Fahrenheit 451 - Inspirations

When’s the last time you climbed a tree? Just for the hell of it? The view as you stick your head up through the crown is nothing but an excuse for the occasion. Like going to see a movie with friends, or going out drinking, or.. I guess there’s a lot of excuses when we look at it that way. Today I’m alive. Tomorrow, who knows? We shan’t forget. Again, I’ve found myself oppressed. Imprisoned. Again, I’ve taken it seriously. That’s okay. When we see it, we can laugh. Another occasion.

Today I’m inspired by Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451. Again, I’ve underestimated the power of the written word. Which is ironic, because it’s the thing that imbues my life. The only thing that seems to remain constant. What would I be without them? The first revolution; picking up reading again. The first book a stolen one; Lord of the flies. A cumbersome read, but the act I will never forget. Every 5 minutes getting distracted, picking up my phone, doing anything else. But I had something to prove, and today I have this to thank. So, Bradbury. I had to keep myself from crying at the Café. He touched me.

“And he remembered thinking then that if she died, he was certain he wouldn’t cry. For it would be the dying of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death, a silly empty man near a silly empty woman, while the hungry snake made her still more empty. How do you get so empty? He wondered. Who takes it out of you?”

So instead here I am, at the top of a tree, with tears in my eyes. How do you get so empty? Why did I travel to the other side of the globe to search for what was lost? What is it that makes life lose its touch? That stops us from feeling its preciousness?

I was about 13 when I got glasses. Putting them on, I looked at the leaves on the tree across the street. It made me want to cry. Then I looked in the mirror. I realized I had never really seen myself before. Every day for the next-coming months I would walk to school enamored with the detail life contained. Its richness. The walls had texture!

This is what we lose. We round off the small things, too preoccupied with life to notice them. The light breeze above your upper lip every time you breath. A leaf slowly falling from a tree, blowing in the wind. The way the sun reflects off a spider’s web. The rhythm of your heart-beat. The fullness of the second! What else is there to life? How can you claim a richer purpose? Today I am alive. Today I am grateful. Tomorrow, not even God knows for sure. Perhaps the sun will rise above the clouds just the same. Perhaps I won’t be there to witness it. All I know is this. It’s all that ever were. In India, in Sweden just the same.

I read this quote by Rumi yesterday. It captures my quest. Guess I’m not the only one.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

All you have to do is let yourself feel it. Look at the person sitting next to you and smile. If you’re alone; that’s you. The love is always there. Go outside, climb a tree, watch the stars, hug the person that you’re close to. Life’s too short to be afraid of death, or to worry about clichés. Actually, maybe you should be afraid. Sometimes that’s what we need. Now my butt has fallen asleep on these branches. That’s my cue. I’ll leave you with this.

“Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the world quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”