To Kurt Vonnegut -- Someday I'm going to write you a passionate love letter, you sad, funny, broken, wise, whiskery old coot. For now, I'd just like to say "Amen."
As I read the Book of Genesis, God didn't give Adam and Eve a whole planet. He gave them a manageable piece of property, for the sake of discussion let's say 200 acres.
I suggest to you Adams and Eves that you set as your goals the putting of some small part of the planet into something like safe and sane and decent order.
There's a lot of cleaning up to do.
There's a lot of rebuilding to do, both spiritual and physical.
And, again, there's going to be a lot of happiness. Don't forget to notice!
What painters and sculptors and writers do, incidentally, is put very small properties indeed into good order, as best they can.
A painter thinks, ''I can't fix the whole planet, but I can at least make this square of canvas what it ought to be.'' And a sculptor thinks the same about a lump of clay or marble. A writer thinks the same about a piece of paper, conventionally eleven inches long and eight and a half inches wide.
We're talking about something less than 200 acres, aren't we?"
Amen. And thank you. (this quotation by way of Whiskey River)
