on Bradbury

i realized that i hadn't updated the gem in the sidebar in quite a while, and it's not so cold anymore so i went a-hunting for a new gem. Being between books at the moment, i didn't have a source at hand, so i used the Google machine to find a good Ray Bradbury quote to use as our gem for the next indeterminate phase. Why Ray Bradbury? *heavy sigh* He's only the greatest writer ever. That's all. In this moment i've just decided to read everything he's ever written before i die. i've much to do then. Yes. Much reading lies ahead. If you're a fan, let me know if you have a recommendation for how to tackle my new task. Thanks.

Lovely, i'm glad we got to share this moment....which was inspired by my fear of going to bed because bed is not a happy place for me anymore. It is an itchy place, full of itching. And not sleeping. (HAVE A BABY! PREGNANCY IS SUPER FUN! LIKE TOTALLY!)

Anyway, the reasons a simple gem switch-out got turned into a full post: i hadn't posted in a bit and i kinda sorta promised i would post more, and :there are too many Bradbury gems to choose from and you need more than one to get you through your life. i feel responsible to share them with you. You needn't have read any Bradbury to appreciate him (though if you haven't i gently weep for you). i had the immense, unbelievable privilege to hear him speak and to have him sign my copy of Fahrenheit 451 when i was but a lowly undergrad at PLNU. Internet, he can speak. About life, writing, imagination, work, humanity, great lays and mad geniuses, craft and joy.... it was breathtaking. Literally. i found myself holding my breath more than once. i'm pretty sure i cried too. It was that overwhelming. (you can watch the 2001 interview here, it's about 30 mins long) i've declared this before (somewhere, to someone, though i don't recall): the day Ray Bradbury leaves this earth i will drink heavily and be very melancholy and nostalgic and generally unbearable to be around. i will mourn. Be prepared.

Anyway. Here are the gems i selected for you.

"We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts."

"Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things."

"Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together."

"If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down."

"If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you."

"Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for."

"My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off."

"We are anthill men upon an anthill world."

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."

"You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."

"Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction. "

"You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance."

"If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape."

and now i understand

For quite some time now i've been mystified by the popularity of Glenn Beck.

i am not a fan.

There are many things/people/trends of which i'm not a fan, but i can still understand at least a bit of why others are drawn to them. Try as i might, i cannot understand Glenn Beck's appeal. Here's where i admit that 'try as i might' means 'i don't try terribly hard.' Frankly, there are only 24 hours in the day and since i only sleep about 4 of those hours anymore, i don't want to spend too much of my precious 20 thinking about why people devote themselves to an angry man and his angry ideas. i guess i just assumed that angry follows angry. Or begets. Or whatever. It's just that it's one thing to agree with someone's positions or ideas, it's another to cheer on that person's vitriol and their propagation of general bitterness and disunity. That's where i lose track of the WHYYYY?? of it all.

Then, in the magical land of Facebook, a friend pondered the very same question (albeit more graciously than i) and later posted the following as how he understands it all to work. Though this video is a few years old and never mentions Glenn Beck, i think it deftly explains his type and the type that are his many fans. Perhaps you too have been befuddled by the hype; here is the key. Or perhaps you are a fan; here is how i understand you. If it's incorrect, please explain.

But i think it's correct.