Darling, just the quickest post tonight. I have a sense of where you might be tonight, that you were in flight during the day, that you're at an abode I know well, or once did, and have fond memories of. Up in the aerie and D has just turned on the stereo from downstairs, a live Tanglewood concert, reminding me of My Friend in Finland. I don't have much of a sense of Sibelius (coming into tonight's concert, that is) except that as it strikes me moment to moment now I'm put in mind somehow of Hitchock's movie Rebecca - it's all very overwrought, and Gothic, and Manderley, full of yearning, and mystery, and portent --- in short, many qualities I quite love, though at the same time I find programmatic (that is, not sufficient somehow in and of itself, but) -- what the hell - when did I become Ms. music critic?

I'm in a strange - yet again liminal - state, or stage. In my leotard & my underwire bra is busted, a wire was poking underneath my armpit so I had to take it off. (At the moment the Sibelius portentously swells.) I ended up cleaning the house today, had it to myself much of the day - and did all the housecleaning in the nude - which was incredibly freeing & liberating. I like aprons, if one wishes to be decorous & protect nice clothing. But if one, like me, needs to go at the baths & dusting blinds & vacuuming -- so much better to do so unclothed on this sublimely perfect day, sunny, warm, & dry. I had a wonderful momentary half-hour that went boundary-busting well for myself, and then I righted myself in spritely fashion (though I tend a bit to a slightly arthritic right hip, under which I've trained myself to place a cushion) and said to myself - let's get cooking! And I slipped into my slippers and went downstairs and - I'm not sure I have the sequence of events exact, please don't depose me for the record - but I rolled out a tart crust for an apricot 'crostata', and sliced apricots, halved, quartered, sliced, & halved again...

Flash forward to later, just whipped some cream, and sent D over to neighbors with a pissalediere, and some of the apricot tart on a plate along with dabs of organic cream whipped with vanilla & superfine sugar.

Ah, more Sibelius to come! The announcer's intoning now... I do like those live radio concerts on a beautiful darkening summer night...

My darling. Very many kisses, up in that aerie of which I have very many happy memories, none of which unfortunately, involving making love with anyone, let alone with you. But I will be there with you in some fashion, darling, thinking of you, hovering like a benevolent spirit with sweet-breathed kisses, loving you.

Be so glad that I don't smoke anymore. Not for well over ten years. But that wasn't always the case when I visited that house, and tried to sneak a smoke from the aerie -

I thrust opened the exquisite woodworked prairie-style (?) window with the cross-hatched painted lattice, lit a cigarette, and tried to blow smoke out over the Spanish tile roof (oh what of a piece that magnificent house, the design of it, is).

I had fled some vast party from downstairs and was trying to steal a cigarette on my own as if in my own garret, which it certainly wasn't, it was my beloved grandmother's, the garret with a writing table, and Persian rug hung on the wall, the coziest space ever with its low eaves and mysterious closets,

ahhh anyway - Sibelius isn't cooperating - he's getting all Hail, Finlandia on me - no good for reverie

punchline - sitting on the windowsill smoking, having thrust open artisanal woodworked window - it unlatched from its casing --- no hinges!!!!! -- detached, dropped down onto (in the frigid night) cold red roof tile, and threatened to slide right off the eave ledge.... to go crashing down below.

My life flashed before my eyes, in the darkness, cigarette clenched. I clambered out onto the Spanish tile in this freaking freezing night (seriously, it was frigid winter) and managed to retrieve the priceless handcrafted original Prairie-style window as it sat teetering at the edge of the bottom row of rare ceramic roof tiles, where had I not managed to retrieve it, rescued it from crashing down onto - what? - shrubbery? asphalt driveway? the outside cement entrance to the basement? - it would have shattered without a doubt, been ruined - completely

I managed to clamber out onto that tile roof in the darkness and retrieve the thing
though I couldn't - because I am so hopelessly unmechanical - figure out how to reattach it to the window frame

which by the way it was such a freezing winter night - yeah, the warm cozy air of my grandmother's space was doing this massive exchange with the cold hostile frigid unwelcome air of the outside

and it wasn't even my house
I had no right to be there, not really
I was trying to sneak a cigarette while a party raged downstairs

(where was Pan Staś - he & I should have gone out into the driveway & he would have told me what's what & we would have satisfied our nic fits

I guess Pan Staś wasn't there)

Punchline ultimately (and, oh now, Sibelius flows on in very lovely waltz-like romantic dance)

my grandmother complained quite vociferously the following morning that her bedchamber, where she'd retreat at night, after a day downstairs, smelt inexplicably & to her great annoyance of ..... cigarette smoke.

Despite all my efforts to smoke out the window, and to rescue the window...

My darling darling love.... how can I end this at this moment, except, on this beauteous summer night, you not so far away from me I don't think, neither of us smoking...

oh my love
kisses