Bono lost his mother when he was thirteen. His longing for his mother and the pain he has lived with since then has been one of the motifs of U2's music ever since their first album, Boy, in 1980. I feel like "Lemon" is the most heartfelt and beautiful of all of those songs. Bono found the inspiration for the song when he found and watched a video of his mother wearing a lemon-colored dress, playing rounders at a wedding in slow motion. For Bono, the song came out of a desire to preserve the memory he found on that tape. It was a touchstone for him--something he could reach back to in the darkest moments of his life. Hence, "Midnight is where the day begins."
I believe "Lemon" lies at the core of U2's lyrical philosophy. It's about looking up at the distant, faint moonlight from the bottom of a well. It's about realizing that, yes, you've hit bottom and there's nowhere to go but back up. The idea that nothing could possibly get worse, so things would have to get better, right? Even if things do somehow worsen from that point, just having that idea in your head gets you through that incredibly difficult time. It's like a prayer. It's a frail, vulnerable hope in the middle of the vast universe. It's humanity clinging to Earth. It's life hanging on simply because it has to. Midnight may be the darkest moment of the night, but you can't forget that that is when you turn the corner. In fact, it might be so dark that you turn that corner without even realizing it. You've got only that hope to cling to, but really, it's all you need and the one thing you can't lose.
She wore lemon
To color in the cold gray night
She had heaven
And she held on so tight
It was in the dark, lonely nights some time after my first real relationship ended, more than five years ago. It was so difficult to find hope in the wreckage of my heart. I was beginning to explore U2 while after having finally collected all my Rush albums. I needed something new to dig into and analyze and feel in my life. So I could attempt to move on from the horrible sadness that plagued me. I was skeptical of Zooropa because it was such a strange-looking and odd-sounding album. I was, of course, familiar with The Joshua Tree and Achtung, Baby, but this album looked like weird bargain-bin fodder from the nineties. To many people, it is. Zooropa stands next to Pop as one of the most underappreciated U2 albums in their entire oeuvre. And it's too bad. Much of the lyrical content is breathtakingly beautiful and thought-provoking. The music spoke to the joyful and uncertain unification of Europe in the early 1990's. It embraced the postmodern vertigo that radiated out to everyone on the TV and radio waves. It questions the sanity of the relentless advertising campaigns that bombard everyone's eyes, regardless of where they looked. And it boldly looked into a murky future and asked if we were ready. What makes Zooropa even more special is Johnny Cash's performance of "The Wanderer," an electro-country song illustrated with nuclear, post-apocalyptic motifs. It's stunning and unforgettable.
When I first listened to "Lemon" and read the lyrics, something inside me shifted. It felt like a tightening, a focusing of sorts. It was then that I realized that if I was going to hang on to my hope for finding real love in my life, I had to get stronger. I had to take stock of myself and remember who I am and the most basic, fundamental things I stand for. And that very thing, I had finally realized, is love. My prime mover.
Tonight we drink to youth
To holding fast, but true
Don't wanna lose what I had as a boy
I can learn to compromise
Anything but my desires
I can learn to persist
With anything but aiming low
So, with "Lemon" building the galvanizing force that would haul me out of darkness, I began to see that I was going to make it. I regained my appetite and the joy I derived from reading, from playing my favorite video games, from school, music, and being with my family and friends. I was reminded again of the healing powers of music. "Midnight is where the day begins" became an immutable part of my life's lyrical constellation, up there with the most affecting words of the Rush and Neil Young songs that touched the deepest parts of my soul.
Hold your fire
Keep it burning bright
I hear their passionate music
Read the words that touch my heart
Not too long after that summer ended, I began my fifth semester at college. I was still sad, still lonely, but no longer hopeless. One afternoon, I was reading or studying something by the liberal arts building. More than five years later, whatever I had been doing at that very second matters as little as I remember it. Because what was to happen when I looked up would change everything.
There was a strikingly beautiful girl trying to sleep on the bench across from me. She had long, dark, wavy hair, and a slightly frustrated and tired expression. Even though her eyes were closed, there was no denying that she was uniquely beautiful. I wanted to say something to her. I was almost too afraid to.
"That bench can't be all that comfortable."
She slowly sat up and looked at me with infinitely deep and soulful, brown eyes. I was taken aback, both at seeing her gaze for the first time and at the fact that she hadn't ignored me. She told me she had been trying to catch up on the sleep she had lost to studying for her biology test, which she had taken earlier that day. Our conversation continued and gathered strength and momentum, and before I could even catch up, she had already gotten up and sat next to me. She told me her name and where she had originally come from. Lalita. From South Africa. My god. I could not believe my ears, nor could I believe I was talking to someone so incredibly beautiful. Though I felt nervous, I felt safe around her. We shared more things about each other and soon we found that we were no longer the only atheists on campus. We talked for what seemed like three or four hours, and when she rose to go to class, I found myself desperately wanting her to stay. Instead I walked her to her class and hugged her twice, tightly, before she disappeared inside the building. Fortunately we had exchanged phone numbers. With her number in my pocket, I felt like I was in possession of some universal truth that had yet to be revealed to humans. Like the evidence of first contact or something. . My path had crossed with someone's from the other side of an ocean. The topography of my life had totally changed and there was no going back.
Building bridges across the ocean floor
Reaching for the alien shore
One very significant detail that I do remember from that first meeting was that Lalita had been wearing a yellow dress.
Lemon
She wore lemon
Even though she was already in a relationship, the desire I felt for her consumed all my thoughts. There were some mornings where I simply could not focus in class because the halo that the sunlight would cast through her hair would blind my mind's eye. She and I could only get closer from that point on. Eventually, I became good friends with her boyfriend. And by the time I had met the girl I would move in with to go to school in Atlanta, I had already begun burying my desire for Lalita. But she never disappeared from my mind or my heart.
After I returned home from the wreck of that aforementioned relationship, I built up the confidence to go back to the college where I had begun my university career. And where I had met Lalita. Who was still there. Who was always there. By that point, she had become a very close confidant. She had already seen me through the ravages of two failed relationships and as we studied together and had more long, thoughtful conversations, we grew even closer. She was fast becoming my best friend. I felt like I could trust her with everything. It took me nearly two more years to realize that I actually loved her.
A year and a half later, at a party, she got too drunk to stand up and then lay in her friend's bed. She beckoned me to her side and then she reached for my hand for the first time in our three years of our friendship. She changed my life again with that simple and infinitely complex gesture. That same night, she asked me to be closer to her. Her husband, who had been her boyfriend when I met her, was allowing us to do this. They were trying something new in their relationship to deal with the problems it was facing.
At this point, you should remember that I've already shared this memory. With a girl I named Madeleine. So, here it is: Madeleine is Lalita. Because thousands of things in my life remind me of her, like the madeleines in Remembrance of Things Past. I used that name in my entries about her from last year, because my memories of Lalita would come unbidden, and I could not resist them no matter how hard I tried. Which eventually led to my entry about "Hand Cannot Erase." Because I knew then and still know now that there is nothing I can do to erase my love for her.
Hand cannot erase this love
That ensuing summer was filled with perfect memories: warm, humid nights under the streetlights along her neighborhood road. Watching Life is Beautiful and Mr. Nobody. Cooking pasta with seitan and curry with noodles and sweet potatoes. Long and deep postcoital conversations about everything and nothing. Desperate and urgent professions of love while clasped in each other's arms. Her dancing to "Eggshell" because of how intensely she felt for me.
The summer ended and she began pulling away from me and it was destroying my world. I clung to her and she tried to cling to me, but she could not reconcile her love for me with how she was raised and socialized. She loved both me and her husband, but she felt that she had to choose between us again. She was worried about her green card. I should also take this moment to dispel the completely wrongheaded idea that I got about how she had used me to keep her marriage alive and keep herself in the country. The idea never occurred to her. I had only come up with it in the vacuum that had opened up between us after we ceased communicating. She was so confused about everything that her ability to express herself failed her and she saw no other way out besides shutting down. So, in anger, I shut her out. I can say with confidence that that night was the worst in my life.
You howl and listen
Listen and wait for the
Echoes of angels who won't return
Avoiding her in school proved to be one of the most difficult things I had ever done up to that point in my life. One night, at a department dinner/gathering at a local Mexican restaurant, she showed up with her husband. I quickly found that I could not hide behind my menu, gathered my coat, and left without a word.
Even then, I still remembered "Lemon." It was a cold comfort then, on that night in December 2014. From that point and throughout last year, she was still my lady in the lemon-colored dress. The anger, hatred, love, and longing I felt for her became an iron cross that I dragged with me everywhere I went. I would still hear her voice and smell her hair. I could still feel her laughter and taste her tears. I wanted none of it and hungered for more at the same time. All the books I had read, all the experiences I had with Susan that year, all the small, isolated moments of happiness and long stretches of darkness I ached to share with Lalita. I could still feel her there, existing in a form between an intense, but slowly fading memory and a ghost. I hated her and I missed her. My relationship with Susan imploded and I went adrift for a while, flirting half-heartedly with vague interests. There was no displacing Lalita. And I began to make my peace with that fact and with the very real possibility that I would never encounter her again.
This past December I drove up north to spend time with some old friends. After a few days, I settled in and looked in my inbox for the first time in weeks. On the first of this year, her name appeared, out of the shadows of my memory.
I felt a sick, rusty, grinding, and groaning wrenching in my stomach and stared at my screen for minutes on end. She had taken an entire year to come the distance she needed to in order to reach out to me once again. She told me of how she discovered polyamory and how much she had grown during our time apart. I had already opened the message, and again I knew that there was probably no going back. I reasoned that if she had finally gotten to a place where she could attempt to reconnect with me, I owed her a chance. But that shred of reason was overwhelmed in a raging tsunami of love and loss and anger and hurt and hope. I wasn't sure if I wanted Lalita back in my life, but I desperately needed to hear her voice.
Caught up in circles
Confusion is nothing new
Flashback, warm nights
Almost left behind
Suitcase of memories
That night we talked for seven hours in a vain attempt to make up for thirteen months of silence. We're still trying to make up for it now. Sometimes I feel like we may never succeed in that. But we know that that was the ultimate test of our love and that we never want to do that to each other again. My love for her came roaring back, like a torrential downpour in the Atacama Desert. I was alive again. It was midnight and it was the beginning of a new day. And I knew that I could face it and anything after that with her by my side.
Ever since that night we have been growing closer than ever before. Right now, I am experiencing the most profound joy in my entire life and it's because she and I are finally free to love each other. I truly believe that this is a culmination of all our education, academically, and emotionally. We circled around each other like two moons for years. We passed into the orbits of other planets, but our combined momentum was far too great for their gravity. We passed into the emptiness between the stars and traversed huge gulfs of silence. But the attraction at our poles and our cores continued to generate heat below the layers of ice that had encroached between us. Now that ice has sublimed and left warm oceans and atmospheres. We are like a double planet, each our own person, but eternally linked and sustaining life and love better than we ever could before.
Somehow we find each other
Through all that masquerade
Somehow we found each other
Somehow we have stayed
In a state of grace
Soon I will be flying out to see her again for the first time in too long. And after that point, I believe that my life will change once again and that I'll be with her, as close to her in the physical realm as I am in the emotional.
And she is still my lady in the lemon-colored dress.
You're gonna meet her there
She's your destination
You've got to get to her
She is the dreamer
She's imagination
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