It’s not long after midnight on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I’m at my parents’ house in New Jersey, my onetime bedroom now occupied by a pair of sleeping beagles.

I’ve spent the last two hours looking for two very random objects: a piece of sheet music and a photograph of myself circa winter 1994, in order to demonstrate exactly what my hair looked like at its longest. (This was, perhaps, not my finest stylistic hour. Or decade.)

So far, I’ve found neither. But the items I have found in assorted college-era containers are doing a fine job of cueing up a surreal set of emotions:

• Numerous late-9os flyers for NYU shows that helped to introduce me to bands I still listen to regularly (Rex, Aislers Set, etc.), along with other odd items from the Program Board archive;
• This seven inch, co-released by Douglas Wolk’s label Dark Beloved Cloud long before I’d met the man or read his work;
• A letter from Jason Molina, responding to interview questions I’d sent for a piece that would appear in an issue of my zine at the time.
• A photo of my dorm-room workspace circa late 1996, including plastic crates full of problematically aligned CDs and a Van Pelt Stealing From Our Favorite Thieves poster on the wall.

It’s made for a surreal, bittersweet kind of night. And one that, if I might tie in the holiday that just passed, makes me thankful for any number of things in a subtle yet strangely overwhelming way.