From the beginning...

So from the time my cell phone-alarm clock goes off at 6:30 a.m. I know today is going to be one of those days. I can just feel it in my eyes, the back of my head, and mostly in my body which is tired from the 3 hours of yoga I did the day before. It's the hot kind, where you smash yourself in a room with dozens of bodies in 115 degree heat and even more humidity. It's the kind where you drink lots and lots of water and plan ahead all day just to do something amazing for your body. And it's only supposed to be 90 minutes, but I hear about people doing doubles, so I tried it out. But my body feels worn, not more flexible or healthy. And I can feel it as I get up to go to work.

I don't straighten my hair or do my eye make-up. I wear my glasses and throw on some clothes suitable enough for a business casual office. It all reminds me that I work at a business casual type office, and feeling that 8-5 pulling me closer, keeping me in for years and years to come because of the surviving salary and benefits. Because of the comfort. And it's the first time in my life that I can feel that choice...that definite comfort. And it picks at me.

The day goes by as any usual day, any day that rushes into decision making and the weeding out of information. My only reprieve seems to come with a few friends sarcastic e-mailing, a coffee break, The Weakerthans on my lunch break, and knowing that at some core I'm doing something right. It's a day that just begins and ends on the clock. And just when I'm getting used to Charlottesville, just when I think it's safe to believe in a place that I've struggled with for the past year and a half, I get the lights cut off on me during my every so often trip to Whole Foods.

From the emergency lights above I can't see the hippies, healthies, and old people who were just standing around me...but I can hear the employees hoping they get off work early, and then the silence, the type of silence that makes everyone uncomfortable. The girl next to me immediately gets out her cell phone and calls someone. Others get out their cell phones and start to shop by the light of it. I just stand there, waiting. I think of that hot, hot yoga room. I think of how stale things seem to get without electricity and eventually I make my way up to the front of the store.

Maybe it's the day or the dust that's brought this. Maybe it's the wind. Because it's turning into one of those nights where the clouds roll over each other and everything's a dark blue with that gray tone. Maybe it's because people don't feel very comfortable being in an uncertainty on a day where tragedy is defined by 33 and who could have done what in 2 hours. The manager has instructed people to check out using a calculator, and they are just underestimating those items that they don't know the exact price of. Just as I start to wait in line, power hums back on and you can feel the relief in the room. Everyone can hear the noise again.

And I don't begin to understand why I'm paying $2.75 for gas on the way home, or why there were hardly any cars on the usually busy route 29, or why I've decided that taking a different way home that is the same amount of time as any other way home (all short cuts and long cuts are the same in Charlottesville) feels somehow like I'm still trying to figure things out, but it does. I've switched from The Weakerthans to Wilco, because at this point it's gotten darker outside, and everything still hangs between rain and nighttime.