It seems like people think you’re crazy for talking about death, but as one of my former English professors who I greatly admired once said, the easiest way to dismiss someone in an argument or a debate is to call them crazy.

On The Road gave me an optimistic reminder. I’m gonna die some day, and so are you. How often do you think about that when you’re afraid of doing something, or when you decide to sit around and do nothing, or when you’re looking at the world like it’s some big huge scary mess?

Death puts all your bullshit day-to-day waste of time troubles into perspective. Why is it pessimistic to think that every day is one day closer to death? I think that’s a very optimistic way to look at life, because it reminds you all the more to make something of that day. It’s a reminder to make every day the greatest day. Can you get any more optimistic than that?

Rest in Peace, Uncle Tim, free from hospital beds and tubes and sickness. Today, and every day following, I will live a little bit more just for you, for your life was cut far too short.

Love,
Your nephew Jim

God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.”
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going God.
- Bokononist last rites, Cat’s Cradle

I’ve just started to get to know you and you’re gone already. I wish I had gone through with finding a way to send you a letter, letting you know that your stories make life worth living. I will make up for it by doing just that, living. The world will sorely miss you.

The world has lost a musical legend, and a musical inspiration and hero of my own. We can only be grateful for the music he left us in those four short years when he shone like the sun. Here’s to you, Syd.

“I’ve been looking all over the place for a place for me / But it ain’t anywhere / It just ain’t anywhere”

“What exactly is a dream? And what exactly is a joke?”

“Won’t you miss me? Wouldn’t you miss me at all?”

-Syd Barrett, 1946-2006