So it goes.

A friend just texted me that Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. Complications from a brain injury sustained in a fall. While I regrettably admit that lately, I haven't read Vonnegut, let alone much of ANYTHING, I'll never forget the first time I read him.

I was in high school, a time when open young minds were frothing with ideas and being blown by philosophy. I was a naive child in a rural town surrounded by mountains, both literally and figuratively. The mountains provided a very real buffer from the world-at-large, and the idea of going to The Big City was a scary prospect, even ignoring the fact that, at the time, it actually kind of was. My parents, before giving in to convention, took us regularly. We were the fortunate ones. Many kids my age never saw The Big City, and I wonder if those same kids ever made it. Probably not. And a note to the reader: The Big City was only an hour and change by car.

Keeping this fact of isolation in mind, there were a handful of us, only a handful, that found inspiration and humor and worshiped the absurd. We played ridiculous records and laughed on someone's living room floor and played instruments (very badly) and wrote each other very sick poems about how great it would be if everyone suddenly dropped dead of some ridiculous disease. Or if aliens came and gave Ronald Reagan an anus probe. We were silly and dark and tested boundaries and hated religion and broke into the art rooms after hours to make mysterious sculptures. It was a grand time. And we were reading.

A friend of mine was reading Cat's Cradle. "You should definitely read this," he said and placed the tattered red-covered book gingerly onto my eager palms. It might as well have been a shard of Ice-9.

Kurt Vonnegut was instantly my Favorite Author of All Time.

Years later, I got a job in The Big City, working at a large ad agency. We were located on the East side, about a block from the United Nations (a fact that became very annoyingly apparent when there was some kind of world crisis, which was about once a week).

The copywriters and I were one day discussing our favorite authors. Inevitably, Mr. Kurt Vonnegut came up pretty quickly.

"Oh haven't you seen him?" One of them turned to me, surprised.

"Seen who?" I asked.

"Kurt Vonnegut!"

"Huh?!"

"No shit! He lives two doors down and stops in the bodega every morning!"

Well, needless to say, I altered my schedule slightly. Before long, I began to see Mr. Kurt Vonnegut. He wore a cardigan. He had wiry gray hair. And he always had a smile on his face.

Eventually, I worked up the nerve to speak to him.

"Good morning, Mr. Vonnegut," I said.

"Well, good morning!" He said back, a smile on his face and in his voice.

And then I got all embarrassed and went back to my regular schedule and only saw him once or twice over the next year. And then, as ad agencies go, we were absorbed by another agency and a became Agency Colossus, and I quit and went to a small design firm way downtown and never saw him again.

Knowing he is not in this world anymore makes me sad. Knowing he is in this world forever makes me happy. When I return to the land of Hoboken, I will pay a visit to the library and begin my own journey of appreciation to a great man, a man who squirted a shitload of colors into my young mind.

Player Piano here I come.