I’m writing now from Bennington, VT, and it’s the end of the first day at the Bennington Chamber Music Conference held here at Bennington College. Getting here was a bit of an adventure, but it was all worth it in the end. Fortunately, you can remove any fly from any ointment, and the ointment still works fine. While well over half my day was spent trying to arrive, sometimes the adventure is in the chase…
I was supposed to leave Minneapolis by 5:50am this morning, but my United Airlines flight from MSP to O’Hare was nearly an hour late due to a tardy inbound crew. Unfortunately, this mean I would miss my connection in O’Hare to Albany, NY. So, as soon as a man arrived at the ticket counter, I got right in line to figure out what I could possibly do. There was a lady in front of me who beat me in the line, but thankfully a second person arrived at the counter, and she was able to help me. To my astonishment, however, the lady who beat me in the line had the exact same problem I had.
It all was very genial, though. The U.S. Airways staff were very accommodating, booking us on a different itinerary and on planes that were actually booked to capacity. While the lady who helped me told me the wrong gate number for the new outbound flight (and since I have a difficult time trusting people anyway, unless I know them very well, I made sure to double check the gate number), I managed to arrive at the correct gate number.
The lady–whose name I later found out was Laurie (perhaps it’s spelled Lori?)–marveled at the predicament and how quickly United solved it. While the woman at the counter of our new carrier, U.S. Airways, seemed a bit annoyed that United booked us on a now oversold flight, she seemed happy to help us out, mainly because, I imagine, we were organized and arrived quite early and had our stuff together.
What was all so wonderful about this whole set of circumstances, however, is that I had the most wonderful conversation with Lori (or is it spelled Laurie?). We spoke about what I did, and we spoke about what she did. I said I was off to a chamber music festival, and she said she was off to a yoga class. Turned out, she was into the exact kind of yoga that I’m into: the kind that treats yoga as a mind/body experience, rather than just a body experience… a kind of mindful yoga where instead of using the breath as your anchor, you use whatever muscle groups you’re using in a certain pose as your anchor.
We talked about how I’m not very religious, but how we both admire certain Buddhist beliefs, partly because they’re not necessarily beliefs, more scientific facts that indicate, without a doubt, that mindfulness has the same rejuvenating power as sleep. (Yes. A fact. Look it up.) Buddha was essentially an atheist anyway, so Buddhism seems a perfect philosophy for atheists like me to delve into. (Granted, some sects of Buddhism do get a bit weird, though, as in large tenets of Islam and Christianity and a host of other bizarre persuasions, but I’ll stick to the portions of Buddhism that actually do make logical sense.)
It was all very nice, though, this conversation. And it would never had happened had that United staff been on time to their jobs. A wonderful coincidence, naturally. The universe is so massive and so large that of course improbably things like two Buddhists (or whatever we were… two people of similar minds, I suppose) bump into each other in a way such as this. Some people call it fate. But, it’s just chaos happening.
Anyway, our new itinerary took us from MSP to Philadelphia, and then from there to Albany. And Philadelphia (where it’s always sunny, apparently) has a much nicer airport to Chicago’s awful, horrible, sprawlish O’Hare. Plus I’ve only been to Philadelphia once before (whereas I’ve been to Chicago several times I’ve lost count… I do love that city, mind, I just never want to live there), and that was only very briefly, so it was nice to see Philadelphia’s skyline again to reacquaint myself with a city that I have a feeling I would adore.
It was also so nice because Lorrie (or is it Lory?) and I rode the shuttle to the correct terminal together, sat next to each other to wait for our flight to Albany to board, shared cookies, and just generally had a wonderful time becoming acquainted. I gave her my card, she shared me the names of some yoga resources in the Cities, and she became the most “single serving friend” (as Tyler Durden would say).
If that wasn’t perfect enough, I organized a ride from Albany to Bennington via an individual named Erin, who was equally interesting, very easy to talk to, who had remarkably similar political beliefs (it’s rare to bring up politics so early on in a relationship of any kind), and who spoke in the most natural tangents conceivable. Remarkable.
And if this still didn’t just make my day, the campus on Bennington is just absolutely gorgeous. I’ve been yearning for quite some time now to have serious, uninterrupted time to compose and work with musicians, and this campus is a perfect place to do that. It’s a campus unlike any other campus I’ve ever set foot in. It feel more like a kind of old military base that quartered soldiers, complete with open lawns for various routines for them drill. (I don’t mean this pejoratively, by the way.) The buildings in the area of campus that I’m spending most of my time are old, wooden, house-shaped buildings, painted white, like old homes on farmsteads. There’s definitely something very New Englandish about this place. I could possibly imagine a campus like this existing in Minnesota. It just wouldn’t fit. Bennington’s campus is a campus for Vermont.
And the views of tall hills! The smells of crisp, late summer air!
But most importantly, what a wonderful group of musicians! So genuine, kind, warm, and welcoming.
It’s also so wonderful to see my old teacher, Laura Schwendinger, again.
I’m really looking forward to this week of music making and music creating, in the hills of rural Vermont. It’s the first time I’ve set foot in Vermont (it was also the first time I’ve set foot in New York), and it’s absolutely splendid.