The Word for World Is Forest
Book 116 of 200, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Here’s book #116, The Word for World is Forest (1972), by the great Ursula K. Le Guin, her second appearance on the Mandorla 200 (“Micro-distillations of 200 necessary books on ecology, justice, and place-belonging for our times. 200 words or less.”)
Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (#60) remains my favorite of her full-length novels, but I can’t say I’ve read all her work, so expect more from Le Guin in the coming dispatches.
Okay, here’s my 200-word lyrical seed packet for you…
The root of “dream” is song. To dream with the world is a lyric, listening to what rumbles beneath, what whispers through trunk to branch toward shared light. Losing this umbilical connection is forfeiting a sensitivity to what’s long been inscribed on the winds because another story has taken over, one that subordinates these gods inside the Self, caging them while caging the world. This Great Taming, this God cosplay, seeks power over, not communion with. Exiled by an impoverished imagination, you lose track of the song and instead replicate this enslavement by clear-cut-terraforming the universe into predictable and lifeless meadows approximating the psychogeographies of a malnourished soul. Fortunately, whew, the dream of the Earth endures. Arboreal consciousness siphons up from the depths. It’s not enough to see with new eyes; you must dream with old ears. Listen to the wild gods as they teach you how to love, how to offer shade, how to irrigate the thirsty and defend against ecocide and refuse colonizing worlds as an extension of a colonized Self, lone king burning inside his wooden castle, forests no longer recognizing their planked kin. The task remains: Let the dream pipe rooted through our trunk. Drink the sun, despite the saw.
The Book: The Word for World Is Forest (1972)
The Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
The Publisher: Tor Books
The Tip: Micah Sewell