It was like a dream. It's always like a dream. So strange that two weeks have vanished. So strange that a year has passed since the last time. So many events gone by. I can remember them all so clearly... yet the last twelve months seem encased in a memory fog.

Did we really see Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band?

Did I really meet Lisa McKay?

I interviewed Guster?

Did my father actually get that sick?

Did my mother have that operation?

We built a new bedroom? A bathroom?

We rebuilt the back porch?

We saw Godspell?

Did that website invite me to write for them?

Did that man, obviously an American Indian, mention the weather ("Hot, eh?") as we both waited for our lunches at the pickup counter?

Did I pay that much for a lobster roll?

Was that a bagpiper on the beach?

Didn't that ocean smell nice?

Oh, did I mention work? No, would you?

Look, my year is no different than anybody else's. Things just happen. What's amazing though, is the disorienting sense of time compression. Days seem like months, years seem like weeks, and weeks seem like days. When I cracked open this new Springsteen recording, the events of the past year flew by in reverse order back to last year's show. Both the music and the event had that kind of power.

First person at the office who says "Welcome back to civilization" is really gonna get it.