A year ago tonight

A few years ago I stopped telling myself that this or that was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, as justification for a trip to see a show or spend the weekend in some weird locale. I just realized that I had upped the ante for what a good time was. Not from being spoiled, or making more money, or even from being jaded. Just from finally realizing that life really IS short, it's not a platitude or a concept, it's a reality. So when I got laid off 3 weeks before a trip to Europe in 2003, I went ahead and went. I stayed on the island in the Seine where the rooms were 250 euro a night, I went ahead and splurged on dinner at a nice boulangerie and bought expensive t-shirts at the National Museum in London. And it worked out - worked out to be some of my best memories ever. Going to the Louvre during the day, pogoing with Parisians at night while Bruce played in the pouring rain, and being right at the stage in Dublin - it really doesn't get much better in my little world.

So last year when my friend Karen called to ask if I wanted to go see U2 in Dublin, I said sure. That was it. Very simple. And then later I talked my friend Joann into going - using the "once-in-a-lifetime" ploy still works on other people. Well, one year ago tonight we were standing right at the stage, ahead of 80,000 other people, just from the simple luck of first getting tickets, and then having someone mishandle a queue, letting latecomers in first. People had waited in line for 3 days to be in front. We waited 3 hours.

At the time Karen called, I wasn't even that thrilled with U2. The last tour was eh, the new cd so - so. But I had always wanted to see them in Dublin, from the mid-80s when I was obsessed with them. So it was a no brainer. Then we went to the show in Phoenix, and I fell in love with them all over again. The songs - so much better live!

So rather than bring it all back up again, which brings sadness, I just think of certain moments that will always stick with me. Because of course, it WAS a once-in-a-lifetime, singular experience, being right at the stage, facing down 95 feet of blazing lights and monstrous speakers pounding out song after song. Being surrounded by people who poured out energy, having that energy pour back out from the stage. Jumping up and down in pouring rain in sync with thousands of other people, uninhabited, wonderful Dubliners, who care nothing about how they appear or what people think of them. Seeing a series of artistic images and statements that are so intuitive and chillingly true that you can't even blink, afraid you'll miss something. Having music be played so loudly and in such a right way that you don't so much hear it as feel it enter your body and rearrange your very cells.

So here's to my NEXT once-in-a-lifetime experience this weekend in DC, seeing Bruce and Pearl Jam with my great friend Anna and the DC posse. Retirement be damned. Life is now.

x marks the spot