NORTH CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA—I get to the Charleston International Airport check-in agent.

“I’m sorry sweetheart. It looks like your flight has been cancelled due to severe–”

And those are the last words I hear.

The agent’s explanation, the drone of passenger pagings and the gentle roll of Southern conversation all get drowned out by the steep rush of calm against my eardrums and neck. I sigh luxuriously.

Some time ago I promised myself, that while it is traditional to treat travel turmoil as a burden, I would treat it as a pause.

Not in time but in place. You see, when your flight is canceled no one knows where you are. They think they do but they are wrong. Those that you left and those you are traveling towards imagine you in the sky hurling away and toward.

But you are not. You are secret.

I bolted for the courtesy phone and scanned available accommodations. I chose using my hotel algorithm. Hotels with beds that vibrate, inflate/deflate, lift, move or otherwise are activated score highest, factoring in, of course, wifi.

I was in luck: The North Charleston Radisson has Sleep Number Beds and wifi.

Once checked in—Jesus secretly in tow—the night was mine to wander lost in place. I got lost in a Baptist cemetery touching the spanish moss and near-vanished etchings of birth and death dates.

Back at the Radisson, after pumping up one side of the bed beyond the recommended firmness level (100!) and below the recommended softness level (5!) it was time to fall back into place. The tubes beckoned.

I launched Twhirl and began twittering my location, Tumbling North Charleston history and Flickring images from the disintegrating cemetery. I trickled back into place.

Being solitary and adrift in South Carolina or any place is easy. Far easier than it is online for me. My computer carries my place, my home, my communities. Keeping it closed is an escape but doing so eventually closes me off from everyone.

The social ramifications of decreased face-time and increased ichat time can be argued as either disastrous or enlightening to a culture. But these distinctions, unlike the polarized Sleep Number bed I am writing on, are not dichotomous. I’ll be damned if anything cultural is.

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Posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 9:10 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.