Good-bye, Ray Bradbury

I've been wanting to write this post for a while, since that day over a month ago now that we all learned that Ray Bradbury had died. There are probably thousands of obituaries written for him by now, and, as the world moves quickly, I am sure it has already moved on, but I wanted to add my reflections.

I began writing this post just after Bradbury’s death, where I sat on my parents' back porch in Florida. It was a fitting place for me to begin to write about an author that I have come to think of as a friend even if all I knew of him were his words. It's fitting because that is where I first read his work, and the book I want to talk about in particular is the first one that I read and that shaped the way I think more than I can say. It was also, in as true a sense as I can say this, a transformational spiritual experience for me. This book, which I read while still a teenager, was Fahrenheit 451. 

Part of that trip home was to finally collect some things that have been sitting at my parents' house waiting for me. As part of this project my parents had set out some of these objects, especially my books. As I walked into the guest room and slung my bag from my shoulder onto the bed, I saw this book at the top of a pile on the nightstand. And so with Bradbury's death fresh in my mind, I picked the book up and turned through it's now yellowed pages scrawled with my underlinings and notes. On the flyleaf I found these equations (even then I thought about everything loosely in terms of mathematics):

Silence/thought = reading = value of life = feeling

Lack of thought/programmed thought = numbness = TV = lack of silence = selfishness (apathy) = the nothing(emptiness)

I suppose in my adolescent way, that sums up what I learned from this book: what the relationship is between thought and emotion and silence. And the place of reading within all of that. In the novel, society has turned on the written word in favor of banal television shows streamed across screens that take up entire walls (sound familiar?). Books are so despised and readers so mistrusted that the firemen in the story seek out houses with books and burn them to the ground. This is where the title comes from. Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns. Some people choose to die with their books, standing with them in the midst of the flames. It’s a disturbing story…but a beautiful story of a fireman who, through a pixie-like young girl, discovers the power of books and so the power of learning and critical thought and discovery.

Many years after first reading this story, I now teach classes that engage popular culture. I am as likely to write here on this blog about Doctor Who as I am about Dante, and yet what I learned from this book still holds true for me. And I have come to think of reading as an action that can happen to any text, and I define text with large, broad strokes. TV itself is not the issue. I think this book actually taught me that. It is the unexamined consumption of it, of anything, the decided lack of responsibility. And what Bradbury's book is fundamentally about is responsibility and learning to take it and live up to it. As I paged through the text, I found this passage starred and I think it speaks to what I mean:

"...when we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on finding the ghost cliffs to jump off. But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They're Ceasar's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, ‘Remember, Ceasar, thou art mortal.’ Most of us can’t rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven’t time, money or that many friends. The things you’re looking for…are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.”

Those are the kind of words to change someone’s life. That changed the life of a lanky teenage girl, already in love with books and with the world, but who needed that added push to “do her own bit of saving” and to not just easily pin the saving to the books themselves.

I went on a date recently with a man who told me he hated to read. I knew immediately that would be our only date, but beyond the obvious concern about my deep love of books and writing, it spoke to something else. Because what I heard wasn’t “I hate reading” but “I hate thinking.” Maybe that’s not fair…or maybe it is. Reading goes beyond the level of hobby. Bradbury taught me that it goes to the level of humanity and of humanity being what it is called to be, being its best. We all need to be taught to read, and I mean that in its broad sense, and sadly, some of us never learn. Maybe that is what my date really meant: I have never really learned to read. I don’t mean that he couldn’t make out letters. I mean that he couldn’t see beyond them in whatever form they came in, to all that they point to, to all that they hold. But somehow books themselves are connected to that very broad sense of reading. Bradbury knew this as he made them terrifying and compelling all at once. And he told the world. And some of us will never, ever forget it.

Thank you, Ray. Rest in peace.

Erik Ehn and A Child's Drawing of a Monster

I was recently in New York visiting friends of mine. These friends happen to be an actor, and a director and they (and a few other people) were putting on a collection of six short plays titled A Child's Drawing of a Monster by Erik Ehn, who teaches at Brown. For months my friend Ryan, the director mentioned above, had been telling me that I would love these plays and love Erik Ehn...and he was right. These plays, which are more like poems acted out, explore and circle around themes of Christianity, science, hospitality, domestic violence, and social justice. I left these plays still piecing them together, still drawing out the implications, still sorting through images and ideas...and I still am and probably will be for a while now. One of the things that most struck me about his work are the images that remain imprinted on my brain (in one of the plays I saw, three men stapled a woman's dress to a huge wooden disk and sent it back and forth between them, creating the most compelling and thoughtful image of rape I have ever seen) and his idea that "we always live in biblical times" and how that idea plays out in this work.

Here is a bit from Erik Ehn talking about the relationship between theater and peace and the importance of strangeness:

Higgs Boson You Guys!

I woke up this morning with great anticipation to read the news. The same kind of anticipation, I suppose, that propels some people out of bed Christmas morning. An amazing discovery. I even teared up a little when Peter Higgs talked about how he didn't think this would happen in his lifetime.


I'm posting this song by Lungfish, called Fearfully and Wonderfully. For two reasons: 1) the singer of Lungfish (one of my favorite bands) is Dan Higgs, and in my head, the Higgs Boson particle is named after him. He's kind of a poet, and I think in times like this, we should turn to scientists and poets; and 2) it sort of explains how I'm taking this moment-- there is an unknown that could shake up a lot of what we know as the Universe-with-a-capital-U, which can be fearful, but also wonderful.

Roger Ebert on Prometheus and Creationism

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2012/06/_one_of_my_creationist.html

Chase, Luke... discuss.

Organization within Living Organisms

Recently I have been studying for the MCAT and when I came across the Biology section, it amazed me how the structure of every living organisms appeared to be so well organized. In particular, the cells involved within sexual reproductive system, as opposed to asexual reproduction, to me appear to be so well-organized that arguably it could provide some possible evidence for a higher being. For instance, the structure of a sperm cell contain a flagellum for mobility and acrosome within its head, which is essential to penetrate an egg cell for fertilization and to produce an zygote. The amazing part of the flagellum is most notably its structure and how well it is organized with its various parts that is essential for the cell to propel itself (as seen in the image below). In other words, the flagellum acts like a motor for the cell just like how a boat a motor in order to propel itself through a body of water. Each of these parts must work together or else reproduction of any living organism would be impossible. 

The argument that I am trying to provide is that this cannot be a product of evolution and that the sperm cell must contain this highly ordered structure at the time the organism came into existence. In other words, this cannot be a product of evolution because evolution would cause the structure of an organism to improve over time in order to better the chances of survival of a species, but the structure of this cell is highly structured as it is. Furthermore, if the cell did not acquired this highly structured mechanism at the start then it is nearly impossible for the survival of the species because there is no mechanism for the cell to propel itself during reproduction. 

The concept of reproduction also lead me to another point and this point is the fertilization of the egg cell by the sperm cell. The idea that I am trying to drive towards or question is that during intercourse, how is possible for the sperm cell to know what its purpose is? In other words, how does the sperm cell know that it should seek an egg cell and release genetic material within it to produce a new living organism? Evolution cannot provide reasoning for this because again if evolution take several years to occur then it is impossible for living species to thrive on the face of the Earth. Therefore, the cellular mechanism for reproduction must already be present at the time of the first multicellular organism.  

Image of a flagellum

People Are Evolving...Whether You Believe It or Not

I found this article fascinating. The reason for these changes, the potential future of our species and implications of a discovery are all things that we don't know right now, but it is interesting to speculate.

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/06/01/american-heads-are-getting-bigger-study-finds

Poetic Theology and Wonder

As part of my dissertation research, I just started reading Poetic Theology by William A. Dyrness.

This quotation has thus far stood out to me, though I imagine there will be quite a few others as I go through this text:


"...aesthetic experience, broadly conceived, and the rituals and created objects that express this, are fundamental to the shaping and expressing of human identity. That is to say, they are not optional extras, but fundamental to the growth and flourishing of persons...aesthetic and symbolic projects are also spiritual sites where the affections, the goods of the world, and religious longings meet and interact....symbolic practices of this kind can also be 'theological' in the broad sense of the word. That is, they are places where, because of God's continuing presence in creation and God's redemptive work in Christ and by the Spirit, God is also active, nurturing, calling, and drawing persons--and indeed, all creation--toward the perfection God intends for them" (6).


In the introduction to this same book, Dyrness says this:


“These symbolic constructions express Augustine’s fundamental insight that people are defined not simply by what they know but by what (and who) they love. Second, these targets of desire coalesce into various objects and practices whose figure and texture evoke praise, even wonder—or at least are intended to do so….As Philip Sidney put this in his sixteenth-century defense of poetry, the poet ‘ever sets virtue out in her best colors…that one must be enamored of her.’”


Put together these both reminded me of perhaps my favorite passage (among many) within Walker Percy's novel,  The Moviegoer, which I finished reading about a month ago. Percy says this through the voice of his protagonist, Binx Bolling:


"And there I have lived ever since, solitary and in wonder, wondering day and night, never a moment without wonder....As for me, I stay home with Mrs. Schexnaydre and turn on the TV. Not that I like TV so much, but it doesn't distract me from the wonder. That is why I can't go to the trouble they go to. It is distracting, and not for five minutes will I be distracted from the wonder."


So all of these together have got me thinking about the connection between spiritual experiences, beauty, and wonder. As someone who is in love with science as much as I am in love with art, I find that the point of connection between the two is beauty and wonder. So much catches my eye or my ear or my heart. I've recently also been reading Sam Kean's The Disappearing Spoon, a book, if you can believe it, about how cool the periodic table is, and along side it William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, a book so poetically astonishing I can't even find words yet to describe it, finishing it only this morning on a train ride back to DC from Baltimore where I had to keep myself from tapping strangers on the shoulder in order to read passages aloud to them. But what I feel as I read the description of the Easter church service at the end of that book and what I read about the element mercury evoke a similar emotional, and yes, even spiritual, response in me: awe. Wonder. And gratitude. 


So what is this wonder that Percy's Moviegoer can't let go of for even five minutes, this wonder at a galaxy or an atom or an ameoba or a turn of phrase or a painting, this wonder that also leaves an ache, like all beauty, somewhere deep inside of ours souls? Dyrness says it is theological in the broadest sense of that word, that such moments of wonder are places where God's continuing presence in creation breaks into our consciousness...and perhaps moments when we recognize our own longing for an unending beauty, which some theologians would call "God". And it might be true. This sense of wonder is the root of any spiritual experience I have ever had, be it in a specifically religious context or not.


In the Metaphysics, Aristotle sees wonder as the root of philosophy:


"For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe."


But I think wonder is also the root of all theology. The wonder that Aristotle describes is to ask questions and search out the answers. It is the wonder of all scientific investigation. But the wonder that exists in the face of beauty is a different kind of wonder, not unrelated to that which asks questions. It is a wonder in the face of mystery. It is a gratitude and a recognition. And it is also a gift. Also the wonder that prompts making, which was Aristotle's large definition of poetry, prompts art, prompts what Dyrness refers to as "a more general human inclination to make beautiful things."


And so I find that as I think of this more and more, I echo the words of Percy's Binx Bolling, the moviegoer, and decide that I, too, will not for five minutes be distracted from the wonder.