I remember driving down to Indianapolis to visit Uncle Kurt when I was 7, sitting in the back right bench of the latest and greatest testament to modern americanism and the nuclear family--the dodge caravan. After two and a half hours of temporizing via mindless car games popularized by a lack of ingenuity and ephemeral familial camaraderie we would cave into my mothers incessant plea to recite a slew of glory-be's hail mary's and our fathers known in closer, more religious circles as the rosary. Its not that i was ardently opposed to saying this supposed great prayer of the Blessed Mother, like any good catholic parents my parents inculcated me to the importance of such things via the CCC animated catholic cartoons. if you recall Fatima: The day the sun danced was the episode where these kids saw the virgin Mary and she told them to say the rosary. so they did for fear of the fire of hell and brimstone and etc etc. needless to say it only slightly put the fear of God in me, but for me a 5 year old child riddled with adhd and hopped up on caprisuns and chex-mix i just wanted to look outside at the sterile and repetitious Indiana wilderness. my uncle always sided with me and reinforced my tendency to simpy enjoy things in the moment and to not be oh so worried with trees of tomorrow that when they grow, if they grow, will dull your moment in the sun. uncle kurt was a humanist. this was largely the result of years of ivy league and top 10 university education. he said that he had come a long way since his days as a religious child. with so much death in the family you can either go and become really religious about the whole thing or you can just come to accept it as the natural progression of life. with that realization you see were here to mess around nothing else. that was what the anthropology from chicago had taught him--well he says it completely affirmed his long harbored suspicions. i suspected it back then but i never really believed it. i like to think humanity in our age is remarkably different and is destined--not just for the endless cycle of replacement but for some teleological end. like uncle kurt saw and wrote about, with out that we are just ants wandering around until death takes us. i never had the chance to speak to uncle kurt again since realizing the inherent pomp and priggishness we afford ourselves as the modernman but i imagine he took the blow to our collective self esteem in stride. i suspect he would have said something to the nature of "its hilarious". he had that macabre sense of humor. but as i think of it he is right. if we arent really destined for providence or anything like that we are a fine, fine on-going joke. really we should just be enjoying this place. one of the real reasons i loved uncle kurts place was the greenery and gardens of his home. we would spend hours playing lawn games and sitting on his veranda talking about whatever. that was the thing that was the most satisfying about our visits, uncle kurt was a real person. he wanted to know about everything and anything that was going on with our lives--even me the 7 year old gadfly i was back then. he believed in real people too. there are those mischievous, daring, outspoken, deleterious souls who make life interesting and bearable for us all through their antics and devilish commentary on life and its current happenings. but they are also savvy and possessing some intellectual ingenuity in their teasing. uncle kurt said he saw himself in me as a kid. so we would exchange stories of pranks and wild adventures that often tempted fate and our livelihood--it was not living unless you tried to live life anyway right? every so often uncle kurt woud remind everyone what a grand time we were all having, leaning back in his lawn-chaise lounge and say 'well, isnt this nice'.