If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear? -- Bruce Cockburn

Dearest Branwell, I hear you, your messages are coming through loud & clear. Many kisses. Thinking of you, with very much love.

It won't be long. -- Paul McCartney

***
Cold, overcast day, with occasional breaks of sun. Conditions still treacherously icy in the driveway and (presumably) at the conservation area, so I walked around here. Ran into neighbors who were making a concerted effort, climbing over a snow bank, to feed the three remaining handsome white snow geese and a few ducks. I stopped and chatted with them, and they said they're worried about the geese, that they might be starving. I was very sorry to hear this. I had assumed that they were someone's well-cared for pets, and now and then I remember to tuck some bread in my pocket for them when I'm going that way, but not always, and in fact when I have given them little torn off pieces that they clamor and honk and seem very grateful for, I was half-afraid that whoever their owner is might come out and say, hey, what are you feeding them. Which one woman once did, come out and say just that, but she wasn't the owner, she was just curious that I was feeding them, and told me that she's afraid of the geese. Anyway, it was a little distressing to have my convenient illusion burst, to think that they're actually fending for themselves in the frozen hardscape. I will never set out for walk in that direction without bread in my pocket again. I hope they're okay. My neighbors - this set - are very nice. I'm glad we had a moment to chat, and from a simpatico point of view on the subject of the lovely creatures.

Dearest, holding your hand now, as I was at the movies. I drove about a half-hour south to catch a matinee of The Fighter, which got a bunch of Oscar nominations, but that I didn't get around to seeing when it was at the multiplex here. Very good flick. I didn't care about the boxing motif, but it was a great study in monstrous and warping family dynamics, starkly reminiscent of Greek tragedies - two brothers locked in complex psychological competition, monstrous harpie mother, and a half-dozen adult sisters physically deformed, it seemed, by impoverishment of spirit - a family portrait of hardscrabble grotesquerie, set in Lowell, MA, which was interesting too, a realist-style portrait of a believable, recognizable family, snapshot of the underbelly of American life, set in a once vibrant town where manufacturing left but - opposite of a neutron bomb - the people remained. That's played out all over America, including here in Hudson, certainly.

I managed to have just enough time before the movie to get a quick cheap meal at a wonderful little hole-in-the-wall Central American storefront, where I had two small delicious two-dollar tacos made of spicy beef on little warm corn tortilla rounds, washed down with a Mexican orange soda. That was just delightful, and reminded me of one of the few things I enjoyed about working at Fordham Plaza in the Bronx for the couple of years I did, a wonderful portable taco stand in the plaza that had the most amazing, delicious, fresh, satisfying, cheap tacos one could wish for. I often lunched on that.

Sweetheart, wish I could say it with salad dressing or hot sauce or something - no, forget all that, just hugs, kisses, touch. Sometimes I wonder if I'm making things up, dreaming, but I don't think so. I'm going with it. We'll see what happens. Touching your hand. All my love. Thinking of you always. XOXO