Thoughts

his is a new blog, one of several I post in. The reason for beginning a new one is that the one I have always used for “midnight thoughts” has been both in English and Spanish. Now I think I will separate them because topics that might interest English-speakers may not interest those who speak Spanish.

Also I have gotten tired of always translating the same entries.

So... this is the first all-English entry.

Just to start, I'll repeat the last English entry on what has always been the English/Spanish blog: http://reflexiones4-karen.blogspot.com/. I will continue to post in Spanish there.

Symbol for Amnesty International

Daily Kos has a short contribution by someone who calls him/herself “LithiumCola” about a short story by Ursula K. LeGuin, “The ones who walk away from Omelas”. Anybody who wants a synopsis can look up the article, but the gist is this: there is no perfect happiness without an inner, terrible secret.

It’s an idea very close to that of emptiness in Lacanian psychoanalysis. Or what Yerma yearned for -and murdered for- in García Lorca’s play. But here, LeGuin describes the emptiness in Omelas as something dark and ugly.

LithiumCola has likened it to the prison in Guantanamo: after closing the jail, s/he asks, “Where will the detainees from Guantanamo go?” S/he isn’t talking about the practical problems involved; rather it is ostensibly a need for a guilty secret: a place where evil fantasies are brought to life, somplace disowned but necessary.

This isn’t political theory; it’s deeper than that. It isn’t an excuse for non-action either. Jails are terrible places, and things happen there that we’d rather not know about. But we do know, and we tolerate them with our eyes firmly shut. Are we responding to a deep need as LeGuin would suggest?




References / Referencias
1. Article in Daily Kos / Artículo en el Daily Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/25/194312/239/595/688925
2. Ornate letters: http://retrokat.com/medieval/leil.htm