So take heed, take heed of the Western winds. Take heed of the stormy weather. And yes, there's something you can send back to me: Spanish Boots of Spanish Leather.

Have you ever been haunted by a song? Where you become so absorbed that you can't shake it? Not the same as getting some hooky pop melody stuck in your head, and it won't leave you alone, and it repeats again and again, and it never ends, until it does... and that was nothing, that was a sneeze on the road to next December, and you'll not think twice about it, and yes, things will be alright. No, to be haunted by a song is entirely different.

Boots of Spanish Leather is haunting me.

Suze Rotolo left Dylan for Italy. She was his one true love, for a time. And this song is about how something like that fades into the long slow walk into oblivion, the long walk to forever—one boot in front of the other. But sometimes it never actually fades, it lingers.

Lingering like gossamer, it has only a hint of existence; and yet when you draw upon it, it is inexhaustible.

I will never forget this song for as long as I live. And it's not because my one true love has left me for another country. She is so much closer. Too close, indeed. She lives down the street, and she sits in a cubicle directly across from me, but there is a lonesome ocean between us... Proximity choked passion like an ill-fitting boot. A Spanish Boot happens to be the name of a special type of boot used during the Inquisition, that was made to be far too small for the feet that were made to be put into it... uncomfortable in a way that needs no further explanation. So I'm off to see what fate has in store for me now. Limping away from yet another relationship, and that's alright. It's not the breakup that has me limping, it's the song. And who knows what will happen.

I'm not one to dwell upon things that have happened. Thinking about the past is for losers and writers, and I am a writer, so I guess that makes me a hypocrite too. And who cares anyways. After we broke up, I was content with seeing what single life had to offer me, and she saw this, and things became ambiguous.... Until a long ago ex-boyfriend of hers bought her flowers for their old anniversary, on a whim. They were sent to the office where we both work, even though he apparently didn't have her address. Sad. Awkward. Facebook.

I can't speak for her, her thoughts are her own, but this certainly pulled her away from whatever confusion was tossing around in the lonely state of mind that often occupies those first few weeks apart after a split. Though she is most certainly still confused in a new way. And in this void, kicking around in my own head, this song, of love and material reminders—of Spanish boots of Spanish leather—settled down to rest, and it will not leave me alone. I've heard it many times in the past, and it flirted with me, the melody rolled into my ears, but it left me, or I got distracted, shifted my attention elsewhere, and moved on... Moved on down the road. Now I have to carry this song, this song.... and it's a-hard travelin' Lord.

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Goodnight Rose... Ciao, Pesco'a.