Great books

Surprising benefits arise from not having read at an appropriate time the books one ought to have read, of having saved them for a time when they may have more meaning, when we may be smart enough to keep ourselves nourished on them, page by page.  I am just reading SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut, not half-way through its brittle pages yet, and Billy Pilgrim keeps breaking my heart.  In turn, Billy Pilgrim breaks my heart for all of us, which is to say, Kurt Vonnegut breaks my heart or reminds me that it has been broken for a very long time and it is not the worst thing I can think of.  How much worse it would be to think everything was fine.

Great books, those we haven't read, those we don't even know about, those that haven't been written, are the (non-explosive) helium filling the airships as they line up to carry us away.

Kurt Vonnegut and the shape of a story

I am doing the internet equivalent of the old-fashioned writer's  dawdle of sharpening pencils.  I am finding writerish things via Google and YouTube. Because both of these videos made me laugh out loud and think that pencil-sharpening time is about over, here they are.  Kurt Vonnegut, whom we can also thank for this:
1. "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"The actual advice here is technically a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's "good uncle" Alex, but Vonnegut was nice enough to pass it on at speeches and in A Man Without A Country. Though he was sometimes derided as too gloomy and cynical, Vonnegut's most resonant messages have always been hopeful in the face of almost-certain doom. And his best advice seems almost ridiculously simple: Give your own happiness a bit of brainspace.


Too many days spent too tightly ensnared in our own company or even more alarmingly, our own thoughts, may drive us to distraction.  I am trying to get back on track.  Being reminded that others are out there in one-man gliders, hoping to catch the necessary thermals and ridge lifts to carry them a safe and predictable distance helps.