is that who we are, you & me?
a paleolithic minotaur dreams of a figurine
sparrows flutter about a Mass Moca room
you're right - it's upside down, not cut in half
I am Annabel Lee
Whistler's nocturne with falling rocket
suggests that you've had pleasant thoughts of me
***
Message from Belle to My Friend in Finland, 11 August 2011
... It is very beautiful here today, one of the finest days of the year - days such as today are quite rare, particularly in summer - cool, dry, sunny, the light warm and golden, cicadas whirring & rattling, crickets in the background chirping. I'm doing laundry, which I will hang out on the line to dry, and will also shortly roll out dough to make pizza, topped with farmstand vegetables - tomatoes, onions, broccoli rabe (a leafy green), as well as cheese (mozzarella & parmesan). I'm back from a walk at the nearby nature preserve, where it felt especially good on such a comfortable day to march around, with all the wildflowers in bloom in the meadow, dragonflies and butterflies darting at my feet in the grass path as I stepped, and a glorious view of the nearby horizon, dark slate-blue mountains silhouetted against bright pale sky.***
... Not much else is going on with me, except for romantic problems of my own - it is extraordinary to me how much of my life takes place in my own head. I mean, it's not entirely only in my head - but it's a terribly cerebral life, much more so than I could ever have imagined my life would ever be.
Well, at least I have some imagination - or else then where would I be? Simply doing laundry, making pizza, simply going through the motions - heavens how dull that would be! So I'm very grateful for my lively - not to mention torrid - life of the mind.
You take care, I hope all's well & happy with you, and that you're enjoying some fine days too in the Land of the Midnight Sun - or is it starting to set these nights?
Yours truly & warmly, Belle
Glass houses in New Canaan, and at Mass Moca, and today, for the first time ever (via) I read the most amazing, riveting poem, by Anne Carson (a poet I've peripherally heard of but never read), entitled The Glass Essay. It's rather lengthy, but reads like a film, a narrative, a dream, a story - it moves, and is very moving. I related to aspects of it very much. It is very hard to have one's heart broken like that. Watering the flowers afterward, and feeling tired, I wept a little, the cadences and strickenness of her poem fresh with me, as I thought of my own life, my life now of the mind, and battery powered cerebral sex in minotaured motel rooms.
***
I've decided I'm not so interested in the Pissarro exhibition in Williamstown after all. There was a slide show in the Times, which from my seat in the computer alcove at the peaceful little town library, quite sufficed. Perhaps I will think about finally making a pilgrimage to E.D.'s Homestead in Amherst - but am I up for such a long drive, and then the visit? Will ponder. Perhaps autumn might be better.
***
Are you back across the pond, my love? That's where I imagine you now. I suppose things have been lost, that I've been crosstabulated forevermore on the enemies list, roped & bound, witch on a stake. I try to imagine conversations on the matter, tribunals. I keep silent. There is no fair response, no way to explain it, or to explain it away.
***
My dearest, I refilled the bird feeders a little while ago, in the garden that fills in the northwest ell of the house. One of the neighbor's chickens, a handsome russet bird with a 'Ministry of Funny Walks' (Monty Python) exaggerated scamper fled from its sub-feeder foraging. I noted that the ivory blooms of the oak-leaf hydrangea are turning a papery rich-rose hue, perhaps like yours truly, and before I forget I agree with Jane Fonda (so chipper the other morning on R. & Kelly - flipping channels while scrambling eggs I stayed when I saw her) that I'm not sinking into decrepitude - nor are you my dearest nonretired darling - but rather that our lives are more like ascending staircases. Jane swept her graceful arm with an expansive flourish as she bestowed that generous paradigm.
***
Darling, do you suppose I'll ever end this post? Aren't you glad that I hate the phone?
***
Wishing you twenty percent returns and then some on all your investments
and when, in your private moments, you climb the steps of your staircase,
you'll find loving me, full of lush rosy fragrant blossomed lustiness
ordering drapes for the crazy glass house
so that we sparrows in the hedgerows
winter or summer that dawn light is awfully harsh
can blot out the sun or gaze out at the moon
or if it's that kind of holiday
or perhaps as now the Perseids
stand together naked in darkness
your beautiful slim hips against mine, less slim
surveying falling rockets
streaming golden down night sky
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