RB

Ray Bradbury was my great-gradmother Kitty's cousin, which made him related to me somehow, 3rd cousin, cousin twice removed. We were both born in "Green Town" we both thought libraries were world openers. I also know that he missed his wife and I hope that they found each other in the whatever's next.

I know he knew I was a writer. The autograph pictured was to me for my first year of an arts based high school I was accepted to for writing. This autograph is in "Green Shadows, White Whale" which is the story of him writing the screenplay for Moby Dick, directed by John Huston.

Unfortunately, that is all we knew about each other, that we were both writers.

Here is a great letter from him, in the fantastic blog Letters of Note, about the importance of libraries.  It reveals something very interesting about writing Fahrenheit  451.

click here.

Perfect Dome of Sound

The desert is a mysterious place with a lot of arrows, filled with paradox, where New Age meets Good News in strange ways. It is lonely beautiful, alien, harsh, and surreal. This is why I love it so.


On Easter we headed to Integratron to celebrate a birthday six months late. An auspicious day to celebrate birth, re-birth and prolongation of life. 5 of us ventured out into the desert to see if we could live just a bit longer. The Integratron compound is a place with many lounging spaces and a colorful hammock village, and a mirror to reflect upon once your experience ends. We hammocked until it was time to get our sound bath, taking advantage of the bright desert light for photographs.

I had read a little about the story behind this place summarized in my last post. This exposition was told to us as we were laying face up on yoga mats interrupted by odd interjections of laughter by our host. I decided that if I continued to listen to him I would laugh too and no one else was laughing, they were listening intently excited for the healing properties that would enter us through the symphony of quartz bowls that would soon be played.

Our experience was through a pop up sound bath, which you share the experience with strangers, well those who are not in your group. They do not do pop up sound baths often because of two things and they said these rules as a warning, that if this happened, they would re-think ever doing a sound bath again and only do sound baths in group form.

1) Turn off your cell phone
2) no snoring, because it ruins other people's experiences by interrupting the pure sound of the quartz bowls.

My friend and I have differing views on whether or not you can help sleeping or snoring, but I feel like if it is going to ruin others experiences, I don't want to be that person. The ruiner. Not other people feel that way. Like the bear shaped man who fell into a similarly bear-like slumber during our session.

Determined to not be that person, hell, I don't even know that I snore, I found another way to experience integratron, with my eyes open. I stared up in the skylight and as those bowls rang out and filled my body that needed saving with sound it shook my right side. I watched the clouds drift by changing shape, turn into lines and dots, pull and compress.

I am not sure that I will live 50 more years, those things we can never tell, but I may remember at 130 what happened to me on Easter 2012. What I did leave with was a higher sensitivity to sound, voices, water trickling, shuffling of feet on the rocks of the parking lot louder. When we ate lunch at Pappy and Harriets and when a child lost their shit because they were leaving, it was one of the loudest sounds I had ever heard and when I was at home listening to music as I fell asleep, it was one of the most beautiful things ever.

Forever Young

A long time ago, but within the last 50 years, a man who happened to be a tesla scientist was kidnapped and given a mathematical equation by the Venutians to help save the human race. This equation formed a blueprint, a blue print for a perfect dome of sound. The sound played in this space would fill the human body prolonging that human's life by 50 years.

I will now live until I am 130 years old.

To Be Continued......

Photos of this place I love

At first I was using google + as a place to store my memories a photo diary of sorts, an experiment a la Super Sad True Love Story, but what good is sharing if no one is there to see. So I have moved that part to a spin off blog called This Ugly Beautiful City. Which probably also takes care of my coffee table book, but also puts my photos up for me to see them better and pick from them.

Just indulge me while I fancy myself a visual historian of this place I love.

Somewhere between ornament and monument

Sometimes in life you need a reset. When a mood pervades that you don't want to be in and can't shake, life going in circles and circles, circling off to no where... I find it is best to do something just a bit ridiculous/campy/silly.

So I thought that I would find something to restart me, make me giggle for no reason and put me in touch with my fellow man and that something passed right through my neighborhood.

At first I scoffed at the LACMA Boulder, found it to be a monument to bureaucracy, a silly thing. That is what I love about LA its tendancy to make even the littlest things, major productions. A 340 ton rock and it's journey twittered away inch by inch, people proposing next to it, rock block parties, people following it like it were the Dead or Phish. Rock heads? Boulder heads?

But when its path was bringing it right through my neighborhood, I thought maybe this silly thing was what I needed to get out of my funk. So after a steak dinner, a quick stop at the Bounty, I picked up a neighbor on foot and we walked the few blocks to Western & 8th. We passed Rosens and joked about renting a room afterwards and sing Rock related songs..

Between a Rock and a Hard Place
I love Rock and Roll
I am a Rock, I am an Island
(please comment about the ones I forgot)

We were expecting to have to wait until 2:am, a whole hour, which was its target time to hit Wilshire and Western, but very un-LAlike it was ahead of schedule. We barely had time to make friends with nurse and her best friend who was a third grade teacher. Their class had been following the rocks path and she was very excited to share her photos with them.

As it approached people were cheering and clapping, it was rather infectious. The construction workers in their neon yellow, puffed out chest, proud of their work, posing for photos with the crowd. We followed it, snapping pictures, excited to see how it would survive the turn onto Wilshire. Hundreds of people were there waiting as it slowly turned. Someone jumped out of the crowd unfurled an American flag and did laps around it, the whole corner sharing a chuckle and a collective cheer.

A man came up behind us and asked what was going on and he misunderstood and excitedly called a friend and said:

"I am in my neighborhood and they are bringing a UFO rock through it. I am watching a UFO rock and it looks like everyone knows about it"

I thought about correcting him, but I didn't want to shatter his once in a lifetime opportunity to see a UFO rock.

We decided to follow it to Wilton, but after its successful turn it all of a sudden stopped. We waited while someone pumped "We Will Rock You" from a boombox attached to a bike and someone marched around with a sign that one one side stated, God Hates Rock, God Loves Scissors. I never found out about how God feels about paper. We waited 20 minutes and found out via twitter that the reason that the Rock stopped was because cars had to be towed out of the way. I would hate to be the person who found out their car was towed because of a 340 ton rock.

The Rock will finally be on view on June 24th. Mark it on your calendars.

Thank you LA for being silly, I really needed it.