The autumn leaves have got you thinking
about the first time that you fell
You didn’t love the boy too much, no, no
you just loved the boy too well, Farewell
So you live from day to day, and you dream
about tomorrow, oh.
And the hours go by like minutes
and the shadows come to stay
So you take a little something to
make them go away
And I could have done so many things, baby
If I could only stop my mind from wondrin’ what
I left behind and from worrying ’bout this wasted time
Ooh, another love has come and gone
Ooh, and the years keep rushing on
I remember what you told me before you went out on your own:
“Sometimes to keep it together, we got to leave it alone.”
So you can get on with your search, baby, and I can
get on with mine
And maybe someday we will find, that it wasn’t really
wasted time

– The Eagles, “Wasted Time”, 1994.

We finished up early today so I cranked the volume at my desk and busted some Van Halen (the Balance album from 1995 to be exact). This brought back some memories from that time — as music does. They aren’t good memories, but nostalgia has set in and worn them down a bit.

It was a break-up that wrecked me. My grades went to shit and nobody around me provided any consolation. Nobody, that is, except for my brother, Adrian. As young as he was then, and as much as he felt that I had deserted him in the years just prior to ‘95, he helped me. I can’t say that I can sit and think and find one or two specific reasons how he helped me, and I’m sure he wouldn’t be able to either, but I think we actually became brothers then. At the very least, I came to know what it really meant to have a brother.

The years have slipped on — as they do. We’ve both gotten caught up with our own lives and our wives and our pets and our homes. This is as it should be. But I want him to know that he grew me up eleven years ago when he was only 17. I’ve never thanked him for that because it took Sammy Hagar to remind me today of the good that has come of my servitude to the dog days of 1995.

“Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”

– “A River Runs Through It”, 1992.