April 1995: San Francisco. After a breakup, I set off to travel alone for the first time in my life. Sad and scared, yet excited to be exploring and finding myself, I walked, hiked, and biked around the city for days, sometimes never speaking to another person all day. This song, on a mixed tape with Radiohead’s Creep and Counting Crows’ Sullivan Street, kept me company. All three songs are forever etched onto my memory and senses, next to the rolling hills, the cable cars, the Castro, and the Golden Gate. The trip and Mary’s song changed my life.
And here we are with nothing
But this emptiness inside of us
Your smile a fitting, final gesture
Wish I could have loved you better
Baby, where’s that place where time stands still?
I remember like a lover can
But I forget it like a leaver will
It’s the first time that you held my hand
It’s the smell and the taste and the fear and the thrill
It’s everything I understand
And all the things I never will
