"If you could read my mind love,
what a tale my thoughts could tell.
Just like an old time movie
about a ghost from a wishing well.
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
with chains upon my feet.
You know that ghost is me
and I will never be set free
as long as I'm a ghost that you can't see.

If I could read your mind love,
what a tale your thoughts could tell.
Just like a paperback novel,
the kind the drugstore sells.
When you reach the part where the heartaches come
the hero would be me.
Heroes often fail.
And you won't read that book again
because the endings just too hard to take.

I walk away like a movie star
who gets burned in a three way script.
Enter number two, a movie queen
to play the scene of bringing all the good things out in me,
but for now love lets be real.

I never thought I could act this way
and I've got to say that I just don't get it.
I don't know where we went wrong
but the feeling's gone and I just can't get it back.

If you could read my mind love,
what a tale my thoughts could tell.
Just like an old time movie about a ghost from a wishing well.
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
with chains upon my feet the story always ends.
And if you read between the lines
you'll know that I'm just trying to understand
the feeling that you left.

I never thought I could feel this way
and I got to say that I just don't get it.
I don't know where we went wrong
but the feeling's gone
and I just can't get it back."

- If You Could Read My Mind by Gordon Lightfoot


Personally, I've always felt that Cold Case pales in comparison to CSI. It always felt like an imperfect copy, the younger sister in the shadow of an elder, more brilliant sibling. The story-telling techniques were similar, especially the use of artfully chosen songs, but somehow, Cold Case always just fell shy of great. But in a span of a mere episode, it more than redeemed itself.

Honor deals with a POW coming home from the Vietnam war to crushing guilt, for having given in to the VC in order to ensure early release from the camps, to the shame of being called a hero when he felt he was nothing but a coward, and last but not least, utter rejection, from fellow POWs who despised him and felt he'd betrayed not just them but their country. When the Cold Case team interviews the wife she is bitter and old. The husband she'd loved as a young woman had returned a broken, tortured stranger and though they'd stayed together, trying desperately to recapture the past, heart-breakingly, he was murdered before they could even try. She never really recovered from that blow. The final sequence with Gordon Lightfoot's song playing in the background was particularly resonant. For the men who had risked their lives and experienced the death of idealism, to come home to cold and hostile reactions must have been devastating.

"..but the feeling's gone
and I just can't get it back.."

Perhaps I was particularly inclined towards this episode because I so happen to be reading Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, which also has its roots in the Vietnam War. The alienation the first conscripts of the war felt, when they returned home to an Earth decades older and disconcertingly unfamiliar is devastating. Young, and yet old, due to the effects of relativity and time dilation, they no longer recognise the Earth they were fighting for. Predictably most 'vetrans' re-enlisted. As the protagonist ironically described, it felt like going home. I haven't been this enthralled in a long time.