A good friend of mine is gone now. He died a couple of days ago, and I already miss him. For him, there are no last respects, at least in my lifetime. I will continue to respect him, and should I live to be 84, I hope to be as lucid and passionate as Kurt Vonnegut.

I knew Kurt very well. He, unfortunately, did not know me. The misfortune is all one sided. He has missed nothing, and I have missed much. I did know him, though. At least, I knew the part of him he exposed in his writing, the part that admired and feared and loved humanity, the part that was saddened by our hate and pain and selfishness and capacity for destruction.

I knew that bit of him.

This is not about him.

Many others are writing about him, those who knew the man himself, and not the doppleganger with whom I was acquainted. As with most writing, this is about me.

I first met Kurt in Germany. He invited me to experience the Allied firebombing of Dresden with him. His invitation was disguised, and I did not know where he was leading me, but I willingly and gladly followed him there. He went into the slaughterhouse in Dresden, and climbed out onto the surface of the moon. I was there beside him, startled completely by this alien landscape.

I read science fiction all the time. This was the most alien place I have ever been.

He took me there, and I knew he was telling me the truth. He showed me that moment from his life. He, like his brother Ray Bradbury, mixed together a lethal and giddy cocktail of fact and fiction, laced with strychnine and humor. Millions of people drank down that brew like it was Kool-Aid served up by Jim Jones himself.

I drank it, and I felt agitated and sick and stupefied, and I queued up for more.

I went with Kurt on regular outings then. He showed me syphilitics mechanically crossing the street. You want to keep kids from having sex? Make them read that passage from Breakfast of Champions. He introduced me to his family, his father and mother and uncles. And he introduced me to one of my favorite phrases. And so on.

Me, I don't want to keep the kids from having sex.

I don't want to force anyone to do anything.

Or not to do anything.

I want only one thing, and I won't tell you what that is.

My wife tells me I feel far too much guilt. I feel guilty about many things:

I feel guilty that I am unable to satisfy demand for my time. I feel guilty that my daughter doesn't have a better life, though she has had a very good one so far. I feel guilty that I drink too much. I feel guilty that I write too little (or far too much, depending on your point of view). I feel guilty I allowed this country I love so much to invade and destroy another country. I feel guilty there is social injustice, and I do nothing to stop it.

And so on.

Kurt introduced me to many people, and most of them felt deep guilt about something. About destroying the world. About destroying a life. About being a patriot by betraying your country. About surviving Dresden, and then collecting the corpses of those who did not survive.

These people I met made me realize my feelings of guilt were not only okay, but natural. Many people feel guilt about many things. The trick is this: don't allow your guilt to paralyze you. At least, I think that's the trick.

I wonder how much guilt Kurt carried with him. I imagine he would say, "Just enough."

I believe firmly that we die quite finally. I believe there is no ghost, no soul, no immortality, no afterlife. I believe our only meaning in life is to perpetuate beauty and love, because those are the only things we produce worth taking to the stars. I believe our species, or something very like our species, should go out among the stars, and our only reason for doing so is to take beauty with us.

Otherwise, we might as well stay at home and order out for pizza.

So I also believe the only measure of our life, the only yardstick by which we can judge ourselves, is how much we have helped spread love and beauty throughout the universe.

And by that yardstick, Kurt Vonnegut's life measures at damned near a thousand kilometers. His life has left behind much beauty, much love.

The beauty is painful and ugly.

The love is sad an unreciprocated.

And because of all this, it is the beauty of truth, the love of insight and compassion and potential redemption. At the heart of it, we all deserve redemption. One day, we will all receive redemption.

My life measured that way is about one-point-two meters, which isn't too bad, really.

My good friend Kurt introduced me to much of what I know about the world. I wish I could one day repay him by giving my own truth to the world, however pallid and meager it might be. That is the only way to repay what we have received. We give back that which we have taken, and so we get to keep both. And if we all give back, the world is a greater and better and more beautiful place.

I don't believe it. We will none of us receive redemption.

Not a single one.

And we don't even deserve it.

But we can hope, and we can strive, not for redemption, but for the right to deserve redemption. We can do that, at least, right?

In this country of United States of America, we say there is a Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Except for the stupid and archaic grammar, this platitude is stupid and wrong. It has hold of the wrong end of the stick. I say, "Treat others as they would like to be treated." It's a little harder, but then we all get treated as we would like to be treated.

The sadists and masochists have this down pat.

I mention all this, because I think it's something I learned a long, long time ago from Kurt. From the time he first became my teacher, until he became my friend, and even until today, and probably into the future, I have learned a lot from him.

His is a simple lesson, really, and it is this:

We are, each and every one of us, from skin to bone, human.

I think this is why he was always outraged and amazed when one big group of humans would attack and kill another big group of humans. Perhaps this is also why he was perpetually astounded by our ability to treat others as if they were not human at all.

But then, he was never impressed by the way we treated non-humans, either. I guess if we have the wherewithal to destroy ourselves, we might as well take as much of the world with us as possible. It might as well be murder-suicide.

I never realized how depressing Kurt was. Huh.

Not that these thoughts are attributable to Kurt Vonnegut, the actual-factual man. No, these are the thoughts of my good friend Kurt Vonnegut, the doppleganger. Specifically, they are my thoughts, which I attribute to him.

I want only one thing, and I will tell you what that is:

I want to wander among the stars.

If we ever do take our beauty and love into space, it will only be because of Kurt Vonnegut, and those like him. If we make it there, and spread ourselves out among the stars, and mingle with the cosmos, I hope we take him with us. We need him to remind us of guilt, and hope, and the possibility of deserving redemption.

And so on.