U2 at Soldier Field

Three awesome things happened the year I turned 17: I graduated from high school, I got accepted to the college I'd been wanting to go to, and on that same day, I got tickets to see U2. Unfortunately, for reasons I won't go into, I never did make it to that show. In fact, I didn't end up getting to see U2 until several years later in the Tacoma Dome. It was the Elevation tour, with PJ Harvey...who I adore...and they were well worth the wait.

I love U2. I'm not a crazy stalker. I would probably never spend the night on the sidewalk to stand in the front row, but their music touches me, and moreover I'm always even more impressed by their philanthropy and how they've chosen to use their celebrity in service of social justice. So when one of best friends called me up and said she was doing it up big for her 30th birthday and had gotten me a ticket to see U2 on opening night for their first concert in the US on the 360 degrees tour, I promptly booked my ticket to Chicago.

I arrived around midnight the day before. Shoshana picked me up from the airport and we headed to our friend Chica's house. There was chocolate cake, candles and singing, lots of girl talk and laughter. It was the first time I had met Chica's husband and seen her new digs. And the whole thing had me feeling older...not in a bad way. Being back in the Midwest is always a marker of time. I can't help, but think; when's the last time I was in Chicago? Who was I then? What was I doing? Who am I now?

The weekend itself was a fun celebration. I got to reconnect with friends I hadn't seen in ages and then there was the concert. We arrived later than we had planned, but it was perfect. We breezed through light traffic, paid half the cost of a ticket to park beneath Soldier field, then walked down to the entrance where we knew the band would be coming in. It wasn't very crowded. There were other fans waiting to get a glimpse, but it wasn't a mob scene. Everyone was friendly. I sat on the grass writing silly messages on the dry erase sign we'd purchased at the Party Store. The Edge and Adam arrived, but they just drove through with a wave. Then after about 20 minutes, Bono showed up. He got out of the car, walked around and greeted everyone. Then we walked into Soldier Field...no lines, breezed through security, grabbed some dinner and found our friend who was holding a spot for us about 6 rows back from the outer walk way of the stage.

The stage itself was kind of like a space ship, round and with two bridges connecting it to a circular runway. The first 3,000 people to arrive, crowded into the ring between the stage and the outer circle...though it didn't seem like there were that many people. Suspended above the stage was this massive cylindrical screen that turned out to be lots of screens that expanded and contracted, sometimes reflecting the show, sometimes showing distorted images, and at one point displaying a message from Desmond Tutu.

And I could tell you more about seeing Snow Patrol,the opening act, or give you a play list of all the songs they played, but really what was interesting to me was being a part of something bigger. I stood in a stadium full of people and felt connected to them because of the music. And there was something important about it that I haven't quite figured out how to articulate.

When they played the song "One" which is so well known, even you don't know U2 by name, if you heard it you would probably intuitively know the words, and we all sang and it was so loud that I couldn't really hear my own voice, but rather just the collective I felt hopeful, optimistic that if we could do this one silly thing...sing a song together at Soldier field...that we might be able to do something important together.

Connecting seems to be the reoccurring theme of this fall for me. Connecting and finding purpose and meaning in everything I do...and also realizing that I can be or do whatever I want. I could wake up tomorrow and decide to start my own band and have millions of people make me into a rock star, or I can wake up and decide to be the best fourth and fifth grade Spanish teacher in the state of Washington....or whatever, the point is, I'm at a point in my life where I feel like I can wake up and choose. I am at choice and I believe that whatever I do, I will be supported. Getting to see U2 was just an added bonus to an already sweet revelation.

Another Poem...rejj ©

Written yesterday on the 43 from Capitol Hill to the U-District, post fabulous massage.

I am collection
of hand me down flaws
dry heels
toes that overlap
asymmetrical eyes and breasts
teeth and hips that are spreading with time
a too loud laugh, a too soft voice
and so much anger,
cycling through me like the seasons
tornados of longing
monsoons of wanting more
quiet snow falls of desperation
that blanket the lava of dreams deferred,
deterred,
and these too are hand me downs
stiched tight into the double helix of my DNA,
a whole world history
quilted on a seedling
scattered on the winds of the diaspora
Do you know my name?
Have you seen my face,
on a milk carton,
in the mirror,
on TV
looking back at you
from the pillow next to yours,
when you wake and when you sleep
And when you dream,
do you know my heart?
Can you piece me back together
so that it all make sense?
unknot the jumbled thread
unwind me and weave together
something beautiful,
something perfect
and simple and right
And if I can’t be perfect,
Can I at least be right
and simple
and beautiful?
If I can’t be perfect
then let each imperfection
be something worth loving
and let me love you
with my entire crooked heart
without comparisons,
without reservations,
without losing a single part of me,
just let me love you as I am
and try to love me for me.

I will have lived...REJJ ©

Written over the course of a few nights after last week's Black Girl Writers' Crew meeting....

I don’t want to be King,
don’t want to be elected president.
Don’t stress about constructing monuments,
to the legacy of my glory.
I don’t need to be Queen,
I’m not the leader of your revolution,
I’m not offering any big solutions,
to the failed economy.
I’ll be no one of consequence
someone easily missed
in your sweep of the crowd,
you might not even learn my name,
and most likely
no sonnets will sing my fame,
but I will have lived.
I will have laughed until my stomach hurt,
and skinned my knees.
I will have lived.
I will have eaten cake and icecream for breakfast,
gotten lost on seven continents,
learned new swear words from the children of foreign streets.
I will have lived.
I will have tasted the salt of oceans
and the honey of mountain sunrises.
I will have danced to set my soul on fire
and known the beauty of solitude.
I will have understood someone perfectly
and lived to be perfectly understood,
if only for a moment.
I will have lived.
I will have loved and lost,
and loved and won,
and loved and live to love again
and again
unceasingly,
belligerently,
joyously.
I will have lived
and that will be my legacy.

Written on the first day of school...

I love summer and find myself grieving its loss. Its not that I don't like fall. The air is crisp, the leaves change, and I sleep like a rock. But there is nothing like summer, the heat, the beach, the time to just chill with friends or have adventures. I've been living on a school calendar since I can remember, and even when I'm not a student, I'm a teacher, and with the death of summer is the birth of a new year. New possibilities. New chances to get everything just right.

Yesterday we had our all school potluck. My coworkers, students, and their families all gathered around on the back lawn, loading our plates from the U shaped cluster of plastic tables heavy laden with every kind of noodle, salad, and chicken in existence. There was no singing or dancing, just a lot of chatter and kids zipping around and swinging from the trees they know they aren't supposed to climb.

It's a new beginning, and yet, it doesn't feel very new at all. I feel like I've lived this dejavou on loop. There is a part of me that is comfortable and even excited to see my kids again and yet another part of me that is striving to wake up. What if this weren't my life? What if I just packed up one day and got on a boat to Bali? I could do it you know....just go. I think I'm just missing summer. It hurts to let this one go. Linear time is evil.

Patience

It's 4:30AM, I can't sleep and I'm thinking about something one of my professors at that hippie granola grad school told me once about patience. At the time I'm sure I was displaying my impatience, as he was notorious for not returning emails and or any form of communication in a timely manner.I don't remember what I was harrassing him about, just that he was, as always, kind of laughing at me. He made this snide remark about my generation always wanting to rush. And in my head, I kept thinking duh! At that time I viewed my impatience as a virtue, something that served me far better than procratinating. It was constantly pushing me on to the next thing and moving felt better than standing still. Acting make me feel like I was getting somewhere.

But now that I am standing still, I think I finally got what he was trying to say to me. He wasn't trying to put down my ability to move, but rather trying to explain that systemic change takes a lot of time and that if you move at a pace like mine and try to pull everyone along in your momentum, you're going to break. It's like hitching a horse up to a skyscraper and saying "pull". There are iron roots in place, entire structures that would need to be dissolved before you could really move a building like that.

And such is the intricate web of how things happen at my school. Today was our first all staff meeting of the new school year and it was blessedly short, though followed by our administrative team meeting which for me was an exercise in frustration. The agenda is always deceptively simple, but as we know, even innocuous topics like recess can be a minefield of two hours of crying and screaming.So perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised when the topic of birthdays and food spiralled into a 45 minute discussion, after which we concluded that we would conduct the celebration of staff birthdays in the exact same way we have for the last year and that we won't have insane amounts of food at the staff meeting. You might think these things are unimportant, but I have come to realize that at my school issues like this are critical. It makes me wonder what it will be like to have my own business. What can I do to create a culture where the small stuff isn't such a big damn deal? Or is that even possible.

I think about the retreat I went on with the Black Girl Crew, where the issue of alcohol was raised. Is it okay to drink at our meetings? A simple question and yet, several meetings later this still hasn't been resolved. My instinct is to gloss over it and move on to more important stuff, but Dr. M (one of our advisors) encouraged us to step right into it and get to the meet of things. "You glide over too many things," she told us. And maybe we do, but how do you pick and choose what's worth it? Sometimes it seems insane, these long winding discussions about lice checks or who brings food for staff meetings. What are we gaining by dragging everything out? Yes, everyone gets to speak and everyone is heard, but then decisions are made and inevitably somebody is annoyed. I don't know if this is just some higher test of my ability to remain zen. Lord knows I've flunk that one several times. But maybe this year I'll try to have a little more patience for the process. Who knows, I might just learn something.