Friday, December 31, 2010

awesome americans #1: kurt vonnegut



I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody. Thank you for using me, even though I didn't want to be used by anybody.

I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm, and I can see I'm doing good, and them I'm doing good for know I'm doing it, and they love me, Unk, as best they can. I found me a home.

--Sirens of Titan (1959)


We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

Make love when you can. It's good for you.

--Mother Night (1961)


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."

--God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)


How nice - to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.

--Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)


I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.
So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.
What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.
And all music is.

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.

--Breakfast of Champions (1973)


A great swindle of our time is the assumption that science has made religion obsolete. All science has damaged is the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Jonah and the Whale. Everything else holds up pretty well, particularly lessons about fairness and gentleness.People who find those lessons irrelevant in the twentieth century are simply using science as an excuse for greed and harshness. Science has nothing to do with it, friends.

--An address


What we will be seeking ... for the rest of our lives will be large, stable communities of like-minded people, which is to say relatives. They no longer exist. The lack of them is not only the main cause, but probably the only cause of our shapeless discontent in the midst of such prosperity.

--"Thoughts of a Free Thinker", commencement address, Hobart and William Smith Colleges (1974)


I was obviously born to draw better than most people, just as the widow Berman and Paul Slazinger were obviously born to tell stories better than most people can. Other people are obviously born to sing and dance or explain the stars in the sky or do magic tricks or be great leaders or athletes, and so on.

I think that could go back to the time when people had to live in small groups of relatives-maybe fifty or a hundred people at the most. And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn't afraid of anything and so on.

That's what I think. And of course a scheme like that doesn't make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifed person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions.

The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an 'exhibitionist.'

How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, 'Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!'

--Bluebeard (1987)


Many people need desperately to receive this message: "I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone."

--Timequake (1997)

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

awesome americans

i started this whole blog idea thinking about being an american, and being patriotic - what that means, and what it doesn't mean, and how it all came to be.

it was living in germany that made me realize two things: that i am, irreversibly, an american through and through; and that i was ok with that.

but this same process happened before, too. i've learned this lesson before.

growing up, it seemed that our existence - out on the corner of the country - was nothing but irrelevant. news was something that happened somewhere else - the midwest, the east. politics, government - the northeast. arts & culture all came from europe. popular culture came from southern california. sports, events, everything - came from somewhere else.

and, in many ways, we didn't even fit into the west. the coastal edge of oregon and washington are an anomaly in the west. not dry. not open. not the typical home of the western archetypes, cowboys. liberal politically and open to government and laws. no one came to experience the west. no ski resorts with hollywood types, no dude ranches. nothing to entice the wealthy easterner or southerner to visit.

feeling irrelevant, and as if everything of value came from away, and loving art, i was a europhile. i wanted only to get to europe, to real culture, civilization, and relevance.

but in high school, i was exposed to a whole new batch of americans, through books and art, ones that made me realize that we had something to offer, that we had contributed something to the world stage other than bravado, empty promises of freedom and success (forced under the guise of war), and optimism. this coincided with trips around the west to visit national parks, where i found a landscape of unsurpassed beauty and joy.

awesome americans - and the national park service - drew me into loving america and loving being american for several years.

so, i've decided to do an occasional series of my personal inspirations. my awesome americans. they don't have to be significant to anyone else, and i'm not even trying to convince other people that they are worthy of their love, too. it's just a way to celebrate and remember the people who led me to recognize some of the amazing contributions we've had.

top of the list & first up: kurt vonnegut, who wrote a body of literature that has never been surpassed for me in terms of honesty, realism, and sweetness. and who could only have been american. not very exciting, perhaps, but coming soon.