and could not believe my eyes.
Kurt Vonnegut is dead. The gentle solace I have taken over the years that though he is not publishing anything right this second (last to release was in 2005) he is still out there somewhere thinking. I have used his works to describe everything from the industrial school system I was subjected to growing up (Harrison Bergeron) to the Prions, which cause Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (ice-nine). I remember getting in trouble in school because I was reading “Breakfast of Champions” in 5th grade & the teacher threw a fit – that it was inappropriate for my age level… I was 10 yrs old and already beyond redemption when it came to his writing. My own writing skills are sorely lacking in comparison.
This being the equivalent of saying: “Dude, Vonnegut is dead, what the fuck?” I remember in highschool, and my distaste for my highschool classmates is now practically legendary, I bonded with one of the popular bois when he read "Slaughterhouse Five" and wrote a report on it for class – I was the only person other than the teacher who had read it and therefore he could talk to about it. & he needed to talk, process out the story as it sunk into him. It has always tickled my black heart to no end that I actually watched someone’s attitudes and outlooks change after reading it.
This is where the rational voices kick in reminding me of Vonnegut’s smoking, his long life, well lived. 84 years is longer than 5 of my 6 grandparents (including the adopted set) got to be on this earth.
"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center." My god, I hope he is enjoying the view.
