Meet Me at Infinity (40 page)

Of course I realize you are saying that it is only a belief, that bodily processes can scare both men and women into feelings that are deathly. And you are (to me) quite right in pointing out that the fear of death is a great unacknowledged participant at our mental table. But—

Maybe because I have just myself emerged from a bout of depression, Suzy, forgive my alarm. But I wish and hope that you would be very careful of this thought, and hold it at arm’s length if you must hold it. Like a savage snake.

And there is the other side of the coin, the well-known life-giving aspect of female processes. I won’t go on about this because I myself have some doubts about the Great Mother business, but you can’t deny that the overall suggestion is at least as much life-promoting as deathly. Maybe the fact of birth itself is deathly—“My replacement has been born”—but I suspect the general feeling is more on the order of satisfaction in increase of life. My flocks, my herds, my children.

By the way, maybe a final word here on my excursion into trying to redefine the sexes so as to lump men and women into more inclusive categories. I am not, by the way, trying to “defend” motherhood as Chip says—except in the general sense that nurturant men and women are a bit less likely to blow up the world. But they may just as easily overproduce young and end us their own way. To me, each of my “sexes”—males and mothers—have their own pathology. What I was trying to ask, maybe buried in my own verbiage, was this:

Why are children raised? Or,

What is the personal, immediate, reward? Or,

What motive urges us and ensures that it will be carried out?

Every Human activity has some rewarding aspect, some goal, some good-feeling prize for which we do it. Eating
satisfies,
fucking
feels
good, walking out of the sun saves us from frying. But what is the orgasmic or homeostatic goal of mothering? In short, why does that rhesus or chimp or opossum—male or female—lug that youngster around?
Why?

Are we, for God’s sake, to fall back on that taboo of taboos, “maternal instinct”? Come on, I had hoped somebody would turn their jumbo brain to this problem and enlighten me.

But nobody did. Oh well.

But it is a mystery, if you compare it with any other animal activity. And nobody seems to care.

What IVe been mulling over, partly in relation to men, is something about power. Authority. Dominance-submission structures, whether statewide or confined to a pair.

But first, a word. Chip, and to some extent Joanna, seemed to think I was “threatening” when I said that our liberties are precarious, that our enemies have the power. Now, it’s true that when someone says “You’re gonna be buried,” it can be a covert threat. But the thing I left out, which let you think that, was that I see myself, very accurately, as one of the mob-ees. If the dark day arises when through war or famine or panic a nucleus of rednecks rises up and decides to subjugate everybody different, Tiptree will be right up there on the list, despite my WASP credentials. I have learned in a long life in organizations that I am a natural lynchee if I let down my guard an inch. I exude the same smell of subversion which those good ole boys can smell a mile away, like the way they used to hunt gays. It is something I shall never get rid of; one look at me and you just
know
I’m thinking something un-American. I myself don’t know what it is, all I know is that when the gang closes ranks, I’m
out.
And I’m afraid I know where the real power is, despite the brave words. All I feel I can do about it is to hope that Der Tag cometh not—and keep my ammunition in a dry place. (Paranoia, anyone?)

Back in 1936 I saw a funny thing. In those days the main coast highway down California was a two-lane blacktop, which wound through a wide place in the woods called Los Gatos. (Yes.) Los Gatos consisted of a tarpaper whorehouse and a line of enormous lead slot machines, called the Wise Men. They were got up to caricature the Three Kings of Bethlehem. (Yes.) But the most impressive feature of Los Gatos was a huge wrought-iron sign stretching over the whole road, which said:

THE GENTILE WHITE MAN IS THE KING OF THE EARTH.

I never stopped to play the slot machines. Because I know this did not mean Me. Call me a wise man.

Well, much has happened to Los Gatos and to kings, but how deep has it gone in the Human heart, and how far are we from 1936? All that far? My.

Which brings me to kings. I’ve been reading a mess of Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Wm. Morris, and T. H. White. And I find extraordinary the unspoken assumption that the greatest boon a people can achieve is—a king. The King Has Returned! Well, perhaps in the feudal state of things one can understand
some
of that. But I suspect it is a largely male contribution.

It led me on to think how women are supposed to be more dependent, to slide easily into and adjust gratefully to domination. Well, to the extent that many women don’t care who decides what car he buys, and that some women are just plain younger and less experienced than the men they go out with, something like that might be visible sometimes. But who are the
real
dependents? Who insist on a captain, a boss, a Great Leader? Who have evolved lunatic systems of authoritarianism in every known activity except maybe solo farming? Who gratefully accept being beaten up and then faithfully follow the bully?

Three guesses. And don’t say guppies.

Joanna, your piece inviting me out of the talk is exactly how I feel. My own concept of what I at least was supposed to do was simply to learn and perhaps talk enough to get knocked down, after which I felt acutely that I should fade away, but didn’t know how to do. Without, you know, sounding like Gimme my wagon and I’ll go home mad. So I just burbled on, figuring that you could ignore me as well as I could. (After all, one possible use for a male participant is just to remind everybody of
everything
there is to be mad at. All the small exquisite vile-nesses I mean.)

I have to end with a note that may amuse some of you.

I thought of it while studying penile displays among the monkeys, and considering the activity known as “flashing” among Human males. The motive is an obscure and yet apparently potent one, which seems to have missed me or be buried deep. I kept wondering, what in hell is the threat value of a penile display? It’s the most extraordinary
abstract
behavior, isn’t it? And what is the magical value of the flasher’s unzip? And this came to me:

A penis is an organ which is strong against the weak—and weak against the strong.

In other words, those men who have difficulty with impotence when trying to make love to “strong” women—really have love confused with penile threat.

I bet it’s more common than we think.

—April 16, 1975

No travelog this trip; I’m disgusted. In five years this place has changed from a quiet Mexican wilderness to a roadstop full of campers. Well, not quite, but they’re on the next ranch. Individually nice people most of them, but the impact is lousy. So this is now in the public domain, and the hell with it. Of course the Maya people are still here, still friendly and living their lives with equanimity; maybe all this is good for them in the long run. It’s just that I preferred the empty starlit nights to Coleman lanterns, stereos blasting out pop, beer bottles, yelling infants, and divers shooting up the reefs. A beautiful big sea turtle washed ashore, still living despite a cruel shaft in its throat… well, Maya dinners.

I did have the chance to buy a marvelous little wet boat called a Royak from one Oregon man. Now I can go out diving somewhat more safely as befits my gray hairs. (You do
not
have to turn over in a Royak. That’s a Kayak.) And he played chess. And he also had a book you might like to mention, the best travel thing I ever saw. For freaks who are serious.
The People’s Guide to Mexico,
Franz, from John Muir Publications, PO Box 613, Santa Fe, NM 87501. ($4.35) It has stuff you will
not
find anywhere else, will save you $4.35 in the first day. Of course it’s got a few things I’d disagree with, but what doesn’t. It’s huge, too.

Well, aside from the above complaints and items like that L’mus—remember the Maya puro?—is still making it with the redoubtable Gre-goria, in fact they are building a house together in Libre Union. And has two younger brothers working here now; one of them (fifteen) just damn near totaled the truck, after rising meteorically to mechanic and electrician. He’s still getting over the shock of finding out what can happen.

Aren’t we all.

—February 1, 1975

This was written for
Universe SF Review,
a tabloid-sized fanzine edited by Keith L. Justice and devoted almost exclusively to book reviews, and published in its fifth issue, September/October 1975.

Every so often a writer produces a book like a basilisk’s
egg,
which contains within it a strangeness, a prefiguration, perhaps, of new and unsuspected form. Often this book goes quite unremarked: People find it puzzling or opaque. And if the author is at the same time producing a stream of admirable, innovative, and beautiful books in a more conventional vein, the baby basilisk may live eclipsed forever.

Take
The Lathe of Heaven,
by Ursula Le Guin, which came out about the same time as her widely and justifiably acclaimed
The Left Hand of Darkness. Lathe
received a few perfunctory notices, after which it apparently disappeared from general view.

But not from mine. Had Le Guin not written it I should have regarded her as admirable, innovative, etc., see above. But after first plowing into the first pulpy pages of the 1971
Amazing,
in which
Lathe
came out, my toenails began to curl under and my spine hair stood up. These phenomena persisted to the very last line, where the Alien, watching like a sea creature from an aquarium, sees the hero and Heather disappearing into the mist.

Several years later I am still trying to figure out what it is about
Lathe
that bowls me out to its deep green sea. Well, to begin with, there is the extraordinary effect of central events unrolling in an almost undersea ambience of quietness, mystery, and precision. (This theme is heralded in the delighting opening paragraph about apparently irrelevant jellyfish—which turns out to be anything but irrelevant.) The events of the book are entirely “unofficial”—no galactic landing teams, diplomats, governmentese. Not even an official world-saver. In fact, the one nominal world-saver is among the most frightening villains in recent memory. The world
does
get saved—I think—but by something nameless, so vulnerable, Human, and mysterious that it would be pompous to call it “love.” But it is entirely real.

The plot is simple—up to a point. A quiet nice little guy finds himself either crazy or in possession of a frightening paranormal talent. He takes his problem to a psychologist, who, though somewhat boisterous, seems also to be a decent type full of good aims and urges and energy. He is Doctor Haber, the aforesaid villain, and the unrolling of his mon-strousness under the genial gabble is beautiful and horrible. (Dear God, the Habers I have met, the Haber in myself!) Haber is also—and this is important to the evaluation of Le Guin’s work—her first major full-scale, tape-recorded confrontation with a contemporary 1975 Human monster. Those who consider that Le Guin writes only the dialogues of fantasy should listen in on Doctor Haber.

But Haber is more than a live character, he is a live problem. One of the things Le Guin is saying through his overactive mouth is that sheer energy and activity and even standard good will won’t save the world. May be in fact disastrous. This is not a do-nothing message; the hero, though gentle, is active too. And so is Heather, the extraordinary female person with “French diseases of the soul.” But their activity is of quite another order and is, in the end, saving.… One of the questions which has remained with me after reading
Lathe
is, how much of my own activity is Haberlike? Perhaps this will trouble you too. And so far as I know, it has not been raised elsewhere in SF.

But I don’t want to leave you with the impression that this is merely a look-within book. No, no, no. Plenty of wild things going on, from the crumbling of Portland, Oregon, to the cryptic reappearance of the sprig of white heather. Aliens, too, lovely big green wet ones. (They may, however strike you as a weak element in the book, because one has become so convinced of Haber’s ghastly triumph that any salvation is hard to believe. But as dei ex machina go, these are superior grade.) And there’s humor: elegant laughs.

The best, though, I’ve saved for the last. It is so artfully incorporated that I had to check back to make sure I remembered right. I said the plot was simple—up to a point. The point comes when you realize that you are falling through quietly collapsing timeframes—
including the one you thought was base normal.
And as to what happened—or keeps happening—on that dreadful fourth of April, and which puts the final deep bass chords in the orchestration—I will leave you to discover. If you can.

The way Le Guin has worked this theme reminds me of the principle of Japanese art which teaches that one must never close a design so completely as to lock infinity out. Hold back from the completion that kills. (Which is, if anyone needs to be told, quite a different matter than leaving loose ends dangling. The infinity-chink is hard work.)

Now from all of this it is clear that an unbiased reviewer I am not. Unashamedly I reveled in
Lathe,
though not without seeing certain faults; you may too. But it is more than a revel, which is why the faults don’t count.
Lathe
is a profoundly
different
book. My hunch-sense tells me that the strange eye staring out of this basilisk
tgg
has a future. Le Guin’s work is changing, developing: Something different is going to happen sometime soon. When it does, I think we may see the vectors leading back to the newnesses born or aborning in
Lathe.