Tag: Kurt Vonnegut

If this isn’t nice, what is?

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My uncle Alex Vonnegut, a Harvard-educated life insurance salesman who lived at 5033 North Pennsylvania Street, taught me something very important. He said that when things were really going well we should be sure to notice it. He was talking about simple occasions, not great victories: maybe drinking lemonade on a hot afternoon in the shade, or smelling the aroma of a nearby bakery, or fishing and not caring if we catch anything or not, or hearing somebody all alone playing a piano really well in the house next door. Uncle Alex urged me to say this out loud during such epiphanies: “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

— Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country (Seven Stories Press, 2005)

Notes:

  • “If this isn’t nice, what is?” DK Photo: Baby Robins. 1pm. June 1, 2025. Stamford, CT. Thank you Barry and Cara Denison for sharing your beautiful finding.
  • Quote: Thank you The Hammock Papers

Walking. Blue on Bone.

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High Tide. 100% overcast. Winds spitting rain. 45° F — wet, wet to the bone. DeLillo’s dusk, silence, iron chill.

It was the time of year, the time of day, for a small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things. Dusk, silence, iron chill. Something lonely in the bone. – Don DeLillo, White Noise.

I stare at the photo. A sad looking street light slouches heavily downward, destroying the symmetry of the view. One sweep of the trackpad and Photoshop clears the way, leaving the foreground awash in its light. There, all better. Gone. No irony in that. No sirree. Street light straining to stand, its light straining to illuminate our way. Blue Blue Blue horizon.

I walk. 1,797 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

Continue reading “Walking. Blue on Bone.” →

Light and sound poured in

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Vonnegut
To the as-yet unborn,
to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness:
Watch out for life.
I have caught life.
I have come down with life.
I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness,
and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly.
Light and sound poured in.
Voices began to describe me and my surroundings.
Nothing they said could be appealed.
They never shut up.

– Kurt Vonnegut

Image Source: ike. Poem: Thank you WhiskeyRiver

(Today) Be soft…

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be soft

Source: thechaffandthewind via madamescherzo

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