A Midsummer Night's Posting

My summer so far...

In Birthdays
My son’s 16th birthday was spent at BayCon over Memorial weekend (Actually, his birthday is May 30, which usually falls on Memorial weekend, but didn’t this year...). Brave soul that I am, I allowed him to invite two or three buddies to accompany him. So while I pecked away at my final term paper back in our hotel room, he and his friends ran amuck in the Santa Clara Hilton: “boffering” (beating each other with padded weaponry); picking up on chicks... er... making new friends with girls in bizarre costumery; and conducting a variety of experiments testing the nature of reality. Of the latter, one example involved (I am told) a trail of Mentos leading between the doors of two adjacent elevators in the effort to trap a Japanese businessman in an endless loop at 6:30 in the morning (the experiment failed, lacking the appearance of said businessman). Another involved a conversation Jared overheard while resting/hiding under a table during a brief respite from an elaborate game of hide and seek. The conversation, between a man and a woman, discussed the topic of reality. Unable to resist, Jared poked his head out from under the tablecloth and, quoting our favorite SF radio show Ruby, said, “Reality is what everyone agrees is real; what everyone agrees is not real, does not exist.” The man said, “Good point!” And Jared retreated back into his hiding place. You see, things like this can happen at a science fiction convention without anyone batting an eye. And *that*, I think, says more about the nature of reality than a stack of philosophy books.

My 41st birthday (July 26) was spent in my home with good friends old and new. We drank wine and ate tasty things and talked about travel and writing and other creative projects... Along with completing another Darkover novel, finishing up her own science fiction trilogy, and editing a second volume of Lace & Blade, Deborah is also actively supporting Live Long n Marry, Afghans for Afghans and Mother Bear projects. (These are truly wonderful grass roots organizations– click on the links to find out more)... While still maintaining the Joseph Mazzello fan club and website (which he originated back when Joseph was a wee lad), Mike is working on a new screenplay. (I can’t wait to read it, Mike!)... Guy’s wife Danielle and daughter Camille just got back from a trip to Mexico: part Spanish immersion, part art studio/museum tour. At an aquarium, Camille was actually lowered into a tank to feed the sharks! Way to go, Camille! Now Guy and Danielle are headed off to Sweden... Pete will be heading back to Singapore on business once again, while his wife Chris continues teaching music and a wonderful new dance form combining flamenco and belly dancing. (I have to take this class!)... Tony will be continuing his percussion training in the Fall, which gives our band such wonderful rhythm and keeps us all in synch... And Isabel, my Cabaret sister, is always on the lookout for another show to display her fine singing, dancing, and acting talents... But I have to say the prize for the evening went to Guy and the original limerick he read in my honor... ;-)

In Books
For the summer book clubs I’m teaching, I’ve read (and recommend highly!):

Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera
Under a Blood Red Sun by Graham Salisbury
Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card
Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

Of the above, it’s hard to pick a favorite– they were all wonderful– but if I had to pick one it would be Goose Girl, the one based on the Grimm’s fairy tale (of course!).

For myself, the little casual pleasure reading I’ve done has included:

Finishing Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel by Susanna Clarke
Starting Declare by Tim Powers (actually almost done with this one)

The former I couldn’t put down; the latter I’ve had to put down again and again. I can’t tell at this point if it’s just my schedule interferring with it, or if the book just hasn’t engaged me all that much. Fascinating premise, though.

I really should be studying. Really, really.

In Film
After a semester of Middle East studies, and watching films like The Battle for Algiers, and The Prisoner, and Until When..., I just haven’t been able to embrace my usual preference for foreign and indie films. So when I do get out to the movies, it’s been to see lighter fare: Iron Man, Indiana Jones, Wall-E, and The Dark Knight. I do love comic book heroes. And I’ll never tire of really well done animation.

In Music
Shadow Opera is doing great! We’ve been practicing new songs and keeping the old ones sharp. We had one really nice gig at Clos la Chance winery in San Martin in June which went really well. The crowd was very attentive and gave us some great feedback. One guy (a David Bowie fan) even ran in from the parking lot when he heard us playing his favorite song! (Ziggy Stardust, of course!) Later, when I sang Five Years, I dedicated it to him. We’ve done other smaller gigs– one at the bookstore and the other at community park– but the audience was somewhat lacking. We’ll be on a hiatus in August while Guy and Pete are out of the country, but hopefully we’ll get back to performing once September rolls around.

Hitting Things With Sticks– Who’d have known this was so fun? While Jared has been back east, I’ve sat in for music lessons with his guitar instructor. He’s teaching me some basic percussion. I joined the group session last Thursday and got to play along with the other students in a band setup. What fun! And I could actually hold the beat. What a surprise! I really should have done this as a teenager– puberty would have been so much more tolerable if I could have taken out my frustrations on clashing cymbals and other clickety-clackety things. This could be dangerous though... I think I’m getting a fever... and the only perscription is: MORE COWBELL!!!

On a classical note, I’ve managed to see the San Francisco Symphony twice this summer, once at the Flint Center in Cupertino and once at Cesar Chavez Park in San Jose. The Flint Center performance was a Cello concerto. I loved Lutoslawski’s Mi-Parti (1976)– It sounded like it could be part of a movie soundtrack for Star Wars or Harry Potter. I could *totally* picture Luke Skywalker stepping into the tree on Dagobah in Empire. Considering the time period, I wonder if John Williams was influenced by Lutoslawski. Mi-Parti was followed by Janacek’s Taras Bulba (1918); but the highlight of the evening was Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B Minor, Opus 104 (1895). The beautiful Alisa Weilerstein played the lead cello. She was amazing. For a moment, when she first came out and faced the audience, you could tell she was aware of us, she took us all in. But as soon as she began to play, you could tell she was somewhere else entirely, transported into her music. And she took us along for the ride. It was as if the music came alive and the notes were dancing and swirling in the air around her. Her performance was so captivating, we completely lost track of time. Suddenly, it was over, and the audience was on its feet cheering. Brilliant!

The concert in San Jose was lovely as well– a Tuesday afternoon in the Park with Verdi, Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky:

Verdi Overture to La forza del destino
Dvořrák Allegra con fuoco from Symphony No. 9, New World
Tchaikovsky Andantino in modo di canzona from Symphony No. 4
Tchaikovsky Finale: Allegro con fuoco from Symphony No. 4

I was talking with my bandmates about this recently– How artists see music. Some artists say they see it in colors, others as language or mathematical formulae; some, like Tori Amos, meet actual personalities in these sonic shapes. Me, I see landscapes. When I listen to music, especially classical music, but other kinds of music as well, it feels similar to when I’m sitting in an IMAX theatre with the camera skimming over the surface of some intricate geography– but I don’t see colors or definition, just a sonic impression, like a bat’s sonar, perhaps. It’s easy to get lost in it; sometimes I don’t want to come back. ;-)

In Scholarship
In June, I attended the Children’s Literature Association’s annual conference, held this year in Bloomington, IL. I submitted a paper discussing Icelandic children’s literature, and was invited to join their international panel focusing on Iceland. The other two scholars were from the University of Iceland– Anna Heida Palsdottir and Dagny Kristjansdottir– and they told me later I was this big mystery: Who else could possibly know about Icelandic children’s literature? Was I Icelandic? ;-) I felt a bit like Cinderella. We went to lunch and I told them about my trip last summer.

I had a wonderful time and met many scholars from all over the world: Iceland, Russia, Greece, Canada, Ireland, and all over the U.S. I met award-winning author Peter Dickinson from England. And I had the good fortune to get reaquainted with my friend Susan from my trip last year. We booked a room together– and after my crazy (mis)adventures with the delayed flights and losing my cell phone, it was such a relief to arrive and find she had my bed all ready and a note telling me there were snacks in the fridge. ;-) (Thanks, Susan!)

(Note to Self: Next time, pack lighter, wear running shoes, and put cell phone in the *inside* pocket...)

In Teaching
As I mentioned earlier, I’m teaching summer reading courses for an SAT prep school. My students range in age from 11-16. I like the junior high kids the best. They are so full of personality. They are both maddening and enchanting at the same time. And they can’t shut up to save their lives. Really. I’ve threatened them with all manner of torture and punishment; nothing works. One of them, the youngest, said to me one day, “Don’t you just love us, Miss Tanja? Haven’t we changed your life?” Yes, Justine. Absolutely.

In Writing
Last semester, my short story “The Kindly Ones” and my long poem “Denmark, On My 40th Birthday” each won first place in the English Department’s Phelan Awards.

Also, I am now a regular contributor to Bookbird, an international children’s lit magazine. I submit what is called “postcard” reviews (about 150 words). My first review should be coming out in the Fall issue. It’s pretty exciting. *International* publication. Wow.

Now if only I can get one of my stories published...

So that’s it. That’s the update. Until next time...



29 Days til the Burn!

All Things Brave and Beautiful

"I wanted to write a book about people doing brave and beautiful things in an ugly world."

~Markus Zuzak

This book was on my reading list this summer. It's absolutely brilliant. So when I heard that Aussie author Markus Zuzak was appearing at Kepler's in Menlo Park, well, I had to go, didn't I. He told some really wonderful stories (which I hope to post at some point) and right in the middle of it all we had the earthquake. He quit talking and everyone was just sort of sitting there, riding it out. And the quake kept rolling, and someone shouted out, "Welcome to California!" Then everyone laughed. Kudos to him, he remained completely unruffled by the experience, and even made a few jokes about being the closest to the only table in the room.

The Book Thief is truly marvelous, a book that I wish I had written myself.

Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007)

She once described herself as a French peasant cook who drops a carrot in one pot, a piece of potato in another and an onion and a piece of meat in another.

“At dinnertime, you look and see which pot smells best and pull it forward,” she was quoted as saying in a 2001 book, “Madeleine L’Engle (Herself): Reflections on a Writing Life,” compiled by Carole F. Chase.

“The same is true with writing,” she continued. “There are several pots on my backburners.”

Her deeper thoughts on writing were deliciously mysterious. She believed that experience and knowledge are subservient to the subconscious and perhaps larger, spiritual influences.

“I think that fantasy must possess the author and simply use him,” she said in an interview with Horn Book magazine in 1983. “I know that is true of ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice.

“It was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant.”

(To read the rest of the NY Times article, click here.)

Know Where Your Towel Is

Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 - 11 May 2001)

I put off reading Douglas' last book, The Salmon of Doubt--which wasn't so much a book as a collection of random entries found on his computer after his death and lovingly compiled by his editor--for as long as possible. When I finally did read it, about two years ago, I laughed and laughed.

And then I cried.

No one will ever make us laugh the way he could. Ah, Douglas, we hardly knew ye...


... any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
~Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

CLIXBY (adj.) Politely rude. Briskly vague. Firmly uninformative.
SHOEBURYNESS (abs.n.) The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat which is still warm from somebody else's bottom
WOKING (vb.) To enter the kitchen with the precise determination to perform something only to forget what it is just before you do it.
~The Meaning of Liff

It was a couple of days before Kate Schechter became aware of any of these things, or indeed of anything at all in the outside world. She passed the time quietly in a world of her own in which she was surrounded as far as the eye could see with old cabin trunks full of past memories in which she rummaged with great curiosity, and sometimes bewilderment. Or, at least, about a tenth of the cabin trunks were full of vivid, and often painful or uncomfortable memories of her past life; the other nine-tenths were full of penguins, which surprised her. Insofar as she recognised at all that she was dreaming, she realised that she must be exploring her own subconscious mind. She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was very clear what the other nine-tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins.
~The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul

Mark Carwardine's role, essentially, was to be the one who knew what he was talking about. My role, and one for which I was entirely qualified, was to be an extremely ignorant non-zoologist to whom everything that happened would come as a complete surprise.
~Last Chance to See

I've heard an idea proposed, I've no idea how seriously, to account for the sensation of vertigo. It's an idea that I instinctively like and it goes like this. The dizzy sensation we experience when standing in high places is not simply a fear of falling. It's often the case that the only thing likely to make us fall is the actual dizziness itself, so it is, at best, an extremely irrational, even self-fulfilling fear. However, in the distant past of our evolutionary journey toward our current state, we lived in trees. We leapt from tree to tree. There are even those who speculate that we may have something birdlike in our ancestral line. In which case, there may be some part of our mind that, when confronted with a void, expects to be able to leap out into it and even urges us to do so. So what you end up with is a conflict between a primitive, atavistic part of your mind which is saying "Jump!" and the more modern, rational part of your mind which is saying, "For Christ's sake, don't!" In fact, vertigo is explained by some not as the fear of falling, but as the temptation to jump!
~Last Chance to See

My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantelpiece, in order to prove it could be done. This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.
~The Salmon of Doubt

Random quotes:
In fact, I wanted to be John Cleese and it took some time to realize the job was in fact taken.

Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a piece of blank paper until a drop of blood forms on your forehead.

It takes an awful long time to not write a book.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they go by.

Getting a movie made in Hollywood is like trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it.
~MIT (1999)

P.S. National Towel Day is Friday, May 25.

Lloyd Alexander: Fantasy and Adventure Writer

Lloyd Alexander
(January 30, 1924 - May 17, 2007)

“In whatever guise — our own daily nightmares of war, intolerance, inhumanity; or the struggles of an Assistant Pig-Keeper against the Lord of Death — the problems are agonizingly familiar,” he said in his Newbery acceptance speech in 1969. “And an openness to compassion, love and mercy is as essential to us here and now as it is to any inhabitant of an imaginary kingdom.”

End of an Age

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007)

I suppose I should have posted about the passing of Kurt Vonnegut over a week ago, but I didn't. I was distracted by other things, and, I have to admit, a little embarrassed. I have not read any of his books. I can only say, with some chagrin, that I have seen the movie Slaughterhouse-Five, which was good, it was very very good. However, I know film is a different medium, and a book is almost always better. Or at least different. Am I not the one who is usually shaking my head in dismay over people who say offhandedly, "Oh, yeah, I saw the movie," and just leave it at that, as if a movie can possibly replace the inner life of a book? So what can I possibly say about this writer that I've never read?

I can say that he was the voice of his generation, an enigmatic figure of the last century. I can say that his words tug at me like strains of music from another room: Come over here, Look over here. And I will. I will.

And I can say, as can be said of all writers of really good books, that he was taken from us too soon.

Growing Older Gracefully

Today was a special day: It was the Croning Ceremony and 60th Birthday Celebration of my friend, Deborah J. Ross. Pulling together traditions from pagan, Quaker, Jewish, and whatever we wanted to toss into the mix, we celebrated the life of this amazing woman, along with honoring her transition into the role of the Crone, or Wise Woman. The Croning Ceremony comes mainly from the pagan tradition that a woman's life consists of three stages: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. (Being the progressives that we are, we included Career Woman in the stage of Mother, because that counts, too!) However, most traditions seem to include some kind of reverence for the old.

It would simply be impossible for me to describe everything that went on today (and I'd like to get some sleep tonight), but I may be able to leave you with a few impressions. Understand that this was pulled together in a matter of two or three weeks by a widespread group of people with only our love of Deborah in common--many of us had never met before and were just names in emails until we met face-to-face this afternoon. Just being there and making all the pieces work was a blessing in itself.

First, never underestimate the power of positive thinking. We had planned from the beginning to hold this ceremony outside in the garden even though rain was expected. It was pouring this morning when I got up. It poured on my drive all the way up into the Santa Cruz mountains. It was gray and gloomy and threatening more rain as guests were arriving. And then, right before we began the ceremony at 3:00, the sun broke through the clouds. Granted, it was still cold outside, but we were able to hold the ceremony outside under the sky and the redwood trees.

Next a woman named Joan led us in a dance, the Labyrinth step, a simple dance step she said is rumored to have been around since the time of Theseus: three steps forward, one step back. You think dancing is hard? Try this; it's fun! It's amazing what a bunch of willing bodies can accomplish with the direction of a skilled leader. We joined hands and did the Labyrinth step as we wound through and around the altars set up in the garden for Maiden, Mother, and Crone. And as the music played we sang along:

Follow me into the center
The center of our shield
Follow me into the center
The center of our shield

I am the weaver
I am the woven one
I am the dreamer
I am the dream
I am the weaver
I am the woven one
I am the dreamer
I am the dream

The altars each had a candle and flowers and items personal and symbolic. Deborah was led on a journey to each altar where representatives of Maiden, Mother, or Crone read poetry or letters from long distance friends and gave blessings. She finished her journey at the altar of the Crone where she received a veil with painted symbols and a crown of lavender and rosemary. We blessed her hands and washed them with water and rose petals-- for her hands are a symbol of her life's work, whether raising her children, or writing, or gardening, or gaining a black belt in kung foo san soo.

The ceremony concluded with another circle dance. Again, I was struck by how easy it was to get everyone moving in unison (and with no rehearsal!). It looked wonderful and it felt wonderful. It's all very well to get out and shake your booty in some nightclub, but nothing compares to this. It just occurred to me that modern dancing, nightclub dancing, is focused on individual expression; circle dancing as we were doing today is an expression of togetherness. It is felt harmony.

So then the ceremony was concluded and we went inside and ate fabulous food, wrote in Deborah's memory book, strung beads for a blessing necklace, oohed and ahhed over her latest book The Alton Gift (I've already read the first chapter and can't wait to read the rest) and lingered and talked and talked.

I will not dread growing older if this is what lies ahead. I am looking forward to my own Croning Ceremony.

Woman Power

Wednesday night I invited a girlfriend of mine out to this book promotional event offered through the Commonwealth Club: This is Not the Life I Ordered by Deborah Collins Stephens, Michealene Cristini Risely, Jackie Speier, and Jan Yanehiro.

As you might suspect, this was a really woman-heavy event. The few men that were there could be pegged immediately: Tech Guy, Backstage Manager, Somebody's Husband (there were about half a dozen of these), and the two old codgers from the Muppet Show (they show up to everything, don't they?). Women from all walks of life filled the room. I'm sure the estrogen levels were through the roof!

I do not mock in earnest; this was a great event. These women had some startling tales to tell. Remember Jonestown? Jackie Speier was there. She was part of the congressional delegation sent down to investigate. When the whole massacre thing went down, she was shot five times at point blank range and left bleeding on the tarmac of the airstrip for 22 hours before the rescue teams arrived. And that was only the beginning of her story...

Each of these women have lived through a tremendous amount of grief and tragedy, and yet here they were standing before us, bouyant, successful, and alive. Their emphasis, and that of their book, is that to survive women need to do what they do best: network and talk. But what I really appreciated was their focus that this idea was on not forming a pity-party network. Yes, we all need to vent; yes, we all need sympathy in times of grief; but what we need most of all are simple, practical steps to guide us through the grief and beyond. This is about using the support of our friends to survive and thrive.

In their book, they quote the late great Marlene Dietrich: "It's the friends you can call at four in the morning that really matter."

Yeah.

Ray Bradbury: A Love Story

I have always adored Ray Bradbury, both as a writer and a person. He is one of my greatest inspirations. It is not so much that I want to write "like" Ray Bradbury; it's more like, I want to tap into that same boundless enthusiasm with which he tackles each new project, and life itself.

My first Ray Bradbury story, although I didn't know it, was read to my class in the first or second grade. It's strange, though, because I can't seem to imagine Mrs. Heaney or Mrs. Leonhart reading that kind of story to a classroom. Did we have a sub that day? I don't remember. But I am certain that the first time I became aquainted with the story, I heard it.

It was about a girl whose parents take her to live on Venus. Venus is very different, covered so heavily in clouds that one can barely see the sun. And the little girl misses the sun on earth. She describes it to the other kids, how it shined like a copper penny in the sky, and the others, having never seen the sun, do not believe her. She is ridiculed and shunned, and she becomes very lonely and sad. Then one day everyone is told that a special day is coming up: every 70 years (I think it was 70) Venus passes close enough to the sun to burn off the clouds for an afternoon. Everyone will get to see the sun for the first time. And the little girl looks forward to it terribly. But that day, the other hateful children lock her in the closet as a joke. The sun comes out, and in their excitment, they forget about her, and play all afternoon in the glorious sunshine. Only later, after the sun has disappeared, do they remember, and she is set free, not to see the sun for another 70 years.

When the teacher finished reading, I was weeping. What a horrible, horrible story! How could they read us such a horrible story! I was shaken, but I never forgot it.

Years passed and I got to know Bradbury's works mostly through movies: The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Something Wicked This Way Comes. All strange, all disturbing. But they intrigued me. I read some of his short stories in high school.

While attending Gavilan College, Bradbury himself came to visit and gave a guest lecture in the theatre. He was marvelous! His energy filled the room. He spoke about writing: he said the first 100,000 words are crap, but you have to write them anyway, write them and throw them away and then keep writing, because that's when you get to the good stuff. He spoke about the space program: how one day, people with disabilites should be able to travel into space and then send their wheelchairs and crutches flaming down through the atmosphere, free at last from the gravity that holds them down. He told the story of his life. Later, I stood in line with other people, older and seemingly far more important than myself, to shake Bradbury's hand. I think I was the youngest person there. When he got to me, he didn't just shake my hand and move on after a few polite words; he stood there and he talked to me for almost 20 minutes. I had been reading a book about the movie Moby Dick--some random biography I had pulled off the library shelf--and there he was in the book: he had been the screenwriter and so figured prominently in the story of the film's creation. So we spoke of that and writing and ... who knows? What did he see in me that day? Because I found I had met a truly generous and gracious man.

When I worked at Hartnell College, the drama department put on a staged production of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury was supposed to attend, but was sick and had to decline at the last minute. I believe it was the first staged production of that particular script. He had worked on the play for them and had specifically given them permission to perform it. They did a magnificent job, and I was very pleased to have been there to witness it.

More years went by and I found myself reflecting on that story I had heard so long ago. By that time I had read more Bradbury and knew his style and suddenly I knew-- I knew in the way you know something in your gut to be true-- I knew it was a Bradbury story. And I went looking for it. I didn't know the name of the story until I opened a book of his collected works and read the table of contents. And there it was: "All Summer in a Day." And I knew without looking it was that horrible wonderful story. Because I knew by this time that the best stories are the ones that rock you to your core, the ones that you can never forget. I stood in the store and I read the story again. And I wept. I had remembered the sun shining like a copper penny. I had remembered the little girl locked in the closet while the other children played. But I had forgotten that at the end of the story, the little girl's parents had taken her back to earth. She did not have to wait to be an old woman before she saw the sun again. She had gone home.

I bought the book.

More years passed, and here I was in college again, this time at San Jose State. Somehow or other I learned through the grapevine that Bradbury's official biographer would be interviewing him via phoneline at Le Petit Trianon Theatre in San Jose. (Little did I know it at the time, but when I walked through those doors, I was walking into my place of future employment.) So I went, very happy to hear him again, if not see him. The ushers passed out slips of paper for questions. Me, being the stunning little English major that I am, asked him to comment about a paper I was writing. I had found-- I thought -- some very interesting connections between Bradbury and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, both in their life stories and in their writing. I had been comparing and contrasting Bradbury's "Uncle Einar" and Marquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and had found some fascinating resonances. I don't know what I was expecting-- I really didn't expect a huge reaction or for him to be impressed in any way-- maybe give me a pat on the head for being studious, something like that. Instead, he made a passionate exclamation that it was absolute rubbish and that he hated Marquez for his politics! The audience laughed, and I laughed, too, because I love the man and he is welcome to think anything he likes. (But I still believe there are some undeniable similarities between the two of them, whether he likes it or not!)

A few more years went by. Now I'm in grad school at SJSU. I'm working in the theatre, Le Petit Trianon, for The Steinway Society. Commonwealth Club, which hosts many author events, including the previous Bradbury event, share offices with us in the building. And I hear through the grapevine that Ray Bradbury will be interviewed via video at Sequoia High School, in the theatre, in Redwood City. So off I go on another adventure.

I arrived a little bit late; the theatre was already dim, but I could see, once again, I am still the youngest person there. Bradbury was already speaking. His face was projected on a massive screen that filled the stage. It must have been 50 feet high. He is ancient now, not quite as spry as when I met him 20 years ago. But the sparkle in his eye is still there, and he speaks passionately about his true loves: books, movies, dinasaurs, spaceships, people, life itself.

He told all his best stories.

He told how he hated school, but loved books, and that libraries gave him the best education he ever had. When he learned of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, it was one of the saddest things he had ever heard. And then he heard of Hitler burning books, and later Russia, too. And that was the impetus for Fahrenheit 451. He recalled how he had finished the book, but did not yet have a title, and so phoned around to various places to find out the temperature at which books caught fire and burned. He called the chemistry department at UCLA. They didn't know. He called the Physics department. They didn't know either. And then he thought, Of course! The fire department! And sure enough, they knew. He first sold the story in installments to a young editor of a brand new magazine called Playboy. (He says that you gentlemen out there have him to thank for stacks under your beds, because he contributed to its success!)

His theme for the evening was Love: Do what you love and love what you do, and the rest will take care of itself. Again and again he gave examples from his own life of how he had thrown himself completely and passionately into the things that he loved, and somehow, things always managed to work out for the best. Maybe not always perfectly, but he had no regrets.

He told how he had met John Huston. Bradbury asked to buy him a drink and gave him a copy of his book and said that he hoped Huston would love his book as much as Bradbury loved his movies, and if he did, he hoped they could work together one day. Later, Huston wrote Bradbury and said, "You're right. I do want to work with you. How would you like to write the screenplay to Moby Dick?" Bradbury said, "I'll do it!" He struggled with the script for eight months, and then finally one morning he woke up and looked at himself in the mirror and said, "You ARE Melville!" and sat down and finished the script that day. When he took the script to Huston, Huston was all set to roll camera. He asked, "How did you do it?" and Bradbury replied, "You're looking at Herman Melville, but you better look fast because he'll be gone in a few minutes!"

He told how he met Walt Disney, wandering through a store in Disneyland. He saw Disney and went up to him and said, "I love your movies!" And Disney said, "I love your books!" Bradbury said, "That's wonderful! Can I buy you lunch?" And Disney said, "Tomorrow?" They had lunch the very next day and spoke of movies and books and everything they loved. Years later, Bradbury was invited to help design the Spaceship Earth section of Epcot Center, which he proudly described as "a world's fair that never has to be torn down."

He told how he gave a script called Dark Carnival to Gene Kelly. Kelly was thrilled and wanted to make the movie. He took it to every producer in Europe but couldn't get funding. He returned it sadly to Bradbury, but Bradbury said, "It's okay, Gene, you tried." Later, he reworked the script into the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes.

He told how when his wife was two months pregnant with their first child, he was invited to New York. At that time he was writing short stories for $30 a story, just struggling along. He went to publisher after publisher-- no one wanted him because he wrote short stories, not novels. Finally, he met with one publisher at Doubleday, coincidentally also named Bradbury, who said, "Maybe you have written a novel and don't even know it." He asked him to write an outline putting all his martian stories together and The Martian Chronicles was born. Bradbury received $700. Then the publisher said, "Maybe you have another novel that you don't know about." They talked further about his other stories and The Illustrated Man was born on the same day. And another $700. Bradbury went home $1400 richer with enough money to pay for their the birth of their first child.

Story after story after story. The man is full of stories. How he remembers being born; how he memorized a Lon Chaney movie when he was three and proved it at 20 by reciting the whole thing from memory to his friends before they went in to see the picture together; how he met Mr. Electro at 13 who changed his life. Mr. Electro was circus/sideshow magician who told Bradbury he would live forever. He's still with us, so it looks like he just might do it! Mr. Electro also told him that he had been his best friend in a former life, that he had died in his arms in a field in France and now here he was back again. It loses something in translation. When Bradbury tells the story, you really believe it.

And he's still going! He has so many projects. He's set on seeing a monorail built to cross the country. He absolutely believes we will return to the moon, and visit Mars and Alpha Centaurii, and beyond, because that is our destiny. We're going to live forever.

And, yes, I wept through the whole thing, and laughed through my tears. I don't know about the rest of us, but Bradbury will live forever. He most definitely will.

Current mood: Elated

Current music: Pan's Labyrinth soundtrack