Thank
you Mr. Bradbury, for your contribution to the world's collective
imagination. Your footprint, so distinct, is palpable and
unmistakeable within my own musings. For me as it was for my father,
star-gazing will never be the same again. Those ancient Martian
cities, their silent dry canals, and your “balm of sun and idle
august afternoons” are such striking inventions of fancy and fable,
fantasy and nightmare, and are such I could never hope to build. You
will always stir and move me.
So
long, friend...
-Klara
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A
few favorite excerpts.
 |
| (Illustration by Joseph Mugnaini) |
The
small boy, on the country road looked up and screamed. “Look, Mom,
look! A falling star!” The
blazing white star fell down the sky of dusk in illinois. “Make
a wish, “ said his mother. “Make a wish.”
-Bradbury,
Ray. “Kaleidoscope.” The
Vintage
Bradbury.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. pg 242
Yes,
even Grandma, drawn to the cellar of winter for a June adventure,
might stand alone and quietly, in secret conclave with her own soul
and spirit, as did Grandfather and Father and Uncle Burt, or some of
the boarders, communing with a last touch of a calendar long
departed, with the picnics and the warm rains and the smell of fields
of wheat and new popcorn and bending hay. Even Grandma, repeating and
repeating the fine and golden words, even as they were said now in
this moment when the flowers were dropped into the press, as they
would be repeated every winter for all the white winters in time,
Saying them over and over on the lips, like a smile, like a sudden
patch of sunlight in the dark. Dandelion
wine. Dandelion wine. Dandelion wine.
-Bradbury,
Ray. “Dandelion Wine.” The
Vintage Bradbury. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, Inc. pg 207
 |
| (Illustration by Joseph Mugnaini) |
“A
carnival should be all growls, roars like timberlands stacked,
bundled, rolled and crashed, great explosions of lion dust, men ablaze
with working anger, pop bottles jangling, horse buckles shivering,
engines and elephants in full stampede through rains of sweat while
zebras neighed and trembled like cage trapped in cage.
But
this was like old movies, the silent theater haunted with
black-and-white ghosts, silvery mouths opening to let moonlight smoke
out, gestures made in silence so hushed you could hear the wind fizz
the hair on your cheeks.”
-Bradbury,
Ray. Something
Wicked This Way Comes.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962.
 |
| (Illustration by Joseph Mugnaini) |
“Who
wants to see the Future, who ever
does? A man can face the Past, but to think--the pillars crumbled,
you say? And the sea empty, and the canals dry, and the maidens dead,
and the flowers withered?” The Martian was silent, but then he
looked on ahead. “But there they are.
I see
them. Isn't that enough for me? They wait for me now, no matter what
you say.”
Bradbury,
Ray. “August 2002: Night Meeting”. The
Martian Chronicles.
New York: Doubleday & Company, 1950. pg 85
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Ray Bradbury's Night Meeting, by Daniel Torres.
Slow Cooker Chai-Spice 
