rise up when I see these kinds of mythological depictions.

Peter Paul Rubens Meleager and Atalanta and the Hunt of the Calydonian Boar, c. 1618-19

As an example of visual narratives that rely on your emotional reaction, rather than your cognitive assessment or general learnedness, we have many to choose from, including renaissance still lives, some fine Lionel Feiningers (I’m partial – here a street scene from Weimar:)

Lyonel Feininger Near the Palace 1914-1915

and the one I eventually settled on, painted by American painter Sam Francis in 1956: Basel Mural I (and two fragments of Basel Mural III.) These paintings are containers that invite you to fill them with new kinds of stories, offering to hold your spontaneous experience. You project your interpretation, if one emerges, or simply your feelings about the beauty that surrounds you into the empty or, perhaps more accurately, quiet spaces of these vessels, spaced that leave enough room next to the configured patterns to hold your connection and absorb it. The beauty loosens something, granting the freedom to abandon demands for deciphering. You can immerse yourself and be moved, without fear of appearing moronic to self or others, because you are unfamiliar with the canon.

Sam Francis  Basel Mural I 1956-58

Released from analysis you tend to be more open for surprises – the discovery, for example, that in the clouds of primary colors of red, blue, yellow hovering over the white negative spaces all kinds of dots and spots and sparks of other colors hide, including purples and turquoise darkening into some shade of cyan, joyful hints of a diverse universe to be found by looking closely. New stories unfold – well, I am describing my own reaction to a painter I had never seen before outside of print.

More information and exposure will be available to people in this area when a new exhibition, organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in association with the Sam Francis Foundation, opens on April 9th at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum: Sam Francis and Japan: Emptiness Overflowing, organized by yet another Portland-linked person, Richard Speer, who also wrote a book about the Painter: The Space of Effusion: Sam Francis in Japan.

Sam Francis Basel Mural I Excerpt and Basel Mural III, 1956 – 58, Fragment

Norton Simon, who died in 1993, was after beauty, and knew when he found it. He was also aware what beauty does with people, what it teaches them and how they are able to change under its tutelage. To accomplish those interactions was the core goal, and ruthless methods of amassing the necessary funds can be forgiven, in my book, when building a brilliant collection, and endowing organizations like the museum to display and share it, serve that goal.

“Still there are seeds to be gathered and room in the bag of stars.”

The collector would have probably agreed with this closing sentence of Ursula LeGuin’s essay, forever searching for the seeds of beauty, perhaps these days collecting them in bags among the stars, riding on the extraordinary Bird in Space by Brancusi, one of the central sculptures in the museum’s collection. We are quite fortunate to be able to experience what he left behind.

Constantin Brancusi  Bird in Space 1931 Excerpt

The Norton Simon Museum

 411 W. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91105

Hours: 12-5 pm Sunday Monday, Thursday, Friday. 12-7 pm Saturday. Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Detailed visit information here.

Peter Voulkos, Black Butte Divide 1958
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Oh, evolution, you botched this!

Don the down-coat. Pack the parka. Meet the early morning mist.

If you are lucky – and I was early Monday morning – you’ll see some wispy clouds evaporate over the water, hear the different birdcalls and have the wetlands practically to yourself.

Well, the birds were naturally on location. Pretty active, too, fighting the lingering cold and scoring on breakfast. Red-tailed hawk preening…

The diffuse light blocked out the harshness of the world and gave rise to thoughts about peace against the backdrop of war.

And talking about war and peace, have you ever considered why so few birds are equipped with weapons? I mean, snakes have fangs, tigers have teeth, elephants, narwhales and walruses have tusks, deer have antlers, bees have stingers – a whole arsenal of martial gear can be found in nature. The occasional evening spent in front of PBS’s NOVA programs about animal warfare confirms this.

Scientists have devoted their lives to figuring out the evolutionary pressure behind this all, notably Douglas Emlen, who wrote one of the best overviews in the field, Animal Weapons, the Evolution of Battle. Here is a short review of the book which includes this:

“Throughout the book, Emlen’s demonstrations of the many parallels between human and animal weapons are fascinating, even when the possibilities are frightening. “I stand awed and shaken,” he writes, “thrilled by the parallels and, at the same time, terrified by the prospects.”

Back to birds, though, who have not participated in the arms race. The reason? They practically get all they want or need by flashing colors, elaborate dancing, song competition and only occasional claws, pecking or spores. (I’m summarizing what I read here.)

The REAL reason? Flight. Anything that flies has to worry about weight. Flying consumes much more energy than movement on the ground or in water, and energy need increases with added weight, even tiny bits. We have indeed mathematical models of flight that spell out in detail how leg or wing spurs, no matter how small, increase fuel cost in untenable ways (given that fuel acquisition itself – searching for food – costs energy as well,) particularly for smaller birds.

(A funky comparison from the article: United Airlines started printing its inflight magazine on lighter paper to reduce the weight of a typical flight by about 11 pounds, or 0.01% of an airplane’s empty weight. Through this tiny decrease, the company cut its annual fuel use by 170,000 gallons, saving US$290,000 yearly. Think through this with today’s news about gas prices….)

Spurs, then, are primarily found on land fowl and in fewer than 2% of all avian species. And beaks used for fighting are rare as well, given that any injury to them might compromise the ability to feed – a direct threat to survival. Yes, some raptors fight with their talons, but overall, we are seeing a peaceable kingdom, if interrupted by screaming matches over territorial rights..

Evolution, you botched this. Should have provided mankind with wings!!

Swallows already returned, harbingers of renewal.

Killdeer twittered.

Hummingbird glowed.

The morning softness continued, sun broke through clouds.

Later the rain set in. What better reminder of “teaching our troubled souls… to heal.”

To the Rain

BY URSULA K. LE GUIN

Mother rain, manifold, measureless,
falling on fallow, on field and forest,
on house-roof, low hovel, high tower,
downwelling waters all-washing, wider
than cities, softer than sisterhood, vaster
than countrysides, calming, recalling:
return to us, teaching our troubled
souls in your ceaseless descent
to fall, to be fellow, to feel to the root,
to sink in, to heal, to sweeten the sea.



“To the Rain” copyright © 2018 by Ursula K. Le Guin.  First appeared in So Far So Good: Poems 2014-2018, published by Copper Canyon Press in 2018. Reprinted in Poetry Foundation by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. 

Brahm’s Rain Sonata is today’s musical joy.

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Role Models

ULG

Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.

These lines form the core of  Ursula Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness – and I post them here because I decided they were a fitting closure to this week’s theme of aging. The author was just rewarded an important honor (on top of every other prize she received) http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/books/ursula-le-guin-has-earned-a-rare-honor-just-dont-call-her-a-sci-fi-writer.html?_r=0.  My admiration for her has been long-standing, not just for her ability to write, her intelligence, her imagination, her willingness to be our conscience, but also her courage to call out the bad guys – in one particular case the publishing industry. I would like to be angry still like that should I ever reach my mid-eighties, but more importantly I would like to be able to look back on a life that was seemingly uncompromising, and in pursuit of a passion. She is a model for the kind of aging I would like to pull off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9Nf-rsALk

The montage above is one of a cycle that I did for the Left Hand of Darkness some years back. Same for the one below, representing her concept of Shifgrethor, a complicated model of status relations, in the novel.

Shifgrethor (1) copy 1

The other woman who came to mind this week as a model for aging was Sonia Rykiel. She died last week at age 86, having kept her debilitating illness hidden as long as possible to live life (and work) undisturbed by pity or concern. She was an incredible self-made woman who served feminism well, I believe, even though she built her imperium in the fashion industry. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/fashion/sonia-rykiel-dies.html

My wardrobe, which is bought at Target and a few natural fiber, independent small shops in PDX, boasts a Missoni scarf the size of a small blanket, one of the many extraordinary gifts that my father brought me when still alive. I love its feel and looks, but rarely wear it for fear of losing or destroying it. It could probably be swapped for an older used car…..here is this season’s cousin. Insane prices for insane luxury – but Mme Rykiel struck me as strong and down to earth and determined to make a difference. Age be damned.

https://www.net-a-porter.com/us/en/product/714463?cm_mmc=ProductSearchPLA-_-US-_-Accessories-_-Scarves-Google&gclid=Cj0KEQjw3ZS-BRD1xu3qw8uS2s4BEiQA2bcfMz5vrXHhrL517uFGac7cH57UCBrtFwOWhwwDTy8-Jg0aApH88P8HAQ

 

 

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