And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.<\/p>\n
The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.<\/p>\n
He told Billy to encourage people to call him Billy\u2014because it would stick in their memories. It would also make him seem slightly magical, since there weren\u2019t any other grown Billys around. It also compelled people to think of him as a friend right away.<\/p>\n
Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.<\/p>\n
Billy found the afternoon stingingly exciting. There was so much to see\u2014dragon\u2019s teeth, killing machines, corpses with bare feet that were blue and ivory. So it goes.<\/p>\n
Billy was guided by dread and the lack of dread. Dread told him when to stop. Lack of it told him when to move again. He stopped.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would take another Earthling to explain it to you. Earthlings are the great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or avoided. I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.<\/p>\n
Tralfamadorians don\u2019t see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millepedes\u2014\u201c with babies\u2019 legs at one end and old people\u2019s legs at the other,\u201d says Billy Pilgrim.<\/p>\n
Another time Billy heard Rosewater say to a psychiatrist, \u201cI think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren\u2019t going to want to go on living.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a still life on Billy\u2019s bedside table\u2014two pills, an ashtray with three lipstick-stained cigarettes in it, one cigarette still burning, and a glass of water. The water was dead. So it goes. Air was trying to get out of that dead water. Bubbles were clinging to the walls of the glass, too weak to climb out.<\/p>\n
And on and on it went\u2014that duet between the dumb, praying lady and the big, hollow man who was so full of loving echoes.<\/p>\n
The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn\u2019t look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again: Oh, boy\u2014they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: \u201cThere are right people to lynch.\u201d Who? People not well connected. So it goes.<\/p>\n
It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor.<\/p>\n
Billy switched on a floor lamp. The light from the single source threw the baroque detailing of Montana\u2019s body into sharp relief. Billy was reminded of fantastic architecture in Dresden, before it was bombed.<\/p>\n
Tralfamadorians, of course, say that every creature and plant in the Universe is a machine. It amuses them that so many Earthlings are offended by the idea of being machines.<\/p>\n
Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer. So it goes.<\/p>\n
Trout\u2019s leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race.<\/p>\n
The news of the day, meanwhile, was being written in a ribbon of lights on a building to Billy\u2019s back. The window reflected the news. It was about power and sports and anger and death. So it goes.<\/p>\n
The Earthling figure who is most engaging to the Tralfamadorian mind, he says, is Charles Darwin\u2014who taught that those who die are meant to die, that corpses are improvements. So it goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep. The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was<\/p>\n