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June 07, 2012 Oh, how the writer shall be missed... RAY BRADBURYAugust 22, 1920 - June 5, 2012 There are so many words I want to say, so many emotions I want to illicit from you, the reader, that I am choked by them, brought to my knees by their overwhelming weight and the real fact of what that weight represents - sadness. A sadness, so deep and indelible, I know it will stay with me for the remainder of my days. Ray Bradbury, the man I call a master, is dead. I wish I had known him. I wish I could have had the chance to speak to him, and thank him for inspiring me, as he inspired countless others. I feel as if he was the father of my dreams and the architect of my imagination. I can remember reading The Halloween Tree on the grounds of my grade school. Seated beneath a pungent pine tree, just as the bones of countless Indian warriors lay mired in the ground below; or so rumor told. I flew with those children in the story, to Egypt and Mexico and Salem, and it was Ray Bradbury who guided me. He is for me, the greatest author that has ever lived. And he shall be remembered, now and forever. The world is somewhat emptier, somewhat darker, somewhat colder, knowing that Ray Bradbury is no longer in it. What follows are but a few of his beautiful works and words. From the novel Fahrenheit 451: It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. From the novel The Halloween Tree: A thousand pumpkin smiles look down from the Halloween Tree, and twice-times-a-thousand fresh-cut eyes glare and wink and blink, as Moundshroud leads the eight trick-or-treaters - no, nine, But where is Pipkin? -on a leaf-tossed, kite-flying, gliding, broomstick-riding trip to learn the secret of All Hallows' Eve. And they do. 'Well,' asks Moundshroud at journeys' end, 'Which was it? A Trick or a Treat?' 'Both!' all agree. And so will you. From the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes: First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren't rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn't begun yet. July, well, July's really fine: there's no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June's best of all, for the school door s spring wide and Septembers a billion years away. From the short story The Grim Reaper: Sobbing wildly, he rose above the grain again and again and hewed to left and right and left and right. Over and over and over! Slicing out huge scars in green wheat and ripe wheat, with no selection and no care, cursing, swearing, the blade swinging up and in the sun and falling with a singing whistle! Down! From the novel Dandelion Wine: It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer. From the short story The Long Rain: The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains. It came by the pound and the ton, it hacked at the jungle and cut the trees like scissors and shaved the grass and tunneled the soil and mottled the bushes. It shrank men's hands into the hands of wrinkled apes; it rained a solid glassy rain, and it never stopped. [Add Comment] 0 Comments |
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