"It's your lucky day, Jim," the state trooper said last Saturday afternoon as he uncuffed me.

Lucky. I had taken 18 neighborhood kids and a couple other dads for a bike ride on closed-for-construction 35W, and the good officer had pulled me over and slapped me in handcuffs and put me in the back of his squad car and almost arrested me and threw me in jail on felony charges, and, well, the whole scene made my son roll his eyes to his buddies and say, "That's my dad," and my daughter cry, a moment I am not proud of, but you should have seen her riding down that freeway, laughing and screaming, as did a couple of the other kids, "This is the greatest day of my life!"

Lucky. I got off with a ticket for talking back to a cop, who was a good guy and fellow dad, and by the end he was explaining himself and his job and the position I had put him in. I was telling him that I understood, that I was an idiot, and that I appreciate it, and, funny, that's one of the last things he said to me before we shook hands, was, "I appreciate it."

Lucky. He doesn't know the half of it.

The night before, I hung in the basement of a coffee shop not far from that freeway, playing my little brother's guitar and singing with and for family, friends, and strangers, and hearing stories and songs that made me weak with love and laughter and longing. Afterwards, I went to the 7th St. Entry to see Eleni Mandell. On my way in, I beheld the sight of two young pierced women who were standing on the corner of 7th Street and N. 1st Avenue. One was holding a sign that said, "I apologize."

They were Christians. The one with dirty blonde hair and a look that wouldn’t be out of place at the Triple Rock explained to me that they just want to talk to people, tell them that all Christians are not freaks, that love is the answer, and that there's more to… "You're trying to heal," I interrupted. She brightened and said, "Exactly." I got her card and told her I wanted to write about them, because I am drawn to stories about healing these hurting days.

Lucky. That's how Eleni Mandell described herself during her set, most of which sounded like the poetic confessions of a tough-tender city girl who knows how to seduce and be seduced but who has obviously had her heart broken by someone with whom she once had a cosmic connection. But now the spell is broken, she has learned to live without him, and has come to realize that the bigger connection to the universe is what we're all seeking, not The One, because there is no One, just All.

"It was my dream to play my music for people," said Eleni for me and many others in the room, "and Minneapolis has always been so great for that" -- as well we all know; all us listeners and writers and rockers and revelers and reveillers and thrill-seekers and groupies and photographers and musicians and squares and hipsters and up-and-comers and out-of-touchers and douche bags and debutantes and dilettantes.

Lucky. During "Make Out King," I hung with my big brother and we laughed and lusted our asses off. Then I got quiet and crouched down next to my friend Alison, who goes to more shows than you and I combined -- and she's in a wheelchair, for Christ's sake -- and I rested my arm across her shoulder and knelt down in reverence to the songstress and the sacred and silence in a world gone loud.

After the show, I went to the Rose Gardens at Lake Harriet, where I was supposed to meet up with some friends. Nobody showed. I was all alone, and for an hour and a half, I lay in the wet grass on top of the hill that overlooks the Peace Garden and the roses, trees, and lake. Hell if I didn't feel one with the universe, in the erotic earth-fucking tree-hugging way that the mystics and hippies and Joe Strummer talk about: I stopped and smelled the lilacs, the musky grass, the humid air, and listened to nothing but my breath and the wind.

The next day our sixth-grade baseball team swept a doubleheader on a field near Fort Snelling that was also playing host to a Somalian soccer tournament and National Guard training drill. I drove home listening to Afro-Cuban music on the community radio station, then I hopped on my bike and led my charges in a victory parade on an empty freeway toward the hometown downtown horizon ("Revolution!" yelled our catcher as we sailed down the entrance ramp into the great wide open), and lived to tell.