It kind of feels like Kurt Vonnegut had figured everything out. He had been around for so long, and seen so much, and most certainly knew when to call bullshit. But he also knew how to take such pleasure from decency and kindness. And if we’d put him in charge tomorrow everything would have been all right. It’s hard to feel cheated when somebody dies at 84 but somehow I am managing it.
I was going to write something about his 2005 essays A Man Without a Country a few weeks ago, as it happens. He didn’t like the Internet very much. He liked tactile things. Letters and envelopes.
Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.
There are very few people in the world I would genuinely like to meet, to sit and eat and talk with. One less today.