URSULA K. Le GUIN SOLITUDE * An addition to "POVERTY: The Second Reporton Eleven-Soro" by Mobile Entselenne'temharyonoterregwis Leaf, by herdaughter, Serenity. MY MOTHER, A FIELD ETHnologist, took the difficulty oflearning anything about the people of Eleven-Soro as a personal challenge. Thefact that she used her children to meet that challenge might be seen asselfishness or as selflessness. Now that I have read her report I know thatshe finally thought she had done wrong. Knowing what it cost her, I wish sheknew my gratitude to her for allowing me to grow up as a person. Shortlyafter a robot probe reported people of the Hainish Descent on the eleventhplanet of the Soro system, she joined the orbital crew as back-up for thethree First Observers down on planet. She had spent four years inthe tree-cities of nearby Huthu. My brother In Joy Born was eight years oldand I was five; she wanted a year or two of ship duty so we could spend sometime in a Hainish-style school. My brother had enjoyed the rainforests ofHuthu very much, but though he could brachiate he could barely read, and wewere all bright blue with skin-fungus. While Borny learned to read and Ilearned to wear clothes and we all had antifungus treatments, my mother becameas intrigued by Eleven-Sort as the Observers were frustrated by it. All this is in her report, but I will say it as I learned it from her, which helps meremember and understand. The language had been recorded by the probe and theObservers had spent a year learning it. The many dialectical ;. variationsexcused their accents and errors, and they reported that language was not aproblem. Yet there was a communication problem. The two men found themselvesisolated, faced with suspicion or hostility, unable to form any connectionwith the native men, all of whom lived in solitary houses as hermits or inpairs. Finding communities of adolescent males, they tried to makecontact with them, but when they entered the territory of such a group theboys either fled or rushed desperately at them trying to kill them. The women,who lived in what they called "dispersed villages," drove them away withvolleys of stones as soon as they came anywhere near the houses. "I believe,"one of them reported, "that the only community activity of the Sorovians isthrowing rocks at men." Neither of them succeeded in having a conversation ofmore than three exchanges with a man. One of them mated with a woman who cameby his camp; he reported that though she made unmistakable and insistentadvances, she seemed disturbed by his attempts to converse, refused to answerhis questions, and left him, he said, "as soon as she got what she camefor." The woman Observer was allowed to settle in an unused house in a "village" (auntring) of seven houses. She made excellent observations of dailylife, insofar as she could see any of it, and had several conversations withadult women and many with children; but she found that she was never askedinto another woman's house, nor expected to help or ask for help in anywork. Conversation concerning normal activities was unwelcome to the otherwomen; the children, her only informants, called her Aunt Crazy-Jabber. Heraberrant behavior caused increasing distrust and dislike among the women, andthey began to keep their children away from her. She left. "There's no way,"she told my mother, "for an adult to learn anything. They don't ask questions,they don't answer questions. Whatever they learn, they learn when they'rechildren." Aha! said my mother to herself, looking at Borny and me. And sherequested a family transfer to Eleven. Sort with Observer status. The Stabilesinterviewed her extensively by ansible, and talked with Borny and even withme-- I don't remember it, but she told me I told the Stabiles all about my newstockings--and agreed to her request. The ship was to stay in close orbit,with the previous Observers in the crew, and she was to keep radio contactwith it, daily if possible. I have a dim memory of the tree-city, and ofplaying with what must have been a kitten or a ghole-kit on the ship; but myfirst clear memories are of our house in the auntring. It is half underground,

half aboveground, with wattle-and-daub walls. Mother and I are standingoutside it in the warm sunshine. Between us is a big mudpuddle, into whichBorny pours water from a basket; then he runs off to the creek to get morewater. I muddle the mud with my hands, deliciously, till it is thick andsmooth. I pick up a big double handful and slap it onto the walls where thesticks show through. Mother says, "That's good! That's right!" in our newlanguage, and I realize that this is work, and I am doing it. I am repairingthe house. I am making it right, doing it right. I am a competent person. I have never doubted that, so long as I lived there. We are inside the house at night, and Borny is talking to the ship on the radio, because he missestalking the old language, and anyway he is supposed to tell them stuff. Motheris making a basket and sweating at the split reeds. I am singing a song todrown out Borny so nobody in the auntring hears him talking funny, and anywayI like singing. I learned this song this afternoon in Hyuru's house. I playevery day with Hyuru. "Be aware, listen, listen, be aware," I sing. WhenMother stops swearing she listens, and then she turns on the recorder. Thereis a little fire still left from cooking dinner, which was lovely pigi root, Inever get tired of pigi. It is dark and warm and smells of pigi and of burningduhur, which is a strong, sacred smell to drive out magic and bad feelings,and as I sing "Listen, be aware," I get sleepier and sleepier and lean againstMother, who is dark and warm and smells like Mother, strong and sacred, fullof good feelings. Our daily life in the auntring was repetitive. On the ship,later, I learned that people who live in artificially complicated situationscall such a life "simple." I never knew anybody, anywhere I have been, whofound life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave outthe details, the way a planet looks smooth, from orbit. Certainly our life inthe auntring was easy, in the sense that our needs came easily to hand. Therewas plenty of food to be gathered or grown and prepared and cooked, plenty oftemas to pick and rett and spin and weave for clothes and bedding plenty ofreeds to make baskets and thatch with; we children had other children to playwith, mothers to look after us, and a great deal to learn. None of this issimple, though it's all easy enough, when you know how to do it, when you areaware of the details. It was not easy for my mother. It was hard for her, andcomplicated. She had to pretend she knew the details while she was learningthem, and had to think how to report and explain this way of living to peoplein another place who didn't understand it. For Borny it was easy until it gothard because he was a boy. For me it was all easy. I learned the work andplayed with the children and listened to the mothers sing. The First Observer had been quite right: there was no way for a grown woman to learn how to makeher soul. Mother couldn't go listen to another mother sing, it would have beentoo strange. The aunts all knew she hadn't been brought up well, and some ofthem taught her a good deal without her realizing it. They had decided hermother must have been irresponsible and had gone on scouting instead ofsettling in an auntring so that her daughter didn't get educatedproperly. That's why even the most aloof of the aunts always let me listenwith their children, so that I could become an educated person. But of coursethey couldn't ask another adult into their houses. Borny and I had to tell herall the songs and stories we learned, and then she would tell them to theradio, or we told them to the radio while she listened to us. But she nevergot it right, not really. How could she, trying to learn it after she'd grownup, and after she'd always lived with magicians? "Be aware!" she would imitate my solemn and probably irritating imitation of the aunts and the biggifts. "Be aware! How many times a day do they say that? Be aware of what?They aren't aware of what the ruins are, their own history, -- they aren'taware of each other! They don't even talk to each other! Beaware, indeed!" When I told her the stories of the Before Time that Aunt Sadne and Aunt Noyit told their daughters and me, she often heard the wrongthings in them. I told her about the People, and she said, "Those are theancestors of the people here now." When I said, "There aren't any people herenow," she didn't understand. "There are persons here now," I said, but she