One of the things about the alchemy of reading is that it is possible to take it in and be transformed. Often in ways where it’s impossible to articulate the difference between who one was before and who one has become.
I don’t know how to articulate the process of becoming as I am that depended on the work of Ursula K. Le Guin. I can only gesture, the finger pointing at the moon, and give you two quotations, one from Earthsea, one from the introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness. Somewhere in the alchemy performed by combining these things, I came into being as I am.
Only in silence the word,
Only in darkness light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.– The Creation of Éa
and
Apollo, the god of light, of reason, of proportion, harmony, number–Apollo blinds those who press too close in worship. Don’t look straight at the sun. Go into a dark bar for a bit and have a beer with Dionysus, every now and then.
I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.
Bright the hawk’s flight, but also remember the dark bar.
My oldest nom de ‘net is ‘Darkhawk’.
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