*fin

     Today I remembered an experimental piece I wrote a couple of years ago for creative non-fiction. I came home completely exhausted from school and work, and decided I would write my assignment after, and only after, I took a lengthy nap. My alarm woke me up 2 1/2 hours later (as to disrupt my second sleep cycle) and my hand shot up, searching for the "turn off that screaming static" button, and immediately I sat up to write--my favorite song just happened to be playing and Tiger VIII, as if in a psychic trance, trotted up to me and jumped in my lap. In my groggy state I wrote:

                             4/13/2009

There I was, freshly awake, staring at my computer screen. The cat was safely fastened in my lap, half petting, half gazing lazily. When you’re that tired, your mind plays tricks you know. I turn up the sound, it is *fin by anberlin, which was ironic because this is just the beginning. I took in the sound until a tide swept out, and pulled me in and I was not just listening anymore, I was actually there. The crowd was throwing their hands up, singing along, no one was idle. No one was idle except for me, and then there was the me who was not idle. I looked to the stage and the band was there, I was there, the people were there. I look at my feet, the ones juxtaposed with others, and they are tapping along with the rhythm. It was a rhythm, of the foot and soul that explodes my centers. The lights, a fluorescence of blue and green, swiveled to perfection. I was blinded; I was there. The words hung in the air until I took hold of them with my ears.

“And then take full weight of me
Guard my dreams, figure this out,
It's me on my own. Helpless, hurting, hell
Will you stay strong as you promised?
Cause I'm stranded and bare.
Meanness is washed up in all that I am
is God. Take this and all…”

Maybe the fact of looking at the computer screen, petting my cat who merely gawked in my lap made it real, creating a true story from fiction. When you’re that tired, your mind plays tricks you know. Maybe just petting my cat makes it real; my thoughts are centered on that sherbet of puffed up pelt, the greasy fur no one had bothered to wash since December. I look at him and he looks back at me and jerks his head to the side as if to urge me, “Don’t miss out on this, this is the best part!” I slant my head in between two broad sets of shoulders and ease through the crowd, but it is a crowd no longer. The crowd is the choir, no one was silent. No one was silent except for me, and then there was the me who was not silent. I looked to the stage, the platform of love and pain, and the crowd was on all fours, my cat was clapping with the rhythm. They were well mixed colors, of blue, of orange and green, of purple and red as he is clapping. He is clapping, I was clapping, I was there.

“…Then grace takes me to a place
Of the father you never had
Ripping and breaking and tearing apart
This is not heaven
This is my hell.”

The finality was not met with silence, only cheering. I was cheering, and the choir was cheering. The lights, the movement, the cat, the long drive home from a desolate concert house, I was there! When you’re that tired, your mind plays trick you know.  

--even after all this time, no song has ever hit me like *fin by anberlin.