Disconnect

I'm sipping green tea with coconut in some Barnes and Noble in Charlottesville, Virginia.

This is not where I belong.

I'm supposed to be practicing in a sun-ridden second-story room at home, or driving past the prostitutes at 10th and Rural on my way to work, or at the very least boarding a 737 (or, God Forbid, a CRJ) on my way to a gig. Instead I've crossed over into nowheresville.

Not that Charlottesville is nowhere to everyone. Thousands of people live here, and thousands more have graduated from its flagship institution. It's just nowhere to me, right now. I don't know anyone who lives here. I'm not here to do anything in particular. I was dropped off in the parking lot 40 minutes ago by an L.L Bean Subaru Outback. In 50 minutes, if all goes well, I will be picked up in the parking lot by a grey Honda Civic. I will have spent a total of 90 minutes in Charlottesville. Right now, no one can reach me by phone.

So infrequently do we go astray from trajectory of our lives. It's both disorienting and centering, like relinquishing, at the very last moment, our bodies into sleep.