celebrating kurt vonnegut, celebrating my karass

Mesmerized by Kurt Vonnegut again as I glanced through the science fiction aisle of Dauphine Books (410 Dauphine Street, New Orleans) on Tuesday night. I had read Vonnegut voraciously in my early 20s.

I suppose I was there flipping through Gibson, Stephensen, Le Guin, Rucker because I'm been kicking around dystopias in my mind.

Sometimes I think the Golden Age is shrugged off because a prophetic thousand years of renaissance and peace sounds like utter dudsville-dullsville squared: where's the drama? where's the fun? I know because I think that way at times. Though flip the coin, and one finds enchantment opposite (and oh so so twain) to ennui.

Anyhow, weird that...

Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday.

"He was imaginative; our generation of writers didn't go in for imagination very much. Literary realism was the general style. Those of us who came out of the war in the 1940s made it sort of the official American prose, and it was often a bit on the dull side. Kurt was never dull." - "Novelist Kurt Vonnegut Dies at Age 84", San Francisco Chronicle, April 12, 2007

Perpetual Astonishment, ah yes, That pretty much sums up any utopia.

"There was a message written in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel. This was it:

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE?

Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he had found anything to write with:

To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool." - Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

images & credits The Vision by Evelyn de Morgan; "I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves "Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment." from Vonnegut's A Man Without A Country; several Vonnegut quotes above & below from NonDual Highlights, April 12, 2007 edition (check out for more)

Bonus: "One of the basic concepts of Bokononism, the secretive island religion of Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle [vaguely recall this being of my faves], is that of a granfalloon. A granfalloon is a recognized grouping of people that, underneath it all, has no real meaning. The prototypical granfaloon in Vonnegut's book is Hoosiers: the main character of the book finds himself journeying to an island nation in the company of fellow Indianans, but other than the fact that they hale from the same state they have no significance in each other's lives.

The opposite of a granfalloon, or at least one alternative, is the karass. These are the people whose lives are entwined in yours in mysterious yet profound ways. Often they are not part of any of your more obvious granfalloons, but in the end it is their presence on this earth that has great influence of the direction of your own life. Recognizing members of your karass is not an easy thing and some you may never identify, but part of the spiritual mission of Bokononists is to celebrate their karass."

Comments

[leah]

oh man, i love vonnegut's writing. as a teenager, he was one of those writers who made me feel not so alone in the world by touching on concepts that just validated my own wacky perceptions of the world.

i adore that quote. perpetual astonishment, indeed. cheers to our karass.

[rudi]

Re "recognising members of your karass": William Stafford described this beautifully in a dedication to a book of his poems:

"There are people on a parallel way. We do not
see them often, or even think of them often,
but it is precious to us that they are sharing
the world. Something about how they have accepted
their lives, or how the sunlight happens to them,
helps us to hold the strange, enigmatic days
in line for our own living. It is important
that these people know this recognition, but
it is also important that no purpose or obligation
related to this be intruded into their lives.

This book intends to be for anyone, but especially
for those on that parallel way: here is a smoke
signal, unmistakable but unobtrusive - we are
following what comes, going through the world,
knowing each other, building our little fires."

[parcelmed]

Dear Mrs. Rodriguez,

thank you for remembering at Kurt Vonnegut jr., one of the most important authors of our ýouth here in Germany also.

[leena]

'damn it, it wasn't very kind of you to die already,' is how I feel about this news which still hasn't quite sunk in... i'm working on a poetic tribute to him - if interested, please give me some feedbacks at http://norhymeandnoreason.blogspot.com/

thanks,
-lp-