Little Man, Big World

Ray Bradbury's passing is still working on me. If you read my last post -- a little piece saying farewell to a the man whose work meant so much to me -- you will know that I included a video interview with Ray in which he speaks about doing what you love. Do what you love, is his message, love what you do. Don't let anyone talk you out of it.

So, I walked away, inspired. "Yeah! That's it. I'm quitting my job to write novels. The world needs to see my fiction. I'm taking my shot at carving my name on the totem of the greats, right up there with Steinbeck and Dickens and Pynchon -- somewhere just below Raymond Carver would be nice. I'd settle for that. But I'm doing it. I'm forty-four. Now's the time. I'll talk to my wife. She'll back me up. I need to do this."

But here are three issues. First, it was easy for dear old Ray to die a happy man, at least where writing was concerned. He made it to the lofty heights. You don't hear a lot of failed writers chirping about following dreams, do you?

A Farewell to Ray Bradbury, One of My Best Friends

Ray Bradbury: 1920-2012

Ray Bradbury is dead. I'll miss him like an old friend, even though I never met the man.

I would say that "a part of me died" when I heard, but that (besides being an anemic cliché) would not be true. I may be sad over losing a one of my most beloved heroes, but Ray is no farther away from me now than he was before. He is truly a part of the man I have become, regardless of whether that means something good or something bad to those around me.

Ray Bradbury has lived in my wondering eyes from the first time I picked up his work as a younger man who was astonished by the spectacle of boundless poetic mysteries spinning through his prose like children behind a rain-wet, sunlit window -- their dance a celebration that was half High Mass, half Midnight Carnival.

Ray's writing made me want to write, and write and write. The more I drank, the thirstier I got.

From Muzzle to Mitt

Exhaustion has set in. The end of the school year is like that last winded push for the goal line when you have nothing left.

(I know a million other professionals out there are saying: "Yeah, teachers. They get off in the summer... " 1) I don’t, for the record. 2) If teachers are good, they work all summer on their own. 3) Imagine if your job were to “perform” five to eight shows a day and then spend your nights and weekends preparing lessons and grading papers. Trust me, hardworking non-teachers: It is, contrary to popular belief, a “real job.” You even get a daily evaluation from your kids, who can make you life heaven or hell with a slight shift in attitude. Can you control 30 teenagers in a room and keep them interested in what you have to say for seventy minutes? I didn’t THINK so. Now what? What? That’s what I thought. Hmmpf.)

Anyway, I thought I would give you a quick run down of my day, today, in all of its surrealistic insanity:

6:00 AM: Awakened to a soft white fuzzy muzzle against my cheek. Smiled at cute dog. Scratched cute dog’s warm snoot. Pushed dog lovingly away. Vigorously rubbed my own face, pushing up with neck. Felt neck go p-toing! Neck has been loath to turn from side to side since then. Went into shower and washed head like an agitated monkey with really short arms, cursing the pain.

7:05 AM: Ran out front door, late. Stopped at fast food place for an eggish sandwich. Opened eggish sandwich. Sandwich was more greasy film than sandwich. It looked like a herring made of English muffin. Ate it anyway, because…what are you gonna do?

"...the sum of such hours..."

I'm not much of a standard book-reviewer (to do it well takes a talent I'm not sure I have), but I do like to share things that sort of "hit" me from books that I am reading.

Right now, I'm finishing an outstanding (Hugo Award-winning) sci-fi novel, by Dan Simmons, called Hyperion. The novel is the work of a master craftsman -- a guy who can walk through "voices" the way we walk from room to room; who can go from the third person narrative about a professor of philosophy and into a "hard-boiled-detective-fiction" voice and make it not silly. The book is also a veritable roller coaster ride for English major-types. I won't give things away; but, if you like both sci-fi and "serious" literature from the Chaucer through the British Romantic period (hence, the title) as much as I do, you must read this book.

Anyway, this passage from Hyperion really struck me the other day. Once again, here's an example of succinct writing that does more in a short passage than I have done in about four-thousand short essays on the subject... Here the perspective of a mother who is losing her daughter to a backward-aging disease. It applies more powerfully under those circumstances, of course, but it fits in perfectly with my take on life when it comes to "special occasions" versus the everyday:

Sarai had treasured every day of Rachel's childhood, enjoying the day-to-day normalcy of things; a normalcy which she quietly accepted as the best of life. She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things -- the weekend afternoon with each member of the family engaged in his or her own pursuit, their crossings and connections casual, dialogues imminently forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal.

Heck, yeah.

Loneliness in Numbers

Give me one mumbling, meandering, daydreaming, stick-wielding kid for ten droop-necked texters in a pack.

Give me one knee-hugging, sunset beach-sitting thinker for a hundred iPod strand-joggers.

I’ll take one game-loving loser for a thousand equipment-throwing "athletes"  --

One video-gaming, movie-quote-repeating teenaged “nerd” for a million pouting, mirror-photographed Facebook movie stars.

I’ll bask in the connection to dead people who live like waterfall mist on pages and in timeless sound and I’ll leave the tight-packed rooms full of living excitement for those who think crowds equal company.

I’ll trade the wide world for the endless expanses of my Tardis imagination.

You can have the Grammys; I’ll be jamming with my little boys.

You can have the cheering crowds; I’ll take kind words from good friends.

Let the rest lust over the chilly marble beauty sculpted by the beauty magazine engineers.

I’ll have my original perfect love with the smiling eyes.

They can have loneliness in numbers; I’ll hang with the best of humankind --

The ones from the First Explosion up to my deathbedside.