My dearest, up in the aerie, past seven, home from a literary reading/wine & cheese tasting in town, one of my favorite extracurricular activities as it turns out. The wines were exquisite - dry, cool, crisp, minerally - all three of them, in various shades of "lightness," two whites, one from Piedmont, Italy, another from France, and a rosé besides - and the exceedingly beautifully chosen perfectly ripe artisanal cheeses were, as always at these events, out of this world. I have no idea what any of it was, but know that if I ever had boundless cashflow & needed to throw a wine & cheese - I'd have Olde Hudson do up a platter, and ask Michael at Hudson Wine Merchants to suggest the wines.

My dear, I strolled down the main street, Warren Street, this afternoon, just in shirtsleeves, jeans & sandals - no sweater, it was a gloriously sunny warm day. I imagined you and me strolling together. I don't know that it's your scene - it's not mine either, really - I'm not an antiques shop & gallery hopping weekender maven. But I do enjoy the beautiful street, with its ever creative & varied window displays, and just the fact of being out, leisurely promenading up and down a venerable old street. If I can't walk in the country, on a country road or vast trailed preserve - then walking along a textured architecturally beautiful street with lots of pedestrian eye-level delights, is my thing. (I despise big box stores, and most every mall I've ever set foot in, and avoid such spaces as much as I can.)

Anyway, it was just such a delight to imagine that I was strolling with you. I stopped into a shop and bought myself an ice cream cone, pistachio, my longtime favorite. So many people this afternoon walking around, enjoying their melting cones. A rare treat, and I savored every lick and sweet-salty taste.

I had time to kill before the reading, about an hour, and even after my walk and my cone I still found myself with a half-hour to kill, so I sat on a bench set in front of a shopfront, and watched as the parade of people, one or two at a time, or with a stroller, or with dogs, strangers, longlost acquaintances greeting one another in surprise - the season starting up again here.

And then finally it was towards five and people arrived for the reading, including a group of writers from the local international arts colony whom I'd heard read last Saturday. They came down in a couple of vans, a field trip of sorts for them, each of these writers in our area for only a couple of weeks on grant-underwritten leaves to write.

The literary reading today was unrelated to the arts colony (except in the sense that it's all sort of interconnected). Three writers were featured, and I was blown away by the first one, a poet, Rebecca Wolff, who read from her first soon-to-be-published novel, The Beginners, in prose that was incredibly metaphoric - each observation transposed into something else that made everything clearer somehow, and it all flowed, and wasn't in the slightest bit precious or "poetic" which I hate. I would like to get my hands on her novel, and on the alternative literary journal of which she's one of the founders, that is published out of the University of Albany not far from here. The journal is called Fence, and I read a bit about it this morning (story of its inception here), how Woolf founded it in her frustration over overly narrow literary categories. I can relate on some level. I mean, what is it that I do here? I think of what I write here as "poetic letters." And basically that's what, if asked, I tell people I do - I write poetic letters, love letters mostly, occasionally ribald.

Dearest Branwell, I'm trying to figure out if you're stateside again, or not. I suppose it hardly matters on my end, but I wonder how things vary for you between the two ports.

My post this evening is hardly of the spectacular transformative metaphorical sort, but I hope you will find it as always full of my love, which is always my prime impetus in writing here - in writing to you specifically - here.

Must launch without proofing, because it's getting late & I need to organize dinner, simple as it is, salad, leftover mash, steak that D will grill.

Putting my arms around you, many kisses. So many fantasies about you earlier today. I imagined a scenario where you and I are alone, others out for a time, scattered to school or mall or market. You & I cross the garden and climb the stairs, you show me your home office that did indeed get done. Up in the tiny aerie, the air-conditioner is going, one shade's open, another's shut, and you prove to me, no time to lose, single kiss followed by amazing hour on the floor, the liberating joys of a room of one's own, well-insulated and soundproofed above the garage.

Have a wonderful evening, wherever you are. XOXO

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Missed Bob Schneider's Let the Light In on KZE this afternoon by two minutes - and so found a recording of it - here -