“Tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out…” R.B. RIP

Dr. Weeks’ Comment:   I think it is fabulous that Ray Bradbury wrote 1000 “loving” words a day.   That discipline reminds me of the fabulous writing coach Brenda Ueland, whose book:  “If you want to Write”   is as exciting as Virginia’s  “A Room of One’s Own.”   (Carl Sandburg called Brenda’s book about art, independence, and spirit, “the best book ever written about how to write”. ) 

Curious… why is a doctor focusing on writing and writers in what purports to be a medical/health website?  

Because writing, being one of many forms of self-expression, is a creative activity which enhances our immune system.  One question I ask all my patients with cancer is “What are you doing with your creative energy?”   Think of expressing your creative being as your life boat. Without it, not only does your immune system sputter and fail but..  on a fundamental level, would life be worth living without the ability to be creative?  

“And God created Man in His own image” teaches the Bible. Steiner suggested that one interpretation of that phrase is that  a creative Being (God) created beings (humanity) which capable of creative activity.  The Baltimore oriel builds an amazing nest but not from real creativity – rather from instinct.  Free creative energy driven by enthusiasm “loving words”  are what we need to thrive!   “Enthusiasm”, hmmm… let’s look at that word.  It derives from the Greek “en-Theus” meaning  “God within”.   So be creative and thrive! I suggest that your live as well as your quality of life, depends upon it! 

 

 

Ray Douglas Bradbury was born at Waukegan, Illinois on 22 August 1920, he died yesterday at Los Angeles, California. An aunt introduced him to the stories of Edgar Allan Poe at an early age, he started devouring science fiction magazines and was such a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs that he wrote a sequel to The Warlord of Mars at age twelve. He started to routinely write a thousand words a day in high school and kept it up until just the last few weeks. He wrote a short story called “Homecoming” about a normal boy at a family reunion of witches, vampires, and werewolves; Truman Capote, then an editor at Mademoiselle, picked it out of the unsolicited manuscripts, giving Bradbury his first major exposure. He is best known for Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. In his obituary The New York Times called Bradbury, “the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream.” I’m glad he did
“From now on I hope always to stay alert, to educate myself the best I can. But lacking this, in the future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind and see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.”

We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.
I don’t describe the future. I try to prevent it.You must live feverishly in a library. Colleges are not going to do any good unless you are raised and live in a library every day of your life.Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.My stories run up and bite me in the leg ”” I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

Why would you clone people when you can go to bed with them and make a baby? C’mon, it’s stupid.

All from Ray Bradbury, 1920 – 2012

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