So it goes

Kurt Vonnegut died today. He was 84.

I fell in love with his work some twenty years ago . I was a young man, self obsessed and miserable. The kind of angsty teen that is so commonly derided and deserving of neither pity nor humor.

I internalized a lot of that. Boy, let me tell you that's the way of madness. But what do you know as an angsty teen, self absorbed and miserable.

I found refuge in his altered worlds. I devoured every word and sentence with a joy that he would have found more than a little disturbing.

As I grew up, I learned the subtext of the writing. The meaning and context of the larger works and developed a newfound appreciation I've had all of his novels at some point or another, some given away to friends, some lost. A couple are still with me.

Some part of you thinks your heroes will be with you forever. When they pass on, it reminds you of your own fleeting mortality. There's only so long a time on this blue green world. For some it's not enough, for other it's far too long. It is, ultimately, what it is.

As his Tralfamadorian creations would say, so it goes.

As a closing, a snippet of God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater that's supremely apropos of this occasion.

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”