Classified.

I was going to entitle my blog "Mis-Directed", but that would've been the wrong headline to use, these days.  Heaven forbid Dick Cheney and George W Bush see a mis-directed call take place, and they see me call Iran because I punched in too many zeros....better to call my blog "Classified" and know that they're already aware of it but can claim immunity from the impunities that might come along with claiming that they knew of it.

Right?

I was supposed to write about Leonard Cohen this week, after having written, last week, about the Clash and Joe Strummer, et. al., but I'm still stuck on the latter and know that the former is still alive and still capable of creating another creation, wherein the Clash can no longer be.  The voice lives on, but the urgency seems to go out like a candle's flame.

Those who die, obviously, are no longer able to create another creation, i.e., reproduce.

Or so my room-mate tells me.

He said, tonight, "Why dwell on a f***in rock band from England who's been gone for over 20 years?".

And I answered, "Why dwell on the Bible or Socrates or World War I and the industrial revolution if you don't want to learn from the past?".

Shut him right up.

After a while, he got his smug on again and said, "What the hell makes you think you know it all, when you're a half-baked high-school drop-out blah-blah blah-blah anything-with-hyphens-in-it-that-might-stir-me-up-into getting-angry-with-him-blah-blah-know-it-all-who -loves-the Clash 20 years later when it's too late and you're just catching their Train in Vain?!".

And I answered, "What, do you have all the answers?".

Shut him right up again.

But then it got me thinking.

So, just because I know who Nicholas and Alexandra were, and know their children who died alongside them in 1918 in a small basement in Ekaterinberg were named Olga, Tatiana, Marie, Anastasia, and Alexei (the only son, but, alas, a hemophiliac) in that order, and just because I know every song John Lennon ever wrote, and just because I can type over 80 wpm, and just because I know more about whaling ships (having gone to elementary through 10th grade in New England) vs some kid who grew up in South Plantation, Florida, and just because I can link Pete Seeger to Bob Dylan, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Bobby and Jack, and Romeo and Juliet to West Side Story, doesn't mean that I know more than my room-mate does.

It just means I learned about different things than he did.

That's all.

Doesn't make me greater than him.  Doesn't make me wiser or smarter. 

And, as I pointed out to him tonight, it doesn't make him wiser or smarter either.  (That was after I said, "If you want to continue the pissing contest, let's take it out of the living room where my futon resides").

So, tonight we agreed that we each know our differences.  We each know each others' limitations.  And we work together to get by anyway.  That's how partnerships work.  We both want peace at night when we get home from our jobs and have to share an apartment.  We both want to get along and yet be separate.

We both want to keep making sense to each other while allowing each other to be ourselves.

Nothing wrong with that.  Nothing odd with that.  It's called cohabitation. 

Yet....so many people want to own things:  Each other, each other's hearts, each other's feelings, each others' money, memories, homes, rights.....

Cohabitating means giving up a piece of ourselves in order to make peace.

That bit of real information, my friends, is what everyone seems to want to keep classified these days.

Eh.  Maybe I'm just too into the Clash.