Dearest love, up in the aerie, reading Dominique Browning's Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas & Found Happiness. I'm doing her one better at the moment - I'm in the nude. (I do keep a robe at the ready in case Mormons should stop by.) Oppressively humid today, and I'm having one of those "everything hurts" days. Gave in and took an ibuprofen. The sun is breaking through the clouds now, instantly lifting my spirits.

Browning and I are kindred spirits. Or perhaps we're a type, of the sort I rarely meet in life, more frequently in the pages of a novel, memoir, or blog. Educated, literate, sensitive, passionate, romantic, poetic. In her memoir, she's even enmeshed in a doomed love affair that drives her mad, against which she beats and yearns for years, moth to a flame. There's no use talking reason at it. Something gets unlocked. I get it.

I wonder if I knew someone like her, had a friend like her, we'd like each other. Or are we so similar and strong and individualistic that we'd be wary of each other, maybe even slightly repelled? I used to have girlfriends, most of my life, maybe will again. Right now, though, it's not what I want. It feels almost subversive to admit that. But I just don't. In your way I have found you more constant than most.

Where are you? Such a desert here today, nothing but Altamonte Springs, Florida, and Hastings on Hudson, New York, in passing.

Notes from a little while ago (expanded and embellished now). Dearest, I have the car again this afternoon so am back at the picnic table. On my walk down the garden path I found myself wondering, not for the first time, about the mystery of your page hits. I can't figure them out so of course my imagination goes haywire. I was working on my post yesterday when you flickered on my site. I posted soon after, and you haven't tried again, not since yesterday early afternoon your time. Isn't there 24-hour satellite connection there? Maybe there isn't, though that doesn't seem likely in this era. I rule out that you share your iphone and so are simply not in possession of it at all times. So then I think, maybe you're only free to hit on my blog when someone isn't looking, because the person will be angry or hurt to know what you're reading. (That doesn't make much sense - you could be reading all sorts of things, news articles for that matter. Will they see you reading it? Isn't the print awfully small?) I think about this person, settle on her gender. I really hate when my mind goes there but it does. All yesterday you never tried again. (And sometimes you'll miss a day altogether.) I don't mind - it's fine - I don't mean to sound needy, that's not what I mean. It just makes me wonder about your evenings, whole entire days and nights on that beach. They are so full & busy, there is that much to do, so much to absorb your attention, that you don't try again? Perhaps so, in a sense that hits me hard. Or, things I'm sure really are very busy and physically taxing - so perhaps you're so exhausted from the day that you've simply crashed - you're really asleep? No, that doesn't explain the long lengths of time. Perhaps there are frenetic excursions Off the Island? In any event - I can't figure it out, and so my mind goes over and over it. I hope you'll let me know the explanation someday.

More bird song and if I saw monkeys swinging from the trees in this verdant grove on this tropical day I wouldn't feel surprised. Kisses.