Rest in Peace Mr Vonnegut

...maybe it's because of where I am right now. But I'm sad today. Authors and actors and artists I like have died before. And I always get a little sad when someone who made an impression not just on me, but on the world, through their art, dies.

And I'm not a Kurt Vonnegut scholar. I don't claim to know the details for his life, I haven't read all of his books. I couldn't engage in a detailed discussion of his life.

And yet, today, I'm sad.

He seemed to pop up in my life at soft times. I read Breakfast of Champions during my last year of high school and my first year of college (they were the same year). I don't want to say something as cliché as "he changed the way I look at the world". But reading that book changed something. You know how sometimes, when you have a really busy day... like one of those 18 hour marathon days where you don't slow down a bit from the time you open your eyes until you collapse from exhaustion.... And at some point near the end someone asks you if you want a bite to eat. And just like that you realize that you're famished. Just like that you realize that you're ravenously hungry and in very real danger of eating things that were never meant to be eaten.

A moment before - before someone let you know you were hungry - you would have blissfully starved to death and not realized it. You exhaustion was strong than your hunger. Then someone reminds you that you're hungry, and that's all there is.

And so it goes...

Came back in a very low time and told me about ice nine, then, appropriately out of order, came back in another odd time to talk about time travel. And finally, recently, became a touchstone for morality in politics.

There are many many others that will be more deeply affected.
I don't even have the rights to a manageable share of this grief pool.

And yet.... I'm sad.




Dear Kurt,

Rest in Peace.

You will be missed.

Tonight I will smoke a Pall Mall,
quietly and in the dark.
I'll stand outside
- even though it's snowing in April.
And I'll think about ice-nine.

When I was young and immortal
you opened my eyes and laid me low
When I was low and lost
you showed me quiet dim places -
where one could read a battered paperback
and be alone in a crowd of machines.

You outlived your demons.
And gave us hope that we can outlive ours too.
You will be missed.
You can go home now.