i can live with or without you,

but i'd rather live with you.

as i moved into my first apartment in college, i found a box of tapes lying on the floor of my new room. sanjay's old roommate had left them behind and he thought i'd like to look through them before he threw them out. he knew me so well.

most of the tapes were crap. but one caught my eye. 'u2 live'. i kept it.

it was a shitty recording and i was about to throw it out but 'with or without you' came on and since it was my favorite u2 song, i just let it play. the song usually fades out with bono singing 'with or without you' over and over...but this time bono came flying back with a new verse i'd never heard before.

'ya we'll shine like stars in the summer night. we'll shine like stars in the winter night. one heart... one hope... one love... with or without you..'

it floored me.

i listened to that tape over and over just for the last minute of that song. over & over & over again. until i wore it out. and eventually lost it.

from that point on, every time i heard 'with or without you', i'd hope for that extra verse. it never came so i'd sing it my head or aloud in my car.

amazingly i found an mp3 version of it and you guessed it, i obsessed over it all over again. and then true to form, i lost it again.

but thanks to some amazing people and the wonders of the internet, the song is back in my life. and i hope i'm never without it again.