Wincing the night away

If I was the story telling type I could probably tell you some interesting stories. I find, though, that stories really aren't my thing. Maybe I'm not creative enough, it probably boils down to my lack of patience. I just can't seem to think up a story that would be in any way worth reading or telling. When things happen to me I have hard time putting them in a story like format. I work better with fragments. Plot lines are too linear.

The master of random ramblings (as well as my own personal hero) is Kurt Vonnegut. He tells stories in such an un-story like way. Please, help yourself out and read Slaughterhouse-Five. When you're finished with that, I reccomend A Man Without a Country.

Listen here:

"There was a still life on Billy's bedside table-two pills, an ashtray with three lipstick-stained cigarettes in it, one cigarette still burning, and a glass of water. The water was dead. So it goes. Air was trying to get out of the dead water. Bubbles were clinging to the walls of the glass, too weak to climb out."

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC"

"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why."

"And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes."

"I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all."

"Unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."

"I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on."

"All right - I'll tell you what you did for me: you went for happy, silly, beautiful walks with me."

"If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They 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."

There's much much more where that came from. Do yourself a favor and read yourself a book.