time travel is for broken-hearted lovers

never have i ever wished harder for a time machine than the last few days.

technological advancement has enabled time preservation of the cruelest kind... i can pull up emails from a few months ago, years ago, and read them and transport myself back to a time that was so happy and filled with promise and yet so achingly out of reach. so real and in my grasp, summoned from memory as if it were yesterday, but still rigidly in the past. i can remember, but never resurrect.

how much i wish for second chances. if only those sweet words that used to be heartfelt could be re-learned and practiced. like sitting back down at the piano and playing that favorite song. climbing back on a bike after falling off and riding it over hills to the next town over, leaving this dreary place behind.

all my deepest desires to still time, to go backwards, to wallow in nostalgic longing, can be traced back to a painful understanding that nothing lasts, and somethings you can never get back, no matter how much you try to recreate and/or preserve them. we are all victims to time.

(if only i could) sleep all summer

i saw Neko Case perform at the Egg in Albany with some good friends last night: a college friend, a friend from my recent graduate program, and one of my best friends, my partner of 7 years (he turned 30 yesterday).

Neko came out to perform this song for her encore. just her and a guitarist. i was in tears by the end of it. something about sitting with all these people who i loved so much, people i've needed in different ways at different stages of my life, some who i've gotten much closer to over the years and others who i know time and distance will eventually pull us apart, not knowing the future of things, not understanding the past, and wanting so much to pull it all in tight and protect it from the erosion of time ever-marching onward. i've never been so afraid for a moment to end.

so i'm just gonna put this video here, and some lyrics that particularly spoke to me, like a little fragile time capsule for me to come back to another day and remember how i felt in this particular moment, tears streaming down my face in a dark spaceship-like concert venue, afraid for the lights to turn back on again.

"I would change for you but, babe, that doesn't mean I'm gonna be a better man

Give the ocean what I took from you so one day you could find it in the sand
And hold it in your hands again

Cold ways kill cool lovers
Strange ways we used each other
Why won't you fall back in love with me?"