“ When You Reach The Stars, Boy, Yes, And Live There Forever, All The Fears Will Go, And Death Himself

"My stories run up and bite me in the leg — I respond by writing them down — everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off."

Ray Bradbury, science-fiction writer (22nd August 1920-2012)

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”  - Ray Bradbury

Why is it," he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?" "Because I like you," she said, "and I don't want anything from you.

—Ray Bradbury

                                            Thrown out of Eden                                       Now we headlong humans                                          Sinners sinned against                                                      Return.                                      Tossed from the central sun                                  We with our own concentric fires                                                 Blaze and burn.                                      Once at the hub of wakening                                               And vast starwheel,                              For centuries long-lost, and made to feel                                       Unwanted, orphaned, mindless,                                    Driven forth to grassless gardens,                                             Dead and desert sea,                          We were shut out by comet grooms like Kepler                                                   Galileo Galilei                                Whose short-sight probing light-years                                                  Upped and said:                                               The Hub’s not here!                                      So shot man through the head                         And worse, each starblind prophet killed a part,                                           Snugged shut our souls,                                          Chopped short our reach,                                         Entombed our living heart.                                    But now we bastard sons of time                                         Pronounce ourselves anew                                        And strike fire-hammer blows                          To change tomorrow’s clime, its meteor snows.                                         Our rocket selfhood grows                            To give dull facts a shake, break data down                       To climb the Empire State and thundercry the town                                         But more! reach up and strike                                             And claim from Heaven                                    The Garden we were shunted from,                                               For now, space-driven                                            We fit, fix, force and fuse,                                            Re-hub the systems vast                                                 Respoke starwheel                                             And at the spiraled core                                             Plant foot, full fire-shod                                               And thus saints feel                                          Our yeast like flesh of God.                                         We march back to Olympus,                                      Our plain-bread flesh burns gold!                                        We clothe ourselves in flame                                         And trade new myths for old.                                         The Greek gods christen us                                        With ghosts of comet swords;                                       God smiles and names us thus:                                          "Arise! Run! Fly, my Lords!“

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We March Back To Olympus

Ray Bradbury  1920-2012

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Graphic - Daniel Maidman  (B.1975)

You are all there, the people in the city. I can't believe I was ever among you. When you are away from a city it becomes a fantasy. Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance.

Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury

McDunn fumbled with the switch. But even as he switched it on, the monster was rearing up. I had a glimpse of its gigantic paws, fish skin glittering in webs between the finger-like projections, clawing at the tower. The huge eye on the right side of its anguished head glittered before me like a cauldron into which I might drop, screaming. The tower shook. The Fog Horn cried; the monster cried. It seized the tower and gnashed at the glass, which shattered in upon us.

Illustration by Aleta Jenks for The Fog Horn by Ray Bradbury.

It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.

— Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine (William Morrow Paperbacks; April 23, 2013) (via Cultural Offering)

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime. 

~Ray Bradbury (Book: Fahrenheit 451)

[Philo Thoughts]

“All graves are wrong graves when you come down to it,” he said. “No,” I said. “There are right graves and wrong ones, just as there are good times to die and bad times.”

—Ray Bradbury, The Kilimanjaro Device