In this the year that I turn fifty years old, I find myself indulging in bits of nostalgia here and there, something I don’t do all that often mostly because of how messy it can be. I look back at some pictures where my smile is big and my outfits ridiculous, anything to disguise and distract from the bandages on my wrists, and I ache for what we do to ourselves just trying to get through it. For some reason, these recent days have returned my mind to my senior year of high school, an eerie echo of another transitional period of life. Winter music put my youth to slumber then; it breaks my middle age now.
We are the roses in the garden,Beauty with thorns among our leaves.
To pick a rose you ask your hands to bleed.What is the reason for having rosesWhen your blood is shed carelessly?
It must be for something more than vanity.
‘Our Time in Eden’ is one of those formative music albums of my youth, thanks to epic cuts like ‘These Are Days’ and ‘Candy Everybody Wants’ – and this one – ‘Eden’ – which is one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard, in the best possible way. Back in those final days of high school, I felt the quickened rush of time – the clock as another demon – and I struggled to hang onto whatever I could even as I felt it all slipping away. Most of my classmates and friends wanted to grow up as quickly as possible – despite how old my soul felt, or perhaps because of it, I understood that we should not have been in such a rush, that those days, that Eden, would never come again. I didn’t want to let it go.
Believe me, the truth is we’re not honest,Not the people that we dream.
We’re not as close as we could be.Willing to grow but rains are shallow.Barren and wind-scattered seed on stone and dry land,
We will be.Waiting for the light arisenTo flood inside the prison.
And in that time kind words alone will teach us,No bitterness will reach us.
Whenever I hear this song, it makes me pause and remember. There’s a pit in my stomach – not the usual angst-ridden pit, but a stirring of great and overwhelming emotion. It brings back that tender time when the world was first imprinting itself on my soul, when music meant so much, when beauty could break the heart and the first flush of romantic love hinted at all the exquisite torment to come. Had I known everything that would unfold, I wonder if I’d have bothered with the bandages at all, or simply embraced the pain, knowing how integral it would be to finding the happiness.
