Dearest love, it is pouring down rain just now, most of the day in fact, though I managed a good vigorous walk with weights at the conservation area this morning before the heavens opened up. I've been enjoying it, actually. I love the sound of rain, the constancy of it, falling on the other side of open windows, pounding the metal roof of the solarium. I won't feel this way six months from now, but in August it's a cozy treat to put on lamps here & there in late afternoon for warm soothing light against damp gray chill. It was a great day too for cooking & baking, and so I did, and here is an admittedly staged recreation of some of the summer bounty that I've prepared (credit to D for grilling the organic drumsticks). Yesterday I made taboulleh salad and a bowl of jalapeno pepper-heated salsa. Today I baked a peach pie and whipped a bowl of cream. As well I made a pot of corn-cheddar chowder, on a ham bone & chicken stock base, with sauteed onions, diced potatoes, red & green peppers too. We had bowls of it for lunch - delicious, and cozy on such a wet day - and I've frozen the rest in containers, to have on some snow & icebound winter's day when a reminder of summer corn & CSA produce will be especially welcome.

I tried to send you a message today, and was taken aback to see that the drawbridge had been drawn up. I was upset for a little while - no, that's too strong a word, just - I don't know, it seemed extreme, given that it's fake & pseudonymous. But I'm over it now, you have your reasons, I have resolved not to take it personally. This way I guess we get to have our cake and eat it too. Beyond that, who needs drama? Especially with all the less than comfortable ambiguities of which I'm only too well aware. But here I type anyway. And think about you. Besides, dearest, no one is having better fun - so I gather - and I hope that means you, thinking of me!

What else today? Read a few more pages of the E.D. biography. I relate to her very strongly, I think we're very similar personality types - given to passionate attachments (and I don't mean in a trivial sense, I mean to family members, deeply loved loves - E.D. is no flit, nor am I) and when they are sundered, acutely suffering the separation. No wonder she walled herself off? It was too much, letters she wrote to her brother Austin for example, when she was in her late teens and he, a bit older, was in college. She missed him desperately. I related to that. There was a time I felt that way (perhaps not quite as extremely) about my own brother. I loved him very very much, and there was a time that he & I had a bond. But it was at his disposition, occasionally for lengths of time warmly expressed when he needed his sister, but as quickly withdrawn entirely when he needed to go elsewhere. You know, there really is a lot to be said for compartmentalizing, so that one doesn't have to do this All or Nothing game when in the natural course of events new people come into a picture, and there's a bit of shifting, relationships adjust, to accommodate - I don't know. I don't know what happened. He was wounded in his own way by our very strange damaged, and damaging, upbringing. Perhaps - and I say this soberly, for real - it is really just as well that we have all gone our irrevocably separate ways - ours was never ever going to be a cheerful, funloving, sporty, sporting family.

Ah, again I keep sinking into these quagmires here... I don't mean to, I'm in a nice mood actually, freshly showered & dabbed with a delicious spritz of Miss Dior, which I so enjoy wearing once again. I look forward to dinner - none of what's pictured above on my kitchen table - rather, bowtie pasta with a sauteed brown-mushroom sauce and a mixed green salad.

And that's it for now, darling. Maybe the rain has stopped, I don't hear it at any rate. A dog is barking. The drier is squeaking. The light is fading. I sip from my icefilled glass. My hair is pinned up in an impromptu bun. I hope you are okay. I'm sure you are, actually. Well, I shouldn't be so sure, I have no idea. But I expect you are. What am I trying to say? I don't think things were handed to us. We didn't come by things very easily I don't think, you and me. Some people are accorded the luxury of going through life with all their illusions buoyed, forever intact. I'm not here to debunk anyone's illusions, though from time to time I have to examine my own motivations (I feel that creepy dodgy feeling just now).

Oh dearest, I'm falling into the quicksand - what I should do is lie flat on my back to save myself. No - really!

Anyway, when illusions and "the way things are supposed to be" have to be constantly buoyed, sometimes the buoyers need to hold hands. Am I a buoyer? I'm not buoying much of anyone - though perhaps, well I don't know - I offer something, don't I?

yours, in high fidelity,
Belle