Good morning darling. I feel a little melancholy this morning, though at the same time set comfortably afloat on my New York adventure. A little planning and preparation pays off. D (the coffee maker in the house) brewed a supply of iced coffee for me, decanted into bottles, which I'm drinking now. I'm very appreciative that I didn't have to throw on clothes first thing and go out in search of coffee.

I wondered overnight what little comforts and necessities you require on a trip away from home. Not simple basics such as clean underwear and shoes - I mean the little things that are psychically soothing, help sustain, give pleasure. I wish I knew. If you were here I would try to arrange them for you. I'm comfortable in this apartment (having stayed here so many times now) in a way that you wouldn't be, not initially - but what hypothetically would help change that, ease the transition? I think of Leonard Lopate's imaginative radio program, where he interviews well-known artists, writers, and others, asking them what are the ten (and no more than 10) items that you would bring along if you were stranded on a desert island, or snowbound cabin. (And which would you prefer - the island, or the cabin?) You don't have to include the tools of your trade (e.g., pad & paper for a writer, paints for an artist) - just the more esoteric essentials. I realize I have my own trivial list started: camembert, rose wine, great coffee, verbena soap, as many pairs of reading glasses as possible (stylish ones), KZE. On my trip for this week I also packed (in a nicely designed Trader Joe bag, sepia oilcloth with black and white images of Victorian explorers male & female, a deep diving woman, a man in a flying machine, and a scattering of red hibiscus flowers and butterflies) Longsworth's Mabel and Austin, Benfey's E.D. and the Problem of Others that I got on reserve at the library, and also the Brian May stereoscopic study A Village Lost and Found.

I am reclusive! It is a beautiful morning outside, sunny and the humidity has broken. And I just feel like sitting up here communing with you, collecting my thoughts, slowly waking. I feel vaguely homesick - yet not for home. Afloat, unmoored. Ungrounded. Cast adrift once more. I think of the Don Gibson song.

So many other thoughts, just a jumbled miscellany at the moment. I think of a song I heard in the wee hours a couple of nights ago - Lyle Lovett singing "You Can't Resist It." It was the first time I'd ever heard it, and I lay in the darkness listening. She was old enough to know better, he crooned, but ... you can't resist it when it happens to you. The song was written quite a while ago, I think, but it spoke directly to me. I myself had once written, trying to sort things out, that I was Old Enough to Know Better. That's what the scolds (external and internal) will certainly say. But when It happens to you - you can't resist it. It overwhelmed me. I didn't feel capable of resisting it. I can't imagine actively trying to resist it (though many years ago I did just that). But to resist it is to kill off something much too essential.

What else this morning? The Secret Life of E.D. facebook page has posted the most beautiful woodcut of E.D., made especially for them by a Finnish artist, Jarkko Pylvas. (I can't manage the umlaut over the "a" in his last name on this unfamiliar computer, nor am I having any success this morning figuring out how to include either the image itself or a link to the page.)

I am so struck by the image. It's like a photographic negative, or black chalkboard with images etched in white, or electrified after-image, as when you look at something dazzlingly bright, shut your eyes, and the image inverts and repeats aglow. It captures E.D. and what she's about beautifully. She's surrounded by feathers, webs, "gods eyes" (ornaments I made as a very little girl, yarn wound and woven around a cross of popsicle sticks - called "gods eyes"), a crescent moon, stars, snowflakes, moonbeams, and starlight. He has captured E.D.'s likeness, idiosyncratic image instantly recognizable - hair parted in a bun, pudgy nose and full-lipped mouth, ribbon crossed at her throat - yet has managed to capture a most elusive quality, a sense of her poetic capacity. She does not look directly at us, as in the iconic daguerrotype. Rather - and more evocatively - she has thought of something; pensive, she looks away, off to the side, heeding the starlight and gods eyes and feathers and webs and stars - she hears beyond the genius of the sea.

Dearest, let me launch this bombananza of a post and get going. Kisses. Have a great day.