***
Wow, what's the "B" side to the orchestral opening bars of Also sprach Zarathustra? Believe it or not, a woman's fastbeat yodel for her cowboy - Wanda Jackson, Cowboy Yodel.

KZE, I love you.

***
Nice sense of well-being at the moment. Up in the aerie, after puttering for an hour in the kitchen. Arranged fresh roses in vases - nice apricot sprays, and what I could salvage of last week's flowers, I clipped and placed in tiny vessels on the kitchen window sash. I rubbed half a defrosted turkey with dried sage, pepper, and salt, and it's in the oven. Last fall's farmstand butternut squash is melting on the pellet stove. I received a message from the friends for whose cat I'll be taking care of in April, nailing down dates & flight times. The place is at my disposal from the Tuesday morning (I'll arrive in the afternoon) until late afternoon the following Wednesday. I figured I'd take my time that last day tidying, doing a wash maybe, cleaning the bath certainly, purchasing and arranging the "thank-you" bouquet of flowers in a vase on the mantel, and it's nice that I'll have all day to do so, no rush.

Walked around here today, have all but given up on the conservation area for the time being. It's so slick there that I wasn't getting enough of a workout and I almost instantly start to put on weight if I don't vigorously exercise. Around here roads are clear and so I've been off on my usual marches. I can't say there are signs of spring, I don't even wish to jump that gun - but I did notice in front of one house that I've passed numerous times in the past, from whose tall shrubbery in May I've surreptitiously stolen a lilac bloom or three - that the shrub has formed buds - lilac buds.

Ah, lilac buds, the very phrase makes me think of your beautiful lips. I have an image of you peeling a clementine, and I look at those lips of yours now and again, your downcast eyes, your thinking - I don't know what - but not, I don't think, of that clementine. (File under: Clementine, oh my darling.)

What else today? Have been happily reading & copy-editing another of My Friend in Finland's delightful and exquisite fairy tales, and had a lovely email exchange with him, which made me so appreciate having the privilege of this little editorial role with him. It's pretty amazing to me that this little epistolary connection between us has transpired. I get so much from his communications. He's decades younger than me, so it's totally not about that, but honestly, I think he and I each mutually offer each other something the other's lacking. I have an antic side, which shows I think in my emails to him, and he's very serious, to the point almost of monastic, well - very scholarly and knowledgeable in his ecumenical religious studies - I'm blown away, and cherish the little "sideways" glimpses into ancient texts that I would never otherwise obtain, and to obtain them in such a direct, personal way - really, it's a gift, and well, there it is. I'm glad I have that connection with him, it's offbeat, really fun, and I think we both derive something from it. I guess we both groove on just what the other has to offer - how nice is that?

Oh my love, oh my love, my darling, I hunger for your touch - on the radio a cappella female singers croon imploringly just now.

Usually precisely my frame of mind, you should see me when I'm lying in bed by myself in darkness, my thoughts of you and their instant abiding effects - oh, but I believe that the same goes on for you, as we think of each other, sometimes at precisely the same moment...

What other impressions of the day? A cardinal flitted in the shrubbery, and there were crows at the side of the road.

So very many many kisses, accompanied by - what style of music do you call that? Trombone, whistling, clarinet, big-band chacha...

Oh let's go out in the warm moonlight darling as we flee the party and the big band belting within and run down the terraced steps in the mild night and slip down to the beach and the lapping waters and in starlit darkness you slip the straps off my shoulders and my gown falls and you kiss me and we kiss