so ok, after my morning nap (see previous post), i was fired up to go to work and sort some stacks of paper.
i got up, took a shower, ate some food, checked my email, got ready to go, and left the house.
i felt kind of smart because i have been annoyed recently by carrying my full set of keys around wherever i go, so i put my house key on a little detachable chain, and i remembered to add my bike key to it because i was going to pick my bike up from in front of cafe pizzaria, where i left it on thursday afternoon.
so i fiddled with my keys, put on my headphones, and had a lovely walk into campus.
i climbed the stairs to my office, took a deep breath, got ready to hunker down for some serious sortation… and realized that i didn’t have the key to my office door.
this was immensely amusing to me, given that i joke with myself all the time about how something always keeps me from going to the office on saturday, no matter my intentions, and so it seemed fitting that i would decide to do something new with my keys on the day that i actually managed to make it to the door.

i decided to sit in the hallway and listen to the rest of the song that was playing because it made me happy, and this made me think about how awesome the personal music revolution really is. i have come to realize that my entire outlook on the world is bumped up like seventeen notches on the sunny scale when i’m walking around with my headphones on. the people that i pass seem beautiful, the storefronts seem charming, and the wind never seems quite as cold. i think it’s because good music sets the baseline state of my brain at “the human capacity for beauty is awe-inspiring”, and it’s just hard to get upset by stuff when i’m in that zone. the first time i realized this i had the thought that maybe the reason that the ipod and other mp3 players have gripped our culture so tightly is because they combat a lot of the forces that otherwise make us want to throw up walls between one another as we walk down the street. streets are crowded, people are busy, we’re running late, bums are asking for money, there are ads on the sides of buildings and buses, papers get shoved in our faces… even in bloomington it’s enough to make you feel a little overwhelmed, not to mention the way it feels in actual city cities. we need to step back a bit, so we carry around these little musical bubble worlds, personalized for our mood and tastes, and even though i know that people complain about headphones on the street as an isolating force, what strikes me is actually a deeper sense of feeling close together, and i’m not just talking about some kind of strange affinity with everyone because they all have the same frickin white cords dangling out of their pockets.

i’m talking about that moment when you’re listening to a song you haven’t heard in a while, or maybe one you’ve been immersed in all day, and one of the lyrics suddenly jumps out at you as the greatest thing you’ve ever heard. you are dumbstruck and swept away for a second, but then you snap back into the moment because the verse peaks just as some stranger in liz taylor glasses walking a shih-tzu smiles at you as she passes by, or a young family gets out of a minivan looking a little flustered and tired and you feel like you know them even though you’ve never seen them before, or a couple walks out of a restaurant and adjusts their leftovers so that they can hold hands as they walk away, and your heart does a little flipflop…
in these moments your own personal soundtrack, chosen from within your own little bubble, feels like the perfect match for the whole scene, and even though you know it’s irrational and silly, you get this sense that everyone fits together, and there’s nothing you can do but smile, rock your head from side to side, and mouth the words silently, hoping you don’t look too much like a crazy person but not really caring all that much because it just feels like the right thing to do, and surely everyone can see that.

or is that just me?
:)

anyway, i love it.
and i was feeling that way as i walked away from my office, grabbed my bike, and headed back home.
i decided that it would make me cranky to go back to the office, so i chose another task that i had been unsure when i would find time for – laundry!
and thus my day has evolved according to its own volition, ignoring my best laid plans.

shrug

perhaps it is because i enjoy such spontaneous reformulations of my answer to the question: “what am i doing today?” that i can never really get myself to take my schedules all that seriously.
i like to make plans, but i like it more when they change and i end up doing something better.
what can i say, i like being reminded that anything is possible.
:)

now i am at david’s house, where i am able to sit and launder and do work and benefit from his generosity in absentia, since he is in new york city for the weekend.
i’m a bit taken aback by the rapidly darkening sky, but i think i’ve managed to get quite a bit done, and the night is just beginning, so…

i am off to the store to equip myself for the upcoming week of home food preparation.
after that, i may play some pool, though i suppose i can never really say these things for sure…
;)

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 4th, 2006 at 7:15 pm and is filed under music, things i do. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.