Ring of Fire

The Ring

I deal with this every year around now: September/October is my absolute favorite time of year, and it’s also inevitably the season when I am busier than a _________ during ____________ (fill in your own, what, do I have to come up with all the fun around here? All right, fine: bagpiper, Fleet Week, an it do ya).

So just when the weather starts to hint that it’s time for a thick corded cream sweater, ideally with a long-haired wistful waif inside of it, and just as the trees drop the last pretense of shading green, and just as the night starts to whisper that there’s warmth out there among the dim gleaming lamps and candles, just as the world snaps OUT of that dazed August thing at last and gets back on track, all of a sudden I have no time for anything except fretting about whether everything will get done or whether this year, finally, at last among all the other years, the whole facade will crumble and they’ll come and Take Me Away. To, I don’t know, Alcatraz or Australia or Rura Penthe or wherever it is that they put us well-meaning miscreants when we don’t get all our shit done on time. To the Island.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s where we are right now. It would sure explain a lot. Anyway, I’d rather be prowling.

Our man Ethan Lipton married the lovely Heather Phelps yesterday in a sweet ceremony in Red Hook. To give you an idea of how things go around here lately, yesterday was also the day of the 31st Annual Atlantic Antic, one of New York’s last great street fairs, which happens right around the corner from me. Two good things, yes?

But put them together and it all falls to pieces on the ground, and the end result is I have no time to Antic and the bus I need to get to the wedding is re-routed to, well, it’s not like anyone would actually know or anything, here in the Information Age, is it? By the time I walk three-quarters of a mile to where the bus rejoins the bus route, there’s only another quarter mile to go, and by Crikey, I’m late again. Well, sort of on-time late.

This is my September, every year. I’m not even going to get into how we have hotel reservations for this weekend for the Dewey Beach Music Conference and I just found out last night that Greyhound has discontinued the one bus per day that went anywhere near Dewey Beach and Rehoboth. Have I mentioned lately that I don’t drive? ** voluptuous sigh **

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