Some people come plowing into and out of your life like a fast-moving glacier, leaving moraines and tarns when they’re gone. You know these landscapes, don’t you? Brutal forces formed the hills and lakes that look so peaceful and beautiful now that they’ve been papered over with grass and trees and little flowers, eons later.

He left boulders as he retreated. Some of them are useful. Some of them get in my way. I’ve planted flowers where I can. Regardless, I would do it all over again. Eagerly.

The things he says, they’re surely meant for other creatures, not this old one.

I know better: do not entertain foolish ideas. Remember. It wasn’t that long ago.

His curls should have been mine to touch. Not hers. I shouldn’t be relegated to a touch on the shoulder or forearm. No.

[It's not fair. It's just not fair. Stop touching him. Just stop. It's just mean, you're just taunting me. It's not fair.]

I know I can’t have him, I know he’s not mine and will never be, and in fact the best thing in the world is waiting for me at home and I want to be there in his arms so much, to remind me how good it is, how much I don’t need the curls and the this and the that.

Walking into the coffee shop unexpectedly. So handsome. Walking back from the post office (to mail a package to his mother). So just so.

It’s wrong to be so intrigued, and I know it. How can I be so completely in love with the one I promised to be in love with, and yet harbor such a crush? Are there two hearts in my chest?

- Stars, “Your Ex-Lover is Dead”

More than you know
More than you know
Man o’ my heart, I love you so
Lately I find
You’re on my mind
More than you know
Whether you’re right, whether you’re wrong
Man o’ my heart, I’ll string along
I need you so
More than you’ll ever know
Loving you the way that I do
There’s nothing I can do about it
Loving may be all you can give
But honey, I can’t live without it
Oh how I’d cry, oh how I’d cry
If you got tired, and said goodbye
More than I’d show
More than you’d ever know

(Vincent Youmans, Edward Eliscu, Billy Rose)

But he’s struggling, in a public way, and they all wrote to me to tell me. I can’t help but watch what has to be the most elegant, most gorgeous, most painfully beautiful trainwreck in history. They think I want to join them in the schadenfreude, and in a way I do, but mostly it just reopens everything. I just want to make it all better, I want to tell him I still care, that someone still loves him, even if only from afar.

Can’t do that, though. Would just make things worse. So I’ll post here, and quote more lyrics, and hope that somehow, through the magical ether of the internet, he hears it.

The moon shines on the sea
No one here but me
The moon is full and low
And all I want to know
Is where are you now?

(Jesse Harris, Where Are You Now?)

you still make me smile
but I’m just glad for every mile
that you put between us
when you walked away

you still make me cry
you make me paint
and you make me write
and you keep me up all night singing these songs to you

and at the end of the world
if I am lucky enough
to still be awake
then I’ll undoubtedly think of you
and that’s a promise I made
on the day that we met

it’s kinds of love
one below and one above
but I feel ‘em both
whenever I see you

you live in my heart
and girl I carry you and you’re a part
of every breath I take
and everything I do

perhaps it’s just in my head
but there are nights
when I wish you were dead
but I can’t count all the curses I put on you

and at the end of the world
if I am lucky enough
to still be awake
then I’ll undoubtedly think of you
cause that’s a promise I made
on the day that we met

(This is a song by Our Lady of the Highway called End of the World. I didn’t write it, but it speaks for me awfully well.)

Well, as I was washing the dishes and listening to some music the other night, it occurred to me that it's not just computers that have file associations. A song came on that immediately made me think of an old friend, as if his name was mentioned right there in the song. It was just as automatic and programmed as the file associations in Windows. This particular person, whom I cared about and was friends with, removed himself from my life a while ago, for reasons I still don't completely understand. I can't tell you how much I wish there were some little utility, like there is in Windows, where I could look at a list of my experiences and make new associations for songs and places and foods and activities that trigger unwanted memories. I like that song! I don't want to stop hearing it, but I don't particularly want to think about my old friend when I hear it either.

It must be possible to make new associations or at least let the old ones go. It's probably even more of a pain in the ass than doing it in Windows, though. I need life tech support.

What's the point in doing everything right if it doesn't assure a good outcome? Why bother spending the energy to learn and do things correctly if I'm just as likely to have a bad result as if I just winged it, didn't consider all the options and just slacked off in general? Why put forth effort to do something well when you'll get the same result if you don't?

Having lived these forty (very) odd years, I know full well that there is little comfort indeed in this abstract notion that you've 'done your best.' It doesn't pay the mortgage, it doesn't mean he still loves you, it doesn't make the hurt go away and in many cases, just seems to make it worse.

Again, I ask why. Why do your best when just doing the minimum has the same result?