Dear friends,
There are many things I could write about tonight. For example (in order of free association rather than interest or importance):
The lovely day my partner and I had, complete with a diner with outdoor seating and an embarrassment of rich cookies that he baked.
The wonderful walk I took with my friend Ben Ehrlich (you should read his book, The Brain in Search of Itself that came out this year; he’s a phenomenal writer and thinker) and how enjoyable it is to have conversation in motion.
The intense pleasure of thinking.
My incredible niece and my amazing brother and his awesome wife who visited this past week and my badass aunt who was here as well and the wonderful time my mom (with whom they were staying) and I had together. (My niece asked *me* to brush her hair, which is a thing she despises having done. But as my brother pointed out when I felt a bit too proud of myself, I’m not brushing her every day, and if I was, I would surely become the enemy at brush-time as well.)
The simultaneous ecstasy and despair I feel reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s work. (Less when immersed in her fiction… The simultaneity occurs when I read her essays, which are critical masterpieces. This one, which I transcribed from the 1978 version of Planet of Exile, originally published in 1966, blows me away. The introductions to each volume of her selected short stories, The Unreal and the Real, bring me to the brink of weeping. O, to have Le Guin’s confidence, her clarity of understanding and precision in conveying it. O, to have a deep and wide imagination as well as the skills to traverse it safely. O, to be able to claim a place beside the writers I admire and adore and fall to my knees in awe before.)
The process of some recent criticism I’ve written as well as the struggles with an article that has been written and rewritten and rereported and rewritten and which might not come out in the end, after all. (Jury is still out.)
The things I’ve said no to even while feeling there’ll never be any yeses (although, of course, there will be—they’re just on the other side of a weather event of anxiety, imposter syndrome, and ambition).
The residency I have coming up.
The semester I just finished.
…how the novel is (not) going.
But instead of writing endlessly about each of those, and going on and on and on as I sometimes do, I’m firing this off into the sleepy void to say it’s me, hi.
Happy Last Night of Chanukah, y’all.
Yours, etc.,
Ilana
I love this, and I really relate to your thoughts on Ursula Le Guin. I feel the same about her writing and imagination
Hope you had a peaceful and light filled Chanukah.