Felicitous Tempilocity:
n. 1: being in the right place at the right time for a delightful discovery by complete accident; 2: an incident in which all actions leading up to the event were intentional, but where the event itself was not the intention.
Today I ventured on to the St. Thomas campus for some poster whoring for a local non-profit event I had volunteered for. It was a largely uneventful adventure and it went exactly the way I had planned…until the last 15 minutes of my trip. As I was sitting at the bus stop outside of the St. Thomas library, I was letting my MP3 player take me on a delightful, chillaxed journey away from the ever growing concern that I would not make it back to my own campus for my 6 o’clock class with the Dean of Scholarly Detattchment.*
I was led through a progression of places and times, from the Southern porch of Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins down the sun-lit post-rain alley of Snow Patrol into the grassy backyard of Jason Mraz’s avocado farm, where I was led up to the familiar tree house of Death Cab For Cutie. As the KT Tunstall afternoon turned into a dark, star-filled Ryan Adams night, I slept through the darkness to finally awake to a beautiful, crystal clear Sufjan Stevens sunrise. As the breeze was tossing my hair about and the sun was shining down on recently rejuvinated lawns, Sufjan’s mild voice began to serenade me about his road trip to Chicago (all things go, all things go).**
The next thing to happen stunned me into silence. I looked up and the very first person I saw was a student who would have ordinarily never even hit my radar. He had the age-old, patented College Student look about him: t-shirt, shorts, near-bursting backpack and Apple ‘phones. But it was his bright emerald green T-Shirt that caught me off guard: in white lettering in the top-center of a white outline of the state of Illinois read the words:
COME ON! FEEL THE ILLINOISE!
It was a golden moment.
I am sure that the young wearer of this shirt thinks me a fool, as I was unable to do anything but stare and gleefully grin at him. By the time my Sufjan-induced stupor had worn off and I had regained my bloody sense and the use of my own vocal chords, he was too far away for me to approach him. Not that I would have said anything to him had I been in full possession of my own facilities. It doesn’t really matter anyway. Sometimes all you need is some beautiful weather and good tunes to make everything seem OK, even when it isn’t. I don’t know if it was my already acheived sense of contentment or a surprising alignment of the planets that caused this to occur; either way it was enough.
Enough.
*I did make it to class, in case you were wondering. Which you probably weren’t.
**The playlist referred to above is as follows:
STEP BACK, CHILLAX
1. Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins – Handle With Care
2. Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins – The Charging Sky
3. Snow Patrol – How To Be Dead
4. Snow Patrol – You Could Be Happy
5. Jason Mraz – I’m Yours
6. Jason Mraz – Live High
7. Jason Mraz – After An Afternoon
8. Death Cab For Cutie – Title and Registration
9. Death Cab For Cutie – Crooked Teeth
10. Death Cab for Cutie – A Movie Script Ending
11. KT Tunstall – Stoppin’ The Love
12. KT Tunstall – Beauty of Uncertainty
13. Ryan Adams – When The Stars Go Blue
14. Ryan Adams – Wonderwall
15. Ryan Adams – La Cienega Just Smiled
16. Sufjan Stevens – The Dress Looks Nice On You
17. Sufjan Stevens – Chicago
18. Nickel Creek – When You Come Back Down
19. Nickel Creek – The Hand Song
20. Belle and Sebastian – Don’t Leave The Light On, Baby
21. Belle and Sebastian – Waiting For The Moon To Rise
