My darlings, how are you? Missing you all very much, as you know. I received another "nice wallpaper" page hit from somewhere else in India, different browser, different operating system - and now, given my cast of mind these years, am inclined to take them personally, as an invitation, or at least as fond memory. Also this morning a page hit I instantly cherished - and again can't be certain, but in response, I'd like to include this little bit, from a post from a while back he may have missed, in case it's him. And if it's you - well then, here you go, you seem like a lot of fun, and thanks.

Watched another video, of another writer, that was reminiscent of (or was) a miniature dramatic monologue. He described his book and explained how in writing it he had allowed himself to follow his intuition, seeing where the gilded birds might take him, trusting in the connections that might form. All the while he spoke, in flowing associative prose, his hands in parallel expression would come together; fly apart; poise in midair, fingers elongated; take flight, his corporeal hands like birds themselves, legible of spirit, that in a certain light might leave eloquent fluttering shadows on a wall.

Oh what else? I am feeling the shortest days of the year, the adumbrated (must look that word up - is that the one I mean?) days on either end, and my midafternoon torpor, just this desire - that I give in to - to lie down in bed and fall into a long groggy sleep. And yet I'm not minding this onset of winter so much. This year there's heat - hot water burbling through the pipes that is - I'm not economizing crazily to the point where I'm bundled in outdoor wear while up in the aerie. No, indeed I feel quite normal and civilized and on even keel - dressed in layers, still, but luxurious thin ones, a thin camisole topped with ivory cashmere tee, a purple longsleeved cotton tee (sleeves too long, must annoyingly fold them up in the morning), and a cozy black, formfitting acrylic sweater. And despite there being this hoary [is that the word I mean? must look it up] glace of frost icing the landscape this morning, there's still green around, and the pansies that sit on the porch table by day that I bring in at night are still in bloom.

Neighbor's chickens are rooting around the base of the bird feeders. It makes me laugh, but there's a cost, I'm sure, to ground feeders such as mourning doves, the cardinals, titmice...

My love, if I could only kiss you just now I really would be happy and calm and I feel certain that magically my aches would disappear, because they are so much of mind, aren't they?

Are you all right?

Reading Muriel Spark, she's very amusing - such as the lithe young woman buttering herself with margarine so that she can slip herself out a narrow casement window onto a sunny roof (London, post-Blitz, but I picture brownstone Brooklyn), something one of her housemates - one-and-a-half inches thinner at the hips, doesn't need to waste precious rations on.

I wonder what Felicity thought of Muriel Spark? I don't remember the subject ever coming up between us - yet Muriel seems to have been of her speed, possibly -

or possibly not, there was a lot she didn't see, or didn't want to see, such as the time in midsummer I was wrapped in a scratchy wool blanket the time she & wry S (her husband) marched upstairs, chaperone-like, to make sure all was comme il faut. Which it wasn't, I was quite obviously in an extremely compromised position, it simply wasn't credible that I had suddenly (as they marched unannounced up the attic steps) developed a terrible fever that required the kind ministrations of their already practiced humoring son.

How does anyone manage writing a novel? All I can manage is snippets of self, my life in progress, unreeled in real time...

Oh darling, darlings, thank you for the buttressing effects of sonically crashing backdrops of Van Morrison and the Stones all day long, that only serve to encourage me...

XOXO

launching without proofing - may tweak in the morning -