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Despite our many differences, humanity has at least one interest in common: storytelling. We write stories, we watch stories, we live stories, and then we tell them. And the greatest raconteur of all, the chronicler of the mysterious unknown, is Ray Bradbury. The origin of raconteur is French, literally meaning to tell an account of something, but oh, how Bradbury does go the distance in recounting stories of the unknown in science fiction, fantasy and horror. He is probably not only the greatest story teller of modern times but also one of the greatest teachers of my life.
On June 5, 2012 after a lengthy illness, Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and numerous other stories exploring the uncharted mysteries of life on earth and beyond, met his Maker. He repeatedly credited God with his talent.Wherever Bradbury is now, I have no doubt he is a source of light, illuminating yet another world. I hope, for Bradbury, heaven looks like his beloved Mars.
But let's travel back even further.
On September 28, 1995, my daughter Kate and I squeezed into our second row seats with fervent anticipation at the Unity Church in Houston, Texas to hear Ray Bradbury speak. He was already an icon by then and the auditorium was packed. I took out my pen and note pad, refusing to leave his words to my faithless memory, in order to absorb any new bits of wisdom from the writer whose life had already profoundly influenced mine.
I had been an ardent devotee of English literature and shared my own enthusiasm for that genre, so friends wanted to know how I could possibly love the work of a science fiction-fantasy writer. The answer, of course, was clear. Ray Bradbury was more than a sci-fi writer.
A white-headed sage by 1995, Bradbury commanded the stage and I was mesmerized. I was a teacher with enough experience to know the reasons I had embarked on that career path and the courage it took to try to change people's lives in a truly meaningful way. And the tragedy of not taking the leap to do so.
His stories, like Jane Austen's, explained our own human nature to us--the nature of good and evil, of learning, of relationships with people, and of the choices we make about our lives and the concomitant consequences. But his somewhat scientific settings were part of the message as well, contributing even more to the warnings about the other side of technology.
Bradbury said, "We're trying to build a chrysalis of education around ourselves and hope the wings come out." He had a great sense of intuition about learning--he knew what he wanted or needed for himself and found it at the library, great observer that he was. I appreciated his metaphor, but it wasn't until years later, after planting a butterfly garden, that I saw aghast what he meant. Standing over a chrysalis one day, I watched it begin to wriggle ever so slightly, sensing I was going to witness for the first time an emerging monarch butterfly. I was enthralled, and then something went wrong. It struggled for over an hour and then halfway out it just gave up. My husband Patrick, the realist, chalked it up to the randomness of nature, but I got it. I think Bradbury also knew, despite our hope, that sometimes the wings don't come out. And then what? What did that mean for me as a parent and a teacher?
The heart of Bradbury's speech that day provided a partial answer. I found my old notebook from that September lecture. Here's what he said.
"Some people live off positive or negative energy. They feed off you with their tongues. Evil people are attracted to agonies, negative energy. They warm their hands on your darkness, your unhappiness. They go around collecting your flaws. They're born of darkness, not light, which is why the devil finds us attractive.You don't get blockages if you keep doing things you love. Love is the best thing. Engage in the best things every day. Put the skin of intellect around it. If you have people who don't believe in you, get them out of your life, unless you can infect them with your joy."
Infect them with your joy, he said. For years I had read to my children and to my students Bradbury stories of space men with deep regrets as they faced death, of children who gave in to their own dark thoughts without thinking of consequences, of men and women who made decisions they couldn't live with, or of the technology they didn't know how to live with. I could only hope that the message would surface when it was needed. Left in the hands of people--teachers perhaps, with enough enthusiasm to carry it forward joyfully, it might be possible.
I was given a gift that day, something extraordinary about being in the same room with a living, breathing icon who speaks words of wisdom from his own lips, not just the pages of a book. You have that narcissistic tendency to think he's talking to you alone, that perhaps he's read your heart and uncovered your secrets. How many millions of people he must have mentored in such a way.
Ray Bradbury loved and thus wrote often about space travel. His cautious attitude toward technology made him challenge his characters as they struggled in the midst of futuristic inventions crafted from the finest imagination, but he was also convinced that space travel was a chance for immortality.
He wept the night the astronauts landed on the moon. In subsequent interviews, even at age 89, Bradbury still talked about the night he was scheduled to be on the David Frost show in London. It was for him the greatest day in history, that moon landing, and he was an expert who wanted to talk to the world about it. Frost had scheduled him last, behind a number of popular entertainers, until Bradbury got fed up and walked out, taking a bittersweet six hour walk back to his hotel. A small London tabloid's headlines read, "Astronaut walks at six a.m., Bradbury walks at midnight." He was gleeful as he related his story that evening, and I was close enough to hear him chuckle.
I was standing face to face with him, tongue-tied, as he signed my copy of The Illustrated Man. I met him briefly, and yet I will miss his presence on this planet and somehow feel the loss as if I had known him well.
My grandson Christian, a reader of science fantasy and a devotee of Mindcraft, recently turned eleven, and I gave him that beloved signed copy. It was only right. His mother Kate had been witness that night to the greatest raconteur of our time.
Beautifully written. The messages here are worth reading over and over especially the part of being careful of what you're giving to others. Stories have helped to keep me going, find answers, as well as entertain me. We need good story tellers who not only know how to tell a good story but how to put it into words that are beautiful. Your book is one of those stories.
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