Hello darling, up in the aerie with my ice-filled glass, drier downstairs filled with bath towels squeaking, D out someplace with some lady or another, they keep buying him margaritas he says, and he's coaching another one tonight - different margarita - on her driving test which is tomorrow I think. Oh I'm making him out to be such a Lothario (is that who I mean?), he's not... it's just that we're each going our separate ways, in our separate ways. How will this all end, I wonder? The owner of next-door neighbor's house - the previous owner I mean - left his wife for a clerk (as I heard it) at a public agency, one I had need to step into the other day in order to pay $10 for a blank document (embossed with what appeared to be a - beaver? is that the NY State official animal?). Which goes to show what a very small town this is, one square-dances with absolutely whoever appears fit to square dance with, even if they're the smiling face behind some counter. There's a cute clerk at the supermarket, decades upon decades younger than me, but I sense a spark in him. I really wish he'd find something more to do - a quest.

I like that idea of a quest - not to sound retrogressive, but the idea of a man's life, experience of his own life, having the shape, narrative, imperative, permission, of being a quest. Not just free-floating along the ghosts of ancestors' anxieties who put one here.

Light & shadows at this moment are playing on the back of the woven rattan chair that I never sit in anymore. There's a pair of them up here, very comfortable, back when D & I got along, we'd sit in them after dark on summer weekend nights and listen to Tanglewood concerts on the radio.

Darling, darling, I am completely free-associating here, and am quite tired. It was a day of moving around a lot about house and garden, changing sheets, deadheading last year's corpse stems off fresh sedum mounds that front the porch border. Had the car for a bit and a few dollars, so drove to a nursery where I was very inspired by a planter they'd put together - a huge honking orange plastic thing, $79.95 - but beautifully composed with an unusual mix of complementary flowers. I arrived at the nursery with one idea in mind - to add a bit of contrasting something to the 'sophistica' petunias in the redwood hanging baskets - abandoned it, and found myself going through the rows upon rows of massed greenhouse arrays, trying to duplicate - on the tiniest scale, one of each - the particular flowers found in the larger container garden. I brought them home and planted them in little pots & baskets on the porch table... I'm not done yet, but I believe this arrangement of flowers & pots will form a charming microcosm. Whoever, whenever might come over - myself included -
might be so charmed by pleasing tableau of pots and driftwood & lantern and alpine-like individual specimens of plants - that they will be mesmerized and delighted, and not notice other things.

Ah, the art of distraction. I'm learning it for myself. I don't wear makeup anymore - but I guess I've taken up makeup in other fashions now...

Not that I'm trying to deceive, I'm not. It's more like - ah, this world is so impossible - here look at this beautiful thing, instead of that not-so-beautiful thing.

That's how I'm coming at it, anyway.

Darling, I am very tired, those squeaking towels must be done by now I should go fold them. All my love, XOXO, and hope all is well & happy with you.