♬ July Flame

Forgot I had this most excellent of albums. kerplunk. Laura Veirs + b&b pudding = a very satisfactory afternoon. humm. When I was a kid I used to say pud-ding, not pood-ing. Puddles, pudding. Made sense at the time but the world has since laughed it out of me.

'July Flame' always makes me think of this magnificent passage from Ray Bradbury's spellbinding 'Something Wicked This Way Comes':

The wind flew Jim away. A similar kite, Will swooped to follow.

Watching the boys vanish away, Charles Halloway suppressed a sudden urge to run with them, make the pack. He knew what the wind was doing to them, where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life. Somewhere in him, a shadow turned mournfully over. You had to run with a night like this, so the sadness could not hurt.

Look! he thought. Will runs because running is its own excuse. Jim runs because something’s up ahead of him. Yet, strangely, they do run together.

What’s the answer, he wondered, walking through the library, putting out the lights, putting out the lights, putting out the lights, is it all in the whorls on our thumbs and fingers? Why are some people all grasshopper fiddlings, scrapings, all antennae shivering, one big ganglion eternally knotting, slip-knotting, square-knotting themselves? They stoke a furnace all their lives, sweat their lips, shine their eyes and start it all in the crib. Caesar’s lean and hungry friends. They eat the dark, who only stand and breathe.

That’s Jim, all bramblehair and itchweed.

And Will? Why, he’s the last peach, high on a summer tree. Some boys walk by and you cry, seeing them. They feel good, they look good, they are good. Oh, they're not above peeing off a bridge, or stealing an occasional dime-store pencil sharpener; it's not that. It's just, you know, seeing them pass, that's how they'll be all their life; they'll get hit, hurt, cut, bruised, and always wonder why, why does it happen? How can it happen to them? 

But Jim, now, he knows it happens, he watches for it happening, he sees it start, he sees it finish, he licks the wound he expected,and never asks why; he knows. He always knew. Someone knew before him, a long time ago, someone who had wolves for pets and lions for night conversants. Hell, Jim doesn't know with his mind. But his body knows. And while Will's putting a bandage on his latest scratch, Jim's ducking, waving, bouncing away from the knockout blow which must inevitably come.                                           

  So there they go, Jim running slower to stay with Will, Will running faster to stay with Jim, Jim breaking two windows in a haunted house because Will's along, Will breaking one instead of none because Jim's watching. Gosh how we get our fingers in each others clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other..

Yeah yeah tl;dr but dang-a-lang! he's a kickass writer. *happy shiver*