Man o' Sand to Girl o' Sea

I've got the Go-Betweens on my mind because I've just bought their "Bellavista Terrace" (a "best of" compilation - a cop out, I know, but I wasn't musically aware in the eighties and so missed their rise to, well, where exactly? I also wasn't fully conscious for some of the eighties so that's another excuse to add to my reasoning). But they were obviously brilliant and I should check out some of their "real" albums.

The title reminds me of a stanza I once wrote:

Night falls, and I dream
That your raven-black hair
Seems like a flaming red beacon,
Magnetised,
And I navigate onshore.

The subject was a girl I was once besotted with, her raven-black hair not quite reaching her shoulders, though she once shaved it off and her flatmates thought it was a sign of developing lesbianism - "Is there something you want to tell us, G____?" Later she would ask me that same question - "Is there something you want to tell me?" But I mumbled something stupid and changed the subject. That was the big chance that I blew. These days I care enough to write a blog about it but not enough that it consumes my every waking moment. I think it is significant, a turning point in my life, but I've been sleeping well lately.

I should have said that her hair had become a beacon because it was so obvious that I was in love with her, and I was magnetised to it, though I was navigating in the dark onshore while she slowly floated out beyond the breakers. Man o' Sand to Girl o' Sea. The first line of that song is "I want you back," followed by "I feel so sure of our love I'll write a song about us breaking up. The traffic lights on the street of love have just turned red. Turned re-ee-ed." I think that Robert Forster was as confused about love as I was at one point. Why did I have the brakes on? Turns out it was a good thing. I looked forward to her last birthday so I could send her nothing and just let it sail by without lifting a finger. This inaction, characteristic of me lately, is essentially why she left in the first place. I should have said, I should have said... Oh fuck off.

Was there anything I could do? I could dive for her memory once again. That way, in my mind, we wouldn't have to part company... but -

Don't the sun look good today?