The minor key drone of “City Ride” is bouncing off the molded plastic dashboard as the car shimmies at the red light, two turns away from home. To say the expression I’m wearing as I stare without purpose into the morning sunshine is blank would be giving it far too much definition. It’s the absolute absence that’s startling as I sit there acutely aware of how empty all this feels.
I can’t think of any place I’d rather not be than home, save for the grocery store to buy the 2% milk we need or the post office which has two pieces of certified mail waiting for me as the two peach colored Sorry We Missed You’s tucked into the sun visor remind me. But I have commitments at home and I’m nothing if not reliable.
Reliable, that’s the word I used to describe myself recently when an interviewer asked for a single word, just one word, to sum me up in the world’s smallest nutshell. It seemed noble in my mind at the time to say reliable, however now it reeks of a utilitarian slate grey, a functional piece of eastern European post war architecture, the concrete administrative office of an unnamed subcommittee after the rain with streaks of greyscale remaining as a reminder of what just happened, a sturdy palace of shuffled papers.
The next song, which may not be the proper next song because my fucking phone shuffles albums without a reasonable explanation as to why or a clear method of stopping the random madness, is celebratory and it greets me like a singing telegram without a door to slam in its face.
This is the feeling of feeling like you are doing nothing well. This was yesterday morning.
