“The barriers between animal and human come down very easily. We belong to a single great family, and if we are lonely and unhappy we gladly accept the friendship of our distant relations. They suffer as we do if pain is inflicted on them, and like myself they need food, warmth and a little tenderness.”

The devotion that the narrator feels towards “her” animals in The Wall is the only thing that pushes her to survive. Caretaking once again becomes a duty to uphold, and the consequences of failure are much more dire than in her previous life with her human children, with whom she had a strained and unsatisfying relationship. Behind the Wall, the death of the animals would mean certain existential death for the woman.

I loved this book, and it reminded me of how I felt reading the Boxcar Children as a kid. This time, however, there was a much colder realization of what building a self-sufficient life out of nothing would really cost. And there was more cow incest, I suppose.

I like Le Guin’s interpretation here. I feel like you can see the influence of the Tao throughout her body of work, which makes coming back to the source so much fun.

Chapter 2 - Soul Food ☯︎

Everybody on earth knowing
that beauty is beautiful
makes ugliness.

Everybody knowing
that goodness is good
makes wickedness.

For being and nonbeing
arise together;
hard and easy
complete each other;
long and short
shape each other;
high and low
depend on each other;
note and voice
make the music together;
before and after
follow each other.

That’s why the wise soul
does without doing,
teaches without talking.

The things of this world
exist, they are;
you can’t refuse them.

To bear and not to own;
to act and not lay claim;
to do the work and let it go:
for just letting it go
is what makes it stay.