When you are young, you dream big. There is a memory I have. I was seven or eight and I was spending the night at my cousin’s house. She and her two sisters showed me this game where they would walk around the edge of their waterbed and try not to fall into the middle (hot lava or shark-infested waters). As we maneuvered the wooden frame, pocked with scratches and crayola, I said, “I’m going to be an author.” I don’t know what prompted me to say that, but I did. “I’m going to write books.”
My cousins, being the stalwart dreamers they were (and still are), said, “That sounds pretty good. Okay.”
As you grow, people begin to shine a bright, ugly light on your dreams. Namely adults. They pat your head and say, “Hey, that’s cute that you want to be an author, but let’s think about doing something else. How about becoming a secretary? Boy, you sure can type fast!”
Ray Bradbury was one of the only adults that told me it was okay to dream big. I never met the man or talked to him personally. Right now, I wish I had been brave enough to write him a fan letter, but the window for that opportunity has closed now. He spoke to me through his writing. He was my very first muse.
The first story I read of Bradbury’s was “The Dwarf.” I found an old, ratty copy of The October Country in a pile of my parents’ old books. “The Dwarf” was about a little person who worked in a carnival. After he finished the long day, he would go into the house of mirrors and find the one mirror that made him look tall and thin, or, in his eyes, normal. As many stories like this go, someone found out about his mirror and chose to play a cruel prank. That story broke my heart and delighted me all the same.
The Illustrated Man came next, followed by R is for Rocket, and S is for Space. I consumed Bradbury at an alarming rate. His stories took me to the edge of my imagination, whether it was a married couple hiding in the recesses of our past, a lone astronaut jettisoned from his craft, hurling towards Earth’s atmosphere, or a little girl on Venus who talked endlessly about the sunshine, only to be locked away when it finally appeared.
When I first read The Veldt, I felt that spark return. Me. An author. Yes, this is what I want to do. Bradbury spoke to me through that text and I’ll never forget what he (and Mr. Electrico) told me: “Live forever!” He found the dreamer in me, gave her a cup of espresso, and put her to work. As for The Veldt, the passage that grabbed on to the front of my shirt and gave me a sound shaking is here:
And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.
Lions. They’ve always been a part of my life in some way or another, mostly in my dreams, though I do know a queen of a lion-tribe who has given me her undivided support and loyalty.
When someone dies, we’re told to let that physical part of them go. What are left are all the memories, “as fragile, as wondrous, as vulnerable, as lovely as life itself.” Bradbury showed me the railyards, boxcars, the smell of coal and fire from his youth, things that others found ugly. He taught me how to remember the smell of fresh-cut alfalfa on my grandfather’s farm, the light warbling of the ditch near that old apple tree, where I found shade on many summer afternoons. He reminded me of apricot trees that I used to climb, using pieces of rainbow colored rope to drape in its branches, hoping the birds would mistake them for snakes and leave the fruit alone. He reminded me of swing sets that took my feet into the pink-and-purple dusky-hued skies, and of wildfire lining the sides the mountains, creating a row of orange “V”s along the dark, rainy northern sky.
Today, I’m reminded. Live Forever. To me this means writing. This means putting pen to page, or fingers to keyboard. Above all else it means remembering who I am and that it’s time to make some more memories.
Archived from: 6/6/2012