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My band o' unrequited love has been lost. I've been wearing it, a Rakhi thread signifying love and protection between a brother and a sister (and i learned later that in Indian popular culture it is what you do not want someone you are falling in love with to tie on you), since 2009 August 5.

From when it broke before i still have half the original band at home, but this is the first time its wearing has been interrupted for even seven steps. I felt its absence the moment i took off my long-sleeved shirt here on the sauna-like second floor of the Uni café by Colombia in Upper West Side Manhattan. It must have come off on the pressure-packed subway from the midtown Manhattan fashion district to here. It's the only thing i've worn for more than a week at a time, and it's been on my left wrist in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, in Europe and Canada, everywhere and all the time.