Carnets de Seattle: An Evening with Ursula K. Le Guin

Two wonderful posts up on Loic's blog, Carnets de Seattle.  Loic is a French expatriate living in Seattle, my hometown.  It is always a pleasure to read his impressions of life in the Pacific Northwest, a region that is hard to define precisely but includes the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington and Oregon.

For reasons unknown, this region is home to some of the very best writers of science-fiction and fantasy:  Frank Herbert (Dune), for example, and Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Tombs of Atuan and many others).

Ursula K. Le Guin is hands down one of my all-time favorite authors.  As I child I read all of her "children's" books which are deep and dark - they both entertained and disturbed me.  Her sci-fi is just as good and her essays are outstanding.  One of the first books I gave to the younger Frenchling when she expressed interest in becoming a writer was The Language of the Night which is a series of superb essays on fantasy and science fiction.  In that collection is one that I have read and re-read many times over the course of my life called  "The Child and the Shadow."  It's an interpretation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale about a man who sends his shadow off to meet a beautiful girl in a house across the street because he's too afraid to go himself.  His life is never the same after he loses the dark side and it doesn't end well.  Le Guin described it as "a story about insanity, ending in humiliation and death."   And the lesson to be learned from it?

"Reduced to the language of daylight, Andersen's story says that a man who will not confront and accept his shadow is a lost soul.  It also says something specifically about itself, about art. It says that if you wish to enter the House of Poetry, you have to enter it in the flesh, the solid, imperfect, unwieldy body, which has corns and greeds and passions, the body that casts a shadow.  It says that if the author ignores evil, he will never enter into the House of Light."

I never met Le Guin when I was living in Seattle but Loic had an opportunity recently to do so at an event organized by one of Seattle's many fine public libraries.  He wrote two posts about the encounter:   Une soirée avec Ursula K. Le Guin and  Une soirée avec Ursula K. Le Guin II.

I learned a few things from Loic's post.  Le Guin is married to a Frenchman (I had no idea) and she does translations.  The event, in fact, was a presentation of a partial English translation of Squaring the Circle by Gheorghe Sasarman.

And here is where it gets very interesting.  Why a partial translation and not a complete one?  Loic said that the second half of her answer to that question surprised him.

"L'autre raison est complètement différente: Ursula K. Le Guin n'a pas traduit certains textes car ils présentaient une vision de la femme qui la choquaient profondément."
(The other reason is completely different:  Ursula K. Le Guin did not translate certain texts because they presented a vision of woman that profoundly shocked her.)

In other words, this woman author who was censored decided to censor someone else's work because she did not like what he had to say on a subject she felt strongly about.

And I have to wonder if this means that Le Guin sent her own shadow out into the world while she did this work.  Did she "ignore evil" by not translating words or ideas that shocked her?  In doing this, did she cast herself out of the House of Light?

"Unadmitted to consciousness, the shadow is projected outward, onto others.  There is nothing wrong with me - it's them... If the individual wants to live in the real world, he must withdraw his projections;  he must admit that the hateful, the evil, exists within himself. "

All good questions for a Monday morning.  Read Loic's posts and, if it amuses you during the day, set your gray matter to answering them for yourself.

Vide-grenier de Porchefontaine

Do the French have garage sales?

You bet they do.  They are called vide-greniers which means "empty the attic' and I just went to a spectacular one here today in Porchefontaine.  They closed off the streets in the center of the neighborhood and local residents put up stalls up and down the main roads with stuff for sale.

I had so much fun.  Bargaining was allowed.  Good cheer was abundant.  I was captivated and entertained beyond my wildest expectations.  I don't know how many complete strangers I met - one woman and I literally went through our sacks in the middle of the street showing each other all the treasure we found - and how many faces I recognized from church, local shops and neighborhoods in and adjacent to Porchefontaine.

For the cerise sur le gâteau, I scored some real bargains.

On the left is a portable sewing box.  It has room for all my quilting stuff so I can get rid of all those plastic boxes in the basement.  It's light and has a handle so I can move it from room to room.  The screws need tightening and it needs a good dusting but other than that it's in perfect shape.

On the right is a small night table with a marble top.  Just beautiful and small enough to fit in a corner of my very small house.

On top of the table is this dish that I got for 1 Euro.  I'd been looking for something like this for serving hot vegetables like asparagus or beans.  It's in perfect shape and I thought it was very pretty.

Okay, none of this stuff was essential but the fun was in the process, not the final product.  I'll find space for all of it and when next year's vide-grenier rolls around, I have promised my spouse to subtract (not add) to the clutter.

Bon dimanche, everyone!

Bi-cultural Families: The Culture Wars

A Flophouse reader left an interesting comment the other day.  He is a Frenchman with a family living in the U.S. and what he said touched a very deep chord within me.  His children, he said jokingly, are more American than French.

Yes, that happens when you are the "foreign" half of a couple and the children are being brought up in a country other than your own.  You are outclassed and outnumbered because culture is to man what the sea is to a fish.  Between the native spouse, the in-laws, the childcare workers, your children's friends and the public schools, it's a battle to pass on even a small sliver of your home culture and language.  (Oh, if the English (or French) Only crowd had any idea how hard it is to transmit a language and a culture in these situations, they might relax a bit.)  Those little dual national minnows are often not terribly receptive or interested in the other country.  What child wants to be different in elementary or middle school?  This is their world and when they are young, it's the whole world.  They are smart enough to figure out what their friends, family and teachers think is important and to act accordingly.

Some are even embarrassed by their immigrant parent.  When Mom (or Dad) speaks with an accent or makes the occasional grammatical error in the local language, they wince.  They don't fail to notice that the society around them has negative attitudes toward "foreigners" or dislikes hearing other language spoken in public spaces.  I once sat through a meeting at school next to a woman from Brazil who had to listen (with her daughter right there)  to other parents talking about how "useless" it was for anyone to learn Portuguese.  My own children came home several times distressed and angry because their teachers decided to talk about "fat Americans"  or the evil nature of the United States and her people.

I've met foreign parents who gave up and went for radical assimilation.  OK, we'll speak French at home from now on - they can learn English (or German or Spanish) later at school.  Plane tickets are expensive and the kids would much rather go to grand-mère's house in the country, so we'll stay here this year.  Maybe we'll plan a trip next year....

I respect that decision.  It takes a lot of time and energy to bring children up more or less bi-cultural.  Money is also a problem for some.  Long ago I knew an American woman here in France who was a secretary married to a housepainter.  With three kids, plane tickets to the U.S. were a luxury they simply couldn't afford.  In the end, it's hard enough as it is to be an immigrant, why make things worse by taking on the dominant culture?

Some of us are insane enough to try.  It's not that we don't want our children to be French or American or German - it's that we want to pass on something of where we came from to the next generation.  What is actually transmitted varies - every parent has to take a good hard look at his own culture and determine what he or she thinks is important.  In my case I said "yes" to English and American history and "no" to Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.  I had a lot of help from the American family in the U.S. who sent books and videos and hosted the Frenchlings when we sent them for a visit.

Whatever the foreign parent decides after negotiation with the native spouse, is really up to him or her.  There is no one right way to do this just as there is no perfect way to be a parent.  And isn't there always someone out there ready to tell us that we're doing a very poor job of it?

I personally think that passing along one's culture is a battle worth fighting.  And if I may offer some solace to those who may still be struggling with this?

Children grow up.  What they care about at five will not be what they care about at fifteen (or fifty). Just because you lose a few battles (and you will) it doesn't mean you've lost the war.   If you can take a stand for those few things that you really care about and are willing to fight for, then you will have planted seeds that will bloom one day into real interest in the other country - its people, culture and language.

Asking Better Questions about Migration

Interesting article up on the Open Border website by Alex Nowrasteh.  Many discussions about illegal immigration are uninteresting because they start from the assumption that it is a huge problem, worthy of our attention and our tax dollars.

In his article Mr. Nowrasteh challenges that assumption and asks instead:   Why are there so few unlawful migrants?  The U.S. has a population of around 315 million.  The EU is even larger with 500 million.  And yet, both regions have relatively low numbers of illegal migrants.  You cannot tell me that 10-11 million sans papiers out of a U.S. population of over 300 million means that the barbarians are at the gate, swamping the native population and intent on destroying their "civilization."

Nowrasteh argues that there are two reasons that hordes are not storming the gates:  uncertain economic benefits and the fear of punishment.  These are the things, he says, that deter many people from migrating illegally.

It's an interesting argument and his points are well taken.  Is it the whole story?  I don't think so.  He makes two assumptions that I question.

The first is that low-skilled labor migration is all about economics.  We look at a low wage country like Mexico and we assume that, of course, people there want to move to a country where they can make more money.  I don't think it's that simple.  I look at economics as just one factor among many that influences that decision to migrate.  Other reasons may include wanting to be with family (lots of families split by nationality in border areas), improving the chances of one's children or escaping persecution/discrimination.  Is a young woman limited by her sex in her home country migrating in order to make more money or out of desperation because her life choices are limited where she is?  Or a father who brings his children to a country with a better educational system so that they might have better opportunities?  Or what about a gay couple where one is an American citizen who can't get a Green Card for his or her partner?  There are reasons other than employment or higher wages that migrants seek under certain circumstances.   And that is true for all migrants be they highly-qualified or semi-skilled labor.

The second is that fear of punishment is an effective deterrent.  It is surely a factor but looking at the 10-11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. many of them have lived there for over 10 years.  Some left during the Great Recession but there are still many who are long-term residents who aren't going anywhere.  Perhaps the risk of getting caught crossing the border deters only those who are at the very beginning of their migration journey and are unsure about the cost/benefits.  I'm not sure it is effective for those who are determined to leave one country for another.  The costs cited in the article can be lowered.  Instead of paying a smuggler, many come in as tourists or students and overstay.  Others have access to migrant networks - friends and family who can help.  Fear of punishment can be much less where the migrant has support and assistance waiting for him on the other side of the border.

My last quibble with his argument is that it is U.S. centric.  The article was clearly written with an American audience in mind and Americans have a tendency to see all migration questions through the prism of Mexican migration.  Another answer to the question "Why aren't there more illegal immigrants in the U.S.?" might be that the U.S. is no longer the only choice destination for migrants.  There are other places in the world with better education and social welfare systems that are respectful of human rights and have solid opportunities for the skilled and semi-skilled migrant.  Migrants today know more about these places, and the choices available to them, thanks to the Net and social media, not to mention the global/local press.  Eva Hoffman argued that there is no center anymore:

Multivalence is no more than a condition of contemporary awareness, and no more than the contemporary world demands. The weight of the world used to be vertical: it used to come from the past, or from the hierarchy of heaven and earth and hell; now it's horizontal, made up of the endless multiplicity of events going on at once and pressing at each moment on our minds and our living rooms. Dislocation is the norm rather than the aberration in our time, but even in the unlikely event that we spend an entire lifetime in one place, the fabulous diverseness with which we live reminds us constantly that we are no longer the norm or the center, that there is no one geographic center pulling the world together and glowing with the allure of the real thing.

That greater awareness of all the world has to offer is not necessarily favorable to the U.S.  I would argue that the perception of the U.S. is also a deterrent to migration.  Americans might be surprised to learn that some potential migrants view the U.S. as a very violent society that does not take care of people in need.  That the truth is much more complex is lost on those who get their information about that country through scary headlines in the local paper or on the Internet and horror stories passed along by word of mouth.  In every country I have ever lived in or travelled to, I have encountered people with this vision of the U.S. and I think that is one hell of a deterrent to both illegal and legal migration.

More on Mortality

I have a new love thanks to Yvonne over at Considering the Lilies:  Lessons from the Field.

It's called Brain Pickings, "a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why, bringing you things you didn’t know you were interested in — until you are."  I read one post and I was hooked.  Extraordinary.

A link to this piece on their site called The Mortality Paradox, by Maria Popova, dropped fortuitously into my mailbox this week along with another to a recent commencement address by Joss Whedon.  

Popova's article is a wonderful essay about death and Stephen Cave's book,
Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization - a book that is now near the top of my to read list along with Christopher Hitchen's Mortality.

I really miss Hitchens.  He was one of my favorite writers in spite of (perhaps because of) the fact that I violently disagreed with him on many occasions.  A bonus for those of who believe in the afterlife (which Hitchens assuredly did not) is that death does not mean that the conversation is over.  I have a list of people I want to talk to when I pass on.  He, Andy Sundberg, and a few others are firmly on that list and I plan on tracking them down and asking them all the things I wanted to know but failed to ask in this life.

The Joss Whedon piece is well worth watching.  Telling the young, bright-eyed, students on the cusp of a new chapter of their life, "You are all going to die," take a great of audacity.  He is funny and deeply serious, all at the same time.  Not everyone can get away with that and keep his audience's attention.  

The part where he talks about honoring the dissent in yourself really struck a chord in me.  Humility has  really bad connotations in our world but it's worth taking a good hard look at it today.  I found that simply asking, "What if I'm wrong?"  broadens my world in a way that I would have found unimaginable a few years ago.  I became "teachable" when I stopped fighting that little voice inside me that was so at odds with the discussions going on around me.  I still feel strongly about things and I believe in fighting for what I think is important.  But as Whedon points out denying the connection, and questioning the humanity and basic goodness of people who disagree with you, isn't productive, closes doors and, for me, is a serious danger to my sobriety.

I don't want to live and die with an ossified beliefs, so entrenched in grumpy inflexibility that I deprive myself of all this world and the next has to offer.

Off to Paris today to connect with some fine people I know who I don't always agree with, but whom I've learned to love because they make my world wider.

Enjoy the video.

Lapsed Agnostics

"If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.  We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.  We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace....

We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves."

Page 83-83
The Big Book


As I examine the events in my life over the past few years, I find that it is hard to give a proper accounting.   So much has happened in such a short period of time and my memory these days is like the box of threads I keep in my sewing kit.  Over time, and through neglect, the contents have become tangled and jumbled, and picking them apart is no small task.  Some threads are brighter than others, however, and today I'm going to pull them out and try to explain what they mean to me.

Recovery is where it all started.  I am a member of a 12-step program which has a strong tradition of anonymity.  This means that I am not to "out" myself as a member or discuss anything that happens in the meetings.  Nonetheless, from what I have said, I am sure that many of you are familiar with the program and know more or less how it works.

How did I end up in such a group?  Well, I had struggled to control my drinking for many years.  Whatever my best intentions, it always seemed that I would start drinking at a pot (cocktail) or in a lovely Parisian bar with friends, and couldn't stop.  "Just one (or two)" didn't seem apply to me and I always drank more  than I intended to with predictable results.  This went on for years as I exercised "control" by setting limits and not drinking at all for long periods.   This allowed me to function and I was able to progress in my career and raise a family.  But it was a struggle and a lot of my energy was wasted in those little games we alcoholics play with ourselves to justify our drinking.  Then something changed (and I have no idea what made me tip).  Not matter how often I resolved not to drink that day, that weekend, that week, I would inevitably find myself with a glass of wine in my hands well before the sun was over the yardarm.  I could not not drink to get through my day, and when I realized that, I was terrified.

To make a long story short, I tried to stop and couldn't.  I could not imagine a life without wine, the magic potion that made me (I thought) witty, smart and fun to be around.  It gave me confidence and fueled my creativity.  How could I think and write, I thought, if I can't drink anymore?  Such is the grandiosity and confusion of the alcoholic.  In my fuddled mind, I seem to have confused myself with Hemingway or Hitchens.

It was only when I finally came to a point of such deep despair and desperation, and realized that I might actually die if I didn't stop drinking, that I finally contacted that organization in Paris and started going to meetings. The support, the tools, and the experiences of other alcoholics made it possible for me to stop for good.  I'll be picking up yet another chip (a small coin that indicates how long a person has been sober) at a meeting in late June.

In the Big Book of this organization, there are what we call The Promises:  serenity, peace, freedom and happiness.  So, it seemed like a great cosmic joke when, after having struggled to overcome one life destroying illness, I was diagnosed with fairly advanced breast cancer.  Two large tumors and one small one.  Worse, it had spread to my lymph nodes (never a good sign).  I had a few moments at the beginning when I shook my fist at the universe and said, "This is my reward?  Took me awhile to realize that they did come true.  Would I have gone to see my doctor immediately about that pesky lump I felt If I had still been drinking?  And what if I had still been in a state of active alcoholism when  I was diagnosed?   Would I have survived the treatment - the surgery, the chemotherapy, and radiation?

The move from anger to acceptance was, thanks to my program, relatively quick.  Life is in session.  Stuff happens.  Surrender.  How to explain to you that I felt more at peace, more serene and happier this past year then in all the years when I was out at sea, so far from God, trying to quench that unquenchable thirst with salty water?

When I started my recovery I was in the middle of one of my periodic flirtations with agnosticism/atheism.  I avidly read "The Four Horseman of the New Atheism": Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett.  And after spending many hours reading and watching videos, I started to be very, very bored.  They seemed to be repeating themselves ad nauseum:  there is no God, organized religion is bad, religious people are delusional.  Not the sort of people I would like to have over to dinner - not because they are uninteresting, but because once you've heard the spiel and the 'Hallelujah's'  of the like minded, than what more is there to talk about?  The only thing that intrigued me at the end was that the Horseman felt so compelled to beat their steed long after it had expired.  I so wanted to say:  Let it go, the beast is dead, my dears.  Bury it and move on.

In recovery I came to another conclusion after I'd been sober long enough for me to start having brief moments of sanity.  Their spiel was unsatisfactory to me because in my heart was a guilty secret:  part of me did believe and craved a sign that there was something more.  I just hadn't been courageous or honest enough to admit it.  But I did not see the depths of my cowardice and intellectual laziness until I read Lapsed Agnostic by the Irish journalist, John Waters, and found the words that cut me deep because they were so true:

"When I was young I used to ask the most fundamental questions all the time.  What am I.  Who made me (sometimes, though not always, in the sense of Who is this God Who made me)?  What am I doing here?" 

"When I became what I in retrospect describe as an 'agnostic', these questions vanished from my consciousness.  Occasionally I would trot them out in order to argue with someone who asserted a belief in God, but for myself they were no longer live questions.  This suggests to me that my 'agnosticism' was never an actual position, but an evasion.  Reacting to the dark spectre of Catholicism, I withdrew, not into a new and convinced philosophical position, but into a kind of self-constructed box  which shut out questions that seemed, to my consciousness then, irrelevant."

People react in interesting ways when their friends or family are faced with life's challenges and turn to religion.  "Of course," they say, "It's because of the drinking or the cancer or the death of a loved one."  Fascinating that such an act seems to require excuses for our madness.  Putting aside the mildly condescending attitude that this implies, may I ask instead that we all consider another view?

I humbly suggest to you that the recovering alcoholic and the person stricken with cancer who seek a deeper union with God are not delusional people.  On the contrary it is the active alcoholic who is, by definition, insane and much of what he or she says as the disease progresses (in my experience) can never be taken as their last word.  Ask them these things again when they get sober.  Sanity usually starts to shine through at about month three of sobriety and all the effects of alcohol abuse (mental, physical and spiritual) can linger for years.

As for the cancer patient, nothing kicks one into lucidity faster than that diagnosis.  It can provoke a radical re-examination of one's life to date and, not surprisingly, deep reflection on the question, "How shall I live now that I know my time here is limited?"

For me the secular world does not have satisfactory answers or a coherent approach to offer in the face of tragedy that comes out of the blue and is no one's fault.  There is no comfort to be had, no meaning to be found, no guided discovery possible in the New Atheism or in Agnosticism 'lite".  If there is delusion to be found here, I think it comes when we avoid deep fundamental questions with all our might.  In the modern secular world we like to pretend that we are immortal.  Some even insinuate that those who turn out to be very mortal indeed have somehow 'sinned' and that is the cause of their suffering.  Perhaps this shows that many of us are closer than we know to a secular belief system based on the faith that if we simply avoid overeating/drinking/smoking/unsafe sex/pesticides/pollution that we will live forever.

This did not escape the notice of the Dalai Lama:  “What surprised me most with westerners is that they lose health to make money and then spend that money in order to get it back. They think so hard about the future that they forget to live the present; that way they don't live the present, and not the future either. They live as if they should never die, and then die as if they had never lived.”

It is the awareness of death and the return to sanity that sends many of us (not all) back to those questions we asked as children.  That is what led me back to the Church.  Believe me, it is not my purpose here to convert anyone - if God wants you, then I am sure He'll let you know - but I do feel compelled to share that experience because it is the underlying current under all that I say, do and write now.  In My Bright Abyss, Christian Wiman expresses it far better than I ever could with words that sing to my heart as I read late into the night:

"In truth, though, what I crave at this point in my life is to speak more clearly what it is that I believe.  It is not that I am tired of poetic truth, or that I feel it to be somehow weaker or less true than reason.  The opposite is the case.  Inspiration is to thought what grace is to faith:  intrusive, transcendent, transformative, but also evanescent and, all too often, anomalous." 

"How do you answer the burn of being?  What might it mean for your life - and for your death - to acknowledge that insistent, persistent ghost?" 

"And faith is finding yourself, in the deepest part of your soul, in the very heart of who you are, moved to praise it."

Flophouse Friday

I am so tired.  The trip to Brussels took a lot out of me.  Yesterday Godin stopped by and had a look at our chimney and said "no problem" so we signed the devis and wrote him a check.  Installation is scheduled for mid-July.

Here in Versailles the weather continues to be terrible.  It's still raining.  The upside is that the garden, especially the reseeded lawn, is lush and green.

Going through my photos, I found one from last year that shows what the garden looked like when we moved in.  I didn't remember it being that bad but it was.

So for Friday's post I offer you before and after pictures of our very own Versailles garden.  Then I am going to wrap a quilt around me and read bodice rippers until I absolutely have to go out later in the day.

And for a bonus (while I still have you), here is a picture of me and my red hair from the Brussels trip: