Ursula K. Le Guin Is Dead

It was inevitable, I know. She was old and had been ill, but it was now, and that was unexpected. I suppose it normally is.

Ursula Le Guin died last evening, or afternoon, or morning, depending on where you are in the world, and for the first time in a long time I’m crying for a stranger.

You see, Ursula made me want to be a writer. I had a friend who was into hard sci-fi and he was always recommending authors to me who could describe quantum field physics with poetic grace, but I didn’t understand what they were talking about, so it didn’t mean much to me. Thankfully, my school library was designed for the young mind, and I picked up a copy of The Compass Rose, wherein if found the moment.

I didn’t realise it at the time. The story was The Author of the Acacia Seeds And Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics. I have always remembered it, but most noteworthy to me was the penultimate paragraph of Announcement of an Expedition, in which the fictitious writer, D. Petri, discusses the language of penguins and his intention to travel to the Antarctic in the -60° temperatures to capture the tiny nuances of the language of the Emperor penguin.

To those of my colleagues in whom the spirit of scientific curiosity and aesthetic risk is strong, I say, Imagine it: the ice, the scouring snow, the darkness, the ceaseless whine and scream of the wind. In that black desolation a little band of poets crouches. They are starving; they will not eat for weeks. On the feet of each one, under the warm belly feathers, rests one large egg, thus preserved from the mortal touch of the ice. The poets cannot hear each other; they cannot see each other. They can only feel the other's warmth. That is their poetry, that is their art. Like all kinetic literatures, it is silent; unlike other kinetic literatures, it is all but immobile, ineffably subtle. The ruffling of a feather; the shifting of a wing; the touch, the faint, warm touch of the one beside you. In unutterable, miserable, black solitude, the affirmation. In absence, presence. In death, life.

I was entranced by the notion of such a language. I was 14 years old. I couldn’t talk to anyone, not my parents, my brothers, my sister was gone to university. I couldn’t talk to girls. In truth, I wasn’t even sure if it was girls I wanted to talk to. I had friends, after a fashion, but I never really fit in anywhere.

So I went home, took over my sisters bedroom during the week, and pounded holes in the ribbon of her typewriter.

I still remember the scraping across my fingers as my enthusiasm outpaced the keys, trapping the first knuckle between them, shearing the skin as I drew them out. I remember as spring turned to summer and heat descended, I would find myself overwarm in the room, dripping with sweat, but not wanting to stop, because I had so many ideas. I remember looking into the mirror of the dressing table upon which the typewriter rested, as my eyes lost focus and my face swam, transforming into someone else, and instantly I would know who they were, and where, and I would begin to write about them.

But it wasn’t to be.

I would show the stories to others, readers, and they would say they were good, in that way. They weren’t good. I know they weren’t. They were the melodrama of a wildly self-absorbed teenager, but nobody would tell me precisely what was wrong with them. They would instead echo old platitudes and tell me how hard it was to be a writer, how difficult to make a living, how there were so many better careers out there.

I began to fear rejection. I had been shy in primary school, but was getting over it as I grew. This was different to shyness. This was the pain of being told I wasn’t good enough. Worse; not being told, but being “informed”, in indirect language, that I would be better putting my energies elsewhere.

I stopped typing. Not immediately, but I learned that my refusal to accept the wisdom that had been passed to me would engender anger: I should be outside playing; that racket was annoying; have you done [anything else] yet? I learned to hide my writing. I wrote it longhand in notebooks. I had no intention of sharing it, because I had been reliably informed by those who should have been supporting me, that I wasn’t good enough. I should have realised, when I started stealing the notebooks I couldn’t afford so that I could continue, that this was who I was, but the pressure was on to achieve something else, and when other distractions came along (like roleplaying games, something else that wasn’t good enough for my critics, but by then I had accepted that that was where I belonged) that allowed me to be creative without the risk of failure, I embraced them instead, and my writing stopped.

So, what happened? I became a father. My child was awash with words. We encouraged her to draw and read and write and be proud of what she did. She has still stalled, because depression is a horrific thing, but I’m confident she’ll come back to it. What I got from it was a story she wrote for me for my birthday one year. It was in some ways childish and in others very mature, and it inspired me. I started writing again.

There is a manuscript. It’s not good, but it is complete and needs to be edited, once I know how. I showed it to a few people and, once again, all I got was silence. It would be better if they told me it was dire, pointless, irredeemable scat than to once again have silence as my criticism. It would be enough to make a man stop writing again.

Except, Ursula died.

My first muse is gone, and I am once again in the scouring snow, the darkness, the ceaseless whine, and I will write. I must finish the manuscript and send it out to agents and pubishers.

I must not fear silence.