"Little one,
why are you so concerned about your aching heart?
It's nothing,
Made of fragile flesh and dust and nothing more.
But your soul...
Oh darling, your precious soul!
It's made of starlight and warmth and immortality
Of things that last and matter.
It's made as I AM.
Think of your soul, my love."
Friday, December 30, 2016
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Clarisse McClellan Appreciation Post
To be perfectly in character, I will start off my blog with an appreciation post for Clarisse McClellan of Fahrenheit 451, a most fascinating and underrated character. Clarisse is by far one of my favorite characters in anything, ever. Hands down. She is a contradiction and an odd duck, but she is lovely.
To start off, she is the only character who is truly alive and present. She is the only one who looks at the world, thinks about the world. She appreciates the world for its crunchy leaves, the man in the moon, the rain, the stars, the wildflowers, all the little beautiful things that I desperately wish I could appreciate more. She hikes, watches birds, collects butterflies, walks in the rain, and basically does all the lovely things I yearn to do. She has a sense of disdain for the all-enveloping "parlor walls" (huge tv screens), the reckless car-racing, the violence and senselessness and rashness of everyone else in the world. She knows more of the world and looks for more of the world than the rest of everyone put together. And yet, she is somehow also the least worldly, the least attached to the earth. Ray Bradbury treats her as almost otherworldly, slightly insane and not all there, not present. He speaks about her like a will o' the wisp or a force of nature. She is not tied to the technology and the parlor walls and the people and everything that has already enveloped the rest of the world. She's somehow beyond and past that. In short, she is my ideal of being wholeheartedly in the world, but not of the world.
She is also completely candid about being herself, with no fear and nothing held back. She says what she thinks, no matter how odd or unusual it is. In one of the very first scenes of the book, she and Guy Montag play the game of rubbing dandelions under their chins to see whether or not they are in love. The focus is on Guy and the fact that he is not in love, though he is married. But what is quickly passed over is that Clarisse is in love, according to the flowers (and flowers always tell the truth). It is my firm belief that she is in love with the world and life and herself, not with a guy. She always shows intense disdain for and even fear of the children her age, the teens who gamble, and kill each other without a second thought, and are silly and violent and young. No, she wouldn't be in love with a boy, not one of those. She is in love with herself, and life, just exactly the way it should be.
She asks the hard questions, the perceptive questions. She's an old soul. She watches people around her, and learns more than all of them put together. She sees that no one is happy. That nobody ever really talks, not about anything real. That Guy isn't like the other firemen and never will be. That nobody looks or loves or learns or listens or does anything real. She knows.
But best of all, she starts something in Guy, and therefore in their unidentified world. She dies not even a fourth of the way into the book and we never see her again. But she sets the ball rolling in him. She wakes him up to himself and the world. That's all she does, really, is ask the hard questions and make people bothered. But it does things, to other people, to relationships, and to the world.
In a way, she's everything I want to be. Alive, in love with the world yet otherworldly, tough and thoughtful and unafraid to be true and wholehearted in everything, always. If I could be half of that, I would be very impressed with myself.
--
"What do you do, go around trying everything once?" he asked.
"Sometimes twice."
To start off, she is the only character who is truly alive and present. She is the only one who looks at the world, thinks about the world. She appreciates the world for its crunchy leaves, the man in the moon, the rain, the stars, the wildflowers, all the little beautiful things that I desperately wish I could appreciate more. She hikes, watches birds, collects butterflies, walks in the rain, and basically does all the lovely things I yearn to do. She has a sense of disdain for the all-enveloping "parlor walls" (huge tv screens), the reckless car-racing, the violence and senselessness and rashness of everyone else in the world. She knows more of the world and looks for more of the world than the rest of everyone put together. And yet, she is somehow also the least worldly, the least attached to the earth. Ray Bradbury treats her as almost otherworldly, slightly insane and not all there, not present. He speaks about her like a will o' the wisp or a force of nature. She is not tied to the technology and the parlor walls and the people and everything that has already enveloped the rest of the world. She's somehow beyond and past that. In short, she is my ideal of being wholeheartedly in the world, but not of the world.
She is also completely candid about being herself, with no fear and nothing held back. She says what she thinks, no matter how odd or unusual it is. In one of the very first scenes of the book, she and Guy Montag play the game of rubbing dandelions under their chins to see whether or not they are in love. The focus is on Guy and the fact that he is not in love, though he is married. But what is quickly passed over is that Clarisse is in love, according to the flowers (and flowers always tell the truth). It is my firm belief that she is in love with the world and life and herself, not with a guy. She always shows intense disdain for and even fear of the children her age, the teens who gamble, and kill each other without a second thought, and are silly and violent and young. No, she wouldn't be in love with a boy, not one of those. She is in love with herself, and life, just exactly the way it should be.
She asks the hard questions, the perceptive questions. She's an old soul. She watches people around her, and learns more than all of them put together. She sees that no one is happy. That nobody ever really talks, not about anything real. That Guy isn't like the other firemen and never will be. That nobody looks or loves or learns or listens or does anything real. She knows.
But best of all, she starts something in Guy, and therefore in their unidentified world. She dies not even a fourth of the way into the book and we never see her again. But she sets the ball rolling in him. She wakes him up to himself and the world. That's all she does, really, is ask the hard questions and make people bothered. But it does things, to other people, to relationships, and to the world.
In a way, she's everything I want to be. Alive, in love with the world yet otherworldly, tough and thoughtful and unafraid to be true and wholehearted in everything, always. If I could be half of that, I would be very impressed with myself.
--
"What do you do, go around trying everything once?" he asked.
"Sometimes twice."
Blog!
Running a blog is something I have wanted to do for a very long time. After years of writing blog posts solely in the blog of my head, it occurred to me that a real blog would be very quick and easy to actually set up. And as I have a lot that I ought to be doing right now, it seemed the perfect time.
This blog really has no theme or purpose other than to put some of the words inside my head onto something more permanent. You can expect philosophical ramblings on life, my faith, and people, talk of writing, books, and characters, thoughts on my favorite music and lyrics, and all matter of things that definitely sounded better in my head. Also probably lots of quotes from smart people who actually did sound as good outside their head as they did inside. XD
Basically, this will be an adventure in the making. Like life........
This blog really has no theme or purpose other than to put some of the words inside my head onto something more permanent. You can expect philosophical ramblings on life, my faith, and people, talk of writing, books, and characters, thoughts on my favorite music and lyrics, and all matter of things that definitely sounded better in my head. Also probably lots of quotes from smart people who actually did sound as good outside their head as they did inside. XD
Basically, this will be an adventure in the making. Like life........
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