Ray Bradbury: 90 and Awesome

I read a lot of science fiction as a kid. I had a few old books I had picked up at thrift stores, dusty and stale with age, in the deteriorating medium of paper pages and spine - hardly giving away the endless possibilities and human capabilities supposed between their covers.

Most of the stories that I read I no longer remember the book title, the author, the characters names. I just hold a moral, or what moral I took. An image conjured, stored in my mind, and viewed through like stained glass - coloring my perpectives as I have grown. I remember a story about a man in the far flung future who learned to do math by hand, after years of computers completing all calculations, to the fear and amazment of his community. I remember a story of a puzzle fallen to Earth and found by very young children--who played with it, understood it, and solved it in a way that their parents couldn't understand. (The take-away here was that we are born with a certain unique and real method of thought, an ability to process that is negated by grownups who think we are just baby blabber and cooing - and that we lose this important way of thinking through conditioning to think like everyone else.)

I have leaned away from science fiction as I've leaned away from all fiction - but today I was wrapped back into that world of possibility and futuristic perspectives that I held as a kid. Both a fear of future and an optimism - as I read about the upcoming 90th birthday of the legendary science fiction writer Ray Bradbury on August 22nd. You've read or at least heard of some of his "big" pieces -Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine or The Martian Chronicles but he's written endless amount of visionary works helping readers to look beyong their own experience into a place where anything is possible.

In the article Mr. Bradbury is quoted as saying one of the most inspiring things I've heard in a long time. A confession that truly speaks to a life lived extraordinarily.

"I jump off the cliff and build my wings on the way down."

This might be my new favorite quote (and I am known to dislike quotes, or things that attempt to evoke inspiration).

There are some surprising and unique aspects to the article -- such as Bradbury's repeated implication that his faith in God, or maybe God himself are responsible for his literary works. That his religious beliefs (although incredibly unusual in a scientific community) have actually served as a boost in his exploration of science and other worldliness -- not a hurdle.

I encourage you to read the article, learn about an amazing writer, pick up a copy of Farenheit and perhaps turn your eyes to the stars with a little more wonder.

Thursday Kitten Snack

Two of my favorite things, Kittens and DC.

Look at that little guy's face. He's a therapy kitten at the United Cerebral Palsy center in DC. Good work little buddy!

Read more here.

Wednesday Night Meditations on City Living

I feel an inherent dichotomy in my bones.

I am a girl raised in suburbs who thrives in city, but my city living has always been warmly flanked by opportunities to spread my wings in quiet places.

My growing up is a rolladex of camping trips, making secret promises creekside, plans to bike the vertical length of the Western coast. The semi-suburban 4 years of college life were softened by the green space, by the river, by the ability to escape into nothingness. Even life in DC was punctuated by a close proximity (in each stage, with each house-mate, in each apartment) to the alive and exhilarating Rock Creek park - the perfect escape for city-bound button-ups. Even now, I can admit that my interest in the location of the L, grocery and liquor stores, is really appreciated when compared to my easily accessible Lake Front Path. To the choppy quiet of the lake. The city is a place where I feel my most me, but it is only so because I can escape the noise and combat any time I desire with the solace of the lake.

The city provides me with the feeling of independence - the long desired need to feel unreliant on anyone or anything, but I mostly love the city because it provides room for comparison. I love extremes - I am not a "gray" person. I love the black, and I love the white - the gray is not enough of either. I cannot appreciate the vastness of black and white from the middle of the gray.

I think that I could give up my big lake for a small lake. I could live a life where my day to day was the Lake Front Path, and my escape was the city. Where I could see and feel and breathe the comparison from the other side. Where my Tuesday was a time for wooded trails and quiet, and my weekends were occupied with the cacophony of traffic and crowded bars. I think I could exist with the city as punctuation - as an exclamation mark - I think the black and white could remain just as starkly bright, contrasting, and mesmerizing from the other side of the line.

In the same way that I love the city, I think I could love being away from it.

Making Decisions about Memories

I am not known to be neat.

Without making excuses, I will say that my propensity towards the sloppy is not because I don't care. It's because I DO care. I care about everything; I care too much. I have a hard time trashing a newspaper that I didn't read every word of, let alone one that contained articles that interested me, or writing that inspired me. I have a hard time throwing away anything that can possibly be reused, or things I think someone else might want. I always joke that this behavior originates from growing up in the depression (and I do certainly think my mother's thrift has had some impact on my problem) but at the root it is just my overemotional desire to hang on to memories - and usually memories are represented by things. I have a fear of things disappearing, of not being reclaimable, of letting something slip from my fingertips and being unable to remember what it felt like against my skin.

The easy way for people to help me clear up this problem is to just tell me no, to throw some of that stuff away for me, to help me find a way to reuse or recycle - its not a creepy additiction (yet). Its just an annoying habit. I don't really notice when stuff is gone, I just don't like getting rid of it myself. Specifically, I have a problem letting go of certain items like hand written cards, letters and emails.

There is something about a hand written card from my grandmother that just destroys me. Its a thing about words (which are obviously a passion of mine) - its notes, letters, texts and emails. The most touching and important things I own are just a few words shared with me - "Feel Better" cards from my 3rd grade classmates after my dad died, letters from high school friends tucked into my copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, a thankful text from my best friend the day after her wedding. I have kept this collection minimal, but its a challenge to not save every word written to me. I know I don't have space for it. I am realistic.

But in the e-world there are only vague limitations to the records I can keep. And keep I do. I almost never delete an email. I revel in my ability to go back through the last few months of my current relationship and read our sweet exchanges. To follow conversations with my best friends on the East coast about burritos and beer. To prove to myself or to another person that a conversation happened or that an agreement way made --I like to have proof. I like to remember what jobs I applied to each time I was unemployed. Luckily at this point I havent hit any of the absurdly high limits on my gmail account, for that will be a sad day. That will be a day when I have to make some decisions. Decisions about what is really important to me.

As for the physical things I have a hard time trashing, maybe its just time I start scanning documents and taking pictures of objects -- time to create an e-time capsule of all my memories so that I can continue into maturity and adulthood without closets full of useless "things" with which I am afraid to part. Or maybe I just start writing about them and then giving them away. I don't really need a closet full of artifacts to remember that I've had experiences - I just need to get better at documenting. Writing about those moments and what they mean to me. What compelled me to hang on to begin with. A half a page of my chicken scratch might be more significant than a business card or a bottle cap in the long run, anyway.

Diving Into Yoga

Since I hurt my back in an unknown incident in March of 2009 doctors and fellow back injury sufferers have told me that if I want to keep running (like i do!) I need to work in some core building. Specifically, lots of people have told me to consider taking up Yoga. I will admit wholeheartedly, although a big part of me has always thought that yoga was "cool" I was still pretty sure that it wasn't for me. to me, Yoga is something slow, requiring concentration, a serious expression on my face, and 45 minutes of quiet. This seemed like the opposite of my vision of a workout. I like to workout sort of fast and furious. I like it to be measurable, 5 miles, 1 hour, 6.0 on a treadmill. Yoga didn't really seem to fit my image of myself.

However, I've come to terms with the fact that I need to stop relying on the "image I hold of myself" like its tattooed on my flesh. I have tried to stop saying "that's not something I would do" and just try to do it and see if maybe it IS something I do. I have been surprising myself.

So, when one of my besties trained for a million months and became a yoga teacher, I felt like it was a good opportunity to be supportive of her passion and lifestyle and perhaps generate an excuse to sign up for a yoga class.

This Yogi friend, who knows my all or nothingness, convinced me that I would only be able to make a real decision (which she was already certain would be favorable) about yoga if I dove in. head first. Into the deep end. (Safety of course, for in addition to one hell of a Vinyasa she also knows CPR). I liked her aggressiveness. :)

I began my dive into the world of Yoga both at Core Power Yoga in Lincoln Park but also at the Ray Meyer Fitness Center through Depaul University. This week I've taken three classes (2 regular beginner heated, one Yoga Sculpt - which is Yoga with free weights) and it has been rad. I really like it. I like the focus. I like the serious look on my face. I like the soreness in my muscles the next day. And, PS, its hard. Yoga is hard. Don't be fooled.

This week I'm doing Yoga 4 times, maybe five. And I feel like I could really keep doing it that often. I bike to yoga, so I get that in, too, but I haven't been running all week. I need to learn how to integrate it all together, and still have plenty of time to go to the bar.

I do not imagine that this will be my last rambling on yoga.

Tell me about your yoga experiences, or why you havent had them. Go.

Photo above is of my Yogi friend, Nic. She's a good teacher, even upside down.

Relaunch 57.0 (I'm back...Again)

It happened again. My schedule got busy and I dropped my blog. It is so hard to believe a person like me, a person who has committed countless hours and endless amounts of money (or at least the promise of money via the federal government) to the practice of writing can’t seem to find the time or make the effort to post a few times on a blog that was designed to be fun. In elementary form its simple – I’ve spent the last several months going out for drinks, going on dates, going to the beach, going running, than I haven't been writing about those things. THAT, of course, is a preference. (To DO rather than to simply WRITE about doing). But I need to work on a happier medium for myself. And so this is the beginning of a relaunch of the blog again and hopefully this time I’ll stay active for longer than a few months.

Some topical commentary for today? Some personal goings on? Certainly.

One thing I’m thinking about lately is other people’s blogs. Clearly, people blog and write in a public manner to be shared. There is a sense that what you are writing is important enough that other people should want to read it, or that its informational enough that you think people SHOULD read it, or you are just looking for interaction that you aren’t obtaining in your life off-line. Maybe that means advice, or commentary and editing for your creative endeavors, or encouragement. The blogger gets something out of publishing their thoughts or their personal work online. But even though I know that bloggers blog for readers, I still end up feeling like a voyeur when I find myself reading the blog of some facebook acquaintance or a stranger who’s blog comes up on my Google search for “December 2012 Apocalypse.” Is it ok to read strangers blogs even if you think they are nuts, or horrible writers, or completely annoying? Is it wrong to read someone’s blog and secretly make fun of them? It makes me feel like all those trolls who slink around on liberal websites and leave comments about god and religion. I support reading things that may be outside of your normal sites – something that challenges you to think differently, but you should be there with an open mind. Not there to criticize, right? I know the bloggers put their stuff out there willingly (as I do!) but is it fair to sneak around and mock a blogger? Should you stay a silent observer or is it actually more fair to identify yourself and comment ?

Just thoughts on blogging from a recently relaunched blogger.

Reduce, Reuse, and Throw Glass and Cardboard into the Trash?

I remember watching the Sean Connery film Medicine Man for the first time. I was so inspired by the jungle, by the fight to cure cancer through the miracle of nature, by Dr. Campbell and Dr. “Bronx” that I banded together with my fellow neighborhood young environmentalists and declared the day International Rainforest Conservation Day. We roamed around our neighborhood with our faces painted like the original Medicine Man paints Bronx’s face in the film, wore khaki shorts and hiking boots, and soapboxed about saving the earth to everyone we encountered.

Its funny how when you are young you have no real concept of time – six months is forever and the age 30 is ancient. But even if those lapses in understanding were present on the International Rainforest Conservation Day, somehow my underdeveloped brain processed the crisis of the environment an immediate. As threatening. They are cutting down trees?? Animals are dying? Species are going extinct? My soda can is pollution?



I felt the weight of environmental destruction on my shoulders as I built compost bins with my best friend and pestered my mother for eggshells and coffee grounds with which to fill it.

As I grew older, much of the world of the Lazy Layman’s Urban Guide to Saving the World became routine. Of course there is a blue recycling bin under my desk at work. Of course I turn the water off when I brush my teeth. Why wouldn’t I bring my reusable grocery bags with me to the store? The passion that trademarked the early stages of my relationship with the environment has morphed into a passive companionship. I do my part but never think twice.

I’ve recently rekindled some of the romance the green earth and I had once shared. It wasn’t a statistic about the rapid decay of our resources, or the upcoming release of Disney’s Oceans (a companion to Earth), or even a late night rewatching of the origin of my environmentalism, Medicine Man. It was the realization that my new apartment building doesn’t recycle. Doesn’t recycle? Doesn’t even play its part in the Lazy Layman’s Urban Environmental Action Plan? Doesn’t even passively protect the ground on which we walk? How is this possible? I’m supposed to throw my recyclables in the same bag as real actual waste?

Chicago has a sad history of fake recycling (remember the Blue Bag Program?) but 10 years after the beginning of this millennium, it is criminal to throw bottles and cardboard boxes into a landfill.

Any advice on how I get involve in this fight? Who controls local recycling programs? Who do I complain to?