FROM "DANDELION WINE"

I THINK I should buy myself a copy of Ray Bradbury's "Dandelion Wine". In my raggedy  book in which I write quotations when I'm reading, there are several words I've written down from that volume and yet I don't own the book. Years ago, when the state of California put together a basic reading list for the public schools, they listed "Dandelion Wine" as science fiction which I would contest. I'd consider it a memoir, but then I only had a year and a half of higher learning.

From time to time I'm going to share with you some of what's in that coming-apart red book of mine.

"When you meet a dragon that has eaten a swan, do you guess by the few feathers left around the mouth? That's what it is.......a body like this is a dragon, all scales and folds. So the dragon ate the white swan.

 I haven't seen her for years. I can't even remember what she looks like. I feel her, though. She's safe inside, still alive; the essential swan hasn't changed a feather. Do you know, there are some mornings in spring or fall, when I wake and think, I'll run across the fields into the woods and pick wild strawberries!


 Or I'll swim in the lake or I'll dance all night tonight until dawn! And then, in a rage, discover I'm in this old and ruined dragon. I'm the princess in the crumbled tower, no way out, waiting for her Prince Charming."
                                                                Ray Bradbury
                                                          "Dandelion Wine"

P.S. The words echo some of the things I'm feeling these days.