Mog the Dog here.

Ray Bradbury’s Mr. Jonas must have lived at least a century, for I am now convinced that old Jonas re-entered this world through the August 22, 1963 door to become the next iteration of himself precisely thirty-five years after he and his horse Ned strolled through the streets of Dandelion Wine in his Conestoga wagon. Mr. Jonas took his first breath of the next life in the last seconds of Bradbury’s forty-third birthday and then exhaled it into the first blink of the new day as the youngest of four girls born within five years to a middle class couple whose hands and fingernails were clean enough for the challenge of properly raising a new rabbi from the lost lands.

Until she retires and buys the next iteration of the Conestoga wagon, a 1940s Studebaker M-5 Express truck, my favorite human companion can be found strolling throughout the San Francisco Bay area in her late husband’s 1999 van in search of unwanted accumulations that have not yet found their rightful place in the world. And I myself, the next iteration of Ned, can often be found on the dash board or in the passenger seat, or among the brickabrac, knitting needles, and cameos; and if you borrow my ear, you can listen across the vast wilderness of cyberspace to hear a bit of my own song, sung with my own sad, clear voice; in tune; rising and falling…

So, which of Bradbury’s characters have you become the next iteration of? The ear of this old toy brindle dog wants to hear…

MTD