Hello my darling, placing my hands in yours, reaching up to kiss you. I've actually been communing with you for a while now, trying to figure out what to write. It's a beautiful hour, crickets ring, a breeze moves through, rattling the blinds, whooshing in trees, stirring the wind chimes hung from porch eaves. I've felt low energy today, perhaps from weeding yesterday, who knows. I did go for a walk at the conservation area, and worked out to C.R. Otherwise though, I just felt like lounging most of the day, which I gave into a little bit, to get some rest, but mostly resisted, trying to keep myself moving. Or at least reading. Books I've renewed twice now (the system won't allow me to renew them again) are due this week, so I've put E.D. aside for a spell, to try to speed-read through a couple of volumes before I have to return them. So I've dipped into the James Lord memoir of Dora Maar again. In 1954, at age 46, she does calisthenics too, Lord reports, behind closed doors, in order to maintain her figure, "always... ample, a feature very attractive to Picasso" - but inevitably ampling in middleage - and so Dora took to the mats or bathroom floor in rigorous exertion to fight the tide.

Dearest, I have so little to report tonight, and let me not become cowed by coming fresh off Lord's lyrical prose. Which I contemplate including here, but why would I wish to do so? I can't have his prose take over mine... or mine to then seem lacking in comparison to his rapturous flights! I'm fine, just flailing about a bit...

I also paged through, and finished, a novel by a writer whom I'd heard read from her work a few months back. The story involves the callous deflowering of the protagonist, a naive, sensitive, unworldly teenage girl. The novel is beautifully written, dreamlike, creepy, realistic - and dark. Despite my physical fatigue my mood is sunnier than that (I hear children's voices babbling next door, a mower running, birds at the feeders chirping). Reading of the protagonist's heartless deflowering reminded me of how very, very different my own 'coming of age' had been. Really, it was the most exquisite experience, drawn out over several months - dance, seduction, initiation, progression, all incredibly lovely and exciting, yes scary & uncertain of course, but at every step over that time it was at a pace I could deal with and absorb. And there was a period of months when I, having been taught how to fly, flew, and loved it. All in all, it was one of the most incredible experiences I ever had, over that time, and afterward encountering, serially, one by one, subsequent lovers, particularly when the memory of him was though time had passed, still vivid - disappointing. What a difference, to have been so beautifully introduced. It has to have been a formative experience for me, of course it was. The shock & pain came when he left - conclusively if not abruptly, there was confusing talk of our being engaged, but it wasn't really the case. We were done. Although not entirely, I seem to have meant quite a lot to him too - though - well, it never did work out. But I think of this now - my gradual, very gentle, patient, and beautiful education - in light of this novel that includes scenes of base, malevolent taking. There is a huge difference.

And that's it for now, darling. I'm feeling off my game this evening, as far as posts go. I wonder about your own experiences, how things went for you, in formative stages, and later. Those moments are so important, aren't they? Yes of course they are. I don't have any big lesson to impart or anything like that. But I am grateful, all these years later to this day, that I can look back to a marvelous chapter in my life, that has essentially, all these years later, served me in good stead.