Back in the late seventies, in the time when I checked books from the library in BOXFULS--when the librarians started giving me nasty glances for browsing the in the 'grownup' books but quickly warming to me when they realized I could intelligently banter about 'grown-up' concepts and welcomed my presence in the library gladly; that was when I first checked out Dandelion Wine.

I'd read a lot of Bradbury's science fiction short stories, juveniles, but never quite finished Dandelion Wine. At that time, it was boring as all hell. Who wanted to read about a kid growing up in Green Town, Illinois? Where are the adventures? The fights? The spaceships? The evil villains?

Fifteen years later, reading the book with a new mind. As if the pages were ripped out, whited out big-time, and re-written with another voice. And I need to stop reading every two or three chapters--overcome by the poignant energy contained within. This is the feeling I need to portray in my craft. The energy and feeling to which I must pay homage. Only now am I starting to understand why. Only now am I starting to formulate my relation to my history, and by assigning words, understanding my psyche with greater clarity.

I remember the stories. My father growing up in Vermont. The Halowe'en that he and his brother lined the base of Williams Street with a row of garbage cans so that oncoming cars, on the darkened, tree-lined street, caused a tremendous crash as they drove through them, unable to stop.

Or the summer he spent driving a milk truck when he was twelve, and the slip on the steps with a basket of milk bottles, the horrific crash, the shard of glass, and his dead left-hand ring finger ever since.

Or my grandfather who died before I could meet him tinkering the winter away in his garage workshop, preparing for the summer with a new family of carnival rides and midway attractions for the Vermont State Fair.

I've heard the stories about 'making do' in the twenties--the fun to be made to be had--without the mind-numbing effects of television. When books were TV and a broom was a horse and a rocking chair was a rocket ship and a stick was a gun and a corncob was a doll and a Quaker Oats container was an Indian drum ready to call the tribes to war before a sandlot ball game in the dying ember of a pregnant summer sun slipping below the horizon as Mom called you in for dinner.

In the mid-eighties I acquired a book called The Big Depression Book of Fun which had line drawings for rubber band guns designs, from simple pistols to automatic rubber-band tommyguns. Plans for scooters, rules for marbles, stories of playing the summer away.
I showed this to my dad. We read it together. Noticeable wisteria. And since then, I've been able to put words to afeeling--a longing I've had all my life. What would it have been like to grow up in America's age of innocence between the wars?My affinity toward films like The Wizard of Loneliness, Something Wicked This Way Comes, To Kill a Mockingbird, and books like Dandelion Wine, all taking place within the framework of the idyllic childhood: Is it a sense of ongoing for days gone by that I've never experienced? Is it a deep sense of understanding what it meant to be a child and simultaneously recognizing that I never was? And was it lack of opportunity? Lack of desire? The fact that the word has changed so much that the ideal is impossible? Much like the stereotypical perfect man myth?

So I read Dandelion Wine--with an extra fifteen years of life between me and the last reading. It's remarkable different. I wonder abut the voice. Is it written from the perspective of a ten year old? or is it written from the perspective of an adult, with adult experiences, thinking back and recollecting life as a ten-year old? Interesting ponderable point. Are the experiences of a lifetime influencing the perceptions of childhood? Where's the line between Memory and Myth/Truth and Fantasy (and does it matter? to the ten year old mind, does it really matter?)

So am I obsessed with the perfect childhood because I never had one? Am I obsessed with sharing that feeling because I never had it? My first foray was a Ferlinghetti-type piece completed shortly after I finished reading Love in the Days of Rage and was a "what if" about one of the few childhood memories I have.

1973? Somewhere around there. My mom's Uncle Herman was visiting from Germany. I don't remember much of the visit. I was old that he was painting the garage, he used a ladder I was fond of playing upon. I was upset and poked him in the leg with a screwdriver. This I don't remember. What I do remember is that I had a sandbox. I had a Matchbox dump truck with a slot in the bottom...slide the lever and the contents of the dump truck oozed out. I remember it was a perfect day. I remember it was light out, probably seven or eight at night, and Mom made me go to bed. My room was still light and I felt that it was too early for me to be there. I heard the grownups chatting downstairs, a distant murmur of indistinguishable voices. I called it "scissors" for reasons unbeknownst to me today, but probably because the sound reminded me of the scrape of metal blade on metal blade on whatever it was that you were cutting.

My story is a beat-inspired free form free flow prose about what it was like to sit in the yard with my dad--he'd give me sips of his beer, we'd just sit in the quiet dark of the back yard. I wish Mom had let me stay up later.

Interesting note. Even now, my father is more of an awe-inspiring figure than my mom. His whole side of the family for that matter. How come? Perhaps because Mom was stay-at-home while Dad worked, and all of her relatives lived within a two hour drive, and Dad's were all in Vermont. They say familiarity breeds contempt...perhaps that's why I have a greater affinity toward Dad's side than Mom's.

There are days I long for the childhood my parents had. No, there are weeks, months, and years I long for the childhood my parents had. Excepting brief moments, I do not recall an idyllic childhood. I do not recall the innocence of play. I concerned myself with greater things, with bigger issues, and whether by default or choice, missed my childhood.

There was one night when i was about ten. But let me set the stage. A lot of elderly couples and people in the neighborhood. Few children. Across the alley from us, for a summer, lived Jeff. I don't even remember his last name. His family was staying with his grandmother, Mrs. Gust, while their new house was under construction in Brown Deer. Across the street from us lived Mrs. Kramer. To her south were Mrs. Stephanic. Mrs. Faust, the Neumann's house (with the twin Neumann sisters, whose names I cannot recall), and Davey Klein in the next house south. Jeff moved away at the end of summer. Davey and the Neumanns moved before the following summer. But there was one brief time when we were all together.

There was one night where the four of us plus some older kids from down the block got together and played kick-the-can.

A brief moment in the summer twilight that I treasure and cherish. A brief moment of the wonder and clarity of childhood captured for an instant never to return.

In college--the residents of the Murray House, myself included, engaged in a late night game on Murray Avenue. Although the street was unfamiliar and I knew none of the good hiding places, I was transported back to that simpler time, and for another brief moment captured a child's vision of life.

Douglas in Dandelion Wine has an unusual clarity and sense about life. His decision to keep a notebook for the summer, chronicling what it means to be alive, as he captures the sense of summer wonder in a boy of twelve is a rare and precious gift usually reserved for those who realize that they are alive far too late for them to do anything about it, like Mr. Corey in Derleth's The Telescope. Is Dandelion Wine Bradbury's last gasp as an adult, wishing he could recapture his adult clarity or a child by projecting that on Douglas, or was he, as a child, truly gifted with the vision of LIFE?

One thing for sure, Bradbury is a two-percenter. If, as a child, his personality was that of Douglas Spaulding's, yow. It's no wonder he grew into what he is today. If, as an adult, he has the gift of language to project his thoughts about life and what it is to live out a ten-year old's personality, and create the aura and feeling and taste and sense of wonder reserved for those who truly LIVE life, his two-percent-ness shows in the talent he displays.

And what am I trying to do with my work? I am attempting to create the same flavors and textures of which I am on the receiving end in Dandelion Wine. My affinity toward The Telescope as a creative piece demonstrates this. My affinity toward the stories I enjoy demonstrates this even though most of those stories are internalized head games which cannot be translated to film as easily. What words do I assign to those feelings? Is it the angst of a misplaced childhood rearing its ugly head? misplaced, misspent, lost, gone, just missing, or merely undiscovered?

Why don't I remember my childhood? I suspect it's because i chose to skip it. Bored with my peers, I had a tendency to seek out interaction with my parents' peers. Bored with my peers, coupled with that ole' German-Lutheran-children-are-seen-and-not-heard' attitude left me disappointed with the interactions I attempted to develop.

My dissatisfaction in the interactions I tried to develop led to my immersion in books, my fascinations with stories. My affinity toward Dr. Asimov when the librarians thought it better that I stick with Dr. Suess. I skipped childhood, buried in a stack of literature. Surrounded by pages. Obsessed with words. Beginning to experiment with construction. Exposing myself to the rules; gaining a keen understanding of the way the structure sat so it could be played with and manipulated. Foreplay for the Intercourse of Discourse...

Developing a certain sophistication, that love for the written word, the voracious appetite for books and knowledge and the communication skills necessary to communicate better with my teacher than my classmates. Curiouser and curiouser.

When I was nineteen, I was involved with a thirty-two year old woman. I saw her biological clock ticking through her eyes. I recognized at that moment that i had lost my youth without realizing it. My innocence had slipped away before I'd even recognized I'd had it, and i spent the better part of the next year trying desperately to absorb the implications of that. It was during that period of soul-searching that met, hung out with, and developed a relationship with Mithuiel. In retrospect, she gave me the greatest gift I've ever received from anyone in my life--an understanding of my head.

Mith gave me the tools necessary to explore myself on my own. Through that self-exploration, I was able to come to conclusions about myself--conclusions meaningful to myself which I would have been otherwise able to comprehend or even ponder.

Her timing was perfect, lending credence the adage "when the student is ready, the teacher appears." In 1989, I understood what I head learned, and the past seven years have been spent putting it into practice. Developing the skills, honing the tools, sharpening my mind to the point where my pen and the thoughts behind it can slice across the paper like a fresh X-Acto blade.

Sure, there have been brief fallow periods, as there have been with every artist in history--the full yin/yang cycles of creativity manifesting itself--but AT THIS MOMENT I feel like a latex balloon of ideas, filled to capacity plus, waiting to accept another 5PSI knowing full well the resounding big bang *BOOM* to end the Antediluvian dry-streambed in which I've operated for the past whatevers.

I create a quiet/personal/creative space. Mine and mine alone with the objects and items meaningful to me as a visionary meditative sanctuary.

To foster my mental space to envelop me with energy to flow through me and in me and under me and over me and before me and behind me in a never-ending karmic flow and ebb of universal life force pulsing in my spirit.
  ¶ 15:34