franz ferdinand starts playing in this cafe (40.681998,-73.960205), and all of a sudden I am in India, walking along MG road (12.97446,77.607915), looking around, feeling lost. it is wet and it is damp. earlier in the day I had gone to Planet M, looked down at the CD of this Glasgow-based band, with a price tag starting with "Rs." somehow it seems utterly appropriate to buy the CD here; that is, not to listen to Indian music necessarily but to be true to this city here, total engagement in a city already engaged in this relentless global intertwining. The night is very dark and I know that I will go home, lie on one of the two empty beds, stare at the ceiling, have Larium-hazed dreams. whatever it is this sticky sense of disorientation from travel I miss, the isolation of having nothing but choice and choice and choice open to you. to where will you go and whom will you meet; and how will you choose to not do the millions of things that you will inevitably not doing?

having entered that country you cut yourself off, discard a thousand choices by walking this way, slough off a million other ones by stepping over here. you could have done this, or that, or seen this, or done that, but as the infinitude of an abstraction compresses down into a lived reality, your choices narrow. having carved out the little, thin tendril of what-you-did-there you reify a place, make it yours; by 'missing out' you engage in a multitude; by forgetting to do something you make it into a place you are now able to misunderstand.