post: omelas

package.json

@@ -35,9 +35,9 @@
   "dependencies": {
     "@fontsource-variable/fira-code": "^5.2.7",
     "github-slugger": "^2.0.0",
-    "katex": "^0.16.25",
+    "katex": "^0.16.27",
     "mdast-util-to-string": "^4.0.0",
-    "posthog-js": "^1.293.0",
+    "posthog-js": "^1.310.1",
     "reading-time": "^1.5.0",
     "unist-util-visit": "^5.0.0",
     "whatamesh": "max-niederman/whatamesh"
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@
     "normalize.css": "^8.0.1",
     "rehype-katex": "^7.0.1",
     "remark-math": "^6.0.0",
-    "sass": "^1.94.0",
+    "sass": "^1.97.1",
     "svelte": "^4.2.20",
     "typescript": "^5.9.3"
   },

src/content/archive/omelas.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,187 @@
+---
+slug: omelas
+title: "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"
+authors:
+  - Ursula K. Le Guin
+published: 1973-10-01T00:00:00-08:00
+---
+
+With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city
+Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the
+streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and
+under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were
+decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry
+women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster,
+a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance.
+Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows’ crossing flights, over the
+music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where on
+the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with
+mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their restive horses before the race.
+The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with streamers
+of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they
+were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own.
+Far off to the north and west the mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air
+of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold
+fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just enough wind
+to make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the silence
+of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city streets, farther
+and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air that from time to time
+trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells.
+
+Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?
+
+They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words
+of cheer much any more. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description such as this one
+tends to make certain assumptions. Given a description such as this one tends to look next for
+the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by his noble knights, or perhaps in a
+golden litter borne by great-muscled slaves. But there was no king. They did not use swords, or
+keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I
+suspect that they were singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got
+on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat
+that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were
+not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and
+sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only
+evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the
+terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair
+is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost
+lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. How can
+I tell you about the people of Omelas? They were not naive and happy children – though their
+children were, in fact, happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were
+not wretched. O miracle! but I wish I could describe it better. I wish I could convince you. Omelas
+sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps
+it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion,
+for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I think that there would
+be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the people of
+Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what
+is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however –
+that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc. – they could
+perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous
+devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold.
+Or they could have none of that: it doesn’t matter. As you like it. I incline to think that people
+from towns up and down the coast have been coming in to Omelas during the last days before the
+Festival on very fast little trains and double-decked trams, and that the train station of Omelas is
+actually the handsomest building in town, though plainer than the magnificent Farmers’ Market.
+But even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles,
+bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don’t hesitate. Let
+us not, however, have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already
+half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or stranger who desires
+union with the deep godhead of the blood, although that was my first idea. But really it would be
+better not to have any temples in Omelas – at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy no.
+Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine souffles to the
+hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the processions. Let tambourines
+be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a
+not unimportant point) let the offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved and looked after
+by all. One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt. But what else should there be?
+I thought at first there were no drugs, but that is puritanical. For those who like it, the faint
+insistent sweetness of _drooz_ may perfume the ways of the city, _drooz_ which first brings a great
+lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then after some hours a dreamy languor, and
+wonderful visions at last of the very arcana and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as exciting
+the pleasure of sex beyond all belief; and it is not habit-forming. For more modest tastes I think
+there ought to be beer. What else, what else belongs in the joyous city? The sense of victory,
+surely, the celebration of courage. But as we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The
+joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it
+is trivial. A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some
+outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere
+and the splendor of the world’s summer; this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas,
+and the victory they celebrate is that of life. I really don’t think many of them need to take _drooz_.
+
+Most of the processions have reached the Green Fields by now. A marvelous smell of cooking
+goes forth from the red and blue tents of the provisioners. The faces of small children are amiably
+sticky; in the benign grey beard of a man a couple of crumbs of rich pastry are entangled. The
+youths and girls have mounted their horses and are beginning to group around the starting line
+of the course. An old woman, small, fat, and laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket, and
+tall young men, wear her flowers in their shining hair. A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of
+the crowd, alone, playing on a wooden flute. People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do
+not speak to him, for he never ceases playing and never sees them, his dark eyes wholly rapt in
+the sweet, thin magic of the tune.
+
+He finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden flute.
+
+As if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a trumpet sounds from the pavilion
+near the starting line: imperious, melancholy, piercing. The horses rear on their slender legs, and
+some of them neigh in answer. Sober-faced, the young riders stroke the horses’ necks and soothe
+them, whispering, ”Quiet, quiet, there my beauty, my hope. . . .” They begin to form in rank along
+the starting line. The crowds along the racecourse are like a field of grass and flowers in the wind.
+The Festival of Summer has begun.
+
+Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one
+more thing.
+
+In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar
+of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A
+little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window
+somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted,
+foul-smelling heads, stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar
+dirt usually is. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused
+tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually
+is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective or perhaps it has become imbecile
+through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with
+its toes or genitals, as it sits haunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops.
+It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still
+standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come. The door is always locked; and
+nobody ever comes, except that sometimes-the child has no understanding of time or interval –
+sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of
+them may come and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in
+at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door
+is locked, the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has
+not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother’s voice, sometimes
+speaks. ”I will be good,” it says. ”Please let me out. I will be good!” They never answer. The child
+used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining,
+”eh-haa, eh-haa,” and it speaks less and less often. It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its
+belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and
+thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.
+
+They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are
+content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand
+why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the
+tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the
+skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies,
+depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.
+
+This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they
+seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people,
+though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the
+matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened
+at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger,
+outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child.
+But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile
+place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were
+done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and
+be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas
+for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of
+the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.
+
+The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.
+
+Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child
+and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on
+they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its
+freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too degraded
+and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits are
+too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be
+wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement
+to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice
+of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the
+acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives.
+Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free. They
+know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes
+possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their
+science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the
+wretched one were not there snivelling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make
+no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first
+morning of summer.
+
+Now do you believe in them? Are they not more credible? But there is one more thing to tell,
+and this is quite incredible.
+
+At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep
+or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent
+for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down
+the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the
+beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth
+or girl man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses
+with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or
+north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness,
+and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of
+us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But
+they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

src/content/config.ts

@@ -30,7 +30,17 @@ const tradesCollection = defineCollection({
 	}),
 });
 
+const archiveCollection = defineCollection({
+	type: "content",
+	schema: z.object({
+		title: z.string(),
+		authors: z.array(z.string()),
+		published: z.date(),
+	}),
+});
+
 export const collections = {
 	posts: postsCollection,
 	trades: tradesCollection,
+	archive: archiveCollection,
 };