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| The canary yellow L.A. home where “Fahrenheit 451” author Ray Bradbury resided for more than 50 years was demolished last week, according to the Los Angeles Times. The culprit: none other than Thom Mayne. The Pritzker winner has never been known to be nostalgic; in the wake of MoMA’s decision to raze the Tod Williams Billie Tsien's American Folk Art Museum, he had noted simply that, “All of our work issomewhat ephemeral.” So it comes as little surprise that shortly after he and wife Blythe Alison-Mayne purchased Bradbury’s former property for $1.76 million, the Times reports, the walls started coming down. --Janelle Zara, Architizer, January 20, 2015. Photo by John King Tarpinian, File 770. |
"Bradbury Landing is a place on the planet Mars located in Gale crater. It marks the landing site of Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover on August 6, 2012. The location was named by NASA for Ray Bradbury on August 22, 2012, his 92nd birthday, in honor of the author who died a few months earlier, on June 5. The coordinates of the landing site are: 4.5895°S 137.4417°E." --Wikipedia
In a dream last night
My young son and I
Descended the steps
To the Bradbury house
Basement, where he
Wrote most of his work,
The walls lined with
Posters of book covers:
Fahrenheit 451 and
The Martian Chronicles,
Scent of used books
And typewriter oil.
And there, as I placed
An arm around my son,
Sat Bradbury’s desk,
The man who has a
Spot on Mars named
After him, untouched,
And I’m sure untouched
Even when Mars itself
Is finally developed
By future architects.
My life is ephemeral,
My son’s life too, yet
I recall, in that dream,
Thinking with absolute
Wonder, how the house,
The Ray Bradbury House,
Smelled of used books
And typewriter oil.
Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems, My Earthbound Eye, in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.
