We had a good time today at the Tucson Festival of Books. Julian had an interesting, if not exactly fun, time meeting several characters from children's books. On hand were two of the Berenstain Bears, Pat the Bunny, Maisy, Skippyjon Jones, and another couple of unknowns.
We also sat in on a Q&A session with Elmore Leonard. It was interesting. He is a very entertaining guy. But he's 83 years old and he's obviously aging--he had to have several questions repeated for him and he had a few moments of forgetfulness. Admittedly, when you've written as much as he has for as long, well, keeping all the stories and titles straight is bound to be a difficult task.
He pulled no punches when it came to the movies made from his films. He had praise for Paul Newman in Hombre and Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown--his take on Leonard's Rum Punch. He said that Tarantino's film was the most true to the novel of any film treatment of his books. He actually likened several films made of his books as the worst movies ever, including both versions of The Big Bounce (with the edge going to the remake).
Another event that has been going on for the past month is the creation of a mandala sand painting created by a Tibetan monk named Losang Samten. It's a beautiful thing. He completed it yesterday after a month of working on it for as much as nine or more hours a day. When you look at it you can't even imagine how much work it must take, how much patience and concentration. The amazing thing is that tomorrow it will all be wiped away.
The dissolution ceremony is difficult for our Western minds to comprehend. It is a foreign concept to us--to put that much effort into creating something so beautiful only to destroy it seems insane. But that, I suppose, is part of the ritual--learning to let go of physical things and to recognize how temporary such things are. To accept that the value is in the work and the creativity, in the act of creation rather than the object created. It's a difficult thing to grasp. You can read more about the monk and the event here: Ritual Sand Painting.
