Dandelion Wine — Chapter One

One night each week he was allowed to leave his father, his mother, and his younger brother Tom asleep in their small house next door and run here, up the dark spiral stairs to his grandparents’ cupola, and in this sorcerer’s tower sleep with thunders and visions, to wake befor the crystal jingle of milk bottles and perform his ritual magic.

Dandelion Wine — A Book for Summer

What you have here in this book then is a gathering of dandelions from all those years. The wine metaphor which appears again and again in these pages is wonderfully apt. I was gathering images all of my life, storing them away, and forgetting them. Somehow I had to send myself back, with words as catalysts to open the memories out and see what they had to offer.

Ray Bradbury, Just This Side of Byzantium — An Introduction, Dandelion Wine

Summer doesn’t officially arrive for a while, but after an hour out in the Texas sun on my quarantine walk, you can start to feel the sweat pooling around your neck and dripping down your scalp. I saw somebody on Twitter recommending this as a good time to start reading (or re-reading) Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. Why not?

Live Forever

This popped up on my Twitter this morning from a unexpected and practically random source. The following story is told in Sam Weller’s biography of Ray Bradbury.

My Love, She Weeps At Many Things

My love, she weeps at many things,
I would not for the world stop up her tears;
She came in many years of drought
And taught me just how right was private rain
To touch the dust with smallest storm
With emerald droppings from her eyes.

My loved one weeps at many things,
Small rings and charms, the soft alarms of birds,
Or sudden summer squall. Large thing or small:
The way the cat puts up his bones in fur,
Teakettle purrs and murmurs:
Slumber. Sleep. October. Autumn. Fall.
Sometimes I say a thing and do not know I say a Joy
Then hear a sound and turn and there she goes full-weep.
Pours forth the diamonds, lets out a cry
As from a thousand hours of happy nightmare/sleep.

In all the splendid time ahead, those years
With yet their secret joys unsaid,
Let no one stay her tears.
Praise God for them and her, praise God for eyes
That smallness see, and grow it to a size,
That see in me a fellow weeper found
And celebrate by laying dust
On our small ceremonial trysting ground.
Then am I rich?
Look here… I wear with grace
The gifts of rain and light and love and time
She’s made and winked and left
To brighten my soul’s face.

Return of the Super Meganerd Fun Pack

Could this be the start of a grand birthday tradition? Watch me unbox the second giant care package gifted to me by my cousin, friend, and frequent collaborator — Carl!