Everything In Its Place

It's a cliche. That photograph, actual or imagined, that we all have, that we all look to when things are rough and we need to escape. Everyone's photograph is different. A beach where the sand is sugar white and the water is a cool blue sky. A lone cabin in the woods where the trees are topped with snow. The idea is serenity. The idea is escape.

And yet the photograph, an imagined one, that I keep coming back to isn't a landscape. Nor is it very serene.

It's a photograph of a me, it looks like twenty years from now, looking out the window of a hotel room at night. I'm sitting and I have a glass of scotch in my left hand, held near my lips. I can place myself in this photograph. It's almost 11:00 p.m. The hotel is very nice, but I'm not in a suite. I've just come back from some dinner on yet another tour. I've taken off my tie and my shoes, but my black suit jacket, my white shirt with too much starch, my black dress slacks are still on. I'm uncomfortable in them, but I've kept them on. I have the air conditioning set at arctic. Every once in a while, I'll sip the scotch. I'm being pensive, just looking into the city at night. I can't tell which city it is. San Francisco? Baltimore? I'm not sure how I'm feeling. I'm not sure how I got there, why I'm there.

When things have gotten tough, at work, in my heart, this image keeps coming back to me. It feels like the completion of a mosaic. I have no idea what it means.