I seem to have had nothing to say for awhile, but that's not true. (Me?) After Sept. 11th it took me a few days to come out of it, as it always seems to, and then: down and back to Philly for a day to spend Rosh Hashonah with my sister and the 2 youngest of the 4 Fabulous Nephews; up to Saratoga the next day for a visit with the oldest of the 4FN, his wife and my 1-year-old grandniece (she who made my brother a grandpa, haha), then up at 5:30 the next morning -- and I'm a morning person, but that's not morning even to me -- to make it to CT for a friend's wedding, then a race to the New London ferry to get to the North Fork for one last night at Rancho Obsesso, to sit in the garden in the morning, then close up the house, take the train back. Since then, fall-re-entry intermingled with tasks relating to the upcoming launch of ABSENT FRIENDS. And I'm trying to work on the next book, but that's getting harder and harder as the launch and tour approach.

But I wanted to say this, responding to some of the comments here and some things what I've heard about a failure to acknowldege 9/11 in many parts of the country, even some parts of the NYC (there were street fairs in a number of places). F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, "There are no second acts in American lives," but I think that's wrong. There are nothing BUT second acts in American lives. We like to think we can just drop the curtain and when we bring it up again everything will be different -- set, characters, emotional tone. And then we can move on. Put it all behind us. Achieve closure.

Baloney. This is a dangerous assumption. Things that happen leave marks. We seem to have developed an idea that not letting your life be ruled by the events of the past -- probably a good instinct -- requires the complete denial that those events have any effects at all.

Yes, if you break your leg you'll eventually be out of the cast and walking again. But maybe your leg always aches from then on in wet weather; or maybe you have a scar; or maybe, even, it's stronger. Or maybe there's nothing you can see or feel, but an xray will always, after that, reveal that something happened. This is my understanding of the eastern concept of karma: not that your fate is waiting around the corner to grab you, but that the effects of whatever you've already done are built into how you're going to feel and what you're going to do next.