A couple weeks ago I ordered a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five because it is the 25th anniversary of the book. I can't remember when I first read this book, probably about the time it was published and admittedly I had no memory of the story when I placed my order. I smiled yesterday morning as I read the preface of this new edition. In playing with Stephen Hawking's musing about our inability to remember our future, Vonnegut writes, "Be patient. Your future will soon come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are." I laughed thinking that I have a least a few stray dogs laying at my feet already. I guess everyone does. Among them a few I'd like to banish to the dog house and others that unfortunately arrived at my feet far to soon. This month on January 14th was the 10th anniversary of the death of my very good friend, Warwick Hiscock. He would have laughed out loud at my crazy idea to run a 1000 miles and I have no doubt he would have tried to run as many of the 1000 with me as he could. Warwick always took great pleasure in my crazy ideas (the one he liked the most was the mini skirt protest of 1993) including when I decided to paint 2000 plant pots and sell them to raise money to go to UC Berkeley for graduate school. While everyone I knew ended up with one of my pots (If I remember right they weren't that special, mostly pity purchases), Warwick decided to give me the money he had saved for a new sail boat (the purchase, as he described of one really big pot!) so that I could get my student visa for the US. In the end I received a surprise scholarship, Warwick bought his sail boat and I closed down my plant pot business. And so it goes.
I'm about half way through Slaughter House Five and for anyone who is a Vonnegut fan, it is one to read again. His wit is as fresh and cutting today as it was 25 years ago.
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