'Everyone must leave something behind when he dies...'

I came across this wonderful Ray Bradbury quote today:

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Gems

I recently read a Ray Bradbury short story, 'The Veldt', from The Illustrated Man, first published in 1951, and I was blown away, it felt so modern - and creepy - and I wished I'd read him before now (I've only read the essays Zen in the Art of Writing). Then I remembered that in The State of Me, Helen admires a 'A Flock of Ravens': 'I just read a short story by Ray Bradbury, it's called 'A Flock of Ravens', I really liked the tone, the hysteria. The man who sold it to me couldn't bend his arms properly.'

So I realised I must have read it too (my book is a  handy aide-memoire). 

I very much like this recent Goodreads review of the novel. And enjoyed this Jenny Diski article on writing, or not writing, via Fictionbitch. (Also, in order to write you need to read. But you should never force yourself to read a book for pleasure, there is a time for every book to be read.)

I've been dipping into Bord de Mer by Véronique Olmi, a French novella I read of here. The language is simple and not too taxing. And I've finally started An Exploding Case of Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif, I've had a secondhand copy on my shelves forever.

I've had a crappy cold that's recycling itself - and a racking cough - I got antibiotics yesterday, it was getting ridiculous - and have woken up more than once feeling horribly ill, more from ME than anything, that horrible weakness-nausea in the very core of your muscles, and you think: Fuck, please go away, and thank your lucky stars you are no longer like this *all* the time, confined to bed, as some poor people are.

Which brings me to Dr Betty Dowsett, I was greatly saddened to read about her passing, aged ninety-one, a true champion of people with ME. She worked alongside Dr Melvin Ramsay. (I was diagnosed By Dr Behan in 1984 according to Ramsay definition of ME, but  did not, of course, know that at the time as it was the only definition, before all the nonsense and watering down.)

*I just saw this, neuro-immune model of ME, from PubMed, June 2012.