A charming story.
Guest Submissions Sought for the Go Do Go Café February Theme: Ursula K. Le Guin
Steve Fuller has been encouraging the Baristas to develop monthly themes for the Go Dog Go Cafe’s Baristas and guest writers to use as a springboard for their creativity, much like the Chef’s use a unifying ingredient on Iron Chef or Chopped.
We will be launching this “ingredient for the month” concept in February in way that let’s us honor the great writer Ursula K. Le Guin, who we lost earlier this week after an amazing life of writing and inspiring adults and children around the world with her powerful storytelling, poetry, and essays. We challenge all of you to write a poem, essay, reflective piece, story, flash fiction that honors her, is inspired by a favorite LeGuin story, or dives into the mind of a character in one of her books. You pick, she is your main ingredient.
If you decide to take us up on our monthly challenge, please submit…
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Reversal of fortune
I used to lie awake at night
even with the pills
praying for a goodly sleep
to cure me of my ills
but then, the greenies vaporized
and many nights of Hell
I spent, and I was terrorized
by the clock’s alarming bell
and then, the jumpy nerves were calm
and I was amply blessed
and given mind and body balm
with periods of rest
but now, with many weeks gone by
no medicine to take
I open up my drowsy eyes
but cannot stay awake.
R.I.P. Ursula K. Le Guin ~ 1929 – 2017
Ursula K. Le Guin was one of my favourite authors. I will miss her keen mind and great storytelling.
Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photo by Beth Gwinn/Getty Images. 2001
I don’t know how many of you have heard, but literary icon and one of my personal idols, Ursula K. Le Guin passed away yesterday afternoon. She was the first woman to win the Nebula Award and Hugo Award for Best Novel, for her 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness. She went on to win these awards several more times throughout her career. This prolific and gifted writer wrote twenty more novels, and according to the New York Times, “a dozen books of poetry, more than 100 short stories (collected in multiple volumes), seven collections of essays, 13 books for children and five volumes of translation, including the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu and selected poems by the Chilean Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral.”
Ursula’s novels made me realize that fantasy wasn’t always just about wizards and…
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Chronic Illness and Self-Acceptance
This has really hit home with me at the present time. I would like to thank the author.
Living with a chronic illness is a challenge at best. If the illness is devastating but not recognized by the medical establishment, convincing ourselves life is worth living becomes an uphill battle.
Photo Courtesy of Lucie Stastkova
In the year 2000, I was diagnosed with a chronic illness that presented as a drop-dead flu. I’d been symptomatic since in the 1980s, but early on, flareups were few and far between. Innumerable doctor visits always produced tests with negative results. Over time, symptoms increased in severity and duration until they became immobilizing and constant in 1999.
I knew my doctors thought I was malingering. I felt invalidated yet knew damn well something was wrong. I lived in fear of a dreaded disease not being detected in time to be treated. Simultaneously, I wasn’t sure I wanted to live. By 1999 I was nearly bedridden; in debilitating pain; overwhelmed by fatigue; suffering…
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Little Green Wings (Reprise 3)
Well, I have completed weeks of total withdrawal from a five year addiction to prescription medication. The grip was that strong that it’s been an ongoing struggle, but will get to the other side.
Ancestral
I never knew my Grandpa.
We have only a faded daguerreotype.
But we kids had found out what we weren’t supposed to
Through fortuitous eavesdropping.
He had just gone into his barn one day
And done the deed with his own shotgun.
Then, when I was twenty,
My troubled old Dad said a thing
All alone (he thought) “I wish I was dead”
We were not very close,
But that was when I grieved for him the most.
Dad got his wish, within a year.
Then, an older brother, a generation apart,
A figure we so looked up to,
Suddenly so sad and lost.
His wife, at her wit’s end, slapped him hard
And said snap out of it.
I blame her not, for she knew not what to do.
These kinds of things were not talked about.
She was not angry, but desperate.
And now I, in later life,
Have been visited by this haunting heredity of the family tree.
I knew not, for the first while, what the trouble was,
But can now liken it to a dark drop of ink
Instilled into a glass of clear water,
Muddying into uniform grey.
There are things, though, that I have
That these others had not.
We know what it is about.
We may talk more openly.
We seek help and are encouraged by some.
And we can feel blameless, when they could not.
A World Without Word’s
Some very helpful actions taken by Eve.
Another Scrapped Suicide Note/Nathan McCool
So much expressed here.
Jesus isn’t waiting for me anywhere. I nailed him
to a tree. A long time ago. And hell fires are extinct to me now. I can no more believe
in them than I can the idea that mercy was
coming for me and just lost its way.
I write this in a field – Gaia’s emerald hair is
what leaves this paper water damaged.
I am not crying now or even fighting tears,
for once.
If you could see me now you’d know
that I’m smiling. Like I never have before.
I do not know if we really take anything with us
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Unpopular opinion
Such power and artistry here.
Aremyfeetofftheground 