11 days deep, 4 years later, 2 years 8 months 8 days and counting

yeah, it's going well. no, i haven't faltered. yes, i feel a lot healthier. no, the football game didn't depress me enough to make me drink. the only times i've come close have been times when i've been cooking. i made a delicious fresh tomato sauce the other night and all i wanted was a glass of red wine to go with it, but i steeled myself. not that it would really be that big of a deal to have one glass of red wine with dinner. but i am sticking to my guns on this one. only three more days to go. even then i'm definitely gonna cool it.

been listening to way too much folk music lately. i've been introduced to an amazing group of people over the past month. so many fantastic musicians and gigs and hearts. it's sort of funny that i never knew these people existed before. but now they are all i want out of this town. check out how cool brandon is, for example. in my opinion he is singlehandedly reviving good local music.

descent played at arbourfest. that was fun. i actually got heard by most of the audience, and while our reception was lukewarm at best, afterwards everyone was quite complimentary. it is lovely to play for people who really love music, and wonderful-er to play WITH people who love music. you know, who play just for the sake of playing. luckily there's one of those in my band. it makes it all worthwhile.

by the way--and maybe this should have been the subject--where were you four years ago?

i woke up around noon to pat calling me, saying he was coming home from work, saying there'd been a horrible accident in new york city and his office had shut down for the day. i didn't believe him. ten minutes later i had the tv turned on and was watching in utter shock as the buildings around the towers collapsed and people ran screaming for their lives. i called my father and made sure his family in new york was all right. everyone was fine but they still hadn't heard from my cousin, carolyn, who lived blocks away from the towers. (later that day we received word that her building was almost untouched.) in the days to come we'd all witness these scenes, over and over, in photographs, narratives, and live reports. there is no way i can describe the utter sorrow i felt for, well, humanity. i felt sorry for the innocent people who had died, i felt sorry for the people who had flown the planes, who had felt like this was the only way to get their point across. i wept for them all. it was so surreal to be walking through ann arbor those days and see incoming freshmen look around at the campus as if these buildings were either the only thing anchoring them. a few looked as though they expected everything to collapse in seconds. some were waiting for the punchline to a horrible joke. and eventually a lot of that grief turned to anger at what happened to our country, and is still happening. historians will look back and say the reaction to that event shaped the future of american politics for decades. bush has been able to get so many of his idiotic ideas across by taking advantage of a country void of a asinine sense of security. at the time, however, i was relatively unaffected by all of that. at the time, i didn't know what i believed, and i didn't really know what it meant to suffer the way so many were suffering. 17 days later, my father was hit by two seizures as suddenly as the Boeing 747s hit those towers, and everything that i felt for NYC was eclipsed by my grief for him. i will always wonder how my life would be different, as i'm sure everyone in new york, let alone the country, wonders. pretty much all i feel now about both tragedies is a hollow sense of loss, and the belief that that's just a part of life. i don't mean to sound callous. but i'd rather focus on the lives that are still being lost--right now--domestically and abroad--because of the two huge demons of war and disease. what are we doing, right now, that is empowering people to bring peace into others' lives? how can we do it better? that's what i think about today. that's what i think about every day.

autumn is almost here and it brings with it a solemn sense of remembrance. this year is going to be different. there is a whole new kind of sadness in store, with my mom and margaret being gone and all. but i feel incredibly supported and buoyed by mle, pete, and everyone else i know. if you're reading this, man, you should know...that i thank you.