It starts with a rush. You zoom up toward the blue. For a while you're floating, and then you fall -- not a weightless descent, but a heavy crash and burn. At the end, you're left dazed, surrounded by the wreckage of what once seemed like a pretty promising adventure. Such is love when it doesn't work out. It's happened to us all. A few years ago it happened to Cary Aria. A talented young musician in Minneapolis, he had his life under control until he bought that ticket. Then suddenly he was up there, dizzy with disbelief. He left everything behind, followed his muse out to southern California. They lived near the beach, breathing in bliss like the spray of the sea.

Then, almost too slowly to notice, the season changed. There was no blowup, just a gradual resignation. Each day, once unpredictable, became a variation on the day before and a forecast of what would follow. The magic that drew them to the west slipped imperceptibly away. Eventually Cary packed up and went back home.

But as one story ended, another began. Working mainly on his own, or on occasion with musical colleagues, he wrote and recorded Ruins, a chronicle of this romance. Disarmingly candid and woven into a sequence of accessible tunes, his lyrics achieve an unaffected eloquence, unburdened by bitterness. From the moment of their meeting to a last wistful speculation on what might have been, Ruins rises from our own experiences as much as his, for we've been there too. This is familiar territory. Except for one thing: Few of us have found a way to turn what we've been through into a cycle of songs. Among those who have, fewer still have done so with the objectivity and poetry, wisdom and innocence, that distinguish this mini-saga. And if there's anyone left out there who has, he probably didn't get his ex-girlfriend to contribute to the project. That alone makes Ruins worth investigation.

Alison's not her real name, but everything else on Ruins is true.

Inspired by the example of Prince, he had made himself self-sufficient in the studio, writing his own material, singing lead and overdubbing background vocals, playing all the instruments. His lyrics, sometimes sardonic, always observant, drew more from the example of Elvis Costello. "Well-crafted pop songs moved me," he explains, "especially the words. There were certain songs I heard on the radio that made me feel what the writers were expressing, and I wanted to express myself in a similar way."

He met "Alison" at one of his shows. "We hit it off," he remembers. "We saw each other for a year or so when she suddenly got a job in San Diego and I decided to move out there with her. It seemed like a good idea to start things fresh." Fresh ... as in the air, the sun, and the inviting vibe of their new locale. They found a house blocks from the ocean and began adapting as Minnesota transplants. "I never grasped surfing," he laughs, "but we did a lot of exploring. We covered the West Coast: Santa Barbara, Orange County ... Tijuana." Their travels wound to the East too, as far as Greece, whose images figure prominently in the artwork for Ruins. Stumbling across a crumbled statue of Dionysus on the empty island of Delos, scrambling up to the Acropolis for an early morning shot of the Parthenon in Athens, Cary and "Alison" filled their album with pictures that would one day become a visual metaphor on Ruins. During another stopover, in Paris, an argument exposed the frayed edges in their relationship; a microcassette captured the exchange, which serves now as a premonitory interlude on the same CD.

Back in San Diego, Cary scribbled out songs like journal entries. After the upbeat early titles -- the shy introduction of "Tongue Tied," the sly and sexy "Draw" -- they began to darken, with doubts about what's left unspoken on "You Can't Hide," apprehensions of failure on "Scared," pain and anger biting through the blues of "Gasoline," and at last a bewildered acceptance on "Where've You Been?" Assembled chronologically after Cary's return to Minneapolis, these songs form a concept album, an odyssey of the heart, laced by catchy riffs and sing-along melodies. Put together as Ruins, they take on a single identity, simple yet subtle, personal and universal, easy to hear and impossible to forget.

Today, Cary Aria has picked up where he left off before his two and a half years with "Alison" had begun. "She likes the album," he says. "She actually helped me put it together. I came to her with the idea and she helped me sketch it all out. She's even on the album, playing the role of 'Alison.' Communication between us was very open, and it still is. We're the very best of friends."

And so Ruins is, in the end, an optimist's tale. "I guess I've come around full circle," he admits. "I learned something about myself with every song that I wrote. Maybe people who hear them will relate to them too."

There's no "maybe" about it. Ruins is your story too ... or it will be someday. That's enough to make it as special as a memory and as hopeful as tomorrow ...

It started with Ruins, his first CD, which recounted the rise and fall of his relationship with Alison, a kind of Everywoman who also happens to be a real person -- real enough to guest on the project, replaying her role in the story.

That leads, a couple of years later, to Obsexed, Aria's follow-up. Things have changed: He is playing to new fans who helped propel Ruins to its debut at No. 7 on college radio charts. He's doing national tours, with gigs booked up and down both coasts and plenty of points between. His sound has tightened, toughened, and grown.

He's also on that road we know too well -- the one that leads from the wreckage of love into the wilderness of dating. His adventures along the way are ironic, titillating and fulfilling, all of which leave the traveler wiser than he was when he started out. Fortunately, Aria has a knack for communicating through song, from the bone-crushing riff that kicks off the opening track, "Dig Down Deep," to his unique blend of slamming beat, experimental vocals, and subtle metaphor on "Empty Canvas."

"I have to write this way," Aria insists. "I can't censor myself. It's better for me to get it all out there. That's one reason why it was easier for me to do the whole album alone. I never thought about bringing any other musicians in; I wanted to play all the parts myself."

Setting aside the lyrics, Obsexed is a musical tour de force. In just three days Aria laid down every part himself, weaving them together to create an impression of one killer live band. Strains of punk, power pop, garage -- even jazz, which pops up absurdly in the middle of the furious "Complicated."

"My approach here was the opposite of Ruins, which was compiled over a couple of years," he explains. "I recorded this one very quickly because I wanted to keep a loose, indie rock feel. Really, I was trying to challenge myself; whenever I feel like I'm settling in too much, I shake things up. That was definitely happening throughout Obsexed."

For the lyrics, Aria drew inspiration mostly from the people he'd encountered in his dating odyssey. "I write to get things off my mind," he says. "It's therapy, and I enjoy writing about what goes on in my life."

As documented on Ruins, Phase Two unfolds on Obsexed -- which, despite its chronicle of frustrations and doubts and annoyances, glows with a kind of cautious optimism. "I have a positive attitude," Aria insists. "This comes partly from the fact that I'm a multi-instrumentalist, which means that as a musician I can do whatever I set my mind to do. The idea behind Obsexed is that there's no limit to what you can do if you open your mind to all the possibilities. I'm a single man, having fun and learning from my experiences, trying to better myself. A lot of these songs deal with the freshness of being out there and meeting new people after coming out of a major relationship."