No damn cat, and no damn cradle

Tiny little personal mourning: they're dropping like flies. Kurt Vonnegut lived a full life (1922-2007) and lived his life his way, right up until the end. It's a life to be celebrated so I don't mourn for that. To quote Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five, "So it goes."

Vonnegut was the holy father of a great karass, engaged in a sacred wampeter, avoiding granfalloons wherever they may be. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you're truly missing out. Read the books.

I'll miss Vonnegut to be sure, but missing doesn't exactly equate to mourning. To mourn there must be a loss, and we've gained so much through his books, how can there ever be a loss? Thank you Saint Vonnegut.

The true loss is that they've all died off. Maybe a rogue prophet or two remain from the great literary movements of the 60s and 70s, but over the last decade... I don't even want to list them all for fear I'd leave someone out. I only started paying attention after Ken Kesey (2001) and Hunter S. Thompson (2005) anyway. It's a collective loss that isn't pinned on one individual, but I honestly feel something actually ended when Kurt Vonnegut passed away. I don't know if the loss can be defined exactly, but it's very real. Maybe it's enough to simply say that an epoch passed April 11, 2007.

So it goes.

"No wonder kids grow up crazy," the midget says. "A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's..."

"And?"

"No damn cat, and no damn cradle."

- Cat's Cradle (1963)