05 June 2012

Ray Bradbury is dead

And I don't care. The way I never cared for Wislawa Szymborska's death.

What I do care for is their word. My mother mishandles my copy of Dandelion Wine and I go apoplectic.

The writer has always been uninteresting to me. Even on rare occasions when I read an autobiography, the author is easily someone else—a character whom I can empathize with.

And that's quite sad.

*

From Green Shadows, White Whale:
What have I done for a single mortal soul this day? Nothing! And that's why I feel so terrible destroyed.

The older I get, the less I do for people.

It's an awesome responsibility when the world runs to hand you things. For an instance: sunsets. Everything pink and gold, looking like those melons they ship up from Spain. That's a gift, ain't it?

Book cover image (published by Perennial)
Well, who do you thank for sunsets? And don't drag the Lord in the bar, now! Any remarks to Him are too quiet. I mean someone to grab and slap their back and say thanks for the fine early light this morn, boyo, or much obliged for the look of them damn wee flowers by the road this day, and the grass laying about in the wind. Those are gifts too, who'll deny it?

Have you waked middle of the night and felt summer coming on for the first time, through the window, after the long cold? Did you shake your wife and tell her your gratitude? No, you lay there, a clod, chortling to yourself alone, you and the new weather!

Ain't you horribly guilty yourself? Don't the burden make you hunchback? All the lovely things you got from life, and no penny down? Ain't they hid in your dark flesh somewhere, just the clean taste of stout here, all gifts, and you feeling the fool to go thank any mortal man for your fortune.

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