Another World. Ray Bradbury

Today, I have been looking for a piece of text to help a friend and I encountered something which I have not read carefully enough(or maybe have not read at all as I have no memory of it).
It's DeWayne's favorite short story book which includes "the ice cream suit" that DeWayne cherished so much. I wanted to share this as it brings back memories of a dear friend:

'All I know is it's really the end of the beginning. The Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age; from now on we'll lump all those together under one big name for when we walked on Earth and heard the birds at morning and cried with envy. Maybe we'll call it the Earth Age, or maybe the Age of Gravity. Millions of years we fought gravity. When we were amoebas and fish we struggled to get out of the sea without gravity crushing us. Once safe on the shore we fought to stand upright without gravity breaking our new invention, the spine; tried to walk without stumbling, run without falling. A billion years, Gravity kept us home, mocked us with wind and clouds, cabbage-moths and locusts. That's what's so god-awful big about tonight . . . it's the end of old man Gravity and the Age we'll remember him by, for once and all. I don't know where they'll divide the Ages, at the Persians who dreamt of flying-carpets, or the Chinese who all unknowing celebrated birthdays and New Years with strung ladyfingers and high skyrockets (...) or some minute, some incredible second in the next hour. But we're in at the end of a billion years' trying, the end of something long and to us humans, anyway, honourable.'
      Three minutes . . . two minutes, fifty-nine seconds . . . two minutes fifty-eight seconds. . . .
      'Yes' He could hardly hear his wife's voice. 'Yes . . . I believe that's true.'
      Two minutes, he thought. Ready? Ready? Ready? The far radio voice calling. Ready! Ready! Ready! The quick faint replies from the humming rocket. Check! Check! Check!
      Tonight, he thought, even if we fail with this first, we'll send a second and a third ship and move on out to all the planets and, later, all the stars. We'll just keep going until the big words like immortal and for ever take on meaning. Big words, yes, that's what we want. Continuity. Since our tongues first moved in our mouths, we've asked, What does it all mean? No other question made sense, with death breathing down our necks. But just let us settle in on ten thousand worlds spinning around ten thousand alien suns and the question will fade away. Man will be endless and infinite, even as space is endless and infinite. Man will go on, as space goes on, for ever. Individuals will die, as always, but our history will reach as far as we'll ever need to see into the future, and with the knowledge of our survival for all time to come, we'll know security and thus the answer we've always searched for. Gifted with life, the least we can do is preserve and pass on the gift to infinity. That's a goal worth shooting for.
      The wicker chairs whispered ever so softly on the grass.
      One minute.
      'One minute,' he said, aloud.
      'Oh!' His wife moved suddenly, to seize his hands. 'I hope that Bob . . .'
      'He'll be all right!'
      'Oh, God, take care. . . .'
      Thirty seconds.
      'Watch, now.'
      Fifteen, ten, five . . .
      'Watch!'
      Four, three, two, one.
      'There! There! Oh, there, there!'
      They both cried out. They both stood. The chairs toppled back, fell flat on the lawn. The man and his wife swayed, their hands struggled to find each other. They saw the brightening colour in the sky and, ten seconds later, the great uprising comet burn the air, put out the stars, and rush away in firelight to become another star in the returning profusion of the Milky Way. The man and wife held each other as if they had stumbled on the rim of an incredible cliff that faced an abyss so deep and dark there seemed no end to it. Staring up, they heard themselves sobbing and crying. Only after a long time were they able to speak.
      'It got away, it did, didn't it?'
      'Yes . . . '
      'It's all right, isn't it?'
      'Yes . . . yes . . . '
      'It didn't fall back . . . ?'
      'No, no, it's all right, Bob's all right, it's all right.'
      They stood away from each other at last.
      He touched his face with his hand and looked at his wet fingers. 'I'll be damned,' he said, 'I'll be damned

I'm a billion years old, he told himself; I'm one minute old. I'm one inch, not ten thousand miles, tall. I look down and can't see my feet they're so far off and gone away below.
      He moved the lawnmower. The grass, showering up, fell softly around him; he relished and savoured it and felt that he was all mankind bathing at last in the fresh waters of the fountain of youth.
      Thus bathed, he remembered the song again, about the wheels and the faith and the grace of God being way up there in the middle of the sky where that single star, among a million motionless stars, dared to move and keep on moving.
      Then he finished cutting the grass.'

 

Ray Bradbury. When I read any of his books I feel tranquility. And I am a little boy again who makes use of his imagination. Now, as a grown man, I feel as if I were reading it surrounded by haze or mist. 

Thank you DeWayne for showing this to me.  What unbelievable literature.