Like most aberrations, this one grew out of a longing to kick over the traces, break out of the routine, spend money on something besides car insurance, dental hygiene, and new brakes.

Late October, midnight, moon on the wane. A quiet house, dog at my feet, husband asleep in the next room. Shouldn’t have had the caffeine-laced chocolate dessert. Surfing 500 cable channels, nothing on –WAIT! Back up! Springsteen’s on tour, the E Street Band in situ. Pulsing bass, Hammond B4, Steve Van Zandt riffs, Clarence Clemons sax.

There was “The Boss,” talking about the music, playing the music, reminding us with the music there’s still hope and passion, still glory days ahead, we’re not done yet.

Bruce, always a rebel with a cause. Bruce, who believes that justice, decency, and connection matter. Bruce, the Jersey poet who whip-saws us from love gone wrong to jobs never comin’ back to our secret garden where we don’t think twice.

Bruce is back, just in time.

Bruce’s music arouses in us what we spend a lifetime trying to suppress: Exuberance, spontaneity, impulsiveness -- it’s all there, WHAM!

After just one track cranked up full volume, we’re willing to toss 20 years – hell, 30 years – of responsible adulthood into a VW van and follow the bus down the road, wherever it leads.

That’s the piece of my puzzle nobody ever gets, the undercurrent that flows backwards, uphill. On the outside I am a respectable writer of middle class bent; on the inside I’m an old rocker poised for the next gig.

I check the Internet; 40 concerts in 84 days, Asbury Park, N.J., to Arnhem, Netherlands, with Oakland, Calif., in-between.

Bruce is back and I’ve got to have him.

A quick email to a well-connected friend, a brief sleep, and at 6 a.m., I open my message queue to find I’ve scored! Two VIP tickets are waiting at the Oracle Arena box office for a week from Thursday.

Playing all-Bruce, all-the-time on the CD player, I ignore that sliver of doubt, that “you can’t afford this” firewall between Sensible Me and Secret Me.

I leave a pleading “find something CHEAP” voice mail on my travel agent’s cell phone, then query San Francisco Bay area friends for a spare couch.

Let’s see: if I pay Visa the minimum, ignore Sears, and postpone the 60,000-mile service on the truck, I might pull this off. Not priceless, but doable.

It was a wonderful Tuesday. I played air guitar in the shower; belted out “Born to Run” on the way to the post office, called the only friend I knew who would understand.

Springsteen’s music pops my lid, the real me springs out, and I’m no longer an old-enough-to-be-a-grandmother doo-wop has-been, but a reconstituted Remainderette morphed into a born-again groupie.

Cranking up “Better Days,” I boogie into the laundry room: “These are better days baby/ Yeah, there’s better days shining through/ These are better days baby/ Better days with a girl like you.”

Driving to the dentist who’s trying to save my tooth, I sing along: “So you been broken and you been hurt/ Show me somebody who ain’t/ Yeah I know I ain’t nobody’s bargain/ But hell a little touchup/ And a little paint…”

A couple of decades ago, I straddled a Harley and roared through post-war Hanoi’s rain-slicked streets listening to “Born in the U.S.A.” As the bike’s backfires disturbed communism’s sleep, Bruce sang about a war by then over in a country embracing platinum American Express cards.

The Vietnamese teenager driving the Harley wore blue jeans and Nikes; he couldn’t remember the war, he said, but he knew every word of every Springsteen song.

As Bruce once warned of Vietnam, so now, at 58, he’s warning us again that “what’s true can be made to seem like a lie and what’s lying can be made to seem true.”

“MAGIC” reminds us that even after three kids, millions in royalties, and enough laurels on which to rest, his fire still burns, lighting our way and perhaps, on a good day, re-igniting our embers.

“This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?/ I was spinnin’ round a dead dial/ Just another lost number in a file/ Dancin’ down a dark hole/ Just searchin’ for a world/ with some soul/ This is radio nowhere/ is there anybody alive out there?”

Bruce, the Boomers’ Bard. A Jersey shore Shakespeare whose lyrics of hope transcend life’s despair. My hope, on that Tuesday last week, was that finally I would experience his magic, live, in concert.

For 24 hours, I was 22. So what if I had gray hair, arthritic knees, and writer’s block? I also had two tickets to ride. “They say you gotta stay hungry/ Hey baby I’m just about starving tonight/ I’m dying for some action/ I’m sick of sitting ‘round here trying to write this book…”

The Internal Revenue Service letter was in the next day’s mail. Reading it, I was certain there’d been a mistake, that the tax bill was just a paperwork foul-up. But its effect was the same: “It’s a sad funny ending to find yourself pretending/ A rich man in a poor man’s shirt…”

I didn’t make a choice between paying the IRS or seeing Bruce; I faced the fact that in my daily life, “The door’s open but the ride it ain’t free…”.

So I went to Borders and bought “MAGIC” instead. As I listened to the new songs, I wrote my letter to the IRS, made out my monthly payment to Sears, and emailed my friend to release the tickets to other fans.

“There will be,” my well-connected friend wrote back, “another time.”

Maybe. I remind myself as well as him to “Stay hard, stay hungry, stay alive/ if you can...”that “It takes a leap of faith to get things going/ It takes a leap of faith you gotta show some guts/ It takes a leap of faith to get things going/ In your heart you must trust…”

Perhaps he’s right; next year I’ll turn up in Albany or Bilbao, Antwerp or Cleveland. But whether I am there to hear him or not, Bruce Springsteen will always be the seer who makes us believe that, in spite of ourselves, “These are better days baby/ These are better days its true/ These are better days/ Better days are shining through.”
Bruce Springsteen “Long Walk Home” from his Magic album

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