As summer winds down, retreats and vacations come to an end (no more toasted marshmallows) and regular life begins again, with everyday chores like buying new shoes for children and paying long-ignored bills and getting files back in order--the whole workaday schedule.

Usually the end of summer has its own bittersweet cyclical comforts, but this year I've been feeling more than the ordinary stress of returning to tall stacks of unread mail and to the zip and chaos of subways and traffic lights and elevators and buses. I realized the other day that much of my extra angst is about September 11, and starting up life again in New York (otherwise known as Targettown).

I'd been up in the Adirondacks, where we try to spend a week every summer, and attempting to figure out which was reality, this--the lake spread out before me, distant pines, a couple of ducks diving, a canoe gliding by, the gas station that sells sub sandwiches, the ice-cream shop with the "Pies Today" sign, the campfires and the cold nights--or New York City; in the same state, the two places seem to exist on such separate planes.

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