everything of memory; where he had stood, what he had done and what had been done around him, what there was and what there could ever have been.
In that instant, he saw backward into memory, backward into the night that had preceded the first thought.
Faraway, a galaxy became as dust, and vanished, leaving no print, no recollection, no residue. Then, one by one, in correct stately procession, the solitary stars went blind.
The question was answered: Sat ci sat bene .
“A painting is a sum of destructions.”
Pablo Picasso (1882–1973)
Afterword
Running the unacceptable risk of writing an “afterword” oh-by-the-way “note” a thousand times longer than the story itself, I sit down to explicate the “Bradbury connection” to this, perhaps my last-published story. Like Ray, I am now old, and there is an infinitude more to recollect and savor of links between Bradbury and Ellison. Truly, it should suffice for even the most marrow-sucking obsessive fan that Ray and I have known each other close on forever.
Ray contends that in very short order he and I will be sitting down together cutting-up-touches with Dickens and Dorothy Parker, shuckin’n’jivin’ with Aesop and Melville.
Uh…well, okay, Ray, if you say so.
(I am rather less comfortable with that Hereafter stuff than is Ray. As has averred Nat Hentoff, I come from, and remain as one with, a grand and glorious tradition of stiff-necked Jewish Atheists. Ray and I have a long-standing wager on this one; which of us is on the money, and which is betting on a lame pony. Sadly, the winner will never collect.)
La dee dah. Back where we began. Too many words, yet I’ll attempt that undanceable rigadoon.
These days of the electronic babble, every doofus with some hand-held device calls every other male he knows—“ brother .”
“Hey, Bro! Whassup, Bro? Howzit’ goin’, Bro?”
Strangers: brother. Casual acquaintances: brother. Same skin color supermarket bagger: brother. Other skin-colored guy who tipped you when you parked his Beamer: brother. Much like the oafishly careless, empty, and repetitious whomping of the once-specific, cherished and singular word “awesome,” the sacred word BROTHER has become in inept mouths, a dull and wearisome trope.
( Awesome is the word one uses for Eleanor Roosevelt, Mt. Kilimanjaro, and pitching a no-hit no-run ballgame. Not available for the crappy cheese quesadilla you had this afternoon, nor for anybody who Dances with the Stars. With or without a wooden leg.) Same goes for yo Bruth -thuh.
I had only one sib, my late sister. The men of my lifelong existence whom I would countenance as my brother are less than the number of dactyls on my left hand, and they know who they are.
Apparently, Ray Bradbury and I are brothers .
Not in some absurd catchall absurdity of vacuous gibber, but actually and really “we are brothers.”
Whence cometh this assertion?
From Ray Bradbury. That’s whence.
“You know, Harlan,” he said to me, leaning in and grinning that Midwestern just-fell-off-the-turnip-truck grin, “we are brothers, y’know; you and I; together.”
I grinned back at him with my hayseed Midwestern mien, onaccounta we are both paid liars, from Waukegan and Cleveland, and I played his straight-man by responding, “How’s that, Ray?”
(The players freeze in situ as the Bloviating Narrator fills in the background data, thus slowing the movie and shamefacedly doing the necessary bricklaying:)
The table across which Ray was leaning was in a booth at one of my and Ray’s all-time favorite restaurants, The Pacific Dining Car in downtown Los Angeles. The night was in 1965. Our dining companions had both gone off to the toilets. That is to say, she had gone off to one; her husband had gone off to another. Her name was Leigh Brackett; his name was Edmond Hamilton. The queen of fantasy writing. Great movies based on Hammett and Chandler. A legend in this life. The Eric
In that instant, he saw backward into memory, backward into the night that had preceded the first thought.
Faraway, a galaxy became as dust, and vanished, leaving no print, no recollection, no residue. Then, one by one, in correct stately procession, the solitary stars went blind.
The question was answered: Sat ci sat bene .
“A painting is a sum of destructions.”
Pablo Picasso (1882–1973)
Afterword
Running the unacceptable risk of writing an “afterword” oh-by-the-way “note” a thousand times longer than the story itself, I sit down to explicate the “Bradbury connection” to this, perhaps my last-published story. Like Ray, I am now old, and there is an infinitude more to recollect and savor of links between Bradbury and Ellison. Truly, it should suffice for even the most marrow-sucking obsessive fan that Ray and I have known each other close on forever.
Ray contends that in very short order he and I will be sitting down together cutting-up-touches with Dickens and Dorothy Parker, shuckin’n’jivin’ with Aesop and Melville.
Uh…well, okay, Ray, if you say so.
(I am rather less comfortable with that Hereafter stuff than is Ray. As has averred Nat Hentoff, I come from, and remain as one with, a grand and glorious tradition of stiff-necked Jewish Atheists. Ray and I have a long-standing wager on this one; which of us is on the money, and which is betting on a lame pony. Sadly, the winner will never collect.)
La dee dah. Back where we began. Too many words, yet I’ll attempt that undanceable rigadoon.
These days of the electronic babble, every doofus with some hand-held device calls every other male he knows—“ brother .”
“Hey, Bro! Whassup, Bro? Howzit’ goin’, Bro?”
Strangers: brother. Casual acquaintances: brother. Same skin color supermarket bagger: brother. Other skin-colored guy who tipped you when you parked his Beamer: brother. Much like the oafishly careless, empty, and repetitious whomping of the once-specific, cherished and singular word “awesome,” the sacred word BROTHER has become in inept mouths, a dull and wearisome trope.
( Awesome is the word one uses for Eleanor Roosevelt, Mt. Kilimanjaro, and pitching a no-hit no-run ballgame. Not available for the crappy cheese quesadilla you had this afternoon, nor for anybody who Dances with the Stars. With or without a wooden leg.) Same goes for yo Bruth -thuh.
I had only one sib, my late sister. The men of my lifelong existence whom I would countenance as my brother are less than the number of dactyls on my left hand, and they know who they are.
Apparently, Ray Bradbury and I are brothers .
Not in some absurd catchall absurdity of vacuous gibber, but actually and really “we are brothers.”
Whence cometh this assertion?
From Ray Bradbury. That’s whence.
“You know, Harlan,” he said to me, leaning in and grinning that Midwestern just-fell-off-the-turnip-truck grin, “we are brothers, y’know; you and I; together.”
I grinned back at him with my hayseed Midwestern mien, onaccounta we are both paid liars, from Waukegan and Cleveland, and I played his straight-man by responding, “How’s that, Ray?”
(The players freeze in situ as the Bloviating Narrator fills in the background data, thus slowing the movie and shamefacedly doing the necessary bricklaying:)
The table across which Ray was leaning was in a booth at one of my and Ray’s all-time favorite restaurants, The Pacific Dining Car in downtown Los Angeles. The night was in 1965. Our dining companions had both gone off to the toilets. That is to say, she had gone off to one; her husband had gone off to another. Her name was Leigh Brackett; his name was Edmond Hamilton. The queen of fantasy writing. Great movies based on Hammett and Chandler. A legend in this life. The Eric
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