Highly disturbing news from Tucson this afternoon. My thoughts and prayers go out. I am more concerned about homegrown anti-democratic sentiments and forces within our borders - have been so for a long time, in my working belief that our nation is in a de facto Civil War - than I am from any boogie-man threats (however real they may be) from without.

***
I am missing you - or are you in Germany? Don't worry - I know how complicated - to say the least - this all is. I don't expect anything, not really, not under the circumstances, and I know that if nothing else, you're a very serious, standup guy. And I would have my own ambiguity to worry about in this vein - as well. It's nothing I would ever have imagined - didn't ask for it. I didn't realize until I opened the holiday card and read where you'd been (I didn't know before then) - it all came together for me at that instant - not really intellectually - more like a bolt from the blue. I had picked up the card and read it in one frame of mind - and put it down in quite another.

***
Snow fell all day yesterday and overnight, and today the world around here was etched in black and white and clouded in silver, arboreal capillary systems in stark outline. I was a walking cardinal, in my bright red coat and long scarf that I know how to tie in a clever way, from a long-ago acquaintance with a European-traveling paralegal friend.

So quiet in the house right now, just the computer whirring, pipes occasionally sounding, creaking; a train rumbles and its horn sounds foggily in the distance. I wish I were with you right now, say, having a nice drink at (p.m.). I like that place. Cozy and romantic.

I wonder about you, Dmitri. I really don't know much about you at all, not even if you have siblings.

I never thought I could care about someone whose belief system I thought was very different from mine, but now I wonder. Or perhaps your belief system isn't so different from mine. Where are you on evolution? I don't find evolution incompatible with a profound belief in divinity - who are we to second-guess God's grand plan? I'm perfectly comfortable with both ideas, able (and happy) to hold both simultaneously.

Lunch was quesadillas, that is flour tortillas topped with cheese, red onion, black beans, leftover roast turkey, yogurt, mesclun salad, and salsa - fried up a bit in a pan so that the cheese melts, the tortilla browns, and refrigerated items converge into a nice mellowed warmness.

My favorite breakfast these days continues to be a small omelet with feta and wilted spinach.

Tonight will be lamb chops with couscous and a salad, because I scored a huge half-price container of "spring mix" at the supermarket this afternoon. Last night D made an awesome scallop dish with fettucine and saffron, because the wild sea scallops had been marked down. The dish was reminiscent of a place he and I used to love to go in Carroll Gardens, long gone now, a little hole-in-the-wall unpretentiously European-flavored restaurant called Mignon. We loved the Argentinian chef's fragrant, brothy, intoxicatingly flavored, saffron-infused pasta that we'd order at mid-afternoon brunch, having the place often to ourselves, wan winter sun lighting the storefront space with its small tables and white linens and a fruit tart and platter of floating island trembling on the sideboard. It was the most timeless place, we used to love going there, then return to our south-facing apartment where in late winter at a certain hour the sun would cast the dining area in the most amazing honeyed light that made me feel exquisitely alive for a silent, prolonged, elating Sunday instant before the earth shifted, the rays disappeared, the moment passed, and the penumbral gathered again...

clarid affirming light, as in a Vermeer: a quiet Breuklyn domestic scene, long gone now, but everlasting in its moment, and I recall it now -

many kisses, darling - I hope all is well with you and that you're having a wonderful night - sleep well, pleasant dreams -