The other day I realized that I don’t really know where I’ve been the past few years. I feel as one who has been wallowing in the middle of truth and fiction; one who looks across a darkening ocean for a future, only to see the past. I feel as though all of that is behind me, though. I’ve woken up.

I’m returning to my studies of literature, philosophy, and Latin. I’ve got a career as an information architect that I’m enjoying fully. I’m working to get my dad’s poetry to the public. Perhaps the most exciting, though, is today I bought myself new saxophone reeds and am practicing again.

My saxophone is important to me, and it was the trigger for my realization above. I’ve gone for three years without ever taking it out of its case, without ever feeling the taste and rough-hewn flexibility of a bamboo reed, without ever honking out my feelings through the tube of cold brass, ivory, and wood. Tonight, though, I felt the vibration of that reed against my bottom lip and honked myself silly.

So now why does Deval Patrick have to go and ruin it? Why was it I voted for him? I’m going to write him and find out.