Oh you, I'm guessing you're on the road again. I hope coming nearer, not on the other side of the date line. It is dusk here. It's been a cold wet day and I couldn't stand it anymore when I got up from my nap and couldn't get warm - I sent up a round of heat. The radiational warmth is very restorative. Some mornings when I take a hot shower I think of E.D. She didn't enjoy the luxury of a hot shower, did she? Nor did most people in northern climes in most of human history, I suppose. I can hardly do without it. I pin up my hair (unless it's a morning that I'm washing it), start the water, check that it's hot but not too hot. The bathroom warms with the heat of the steamy water and I look at myself in the mirror as I pin up my hair and remove my garments. I step into the tub and let the hot water caress and envelop me. I close my eyes and luxuriate. I am a nude on a tropical island, water streaming along the contours of my body. I close my eyes, lose myself under the beautiful hot water, imagine you, your contours against me, waterfall, shower, floor, bed, it doesn't matter, it's our warm beautiful bodies together that counts.

Oh darling. That was a nice moment for me to type that, as I sit bundled in sweaters and microfiber fleece and wool hat and socks. It was raining too hard for me to go for a walk with handweights - I needed an umbrella - so when I had the car for a couple of hours I drove into town, parked at the municipal lot, and walked up and down Warren Street looking in gallery and shop windows. It seems Mignorelli's is done, hopefully just for the season, the shop is for rent. One antiques double-wide storefront is now reincarnated as another home furnishings place. The Estate of D. Dunne, melancholic, bespectacled journalist about bicoastal towns will be auctioned at the main mysterious auction gallery, another world of Hudson. I wonder if he had interesting, beautiful possessions. I guess he did if they're to be auctioned there.

***

I hope you are well and happy wherever you are. I wish I had more for you this evening. I have such a jumble in my mind. Witnessing goons in the ShopRite parking lot yesterday scarily goonily goading a Bengali contractor - we know who has the money, the goons chanted at him, over and over and over. (They pretended to be in a friendly chat with him and the Bengali hung out with them for a few minutes, as they continued to hatefully and stupidly goad him.) Something fierce rose in me and I just wanted to go up and Buffy-style do something but felt powerless. All I would have done was sputter incoherently, the subhumans (yes, subhuman - they barely look human to me, disfigured, half-psychotic, low IQ) would have taunted me instead. And besides the Bengali guy didn't need my help, would have resented it, in fact. But it's just one of those ugly things to witness, especially after the election the other day. It really frightens me, these nakedly expressed xenophobic attitudes. I think Stephen King understands them extremely well - the goons, that is.

Stopped by a big box store this afternoon on my way home and came away with a number of plants at a quarter apiece, hardy decorative cabbages, variegated succulent jade that the kindly, elderly clerk assured me should overwinter, and a few cheerful yellow pansies. I came home with this haul - 24 plants in all for which I paid all of $6 - and in the pouring rain and the black cloche slapped on my head and a black jacket (I looked like a gardening Morticia Adams!) I changed out the summer's barrels on the porch, petunias still wanly, brownly blooming, and took down the redwood hanging baskets. I've never actually been a fan of "decorative cabbage" but the porch does look much neater and it was a good excuse for me to finally take a broom and change the whole thing over.

Darling, darling. I will let you go. I hope you are warm & tidy wherever you are and that when you step into a shower and let the hot water course over you -

XOXO