Blue

My much-improved Halasana: hooray for yoga's healing power!

I set my alarm to wake up for practice this morning and my sometimes-ipod alarm clock was kind enough to wake me with this song from one of my faves:

Go find a jukebox
And see what a quarter will do
I don't want to talk
I just want to go back to blue

Feeds me when I'm hungry
And quenches my thirst
Loves me when I'm lonely
And thinks of me first

Blue is the color of night
When the red sound disappears from the sky
Raven feathers shiny and black
A touch of blue glistening down her back

We don't talk about heaven
And we don't talk about hell
We've come to depend on
One another so damn well

So go to confession
Whatever gets you through
You can count your blessings
I'll just count on blue

I love Lucinda's voice. I am not, in general, feeling blue in my life these days, but I have to admit I was feeling that way when I went to sleep. I was working on my book, which includes the reprinting of a letter that The New Englander and I wrote to each other in March of 2011 to remind ourselves how much we loved each other and how much we were worth fighting for in case that ever came into question. Ironic, eh? We each wrote part of it, but he wrote the end, and that was maybe the saddest part of all for me to revisit:

"But I’ll tell you what: I bet you’re doing just fine. I bet you celebrated each other when things went right, and took solace in each other when they went wrong. I bet that feeling of love that sprouted all those years ago has put down roots that go miles deep, and raised branches way up into the sky. I bet your example has made it easier for friends to honor their relationships the way relationships should be honored, and I bet you’ve helped a few children grow into better, happier adults than they would have if they hadn’t known you. I bet you’ve spread the love like mad, and been a ton of fun to hang around, and generally elevated the tone of the human experience for everyone you’ve come in contact with. And that is because both of you, somewhere underneath all the crazy family bullshit, youthfully ignorant excess and dysfunctional romances, are really, really lovely people."

Yeah? Well I bet you're wrong, about us as a couple, at least.

And I bet it still makes me cry to read that. I don't know if it ever won't. But it's ok. It just feels sad now, like a missed opportunity, but not like a tragedy. I can see now that I will one day soon view that relationship in a similar light to the way I view my first love: It taught me a lot about myself and a lot about love, but because it lacked true reciprocity, it can't really compare to my next love.

His identity may still be a mystery, but I don't think that will be the case for long. Tonight I had a lot of fun talking to a cute man with whom we mutually agreed that if it weren't for the nearly 20 years that separate us, we'd be into each other. It's always good to feel that spark -- even if it isn't going to go anywhere. One day soon I reckon a similar spark will ignite the fire I've been building up to all this time...