Darling, is that why you made no show for Morn - a long long sleep? I'm sure you needed it, I wonder how you manage. Here's a wake-up kiss hello. Stir your lids while I stretch my limbs to put my arms around you. Ah, 'twere idleness always like this. We'll bask a week away in siestas, lose ourselves in kisses, and Not once look up - not for Noon, though probably for hot coffee and verbena soaped showers and divine finger foods.

Yet another damp gray day here but I'm finally shaking my cold and managed both a walk and a workout. D will fry pork chops for dinner, to go with a side dish I'm cooking right now from a recipe in yesterday's Times, cabbage with tomatoes, bulgur wheat, and chickpeas, seasoned with sauteed onion, paprika, cider vinegar, and dill. A slightly unlikely combination of ingredients to my mind, but I had everything except fresh dill, which D picked up on his way home for lunch, and which I like to have on hand in the freezer anyway, for chicken soup, or salmon, or picklemaking. I've just now shut the heat under the dish, the bulgur wheat absorbing the liquids, and it does smell homey and comforting, the colors warmly gold and red, truly nice on a day like today.

On Charlie Rose the journalist Jeff Greenfield was on talking about his new book, novelistic "what if" scenarios of alternate versions of history. This morning I woke, and the thought lingered for a while of how I ran into you in the darkness as I rummaged through my bag, and we greeted each other, and I wish (don't you?) that we could have kissed, it was impossible, but that moment - oh that moment, and all the time that's gone by since but I still remember, thinking of you, seeing the outline of you standing in the shadows, so very close to you, people about, me rummaging, good night, yes you too. We were this close. An amazing moment really, that tiny tiny conjunction. There is no alternative history to that moment, it had to be just precisely the way it happened. And here we are now.

And that's all I have for this evening, darling. There was other stuff - read more of the Patti Smith but am growing bored with it, it's trailing off into a not-reflective-enough, and frankly a little less than believable "Forrest Gumpish" celebrity memoir. Paraphrasing, I was short a dime at Horn & Hardart and Allen Ginsberg - who I recognized - hit on me and stood me the missing coin and thought all the while he was trying to pick up a guy, sorry I disappointed him, and then, somehow she takes up with Sam Shepard the unbelievably sexy cowboy playwright (especially back in the day) and while she's hanging out with him - he takes her out for a super-expensive meal - the whole while she's not even aware of who he is. I don't know, that little chestnut strained my credulity, it just did. I did love the anecdote, ingenue that she is, that someone snarkily referred to her as looking like Joan Baez, with her long flowing hair, and Patti Smith soon after takes shears to her hair and gives herself a shag, and comes out looking uncannily like Keith Richards, which scores her unbelievable points in the androgynous "cool" department. But see - even that is almost accidental! Okay, I'll stick with the memoir, but - oh man, I'm not quite getting her, she was an "It" girl for being in the right place at the right time - but that can't be all of it - can it? Maybe so. And in other news Gwyneth Paltrow is an up and coming country music star...

Sweetheart, sweetheart. What else today? Based on a recommendation from My Friend in Finland who in his academic pursuits is required to study Swedish language and culture I watched an Ingmar Bergman DVD on my computer this morning, Autumn Sonata, with Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Bergman (her last film, she was dying of cancer, though she appears in good health and is full of vitality in the film). I'm glad my friend recommended it, it's a very truthful look at not-unusual family dynamics, I mean they're heightened in this film, but I could relate on some level - well, that's Bergman's (Ingmar's, that is) brilliance of course.

And that's it, darling. Where are you, I'm sure you've woken up by now, had some nice coffee I hope and a good meal. Thinking of you as the night goes by, dearest -- hope all's well.

Here's the kiss now darling, if we could have kissed when we encountered each other that night in the bustling shadows - brushing of lips, insistence of tongue, good night, good night, sleep well, you too, as we pull apart

***

#654, by Emily Dickinson (c. 1862)

A long - long Sleep - A famous - Sleep -
That makes no show for Morn -
By Stretch of Limb - or stir of Lid -
An independent One -

Was ever idleness like This?
Upon a Bank of Stone
To bask the Centuries away -
Nor once look up - for Noon?