The Sun Set...In Her Eyes.

One of my favorite songs of all time is from the U2 album The Joshua Tree  called "One Tree Hill". One particular lyric in the song has always haunted and fascinated me: "We see the sun go down in your eyes". It is a song written about the death of Greg Carroll, a friend of the band in a 1986 motorcycle accident. The lyric, to me has always been a metaphor for death or dying. I can picture The Sun light being extinguished from someone as reflected in the mirrors of one's Soul: their Eyes.

The song and the line have always given me chills yet I'd say they are rather "warm" chills...if that makes any sense at all. Meaning they are familiar and friendly, almost the "good kind' as it were.

I have always felt things very deeply...it is just the way I have always been. I'm that way even more today now that my emotions are un-encumbered by booze and drugs...that crap certainly watered 'em down, no doubt about it. I think about a man losing his best friend then writing a song...it moves me almost to tears just thinking about it.

I've lost more friends then I care to admit, many of them very young, their lives had hardly begun. When you choose to live a life that constantly pushes the envelope of sanity, of physical tolerance by doing drugs and drinking/partying to excess...well this is what you have to expect: You or your friends are going to die. Several of mine have...

Of all the friends I've lost, the first one resonates with me the most for a couple of reasons. The picture of her grave graces the front page of this blog on the left hand side. Debbie Coleman lived right up the street from me and was my very first girlfriend ever...way back in the 6th grade. That was the first time I had ever touched a girls lips with my own...I still remember how they felt, what they tasted like. My first kiss...

Then she moved away to California and I didn't see her until our senior year in high school when we re-connected, not as boyfriend/girlfriend but as friends. We shared a love of art, particularly Impressionist Painting, of Led Zeppelin and other things...drugs particularly...but I had just been through drug treatment (twice) and was clean and sober. That is why I lived that day...and Deb died. I always felt responsible for that and for the death of the man she and two other friends of mine killed when they ran their car into his head on, on Hard Road in Columbus, Ohio February 27, 1981...

I think I'm feeling a bit reflective tonight because my 30th High School Reunion is this weekend in Columbus Ohio (Worthington High School Class of 1981) and everyone has been in touch via FaceBook which has really been kind of cool. Because I was already practising my addiction by the time I was in High School, I didn't really participate in much of it. Nor did I really seem to remember much or that many people from that time. Worthington High was a very large school, we had a huge Graduating Class but I've been surprised to find out how many people I do actually recall now and it feels kind of good...

So I guess that has sparked some of this sentiment...unfortunately when I think of High School I almost always think of Debbie first and how I really have missed her all these years. I sit here tonight and I feel so sad for something that literally happened over 30 years ago. And it seems just like yesterday, that the two of us were standing in the north doorway at Worthington Estates Elementary School, kissing each other for the first...and the last time EVER.