Subject: One shot Date: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 0348 From: Mat Schulte <[email protected]> To: "Daniel M. Frake" <[email protected]> in honor of you one shot in honor of the one shot you get before it’s all over i’ve waited beyond the drunken moment, and so i am bereft of the eloquence only drunkenness can deliver. But here is what I remember: We took a direct path from Brady Street to cornfield, my dead old friend and i. My dead drunk friend (whom i can always count on not to be invisibly here when everybody else is visibly not here) and i, We played drums out loud, played drums without skill loud, inside a cornfield, in of all god damned locales, Wisconsin. We walked in mud troughs, played drums Loud, until a friendly sheriff came along, out of the blue nowhere and said, boys, you’re making too much noise; these are farmers out here, ordinary people who have to get up early, so can you please just knock it off, and we were glad to. Relieved to have been chastised into silence, we got back in our car, emblematic of the luxury of extended youth that is (or was) America, and drove on back to somewhere resembling home, My dead drunk friend and I. Why do I tell you this? Because I don’t know how else to explain because I don’t know who else I can tell because I’ve dreamed about the Omaha you’ve dreamed of. Because I know that when i finally get back home, and swing that fossil-burning behemoth into my parking space, that everything inside will be exactly as I’ve left it; nothing’s changed; I’m still an alien inside my strangely aging skin; and yet i still don’t know; at any moment i could disappear; return, go back into the country my mysterious angels’ children came here from (and why?! i cannot say); that place between the scenes, that place where we all meet, my tribe and me, to talk about what comes next, what came before, and how we’re going to play it differently this time. It’s in that place, that Omaha, that nightlit place of coffee tables boots, parenthesis and mud, that I can call you brother, and see that you can hear me; and I’ll sit here as long as it may take, delaying walking up the stairs and back into the folds of what’s become my life; I’ll sit here as long as it may take for me to stop avoiding saying what I really mean, which is, namely, I’m glad I met you, glad to know you, gratified, amazed to feel that knuckle punching knuckle saying brother, dear friend, live friend, thank you thank you thank you. one shot. good night “and all i’ve done for want of wit to memory now i can’t recall so lift to me the parting glass; good night and joy be with you All”