Hello darling. Sitting at my desk up in the aerie, freshly showered, wrapped in a bath towel. I became so re-enamored of swimming this week that I took myself out to Lake Taghkanic state park this afternoon and swam back and forth as far out in the lake as I could get, along a rope upon each of whose plastic buoys was alighted a single tiny iridescent blue dragonfly-like insect. Are they called bluebottles? Not sure. I wished I'd had my readers in the water so that I could examine one up close. I'm sure they're exquisite. Their coloring certainly is, and they seemed alert, as if surveying the leviathan swimming to and fro.

It was my first time there. It's a beautiful, classic vacation lake, slate and silver ripples surrounded by green wooded hills, blue skies today with huge clouds suspended in ornate billows like Vesuvian steam. I swam, then sat on my towel and read White Heat, by Brenda Wineapple, a well-written examination of the friendship between Emily Dickinson and her preceptor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson. (Preceptor - I've been meaning to look up that word. It's a word that I've only encountered in connection with E.D. (Fascicles is another word like that, the term for the packets of poems she compiled and stitched together.) Preceptor, from Latin praecipere, to teach, (1) a teacher; an instructor; (2) an expert or a specialist, such as a physician, who gives practical experience and training to a student, especially of medicine or nursing; (3) the head of a preceptory. You were my Preceptor once, darling, and I still think of you that way, mostly because before I looked it up I thought the word might mean beloved and willing recipient.)

Then I lay on my towel and tried to nap. I'm exhausted today, mostly due to a tedious, unnecessary fight yesterday evening which accomplished nothing and whose lingering effect was to wear me out. But I couldn't sleep because I'd treated myself to an iced coffee from Strongtree's, a wonderful organic coffee roaster and café down by the train station. Their coffee is delicious and strong, so I lay awake in the shade of a mature pin oak, stretched out long in my bathing suit, staring up at an expanse of robin's-egg blue firmament. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again a thin gauze of clouds had appeared as if lowered from above. I sat up and read some more. In front of me a father admonished his young mischievous daughter, spider slim in her wet black suit and dancing on her feet, to stay put right in that spot ("don't move") and said "you're in charge" to a slightly older boy. The father left for the pavilion and the boy did his best to supervise his wayward sister who with a big grin on her face stood on the pavement and peed. A puddle gathered under her and she laughed and made rude noises and darted away and darted back and peed a bit more and taunted her brother. I observed this whole thing and the boy looked over at me with not embarrassment so much as weariness. What am I supposed to do, his look seemed to say. I have no idea, I telegraphed back, good luck. I returned to my book and when I looked up again the boy and his sister had vanished. I stood up and headed to the water, taking care to avoid the wet spot on the pavement. I swam a second ten lengths, and that's when I saw the bluebottles. Also the cloud cover had thickened and settled overhead in a massive bank like a huge sci-fi spaceship, benevolent though.

Then I gathered my things and got in the car and drove down 82 to a farmstand where I bought three cucumbers for $1.25. They were out of lettuce, and they had no tomatoes which I was craving, and Mignorelli's, a local produce shop on Warren Street, also didn't have any because they're not in season yet as I was informed by a girl behind the counter. We planted tomatoes here but tragically during my stay in Brooklyn, as I was debriefed on my return, one night some creature invaded our vegetable patch (true, we're lackadaisical about gating it) and ate not only numerous nascent tomatoes but the peppers too.

I'm terrified of most highway driving, but yesterday on the way back from Brooklyn I did the Columbia County portion of the Taconic, and today got back on to go to the park. I accidentally overshot the state park exit, which surprised me by being on the left as I drove south, so I wound up in Dutchess County before I could turn around and come back the seemingly interminable miles. Now Jerrice is on with a fado and I've shaken off the towel and I'm very glad that... that... that... oh I don't know, that you're my preceptor, my dearest, whatever the meaning of the word. Icicles to fascicles, darling. XOXOXO