Hello darling. Very hot & humid again today, uncomfortable. I'm sitting here topless - of necessity, darling - even with the shades drawn the aerie is sunny & warm. I'm paging through a few books, looking things up, for one, a bird in my Sibley's and Audubon field guide. This morning when I stepped to the back door to my delight a sprightly tiny brown bird with an upright tail stopped for several moments on the porch railing. I've never witnessed a bird alight there before - the migration must be starting to happen, it's mid-August, I'd like to start stocking the feeders again. Later in the morning I spotted a couple of birds in the bird bath (it's rare for me to see birds use it, the object had become merely decorative). The water gets hot very quickly in the black cast iron. I freshened it and added a couple of handfuls of light-colored gravel in the hope of giving the birds a bit of traction against the algae-slimed bottom, and to deflect the heat. The gravel is from a small pile in front of the small original shed, pleasingly righted now, refurbished, and repainted. The shed sits a few feet from the road. A couple of weeks ago as I stood by the car waiting for D, I looked at the shed and surrounds and my glance fell on a single plant rising - singularly - from a low mound of pebbles. I looked again. There was the classic set of lobed leaves, and the plant itself seemed to have a vigorous, insolent air - lady, you think I can't grow out of nothing? D emerged from the house and I beckoned exaggeratedly with my finger. He approached with an uh oh what now expression. Is that what I think it is? He nodded with palpable relief that it wasn't anything worse. Yeah, I saw that too a few days ago. How is it that it's growing here? The gravel's from a shop in town that I was doing some work at - they must have smoked pot at some point and dropped some seeds. If you know the "Arts and Antiques District" of Warren Street - this is hardly a stretch to imagine.

How we came to be in possession of this gravel I'm not sure (though it is handy in garden landscaping, that must be why D acquired it). But the big honkin' plant was near the road, past which all kinds of local heroes cruise incessantly - that's all I need for any of them to spot, as if we're growing it on purpose. If I'm going to be arrested for something - I don't want it to be for that. So D yanked the plant and tossed it on the weed pile at the back of the garden where I wouldn't be surprised if it's thriving, not that I've checked.

I never got into pot, not for lack of trying in college and for a few years afterward in California. But it rarely got me high - or not in the way that I like, with a few pleasurably memorable exceptions, but the weight-gaining nuisance munchies phase - never missed a one.

The bird that alighted this morning? A house wren perhaps.

So what else am I looking up? Did a tour of a couple of farmstands this morning and came away with a small box of eggplant for $3, and a larger one of mixed peppers for $6. I'm looking at a recipe in an Italian cookbook for caponata, a jamlike mixture of eggplant, peppers, onion and celery, seasoned with green olives and capers. Oh good I bought celery too, remarking to the woman that I didn't know that it grows in this region. It's very fragrant, redolent of pure warm celeryness, a revelation after a lifetime of cello bags trucked from California.

***
I had a strange dream last night - perhaps of E.D. As you know I've been reading books about her and her circle, and there's a controversy abrew over a posthumous epilepsy diagnosis on the part of a recent biographer to which a retired physician who claims to be expert in 19th century pharmacology (I have no reason to doubt him) has taken issue - glycerine was never an anti-seizure drug. Anyway, in an instant warring camps have staked their sides. I don't know what to believe - the issue isn't settled for me. The physician may be right, but to me his comments all over the place slamming the biography on this single note has the effect of an expert witness whose testimony doesn't settle an issue (let alone illuminate it) but serves simply to stir doubt in the jury. And then people line up on one end or the other like magnet filings.

am in a room – someone’s reclining on a cot - a woman - (is she wearing a white dress?) - she's talking and says her piece and we listen and then she goes into an epileptic seizure and rolls off the cot (which is placed against a wall at the end of the room) onto the floor – no one (me included) does anything, we’re just holding our breath hoping the seizure will stop soon – she stops convulsing and is a little dazed and I crouch on the floor near her and try to comfort her and tell her that it’s thought E.D. had epilepsy.

***
Prompted by entries on today's Secret Life of E.D. f'book page, I fool around with combining yours and my names, intertwining them... Won't even bother to set forth the result -- too many J's and O's, like a bad Scrabble tile draw... lacking the ring of AMUASBTEILN.

From Polly Longsworth, Austin and Mabel: The Amherst Affair and Love Letters of Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd, p. 121:

Consummation of Mabel [Loomis Todd] and Austin's [Dickinson] love occurred at the Homestead, Emily and [sister] Vinnie's dwelling, the evening of December 13, 1883, in the dining room, where they often met before the fire. It is confirmed by symbols in both Austin's and Mabel's diaries, and also by the existence of two small slips of paper, each bearing the same strange word, AMUASBTEILN. One of the slips was tucked into Mabel's diary at December 13, and bears that date on the reverse. The other slip was in Austin's wallet when he died. The word is composed by alternately merging the letters of Austin's and Mabel's names. The event that evening occurred with the knowledge of David Todd [Mabel's husband], who was fully aware of the depth of feeling between his wife and Austin, and had not been alienated by it. David was, and would continue to be, devoted to Austin, whom he considered his best friend. "I loved him more than any man I ever knew," he said years later.

The Secret Life of E.D. people floated a judgment that the AMUASBTEILN is a bit high-school, but also intriguingly asked if we can imagine whose idea it was, the circumstances under which the letters were jotted down.

Oh I don't know. It was profound for them - it reminds me of the connection between Kitty and Levin in Anna Karenina, the way they intuited each other and easily communicated in code - I wonder if there was news of that novel (even if it hadn't yet been translated into English) in Amherst.

JJOOHLNA

Love you darling. XOXO