The third week of April 2013 was, by any measure, a bad one, filled with dark feelings and horrible events. The epicenter was Boston but the aftershocks were felt far and wide, from Vancouver to London and beyond.
The Boston Marathon bombings transplanted a new, more foreign form of terrorism onto American soil. It’s a scenario people in the middle East, the Indian subcontinent and other regions have been living with for decades: homegrown radicals planting dreadfully destructive explosive devices in the middle of everyday life, killing and maiming innocent civilians at restaurants, public markets, and so on. I doubt anyone ever gets used to such events, but for Americans, it was a novelty, and a deeply troubling one.
If there was a political component, it must have been a pretty obscure one; what political message could possibly have been served by dismembering a bunch of hardcore runners?
In the wake of that awful event, my world – as a human being, and as a runner – closed in a little. Mostly I grieved for the maimed runners. These were people who lived to run, and were now legless, never to run again, like pianists whose hands had been amputated. I could scarcely imagine the physical loss these people must be suffering.
I also mourned for the wider loss to the sport, and society, that this event would inevitably bring about. Running events would become the new front line against terrorism, saddled with impossibly expensive and difficult to implement security regimens like those that have made traversing American airports such an ordeal in the past decade.
(The irony is, such efforts are completely misplaced. The Boston Marathon bombing was not about running, any more than 9/11 was about tall buildings. It was about attacking and injuring an American institution. It was about exposing our vulnerability.)
It was while I was sunk in this mire of depression, anger and pessimism that another news item caught my eye. And made me think of Ray.
The item was that the Hubble telescope had just captured stunning new images of the so-called horsehead nebula. (And stunning is the word. Check out the full image here.) And as I gazed in awe at this extraordinary picture, I thought of Ray.
Ray is Ray Bradbury, the writer and thinker and all round creative powerhouse who is most well known for his writing (Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and The Illustrated Man among others). Ray also invested his abundant energies into many other projects including films, television programs, museum installations and more. I know and remember Ray best (he died in 2012) not so much from his literary works as from the two occasions on which I was lucky enough to see him deliver keynotes at conferences. He communicated a few simple messages which have stuck with me for years.
(One of which, as an ever-struggling writer, I have always loved and tried to live by. Ray counseled that, when writing, one should let the creative gates open wide at the beginning of the process; there will be lots of time later to refine, edit and trim. Or as he so memorably put it: Throw up at breakfast, clean up at lunch.)
The remark of Ray’s that came back to me now was this: Don’t watch the news – it will only depress you. Look to the skies, the stars, the infinite wonders of the universe, and ponder the possibilities they hold.
It’s a philosophy that served him well, and helped to produce some surprisingly moving, ingeniously creative and profoundly humanistic literature. It’s a philosophy that works well when life on earth becomes just too bleak. It’s not looking away, it’s looking beyond.
As the first anniversary of this tragic event approaches, it will slide back onto our collective radar, bringing with it all the horrors and fears and black thoughts that swirled around those dark days last spring. If it gets too much, remember this. Remember Ray. And look up.