What a gift of a comment, thank you. I am (embarassingly) unfamiliar with Le Guin’s work, I’ve been meaning to read her for ages. I do have a copy of Ishi, but that’s her parents. I looked up the theory, and it’s very moving. Thank you for sharing that with me. Now I have a good way to enter her work
Here's a pdf of her original essay (short and sweet but so good... has greatly influenced my own work). I also highly recommend Always Coming Home and think you'd like it given your writings and art here!
In a warmer climate than you are apparently working in, another ancient, symbolic item similar to the bark basket might be the bottle gourd. I think it ws Dolores laChapelle (in “Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, Rapture of the Deep” suggested the gourd may have been among the first cultivated plants (along with entheogens)….since food was easy to come by compared to containers (and entheogens). Added to the mystique is that the bottle gourd genetically originated in Africa and yet spread pretty much everywhere warm enough to grow it well before the white man’s “voyages of discovery”.
I will send this to my mom, she grows gourds in Tucson, and I do love making baskets from them. This is beautiful and fascinating! I will also dive in to LaChapelle’s work. With summer coming that title sounds incredibly tantalizing for a warm summer day in the sun, on the ground with some flowers
"To become a vessel is not to be emptied of self, but opened wide enough to hold more than the self alone." I love this, Lena. There is so much writing out there advising people - particularly women - not to carry others, as it leaves us depleted and prone to burnout. But many of us want to live in a world where we do support each other. Your image of the vessel is a beautiful map for how to keep hold of ourselves even as we make space for others.
Beautiful work and words! Reminds me of Ursula Le Guin's Carrier Bag theory.
What a gift of a comment, thank you. I am (embarassingly) unfamiliar with Le Guin’s work, I’ve been meaning to read her for ages. I do have a copy of Ishi, but that’s her parents. I looked up the theory, and it’s very moving. Thank you for sharing that with me. Now I have a good way to enter her work
Here's a pdf of her original essay (short and sweet but so good... has greatly influenced my own work). I also highly recommend Always Coming Home and think you'd like it given your writings and art here!
https://otherfutures.nl/uploads/documents/le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction.pdf
That was a great read, so funny!
In a warmer climate than you are apparently working in, another ancient, symbolic item similar to the bark basket might be the bottle gourd. I think it ws Dolores laChapelle (in “Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, Rapture of the Deep” suggested the gourd may have been among the first cultivated plants (along with entheogens)….since food was easy to come by compared to containers (and entheogens). Added to the mystique is that the bottle gourd genetically originated in Africa and yet spread pretty much everywhere warm enough to grow it well before the white man’s “voyages of discovery”.
I will send this to my mom, she grows gourds in Tucson, and I do love making baskets from them. This is beautiful and fascinating! I will also dive in to LaChapelle’s work. With summer coming that title sounds incredibly tantalizing for a warm summer day in the sun, on the ground with some flowers
"To become a vessel is not to be emptied of self, but opened wide enough to hold more than the self alone." I love this, Lena. There is so much writing out there advising people - particularly women - not to carry others, as it leaves us depleted and prone to burnout. But many of us want to live in a world where we do support each other. Your image of the vessel is a beautiful map for how to keep hold of ourselves even as we make space for others.