In the two previous blogs I wondered about ways to predict the future and ways to remember the past. So it seems fitting then to round up this week with a way to see the present.

I had connected the former to science, would like to introduce the latter with poetry, along the maxim lodged in my head by the unforgotten, unforgettable Ursula LeGuin (1929-2018):

“Science describes accurately from outside, poetry describes accurately from inside. Science explicates, poetry implicates.”

These lines come from an essay, Deep in Admiration, that precedes the poems in LeGuin’s penultimate book of poetry, Late in the Day. (2015.) (So Far So Good: Final Poems 2014-2018 was published posthumously). In typical fashion the small volume inspires and lifts up, even though it centers around finiteness, both personal and ecological. The poems urge us towards awareness. My mindfulness will never reach the height of observational precision and depth of forming connections among all in the natural world, as did her’s. Nor will I ever succeed in emulating the driest of dry humor that pervades so many of her writings. But it is good to be reminded to try and focus on the here and now. Since as we know it might not exist much longer. The here as much as the now.

Hymn to Time

Ursula K. Le Guin – 1929-2018

Time says “Let there be”
every moment and instantly
there is space and the radiance
of each bright galaxy.

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

Time makes room
for going and coming home
and in time’s womb
begins all ending.

Time is being and being
time, it is all one thing,
the shining, the seeing,
the dark abounding.

And here is to doing all that with elegance and gusto during advanced age…

Artemisia Tridentata

Some ruthlessness befits old age. 
Tender young herbs are generous and pliant, 
but in dry solitudes the grey-leaved sage 
stands unforthcoming and defiant.

by Ursula LeGuin

Photographs include sage and Eastern Oregon landscapes; music, from a collaboration between LeGuin and Todd Barton, is mind boggling.

“Music and Poetry of the Kesh is the documentation of an invented Pacific Coast peoples from a far distant time, and the soundtrack of famed science fiction author, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home. In the novel, the story of Stone Telling, a young woman of the Kesh, is woven within a larger anthropological folklore and fantasy. 

The ways of the Kesh were originally presented in 1985 as a five hundred plus page book accompanied with illustrations of instruments and tools, maps, a glossary of terms, recipes, poems, an alphabet (Le Guin’s conlang, so she could write non-English lyrics), and with early editions, a cassette of “field recordings” and indigenous song. Le Guin wanted to hear the people she’d imagined; she embarked on an elaborate process with her friend Todd Barton to invoke their spirit and tradition.”

In other words, the music and language were invented at the same time the book was written. Listening to it while reading Always coming home was the idea. Details here.