I don't have much in the way of family. Both my parents were somewhat estranged from their siblings and we moved away from my relatives, mostly in Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas, when I was twelve. I find family where I can. Sometimes, where I create it or imagine it to be. To this point, I'm a big Ray Bradbury fan. If I had an uncle I actually talked to, I'd want him to be like Ray Bradbury -- with lots of stories about strange carnivals, freaky characters, and life on Mars. So, I think of Bradbury as my Uncle Ray: a silver-haired gentleman wearing thick, black eyeglasses, a bit eccentric, and always with a story to tell.
This passage comes from one of my favorite books by Uncle Ray, on "releasing the creative genius within you," Zen in the Art of Writing.
"Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jump, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next -- life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was -- a whisper.
What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping."
Thanks for the fine advice, Uncle Ray.
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