Hello dearest. Have done my best to slog through a very enervating day today, so humid that droplets materialized from thin - no, thick - air as I took my walk at the conservation area this morning. It was overcast so I was able to get in a good workout, which I'd missed yesterday, which I don't like to do, vigorous daily exercise vital to keeping my weight in check. Beautiful there, many wildflowers in bloom, including vast armies of purple loosestrife, not a good thing, so invasive. But also at the edges wild asters, goldenrod, a shrub with ink-dark berries, beautiful but lethal I suspect. Monarch butterflies here and there, and tiny bright yellow finches that flitted ahead of me on either side of the path as I walked. When I got home I watered the garden and let the hose run into the frog pond - it does have frogs, but it's just a tiny pool. Then I lay down for a bit and read and tried to close my eyes but couldn't sleep - perhaps due to delicious strong iced coffee this morning. Then I could hear that it had started to rain. I slipped on a long cotton nightdress (it's been that hot - normally I absolutely dress during the day - that is, unless I'm in the nude), and stood on the porch savoring the monsoon beating down on the roof, sheets of rain scrimming the garden. I glanced dreamily about, at the buddleia with its lilac blooms, barrels with petunias and marine bells, rose bushes and raised beds, a perennial border overrun with blackeyed Susans (which have all but obliterated the echinacea), frog pond brimming. Oh no - the hose was still on! I ran out barefoot in my nightgown in the pouring rain and became instantly drenched as though in Indonesia, my hair, freshly washed, damp all morning, wet again, which I hoped with this second rinse might dry "rainwater soft." The image conjured of me cavorting about for a few seconds in a wet, clinging gown may be more sylphlike than the reality -- but perhaps the reality wasn't so bad if (as I hope) you favor plush nudes such as those in French Impressionist paintings. They have a shape, as do I. Over time my daily workouts have paid off. I can wear sleeveless. My arms are quite toned. I turned off the spigot.

***
Dearest, I have so many images now in my mind of handsome Victorian men with beards - my type it seems - you, most especially you (bearded or not) - Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Edward Carpenter, and now T.R. Williams. I hope all is well with you. I imagine you must be starting to glimpse the idea of the return - it's way past the midpoint, past the Wednesday afternoon (the midpoint of the workweek that, years ago, if I could just get past I could manage til the weekend) of your expedition.

***
Read touching lines by E.D. which reminded me of you, how I feel about you. Backstory: Higginson's first wife died, he had become somewhat spent due to his involvement in a number of causes and the Civil War, he was desperate to simply have children and a family life, so he soon married again, a much younger, uncomplicated, pretty Newport woman, to the surprise of many a suffragist whom he famously championed, as well as of E.D. Soon afterward E.D., then almost 50, fell in love with a much older man, her deceased father's best friend in fact, Judge Otis Lord. "Calvary and May wrestled in his nature," wrote E.D. of him - which, reading that, reminded me of you, in the way that I'm sure you and I both understand.

From Wineapple, p. 223,

She played with poetry in her letters to Higginson, but with [Judge] Lord she juggled legal terms--bankruptcy, penalty, warrant--with erotic zing. "To lie so near your longing -- to touch it as I passed, for I am but a restive sleeper and often should journey from your Arms through the happy night, she wrote, "but you will lift me back, wont you, for only there I ask to be." Then again she would remind him, "Dont you know you are happiest while I withhold and not confer--dont you know that 'No' is the wildest word we consign to Language?" What had she refused him?

[Note to Darling: I for one am not happiest when not conferred upon. I can make an impassioned argument in support of the word "yes". Please note also E.D.'s willful misuse of apostrophe marks, as if to provoke and frustrate - to what end? I rest my case.]

His letters arrived Mondays. "Tuesday is a deeply depressed Day--," she scribbled on a scrap of paper, "it is not far enough from your dear note for the embryo of another to form... but when the Sun begins to turn the corner Thursday night -- everything refreshes -- the soft uplifting grows till by the time it is Sunday night, all my Life [cheek] is Fever with nearness to your blissful words..."

So E.D., like Queen Victoria herself can "gush." (An unfortunately sexist verb, in my mind, that has stayed with me since reading the unsatisfying little quote, via the NYRB, from "Our Own Dear Queen," about a young, ecstatic Princess Victoria's notes in her private journal.) I was always admonished (in one ear) that gushing was a bad thing, bad for art anyway. I have second thoughts about that and am going for it, as you well know.

Darling, have run aground here, my use of punctuation marks stretched to it's limits, so very much in wanting of a yes, yes, yes, hoping that in all respects with beautifully bearded you that the tide is high and the water is low and I am standing in the frigid Pacific - no, pacific - waters of that sea, which surely should be decently warm after all that midnight sun and I am kissing you full well on the lips and hoping very, very much - that that that

Giving out here, darling. Love you. Kisses.