“…a very human way to make life more bearable…”
I am soaking in the second week of a two week vacation. Week one I spent in my hometown, Indianapolis, for a family reunion (all our children, their spouses, our grandson, Rider, my parents, aunt, cousin and cousins once-removed), and to host a party to celebrate my mother’s 80th birthday, somehow shoehorning forty people into our smallish condo. When the party’s hubbub had died down and Rider and his parents had departed, the rest of us made a pilgrimage to visit the relatively new Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library downtown on Senate Avenue.
The place was small in size but large in inspiration. Two of three rooms contained prints of Kurt Vonnegut’s drawings, sayings, writings, as well as mementos of his life, photographs, his typewriter and more. The third and smaller room was a facsimile of his library and writing room. Many of the books on the shelves were copies of the same ones Vonnegut himself owned and read. What inspired me most was an artistically rendered timeline of Vonnegut’s life, including wry, sardonic, even sarcastic Vonnegut-esque statements about current events at certain points of his life.
I purchased a book from the small book/gift store in the library, a late collection of his essays called, Man Without a Country. Here’s a quote from the book that inspires me and exactly explains one of the two reasons I’m writing this blog:
The arts…are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
The art I practice and encourage is writing (and all things literary), whether a few words of a picture caption, or an essay, or even a lousy poem. I write and memorize poems and host literary parties, and encourage other people to do the same because in the process, I create something. I enlarge my view and life and positively affect those around me. I add something to the world. One reason I write this blog is to encourage other people to try it, too.
Visiting the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library was also a literary event, and guess what? Not only was it painless (we hardly spent an hour there), it was fun. We were better for having done it. You can spend hours daily or 30 minutes a week doing something literary. It doesn’t matter the amount of time. What does matter is that doing something literary, living literarily as I call it, makes a positive difference in the person doing the literary thing and in the world around him or her. I suggest you look into what literary figure was born in your hometown, or in the place you’ll be visiting on your vacation, and see if there’s a museum, library, or house you can visit. You’ll be enriched.
Reflecting on Vonnegut
