3.21.2009

INSPIRATION: KURT VONNEGUT


This is a kitesurfing trip, right?!?!

Sure. And more.

As the punchline goes, "Hold onto your hat. We could end up miles from here."

If I could stop spouting thoughts about societal collapse, peak oil, the fact that EVERYONE is brainwashed (me included), WWIII, and such maybe I'd actually get some support from the sponsors I brought on-board before this thing got started.

But I can't stop. There's too much on my mind that's gotta come out.

I haven't heard back from or gotten diddle from a corporate sponsor in months, anyway. DISOWN and DISTANCE is the proper action from a marketing standpoint.

Not that anyone is reading anyway.

Maybe I should learn to RAP. RAPPERS can get away with saying super crazy shit... folks just nod agreement to the beat.

Ya FEEL me?

The biggest influences on my life have been a loving family, a great education, endurance sports, Camp Olson YMCA, beautiful women, monkeying around in the mountains, and the books of Kurt Vonnegut. Now the sea is playing a big part. As is my dog.


Kites are a little too fragile to bet the farm on.

I first read "Slaughterhouse 5" in high school and only caught about 10% of its significance.....got hooked on Vonnegut and have since read everything he wrote at least twice.

When his last book "A Man Without A Country" came out, I had just dropped out of medical school and fled back to my mountain stronghold.

Feeling safe, with all those elk and buffalo grazing nearby.

For work, I was setting up banquets at the WORT and sleeping through shifts of overnight security at the gated community where Dick Cheney's house is.

For fun, I was tempting gravity in the Tetons.

I bought the overpriced hardcover 'cause I needed to hear something hopeful from the wisest source I knew... excluding sunsets.

I stayed awake only one night of security work...

...the night I read and digested "A Man Without A Country".

Vonnegut had given up hope, lost his sense of humor, and it all spun from his view of the inevitability of our self-destruction.

"The good earth: we could have saved it but were too cheap and lazy."


I believe he is fundamentally right.

So now I'm saying the same thing.

Relax, though. It's probably in my head.

"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand."

I'm going sailing.

MAX