I had an unpleasant memory from my past as an avid concert-goer. Being at the Cog Factory downtown wearing a flannel shirt and sweating profusely and smoking at the same time. It was very common for me to smoke while I was at concerts, so much so that I remember trying to sneak some into a Widespread show at the Pershing Auditorium in Lincoln. The place was pretty fierce about allowing tobacco products in whatsoever and they were doing full-body pat-downs. There I was right outside the gate and beginning to sweat. I thought, I'll put them down in my socks, because they'll never find them there. I was thinking/ hoping/praying that the feat would work for me. So concerned I was with getting to have something I could smoke with me that I was risking being pushed away from the door of a concert I had spent thirty dollars to get in the door. Nevermind that I was risking my health on a daily basis.
NOW, look--- I'm not on an anti-smoking campaign because having a fear or downright contempt of the institution as a whole is neither fruitful nor productive in terms of wanting to continue a long period of abstinence. I did that the first time I quit back when I was 19 or 20 (yes, I WAS attempting to QUIT at that age) I started to go the militant route on it, decrying anyone who made the conscious decision to smoke at all.. needless to say within and before two months I found myself smoking again just as much as ever before and had to eat a lot of crow from the big stink I made. So I'm doing my best not to be a hypocrite but I will say that I am not missing it now... The actual thought I had was of how many articles of clothing ended up with burn holes in them, and a countless number of times I was actual burned by other people's scalding ash. In the middle of a concert (God how did they justify tearing down the ashtray shrine that was the Ranch Bowl, the nexus of most rock n roll shows in the Omaha area) it was the most startling experience to feel a hot cinder burning its way into your skin, only to turn around and see some grease monkey with long curly scraggily hair and virtually no face standing there in concert pose one leg out with knee bent, head swaying to the music and cigarette in their mouth.... OK, see now even THAT is a bit of a stereotype because God only knows: you have to be trash to smoke. Not entirely true as I found in my suburban experience. There was a time when it seemed like everyone smoked. Conversely, there can a time when everybody was seeming to quit. I'm glad I made it out alive, at least for now. Without dying from an aneurysm while banging my head to the Poster Children at the Cog, or moshing to Fugazi at the Ag Center in Lincoln.

I know that now I can pretty much enjoy a concert as a chance to loosen up, exercise, get pumped up and let my blood flow freely. It's a little more freaky than it used to be, because I feel somewhat out of place, no drink, no smokes. I'm not sure what sold me to the idea that I needed those as props to get through the whole experience, one of the more profound among all human experiences, seeing another person shredding a guitar on stage and a whole group of them making unearthly noises that pierce the skin and wrestle their way to our insides. Music has saved me time and time again, just like Mike D. said on the Check Your Head album. I realize this is like preaching to the choir, especially when the choir preaches back, but it was an amazing realization that I was stifling an expereince myself; that experience being the one of being humbled before a man or woman channelling a great wave of creative energy through his or her being...

Self- discovery and awareness in the middle of January. I have struggled to like January a great deal, and luckily it is almost over. You aren't entirely aware of it how it is the pole in the middle of the road given the whole year. The next thing you have to look forward to in the way of holidays is Valentine's Day, which presuming you are in love with someone, can only be truly enjoyed on condition. I guess an argument could be made that Christmas can only be celebrated on condition as well, that condition meaning that you are Judeo-Christian in heritage but the other holiday which follows from VAlentine's Day is of course, St. Patrick's Day... presumably you don't have to be Irish to really enjoy it, but I've never found that to be entirely the case...I mostly want to be safe and away from bar-crawlers. Truly, I like those moments where you find cause to celbrate regardless of the fact that there is no holiday surrounding it... celebrating life, celebrating again that you figured out that you are in love with the person you live with again, celebrate the fact that you have legs and can walk upright. Celebrate the fact that you have blood punding through your heart. Celebrate trust.

Today we talked about the dues and fees for membership. The fee for coming into a room, telling complete strangers about where you're at. where you're trying to go, how you feel and that it somehow pulls your life together into a narrative which suddenly makes sense a little more than it used to. The fee being the thousands of dollars you pour down the drain, the relationships, the brain cells, etc. You didn't notice paying them and didn't , couldn't predict where it was going to wind you up. And you didn't believe that it was going to amount to much. What you would come to endure. How you would manage to survive yourself. How you begin to bask in laughter. That you would begin to create laughter. That you would begin to find joy again, even on days when the wind whips hard because suddenly you have discovered that people affect you in a profound way, sometimes by their intimacy, sometimes by their aloofness, their objectivity, but they can pentrate your being and you learn to live again. You know long have the strings of a puppet, it's just coming to you naturally, as if you knew it all along, someone just needed to start the fire, to light the spark.

I remember driving a long distance between here and somewhere else and thinking about the course my life could take, what I could legitimately be DOing with myself. I looked at being behind a computer desk for the next however many years, knowing that my true role was to consult. To put down the fence of a human trying to get through the next forty hours of submission to the will of his company. And realized that God gave me brains to use for a reason. He didn't care how I used them, just so long as I applied them toward the good, and just so long as I didn't fully expect to keep various talents to myself, that was how it was supposed to go down... I still like to think about this because I think I might still have yet to find the exact groove into which I can fit myself in terms of vocation... the fact that I like to consult, to teach, to help others question... something along those lines, exploiting my own knowledge that I love to get people to talk about themselves, to identify that they know what they think they know... an admitted Platonist I guess. So I have to imagine that i will need to continue to explore that love, that comfort.

http://aaomaha.org/WWOct06.pdf

Went on Friday to see a pdocuction of My Name is Rachel Corrie at the Unitarian Church in Omaha. The city is coming a long way since the days when it was a stir when Malcolm X came out in theaters. I guess I didn't quite know what to expect from the production as it was a bit vague how you would be able to take scraps of a girl's journals and box them into a play. I have always loved the art form of theater though as an outlet of tremendous emotion and with the ability to allow layers of meaning to stand there like fat strips of bacon for the curious mind to ponder. I feel a bit embarrassed to say my biggest criticism was that it ran too long, but having made that disclaimer, I will say, and Brooke and Kyle both agreed that the play was rather long. Maybe it was the cramped space of the Unitarian pews but even so, you almost have to understnad that the play was in its most unabridged form, and certainly why not? If you've captured the audience long enough to get them to go see a play of curious proportions might as well drive home the nails of discourse. Enough said about that, because what really strikes me about this girl's character is how she was ultimately human. Full of life, full of dreams, hopes, aspirations. She was driven, driven by whatever came to her. She was on the firing line of life. And knowing that that was where she found herself, they sort of bring into play this Christ-like human being... Christ-like in childish wonder, Christ-like in her ability to think outside the box, but still analytical, still working hard to see the bigger picture. That allusion of course is imposed by me only, and actually I would even debate its accuracy. It's just that as time has gone on I see the human struggle as the one in which we are faced with now in the twenty-first century. We have spent long years and centuries tying ourselves to history, religion race, creed, country. Now, in the twenty-first century it seems the fight is to uphold the sanctity of being human and somehow, it seems that that is somehow tied with our continuing quest to understand our relation to the divine. But humans are scared because of their place on this earth, among the animals, the plants and trees. We are special because we survive, because we exist... we have the right to be here in the midst of other human beings. Together, undivided, but individual. I don't know why the image of the farmer tilling his land seems to stick out so drastically, but it's there. A man and his land. A man walking the earth as if simply that he moves over it must be evidence of his worth in being there.

Do we live again? I think it's irrelevant, almost not even worth the thought because if we do not live in this now, do we eever have a cahcnce of living truly living. Silly statement. Look, here it goes. I have moments of terrible doubt about what I'm doing here. About whether my desire to get cable television to stir the fruits of thought a little are ultimately childish because walking around the grocery store, placing various items into my shopping cart with Brooke, I realize that there are many many people who don't have a pot to piss in. So you go back to getting grateful, about starting with the simple roof over your head, looking at the food on your plate, whether you are able to pay your bills and if so, maybe because you have a job to go to and a car that gets you there, hell, even if I rode the bus I might want to look at the fact that I live on a bis line. Start with the simpler things like the people around you, whether you're related to them or not. Hopefully they treat you how you should be treated how anyone would like to be treated and you've got something to be happy about. Not everybody can live in Coeur d;Alene or a Swiss chalet, Boca Raton or the Virigin Islands, and you;d take it for granted or get resentful if you did. Maybe. Not a lot of people with a pot to piss in, but life must go on. If you stay persistent in that, you will be amazed... without doubt.