Trees, Beards and Books

I'm feeling alternatively stressed and depressed. Pay no heed to me. I get stressed very easily and I have a depressive personality.

I'm not getting anywhere with my job hunting, but these things take time. So lets not talk about that, shall we?

In other, more interesting news. I took my bearded friend Dimitris on a walk through the forest around Forty Hill on Sunday. It was nice sharing a familiar childhood experience with a friend.






Yes, I just had to share Dimitris' absolutely ridiculous beard with you. Sometimes I wonder how I agree to go out with him like that. (By the way, he's not nearly as old as the beard makes him look.)


Also I have been reading. A real book! A real published book. In paper!

So do you like Science Fiction and Fantasy Fiction? Because I do. Not the kind that has starship battles, lazer guns and scantily clad women and men with too big muscles and swords, obviously. But the kind that creates whole new worlds and societies. You know, like Herbert's 'Dune', or Pullman's "Dark Materials'. Like Narnia or Middle-Earth. Like the universe in Harry Potter obviously.

One such author that delivers in spades is Ursula LeGuin. She's really old, so you should know her. My friend Nikoletta kept on telling me I should read her stuff. In the end, to make in extra easy for me, she got me the Earthsea Quartet a couple of years ago. The Earthsea books are classic boyish fantasy fiction, with magic and dragons and a quest and lots of adventures. The kind of well written boyish fantasy fiction that grown women like me like to read on occasion. I guess my age shows when I tell you that I possibly liked the last book in the series the most. The one where the hero is now middle-aged and has returned from his adventures and has to learn how to live like an average everyday person.

Ursula LeGuin also writes Science Fiction. The kind I love. Her science fiction is all about strange new societies on different planets. Societies made of people a little like us, but with completely different attitudes towards human relations, power play, gender, families, sex and marriage.

Last year I read her book 'The Left Hand of Darkness', which I urge you all to read. It's brilliant and engrossing. Because it was written in the 1970s, the feministic polemic in the book is a bit too obvious for today's tastes, but I think we can all forgive her that. It's all about a Terran who visit's a planet where the people there have no gender. They live most their lives without gender or sexual urges, and only when they go into heat - which happens on a regulate cycle - do they arbitrarily turn into women or men and have sex, and on occasion get pregnant. It really is quite an interesting idea.

Now I'm reading a collection of her short stories, 'The Birthday of the World'. So far all the stories are about sex and human relations in completely alien societies. It's all very engrossing and interesting. I always believed that good authors are also sociologists and psychologists.

Hmmn. Anyway. I hope the title of my journal sufficiently warned you of my incoherent and random ramblings.