This dark morning, the rain lashes my front windows and Monstrance is on for at least the fourth time in the last twenty-four hours.

So it goes.

The Internet and all the channels on Blogovision are overrun with Vonnegut tributes and redundant notifications, so I will add my voice to the cacophony only to point toward this, by Lance Mannion. And to say, Exactly so: ruined. My life was ruined when I was about thirteen, when my eighth grade English teacher assigned Cat’s Cradle. Game over. I wanted to be a writer.

More than that, though, I wanted to stay awake and pay attention. There was something about Cat’s Cradle that made me realize I was constantly in danger of missing the big picture. It was the first of many books, and he was the first of many writers, to leave me with that sick yet elated feeling. Ursula K Le Guin, Douglas Adams, Ray Bradbury, Annie Dillard, Pynchon. It’s like the old joke about the difference between a virgin and a lightbulb: you can unscrew a lightbulb. You can’t unread stuff like that.

But you can fall back asleep. If I may be so bold as to suggest that art has a message (a claim I would not want to be asked to defend), that message is perhaps: Pay attention! Stay awake! They’re out there, waiting for you to fall asleep, and then they’re going to take over everything else! Keep your lamps trimmed and burning!

And for Vonnegut, like all satirists, the best defense is a good offense. Good artists shock, great artists startle. After all, we can grow numb to shocks, and fall back asleep. What we need are good and frequent startlings. Wake up.

For quite a few reasons (which I won’t bore you with), 2006 was the worst year of my life, and it ended badly. I am heartily glad it’s over, even if a year is an arbitrary demarcation. All that was bad about 2006 fell within the human universe, and such demarcations, tho arbitrary, are also within the human universe. I am therefore confident that the latter will have a real effect upon the former.

I am thankful for the good things that happened during the calendar year of 2006, even tho I could count them on one maimed hand. I am taking seriously the notion of the “new year’s resolution,” never having done so before, and one of my resolutions is to step to the side of polarities. Black-and-white, for example, is a polarity; but to introduce “shades of grey” simply defines a new polarity of “black/white” v. “greys.” Instead, I resolve to look for a meaningful third space.

Also, I simply have a thing against the number six, and I’m glad to see it go.