Farewell, Kilgore Trout.
hey, it’s been a minute
Hello, again.
It’s been a little while since I’ve written anything here.
I don’t have much to say at this point outside of this: life is better than it has been in the past.
What I am about to share is silly and simple. I wrote it a few months ago in the middle of the night. I made one mild pass of edits on it, but for the most part it is what spilled out into the notes app at 3:00 am after having spent multiple months consuming everything written by Kurt Vonnegut.
His books are my favorite books I’ve ever read. They made me feel less alone.
This story has just one message at its core: thank you.
Farewell, Kilgore Trout.
“So, you’re saying that heaven is just a duck pond?” I asked.
“Precisely,” replied Trout.
“That doesn’t sound very interesting.”
“There’s lots of ducks.”
We talked for hours. Long stretches of silence briefly interrupted by Trout’s musings of what ducks eat, what they sound like, what they do.
Ducks eat bread, mostly?
After awhile, it became apparent to the both of us that it was time for me to return home, to put this quest behind me. I stood up from the bench and gazed across the horizon at the light bouncing off the surface of the pond. It appeared to be sunrise. Or sunset. I couldn’t be certain but the rainbow sherbet sky told me I better be going.
I turned to Trout, making sure to take note of everything I could note in this small slice of eternity. I thanked him for his time and for his stories. He said he barely remembered writing them. That didn’t hurt like I thought it might.
As I walked away from the pond, I looked back one last time. Trout was still on that bench, laughing to himself at the sight of one of those webbed footed bastards with its tail end erect, mooning God if God were watching.
“I miss you, Trout,” I said.
Trout reminded me that sometimes I would miss him. And in other times I would forget him entirely. How I would hear his voice in the sounds of a grand piano being orchestrated beautifully or in the homeless man muttering to himself on the corner or when waiting in line at the grocery store seems to be an eternity.
He said a lot of things about life (not all necessarily in that moment). About how we will live, how we will likely die, and how none of that matters once you get to the duck pond.
In short, he said to go and live life the way it ought to be lived: full of kindness and silliness and horrifying despair and everything in between.
I nodded and thanked him again and continued back toward the door through which I had entered. A single Post-It note rested at eye level, a speck of yellow against the deep cherry red wood of the door.
“So it goes,” said the note.
I opened the door and walked through, back to everything I knew and everything I’d ever know. I closed the door behind me, knowing without really knowing that I couldn’t steal another look at Trout, perched nonchalantly on that park bench, overlooking the expanse of the pond.
I stepped out onto the sidewalk once again, decided there was nowhere I’d rather be than home, sipping on coffee and listening to the love of my life talk about their day.
I put one foot out, then another, then another, etc. etc., a ritual I’ve had since I was a toddler. I looked around at the busy sidewalks, each person bleeding into the next, bleeding into a giant blurry soup of motion and desire and purpose.
I laughed.
Lots of ducks, indeed.