Blame Bradbury

veryone always wants to know what it was that brought you to a particular place. And for me that thing was Ray Bradbury. The man is so arrogant -- to think that at the end of Fahrenheit 451, the movie, that there would be some red haired kid that would memorize his entire Martian Chronicles. Okay, so there were lots of book people at that place. But did he really have to go and insert himself for more publicity?

It's not hard to think how I might have ended up like this, balled up in the school infirmary like some cliché no one wanted to acknowledge was still around but still being used. Except it wasn't like that for me because no one really knew. I hid it well. This would be my freshman year of college, when I was still undecided about my major, but felt pressured to make a decision that would affect the rest of my life. "What you major in doesn't mean anything in the long term," people would say. "You can always switch careers if you'd like in the future. Just pick a major in the meantime to get you through the door," they'd add. And that's what I did, but all the while suffering in the supposed meantime.

And what possibly could Ray Bradbury have to do with any of this? Well, back in the early fall of my freshman year in college, there was an announcement in my beginning English class, you know, the one you are forced to take at the 101 level that really does no one any good? Yeah, I had to take that. Anyway, there was this announcement that Ray Bradbury, one of the greatest science fiction writers, if not the greatest, in my opinion, would be visiting our humble mid-western university campus. And naturally, for me, I was ecstatic. Growing up in a small town like Philsville, I never got the chance to meet many famous people. Okay, I never met a single one. A small town is sort of like your safety bubble, only when you leave it, you wonder if all that safety was really any good for you. I mean, can there be such a thing as taking too much medicine? And in college one of the first things I encountered were people who liked to say the phrase, "Well, this is the real world." Or "Things like that happen in the real world." Or "College prepares you for the real world." And I couldn't help but ask myself how realer could a world get? Because when you want to talk about real, college couldn't be the farthest thing from the real world. Why? Because there was nothing real about it, not even me. And I certainly didn't feel very real that early freshman fall, back when the last days of summer lingered on, and it would feel like it was going to be warm forever. That is, until mid-October hit. But when Ray Bradbury came, it was still the early days of September when the nights were still short and the days were long, and you didn't even need a jacket to walk outside in the evenings. Yes, I loved days like those, but hated them too because I knew they would eventually come to an end, like all things. Time would take them away too.

Growing up in Philsville, sure I read books, but I never actually imagined meeting the flesh and bone of the person who had written them. Books for me just seemed to pop into existence, because it was hard for me to imagine someone actually writing a classic like Fahrenheit 451 because as far as I was concerned, it had always existed. You mean to tell me that someone actually sat down to write The Great Gatsby? It didn't just evolve right beside us as a human race? For me, things like books had always been there, so it was hard to imagine them not being. It's sort of like when you read a history book, and you know about the war of which you're reading, and you get mad every time when you think, "How dumb could the Americans be on the morning of December 7, 1941?" And "How could the people not have known that October 29, 1929 was going to happen?" Basically, what I'm trying to imply is that it is easy to take history for granted. History is only the product of the time that has already passed, and whenever I'd read some book telling me the facts about the way things were forty or a hundred and forty years ago, it is easy to take my knowledge of the situation, and also current technology, and think I am God because I know all the answers. That's why the past looks so easy -- we already know what's going to happen. But I was one of those unlucky ones forced to live in the present, and the present didn't really provide any answers, and the present never wanted to move quick enough to make it into the past.

But in seeing Ray Bradbury, my opinion of it all changed. After all, here was the man who had written the books, standing right in front of me. So he wasn't just a myth. He was a man. For me, it is easy to imagine myself living as a myth, because when you're a myth everyone knows about you and talks highly about you and all that, but you don't have to interact with anyone because you can't -- you're a myth. You can't take a myth out to lunch. It just isn't possible. And a part of me wanted to be a myth, and that's what I think a large part of my problem was. When you're a myth, life is immortal because there is no life of your own and you need not worry about it. You only live on in the minds of other people -- like Mozart. I can close my eyes and hear the sounds of Don Giovanni. But when I open them and try to picture Mozart the man, all there is to go by is some black and white sketch I downloaded off the Internet. And in my mind, Ray Bradbury also had this myth attached to him, but in seeing him up close, he became both.

So when my English 101 professor told our class that Ray Bradbury was coming to our school to give a talk, I marked the date on my calendar and planned to be there. Supposedly the talk was going to be about the ways in which young people can figure out who they are and where they are going in life. This made my day because this would be just what I need. To hear advice from both a myth and a man, about what's really important. And I needed to be told what was really important, because even though I think I knew, I didn't really know, so that's why I needed to be told.

And not only would I have the chance to go and hear Ray Bradbury's advice, but I would also have the chance to eat lunch with him, through my humanities program. It was this program where you took a lot of humanities classes with lots of the same people, and it's objective was to make us "more well rounded individuals in a pluralistic society," whatever that means. I thought that was a fancy way of saying, "We're going to show you how to live and think in the real world." And truthfully, I was fine with that because I had no idea how I should live. All I knew was that I wanted answers. I wanted to know why I only really felt comfortable and got along with people -- I mean really got along with them -- when I was drunk. I wanted to know why I had to be so many things to so many people, so that when everyone I knew gathered together, I didn't know who I should be because each person knew me a little different from the next, and I could not be everything to everyone at once.

here aren't many details for me to tell regarding my lunch with Ray Bradbury. He was on one side of the table, next to several professors and the chair of the English department, and I was seated on the other side, about eight seats down. All in all, there had to be about twenty people at that table, so if anyone ever asks me what it was like to have lunch with The Great Myth and Man, Ray Bradbury, all I can say is that I don't remember all that much. But I could hear a few of his criticisms regarding the writing and English departments of most universities, and at the time, I felt his opinions were harsh. But in looking back, I can see he was right. So the lunch didn't go that well, and I was too shy to ask him to sign my tattered copy of Fahrenheit 451, so I never had the chance to hear his advice regarding the real world like I had wanted. And that night when I was back in the reality of my small dorm room, I realized I was on my own when it came to figuring this stuff out.

But before I arrived at my dorm room, I of course flocked that evening to hear Mr. Bradbury speak about all this advice for young people, like he had promised. I wanted him to say things like he was confused too once, and he didn't always know what he wanted to do, or maybe he did, but had a lot of obstacles to go through but in the end it all worked out because here he is with the support of a university wanting to hear what he has to say about life in the real world. Those were some of the things I was eager for him to say. I wanted him to say crap like that. But he didn't. Sure, he spent a deal of time talking about himself, and what critics thought of him, and how he thought they were all stupid for what they thought, and then he talked about some politics and issues like that, and how he thought, and how everyone else thought, and how he was the greatest guy in the world. And maybe he was, but I wanted to hear him talk about other stuff -- like the more personal stuff I mentioned. But he didn't. He was talking more about politics. I didn't know much about politics. But I would need to learn if I ever wanted to get along in the real world.

At the end of his speech, of course everyone applauded, and in a matter of minutes, there was a line out the door to get his autograph. I had brought my book, like I said before, but I did not wait in line for him to sign it. I kept it hidden in my back jean pocket, sticking upward against my spine and in doing so, it almost required me to stand perfectly straight for the world, so the book itself would not get bent from my bad posture. I became ashamed of my book, and wanted to keep it hidden, as though I had never owned it or read it before. The book became my reminder of how I needed to present myself -- standing all firm and straight so that my own bad posture wouldn't bend the pages. But it was too late. When I got home to my dorm room, I pulled the book out of my back pocket and flung it against the wall. It bounced off and landed there on my desk, and had been bent ever so slightly to the curve of my spine. I suppose it didn't matter because the book was old and tattered anyway, but I knew had I kept it there in my pocket long enough, the book would have bent so far back that it would have been impossible to read. I don't know what that says about me, or who is stronger, me or the book. But I do know that my head still held some of the ideas from the book, and in a sense I began to feel like that red haired kid in the ending of the movie, Fahrenheit 451, who introduced himself as "Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles." Only I had become "Fahrenheit 451" regardless if I had wanted to or not.

And it would be more than a decade until I let myself read that book again. In between then, I grew depressed that first winter after my mom's death, and would spend some hours crying in the cemetery that was in walking distance of our school. It was a very pretty cemetery, and I found walking through it very peaceful. I figured that if there is going to be death around you, at least make everything else pretty. I'll ask then, who should I have blamed for my self-pity and feelings of inadequacy? I suppose many would suggest myself, but I would not say that.

I say blame Bradbury. Blame him. And mention too that a smalltown boy from Philsville says hi.