Dearest Peter, pouring rain out all day, the entire world here is wet and gray and seems ready to wash away. Up in the aerie after an unusually long nap, I feel okay but am still fighting a bit of a cold, sneezing, blowing my nose. So no workout today though I did take a walk, tucked bread in my pocket, encountered the snow geese on the other side of an enormous melted puddle. They seem befuddled and half-blind, they were in someone's driveway who seems to be feeding them some sort of grain or meal. I guess they're okay, though they don't seem as chipper as they did months ago. Well, who could feel so chipper after such a long harsh winter?

All around me as I walked I was surrounded by rushing, streaming water. I carried an umbrella but still my Red Riding Hood coat and jeans legs got soaked. I stood above the creek which is sometimes so placid that mallards bob and float, but today it was all swollen pale acid-green whitewater, trunks of trees on either side submerged. On steep slopes tiny waterfalls had formed and picturesquely burbled down among an impromptu path of rocks and leaf litter, as I trudged up the middle of an empty road narrow gulleys on either side coursed and streamed downhill. Here at home the neighbor's driveway and part of our backyard is submerged in a huge gray puddle. The town alarm system has been going on and off all afternoon and I wouldn't be surprised if in the foggy bottom lowlands down the road, the creek has breached its banks. We like your water planet, I thought, conjuring a song that I've heard on the radio.

Wow, after all that, sailing serenely through the sky high over the pond in a warm dry jetliner almost sounds appealing. Outside the windows a neighbor revs up one of his motorcycles. I think - Daytona? On the radio Women of Note plays. Gwynnie's asleep on a cotton mat next to me. I killed I don't know how many bugs today, too many, it's dreadful. Read some more of the Patti Smith memoir, she has a sweet genial writing voice. Based on some new memoir of JFK Jr. I had occasion to google tantric, and I'm all for it, it just means savoring, taking things slow, not focusing on the end result. It involves ambience, water, nice soap, candles (maybe), music, soft sheets, "finger foods." I think - finger foods? Well yes, I subliminally understand what that is - thinly sliced rounds of bread topped with delectable dabs of flavorful spreads or cheese or meats, olives perhaps, little salads of various kinds, fruits peeled and prepared into salads. Perhaps we'll do some of that ourselves, of course we will, some of it, but then fortunately (the way my current neck of the woods is surrounded by teeming waters), the B'klyn neighborhood has no shortage of markets and ethnic food shops of every imaginable sort, where we can take a stroll and shop for that day's delicious finger foods. One shop I can think of, for example, has wonderful Italian delicacies, freshly made mozzarella balls, marinaded and grilled vegetables, dried sausages, olives, along with packages of fresh pasta, raviolis with an array of fillings - you name it, meat, cheese, mushroom, pumpkin - along with containers of sauces, pesto, sauce bolognese, etc. that can make a quick, easy, delicious dinner without a whole lot of cooking - if we care, mere mortals that we are, to venture from the clouds and dine on a plate of hearty something.

My dear, I hope the flight attendant is taking good care of you, bringing you a fancy ginger ale and not one but two bags of honey roasted nuts. What are you reading, I wonder? Or perhaps you're doing a Sudoku. Or perhaps you're simply sitting back in an upright position in your seat, eyes closed. I hope the in-flight movie is good. Do they still do those? I haven't flown in many years, more than ten I think. I used to fly a lot, for work, and the movies usually were pretty bad, on the random pointless order of (as I recall one) Hello Giorgio.

Water world and high flights in nighttime stratospheres now, darling, but next month, it'll be all soft sheets and finger foods and foraging in shops in the neighborhood and admiring Botticelli works even if we never do manage to step inside a museum.

Looking forward to it all, my dear. XOXO
Yours, Venus