Kick

I look around unsatisfied

At what they're giving me

Then I think to myself

Is there someone else

Who feels the same as me?

Do you feel the same baby?

For the entire summer of 1987, my friends and I were obsessed with INXS' monumentally popular album Kick.

We listened to it a lot.

Let's just say that Michael Hutchence was not exactly a lyrical heavyweight. But it's a funny thing about the music of your youth. It gets buried in your subconscious mind and can come out at unexpected times, when you see it in a new light. It's happened before and it happened to me today.

Sometimes you kick.

Sometimes you get kicked.

As I was leaving from a weird day in the middle of a weird week, those words popped into my head and struck me as surprisingly deep. To me it's like a zen koan - a superficially simplistic aphorism that unfolds petal after petal of meaning like a fractal. 

Yes I'm serious.

OK, I'll admit I'm at a unique point of juxtaposition that puts me in a frame of mind to think that way. The circumstances aren't important, but I think you'll get the flavor of what I'm talking about.

At the 0th order, it seems pretty stupid. Sack up man. You win some, you lose some. But wait a minute. Sometimes you kick.

Sometimes you score a victory. Sometimes you get your ass kicked. Sometimes you're the one doing the kicking. Sometimes you are all of these at once. Two of these happened to me this week already and the third is likely imminent. I'll leave it up to you to figure out which is which.

This puts me in an oddly emotional and conflicted state of mind. A state of mind that drove me to spend my entire trip home deeply cogitating on INXS lyrics. As the title track faded out, and the next song began, Hutchence exhorted me to "Come on down to the party!"

Not tonight Mike. I'm not in the mood.