Reflections

You fill me to the brim. You take over until there is nothing left and I let you. You are my home. You are my harbor. You are all my thoughts summed up into another consciousness. You are everywhere, but I still never felt bigger. And as I breathe you in I know, what I've always known -- you have me, you will always have me. I knew I would find you. I just didn't know what color your eyes would be.

Justin Timberlake – Mirrors

Fly

Sometimes the path is not a straight one. Sometimes you are fumbling and stepping sideways and tripping over your own two feet. And sometimes it is hard. So much harder than you thought it would be. To stand up tall, to keep the pace, to move forward. Sometimes it would be easier to just sit back, relax and stay in your corner of the couch indefinitely. To choose the straight and narrow, to avoid the blinding lights up ahead in favor of what is known and safe and pacifying. Sometimes life takes you where you didn't think you would ever go. You make mistakes, you try to remedy those mistakes, only to make new ones. It's all part of the travels, all part of the road and the colors you choose to paint your life with. And in the end. All that is left.

Is to follow your heart.

Leddra Chapman – Picking Oranges

At the core

So, you are changing the outline of my life again. So, you are affecting the paths I choose again. So, you are complicating things again. (It's just what you do, always.) Not many have tried. Most have failed. You never tried I think, it just happened like a light switch being flicked, or a brand new door opening into a very different room. I try to imagine sometimes, what it would be like, had you not taken hold of me that warm Midsummer's eve. I try to go back sometimes, but I always fail. I can't imagine not ever having met you. I can't imagine the person I would be had you not come along. I can't imagine being back there, where everything was bleak and quiet and orderly. Where I had everything at my fingertips and still felt as if I had dropped my life in a trash can with little hope of ever finding it again. So that's why I don't make that cut. That's is why I won't make it, unless I absolutely have to. Time will tell if you'll make me...

Laakso – Norrköping

Get on with it!

You drive me crazy. You always did. You still do. Do you know it? No, I think not. That's part of the thrill I guess. Do you still wear cowboy boots, I wonder. Do you still not know, just where you are going? (No, wherever it is I am NOT coming with you.) When I think of you I can't help smiling. When I think of you I can't help hoping. That you'll sort it all out in the end. That you'll find your way. That you'll find out who you are. I knew a boy once. He was all sparkles and fire and sorrow and he laughed just like a child. I knew a boy once. Who wanted nothing more than to be a man, to grow up, but who kept tripping over the ghosts that had become his life. I hope I pick up my phone one day and find a man on the other side. "Top of the morning to ya me darlin', life is bleedin' grand isn't it?, he will shout across a static phone line. And I will lose my breath for just a second (as always) and then I'll have to smile through all the miles that separate us. Because, finally, finally, that boy I used to know has become a man.

Flogging Molly – If I Ever Leave This World Alive

Hjärter knekt

Jag: How is she?
M: Ah, she'll be alright. She's a tough cookie -- just like you!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for reminding me. I forgot again...

Fan!

Det är inte svårt. Det är inte omöjligt. Jag har släppt taget nu och jag vänder mig inte om. Det är som det ska nu. Det är exakt. Det är precis nu. Allt det vi inte var. Jag går vidare framåt: lätt, fri, och jag ler medan jag rör mig. Varför trodde jag det skulle vara så svårt? Varför kändes det så omöjligt? När det var så oändligt lätt. Men så, (helt plötsligt) känner jag din närvaro. Lika stark som alltid. Den golvar mig. Precis som alltid. Dina tankar söker mig genom mil och åter mil av okända gator. Dina ögon hittar mina från en bardisk långt där borta och ditt medvetande borrar sig in, ännu lite längre in. Det blir så där jävlarnas svårt att andas igen. Och jag förstår, långt där inne på botten, att ingenting är över, ingenting är slut -- att vi bara väntar.

Jag hoppas så innerligt att jag har så jävla in i helvetes fel...

Lord Huron – Setting Sun - (Bonus Track)

Achill

You want to walk along the shoreline with me -- where the waves never stop crashing against the rugged, black rocks and there is a little white house, with a white fence, in the middle of nowhere. You want to place me there, in front of the roaring hearth, with a mug of proper Irish tea between my hands, and then you want to show me your shed, (the one you used when things got too close and hard and fierce) and the pub where all your friends that stayed behind still drink their pints. You want to take me home, to give me the heartland, to give me emerald green and cragged black and a grey, vivid Atlantic ocean. But most of all: you want to give me you. With every fiber and core, with every thought and emotion and image, with every complexity and fearlessness and lack of armor. But, you're too late my darlin'.

We were always a little too late.

The Saw Doctors – Clare Island

Away

I feel like I'm locked up in a cage. I feel like my wings are broken. I feel like everything is upside down and there isn't anything I can do about it. So I sit here, trapped within my own mind, by my own thoughts, and all the while I keep wondering: where is this going to end? Because I sure as hell don't like where it seems to be going...

Mumford & Sons – I Will Wait

Pilot boy

White sheets of paper are spread out before me. I'm choosing ink and spacing and lining and as I do I wonder (as always) where am I going? I put my pen to the paper, I start scribbling and the text seems to flow from my pen like water. It switches shades and colors, it fades in between words and sentences and New Roman and Calibri. And as the notes pound in my head, as the thoughts pass through me, I reach further, onward, beyond all the fear and hardships and anguish and all I find is you, always you.

Lord Huron – Time To Run

Ta

I sent you a letter -- and now I can breathe again. I went ahead and pressed those digits -- and now I'm light and airy and hopeful again. I put down the words, I gave them to you, and the rope that held us together was suddenly cut, suddenly and unexpectedly I was free. You laughed that special laugh, the one that stems from deep within your core. And I couldn't help but be so very grateful that you are -- with every cherry on top and every handful that comes with it. So, thank you (hand on my heart) for being all that you are. And for deciding to actually stay this time.

Lord Huron – The Stranger