March 9

OK, it took me a full year to put March 9, 2008, together, but it’s done. Greetings to edition number 13, which finds me in a partly-furnished apartment in Oakland, California, sitting at my newly assembled table, an elevator shaft creaking behind the wall to my side, Sigur Ros playing on the boom box, my cat Canela folded up like a turkey at my feet on the salt-and-pepper carpet.

So another March 9, with so much that’s happened between now and then. Whole economies collapsing, industries falling apart, people losing their jobs, others clinging to what little they have. And then there was hope, change and Yes we did. Somehow, it’s like the two halves inhabited independent planets.

For me, the last March 9 found me in a hotel room in San Antonio, Venezuela, hiding from real and imagined guerrillas as I wrote my sexy expose about them, then dashed for the airport, calling my boss in Washington, D.C., the minute I was getting on the plane so that he could press the button and run the story as I was leaving and I’d be safe from the guerillas’ clutches. Ah, the days.

But now, an even scarier adventure. Domestic life. I chose this mission. I live with the consequences. 9 to 5. Mortgage. IKEA. That was the idea. Let’s see how it goes by next March 9.

By the way, for the uninitiated, this is a yearly project I’ve been doing since 1996, where I ask friends, acquaintances and total strangers to write, draw, take a photo or otherwise create some sort of art about what they did, thought, saw on March 9. The date is random. It’s just a fun snapshot of the world and all the people in it. I then post the entries a few months later, well, in this case, a whole year later, but I swear I’ll be turning this around more quickly in the future. No promises, though.

May peace be upon you.