Dispatches from the archives

Ursula K. Le Guin archives at the University of Oregon

It’s been a while since I had a post, and I’m adjusting my posting schedule here to “as I can/occasionally” for a while, as I’m intensely working on two big things. One is the work in Ursula K. Le Guin’s archives - my second archival trip to Eugene, OR. As I wrote in A Portable Sanctuary, fountain pens are not allowed inside, and that’s causing me real anguish - I absolutely must write longhand. I had fantasies of writing longhand after my archival hours, but all that was mostly shattered by the second big thing: after hours I’m writing ravenously, endlessly, I am composing this extremely intense fiction manuscript which is unlikely to see the light of day for so many reasons — I don’t want to market it — but I can’t and won’t stop writing it, it’s the best thing that happened to me since 2016 at least, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever written (I say this about almost every book; but this one is just so visceral).

“Joy is the oldest geometry” is a quote from one of my Birdverse stories.

So for the first week my longhand notes were mostly about this manuscript, to the tune of “this is the Jungianest shit that ever queered, what do I do with all this, I literally don’t care, it’s not a product, FROGS FROGS FROGS, this character has never been into frogs before, they’re a snake person but at least it’s a reptile — wait here’s a hare” and “Lapines are Indo-European, but I don’t remember this exact thing I just wrote about, I’m sure it’s somewhere, where’s my Dumézil.” The writing is frantic, like a heartbeat, like a run. I’m not writing anything longhand at this point because I’m hammering out between 2k-3k of this manuscript a day between 7pm-midnight PST, and the rest of the time is archival work.

Leonardo Momento Magico Bohemian Twilight has been my most used FP on this trip. It is inked with FWP Moonlit Jade.

I am here alone. I am not seeing anyone, except I saw my graduate school friend Roy and his partner, and went to a small get-together with some university folks, and had lunch with Linda, the archivist. I went to bookstores to find myself some of the Dumézil I already had at home. I’m literally in the library, but if I go look for Dumézil and other Indo-European books in here, I’ll never come out again.

In the archives, I am currently working on the correspondence between Urusla and Diana Bellessi, a queer Argentinan poet. They collaborated on a bilingual English/Spanish book of poetry (The Twins, The Dream) for which they mutually translated each other. I am reading Bellessi’s incredible, impassionate, deeply insightful, unpublished letters and I’m thinking to myself, this too is the Jungianest thing that ever queered, I’m in love with this, in love with these women, I have to write and publish about this, I’m so in love with my work. Why is it so bad to write out of your wildest, deepest, truest self? Your most unpalatable self, the monstrous self, the “crichi” (as Diana Bellessi put it) who looks out of the forest - who is to say it’s not allowed? Who dares? I don’t care. I’m living, when I had only existed throughout 2023. I’m not here for the normative. I’m reading, and I’m writing. The only thing missing are my pens - I do not think as well without a fountain pen to the right side of my laptop.

Onwards.