They say that when your ears ring, it is the last time you’ll ever hear that sound, that tone on that frequency.  And then it fades, and it is gone, it is never to be heard again.

I wonder if that is how I’ll go someday.

I want you to be my best lover
And all you want is to be my intimate friend

… … ….

You don’t get to come on back
Filling my head with your lies
And empty prizes
They’re no surprise
This is all no surprise

“You simply can’t make someone love you if they don’t. You must choose someone who already loves you. If you choose someone who does not love you, this is the sort of love you must want.” - Israel Horovitz

I believe in love, I believe in you

***

or: what isn’t “wait in the far east”

Today, we bring to your attention the misheard lyrics of this beautiful piece.  I’m certain I IM’d you the lyrics, copied and pasted from the same website you stole them from with my corrections, yet you still think you hear ‘wait in the far east’.  It makes perfect sense and all, it’s what we wanted, or what you wanted to hear.

Wait in the far east / There’s nothing left / No nothing left

For you, forever, from the liner notes, sans doo-doo-doo-doo-doooo’s:

Put down those car keys and come back to bed
We hear the phone ring, there’s nothing left
No, nothing left

Enough with the makeup, let’s see your eyes
Your heartbeat is so sweet when you’re by my side
Let’s leave this loneliness tonight

True love is more than a make out song
Waited to tell you way too long
For way too long

We’ve been forever, for two years now
First time I kissed you, I almost died
So maybe it’s more than love now
So maybe it’s more

I was brushing my teeth and I was flossing and I had thought a flurry through my head.  And I can’t remember them now.  It’s cold, it feels like fall and my body doesn’t like it.  I get over being sick and it already wants to be sick again.  Fan on the lowest setting; good idea, bad idea.  Cough cough, hack hack.  Can’t wait to see what’s going down the shower drain in the AM.

Presses play.  Inhales.  5:48. Inhales. Go.

You need to hear it on headphones.  The sticks click ever so lightly, ever so slightly before Ivan starts to sing over this Danelectro.  Maybe you just played this too much and wanted to come back to bed, come back to me.  I have no idea.  One can sit and ponder and try and analyze every word and moment but that same one we’ll never know.  They’ll never know what all that time really was.  I regret what I had said.  I regret chalking it up to lust, because I never wanted that thought to enter our train of thought, but it is logical at times.  Though I felt so close to you.  Ever so close.  Closer than I had ever been to someone, maybe even closer than anyone I actually called mine, claimed possession over.

True love is no love make out song

Do you sit and think about me when you do, are you thinking about all those intimate moments or those moments when we lay staring at the ceiling, talking over the soundtrack destiny decided to provide.  Do you think about that time you IM’d me at work one day, telling me you wanted to be girly and hold my hand and walk with me to the post office.  When we walked towards the bus eight days ago and you rubbed my back like you had so many times before.  Do you think about that morning you awoke, laid nude on your side, arms around me, whispering “Can I tell you a secret? I think I’m falling for you,” before placing your lips on my skin, on my lips.  Was it all an act?  Was it all just a game?  Was it all just some cruel trick?  What possessed you to say such things?  To wait until the right moment, me inside of you, to tell me you loved me, too.  Was it just in the heat of the moment, or in the heat of despair.  What was this summer?  Too real to be a dream, yet too vivid to not wake up in a cold sweat.

So maybe there’s more than love tonight

And maybe there is.  Maybe there is more than the love that you do say you possess for me.  You don’t love me like him, understood, but you do love me in some way, you said it yourself.  But maybe it is more than that love; more than platonic, but there’s actually some hint of feelings in there.  Maybe you really did fall for me.  Maybe you told people how I treated you how a girl should be treated, like a princess.  Maybe you really did want to bring me home and meet your friends, meet your family, integrate me in to that part of your life.  Or maybe it was just part of that movie.  Maybe it was just that all of those were scenes that lead to last night’s climax, the finale.  Or was that the epilogue?

What was last night?  That’s the three-quarter part, where there is about anywhere from 17-25 minutes remaining, including credits.  Where everything had gone to shit, where the conflict and inner turmoil have been revealed, where we go through the montages that were us running everything from the past two months back in our head.  And unannounced, when I was at my lowest, thinking that was it, thinking that I would never see you ever, ever again, you call.

“1. Am I Lightning? 2. Will you let me in?”

And you walked in and you kissed me.  You kissed me like you never kissed me before, kissed me like I had never been kissed before.  Never had a I felt a moment of my life been so filled with passion.  And I wouldn’t change it for the world.  Was this a resolution?  No, because here we still are.  You can just let it fade then and let whatever happens after that be that, but what fun would that be.

Maybe there is more than love.  Maybe there is more of this every night.

What are you thinking?
Am I on your mind at all?
Am I on the current, or am I an afterthought
What’s going on in there
I’d really like to know
Am I the one for you, or am I another clue
To what you’re after

What are you thinking, what are you feeling?
Do the two of them bear any resemblance at all?
And if you think just like I feel
Then Why don’t you feel like I do?
Like I do?

What are you feeling?
Am I inside, in your heart somewhere?
I really think I am, I just think that you’re scared
Scared of nothing
Because I don’t want to hurt you at all
You can stumble all you want, and I’ll be there when you fall
Back in to my arms, or you hit that wall

What are you thinking, what are you feeling?
Do the two of them bear any resemblance at all?
And if you think just like I feel
Then Why don’t you feel like I do?
Like I do?

If everything was alright yesterday
Why can’t we let today be today
Just let it be any other day

“Follow the advice of your heart” the fortune said
And if I follow my feelings, I probably won’t get it in the end
And if I follow my feelings, I won’t get what I want in the end
If I follow my feelings, it doesn’t get me there in the end

This is not something to be had
This is not something for me to have

What am I thinking and what are you feeling?

“I was gonna spend the night, could’ve been okay
we were gonna talk all night, till I went away”

Sitting at work, wishing the day were over.  Then again, where am I off to?  Nothing to go home to.  You aren’t around.  Should get used to it, but I guess since I know you’re around the area and zip codes that I could only wish to see you yet another night.  But it’s alright, it is a part of life.

Random fact #42: Every time my phone vibrates from a text, I get the butterflies knowing it’s probably from you.  9.8 times out of 10, I am right.

This has been the longest week of my life.  Back from vacation, trying to get back in line at work and getting my personal life in order.  I hope these next few days are just as slow so I can enjoy every last second we share until … whenever it is we are in the same place again.

Instrumental Yo La Tengo songs keep coming on the iRust’s shuffle.  So bizarre.

I keep thinking in my head if I turn up the heat, if I start to hustle, maybe we’d give this a try.  I shouldn’t want that, but all I want is us.  Through all that has transpired this week, through whatever it is that probably will transpire between now and when I leave your side for the last time, I could want nothing more than to call you mine.  And I know I can’t.  And I know you won’t.  And I could just hope that maybe just maybe, once you are back at school and away from both of us that you can make the informed decision for yourself.  But he can come visit easier that I can, with greater reasons than I.  You’ll get back together and I slowly re-sort my life and move on.  I really don’t want to.  I want this to stay for the while.  Wait around for a bit, see how often I hear from you, see what it is I hear from you.

It’s weird knowing I have an audience now.  I don’t know what I’ll be able to say now.

I know I wrote it before, and that it was quickly followed up with a halt, but do you think we’re meant to be?

I had this great idea in my head on vacation that “Ithaca” would be the song always going through changes to reflect our life together.  Crazy.

Until tomorrow, when I will see you at some point, and hopefully at least get a hug.  I’m at the point where I will learn to accept any physicality being out of the question, no matter what our discussion was last night.  Doesn’t mean I won’t still hope it happens one last time still.

“There is only this time, and what a time it is.“

You don’t have to leave,
You can stay the night if you want to
Laid out in my arms she said, “Don’t fall for me,”
I replied that I’d try my best not to
We’ll see where that gets you

I know that she likes me, she once made it clear
We’re just impossible for now, and we’re nowhere near

Some nights spent we were doused in sleep
Others were drenched in sweat
Was there a way to make this better yet?
And no one had to play hard to get

Wake up in the morning, she lays next to me
Her skin rubs on my skin, a breast then her chin
She whispers in my ear she’s fallen for me
With this I am ok, I’m glad we’re on the same page

But you can fold your hand for now
While the chips are down
Are you frightened by my love?
Do you think we’re meant to be?
Wait, don’t answer that

And fingers graze spaghetti straps
This may be the last time that they ever graze your back
I know you have to go back
And the odds favor you never return

But for now, don’t leave
Stay this night, you want to
I’ll awake in the morning, she’ll sleep next to me
No longer is it the same, no longer on the same page
She’s off to a new chapter, and I’m back at the start

Desolation.

I’ve never been so alone.

Don’t even know what to think of all of this anymore.

This song plays and it used to have such meaning.

I remember that luck would have it and it was playing the first I went to your place.

And then, not by as much coincidence, it was playing the second-first time I arrived in your lobby.

Now what do I have left with this song?  Like us, our relationship is over.

The rip tide has taken me in, sucked me in to the undertow. Drifting away and never to be saved.

Oh darling.  My beloved darling who I fell for.  How the last two months have been so great.  How I treasure each and every moment shared with you, asleep or awake, a smile or a straight.  hand in hand, arm and arm.

Oh well, can’t have everything you ever want.

Eddie Vedder said it once, and he has repeated this statement to me over the months and multiple plays on my iPod.  Ties this all together:

“So that’s it for now, sorry.  Never been too good at happy endings.”

Good bye.