My dearest, I had an unpleasant evening yesterday, slept badly, felt upset, it threw off my day today, I tried not to let harsh spitted invective infect my mind. So today honestly has been about recovering myself, getting past - rebuilding a wall? Maybe not that - but fortifying defenses. Things have smoothed over, but still. I grew up with that. I don't need it now.

And so that explains my bifurcated, in-between mood. I did have a nice day, but it was a bit of a struggle. I felt tired, achey, low-energy, chastened. Went through paces. Put together a wonderful breakfast, a breakfast burrito made of two enormous eggs that the chickens have been laying in our bushes, scrambled on a base of chopped onion, poblano pepper, and tomato, with a bit of cheddar, and some chopped ham thrown in - a "western" scramble - folded into a lightly toasted tortilla, with lettuce and CSA arugula. Dashed with Tabasco sauce at the table. My word - delicious. And so fortifying. It held me for several hours - and I often feel quite hungry soon after eating even quite a substantial breakfast.

Then I went to get my hair trimmed - last time I did so I was about to go to Brooklyn, and so here I am again. My hair looks nice, especially after being neatened up after the trim. It's about shoulder length, and has a nice wave and body to it, and my hairdresser exclaimed over the highlights that walking in the sun I guess has put into it. (Because otherwise my hair is light brown.)

Then I drove to the conservation area and took a long walk with weights. I wore a nice skirt and light cotton top, very comfortable on a warm, humid day. Lovely there, the mountains in the distance all blue, butterflies and dragonflies flitting all over, the meadow a tapestry of wildflowers (and invasives such as purple loosetrife) in bloom, buttercups, wild asters, spent milkweed, and some plant that a poet of my acquaintance once described as Zulu warriors with spears - I think of that when I see the army of them in the field. Innocuous though!

My dearest, what else? I was getting a little too exercised over the sudden dog-leashing rule campaign to "gain consensus to enforce compliance." Grrr, I hate phraseology such as that. That may or may not be an exact quote, but those very words are used in that style in the park's online discussion of the subject. Which has only raised my hackles. But which are lowered again. I think I was just projecting some philosophical symbolic overlay meaning to the thing and got a little excited. Not my battle, not really. I'm inclined not to attend the public meeting about it next week. I don't relish placing myself in a situation where I feel that I'm being lectured at like a child - and I don't even have a dog!

What else? Stopped by a strip mall department store and bought a top (originally $44, $8 on clearance) so that I'll have enough to wear in Brooklyn. It's a nice top, a little dressy, a blue-black-white paisley design with subtle reflecting shimmery tiny sequins all over, if you can believe it! I can wear it during the day, but it would be especially nice for a dinner out, or I imagine myself wearing it at Christmas, a soiree at my aunt's - if that ever happens again, with me in the tableau that is - will it? Summer, after all, came and went...

I came home and made pesto from all the beautiful fragrant pristine basil, and D and I did a little dance (figuratively speaking) to get ourselves back on an even keel, because the fact of the matter is that - as I told him - we're stuck with each other and we need to make the best of it, there is no use doing otherwise.

D went off for the afternoon to a job, and I read in the aerie, more of the E.D. biography, and then lay down, feeling tired yet very close to you - during my walk too dearest - thoughts of you swirling amid the swirl of everything else (fight, delightful older gentleman with now-leashed sweet dog, swirly top that looks nice with my black tulip-hemmed skirt, bit of last week's leftover pesto stirred into fine angel hair nests that softened and unraveled in boiling water and cooked in a thrice, delicious lunch as I paged through a recent Harper's I'd brought home for a dime from the library's sale pile, thinking of you when I read about "The Age of Enron.")

And lay down and went to work (so to speak) and it is quite an effort of imagination trying to convince myself, along with sensations, and mastering settings, and I hate to say it sometimes a downright lascivious change of characters and venues (ranging from bunny ranches to motel rooms to back cabs of pickup trucks) - darling I'm desperate! - but finally managed - and then I read a few more pages about E.D. and Samuel Bowles (I related, they were personality opposites, not exact but not unlike either, as I read, me and 1.0), and then I fell asleep - I think - very fitfully - I was so exhausted, and yet restless, sated, yet not. Disturbances. But as the afternoon wore on into late afternoon, the light finally softening and mellowing, so did my mood, and my energy picked up, and I went for another walk just now around here, this beautiful quite scenic, "picturesque" romantic landscape, of woodlands, ancient churches, decrepit cemeteries, rushing creeks, a massive pine fallen onto fragrant silent downhill Indian path, which massive trunk I judged stable and - see I was trying to take a shortcut by taking this path but there's this huge enormous felled pine, toppled in a storm months ago its needles starting to brown now that it's been uprooted (darling your root, your stem) so long. So I, in pink minotaur garb with diaphanous skirt wielding handweights straddled the trunk and the pilates workouts pay off because I wasn't the most graceful minotaur but I managed to gingerly and without snagging my skirt, make my way over the formidable organic balance beam (lower though, roughly crotch height) and proceed onto the other side, "doing the horse" as I swung my bare legs over, crossed the vast awful wonderful Moby Dick of an obstacle to proceed forth downward to the bottom of the rest of the pine-needle strewn trail. Whereupon I hopped over a gully and emerged onto a familiar asphalt road which is entirely secluded and where, by custom, I put my handweights into service - arms outstretched little circles one two three four five six seven eight, etc., etc. - an entire routine.

And that's it darling, I'm feeling mostly restored -

do you know where I would love to be with you just now? At some private pool, sitting side by side, right next to each other, our feet dangling in the cool blue translucent depths. We just hang out, enjoying each other's company. We have our corporeal solid bodies, of which you and & I so close together are only too well aware, but we regard our lower limbs, tanned strong well-shaped shins, transformed, visually deconstructed, beneath the ripples. We talk of other matters - dogleashing, metaphors, what's for dinner, "free-markets" - while we regard our feet and toes and our calves touch, linger & touch...

I'm wearing a nice formfitting swimsuit and I'm exhausted from the day, and so my legs immersed in this lovely pool, I lie back and place my arm across my face against excessive sun. And you lift my arm away from my face and descend upon my lips with the softest most tender kisses, and a shadow falls upon sheltering me, oh beautiful you, with