Ran Lives
Prelude
I heard it. The sound of immediate destruction. It was years before Ran passed away. It happened as I sat with him and Emily in that warm, comfortable house in that quiet, pleasant Galveston neighborhood near the ocean. It was the whistle of a rocket. A rocket? I knew the sound. A few years before that I lived close to Ft. Sill in Lawton. It was the exact sound I heard so many times when they tested weapons. The same whine from shells you've heard in old WWII newreels. The two or three seconds I heard it coming in seemed very much longer than that . . . for I knew what the next sound would be. In that space of time I never thought it was a firework at all. Too stolid a sound. It got louder and louder and louder. The rocket came right over the roof. In that millisecond I braced for the explosion. And it came. A giant blast in the backyard, right there in front of me as I looked out the huge open window of the study. The rocket struck the ground right by the stream. Dirt and rocks and wood surged out like a sunburst of tiny missles. . . . Emily had stood up right in front of the window just before impact . . .
1: Unreal News :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Ran Lives
It's Sunday afternoon in Oklahoma City. They told me today that Ran died. When I got the call, a huge flood of feelings–a tidal wave–came and the memories that went with them. I got one of his "letters" just a week ago. Hand written. "Dear Riley," scrawled at the top. You never think it will be the last one. It's over. Though in this world I live in now--partly because of Ran--what is "over"?
Ran. There he was. Is. Often behind that big cherry desk, papers--mostly in neat stacks--all over the top. Books on wall-shelves all around him. The books even made a frame around his one window, a square beveled-glass picture window opening out upon the world. A large black reflector telescope sat to the side of it, and two blue armchairs were in front of it facing the window. He sat there a lot too, alone or with a friend. I was one of those.
You couldn't really tell if the room actually had walls. Books from hundreds of years ago to the present. They were the wall covering, the wallpaper. Leather covers, cloth. The smell of those books . . . centuries of smells. Some of them he'd gotten on his trips to London and other places. I always felt like I could smell London in there--centuries of chimney and tobacco smoke, and the aroma of the Thames mixing with the general dampness of the air-all wafting across the city as slowly as a snail crawls. Unreal city. Under the brown fog of a winter dawn. And there were books releasing fragrances of Hong Kong, and Jerusalem, and Jeddah, and then Boston and New York, and of the sea in the volumes from the old Galveston Books used book store, downtown near the Strand--not far from Siloam, the name Ran gave to his house. Siloam, that house with the little gently flowing brook behind it, the house that seemed to have almost totally slipped beyond the curtain between this world and the other one.
One large round convex dome skylight was installed in the study of the old red brick Victorian two-story not long before Ran bought it--three feet in diameter, the tube variety that went right up through a second floor storage closet and on through the attic to the roof. Diffused sunlight from the dome spread outward and saturated the room, including the books. At night in the study, the sunniness remained, the room seeming to be permanently infused with light.
I miss him already, of course. But there is something I need to explain. He was a very different kind of man. When I was around him, he was always present. Fully present, as they say. His mind wasn't somewhere else. He was with me. Yet . . . he was always somewhere else. Two worlds at once. The other world was very wondrous. I could always tell that. I could feel its power, its love that burned like a forest fire. Still, he was here, giving me or whomever was there with him his full attention, his full focus. Completely present in two worlds at once. That is the best way I can put it. So even though he is gone, I don't feel exactly as I usually do when someone I know dies. It's as if he were always where he's gone. And being around him, I came to know that world better and better. In a way, he has always been gone.
So it doesn't feel as bad as it might. But memories of this man are flowing through my mind like a river. Amazing memories. For whenever I've been around him, I sensed that the other world was not far away, and it is a very powerful world. Sometimes I actually saw that it wasn't far away. With my eyes, I mean. Miracles, some might say. Ran said he preferred to call them "brief returns to normalcy." I guess that today he is finally totally "normal." But he was very close to "normal" while he was on this earth. When around him, you never knew when one of these brief returns might take place. A totally ethical yet astoundingly slippery guy he was . . . is.
I feel so much like he is still here. Seems impossible he is gone. But gone he is. Well, people always think for a while that someone is not really gone. Yes, he is dead, but, he is definitely alive anyway. Right? Yes? . . . I didn't anticipate this confusion. Also, I didn't anticipate that he would die, however much the reality of his death is steeped in doubt at the moment. No. he is dead, Riley. I am grieving and going through the disbelief stage. He is dead. Very dead. I am grieving. He has died.They don't hold funerals otherwise.
Prelude
I heard it. The sound of immediate destruction. It was years before Ran passed away. It happened as I sat with him and Emily in that warm, comfortable house in that quiet, pleasant Galveston neighborhood near the ocean. It was the whistle of a rocket. A rocket? I knew the sound. A few years before that I lived close to Ft. Sill in Lawton. It was the exact sound I heard so many times when they tested weapons. The same whine from shells you've heard in old WWII newreels. The two or three seconds I heard it coming in seemed very much longer than that . . . for I knew what the next sound would be. In that space of time I never thought it was a firework at all. Too stolid a sound. It got louder and louder and louder. The rocket came right over the roof. In that millisecond I braced for the explosion. And it came. A giant blast in the backyard, right there in front of me as I looked out the huge open window of the study. The rocket struck the ground right by the stream. Dirt and rocks and wood surged out like a sunburst of tiny missles. . . . Emily had stood up right in front of the window just before impact . . .
1: Unreal News :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Ran Lives
It's Sunday afternoon in Oklahoma City. They told me today that Ran died. When I got the call, a huge flood of feelings–a tidal wave–came and the memories that went with them. I got one of his "letters" just a week ago. Hand written. "Dear Riley," scrawled at the top. You never think it will be the last one. It's over. Though in this world I live in now--partly because of Ran--what is "over"?
Ran. There he was. Is. Often behind that big cherry desk, papers--mostly in neat stacks--all over the top. Books on wall-shelves all around him. The books even made a frame around his one window, a square beveled-glass picture window opening out upon the world. A large black reflector telescope sat to the side of it, and two blue armchairs were in front of it facing the window. He sat there a lot too, alone or with a friend. I was one of those.
You couldn't really tell if the room actually had walls. Books from hundreds of years ago to the present. They were the wall covering, the wallpaper. Leather covers, cloth. The smell of those books . . . centuries of smells. Some of them he'd gotten on his trips to London and other places. I always felt like I could smell London in there--centuries of chimney and tobacco smoke, and the aroma of the Thames mixing with the general dampness of the air-all wafting across the city as slowly as a snail crawls. Unreal city. Under the brown fog of a winter dawn. And there were books releasing fragrances of Hong Kong, and Jerusalem, and Jeddah, and then Boston and New York, and of the sea in the volumes from the old Galveston Books used book store, downtown near the Strand--not far from Siloam, the name Ran gave to his house. Siloam, that house with the little gently flowing brook behind it, the house that seemed to have almost totally slipped beyond the curtain between this world and the other one.
One large round convex dome skylight was installed in the study of the old red brick Victorian two-story not long before Ran bought it--three feet in diameter, the tube variety that went right up through a second floor storage closet and on through the attic to the roof. Diffused sunlight from the dome spread outward and saturated the room, including the books. At night in the study, the sunniness remained, the room seeming to be permanently infused with light.
I miss him already, of course. But there is something I need to explain. He was a very different kind of man. When I was around him, he was always present. Fully present, as they say. His mind wasn't somewhere else. He was with me. Yet . . . he was always somewhere else. Two worlds at once. The other world was very wondrous. I could always tell that. I could feel its power, its love that burned like a forest fire. Still, he was here, giving me or whomever was there with him his full attention, his full focus. Completely present in two worlds at once. That is the best way I can put it. So even though he is gone, I don't feel exactly as I usually do when someone I know dies. It's as if he were always where he's gone. And being around him, I came to know that world better and better. In a way, he has always been gone.
So it doesn't feel as bad as it might. But memories of this man are flowing through my mind like a river. Amazing memories. For whenever I've been around him, I sensed that the other world was not far away, and it is a very powerful world. Sometimes I actually saw that it wasn't far away. With my eyes, I mean. Miracles, some might say. Ran said he preferred to call them "brief returns to normalcy." I guess that today he is finally totally "normal." But he was very close to "normal" while he was on this earth. When around him, you never knew when one of these brief returns might take place. A totally ethical yet astoundingly slippery guy he was . . . is.
I feel so much like he is still here. Seems impossible he is gone. But gone he is. Well, people always think for a while that someone is not really gone. Yes, he is dead, but, he is definitely alive anyway. Right? Yes? . . . I didn't anticipate this confusion. Also, I didn't anticipate that he would die, however much the reality of his death is steeped in doubt at the moment. No. he is dead, Riley. I am grieving and going through the disbelief stage. He is dead. Very dead. I am grieving. He has died.They don't hold funerals otherwise.