Dear love, I'm up in the aerie, changed from a nice skirt outfit into a light blouse & underwear. Storm after storm has been whipping through here the last hour, knocking out not power exactly or even the phone line but causing Foxfire to freak out. So I had to reboot, which always takes a while. And here comes pelting rain again as skies darken, towards dusk too, but at least at the moment there isn't incoming heavy cannonfire that was so nearby it made me jump.

I'm glad it's pouring rain now - for many reasons - the lush curtain of sound, the coziness of being dry indoors, the release from my needing to water the garden tomorrow.

I'm back from a jaunt to Rhinebeck, where D & I caught a small independent film, Another Earth. Ostensibly it's a speculative-fantasy tale about the sudden appearance one day, of a second, mirror Earth in the sky, and how it affects the lives of two characters whose paths disastrously collide, here on "Earth 1." It is a lovely, affecting, thought-provoking film - I highly recommend it. To me it's less about the sci-fi aspects, than an original and very moving story of love & redemption, and finely iterated exploration of a question each of us might well ask of ourselves - "what would I say if I were to meet me?" We do meet ourselves in our lives - as a girl I tried to imagine what I might be like as an adult, at unimaginable age 40 in the unimaginably distant year 2000. Or I've had occasion to look back to my youth. I suppose a parent might look at one's offspring and see glimpses of self - perhaps so, very much. But I suppose that's a different case.

The rain has stopped. Upstairs the air is fragrant with yet another huge batch of ratatouille I cooked up today, an enormous bowlful. I had a lovely session this afternoon, brief but it counted. There's a very passionate love scene in the film I saw this afternoon, which made me think of you very much, I completely transposed ourselves into it, the excitement of great connection and love, wild passionate abandon. Not porny at all, and I guess for myself I have mixed feelings about porn, it has its uses including in the film projector of my own mind, but that form though it works well enough for me solo, is not at all what I wish for and desire. So there's an example of one aspect of me meeting another aspect of me - right there.

It was a lovely drive, I was going to go by myself but D expressed interest in the film and he really does need to get out way more - it was fine, a pleasant sojourn. We stopped at a bakery and stocked up on a variety of wonderful loaves of fresh artisanal breads for our breakfasts, rye, sourdough, "local apple cinnamon," multigrain, a baguette. I stopped into a favorite shop to buy a ritual bar of good soap for my Brooklyn stay, and was delighted to see several other bars that I like, marked half-price. The drive there and back was scenic and pastoral as always, rolling farmland, orchard after apple orchard fruit reddening on the branches and dropping scattered onto the ground - future cider I guess; a farmstand with gorgeous sunflowers, orange and yellow, I picked an orange bunch and we stuffed $4 into a plastic milk jug marked 'pay here please'.

I liked seeing the utterly impassioned love scene in the movie today. How elusive and rare are such moments on 'Earth 1'. How healing, restorative, that instant intense compulsive utterly heartfelt bonding. It is so different from porn. It is very different from marital sex (that is in comfortable longlived marriages, particularly I imagine, those with children, where other aspects of self take priority). It is very different certainly from casual 'hookups.'

There was an aspect of the film that made me feel really happy - redeemed in some fashion even - that I write a blog. That this small imperfect human daily expression of mine - that I myself depend on - has meaning I believe for a beloved one or two - and that they do so, as I'm convinced, means the world to me, and makes me feel that my endeavor however difficult to explain to an outsider not instantly sympathetic, is incredibly worthwhile. That's something I feel from each of you, here on Earth 1, and something I can tell myself even as my fingers clatter on the keyboard. Sometimes things are truly morally ambiguous - and sometimes - words fail me, and I don't wish to be discursive

(I've crossed out so many phrases my dearests, "when love is involved," but I don't wish to sound treacly or preachy or - well there's a difference)

this is what I have to give
you seem to love it
I imagine that you gain something from it
that is enough and beautiful for me
I'm glad, very glad that I do it
as opposed to not doing it
that is unimaginable to me at this point

All that - here on Earth
and any number of parallel universes
iterations of self, here and in heaven
past and present

I have to sign off now
morse code signings off
fingers tapping
brimming bowl of pasta with ratatouille
love to Delphos