It's a Beautiful Day

We bought this set of CDs, #1 Hits in Australia, somewhere along the Southern Coast on the way to Melbourne. We stopped for the restrooms and to get a ginger beer (similar to ginger ale in the states) at a tiny little gas station in the middle of nowhere because my stomach was feeling a bit queasy from all the hairpin turns.

Walt picks up the CD set and shows it to me. "Should we get this? I'm getting tired of the iPods." I glance over the CD titles and immediately consent. The titles include 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s songs, and random things I would never believe could ever hit #1. But I saw Beautiful Day by U2 and I knew we had to get it.

This is the same set of CDs that got Walt a 300AUD speeding ticket, by the way.

We're playing this song, Beautiful Day, as we drive out south of Hobart, Tasmania this morning. We're driving on the left side of the road on the edge of a steep cliff, overlooking the bay in Hobart. The weather is a bit cloudy and a bit chilly. But it's a beautiful day in my head.

This song makes me happy every time I hear it.

I would marry Bono for this song. He's pretty awesome anyway.

It consistently reminds me that even when my life isn't as great as it is now - read: happily unemployed, traversing the Ozzie lands with two amazing people, and generally having the time of my life - life is beautiful. In its own twisted and warped way, the hardest, most difficult times have an inner beauty that you can't appreciate until you have passed through.

Today? It's a beautiful day.


The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
There's no room
No space to rent in this town

You're out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you're not moving anywhere

You thought you'd found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace

It's a beautiful day
Sky falls, you feel like
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away

You're on the road
But you've got no destination
You're in the mud
In the maze of her imagination

You love this town
Even if that doesn't ring true
You've been all over
And it's been all over you

It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
It's a beautiful day

Touch me
Take me to that other place
Teach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case

See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out

It was a beautiful day
Don't let it get away
Beautiful day

Touch me
Take me to that other place
Reach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case

What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can feel it somehow
What you don't have you don't need it now
Don't need it now
Was a beautiful day