...think back to that fateful day, ensconced in my room as the cold front blew through, fearing for my life as I finished Cat's Cradle, believing the world had indeed turned to ice...
Such news isn't depressing though, but indeed a relief. Kurt Vonnegut's website today has a picture of a birdcage, its door opened, its occupant escaped. I go back to the fine interview my editor JC Gabel conducted for Stop Smiling last year, when Vonnegut stated:
I've said everything I want to say, and I'm embarrassed to have lived this long. I so envy Joseph Heller and George Plimpton and all these other friends of mine who are pushing up daisies...That's what I want to do. I think I'd do a swell job.Hoping that he gets to that work as swiftly as possible, there remains work for us as well. Elsewhere, Vonnegut tells that art is a state of becoming, as necessary as food and sex. He recounts a challenge he gave out on the lecture circuit:
Write a poem tonight. Make it as good as you possibly can...Don't tell anybody what you're doing. Don't show it to anybody. When you're satisfied it's as good as you can make it, tear it up in small pieces and scatter those pieces between widely separated trash receptacles and you will find out you have received your full reward for having done it.
