ray

here is a picture of ray bradbury.

i can't remember if it was my father or my eigth grade english teacher who introduced me to ray but both played a part. growing up, my father took me to bookstores regularly. we are of the same breed. in a loud family, we like hours of quiet and adventure in our head. so, we spent hours thumbing through shelves, the old, dingy perfume of printed paper filling our lungs. one day, i came across the illustrated man. it is filled with violence and possibility. around the same time, i was assigned fahrenheit 451. we were instructed to mark it up with questions and thoughts. this was the first time i wrote in my book. write in my book? with a pen!? sacrilege! eventually, i adjusted. it was not an irreverent violation of the text, but a way to interact, absorb, and remember. fahrenheit 451 shocked and stirred me. i had no idea that words could be used with such imagination and power.

i read this book recently.  ray got his education at the library. he had a wife whom he met in a bookstore. she read proust and he read buck rogers. they had four daughters. he had two affairs. ray wrote one short story a week for more than 40 years despite his unpromising talent. his determination was fanatical. he willed his way to the sides of huxley, disney and more. always learning from  and pestering those who were better. he wrote for television, movies, radio and more. he sold short stories as collections and disguised them as novels. he feared the ending of things and was obsessed with immortality. creating is death's greatest loophole - keeping him alive in public conciousness as long as they read his work. ray wrote human stories even if his characters were martians. he instinctually played with metaphor and imagery. ray, ever the outsider and onlooker, dressed his life and the common things in it with words - beautiful, simple, and true.

i'd like to be like him.

and in the name of one-too-many-links:
this is a young ray. what a winner.