ray

here is a picture of ray bradbury.

i can't remember if it was my father or my eigth grade english teacher who introduced me to ray but both played a part. growing up, my father took me to bookstores regularly. we are of the same breed. in a loud family, we like hours of quiet and adventure in our head. so, we spent hours thumbing through shelves, the old, dingy perfume of printed paper filling our lungs. one day, i came across the illustrated man. it is filled with violence and possibility. around the same time, i was assigned fahrenheit 451. we were instructed to mark it up with questions and thoughts. this was the first time i wrote in my book. write in my book? with a pen!? sacrilege! eventually, i adjusted. it was not an irreverent violation of the text, but a way to interact, absorb, and remember. fahrenheit 451 shocked and stirred me. i had no idea that words could be used with such imagination and power.

i read this book recently.  ray got his education at the library. he had a wife whom he met in a bookstore. she read proust and he read buck rogers. they had four daughters. he had two affairs. ray wrote one short story a week for more than 40 years despite his unpromising talent. his determination was fanatical. he willed his way to the sides of huxley, disney and more. always learning from  and pestering those who were better. he wrote for television, movies, radio and more. he sold short stories as collections and disguised them as novels. he feared the ending of things and was obsessed with immortality. creating is death's greatest loophole - keeping him alive in public conciousness as long as they read his work. ray wrote human stories even if his characters were martians. he instinctually played with metaphor and imagery. ray, ever the outsider and onlooker, dressed his life and the common things in it with words - beautiful, simple, and true.

i'd like to be like him.

and in the name of one-too-many-links:
this is a young ray. what a winner.

so brave

i have read maira kalman's book three or four times since purchasing it against my budget's will in december. i reread it again this week, this heartbreakingly confusing week. and i keep coming back to this quote starting at "how are we all..."

sorry and proud. this is precisely how i feel this week. 

there is so much to weep over.

there is so much to relish in.

"what to do? what to do?" i wonder.

a girl turned blue

a month or so ago i finished sylvia plath's, the bell jar. it is considered autobiographical fiction.
i had been avoiding it for years. i heard something about her having a dark soul - full of despair and terrible thoughts. she had stumbled into a wasteland of infinite sadnesses and committed suicide. i know instinctively that my avoidance of a girl turned blue could be claimed by one thing: fear, go figure. i decided long ago that she and i were too much a like. i, too, was glum. her signs were obvious, mine less so (at least, i'd like to think). there was lots of sulking. but all sulking was personal, not shared, and internalized, except at home. the internalization bit kept me in a cacoon of my own opinions and assumptions. besides this hue of self-absorption (artists call it many things but it should never be denied for what it is - the excessive concern for one's self.), i think what causes her to materialize across the living room in that old 70's mirror is my shared willingness to concede to all those dark feelings that i am told to push out with cheery dispositions and white teeth. instead, we welcome them.  i have explored sorrow and grief, given myself to it, and am more human because of it. i have words to give children on the playground when they cry and i have a taste of what a daughter caught in the fault lines of a marriage feels like. i have words and understanding. they are shades of what sorrow and grief all people feel. and i am not afraid to welcome them, to give myself to them. but i know that in the very hole of darkness - the airless and alienating bell jar - there sits with me a friend and a savior, who has conquered death and its misshapen cohorts. so while i allow sorrow and grief to run their course, i choose to live according to the Truth.

being of the same strain as plath, i feared that reading her book in me would set off some trigger that would cause me spiraling into an oblivion of isolation and madness. i was wrong.
in esther, the protagonist, i found a familiar spirit. distancing herself from people. observing from afar. pessimistic about relationships. holding people to be honest about their decisions. disoriented by many things. especially the life she was supposed to be living and the life she desired. feeling inadequate. reducing things to either/or rather than both/and. carrying on imaginary conversations with the loved and the loathed. a disjointed and confused perception of self. fearful she might be trapped by her madness again.  esther was direct. cynical, yes, but matter-of-fact. she knew what she was feeling/observing/thought and explained it plainly. these characteristics, among her love for avocados and the feeling of fingers running through her hair, made me feel a friend in her.

and because it goes without saying but i cannot be as direct as esther...
plath, a poet at bottom, stole me with her words. i was thinking of posting my favorite quotes - phrases even! but maybe only as they are relevant to upcoming posts. they are all so lovely though.

p.s. i have a proclivity to coming-of-age novels. i've noticed those are the kind i always find myself reading. i like tension, in anything. and when is there more tension than in becoming acquainted with the world as a somewhat adult?

wishlist

update: crossed out items have been purchased

bodies
by susie orbach
and
fat is a feminist issue
and
the impossibility of sex
and
hunger strike

and
on eating

like i have said in these posts i am working towards a better understanding of body and beauty. sometimes i cringe in comparison, sometimes i am brazenly confident. knowledge (and the internalization of that knowledge) will hopefully help level this all out. i want to speak intelligently about this subject. i want to confront this issue with understanding. i want the language and the facts. miss orbach knows these things. i want to know of bodies of art of beauty. if you have any suggestions on the matter, please say so.

anything, absolutely anything written by norah ephron.

a collection of her essays, perhaps? [i feel bad about my neck, heartburn, i remember nothing, scribble scribble, crazy salad... just to name a few] i read an article she wrote on breasts, which made me laugh and feel unusually close to her. she gave me the gutspa to buy only lace bras in celebration of myself. the original article on Esquire.com has been removed since her passing this year but you can find it here. she is the mind behind romantic comedy you've got mail. fantastic.

the bradbury chronicles
by sam weller
i was reading a book called steal like an artist by this guy. if you watch the video you will know why i chose this book. in eighth grade i read farhenheit 451. it was then that i thought, you can do this with words? i was shocked. i was pleased. and i began to write better because of it.

is everone hanging out with without me? (and other concerns)
by mindy kaling
i think i might be a tad obsessed with her at the moment. her new show the mindy project is the love child of confessions of a shopaholic, mean girls, and thirteen going on thirty. all movies i adore. she is funny. she is smart. she is one hell of a writer and her sense of humor is stellar.  i wish she were my adopted indian sister. i'm not sure if reading kaling's book means i must read fey's bossypants, but i'm not against it.

i already have a stack of books i am reading. not to mention the ones on my trunk and the ones on my shelves and the ones in my ralphs crate that have not been scoured. but i will have to agree with john waters, the writer and director of hairspray (88):

nothing is more important 
than an unread library.

yes, mister waters, yes.

confession is the way out.

i had a brief stint in a book club full of girls two summers ago, 2010 i believe.

we read the weight of silence and the particular sadness of lemon cake.

the first i enjoyed, the second, well... i could appreciate.
schedules are the death of many things. 

people moved and got busy, that was the end of that book club.

in 2011 i met with some friends and we opened up james frey's a million little pieces. besides the oprah scandal, which i think was overwrought and silly and don't give much weight to anyways, it was wonderful.

stream-of-concsiousness alway steals my heart. lack of quotations marks is quirky and we all know that the best break the rules. fragmentation. quick and short and long and quick. repetition. base needs given pulse in his torrential excess of words. it seemed his way out of addiction was a hole of blackness and whiteness - both blinding. the hole was terror. the hole was fury. the shovel was loss of dignity. he wriggled out with confession. frey showed me - at a time where i could continue in deception (of self, of others) - that truth is paramount. the. only. thing. that. matters.  confession is the way out. this slightly fictionalized memoir wrapped thick cloth around my wrist and dragged me through the hole. and i experienced pain and agonizing isolation and estrangement. i took heed of the destruction deception ensures. monstrosity. 

if frey is one thing, he is self-aware (distorted, depressing awareness but aware). aware of what he feels he deserves. nice things or nice people are not some of those things. small kindnesses are too beautiful a gift. pardon from his sins is laughable. he is responsible for the sorrows of others. he has ruined all good things with carelessness and avoidance. he disqualifies every human thing in him thus creating a boundary that keeps people out and away. his sentiments about light and being exposed and his uncomfortability with both are, i think, universal. darkness provides cover. his sabotage. self-loathing. shaming. are best done in the dark.  he feels akin to darkness. darkness is escape to those unworthy of forgiveness. of breath. of space. of opportunity. darkness is friend to the irreparable. 

he said:

"we are all awful."

and with little reservation, i say - yes. yes we are.

there were lots of stories of similar men and women in similar holes. and there was hope. 

but the one thing that gave me the courage last summer, was frey's conviction that the truth was the only thing that mattered. it gave me the courage to uncover lies and to stop lying. so i told the truth and was met with understandable frustration and grace grace grace (not expected, but given nonetheless). i had been awful, just awful to those i loved. but i took responsibility for it. i had been hurt by those who never took responsibility for their recklessness, for their omission, for their sins. i refused to be that. i may have been awful, but i refused to continue to be such a person. that summer i heard the voice of God in an addict. yes, frey gave me courage. and that fall i began seeing a therapist on campus that semester. we talked about loss and deception and letting go. it was good. one thing became apparent: small decisions and big decisions lead to a life style. i could choose, like frey, to say no to self-destruction. unlike frey, i knew that my salvation was not self-reliance but was instead a God of grace and power. it was the continued support of friends and family who knew me. it still is.