I remember Clarisse’s words, straight from Modern World Literature in freshman year of high school.
“Have you ever watched the jet cars racing on the boulevards down that way?”
“You’re changing the subject!”
“I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never seem them slowly,” she said. “If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he’d say, that’s grass! A pink blur! That’s a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days. Isn’t that funny, and sad, too?”
“You think too many things,” said Montag, uneasily.
Sometimes I’m driving too fast. Too fast to notice that the blue sign I cross every day is pointing me in the right direction. Or that the black and white article I’ve flipped through is one of many gifts called my senior year of university. My foot is on the gas pedal, and I don’t notice how perfectly the red of crisp autumn melts together with the green fields and blue of a Bethlehem day. I ignore how my timetable has been orchestrated by more than just crowded numbers, and disregard how the weather changing means my Hawaii-born feet can dance on maple leaf crunch daily.
OH… slow down. It’s here I finally see the last dregs of old Milo mugs prepared by a friend, leftover from that afternoon we fought to stay in our computer-lab seats instead of escape to some complacency. I finally notice it. And then, though I’ve seen it a dozen times each day, on the computer lab notice board– I soak in the red marker ink telling me to go to Him who gives me rest.
And it’s there… on the library boardwalk… I see the portrait of my present:
the juxtaposition of books and beauty,
my life in Bethlehem.
“Bet I know something else you don’t. There’s dew on the grass in the morning.”
He suddenly couldn’t remember if he had known this or not, and it made him quite irritable.
“And if you look”–she nodded at the sky–”there’s a man in the moon.”
He hadn’t looked for a long time.
Look, dear ones, into your own daily life.
Press your foot down on the brakes. Maybe even get out of your car.
You may be surprised, like me,
to discover that the adventure you’ve been longing for
is right in front of you.
Story dialogue: Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451, p. 8-9; Montag meets Clarisse.
