My piano is out of tune. It happened gradually and I am so used to it I didn’t notice until my mother who is in her 90s heard over the telephone and gave me shit. We had a grand piano growing up, thanks Mum and thanks especially her mother, Rose Winston, the original instigator of the pianistic business that is her grandson’s calling card. A few years ago we moved my mother into an assisted living apartment and gave the piano away, . It’s a mighty interesting threshold to cross, the space of departing iconic objects from your childhood. It’s hard to see it for what it, like seeing humans as biological machines in The Sirens of Titan. The woman selling coffee wore a short sleeve shirt, there was a prominent tombstone tattoo on her bicep. The text inside the grave read familiar but I couldn’t place it. I decided not to ask, though obviously such an odd and strong image is asked about, especially if visible to everyone. The text said “everything was beautiful and nothing hurt”. I turned to exit, proud that I short circuited the auto-pilot smalltalk machine between my ears, when she asked about my hat and within a minute I heard words leaving my mouth, “what’s the tattoo about?” I lost. But in a way I won. What better world than one where people intentionally ink Kurt Vonnegut Jr. stories to their body for the rest of their lives. Hi Ho