>From an "advice letter" written to a high school class from the 84-year-old Vonnegut:
"What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience BECOMING, to find out what's inside you, to MAKE YOUR SOUL GROW." More "life advice" from Vonnegut, this time to his own kids: "You're learning now that you do not inhabit a solid, reliable, social structure that the older you get people around you are worried, moody, goofy human beings who themselves were little kids only a few days ago. So home can fall apart and schools can fall apart, usually for childish reasons, and what have you got? A space wanderer named Nan. "And that's O.K. I'm a space wanderer named Kurt, and Jane's a space wanderer named Jane, and so on. When things go well for days on end, it is an hilarious accident. "You're dismayed at having lost a year, maybe, because the school fell apart. Well I feel as though I've lost the years since Slaughterhouse-Five <http://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Five-A-Novel-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0385\ 333846/?tag=braipick-20> was published, but that's malarky. Those years weren't lost. They simply weren't the way I'd planned them. Neither was the year in which Jim had to stay motionless in bed while he got over TB. Neither was the hear in which Mark went crazy, then put himself together again. Those years were adventures. Planned years are not. "I look back on my own life and I wouldn't change anything. . ." "I think it's important to live in a nice country rather than a powerful one. Power makes everybody crazy." Vonnegut on his daily routine: "In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. I'm just as glad they haven't consulted me about the tiresome details. What they have worked out is this: I awake at 5:30, work until 8:00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11:45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach of prepare. When I get home from school at about 5:30, I numb my twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water ($5.00/fifth at the State Liquor store, the only liquor store in town. There are loads of bars, though.), cook supper, read and listen to jazz (lots of good music on the radio here), slip off to sleep at ten. I do pushups and sit-ups all the time, and feel as though I am getting lean and sinewy, but maybe not. Last night, time and my body decided to take me to the movies. I saw The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I took very hard. To an unmoored, middle-aged man like myself, it was heart-breaking. That's all right. I like to have my heart broken."
