I need a passage from one of Bradbury's stories asap. It is for my father's memorial service tomorrow, Friday. It does not have to be about death but something appropriate for the occasion.
Thank you to everyone.
Mary

Respectfully and sincerely offered:
http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=63&a=63

http://books.google.com/books?...v=onepage&q=&f=false

Maybe a poetic verse from the above works of Mr. Bradbury will feel appropriate.

fjp451,
If you have this book, would it be possible to copy Remembrance from it and send it to me? I realize this is a big request but it would be very much appreciated. I also like I Have Endured Much. . . and thank you.
Mary

Wayne, a poem about fathers that I have always liked is Ray's tribute to his own late father, "With Love, For Leonard Bradbury", which deals with how Ray's father taught him to tie his tie, and how now, even though his father is gone, his father continues to tie his tie. Here is a link to the poem:

http://books.google.com/books?...v=onepage&q=&f=false

quote:

Originally posted by Wayne:
I need a passage from one of Bradbury's stories asap. . . .

I responded in your other thread.

Dale

quote:

Originally posted by Richard:
Wayne, a poem about fathers that I have always liked is Ray's tribute to his own late father, "With Love, For Leonard Bradbury", which deals with how Ray's father taught him to tie his tie, and how now, even though his father is gone, his father continues to tie his tie. Here is a link to the poem:

http://books.google.com/books?...v=onepage&q=&f=false

That's a good one - I've had much the same experience. Except, when I'm repairing a car or working on the house and glance down at my hand holding a wrench, hammer or other tool - it's sometimes my father's hand I see holding the tool, teaching me to use the tool.

Dale

Remembrance, by Ray Bradbury
http://holyjoe.net/poetry/bradbury.htm


I received a copy of the collection of poems in They Have Not Seen the Stars this summer in Glendale, CA, at Mr. Bradbury's 89th birthday gathering. The poem is filled with wonderful images, and what an ironic closing 2 lines! We had traveled cross country 15 days via train (my wife and our two young boys, 14, 11) for our first meeting with him after years of so many of his generous communications.

I hope this helps in someway!
f

This message has been edited. Last edited by: fjp451,

fjp451, Richard and, again, Dale,
Thank you for the words, the support and all your efforts to help me tonight. My dad would have liked this forum !!
By the way, his name is Wayne and I'm Mary.
Love and peace.

Better yet, for all to enjoy and thus sending thoughts to you and your family!

Remembrance

by Ray Bradbury

And this is where we went, I thought,
Now here, now there, upon the grass
Some forty years ago.
I had returned and walked along the streets
And saw the house where I was born
And grown and had my endless days.
The days being short now, simply I had come
To gaze and look and stare upon
The thought of that once endless maze of afternoons.
But most of all I wished to find the places where I ran
As dogs do run before or after boys,
The paths put down by Indians or brothers wise and swift
Pretending at a tribe.
I came to the ravine.
I half slid down the path
A man with graying hair but seeming supple thoughts
And saw the place was empty.
Fools! I thought. O, boys of this new year,
Why don’t you know the Abyss waits you here?
Ravines are special fine and lovely green
And secretive and wandering with apes and thugs
And bandit bees that steal from flowers to give to trees.
Caves echo here and creeks for wading after loot:
A water-strider, crayfish, precious stone
Or long-lost rubber boot --
It is a natural treasure-house, so why the silent place?
What’s happened to our boys that they no longer race
And stand them still to contemplate Christ’s handiwork:
His clear blood bled in syrups from the lovely wounded trees?
Why only bees and blackbird winds and bending grass?
No matter. Walk. Walk, look, and sweet recall.

I came upon an oak where once when I was twelve
I had climbed up and screamed for Skip to get me down.
It was a thousand miles to earth. I shut my eyes and yelled.
My brother, richly compelled to mirth, gave shouts of laughter
And scaled up to rescue me.
"What were you doing there?" he said.
I did not tell. Rather drop me dead.
But I was there to place a note within a squirrel nest
On which I’d written some old secret thing now long forgot.
Now in the green ravine of middle years I stood
Beneath that tree. Why, why, I thought, my God,
It’s not so high. Why did I shriek?
It can’t be more than fifteen feet above. I’ll climb it handily.
And did.
And squatted like an aging ape alone and thanking God
That no one saw this ancient man at antics
Clutched grotesquely to the bole.
But then, ah God, what awe.
The squirrel’s hole and long-lost nest were there.

I lay upon the limb a long while, thinking.
I drank in all the leaves and clouds and weathers
Going by as mindless
As the days.
What, what, what if? I thought. But no. Some forty years beyond!
The note I’d put? It’s surely stolen off by now.
A boy or screech-owl’s pilfered, read, and tattered it.
It’s scattered to the lake like pollen, chestnut leaf
Or smoke of dandelion that breaks along the wind of time...

No. No.

I put my hand into the nest. I dug my fingers deep.
Nothing. And still more nothing. Yet digging further
I brought forth:
The note.
Like mothwings neatly powdered on themselves, and folded close
It had survived. No rains had touched, no sunlight bleached
Its stuff. It lay upon my palm. I knew its look:
Ruled paper from an old Sioux Indian Head scribble writing book.
What, what, oh, what had I put there in words
So many years ago?
I opened it. For now I had to know.
I opened it, and wept. I clung then to the tree
And let the tears flow out and down my chin.
Dear boy, strange child, who must have known the years
And reckoned time and smelled sweet death from flowers
In the far churchyard.
It was a message to the future, to myself.
Knowing one day I must arrive, come, seek, return.
From the young one to the old. From the me that was small
And fresh to the me that was large and no longer new.
What did it say that made me weep?

I remember you.
I remember you.

quote:

Originally posted by fjp451:
Better yet, for all to enjoy and thus sending thoughts to you and your family!

Remembrance

by Ray Bradbury

And this is where we went, I thought,
Now here, now there, upon the grass
Some forty years ago. . . .

. . . What did it say that made me weep?

I remember you.
I remember you.

And thereby hangs a story . . . What is the title?

I think it was Ray Bradbury, tho it may be Theodore Sturgeon. A last-man-on-earth scenario. The sole survivor, desperate for companionship - or just the sound of another human voice - lives out his days programming the telephone network to randomly call him, and conduct a conversation with himself. Of course, the call originates from himself at some previous time. Eventually, he dies but the network continues to call - and answer its own calls - and two synthetic versions of the dead guy converse with each other, comparing notes about himself at two different stages of life.

Dale

quote:

Originally posted by Dale:

quote:

Originally posted by Wayne:
I need a passage from one of Bradbury's stories asap. . . .

I responded in your other thread.

Dale

As did I.

quote:

Originally posted by Dale:I think it was Ray Bradbury, tho it may be Theodore Sturgeon. A last-man-on-earth scenario. The sole survivor, desperate for companionship - or just the sound of another human voice - lives out his days programming the telephone network to randomly call him, and conduct a conversation with himself. Of course, the call originates from himself at some previous time. Eventually, he dies but the network continues to call - and answer its own calls - and two synthetic versions of the dead guy converse with each other, comparing notes about himself at two different stages of life.

Dale

"Night Call, Collect." 100% Ray Bradbury.

quote:

Originally posted by dandelion:
..."Night Call, Collect." 100% Ray Bradbury.

And sometimes published under the variant title "I, Mars".

Ray has other stories where a character encounters himself at a different stage of life. I can't remember all the titles right now, but "A Touch of Petulance" is one of them.

quote:

Originally posted by dandelion:
"Night Call, Collect."

I just read this story a couple days ago, as I'm currently rereading I Sing the Body Electric!

quote:

Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:

quote:

Originally posted by dandelion:
"Night Call, Collect."

I just read this story a couple days ago, as I'm currently rereading I Sing the Body Electric!

Synchronicity again.