Lessons from Slapstick

My unconditional love for Kurt Vonnegut was reinforced this weekend when I found 'Slapstick' on my roommates bookshelf. Saturday morning I woke up in a strange position on the papasan chair in my living room. Then I made a pot of oatmeal and biked up State street in search of a good cup of coffee and a place to read my new book. Just as soon as it started to rain, I parked my bike and walked through the busy farmers market. Noticing the cute kids out running wildly all over the place, I fought back a maternal painge by thanking god for birth control, then made it to Cafe Solie. That place is impressively sustainable. Their paper cups are not coated with the same waxy substance other paper cups are coated with because that substance contains petroleum, instead theirs are coated with a corn derived substance. That kind of thing. I sat and read for one hundred pages or so, but in agreement with the San Fransisco Chronicle's review the prologue alone is some of the best Vonnegut I have ever read.

here is an example,
I have had some experiences with love, or think I have , anyway, although the ones I have liked best could easily be described as 'common decency.' I treated somebody well for a little while, or maybe even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in turn. Love need not have had anything to do with it.

Also: I cannot distinguish the love I have for people and the love I have for dogs.
When a child, and not watching comedians on film or listening to comedians on the radio, I used to spend a lot of time rolling around on rugs with uncritically affectionate dogs we had.
And I still do a lot of that. The dogs become tired and confused and embarrassed long before I do. I could go on forever.
...
Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please-a little less love, and a little more common decency."

Also my "O" key fell off again. thats me not KV though. You may have noticed my excessive use of commas, I have toned it down quite a bit following the instruction of Mrs. Abbott and others since, but I still love them and run-ons and fragments. And writing the way I speak. All lessons from Vonnegut.

I know you could just go out and borrow the book yourself, but the last fifty pages put me to sleep, only the prologue is really excellent, the rest of the story is not bad if you are madly in love with Vonnegut as I am but I don't know that any of you are. So I will include a few other things I was particularly pleased with.

His brother was an atmospheric scientist and had a lab that was in disastrous shape "where a clumsy stranger could die in a thousand different ways, depending on where he stumbled." Anyway a lab safety officer was inspecting one day and when his brother was confronted about the state of his lab he said tapping his forehead with his fingertips: "If you think this laboratory is bad, you should see what it's like in here"

Here is another direct quote that I feel like could be a dialog about my sister and I.
So my brother and I strapped ourselves into a jet-propelled airplane bound from New York to Indianapolis. I sat on the aisle. Bernard took the window seat, since he was an atmospheric scientist, since clouds had so much more to say to him than they did to me...
He asked me politely how my work was going. I think he respects but is baffled by my work...
After the plane took off, my brother showed me a piece of scientific apparatus which he had brought along. It was a photoelectric cell connected to a small tape recorder. He aimed the electric eye at clouds. It perceived lightening flashes which were invisible to us in the dazzle of daytime.
The secret flashes were recorded as clicks by the recorder. We could hear the clicks as they happened-on a tiny earphone.
"There's a hot one," my brother announced. He indicated a distant cumulus cloud, a seeming Pike's Peak of whipped cream.
He let me listen to the clicks. There were two quick ones, then some silence, then three quick ones, then silence again.
"How far away is that cloud?" I asked him.
"Oh-a hundred miles, maybe," he said.
I thought it was beautiful that my big brother could detect secrets so simply from so far away."

I remember as a kid it was a desire of mine to hold a mason jar out the window of an airplane and catch clouds as we zoomed by. I also remember the disappointment that followed my dad telling me why that wasn't possible. I still think about that whenever I fly, and for that reason I get jealous if I don't have the window seat.


I leave this place on Sunday. The more I have been longing for Seattle, the more I grow bored of it already. I came to that depressing conclusion this weekend. However I am still holding on to the hope that I will appreciate so much more about Seattle after being trapped in Madison. I can't wait to see all of you. This is a fairly lonely city when you get sick of the few friends you have, and cannot summon the energy required to invest enough in other people to make friends with them in the short period of time you have left here. But I think I will talk to more strangers once I get back to Seattle. And try to stay away from cigarettes.

I have learned a few important social skills here I believe. Talks with Eric have allowed me to open up a little more and dissect why I am so quiet in most sessions, my calculated responses to different comments and situations etc... But more importantly to say what is on my mind because that makes things way more interesting in the long run and will deepen friendships or separate the ones I am wasting time with. Don't worry, if you are reading this (or are at least one of the people I know who are reading this) you are already safe because you already know a good portion of what I think.

Time to go pick up my roommate from work. She didnt want to walk so she had me drop her off and take her car to the near by coffee shop so I could use the internet. The end. See you soon.