I still wear the silver guitar pendant Annie gave me those years ago. It says MEXICO on the back...por supuesto. Not going to be easy to find plata en el EEUU that ain't from México, eh? It's even strung with tiny copper wires for strings. It sits right on the thinnest part of my chest, where the bone rises up, where there is no muscle nor fat. Tiny little tuning pegs like spikes rest against my skin.

También, I have Nu~nu's shell bracelet, Shannon's yen bracelet, Rain's red shrinky-dink necklace, Louise's blonde 19-year old hair and loveletters...somewhere. I have a photo of my mother and I on my window, and a drying couple peppers on a green ceramic dish in front of me. Boxes seem to be exploding silently from my closets these last few days. The floor is growing cluttered in an extreme nearly artistic. I am the Fan Man, redux, man.

Autumn comes, is that it? Is that this draft at my elbow? Is that the rust tinge creeping into the eastern sky?

It's good to know the right time to harvest. You can be holding hands one day, and then be left with nothing but dead fruit, or fraying string, or broken plastic between your fingers if you wait too long. Sometimes you are left with nothing but the memory that you refused to hold a hand. Or just a catty-corner question in your mind of whether or not you ever actually refused...or just waited too long to reach.

What was once vague can grow heavy with repeated recollection. Some things hollow out and rattle when you try to move them again. Some gifts tarnish...you watch them as they darken. You let them. 

My emails stack up now at an alarming rate. I say to people "I'm so busy" but the truth is...my life just seems to have accelerated. It's really since I began this blog. So many opportunities have arisen, so many connections have been made, so many loops sprung up, so much more interaction, tips, offers, remembranzas, jobs, questions, spam, so much correspondence. I really feel its unfair. To people. I am not even quick enough at making folders for new reasons/events/people before an important (and flagged email) gets buried and then temporarily forgotten. It's just...ridiculous. I've said it before, but I really need to find a way to make more cash so I can hire a personal assistant. (This is just something I like to say, it won't happen, there's no real way I can make that much without getting...busier!) Really. I'm maxed out and have become actually inefficient, when really I am a very intensely dedicated and energetic and mad passionate worker and I just can't keep track anymore. 

I say this to explain myself a bit to those who feel I must certainly be rude lately. But have no fear. I am buying a wall sized calender and will write with big, red, bold markers and raw special symbols and wavy lines and jagged arcing bursts of pigment and it will look like the Huichol version of Twister and I will ask my (volunteer) new personal assistant to stand in front of it making secret and wise shapes with her shoulderblades that will cast green shadows bringing magic sundial upon my Huichol-styled Twister Wall Agenda Map and in this way, we will suss out what is important and what is merely distraction. 

So rest assured in this.

But of course on to the September 11 part. I may have told you about this already. No, not the part bout me living in manhattan when the shit went down. Not that asbestos and fuel-flecked chestnut. And you know--I really love New York. Just like the damn T Shirt says. And I really hope one day NEW YORK CITY doesn't have to mean death and terror and wiretapping and USA-SANCTIONED TORTURE and every other gross thing the Historical Criminal Bush has worked so hard to make it mean. Then again, what future lies in wait for cities so busy and so cramped and like imploding stars, only drawing more people and more energy ever inward and upward? I wander and think to myself that L.A. and NYC, sadly, may foretell the fate of the USA's future cities.

I digress! (I always want to smack the shit out of myself when I use phrases like "I digress" for crying out loud.) Not that part of September Eleven that this post's title foreshadowed. The part where fate (and myself, acting as fate) have arranged it somehow that I will be flying on that very day, this year. This month, out of New York City. On September 11th.

That, and other interesting announcements soon to come.