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Science by Ursula K. Le Guin

By T.

13 March 2013

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Science
Ursula K. Le Guin

What little we have ever understood
is like an offering we make beside the sea.
It is pure worship when pursued
as its own end, to find out. Mystery,
the undiminishable silent flood,
stretches on out from where we pray
round the clear altar flame. The god
accepts the sacrifice and turns away.

MARGINALIA

I am listening to Handel’s Sarabande (Suite in D minor), and thinking about monsters. I remember an evening in November, six years ago, when I drew a creature in my notebook. He had commas in his hair, which is styled like Elvis’s, a large mouth, which is always open, as if a curse, or an urge he cannot control. He also had a large head, and awfully thin legs, and no body. I didn’t think he deserved one. I drew him with sleeves though, and gave him nice shoes (with laces tied), as well as striped socks up to his knees. I thought, if only you exist in real life. Then I would worry about you instead, and not of my future, nor my present.

That’s what I do these days. Mulling things over. When I’m working. When I’m writing. When I’m eating. The more I seek for answers, the more I unearth questions.

ABOUT URSULA K. LE GUIN

American writer Ursula K. Le Guin was the author of over 20 novels, a dozen books of poetry, over 100 short stories, and several books of essays. Born in Berkeley, California, she earned a BA from Radcliffe College, an MA in Romance Literature from Columbia University, and then studied in Paris on a Fulbright fellowship. Her fiction gravitated toward the genre of science fiction, with many of her most famous books and stories examining our own world though stories combining fantasy

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