| Happy Birthday, Ray. Here is a copy of the letter I wrote to Ray the day after his passing...
Dear Ray,
A very long time ago, Mr. Electrico touched you with the tip of a sword and ran you through with a current of electricity and said, “Live forever!” A bold declaration, and one made even bolder by your twelve-year-old self, who almost believed he would do it.
Well… you did.
Even though I find myself with a heavy heart on this warm June day, there is a smile beneath the tears. For you did live forever, Ray, and you go on living with each day that passes. You live forever in “The October Country”. Your fruits are harvested in “The Golden Apples of the Sun”. You move among the art of “The Illustrated Man”. And you are there on the red planet, colonizing, creating and living in “The Martian Chronicles”.
You have not passed on, Mr. Bradbury, and you will certainly never die.
Stacks of pages, shelves of books… the papery whisper of a million voices are your legacy. For me it began when I was a boy, reading a story called “All Summer in a Day” and nearly being moved to tears. You could always do that, Ray. You could bring tears and laughter, hope and heartache, and in all of it you strung together metaphor and magic. You plunged headlong into the world and life, and I was carried along with you.
You taught me to leapfrog through life and seek joy and zest. Words seemed to be created by you, to be you. Rush, race, passion, zeal, eruption, urgency, childhood, magic, crisp, flickering.
And the colours, Ray, your colours. The green of your Greentown and the orange of your Halloween Tree. The red of your Martian landscape. The glimmering white glow of your ice cream suit. A rainbow, a bedazzlement, a plethora of explosive colours, all of them flowing with ease from your fingertips and onto page after page.
I want to thank you, Ray. Thank you for the simple joy and pleasure of your stories. For the metaphors that taught me so much about life, about people and about writing. Thank you for the inspiration to make me a better writer. You are a man who taught me to read better, write better, and live better.
So now, sadly, I will say farewell. Never good-bye, of course, for there will come a cool autumn night when I hear the steely clack of train wheels on a cold track and I’ll know that the carnival’s come again. And perhaps I’ll gaze up at the stars one night, seeking Mars, seeing the endless expanse of the cosmos, and see you there. Or maybe it will be nothing more than a new pair of sneakers, a warm summer morning, the smell of cut grass, or a single dandelion.
You are everywhere, Ray.
You live forever.
Shane |
