Cups

You shine, like a sunflower.

I'm stuck.

I need to divest myself of junk, both proverbial and otherwise.

I have too much stuff.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves
over and let the beautiful stuff out. Ray Bradbury

Listening to Ray Bradbury on the Ventura Freeway

There must be something in books, 

something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; 

there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 

Since my carpool in the mornings fell through, I've been spending a lot of time in traffic on one of Los Angeles' most notoriously congested highways. The ride to Henry's school is manageable, but the ride back can take more than twice as long, and it's difficult not to feel rage rising up, the rage that is born of rue for choices made. Something about the silence of cars, the endless glint of steel below the bluest of skies tinged pink with a still rising sun, the muffled horns and set faces of the inhabitants makes for desolation, at least for me. Why do I live here? I can't listen to music. I can't listen to the talking heads of commercial radio, nor the droning ones of NPR, and while I've learned to surrender my rage, to breathe deeply through it in a sort of mindful daze, it's been the husky voice of Tim Robbins reading Fahrenheit 451 that's literally erased it, turned frustration and a self-absorbed samsara into -- dare I admit it -- anticipation of more hours spent on the road listening?

Yes. I'll say it. Since I've been listening to the great actor Tim Robbins read the great writer and human being Ray Bradbury's sinister yet beautiful masterpiece Fahrenheit 451, I look forward to getting into my car every morning at 6:45. I spend the first half hour in the passenger seat with my son Henry who is earnestly and quite capably learning how to drive. After I drop him off, I spend the next hour or so, along with millions of other humans, sitting in my sexy white Mazda inching south on the Ventura Freeway, and listening to the riveting story of Guy Montag. I read Fahrenheit 451 a million years ago, and despite a memory like a steel trap, I honestly don't remember it other than the burning books stuff. I don't know if it's the time in my life, my stifled, seeping-out rage, the city I find myself struggling in or just the damn exquisite prose and grim prescience of the story, but listening to this novel is knocking my Birkenstocks off.








***Disclosure: Audible gave me a free download of the book but with no obligation to write about or review it. Thank you, Audible, because I know I never would have done so, and I'm grateful to not only avoid the extreme frustration of navigating the highways of Los Angeles, but Bradbury's novel is a work of art that I'd forgotten. For anyone interested, exclusive audio excerpts of these new Audible Studios Bradbury titles are available at www.soundcloud.com/audible.

Part 2 of Ray Bradbury's Inadvertent Writing Prompt

February, 2012

Here's the Raymond Chandler quote again, in case you missed it from the earlier post:

“You have to write the way you see things. I tell people, Make a list of ten things you hate and tear them down in a short story or poem. Make a list of ten things you love and celebrate them. When I wrote Fahrenheit 451 I hated book burners and I loved libraries. So there you are.” 

Ray Bradbury 

You sent me some great hate lists, and now it's time to list ten things you love. I think what comes after that is something that you create from both lists. In fact, let's have a contest. Send me what you "tear down" from your ten hates and what you "celebrate" what your ten loves -- a short story, a play, poetry, a prose poem --and I'll read it. Hell, if you can write a novel really quickly with this prompt, do that and send it to me! I'll pick out the one I like best, post it here and send you a copy of my friend Brittany's new novel Angel Food. I've been meaning to review her raucous book, unlike anything I've ever read with an almost old-fashioned sense of story and plot and characters, yet so twisted in sensibility that your head spins in the best way, making you feel at once invigorated and breathless with anticipation. Oh, and the characters become as real as anyone you've ever met but are at once completely surreal, both terrifying and irresistible. How's that for a mini-review? If you're not going to win the contest, you need to click on over to Amazon and buy it and read it for yourself. You'll thank me for telling you to do so.

Here are ten things I love:

1. the moon
2. the word and the color cerulean
3. fat and tedious novels written about characters in the nineteenth century
4. those three children in that old photo up there
5. pizza, pasta and yellow cake with dark chocolate frosting
6. California and its temperate weather with no humidity
7.  men with wicked senses of humor
8. Van Morrison's voice, especially when he sings "Astral Weeks"
9. Yosemite Park
10. a stack of books not yet read with a few slim books of favorite old poetry mixed in

Your turn --

A Writing Prompt and Playing Around with Tumblr

by Roz Chast-- a goddess
via The New Yorker

I've been playing around with Tumblr, inspired by my friend Vesuvius, and wanting a place that I could curate stuff that I like and am inspired by without resorting to Facebook or even Pinterest, which both give me agita. There's a simplicity to Tumblr, I think, and I love the way it looks. Here's my Tumblr address: a moon, worn as if it had been a shell. Check it out and let me know what you think. I have no idea of what I'm doing there, but I imagine I'll keep it simple and just post periodically.

I saw this on Paris Review's Tumblr today and thought it an excellent writing prompt:

“You have to write the way you see things. I tell people, Make a list of ten things you hate and tear them down in a short story or poem. Make a list of ten things you love and celebrate them. When I wrote Fahrenheit 451 I hated book burners and I loved libraries. So there you are.” 

Ray Bradbury 

So what are ten things you hate? I'll start, and tomorrow we'll do ten things I love:

1. Designer labels on children's clothes
2. Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christianity
3. Violent television and movies
4. When people cut down trees
5. Peas
6. Electronic music
7. Sexism
8. Being called "Mommy" or "Mom" by people in the medical profession
9. Hashtags
10. Aggressive BMW drivers

Sophie and I

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Ray Bradbury 

The Fallacy of Night

A long time ago, I used to wake in the night when Sophie was seizing and then not be able to go back to sleep. I'd lie still, on my back and stare at the ceiling, humor the chaos, allow it to creep in, take over. I'd think about death and trial and tribulation, violins would be playing furiously, chins tucked, eyes closed. I'd get on my knees and plead for mercy from a god that was as substantial as the wisps of reason that sailed through the room (not very much). In my mind I was dressed in the black of my southern Italian grandmother, veiled and dolorous, confounded by the disappearance of light. I would fall asleep, eventually, and wake in gray light, nearly embarrassed at what I had loosed the night before.

We are all cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Ray Bradbury 

 

 

Remake a World

Transit of Venus, June 2012

To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.

You must write every single day of your life.

You must read dreadful, dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.

You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to snuff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

I wish for you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.

I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. 

May you live with hysteria and out of it make fine stories.

Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

Ray Bradbury, How to Be Madder than Captain Ahab 

(August 22, 1920 - June 5, 2012