I thought of Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea Cycle, as I walked home from work. I’d taken a diversion to Michigan Avenue, to nab a few photographs, to watch tourists, and to see if there were interesting things to see. I’d had a reasonable afternoon/evening at work, but I needed time to decompress: to think, to plan, to maneuver. I did so, and in the midst of such maneuverings, I stumbled across one of those odd moments of visual synchronicity that must surely mark quite a large number of lives. I passed a store on Michigan Avenue and I can’t remember the name of it. All I can remember is that it sold expensive clothing. Hundreds of antique sewing machines formed the core of the store’s visual personality; indeed, there was (as pictured here) an entire wall of nothing but ancient sewing machines. There were hundreds of them, not just on the wall, but in other places as well. Years ago, I watched a miniseries event allegedly based on the first two novels of Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea Cycle. The miniseries in question was called, creatively enough, The Legend of Earthsea and though it was based on the first two books in the cycle, it had nothing to do with them. Not much, anyway. It was a disaster of a miniseries, completely mis-cast and undertaken by people who knew nothing of the original Earthsea stories. I have no problem with film/video interpretations of an author’s work, but I figure if one is to interpret someone else’s work, then one should at least read the work in question. One should realize that changing character ethnicities is probably a great, big no-no, if such ethnic changes effectively “whitewash” a story, as Ursula K. LeGuin so angrily stated. She wrote a whole blog article on the topic and washed her hands of the entire Legends fiasco. Because of the The Legend of Earthsea miniseries, I saw something odd and unexpected on Michigan Avenue. I saw a warped version of the tombs featured in the second Earthsea novel: The Tombs of Atuan. In the book, the tombs were scarcely described. They existed in a darkened, underground labyrinth and the tombs’ keeper didn’t need light in order to perform her functions there. In the bastardized miniseries…the tombs in question looked a lot like…well…a wall full of shelves and niches. That image stuck in my head as I saw a wall full of antique sewing machines. I wondered if these were the fabled Sewing Machines of Atuan, only I have to admit that Ms. LeGuin never made any references to such devices. I’m sure that if she did, there’d be all sorts of anthropological detail involved in their common description. There are no such things, however. But on a northerly stretch of Michigan Avenue, there are sewing machines on a wall…there is a wall made of sewing machines…and if one looks carefully, one may see shelves and niches, presumably containing the cremated, remains of various ancient rulers, quasi-gods, and warriors. There is no tomb-keeper in this image, however, no wandering Mage. Indeed, there isn’t much in this image except for sewing machines, bricks, and a bit of glass…but the image of otherworldly tombs stuck in my head, and drove me to give this image the title it bears above. It makes me laugh to think of an addition to LeGuin’s Earthsea Cycle: I giggle at the idea of The Sewing Machines of Atuan, probably to be followed by something like: The Seamstresses of Gont. I’m not sure what Ursula K. LeGuin might think of this idea, but I’m sure she’d giggle as well…she, like me, after all, comes up with story ideas by reading highway signs backwards. And she, like me, might well discover a novel lurking in…well…a wall made of sewing machines. And that’s that…and as always: thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.