something wicked this way come. ray bradbury. (71)

a couple months ago i picked up "something wicked this way come" but after reading its jacket cover and saw that it was about halloween coming early, i decided to save it for october. so when october came, so did my reading.

the first thing that amazed me was that the book was dedicated to gene kelly. my first thought was not the gene kelly, but i googled it and yes that gene kelly (i know there really isn't another). turns out that bradbury wrote a screenplay for kelly to direct but they couldn't find backing for it so it never happened so bradbury turned it into a novel. but it still made my heart happy to know they were friends. my friend cody used to do this thing where he imagined what dinner parties with kay-z, beyonce and chris martin and gwenyth paltrow would be like. so this made me wish i could have attended gene kelly and ray bradbury dinner parties.

the second thing i noticed was that this story takes place in green town, illinois, which is the setting of "dandelion wine" and since i loved that book, i had high hopes.

i hate to admit this but "something wicked this way come" will not be listed as a bradbury favorite for me. it's not that it was bad, it just wasn't for me. well for me now, as i was reading i couldn't help but think of the nickelodeon show "are you afraid of the dark?" and r. l. stine's "goosebumps" and "fear street" series, all of which i was obsessed with as a kid. twelve-year-old me would have been crazy about this book, but twenty-nine year old me enjoyed it but wasn't on the edge of her seat reading.

it was still well written. there were things i enjoyed. it did inspire me to write a whole blog devoted to women as time (see: "time (is never time at all . . .). and it was filled with the poetry that is bradbury's writing:

". . . the air so cold they ate ice cream with each breath"

"oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are."

"her nose breathes in the air of the world that i know, therefore i love that nose."

and since this is a library blog, i loved that bradbury had the library play an important role in the book. it is described as a mystical place that allows the boys to travel over distance lands and times. he describes how one could adventure to tanganyika in '98 and at the time he wrote it, that would be the future but me reading now, it is the past. the library was also a safe haven and where the halloways and jim gain the power and knowledge to fight the wicked that had came. i may even create a list of books (ala flavorpill) of my favorite stories that feature libraries and this would be one.

last but not least, there is a carousel that played a very important role. it symbolizes immortality which i am okay with not having. i am
very happy with going through the stages of life and one day growing old and dying. however the carousel reminded me of a piece i saw at the new museum, new york. charles ray's carrousel. it was an optical illusion, i remember standing by it to listen because you could hear the motors. but the top moved forwards while the bottom moved backwards so it looked like it was standing still. and in the context of this book and time, it's kind of amazing. life can be propelling forward (planning for the future) and backward (dwelling on the past) so quickly in time that sometimes it looks like we are just standing still but life is actually going on.

but still not wild about the book. i will recommend it to others and have my future kid(s) read it. it was creative and interesting and loved the father-son element, but would have rather seen it as a film directed by gene kelly.

time (is never time at all . . .)

in the beginning, this blog was devoted to a book or DVD that i checked out from the library. but being the bibliophile that i am, i extended it to any book i have read. and just this past month had an entry about a movie based on one of my favorite books. and today i will start a new type of entry. a thematic entry. and this first theme is women as time.

today as i was reading ray bradbury's "something wicked this way come", i came across this passage on time and women:

oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. they nest in Time. they make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. they live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. why speak of Time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action? how men envy and often hate those warm clocks, these wives who know they will live forever. so what do we do? we men turn terribly mean, because we can't hold to the world or ourselves or anything. we are blind to continuity, all breaks down, falls, melts, stops, rots or run away.

this struck me as interesting because women as time was also a theme in smith's "nw". smith wrote the following about her character natalie hanging out with her gay brother and his friends:

(natalie is envious of their fluid and "free love" living arrangement)
it was not possible to feel happy for him it was because the arrangement was timeless--it did not come bound by the constructions of time--and this in turn was the consequence of a crucial detail: no women were included within the schema. women come bearing time. natalie had brought time into this house. she couldn't stop mentioning the time and worrying about it.

women as time is a serious truth for me right now. i am slowly ticking my way to thirty and i have no idea where the time has gone. and the scarier thing is that even though i am only thirty i do feel like time is running out. why the stress? the dreaded biological clock that ticks inside of every women. as a teen i remember watching the friends episode when rachel turned 30 and this happened:

back then i didn't realize that this would one day me my fate. occasionally i will have the same freak out as rachel because right now i should be dating someone that i can potentially marry so i can have kids at a "reasonable" age and right now i am dating no one. and it seems like everyone around me is getting married (gay friends exempted) and my "future" and biological clock are going nowhere. (please note this freak out started to appear in the back of my mind at age 25. it started getting more serious around 27. but now at 29, i might just be in denial about it cos i should be going insane over it but am surprisingly calm, hence denial.) the only thing that is in my favor is that my mother had my brother at 43, so biologically there still may be hope for me.

and i think back to my life and wonder what have i done for the past 30 years and why have 10 of them been in singleness? and the only thing i can think of is that i should not have drank as much and i should have never wasted my youth on men who didn't deserve it. seriously there is one guy who is married (still shocking) that i wasted my hot years on. i mean i was hot, boys would hit on me but i would ignore them because for some odd reason i wanted this one guy. to this day all of my friends, still don't understand why or how i was interested in this kid. seriously my hot years, i have pics. and i have no idea why he passed me up because his future potential wealth were not equivalent to my personality or than hotness. but i digress.

and let me clarify, i do not regret the life i have lived so far. i have had fun and can say i have lead an interesting life. there is rarely a dull moment with me. but i don't know why i can't plan for a future. maybe it's because of my nihilist tendencies. i don't believe in an afterlife and without the goal of eternal life, it's hard to plan for a future. might as well enjoy things now because i'll be worm food once i'm in the ground. but then again, i do want good things for me twenty years from now but i am really too busy living now to worry about tomorrow. and i am not sure how to switch perspectives. isn't it suppose to come with age?

at the risk of sounding like a sappy female but maybe it will be when i find the "one" and start thinking in terms of "we" and ultimately the future tense. right now i can only think in the present tense "krisha is . . ." versus "krisha will . . .". and maybe having an "other" will make me less selfish?

i don't know. all i know is that i do feel like there is a timeline of my life and i have to stop denying it. i have to stop trying to slow it down or stop it and start ticking with it.

[sidenote: just like both "something wicked this way come" and "nw" discuss women as time. they also share instances where males express the pointlessness in having children:

smith's character nathan shares: "kids if they get born, they're gonna die. so [a death sentence is] what you're giving them at the end of the day."

and bradbury's jim had the following exchange with his mom:

"never gonna have [childern]," said jim.
"you just say that."
"i know it. i know everything."
she waited a moment. "what do you know?"
"no use making more people. people die."

morbid but true. what is the point of procreating if in the end we all die. its sad to think this way but if i took on this philosophy on childbearing, it would make a less neurotic thirty-year-old.)