I'm lost on a hot night in Texas.

I'm emotionally unmoored, no longer attached to my surroundings, and I've gone out to find solace.

My martial arts friends are also my musician friends, and fans of same.

I'm following a standing invitation on a late weekday night, to come out and hear some music.

Maybe I can take the next day off, maybe I'll just take the sleep dep.. but I follow them all out, and I'm on a street corner in downtown Austin, sweating in the summer night, or huddled alone on a corner in a tiny bar, sipping my Shiner and grinning at the band.

I only recently gave away the boots I used to wear.. they fell apart from the walking and the dancing. I used to slip them on, under my hakama, walking back to my car from aikido class, after training late into exhaustion, training myself into tatters, driving home destroyed, and wondering why I always felt I was going the wrong way..

It's hard to explain, this social activity, I did all by myself.

Being alone in a crowd takes a certain kind of deeply isolated mindset, and that was me, at the time. I knew the band, I knew I was safe. I knew a couple of likely guests, one of them a quiet good friend, teacher and resource.

Things could have gone very, very badly, but they did not.. and I could sit at a table and quietly listen to my heart, and blues to match its tune.

I would walk back to my car in that absolute isolation, drive home in same, and go to sleep alone, next to someone else.

That's why it didn't work.. I am still alone.