Sunday, 12 June 2005

“So now my last book is done, with the exception of this preface. Today is November 12th, 1996, about nine months, I would guess, from its publication date, from its emergence from the birth canal of a printing press. There is no rush. The gestation period for a baby elephant is more than twice that long. The gestation period for a baby oppossum, friends and neighbors is twelve days.”

“Call me Junior. My six grown kids do. Three are adopted nephews, three are my own. They call me Junior behind my back. They think I don’t know that”

“You think the ancient Romans were smart? Look at how dumb their numbers were. One theory of why they declined and fell is that their plumbing was lead. The root of our word plumbing is plumbum, the Latin word for “lead.” Lead poisoning makes people stupid and lazy. What’s your excuse?”

I have become a Kurt Vonnegut fan. I’m not gonna lie. The above quotes are from his last book, Timequake. It’s a fiction with some biography thrown in. It’s bizarre and a bit scattered but I liked it. The broad gist of the book is that a timequake happened and time went back ten years but everyone had to repeat what they had done for the last ten years. No free will. When the ten years is up, a bum writer, who incidentally looks like a bag lady, named Kilgore Trout finishes the story he started 10 long years ago and then begins to realize that people haven’t realized that they have free will. So he goes around saying, “You were sick, but now you’re well again, and there’s work to do.” That phrase is what gets peole into action, saving others and whatnot. Crazy.

At the end of Jeremiah, the exile king of Judah, Jehoiachin, is freed from prison. Verse 33 says “So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king’s table.” I have news for you. It’s time to forget your old life and move on. Stop dwelling on what you were. See what you can be. Put aside your prison (of sin) clothes and eat at His table.

You were sick, but now you’re well again, and there’s work to do.