Thursday was typical: wander into the bathroom a little too late to be luxurious, brush teeth in the straw colored sunlight, wonder why it takes so long to get warm in the shower, button on something dark and comforting that looks vaguely business, trot to the train trying to chew toast, read C. S. Lewis (rocking and jostling mentally and physically), trot six blocks, don't look awkwardly at people waiting for the elevator, stride past receptionist one minute late (Puritan work ethic smarting), turn on computer, fill copiers, eat almonds, reboot brain. Provided I've eaten enough to have the proper blood sugar levels, I usually get a thing or two done by 9:42, then go round the office and see what's to be taken to court and filed, taken to an obscure office across the Loop, brought back from another office (shining on the 66th floor), dug from an opal mine in Australia, or what-have-you. My work life is defined by the clause "...other duties as assigned."

On the morning herein expounded, there was apparently a fire to be put out in a client's file which required an extinguisher kept at the Cook County Assessor's office. I was sent to fetch it. Normally, I'm not at the Assessor's until 4:07 (just after they've started counting the register..."did you want those copies today?") but on Thursday I was leaning on the counter waiting to pay and get back with my printouts (lest the fire should follow me) just after ten. Where there is commonly no one to keep me company, not even government employees, there was this morning quite a buzz--people came and went with impressive regularity, and leaned as I did when the government employees remembered themselves and went back to hiding. Minutes passed, pleasantly (it was sunny and before 11:40; the world was young), when up walked the guy who helped push the dolly when I moved in to my diminutive room at Moody during my first few minutes of orientation my Freshman year. Shawn, I remembered, and he remembered me. We caught up in sixty seconds, as guys do, and got straight to what we wanted to do in life besides lean on counters and carry things spit out of Xerox machines. He's hoping a few more months will allow his wife to support him briefly while he finishes his screen play; I'm hoping to smuggle some form of rock-stardom into the cracks around my nine to five before my budget begins containing entries for Geritol.

At some point in the exchange, maybe two minutes in, I mentioned that, while I like rock, classical is where I've had all of my training and it comes out better, at least vocally speaking. There was a girl, woman actually (I keep forgetting I'm over 18 and people "my age" are too) at the other end of the counter who leaned around rather quickly at this point and asked, "Did you just say you like Classical music?" "Yes," I admitted. "Do you want a ticket for the ballet tonight?" was the second thing out of her mouth. "Pardon?" I asked. (or something less poetic like, "What?") She said, "I have a ticket for tonight but I have a meeting I have to attend and I would much rather give it to someone who will appreciate it. Even if you don't like ballet, just go and close your eyes and listen to the music." I almost asked if there really are people who don't like ballet because I'm sure not one of them, but instead I said, "Sure! How much is it?" "Oh, no, no, you can have it," she responded, handing me two tickets. I blinked. Before I could ask if I was on Candid Camera, she told me that the second ticket was for an after-party with free dessert and cheese (be still my heart) and champagne and that if I didn't go to the ballet I should at least go eat the free food. So I fumbled some sort of thank you and tried for the next five-and-a-half hours to get my mind to assent to the sensory experience my body had just reported.

After work I buzzed home, tried to decide what to wear when going out on the town without a date and not possessing anything "to the nines," galloped to the train, and arrived a trifle breathless but looking like I knew the ropes. Hey, I've been cultured, at least in college--we were REQUIRED to go to the opera (be still my heart). I handed the Auditorium Theater doorman my stub, he waved around to the side aisle, and I was glad to see that I wasn't climbing stairs; good sign. I walked in and the attendant said, "right down there, row D," which still didn't register until I began looking at the rows as I walked forward. I was already in the front of the house, and walking past row K, J, I, H...

When I got to D, I became a Christian Scientist: I decided that none of this was actually happening. It couldn't be. My ticket was for row D. If I went any further, I would have fallen into the French Horn player's lap. I sat in my seat and waited for judgement to fall and some strident feminist in an open backed evening gown to arrive and tell me that the seats for short people who can't read their tickets were UP THERE. She never came.

God has never spoken to me audibly, but a few weeks ago, in a very different context, he said very clearly, "I can do anything I want." He meant specifically that he was quite powerful enough to answer the trust issue I was having at that point. As I sat and waited for the feminist and watched the French Horn player's cheeks puff in and out, he said it again. "I can do anything I want." But the tone was different, more like the lover I don't yet have but still tend to think might come along one day. I think I would have kissed him if I could have, if such a thing can be said of Him whom the cherubim hide their faces from, of whom prophets have cried at the sight, "Woe is me, for I am undone! I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the king, the LORD almighty!" Either way, it was a half-second ringing with bright, heavenly syllables, but only, I think, for my ears. At least the annoying guy next to me clicking his Kodak Easy Share in my ear at inopportune moments probably had no inkling.

The performance was...so good that I didn't critique it much. I was so close I could watch the leading man sweat and hear the padded footfalls. But it was grand. Oh, and this was opening night, by the way. I was in the second row, and no one ever arrived to sit in front of me.

At the after party, I was lassoed by a very single, very talkative chicago Russian girl (she was 25; I'm 29; I can call her what I like) and her family, who didn't talk much at all. I probably should have excused myself and talked to the dancers like I wanted too, but I was still in slight disbelief, so it didn't bother at all. I almost didn't even notice.

I toddled home, took off my finery, and sat in the old recliner in the dark to say thank you. I was tired, so the brain wandered and it didn't last as long as it probably should have, not as I would have liked, at least. But I wanted credit where credit is due. After all, it was the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me.

I was in a terrible rush to get to the train this morning and I was sure I was going to miss it.  I had plans to get into the city early and pick up some lunch so I wouldn't have to spend lunch break getting food and I could just concentrate on eating it instead.  But then as I was crossing the street coming out of the alley, I looked down in the gutter and each and every edge of every item, even the cigarette buts, was stenciled in little sugar-sized ice crystals. 



I caught the later train.  

Here lies a eulogy for a man I've never met and won't get to for perhaps another forty years or more, for a man who had more genius (and maybe a great many more personal demons) than I shall ever collect in my years on earth, a man I could almost say that I love, though only through a glass darkly, like a silhouette of some hero of old against the sunrise.

"I've been knocked down, kicked around,
But like a moth drawn to a flame,
Here I am talking about Jesus just the same."

Larry Norman died on Sunday. He was 60 years old and in "failing health" due to heart problems. Most of his music I've gotten in digested form through other artists, chiefly younger Christian singers that got their inspiration--and maybe even their entire genre--from him. He's famous and infamous as the "Father of Christian Rock and Roll" who was an enigmatic outcast to a broad swath of Christendom for much of his career. His entry on Wikipedia is rather fascinating reading and there is currently some good journalism surrounding his memory and career (until something else more pressing takes the press).

But someone who could write "Why Don't You Look Into Jesus?" and "The Great American Novel" is bound to garner some attention--and get banned from a few Christian book stores for, um, explicit lyrical content (or for telling the truth). That's not remarkable in and of itself. It's just that I can't quite get past a man who's signature at the end of a concert was pointing to heaven and proclaiming Christ as the "One Way" to get there. Even if talk of the rapture is no longer vogue and it's rather silly or fanatical in current thought for anyone to actually expect Jesus to come back while they're sitting in front of a computer screen reading a blog, there's just something that feels like a slap up side of the head when a man comes by and sings "I Wish We'd All Been Ready" as if he really thought it was true, as if there was something even heavier than time and even more real than the stars that was about to step into the same atmosphere we're breathing, a man who dies with these words on his lips:

"I feel like a prize in a box of cracker jacks with God's hand reaching down to pick me up. I have been under medical care for months. My wounds are getting bigger. I have trouble breathing. I am ready to fly home...I'd like to push back the darkness with my bravest effort. There will be a funeral posted here on the website, in case some of you want to attend. We are not sure of the date when I will die. Goodbye, farewell, we will meet again.

Goodbye, farewell, we'll meet again
Somewhere beyond the sky.
I pray that you will stay with God
Goodbye, my friends, goodbye.
Larry"

That's a pretty good way to go, even if you're not wearing the latest or looking the greatest. Mr. Norman wasn't too concerned about being called a rebel, since Christ himself was called an "Outlaw." He memorably set Martin Luther's quote "Why should the devil have all the good tunes?" to a beat that might have raised even that saint's eyebrows. But he did seem to spend the majority of his energy watching the skies for a "U.F.O." that will be the most real, and the most beautiful thing ever to take the world by surprise. I think he was a very wise man.