"only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave"
Happy birthday to mayree, and best wishes for many happy returns of the day!
In other news...
* SF Signal has a new "Mind Meld" feature in which science fiction experts discuss which predictions Golden Age science fiction got right and wrong.
* Meanwhile, the Sword of Gryffindor community discusses whether blogs can save literature and also has a new poll: who is the "most good" character in the Harry Potter series?
* Alex Ness of Pop Thought is running a new contest: send him an email and you may win one copy of A Life of Ravens: Epic Poetry and Narrative for you plus another copy for the library of your choice. Read more here (scroll to bottom).
* The finalists for the 2008 Audie Awards for best audiobooks have been named. Check out the science fiction finalists here, and follow the link for the rest of the finalists.
We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by John J.L. Mood, from "The Dragon-Princess"
In other news...
* SF Signal has a new "Mind Meld" feature in which science fiction experts discuss which predictions Golden Age science fiction got right and wrong.
* Meanwhile, the Sword of Gryffindor community discusses whether blogs can save literature and also has a new poll: who is the "most good" character in the Harry Potter series?
* Alex Ness of Pop Thought is running a new contest: send him an email and you may win one copy of A Life of Ravens: Epic Poetry and Narrative for you plus another copy for the library of your choice. Read more here (scroll to bottom).
* The finalists for the 2008 Audie Awards for best audiobooks have been named. Check out the science fiction finalists here, and follow the link for the rest of the finalists.
We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by John J.L. Mood, from "The Dragon-Princess"