My Friend in Finland to Belle, 3 June 2011

... PS: I wouldn't wish to be a spoiler, but right now I'm not quite sure if the framing of Emily-woodcut is properly done. You see, the framing should always be done by professional framing expert, who has this highly sensitive skill of framing. The surface of the wood cut should never touch the glass, which has been placed on it. So, between the glass and surface of the woodcut there is placed a thick cardboard, which frames the woodcut and over this cardboard is the glass placed.

Belle to M.F.in F., 3 June 2011

Thanks for the advice about the framing. I have asked my husband to redo it. I asked him first how long it took him to make the frame. Two, two-and-a-half hours, he said. (So why then did it take him 6 months to make it?) So I don't feel too guilty asking him to redo it. We'll take your woodcut into town this afternoon and get a proper mat (or is it matte), and D will make another frame...

***
Darling, I am not having a good day so far, everything seems completely off and I'm out of sorts. I wish so much the frame had come out right the first time. D and I didn't communicate or coordinate well enough, and there was too much nickel & diming - was that the reason we chose not to get a mat for the frame? I don't remember now, we discussed it months ago, and not since, except for my occasional querying (a/k/a nagging) so when's the frame coming. So D & I argued about it this morning. No, not argued, it's just that I felt tense about asking him to redo the frame, and he snapped as a result of my being tense, and I was tense because I dreaded his reaction & also because I felt that maybe under the circumstances I'm asking too much --- that's how it is these days. But he did say we'll go into town later, he's friends with the guy in the frame shop as it turns out.

This whole thing has left me feeling that I don't have control over even little things, a frame for Emily, done right, the first time. And that I should be grateful and happy that D made it, and yet if I don't like the way it came out... I had tried to make my peace with it the other day, as with that humorless bread - I was going to live with it. But when My Friend, who created the beautiful image, volunteered that he doesn't think it was framed properly - I viewed that as dispositive - so I said something. And D accepted the verdict without question, when I said "My Friend thinks there should have been a mat, that the woodcut shouldn't touch the glass."

***
It is the most beautiful day one could wish for - cool, sunny, dry - spectacular. But what else is wrong? I seem to have pulled a muscle in my back, or somehow spazzed it out - it seizes up spontaneously. And I'm feeling allergic to whatever pollens are around the last couple of days. I've been feeling spacey all morning. I went for a walk, and on my return started a load of laundry. I took off my jeans, removed kleenex from the front pockets, threw them in the wash. A half hour later I put the wet clothes in a huge blue Ikea tote to carry outside to hang on the line. At the bottom of the washer - to my horror - was my digital camera, which in my spaciness today I had completely forgotten I had tucked in my back pocket for my walk, and had even snapped a couple of pictures.

Yet another stupid thing, that's making me feel how easily things slip out of control. I can't get the camera to work, unsurprisingly. I hope maybe fresh batteries might be the fix, that I haven't completely ruined it.

These little things are so upsetting, disproportionately so, I realize. I mean, I have my health (more or less!), nothing disastrous has happened to me, how can I complain. And yet I like things to go smoothly, to be ordered, for there to be a sense of progress, of getting someplace, not things forever feeling out of my grasp, not quite as I like, makeshift, barely controlled, spinning into entropy no matter how I try to keep things wrapped together as if with bits of string.

I dodged the bullet of the speeding ticket, but now I've wrecked my camera probably. (Still holding out hope, trying to.) Found two dozen roses for $2.50 - but a new camera will cost what it costs.

Just finished watching the miniseries, Any Human Heart, a major theme of which is that one's life, in the grand scheme, is a combination of good luck, and of bad luck. I've had a run of bad luck this morning, a dyspeptic time. But in trying to find some comfort, pull myself out of it, I couldn't help but turn to thoughts of you. I found myself thinking how I regard it as very very good luck that you ever found me (how?, my girlfriend asked the other day; I don't know, was my reply), that you think of me, and - more than good luck, a miraculous gift, to feel so accepted by you - that you "get" me. Connect, embrace...

Wish me luck that my afternoon will go better. And I certainly hope that your day is going much better than mine. I Think of You too, dearest. XOXO til later. All my love.

P.S. Possibly the last two images from the camera - the laundered memory card still works.