Quotes From THE DISPOSSESSED by Ursula K. LeGuin

-----The Dispossessed is about a man named Shevek, who has come through unusual circumstances to live on another planet, the one of his ancestor's origin, Urras. His own, former planet, is a desert, barren and devoid of complex living organisms. The people live off of what they can. The reason for their self-exile is the desire for a utopia; anarchy against a government, wars, and battles of class. The reader also feels what it means to move to another country, very different from one's own, and what it is like to be an ex-patriot, or be between two worlds. The sense of not knowing where one belongs anymore, feeling at once with one and with the other, never again of your own world. I would like to thank LeGuin for once again in this novel as well as all of her others, giving us the ability to see with great depth and genius empathy, of what it is to feel life from within the heart of another. -----Shevek is shocked by the opulence of Urras, which is actually very much like our society. We wouldn't think twice about a "nightmare shopping street", equivalent to one of our malls. As far as empathy goes, most people would not immediately be able to imagine his situation, but perhaps we might imagine being a person working in a sweatshop in Southeast Asia or South America somewhere, and how we might feel if we were to suddenly be in a mall, maybe surprise mixed with envy and anger, maybe... But she gives a very interesting perspective of someone coming from a place where THERE IS NOTHING, and what there is, is made, and sold directly by the makers, like it might have been before there were mass transportation, as in medieval times, but even more intense, because even in the old days, there were rich and poor, but in Shevek's society, there is no money, and so, there is no concept of buying, not concept of the haves and the not haves, and so there is no concept of crime, and no hierarchical power over others. Instead, there is beaurocracy controlled by computer, waiting for years, a lack of being able to choose your life, not being able to ask and receive what you want, your children are taken from you, and if you choose not to follow or fit into the system, you are ostracized by the people around you and cannot fulfill your desires at all, or only with a fight. It seemed really frustrating. Having come from an exiled Cuban family, and hearing the stories of the people who lived there or died there in Communist Cuba, it reminded me of many stories (Even more sadly, Cuba, like all communist governments on this Earth, is not an all-are-poor situation. Castro and his buddies enjoy steak and wine every night, while the rest of the country starves. As far as I have been able to see, a true communist society - on this Earth - can only exist in very small numbers...if at all. I lived on a commune of 20, and can attest to the difficulties of it.)

**P.98** _____“Excess is excrement,” Odo wrote in the Analogy. “Excrement retained in the body is a poison.” _____Abbeney was poisonless: a bare city, bright, the colors light and hard, the air pure. It was quiet. You could see it all, laid out as plain as spilt salt. Nothing was hidden.

*******p.131***** ______Saio Pae had taken him "shopping" during his second week in A-Io. Though he did not consider cutting his hair - his hair, after all, was a part of him - he wanted an Urrasti-style suit of clothes and a pair of shoes. He had no desire to look any more foreign than he could help looking. The simplicity of his old suit made it positively ostentatious, and his soft, crude desert boots appeared very odd indeed among the Iotis' fanciful footgear...

______The whole experience had been so bewildering to him that he put it out of his mind as sooon as possible, but he had dreams about it for months afterwards, nightmares. Saemtenevia Prospect was two miles long, and it was a solid mass of people, traffic, and things: things to buy; things for sale. Coats, dresses, gowns, robes, trousers, breeches, shirts, blouses, hats, shoes, stockings,...clothes to wear while sleeping, while swimming, while playing games, while at an afternoon party, while traveling,...- all different, all in hundreds of different cuts, styles, colors, textures, materials. Perfumes, clocks, lamps, statues, cosmetics, candles, pictures, cameras, games, vases, sofas, kettles, puzzles... figurines and souvenirs and kickshaws and mementos and gewgaws and bric-a-brac, everything either useless to begin with or ornamented so as to disguise its use; acres of luxuries, acres of excrement..."The coat costs 8,400 units?" he asked in disbelief, for he had recently read in a newspaper that a "living wage" was about 2,000 units per year..."Pretty thing isn't it? Women love furs." And they went on. After one more block Shevek had felt utterly exhausted. He couldn't look any more. He wanted to hid his eyes. ______And the strangest thing about the nightmare street was that none of the millions of things for sale were made there. They were only sold there. Where were the workshops, the factories, where were the farmers, the craftsmen, the miners, the weavers, the chemists, the carvers, the dyers, the designers, the machinists, where were the hands, the people who made? Out of sight, somewhere else. Behind walls. All the people in all the shops were either buyers or sellers. They had no relationship the things but that of possession.

Hi...

We found five kittens, found homes for four of them and kept one. His name is Ebi, which means shrimp in Japanese, because his coloring resembles that of a cooked shrimp. He's really cute, but has some bad habits which seem to be hereditary, because all his brothers and sisters do it, too. Or maybe its just a kitten thing to pretend your caretaker is a tree, and climb on them. Or climb on the table, the drapes, and other places where you tell him repeatedly not to climb. Or sleep on your caretaker's face...Ebi isn't as bad as his brother Angel, who actually sleeps ON my friend's face, he chooses to sleep next to my face, and in between Shinpei and I on one of our pillows. He is actually a really adorable kitten, and he has made our lives so much more peaceful just by being around.

On another note, Turkey Day came and went. So fast. And I didn't have any turkey. Grrr.
Hopefully there will be one at a Christmas Dinner... I did get my pumpkin pie fix, however, thanks to Costco!! Thanksgiving Day is an interesting holiday to teach in Japan. It was fun to make turkeys with the elementary school kids and teach them words of thanks in their lives. I think that we all forget how much we have, and it is important every day to reiterate some little place in your life that you are thankful for. Thanksgiving is just a reminder to do that.

Too bad the day that was chosen by my country to praise life, was the day that the Massachusetts Puritans chose to massacre 700 men, women and children in what was also referred to as the Piquot "War". (This is just one example of the lies that the country tells to protect the Church. Children are never taught, for example, what all of the Missions in California were really for, either.) I learned about it while searching for information on Thanksgiving. I knew the holiday was probably not as happy as it seemed, from what I had learned in college about the number of natives who died due to Small Pox and other European illnesses when the pilgrims came, but I had no idea that the actual naming of the holiday had this dark of a history.

Well, if we were to dwell on all of the horrible things that have happened in the past, we would never be able to move on. It is important to know what happened, so that one can understand the present, and one can possibly prevent future similar occurrences. It is also crucial to a positive and healthy progression to forgive what happened 200 years ago, or 20, or 2, if the aggravation is no longer occurring, to move on for one's own health.
Today's lesson; to forgive and forget so that we can move on. Much harder when it is my own skin, but nonetheless important...

Last night we watched the Golden Compass. Shinpei commented on how fractured the plot was. We discussed why there might have not been a sequel, when one was promised. And then he commented on the anti-Christian angle of the film. I looked it up online at that point, and lo and behold, the story is based on a series of books called "His Dark Materials" by Phillip Pullman. According to Wiki, He won several medals for the series and is considered one of the best authors of the past 50 years, but the series has a very anti-religious sentiment. How it got into Hollywood is beyond me. The film went through a lot of change, because I guess people didn't read the script before they OK'd it... So that explains the choppy plot; a bunch of it is missing. And after it was made, with plans for a sequel, it got canned due to the anti-Christian aspects of the series, almost imperceptible in the film. Secular people complained that the religious aspects had not been addressed, and the religous people complained that the film was based on something that they didn't approve of. So the sequels won't happen. The books are available on Amazon, however, and I am going to order them asap. I want to know what all the hubbub is about, and hear what Mr. Pullman's religious viewpoint is. Is he a devil worshipper? Is he flagrantly insulting to the Church and the Heavenly Father? Why? Novels are better than movies anyway...