BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 5.0.18//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMWorkCalendar NAME:RMWorkCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:https://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Sudoo DTSTAMP:20250401T081608Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:231-5-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n Sudoo\n https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Sudoo-11 77858677\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n \n\n \n\n\n\n IN AMENDMENT\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Curse of immortality vocal essay from Jess of the Shire- transcript or vid eo\n\n\n\n after that is THE ISLAND OF THE IMMORTALS of URSALA K LEGUIN\n\ n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Curse of immortality vocal essay from Jess of the Shire\n \n\n\n video\n\n https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVL1P2_lavc\n\n  \n\n\n\ n \n\n\n\n My Reply to the Video\n\n\n\n so anne rice vampires are of hous e dorian grey? \nwowbagger:) is hilarious\nnice comparison of immortalitie s\nTolkiens- spiritual knowledgeable immortality\, all things are known an d those who don't are others\, even living aside them\nRice's- invaluable immortality\, the rare few find value in it\nHerbert's- immortality prison s\, leto jailbroke it \nLEguins- natural immortality \, weathering is immo rtal\n\nhmmm favorite immortals in fiction hmmm\n\nI think Mr. Bloom in t he remake of Kick the can\, \nGeorge CLayton Johnson wrote the original ki ck the can in the original show and it had elders \, led by one elder who holding on to fun or life took a simple can kids were playing with and got the other elders to play kick the can and escaped the prison/old folks ho me\, leaving the one elder who didn't want to play alone\, with the can\, a living death \, as the other elder are eternal children playing in the p arks/forest/green spaces of the world\, uncatchable by the old folks home agents. \nIn the remake\, Mr Bloom\, who already is in the old folks home \, arrived at some unstated time\, enjoys his time in the old folks home s imply\, as one of the crew\, but after a discussion on games occurs\, he o rganizes a game of kick the can all but one elder plays\, and as in the o riginal\, the elders who play turn into children and play but Mr Bloom doe sn't. One of the elders ask\, why don't you turn into a child \, and Mr. B Looms answer I will never forget. \nI learned a long time ago\, that I wan ted to stay my own age in my own body. \nand as the other elders continue to play \, they start to realize what being young would mean. all the thin gs in their life they weren't ready to deal with again \"I have to go to s chool again!\" or deal with for the first \"we will just to our son's hous e and say murray\, its your parents\" and so all the elders save one decid e to return to elders\, as Mr. Bloom asked one\, do you want to see the co met at eight or eighty and an elder replies\, eighty. Mr Bloom tells them\ , to keep a fresh young mind. And they chant it like a prayer or hymn or m ental training\, fresh young mind. back in thier rooms\, the old folks hom e guards find them but they are all back to their old selves but one. \nTh e one who has stayed a child\, mr agee with a kind of silver technicolor l ight\, the elder who didn't play recognizes\, and they sadly depart as the elder who didn't play hears his oldest friend \, an immortal youth among the parks/forest/green spaces yell\, it is young being young again. \nAnd the next day\, all the remaining elders who played are active or busy\, do ing\, not sitting\, not waiting to die\, not dwelling on a routine made fo r them. the one who didn't play is now playing kick the can alone with a s mile on his face. \nAnd Mr Bloom sees all of this \"he'll get it\" and the n we end with Mr BLoom going on to another old folks home. \nIt is interes ting for me as a writer\, George Clayton Johnson\, got to rewrite a story he had written as a younger person. I ponder what stories I will change o n rewrite when my hair is bone white. How perspectives of an artist can ch ange. \nHe went from immortality being strictly to those elder to become i mmortal child free spirits\, to now one singular immortal who travels as a n elder by their own choice who offers elders a chance to see/find the hap piness in their mortal life even with full acknowledgement it has less tim e left\, or happiness as an immortal child free spirit and offers both pat hs effortlessly\nMr. Bloom is an immortal who has discovered powers to con trol his very interface to the mortal while purpose in an immortal life in guiding the mortal elderly to enjoy their existence more. \n\n\n\n\n  \n \n\n\n Transcript\n\n\n\n 0:00\nfor as long as humans have lived we have o n some conscious or unconscious level\n0:06\nfeared death and tradition di ctates that some might respond to that fear by\n0:11\ntrying to escape it by seeking immortality from the philosophers stone to the fountain of yout h seeking\n0:17\nimmortality has been the quest of many a hero but what ha ppens once they achieve\n0:23\nthat quest how does a mortal bear the burde n of immortality and questions like\n0:29\nthis tend to only ask a whole l ot more questions we wonder what would become of\n0:34\na race that couldn 't rely on the certainty of death we wonder what would become of a mortal human mind trapped in\n0:42\na timeless body what could drive someone to c hoose the path of immortality and\n0:48\nperhaps the most important questi on if we are no longer mortal can we still\n0:54\ncall ourselves human tod ay we're talking about elves vampires worms and so much\n1:00\nmore so tha t we can try and explore these questions after all in the immortal words o f Queen who wants to\n1:08\nlive forever i think that it will surprise abs olutely no one to find out that we're going to be starting with the\n1:13\ nLord of the Rings and that's not just because this is largely a Tolken th emed\n1:19\nchannel it's also because Tolken's elves are very unique in th at they are an\n1:24\nentire race born into a very particular kind of immo rtality you see although\n1:30\nthey are functionally immortal technically it is only the souls of elves that cannot die and their spirits\n1:37\nar e bound to the physical creation of Arda this means that when one of them dies their soul leaves their body and it\n1:44\nis either re-mbodied or re incarnated or it just drifts either way it will\n1:51\ncontinue to be in e xistence in physical existence until physical creation itself\n1:58\ncomes crashing down until the world ends this is a sharp contrast to the second \n2:04\nborn of God who is named Illuvatar mankind when humans die their s ouls do\n2:11\nnot linger but rather fly out of Arda out of physical creat ion to an unknown\n2:18\nplace to await an unknown fate and to men this un knowingness is terrifying\n2:26\nthey long for the immortality that the el ves have to so easily be able to\n2:31\nescape death and they really strug gle to see their mortality as the gift that it\n2:37\nwas originally inten ded to be but that jealousy is understandable with their\n2:42\nprolonged lifetimes the elves have been able to become masters of any craft that\n2: 48\nthey take on they are wise learned aware of the immediacy and importan ce of the\n2:55\npast in a way that humans just never could be but this al so means that to\n3:00\nthem time looks very different as the elf legal ex plains nay time does not t\n3:08\nhe said but change and growth is not in all things and places alike for elves\n3:14\nthe world moves and it moves both very swift and very slow swift because they\n3:20\nchange little and all else fleets by it is a grief to them slow because they\n3:26\nneed not count the running years not for themselves the passing seasons are but ri pples ever repeated in the long long\n3:34\nstream this timelessness has l eft them with a profound sense of foroding they\n3:41\nknow that no secret destiny awaits them there are no surprises they can depend\n3:46\non thei r future but they know that their future holds eventual nothingness tolken \n3:53\nexplains \"The Elvish weakness is in these terms naturally to regr et the past\n3:59\nand to become unwilling to face change as if a man were to hate a very long\n4:04\nbook still going on and wish to settle down in a favorite chapter in a perfect\n4:10\nworld the fixed perfection of Elve n Living would be a blessing but this is\n4:16\nnot a perfect world it's a world marred by sin by war by the eventual death of\n4:23\neveryone outsi de of their race their only respbit is to eventually pass out\n4:29\nof Mi ddle Earth over the sea and into the timeless land of Valinor a place\n4:3 5\nthat is as evergreen and unchanging as the elves this heavenly stasis i s a\n4:42\ncomfort to them but it's nothing compared to the bright excitem ent and\n4:48\nuncertainty and freedom granted to men by the gift of Ovata r their beautiful\n4:54\nlives come with one great big inescapable expirat ion date and I think\n5:00\nit's hard for any of us to say whether if we w ere given the choice whether we would choose blissful stagnation or\n5:07\ nunsettled freedom there are actually a few characters in Tolken's larger\ n5:12\nlegendarium that are put face to face with this choice and one of t he most notable is Baron and Lucian the tale\n5:20\ntells of Lucian an imm ortal elf and Baron a mortal man who fall in love and\n5:26\nare forced to face mortality face to face in their adventures Baron is killed\n5:33\nan d Lucenne is so distressed that her soul leaves her body and flies out aft er\n5:39\nhim although she is immortal she dies prompted by the connection of their love\n5:45\nBaron's soul lingers in the halls of death while Luc ian stands before the\n5:50\ngods and makes her final plea for Baron's sou l the sorrow of her tale is\n5:56\nso profound so deeply felt that the god s give her a choice they will take her\n6:02\nsorrow away and she can pass into unchanging Valinor or she and Baron will\n6:07\nbe returned to Middl e Earth as mortals to live for a time together and die\n6:13\ntogether the ir souls passing hand in hand into the unknown lucian chooses\n6:20\nmorta lity on the face this seems like an inconceivable decision who if born wit h\n6:26\nit would be willing to give up immortality to give up endless bli ss but\n6:32\nfor Lucian she would rather live one chaotic mortal life tha n to have to\n6:38\nendure all of the ages of the world in solitude this c hoice is later faced\n6:45\nagain by Arwin Lucian's descendant as a half- elf she's granted a choice when\n6:51\nher father Eland leaves for Valinor Arwin may go with him or she may stay\n6:58\nthis choice is complicated b y Aragorn a mortal man who sees Arwin and instantly\n7:05\nknows that she is his soulmate eland explains her plight that she may very\n7:11\nwell le ave with him to be immortal in Valinor forever but Aragorn is undeterred h is heart has been set arwin\n7:19\nfalls in love with Aragorn as well and it is this love that drives her to\n7:24\nsacrifice her immortality and di e by his side she tells him \"There is now no ship\n7:31\nthat would bear me hence and I must indeed abide the doom of men whether I will or nil the loss and the silence but\n7:40\nI say to you king of the Num Manorans not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall as wick ed\n7:48\nfools I scorned them but I pity them at last for if this is inde ed as the Eldar\n7:54\nsay the gift of the one to men it is bitter to rece ive arwin having\n8:01\nexperienced both the promise of life eternal and t he painful reality of\n8:07\nmortality understands the difficulty of this decision more than most and\n8:12\ncompared to Lucenne where her story kin d of fades to black as soon as she makes that choice we see how much Arwin \n8:20\nstruggles with this decision uncertainty is painful and she just d oesn't know\n8:25\nwhat's going to become of her soul and in the end when Aragorn grows old and\n8:31\ndies Arwin fades away surrendering her spirit to the halls of Mandos facing a\n8:37\nfate unknown at Aragorn's side in a letter Tolken admitted \"The real theme\n8:43\nof the Lord of the Rings for me is about something much more permanent and difficult death and immo rtality the\n8:51\nmystery of the love of the world in the hearts of a rac e doomed to leave and seemingly lose it the anguish in the\n8:58\nhearts o f a race doomed not to leave it until its whole evil aroused story is\n9:0 4\ncomplete neither mortality nor immortality carry the secret to life in\ n9:10\nTolken's world and I think that seems fitting after all I I'm prett y sure that\n9:16\nmost of us have also been blessed with the gift of a Lo uis Vuitar we've been left with the the painful uncertainty\n9:24\nand the freedom that comes with not knowing how or when or where we're going\n9:3 0\nto die not knowing what is going to become of our souls after we are go ne\n9:36\nbut by presenting us with the alternative of Elvish immortality I do\n9:41\nbelieve that Tolken was trying to comfort us of course elves a re immortal\n9:46\nand beautiful they're so much more wise and powerful th an we ever could be\n9:53\nthey've had entire lifetimes to perfect the cra fts that they perform and yet\n9:58\nthere are still some of them that are able to be swayed some that have tasted\n10:03\nthe beauty of this immort ality and still choose mortality and while it may not\n10:10\ncure our fea r of death Tolken urges us to see the promise of death and the\n10:16\nfre edom that may come with it not as a curse but as a gift and you know what\ n10:22\nwould also make a great gift and actually what would be almost as longlasting and beautiful as the\n10:27\nlifetime of the elves the posters from this video's sponsor Displate displate\n10:33\nmakes unique durable metal posters that are designed to capture all of your interests and passi ons they have over\n10:40\ntwo million designs to choose from in the Displ ate catalog everything from new and original art to officially licensed\n1 0:48\ndesigns from your favorite fandoms like Star Wars Marvel The Witcher and of course The Lord of the Rings confession\n10:55\ntime i actually di d not have any of the Middleear maps hanging on my walls as\n11:00\nart be fore this but now I have these two\n11:05\nabsolute beauties to hang up ab ove my TV i also got this giant one to sit in my\n11:11\ndune corner and i t looks absolutely beautiful in the space and it's way more sturdy than th e flimsy little paper one\n11:18\nthat I had taped to the wall previously it is so easy to set these things up they come with a tool-free magnet-bas ed\n11:25\nmounting system and as someone who has tried a lot of technique s to get posters to hang up you know sticky strips tacks\n11:32\nnails tap e you name it I've tried it this is by far the easiest and most\n11:38\nef ficient way to do it plus it doesn't damage your walls at all which is gre at if you're renting even better Displate\n11:44\nshipping is super fast s o these make a great emergency gift for that very special nerd in your lif e displate's\n11:50\nlatest edition is their textra products that have a t exture and it really makes\n11:56\nthe details pop my Middleear map is act ually a texture one and I don't know\n12:01\nif you can see that on the ca mera but it really makes the details pop and the light catches it in an in teresting way\n12:07\nthat you just don't see in paper posters go ahead an d check them out through the link down there in my description and if\n12: 14\nyou go and order there right now or over the next couple of days you c an get 25%\n12:19\noff your order of one to two disc plates or if you orde r three disc plates you can get 30% off that deal only lasts for\n12:28\nt he next couple of days so definitely go and check that out now again the l ink is right down there in the description and\n12:34\nthank you so much t o Displate for sponsoring this video and supporting the channel the elves whilst being a\n12:41\nbeautiful portrayal of timeless life are somewhat u nique in that they are a race\n12:46\nborn into and intended for immortali ty but what happens when you take someone\n12:52\nwho is meant to be morta l and make them immortal well Tolken gives us an idea of\n12:59\nwhat that might look like in the character of Bilbo whose life was unnaturally exte nded by the influence of\n13:06\nthe ring bilbo explains i am old Gandalf i don't look it but I am beginning to\n13:13\nfeel it in my heart of heart s well preserved indeed he snorted why i feel\n13:19\nall thin sort of str etched if you know what I mean like butter that has been\n13:24\nscraped o ver too much bread that can't be right i need a change or something\n13:30 \nfortunately for Bilbo though his regular lifespan was able to resume aft er he gave up the ring but what about those\n13:38\ncharacters who aren't able to give it up what about the characters that are coerced into immorta lity that seems like\n13:44\nit's going to last forever the vampires of An ra's Vampire Chronicles are one of\n13:52\nmy favorite examples of the ang sty immortal i want to issue a quick warning\n13:57\nthat there will be sp oilers ahead for the first interview with the vampire book and hints towar ds the vampire list\n14:04\nbut nothing serious and that also means that t he first two seasons of the show will be completely spoiled you can go\n14 :10\nahead and skip to this timestamp right here if you want to avoid all spoilers of all of Van Rice's many very angsty\n14:18\nvampires the cream of the crop is the protagonist of the first book Louie\n14:24\nDeuontulak life has made Louie grim and pessimistic even before he became a\n14:30\nv ampire and I would argue that that's probably one of the things that drew Lestat to him louie was frustrated by\n14:38\nthe injustices he saw bitter towards death and he had a sharpedged desire to\n14:44\nfind something an ything that could make life worth living in sweeps the vampire\n14:51\nLes tat de Leonor promising Louie that through the dark gift of vampirism he\n 14:56\nmay experience a life without fear without regret without the loomi ng presence of death in the book Louis's\n15:04\ntransformation scene into being a vampire is a little bit rushed but in my\n15:09\nopinion the show elaborates this scene beautifully lestat is offering Louis\n15:14\nvampir ism as a cure for the lifetime of pain that he's endured be my\n15:23\ncom pion be all the beautiful things you are and be them without\n15:32\napolo gy for all eternity with the dark gift Louie wouldn't need to fear the\n15 :38\nsociety that had hemmed him in the racism the homophobia the unfairne ss the\n15:44\ncruelty as the apex predator Louieie could make whatever li fe he wanted to\n15:50\nlive but once changed Louie unfortunately discover s that vampirism\n15:56\nwas not the solution to all of his problems his u nderlying issues his misanthropy his depression his\n16:03\nself-loathing they've gone nowhere and he is no better equipped to handle them in fact t he idea of immortality the idea\n16:12\nthat he has to keep living the lif e that he is currently stuck in for the rest of\n16:17\ntime becomes tortu rous for him lat tries to remedy this the only way that he\n16:22\nknows h ow introducing Lousie to his rather lazair attitude and philosophy\n16:28\ nteaching him the joy of the kill the joy of debauchery but Louie is not l ike\n16:33\nLasat he's trying desperately to cling to some semblance of hu man morality but\n16:40\nthat just makes things worse how can you live a g ood life when you are consciously performing acts of evil\n16:47\nlestat a nd Louie try to bring themselves back to life by turning a girl named Clau dia into a vampire and treating her\n16:55\nas a daughter and for a time t his seems to soothe them louiesie takes on the\n17:00\nrole of fatherhood and he's trying to foster within Claudia the spark of joy\n17:06\nthat he himself does not have and all this time I was educating Claudia\n17:12\nwh ispering in her tiny seashell ear that our eternal life was useless to us if we\n17:17\ndid not see the beauty around us the creation of mortals eve rywhere i was\n17:23\nconstantly sounding the depth of her still gaze as s he took the books I gave her whispered the poetry I taught her\n17:30\nand played with a light but confident touch her own strange coherent songs on \n17:35\nthe piano but even that falls flat claudia doesn't stay a little girl forever and eventually she wants answers\n17:43\nshe wants to find so me kind of meaning and she is not satisfied with what Louie and Lat are ca pable of teaching her and\n17:51\ntheir illusion of a sweet nuclear family is shattered they all begin lashing out\n17:56\nat each other and eventua lly Claudia and Louie killat or at least they think they\n18:02\ndo and th ey head off to Europe to find vampires that may understand them better but for Louie it's too late he's not\n18:10\nexpecting to find any answers he thinks that life has become truly meaningless\n18:17\nwhat does it mean t o die when you can live until the end of the world and what\n18:22\nis the end of the world except a phrase because who knows even what is the world \n18:28\nitself i had now lived in two centuries seen the illusions of one utterly\n18:34\nshattered by the other been eternally young and eternally ancient possessing\n18:39\nno illusions living moment to moment in a way that made me picture a silver\n18:45\nclock ticking in a void the painted face the delicately carved hands looked upon\n18:52\nby no one looking out at no one illuminated by a light which was not a\n18:58\nlight like the l ight by which God made the world before he had made light\n19:04\nticking ticking ticking the precision of the clock in a room as vast as the\n19:12 \nuniverse it makes you wonder does a clock count as a clock if there's no one\n19:18\nthere to read the time it's telling does a light really matte r if there's no one there to see it shine and is it really a\n19:26\nlife at all if it has no meaning despared and empty Louisie and Claudia\n19:33\ nmake their way to Paris and it is there that Louis is revitalized by meet ing the\n19:39\nvampire Armand armand is the antithesis to Lestat while Le stat was closed off\n19:47\nand cy Armand seems open he's telling Louie ab out his own history about what\n19:53\nhe knows about vampirism he wants t o probe Louis's mind about the purpose of their existence the meaning of e vil in\n20:01\nthe lives of evil creatures and Louie falls head over heels for him it is here\n20:06\nthat Armand explains to Louie how the immortal life of the vampire may come to\n20:13\nan end how many vampires do you t hink have the stamina for immortality they\n20:18\nhave the most dismal no tions of immortality to begin with for in becoming immortal they want all the\n20:24\nforms of their life to be fixed as they are and incorruptible carriages made in\n20:30\nthe same dependable fashion clothing of the cut which suited their prime men attired and speaking in the manner that\n20:3 7\nthey have always understood and valued when in fact all things change e xcept\n20:44\nthe vampire himself everything except the vampire is subject to constant corruption and\n20:51\ndistortion soon with an inflexible min d and often even with the most flexible mind this\n20:57\nimmortality beco mes a penitential sentence in a mad house of figures and\n21:03\nforms tha t are hopelessly unintelligible and without value one evening a vampire\n2 1:09\nrises and realize what he has feared perhaps for decades that he sim ply wants\n21:15\nno more of life at any cost and that vampire goes out to die\n21:22\nthis is to be the true fate of the vampire the end of it all although their\n21:27\nbodies are safe from age and time their minds are n ot their minds will continue\n21:33\nto age continue to sustain and hang o n to hurt they watch horrified as all the\n21:41\nbeauty of their youths p asses down the river of time into history for a\n21:48\n400year-old vampir e like Armand the only way that he's been able to persist is by\n21:54\nan choring himself wherever he can by clinging to new people new vampires new \n22:00\npoints of view digging into their passion their drive drinking th em dry to\n22:05\nhelp moore him to a new place and time louie is to be hi s next victim he tells\n22:12\nhim \"It is through you that I must make my link with this 19th century and come\n22:18\nto understand it in a way th at will revitalize me which I so desperately need.\" \"Oh but you'd be mak ing a\n22:25\nterrible mistake\,\" Louie said \"don't you see i'm not the spirit of any age i am\n22:30\nat odds with everything and always have bee n i have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time.\" It was too pai nful\n22:39\ntoo perfectly true but his face only brightened with an irres istible smile he\n22:44\nseemed on the verge of laughing at me and then hi s shoulders began to move with this laughter but Louie he said\n22:51\nsof tly this is the very spirit of your age don't you see that everyone else\n 22:58\nfeels as you feel your fall from grace and faith has been the fall of a century\n23:04\nlouie and Armand are both using each other louie clin gs to Armand because he\n23:10\nthinks that because Armand is old he must have discovered some kind of a secret to life and living and he hopes\n23: 16\nto someday unlock that secret to infuse his own life with meaning arma nd clings\n23:22\nto Louie for the sake of companionship he hopes that Lou ie will teach him how to live how to love how to survive in\n23:29\nthis n ew age but they are both sorely disappointed to find out that neither of\n 23:34\nthem holds the secret that the other was looking for all of their d isillusions come crashing down as Arman's coven\n23:42\nkills Claudia and although Louie and Armand go through the motions traveling\n23:47\nthe wor ld making a life together it is all for not louie confesses \"I never\n23: 53\nchanged after that i sought for nothing in the one great source of cha nge which\n23:59\nis humanity and even in my love and absorption with the beauty of the world\n24:04\nI sought to learn nothing that could be given back to humanity i drank of the beauty of the world as a vampire drinks\n2 4:12\ni was satisfied i was filled to the brim but I was dead and I was ch angeless\n24:19\narmand comes to recognize this despair in Louie and he's heartbroken he tries\n24:25\nto provoke a reaction from him tries to get h im to do or say anything he admits\n24:30\nto Louie that he had a part in the death of Louis's beloved Claudia but even that\n24:35\ndoesn't get a r esponse to Louie louie has drank in the entire world and he has\n24:41\nno thing to show for it armand leaves to find his next victim his next anchor to\n24:46\nthe new age and the interview with the vampire book concludes with Louie left\n24:52\nutterly a drift his immortality stripping him bare of any semblance of\n24:58\nhope or humanity but existential despair is n ot to be the lot of every vampire\n25:06\nfor those like Lestat who truly embrace their vampirism there is hope that they\n25:12\nwill find meaning louie explains that for Lat being a vampire for him meant\n25:18\nrevenge revenge against life itself every time he took a life it was revenge\n25:2 6\nlestat has taken advantage of being a vampire to do all of the things t hat he\n25:32\ncould not do as a human he lives passionately and recklessl y he falls in\n25:38\nlove he breaks hearts he creates and he destroys and although by our human moral\n25:44\nstandards he's not exactly living the purest life by vampire standards he's\n25:49\nliving the only life you ca n this sentiment is actually perfectly expressed by Meline Claudia's compa nion\n25:57\nin the show when Meline cuts through Claudia's very Louisesqu e existential\n26:02\ndespair and tells her that if she feels like it's al l too much if she feels like it's all building and she's just going\n26:08 \nto go bang that she should just go bang go bang or go flag go cold i mea n that's\n26:16\nfine then you'll be fine again and then bang and then Oka y and then bang\n26:22\nand just get used to it like weather meline in the show is actually one of my\n26:29\nfavorite examples of someone who has f igured out the key to living as a\n26:34\nvampire without completely losin g your mind she is a human that has experienced\n26:39\nall of the horrors and abuse that 1940s Paris has to offer she already\n26:44\nunderstands w hat it is to live outside of the standard moral code to live for scant mom ents of joy whilst enduring the\n26:52\nagony between them when Claudia me ets her she is instantly enamored and it's\n26:58\nno wonder here's finall y someone who's not just moping and whining with existential dread it's so meone who wants\n27:05\nto take life with both hands and make it her own s he's perfectly suited to\n27:11\nbecoming a vampire in a conversation with Armand when they're trying to get Meline turned into a vampire he flatly\ n27:17\npresents her with the issue that characters like he and Louie are struggling with how do you deal with the\n27:23\ntimes that you remember b ecoming history and Meline just laughs she has already\n27:30\nfelt the di splaced unsettled timelessness of a vampire as a mortal\n27:35\nand welcom es the new challenges of immortality i think that this really\n27:40\nreck less zeal for life exhibited by characters like Meline in the show and\n27 :45\nlater listat is kind of the only way that you can survive as a rian v ampire\n27:53\nyou can't just wait around for perfect transcendental meani ng to drop out of a\n27:58\nbook and into your lap the world doesn't make sense it is a chaotic messy savage\n28:05\ngarden and in that garden you h ave to fight for yourself you have to be willing to scrge for whatever joy you\n28:11\ncan the joy of love the joy of creation you have to be willin g to make mistakes\n28:17\nand then get back up from them it is an utterly imperfect way to live but for\n28:23\nthe imperfect creature of a vampire it might be the only way to survive\n28:30\nhonestly this whole listian l ife philosophy just makes me\n28:36\nthink of Wow Bagger the infinitely pr olonged from the third Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book douglas Adams \n28:42\nintroduces him those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it but Wow Bagger was not one of\n28:49\nthem indeed he had come to hate them the load of serene bastards he had had his immortality t hrust upon him by an\n28:56\nunfortunate accident with an irrational parti cle accelerator a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands and yet despite\ n29:04\nall of that Wow Bagger just like Leat has found a reason to live e ven if it is\n29:11\na a morally dubious one he would insult the universe that is he would insult\n29:17\neverybody in it individually personally on e by one and this was the thing that\n29:23\nhe really decided to grit his teeth over in alphabetical order is this the\n29:29\ntraditionally morall y correct thing to do with your life i'm going to say\n29:35\nprobably not however we're not necessarily following the rules of traditional morality we're already\n29:40\nbreaking the laws of time and space so who's to say that your reason to live has to follow the conventions of\n29:47\nstandar d morality either way it's fiction and watching these immortal\n29:53\ncha racters fail and struggle and sometimes succeed to make meaning out of\n29 :59\ntheir immortal lives can be a really great way to reflect on our own lives\n30:04\nand how we find meaning in a world that sometimes seems insa ne and chaotic but\n30:10\nthe playing field becomes a little bit more com plicated when you consider characters that weren't necessarily born\n30:16 \ninto or coerced into immortality but those who chose that path for thems elves\n30:22\nfor example the characters of Dune i'm going to issue a spoi ler warning for all\n30:28\nof the Dune books up until the end of God Empe ror and then that also counts\n30:33\nfor all three Denal Noob movies that will ever exist so go ahead and skip to this timestamp if you'd like to a void\n30:40\nthose spoilers in Dune the past and the future frequently imp ose themselves upon\n30:46\nthe present paul experiences this as he is gra dually transformed into a god by\n30:52\nthe Fman people they begin to fit him into prophecies to look gleefully towards his future and by the end o f the\n30:59\nnovel although he's lived an entirely mortal human life he h as already\n31:05\nascended to a certain kind of immortality paul saw how futile were any\n31:11\nefforts of his to change any smallest bit of this he had thought to oppose the\n31:16\njihad within himself but the jihad wo uld be his legions would rage out from\n31:22\nArachus even without him th ey needed only the legend he already had become\n31:28\nprecience the abil ity to see glimpses of the future imparts a kind of\n31:34\ntimelessness u pon Paul that along with the voices of his ancestors awakened in\n31:40\nh is mind give him an unnatural connection to the past and the future\n31:45 \nand in a way they have already immortalized him and yet he finds no\n31: 50\npeace in his prediction of the future it's a trap as his son Leato exp lains I\n31:57\nknow the trap of precience my father's life tells me what I need to know about it to know the future absolutely is to\n32:04\nbe tra pped into that future absolutely it collapses time present becomes future\ n32:12\ni require more freedom than that leato does indeed require more fr eedom he is\n32:18\nthe one that fulfills the golden path which his father could not humanity has\n32:24\nbecome overreiant on faith they anticipate heroes and messiahs they wait\n32:30\non saviors and Leato seeks to break them from those delusions but in order to\n32:36\nfulfill the golden path to make the change that humanity needs Leato must\n32:42\nbecome truly im mortal with the voices of his ancestors clamoring in his ears and\n32:48\n the options of the future a glimmer in the corner of his eye Leato immerse s\n32:53\nhimself in timelessness taking on a skin of baby sandworms inund ating himself\n33:00\nwith a constant cycle of the spice milange with disc oursing through him he\n33:05\nis all knowing all powerful and immortal go d Emperor of Dune the fourth book\n33:12\nlaunches us over 3\,000 years pa st this transformation when Leato has become the\n33:19\ngod tyrant that h e knew he needed to be he is an atrocity in the truest form\n33:26\nknown by many as a god operating the minutiae of his empire with an iron fist\n3 3:31\nto nearly everyone who looks upon him there is next to no humanity l eft in\n33:38\nLeato he has become a massive bloated worm with a human fac e and if he is not\n33:45\nworshiped as a god then he is cursed as the gre atest villain that history has\n33:50\never seen and yet the book provides us with a very unique perspective because it allows us to see into Leato' s mind it\n33:59\nallows us to see how despite appearances he has clung de sperately onto his\n34:05\nhumanity he mourns the loss of it he recognizes that despite his immortality\n34:11\nhe has never been allowed to live ev en one singular truly well-lived life he\n34:18\nhas no true friends only the regenerated copies of his old friend Duncan Idaho\n34:24\nand his rebe llious advisors he falls in love with a woman but it is with a woman\n34:3 0\nwho is specifically engineered to trap his heart their love is true and it is\n34:35\nbeautiful but it can never be fulfilled he will never be a man again it is far\n34:42\ntoo late for Leato to be anything except for t he god monster that he has made\n34:48\nhimself and yet we can also see ju st how much beautiful important insight his\n34:55\nimmortality has given him for what do you hunger Lord monae ventured for a\n35:01\nhumankind whi ch can make truly long-term decisions do you know the key to that ability Mano you have said it many times\n35:08\nLord it is the ability to change your mind change yes short-term decisions\n35:15\ntend to fail in the long term this is a key insight the true power of humanity\n35:23\nthe thing t hat will allow us to continue to persist for eons to come is our\n35:29\na bility to change no humanmade decisions no matter how long-term you were\n 35:35\nthinking when you made that decision can be upheld through all of h istory if humanity wanted to survive they could\n35:42\nnot be like Leato they could not be still and unchanging in the sea of time\n35:48\nthey wou ld have to learn how to not be part of the precient vision that Leato\n35: 53\nonce had and that is the secret to the golden path the golden path can only end\n36:01\nin one way with the death of the god emperor Leato atrad es through his\n36:07\nsister's descendant Siona Leato has bred a race of people who are capable of\n36:13\nstepping outside of precient vision and making choices that are truly free like\n36:19\na closed soda bottle being shaken over the course of 3\,500 years Leato's death\n36:25\nresults in a n explosion of humanity taking in their freedom and making truly\n36:32\nf ree decisions and they will certainly think twice before they place a tyra nt\n36:37\ngod emperor on the throne again in Dune immortality is a sticky and painful\n36:45\nthing and it's not the clean noble agony of Tolken or the angsty passion of Anne\n36:53\nRice it is self-imposed torture but in a way the immortality that Leato aspires\n37:01\nto might just be the mos t lasting form of immortality of all standing over the\n37:08\ndecrepit co rpse of Leato Siona and Duncan Idaho muse on this and everyone\n37:13\ntho ught he was immortal idaho said \"Do you know what the oral history says?\ " Siona asked \"if you want immortality\n37:22\nthen deny form whatever ha s form has mortality beyond form is the formless\n37:29\nthe immortal that sounds like him idaho accused i think it was she said Leato\n37:37\nhas t ransformed himself into an idea a chapter in every philosophy textbook\n37 :44\nthat will ever be written in this new universe a nameless fear that w ill catch\n37:49\nin the back of the throats of anyone who finds themselve s falling under the spell of a new charismatic leader in carrying\n37:56\n out his terrible purpose upon himself and upon the universe Leato has made \n38:02\nhimself truly immortal but all of these characters I've discussed have something\n38:08\nin common and that is that they were nonhuman elve s are a completely\n38:13\ndifferent species uh vampires have supernatural abilities and Leato tapped into supernatural powers in order to\n38:20\ng ain immortality but what about the human who without thought or supernatur al\n38:25\nintervention is launched into immortality whilst still being hu man\n38:31\nthrough and through i do usually try and limit myself in these trope videos to just three particular tropes because\n38:38\nthey get ver y long and I could ramble on forever however I couldn't help myself\n38:43 \nfrom talking about this short story by Ursula Ka The Island of the Immor tals if\n38:50\nyou watching this video right now have not read this story I'm going to urge you right now to click off this video\n38:56\nand go an d read it i'm going to link it in the description but you can also just Go ogle the Island of the Immortals and\n39:01\nit'll pop up it's a 10-minute read and it does hurt me in my algorithm to tell you to click off of this video but you\n39:07\nseriously should read it because it's very good and you're going to have a great experience reading it versus me\n39:13\njust poorly recounting it to you but for those of you that are driving while l istening to this or doing laundry or\n39:20\njust have this on in the back ground while you're playing a video game and you're not going to go throug h that effort allow me to summarize this story\n39:27\nfor you if you just finished reading it and you don't need it summarized for you you can skip to this point or you can\n39:33\nlisten to me talk because at least that' s good for my algorithm we're introduced to an unnamed protagonist who\n39 :39\nis on vacation in the Yendi Plains while there she catches word of an island\n39:45\nthere where there are people that are immortal obviously s he's fascinated by\n39:52\nthis idea and she wants to go to this island an d check it out for herself and so she speaks to a travel agent but when\n3 9:58\nshe tells the travel agent about where she wants to go she's immedia tely met with disdain the woman doesn't seem to\n40:05\nunderstand why she would want to go to that island still she reluctantly makes the plans for the protagonist to go to\n40:11\nthe island but before she leaves the pro tagonist stops off in a library while trying to research this island in th e\n40:17\nlibrary she finds suspiciously little information whatsoever abo ut the island\n40:23\nthere's an old account of a man who traveled there l ong long ago there's a\n40:28\nreport on the diamonds that are sometimes m ined on the island but other than that there is very suspiciously\n40:35\n little information about this island where apparently people are immortal on\n40:41\nthe boat ride to the island the protagonist thinks to herself \ "If a virus that made you immortal turned up\n40:46\nin my country vast su ms of money would be poured into studying it and if it had bad effects the y'd alter it genetically\n40:53\nto get rid of the bad effects and the tal k shows would yatterder on about it and the news anchors would pontificate \n41:00\nabout it and the pope would do some pontificating too and so woul d all the other holy men and meanwhile the very\n41:06\nrich would be corn ering not only the market but the supplies and then the very rich would be even more different\n41:13\nfrom you and me what I was really curious abo ut was the fact that none of this had happened the Indians were\n41:19\nap parently so uninterested in their chance to be immortal that there was sca rcely anything about it in the\n41:26\nlibrary once on the island the prot agonist finds it dilapitated and\n41:31\ndepressed the residents all wear gauze suits and fly masks to keep away the\n41:37\nomnipresent herds of fl ies that are in the air flies that allegedly carry the\n41:43\nvirus that makes you immortal once again the protagonist finds herself wondering who in the world would intentionally\n41:51\navoid the fly bite of eternal lif e so she asks a local boy \"if you could would\n41:57\nyou like to live a long time?\" \"Sure\,\" he said with as much enthusiasm as a Yandian is ca pable of \"you know but you\n42:04\ndon't want to be immortal you wear the fly gauze.\" He nodded he saw nothing to\n42:10\ndiscuss in all this she makes it out to a remote village where supposedly an\n42:15\nimmortal pers on lives and there she sees someone leaning against the well that has been afflicted by a rare tropical\n42:21\ndisease akin to leprosy their legs h ave been rendered into stumps their face is\n42:27\ncompletely melted away and scarred their hair is long and matted they can't see\n42:34\nthey can 't speak it seems like they're barely hanging on this disease has utterly ravaged them and so the\n42:40\nprotagonist avoids the leper and instead f inds the local tour guide and pays the\n42:46\ntour guide so that she can go and meet the immortal person and then of course the woman then brings h er right back to\n42:52\nthe disfigured person by the well you are looking at the immortal of our village the woman said in the practice\n42:59\nsin g song of the tour guide it has been with us for many many centuries in th is family it is our duty and pride to look\n43:06\nafter the immortal feed ing hours are 6:00 in the morning and 6:00 in the evening it lives on milk and barley\n43:12\nbroth its legs were lost when there was an earthquake 1\,000 years ago it was also damaged by fire and by other\n43:19\naccident s before it came into the care of the Roya family the legend of my family says that the immortal was once a\n43:25\nhandsome young man who made his living for many lifetimes of normal people by hunting in the marshes this was 2 or\n43:33\n3\,000 years ago it is believed the immortal cannot hear what you say or see you but it is glad to accept your\n43:40\nprayers for its well-being and any offerings for its support as it is entirely depende nt on the Roya family\n43:45\nfor food and shelter thank you very much i w ill answer questions after a while I\n43:51\nsaid it can't die it seems th at in our\n43:56\nminds no matter what the Oxford dictionary definition is being immortal\n44:02\nis not the same as just never dying stricken the p rotagonist asks if this is\n44:08\nthe only immortal on the island oh no s he said there are others all around in\n44:13\nthe ground sometimes people find them souvenirs the really old ones ours is young you know she looked at the\n44:20\nimmortal with a weary but proprietary eye the way a mother looks at an unpromising infant \"the diamonds\,\" I\n44:27\nsaid \"the di amonds are immortals\,\" she nodded after a really long time she said\n44: 33\nas the protagonist wanders off in the direction of home completely gut ted she notes we are a carbon-based life form as\n44:41\nthe scientists sa y but how a human body could turn into a diamond I do not know\n44:47\nunl ess through some spiritual factor perhaps the result of genuinely endless\ n44:54\nsuffering and perhaps diamond is only a name the Indians give thes e lumps of\n44:59\nruin a a kind of euphemism to me this is the horror of all horrors when it comes\n45:07\nto the already terrifying prospect of im mortality what if we aren't part of\n45:13\nsome special sacred race promi sed a cushy retirement until the heat death of\n45:19\nthe universe what i f we aren't a a a hot moody vampire surrounded by other hot\n45:25\nmoody vampires to canoodle with what if we don't have some great larger than us\ n45:32\npurpose driving us forward what if it just happened one day and th en suddenly\n45:39\nthe life that you're living right now with all of its tedium was just what you had to do for the rest of time and space\n45:48\n think about all the things that you've been putting off all the stuff that you're kind of like maybe I'll just never get around to\n45:56\nthat you know the the overdue credit card bills the relationships in slow decline t he dreams that you just never\n46:02\nquite got around to fulfilling the a ching hearts the aching souls the life\n46:07\nthat you have today riddled with holes and flaws and pain stretched out as it\n46:13\nis into eternit y and maybe that is why immortality is at its most\n46:21\ntantalizing whe n it's kept in fiction because when we get down to brass tax\n46:26\nI'm f airly certain that most of us wouldn't actually want to be immortal we\n46 :31\nwouldn't accept it if it was presented to us but within the safe drea mland of\n46:37\nfiction we can imagine what it would look like if we coul d skirt this great\n46:43\nspecieswide fear we can plan out what we would do if instead of decades we had\n46:49\ncenturies the skills that we would learn the places that we would see the people that we would become if the final bell\n46:56\nnever rang when we seek to learn the secret to immorta lity the secret is not\n47:02\nhow to become immortal the secret is how to cope with the mortality that from our\n47:09\nvery first breath we have a ll found ourselves trapped in we can see who we\n47:14\nare and the lives that we are leading with entirely new eyes humans are\n47:20\ntrained to b elieve that the grass is always going to be greener on the other side but through the lens of fiction we\n47:25\ncan catch a very rare glimpse at th e grass on our own side we can see that it\n47:30\nlooks pretty green over here too those skills that we would perfect if we ever\n47:35\nrandomly b ecame immortal if we start today we can at least get passively good\n47:41 \nat those skills within a year or two we might not see every corner of th e world\n47:46\nbut we can look at the things that we see every day the st reets the trees the\n47:52\nsky we can see that with new eyes and see it f or how absolutely beautiful it\n47:57\nreally is we may not be able to bec ome the superheroes that we could be if we had all of time to figure it ou t but we\n48:05\ncan still try and become the best version of ourselves th at our mortal lives will allow for despite the\n48:11\nchokeold that it ha s had on storytelling and human life since the Epic of\n48:17\nGilgamesh 4 \,000 years ago I would like to declare today in this video that\n48:23\ni mmortality is kind of overrated after all we have read story after story w here\n48:29\nimmortal people want nothing more than to be like us to have these simple\n48:35\nbright beautiful lives that we are all gifted from bi rth and so I'd think or at\n48:41\nthe very least hope that we might event ually get the message that it's no bad thing to celebrate a simple mortal\ n48:49\nlife i like to consider myself a fairly rational person when it co mes to what I\n48:54\nfear my phobias are things like the ocean and outer space which are perfectly reasonable however I do have\n49:01\nan unreason able fear of randomly being turned immortal that's terrifying that's\n49:0 7\nI'm not ready to handle all of that but I would like to hear in the com ments what your favorite story is about\n49:14\nimmortal people i know tha t most of the things that I talked about today were people that hated bein g immortal but I'm\n49:19\nfairly certain that there is stuff that exists out there where people are immortal and also managed to be happy so\n49:26 \nplease do let me know in the comments what your favorite literature or m edia is about immortal people so I can check\n49:32\nthat out give this vi deo a like if you enjoyed it or you learned something new and do consider subscribing if you want\n49:38\nto tune in to hear me talk about stuff alm ost every single week thank you so much for joining me this week and I hop e\n49:45\nthat you have a very happy hobby day\n49:52\n[Music]\n\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n THE ISLAND OF THE IMMORTALS of URSALA K LEGUIN\n\n\n\n LINK \n \n https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-island-of-the-immortals/ \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Somebody asked me if I’d heard that there were immor tal people on the Yendian Plane\, and somebody else told me that there wer e\, so when I got there\, I asked about them. The travel agent rather relu ctantly showed me a place called the Island of the Immortals on her map. “You don’t want to go there\,” she said.\n\n“I don’t?”\n\ n“Well\, it’s dangerous\,” she said\, looking at me as if she though t I was not the danger-loving type\, in which she was entirely correct. Sh e was a rather unpolished local agent\, not an employee of the Interplanar y Service. Yendi is not a popular destination. In many ways it’s so like our own plane that it seems hardly worth the trouble of visiting. There a re differences\, but they’re subtle.\n\n“Why is it called the Island o f the Immortals?”\n\n“Because some of the people there are immorta l.”\n\n“They don’t die?” I asked\, never quite sure of the accurac y of my translatomat.\n\n“They don’t die\,” she said indifferently . “Now\, the Prinjo Archipelago is a lovely place for a restful fortnigh t.” Her pencil moved southward across the map of the Great Sea of Yendi. My gaze remained on the large\, lonely Island of the Immortals. I pointed to it.\n\n“Is there a hotel—there?”\n\n“There are no tourist faci lities. Just cabins for the diamond hunters.”\n\n“There are diamond mi nes?”\n\n“Probably\,” she said. She had become dismissive.\n\n“Wha t makes it dangerous?”\n\n“The flies.”\n\n“Biting flies? Do they c arry disease?”\n\n“No.” She was downright sullen by now.\n\n“I’d like to try it for a few days\,” I said\, as winningly as I could. “J ust to find out if I’m brave. If I get scared\, I’ll come right back. Give me an open flight back.”\n\n“No airport.”\n\n“Ah\,” said I\ , more winningly than ever. “So how would I get there?”\n\n“Ship\, ” she said\, unwon. “Once a week.”\n\nNothing rouses an attitude lik e an attitude. “Fine!” I said.\n\nAt least\, I thought as I left the t ravel agency\, it won’t be anything like Laputa. I had read Gulliver’s Travels as a child\, in a slightly abridged and probably greatly expurgat ed version. My memory of it was like all my childhood memories\, immediate \, broken\, vivid—bits of bright particularity in a vast drift of oblivi on. I remembered that Laputa floated in the air\, so you had to use an air ship to get to it. And really I remembered little else\, except that the L aputans were immortal\, and that I had liked it the least of Gulliver’s four Travels\, deciding it was for grownups\, a damning quality at the tim e. Did the Laputans have spots\, moles\, something like that\, which disti nguished them? And were they scholars? But they grew senile\, and lived on and on in incontinent idiocy—or did I imagine that? There was something nasty about them\, something like that\, something for grown-ups.\n\nBut I was on Yendi\, where Swift’s works are not in the library. I could not look it up. Instead\, since I had a whole day before the ship sailed\, I went to the library and looked up the Island of the Immortals.\n\nThe Cent ral Library of Undund is a noble old building full of modem conveniences\, including book-translatomats. I asked a librarian for assistance and he b rought me Postwand’s Explorations\, written about a hundred and sixty ye ars earlier\, from which I copied what follows. At the time Postwand wrote \, the port city where I was staying\, An Ria\, had not been founded\; the great wave of settlers from the east had not begun\; the peoples of the c oast were scattered tribes of shepherds and farmers. Postwand took a rathe r patronizing but intelligent interest in their stories.\n\n“Among the l egends of the peoples of the West Coast\,” he writes\, “one concerned a large island two or three days west from Undund Bay\, where live the peo ple who never die. All whom I asked about it were familiar with the reputa tion of the Island of the Immortals\, and some even told me that members o f their tribe had visited the place. Impressed with the unanimity of this tale\, I determined to test its veracity. When at length Vong had finished making repairs to my boat\, I sailed out of the Bay and due west over the Great Sea. A following wind favored my expedition.\n\n“About noon on th e fifth day\, I raised the island. Low-lying\, it appeared to be at least fifty miles long from north to south.\n\n“In the region in which I first brought the boat close to the land\, the shores were entirely salt marsh. It being low tide\, and the weather unbearably sultry\, the putrid smell of the mud kept us well away\, until at length sighting sand beaches I sai led into a shallow bay and soon saw the roofs of a small town at the mouth of a creek. We tied up at a crude and decrepit jetty and with indescribab le emotion\, on my part at least\, set foot on this isle reputed to hold t he secret of ETERNAL LIFE.”\n\nI think I shall abbreviate Postwand\; h e’s long-winded\, and besides\, he’s always sneering at Vong\, who see ms to do most of the work and have none of the indescribable emotions. So he and Vong trudged around the town\, finding it all very shabby and nothi ng out of the way\, except that there were dreadful swarms of flies. Every one went about in gauze clothing from head to toe\, and all the doors and windows had screens. Postwand assumed the flies would bite savagely\, but found they didn’t\; they were annoying\, he says\, but one scarcely felt their bites\, which didn’t swell up or itch. He wondered if they carrie d some disease. He asked the islanders\, who disclaimed all knowledge of d isease\, saying nobody ever got sick except mainlanders.\n\nAt this\, Post wand got excited\, naturally\, and asked them if they ever died. “Of cou rse\,” they said.\n\nHe does not say what else they said\, but one gathe rs they treated him as yet another idiot from the mainland asking stupid q uestions. He becomes quite testy\, and makes comments on their backwardnes s\, bad manners\, and execrable cookery. After a disagreeable night in a h ut of some kind\, he explored inland for several miles\, on foot since the re was no other way to get about. In a tiny village near a marsh he saw a sight that was\, in his words\, “proof positive that the islanders’ cl aim of being free from disease was mere boastfulness\, or something yet mo re sinister: for a more dreadful example of the ravages of udreba I have n ever seen\, even in the wilds of Rotogo. The sex of the poor victim was in distinguishable\; of the legs\, nothing remained but stumps\; the whole bo dy was as if it had been melted in fire\; only the hair\, which was quite white\, grew luxuriantly\, long\, tangled\, and filthy—a crowning horror to this sad spectacle.”\n\nI looked up udreba. It’s a disease the Yen dians dread as we dread leprosy\, which it resembles\, though it is far mo re immediately dangerous\; a single contact with saliva or any exudation c an cause infection. There is no vaccine and no cure. Postwand was horrifie d to see children playing close by the udreb. He apparently lectured a wom an of the village on hygiene\, at which she took offense and lectured him back\, telling him not to stare at people. She picked up the poor udreb “as if it were a child of five\,” he says\, and took it into her hut. She came out with a bowl full of something\, muttering loudly. At this poi nt Vong\, with whom I sympathize\, suggested that it was time to leave. “I acceded to my companion’s groundless apprehensions\,” Postwand sa ys. In fact\, they sailed away that evening.\n\nI can’t say that this ac count raised my enthusiasm for visiting the island. I sought some more mod ern information. My librarian had drifted off\, the way Yendians always se emed to do. I didn’t know how to use the subject catalogues\, or it was even more incomprehensibly organized than our electronic subject catalogue s\, or there was singularly little information concerning the Island of th e Immortals in the library. All I found was a treatise on the Diamonds of Aya—a name sometimes given the island. The article was too technical for the translatomat. I couldn’t understand much except that apparently the re were no mines\; the diamonds did not occur deep in the earth but were t o be found lying on the surface of it\, as I think is the case in a southe rn African desert. As the island of Aya was forested and swampy\, its diam onds were exposed by heavy rains or mudslides in the wet season. People we nt and wandered around looking for them. A big one turned up just often en ough to keep people coming. The islanders apparently never joined in the s earch. In fact\, some baffled diamond hunters claimed that the natives bur ied diamonds when they found them. If I understood the treatise\, some tha t had been found were immense by our standards: they were described as sha peless lumps\, usually black or dark\, occasionally clear\, and weighing u p to five pounds. Nothing was said about cutting these huge stones\, what they were used for\, or their market price. Evidently the Yendi didn’t p rize diamonds as we do. There was a lifeless\, almost furtive tone to the treatise\, as if it concerned something vaguely shameful.\n\nSurely if the islanders actually knew anything about “the secret of ETERNAL LIFE\,” there’d be a bit more about them\, and it\, in the library?\n\nIt was m ere stubbornness\, or reluctance to go back to the sullen travel agent and admit my mistake\, that impelled me to the docks the next morning.\n\nI c heered up no end when I saw my ship\, a charming miniliner with about thir ty pleasant staterooms. Its fortnightly round took it to several islands f arther west than Aya. Its sister ship\, stopping by on the homeward leg\, would bring me back to the mainland at the end of my week. Or perhaps I wo uld simply stay aboard and have a two-week cruise? That was fine with the ship’s staff. They were informal\, even lackadaisical\, about arrangemen ts. I had the impression that low energy and a short attention span were q uite common among Yendians. But my companions on the ship were undemanding \, and the cold fish salads were excellent. I spent two days on the top de ck watching sea-birds swoop\, great red fish leap\, and translucent vane-w ings hover over the sea. We sighted Aya very early in the morning of the t hird day. At the mouth of the bay the smell of the marshes was truly disco uraging\; but a conversation with the ship’s captain had decided me to v isit Aya after all\, and I disembarked.\n\nThe captain\, a man of sixty or so\, had assured me that there were indeed immortals on the island. They were not born immortal\, but contracted immortality from the bite of the i sland flies. It was\, he thought\, a virus. “You’ll want to take preca utions\,” he said. “It’s rare. I don’t think there’s been a new case in the last hundred years—longer\, maybe. But you don’t want to t ake chances.”\n\nAfter pondering awhile I inquired\, as delicately as po ssible\, though delicacy is hard to achieve on the translatomat\, whether there weren’t people who wanted to escape death—people who came to the island hoping to be bitten by one of these lively flies. Was there a draw back I did not know about\, some price too high to pay even for immortalit y?\n\nThe captain considered my question for a while. He was slow-spoken\, unexcitable\, verging on the lugubrious. “I think so\,” he said. He l ooked at me. “You can judge\,” he said. “After you’ve been there .”\n\nHe would say no more. A ship’s captain is a person who has that privilege.\n\nThe ship did not put into the bay\, but was met out beyond t he bar by a boat that took passengers ashore. The other passengers were st ill in their cabins. Nobody but the captain and a couple of sailors watche d me (all rigged out head to foot in a suit of strong but gauzy mesh which I had rented from the ship) clamber down into the boat and wave goodbye. The captain nodded. One of the sailors waved. I was extremely frightened. It was no help at all that I didn’t know what I was frightened of.\n\nPu tting the captain and Postwand together\, it sounded as if the price of im mortality was the horrible disease\, udreba. But I really had very little evidence\, and my curiosity was intense. If a virus that made you immortal turned up in my country\, vast sums of money would be poured into studyin g it\, and if it had bad effects they’d alter it genetically to get rid of the bad effects\, and the talk shows would yatter on about it\, and new s anchors would pontificate about it\, and the Pope would do some pontific ating too\, and so would all the other holy men\, and meanwhile the very r ich would be cornering not only the market\, but the supplies. And then th e very rich would be even more different from you and me.\n\nWhat I was re ally curious about was the fact that none of this had happened. The Yendia ns were apparently so uninterested in their chance to be immortal that the re was scarcely anything about it in the library.\n\nBut I could see\, as the boat drew close to the town\, that the travel agent had been a bit dis ingenuous. There had been hotels here—big ones\, six or eight stories. T hey were all visibly derelict\, signs askew\, windows boarded or blank.\n\ nThe boatman\, a shy young man\, rather nice-looking as well as I could te ll through my gauzy envelope\, said\, “Hunters’ lodge\, ma’am?” in to my translatomat. I nodded and he sailed us neatly to a small jetty at t he north end of the docks. The waterfront too had seen better days. It was now sagging and forlorn\, no ships\, only a couple of trawlers or crabber s. I stepped up onto the dock\, looking about nervously for flies\; but th ere were none at the moment. I tipped the boatman a couple of radlo\, and he was so grateful he took me up the street\, a sad little street\, to the diamond hunters’ lodge. It consisted of eight or nine decrepit cabins m anaged by a dispirited woman who\, speaking slowly but without any commas or periods\, said to take Number Four because the screens were the best on es breakfast at eight dinner at seven eighteen radlo and did I want a lunc h packed a radlo fifty extra.\n\nAll the other cabins were unoccupied. The toilet had a little\, internal\, eternal leak\, tink … tink\, which I c ould not find the source of. Dinner and breakfast arrived on trays\, and w ere edible. The flies arrived with the heat of the day\, plenty of them\, but not the thick fearsome swarms I had expected. The screens kept them ou t\, and the gauze suit kept them from biting. They were small\, weak-looki ng\, brownish flies.\n\nThat day and the next morning\, walking about the town\, the name of which I could not find written anywhere\, I felt that t he Yendian tendency to depression had bottomed out here\, attained nadir. The islanders were a sad people. They were listless. They were lifeless. M y mind turned up that word and stared at it.\n\nI realized I’d waste my whole week just getting depressed if I didn’t rouse up my courage and as k some questions. I saw my young boatman fishing off the jetty and went to talk to him.\n\n“Will you tell me about the immortals?” I asked him\, after some halting amenities.\n\n“Well\, most people just walk around a nd look for them. In the woods\,” he said.\n\n“No\, not the diamonds \,” I said\, checking the translatomat. “I’m not really very interes ted in diamonds.”\n\n“Nobody much is any more\,” he said. “There u sed to be a lot of tourists and diamond hunters. I guess they do something else now.”\n\n“But I read in a book that there are people here who li ve very\, very long lives—who actually don’t die.”\n\n“Yes\,” he said\, placidly.\n\n“Are there any immortal people in town? Do you know any of them?”\n\nHe checked his fishing line. “Well\, no\,” he sa id. “There was a new one\, way back in my grandpa’s time\, but it went to the mainland. It was a woman. I guess there’s an old one in the vill age.” He nodded toward the island. “Mother saw it once.”\n\n“If yo u could\, would you like to live a long time?”\n\n“Sure!” he said\, with as much enthusiasm as a Yendian is capable of. “You know.”\n\n“ But you don’t want to be immortal. You wear the fly-gauze.”\n\nHe nodd ed. He saw nothing to discuss in all this. He was fishing with gauze glove s\, seeing the world through a mesh veil. That was life.\n\nThe storekeepe r told me that you could walk to the village in a day and showed me the pa th. My dispirited landlady packed me a lunch. I set out next morning\, att ended at first by thin\, persistent swarms of flies. It was a dull walk ac ross a low\, damp landscape\, but the sun was mild and pleasant\, and the flies finally gave up. To my surprise\, I got to the village before I was even hungry for lunch. The islanders must walk slowly and seldom. It had t o be the right village\, though\, because they spoke of only one\, “the village\,” again no name.\n\nIt was small and poor and sad: six or seven wooden huts\, rather like izbas\, stilted up a bit to keep them from the mud. Poultry\, something like guinea fowl but mud-brown\, scuttled about e verywhere\, making soft\, raucous noises. A couple of children ran away an d hid as I approached.\n\nAnd there\, propped up next to the village well\ , was the figure Postwand had described\, just as he had described it—le gless\, sexless\, the face almost featureless\, blind\, with skin like bad ly burned bread\, and thick\, matted\, filthy white hair.\n\nI stopped\, a ppalled.\n\nA woman came out of the hut to which the children had run. She came down the rickety steps and walked up to me. She gestured at my trans latomat\, and I automatically held it out to her so she could speak into i t.\n\n“You came to see the Immortal\,” she said.\n\nI nodded.\n\n“Tw o radlo fifty\,” she said.\n\nI got out the money and handed it to her.\ n\n“Come this way\,” she said. She was poorly dressed and not clean\, but was a fine-looking woman\, thirty-five or so\, with unusual decisivene ss and vigor in her voice and movements.\n\nShe led me straight to the wel l and stopped in front of the being propped up in a legless canvas fisherm an’s chair next to it. I could not look at the face\, nor the horribly m aimed hand. The other arm ended in a black crust above the elbow. I looked away from that.\n\n“You are looking at the Immortal of our village\,” the woman said in the practiced singsong of the tour guide. “It has bee n with us for many many centuries. For over one thousand years it has belo nged to the Roya family. In this family it is our duty and pride to look a fter the Immortal. Feeding hours are six in the morning and six in the eve ning. It lives on milk and barley broth. It has a good appetite and enjoys good health with no sicknesses. It does not have udreba. Its legs were lo st when there was an earthquake one thousand years ago. It was also damage d by fire and other accidents before it came into the care of the Roya fam ily. The legend of my family says that the Immortal was once a handsome yo ung man who made his living for many lifetimes of normal people by hunting in the marshes. This was two or three thousand years ago\, it is believed . The Immortal cannot hear what you say or see you\, but is glad to accept your prayers for its wellbeing and any offerings for its support\, as it is entirely dependent on the Roya family for food and shelter. Thank you v ery much. I will answer questions.”\n\nAfter a while I said\, “It ca n’t die.”\n\nShe shook her head. Her face was impassive\; not unfeelin g\, but closed.\n\n“You aren’t wearing gauze\,” I said\, suddenly re alizing this. “The children weren’t. Aren’t you—”\n\nShe shook h er head again. “Too much trouble\,” she said\, in a quiet\, unofficial voice. “The children always tear the gauze. Anyhow\, we don’t have ma ny flies. And there’s only one.”\n\nIt was true that the flies seemed to have stayed behind\, in the town and the heavily manicured fields near it.\n\n“You mean there’s only one immortal at a time?”\n\n“Oh\, no\,” she said. “There are others all around. In the ground. Sometimes people find them. Souvenirs. The really old ones. Ours is young\, you kno w.” She looked at the Immortal with a weary but proprietary eye\, the wa y a mother looks at an unpromising infant.\n\n“The diamonds?” I said . “The diamonds are immortals?”\n\nShe nodded. “After a really long time\,” she said. She looked away\, across the marshy plain that surroun ded the village\, and then back at me. “A man came from the mainland\, l ast year\, a scientist. He said we ought to bury our Immortal. So it could turn to diamond\, you know. But then he said it takes thousands of years to turn. All that time it would be starving and thirsty in the ground and nobody would look after it. It is wrong to bury a person alive. It is our family duty to look after it. And no tourists would come.”\n\nIt was my turn to nod. The ethics of this situation were beyond me. I accepted her c hoice.\n\n“Would you like to feed it?” she asked\, apparently liking s omething about me\, for she smiled at me.\n\n“No\,” I said\, and I hav e to admit that I burst into tears.\n\nShe came closer and patted my shoul der.\n\n“It is very\, very sad\,” she said. She smiled again. “But t he children like to feed it\,” she said. “And the money helps.”\n\ n“Thank you for being so kind\,” I said\, wiping my eyes\, and I gave her another five radlo\, which she took gratefully. I turned around and wa lked back across the marshy plains to the town\, where I waited four more days until the sister ship came by from the west\, and the nice young man took me out in the boat\, and I left the Island of the Immortals\, and soo n after that I left the Yendian Plane.\n\nWe are a carbon-based life form\ , as the scientists say\, but how a human body could turn to diamond I do not know\, unless through some spiritual factor\, perhaps the result of ge nuinely endless suffering.\n\nPerhaps “diamond” is only a name the Yen dians give these lumps of ruin\, a kind of euphemism.\n\nI am still not ce rtain what the woman in the village meant when she said\, “There’s onl y one.” She was not referring to the immortals. She was explaining why s he didn’t protect herself or her children from the flies\, why she found the risk not worth the bother. It is possible that she meant that among t he swarms of flies in the island marshes there is only one fly\, one immor tal fly\, whose bite infects its victim with eternal life.\n\n***\n\n© 19 98 by Ursula K. Le Guin.\nOriginally published in Amazing Stories.\nReprin ted by permission of the author and the author’s agent\, \nThe Virginia Kidd Agency.\n\n\n\n  \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250401 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR