Ray Bradbury seems to be a writer whose brilliance shines through quite unpredictably - like an unannounced flash of lightning which burns a likeness of his nocturnal mindscape into the reader's brain, leaving a lingering after-image which is not altogether unpleasant.
Well, judge for yourself, this is from Frost and Fire - a short story about a human(oid) race living on an unfriendly planet where 'normal' lifespan is reduced to 8 days - with an accelerated aging process which plants a paralysing fear of mortality in everyone from the moment they are born - knowing that their days are numbered irrevocably.
'Birth was as quick as a knife
Childhood was over in a flash
Adolescence was a sheet of lightning
Manhood was a dream
Maturity a myth
Old age an inescapably quick reality
Death a swift certainty'
Why then, I wonder, does this description of an 8-day lifespan feel so much like my own, at least as far as I have lived and what I expect from the rest?
As I read the struggle of that far away race to gain an extra day of life and to find answers for a 'normal' life span, I felt suffocated by my guilt - for wasting the time I have.
Now that is the sign of a great writer, when his words from a different time zone, frozen on paper, makes me feel a certain frantic desperation for all the things I have not yet done ...
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