If stories are written to be interpreted by the readers, coming up on this actual date puts Bradbury’s story in a new place. Now, it is about the coldness of technology, the understanding that we are going to lose something very real if we continue on the uncharted path we are going.
Korach, man of influence, whose ego gets in the way, influences 250 people to their deaths. They rallied behind him and supported his cause, but I can’t help but wonder if it was solely because of his stature and not his platform.
I’m reading East of Eden. And I’m reminding myself of how important it is to revisit the works in my “Library of Shame,” take down those old tomes, dust off the jackets, and plunge in.
“Before October 7th, I might have simply noted the Jewish detail in King’s story and moved on. Now the mention of Judaism in literature feels charged in a way it never used to. The guard goes up. The scanning begins. You start looking for danger before danger has even presented itself.”
The siren goes off, and I imagine it: my family and friends rushing to their bomb shelters, waiting for the all-clear, hearing the explosive booms overhead, and praying that the walls hold and the building stays standing.
I thought I would be excited to move on. But my mixed emotions at changing the decor that has been my daily view for two years remind me that the street I live on can’t just go back to before October 7th.
That was just me not understanding technology.
We stood, 290,000 strong, in song and prayer, in tears and heartbreak, but most of all in our collective hope.
In my garden today, the dying sunflowers painfully reminded me of my friend Miriam and the gold that is fading in front of me echoes that larger loss.
It’s interesting what we attach ourselves to and the meaning we ascribe to objects that somehow, over years, become important not in functionality but just in being.