My dearest, up in the aerie, thinking about what to write - my mind was teeming with thoughts all through the day - where are they now? Ah, but some of them are tedious, why go there? if only I'd been taught practical useful life lessons as to how to live, how to conduct one's life, but she hadn't been taught them either, yes but she was much older than me, must have realized what she lacked, or, I don't understand how Poles of all people can become rightwing idealogues, Poles should be on the side of Native Americans here, Poles were done to by Germany and the U.S.S.R. similarly - so how do you become rigidly on the side of empire after that?

See - told you. Thoughts such as these all the time while on the surface the picture of me at home today was as placid a domestic scene as Vermeer or anyone else enamored of warm golden northern light could imagine, me standing at the counter, cutting up baguettes into bite-size pieces, tossing them with minced garlic and olive oil, toasting trays of croutons in the oven. Rolling out homemade pizza dough and dressing it with diced tomatoes, broccoli rabe, sweet onion, turkey sausage (which I'd first browned in a pan), and mozzarella.

Watered the garden, and plants in the solarium. No lost sparrows today. A workout to Ellen DeGeneres, Matt Damon is very charming, and I was charmed by his story of how he met his wife, with whom he's clearly, after many years and four daughters, deeply in love. He seemed to keep pinching himself over the fact that he had spied her "across a crowded room" one night, on break from a film shoot in Miami, crew members going out for a beer, he wasn't in the mood, they said oh come on, he agreed, there she was, the bartender, and he thinks to this day how he might easily have never met her, the convergences all seemingly so chancy.

It's funny, with you and me, of course we're entirely corporeally unavailable to each other, and yet I have this sense that you were there all the while, for many many years, only you didn't know it (I assume), and I certainly didn't know it, and then somehow you discovered my blog - you didn't just happen to discover it, you must have been looking for me in some fashion, had to have been, there's no way coincidences go that far - and anyway, here we are. In a parallel universe, like sparrows inside a house cut in half at Mass MoCa. And do you know, I can't complain - I mean, yes, I'm not going to be falsely, saccharinely Pollyannish - I can complain. And yet, on another level, I'm just so happy for this little connection - it truly is better than nothing - better than better than nothing - it's vast -

We had BLTs for lunch, D grilled the bacon, which was fabulous, worth every penny at $9.95 a pound, lean, flavorful - very different, bacon made from pigs that were fed well and led sated, contented lives in fresh air and sunshine and good feed.

And I see a NY Times email alert now, how Dominique S-K's accuser is filing a lawsuit in a Bronx court, suing S-K for damages for his assault. The way the story is worded, it's she-said/he-said, the taint on her being that she's out for the money, that she's exaggerating, etc., etc.

But that's the slant of Empire, as evidenced in headline news from the Times. The Times will always ultimately be on the side of S-K, no matter how poorly he misbehaved. I understand that very clearly now, in a broad world-view kind of way, but I didn't always. I really was so very clueless trying to figure things out on my own without any credible or useful guidance from my family, no real mentors to speak of for the most part (I was always much too shy & hesitant to overtly seek out a formal 'mentor.') It's not to say that I didn't have good friends and good influences and genuine well-wishers along the way - I did, very much so I did. Anyway, where I was going, was that many years ago (quick, do the math), let's see, in the mid-1980s, I was a paralegal at a Wall Street law firm, and I did very well there, was very well-liked by my superiors, over time promoted, and over the five years that I worked there given increasingly plum assignments. My superiors knew that I had a talent for writing, and so they sent me to cover at least one (maybe more than one, I don't recall) highly publicized at the time insider-trading scandal trial. I would arrive at the courthouse, and observe the proceedings with very great fascination - I mean, truly the titans of litigation, feds v. private sector, were at their best here, and there were journalists covering it too. But I was there, sent by my law firm, for my observations, and 'inside scoop.' Basically - because not all insider traders at high levels ever get caught, let alone prosecuted, let alone go to trial - so when it happens - what's going to happen? how's it going to go down? what might hypothetical others engaged in not dissimilar activities face?

It was a plum assignment, and I relished returning to the office at the end of each day and typing up my copious notes into memo form - they read like a novel. (I remember one exchange now, that pops into my mind, dramatic courtroom denouement, at five minutes to four, light streaming from on high down into the marbled court - a very famous, since deceased venerable litigator, cross-examining the defendant, a very high level financial sector malfeasor, "and so how have you spent your time since you turned state's witness [as I recall] and been released"? The defendant answered to the effect of, within the precincts of the toney community where he lives in Colorado, coaching youth in golf. The defendant was hoping that this would cast him in a genial, paternal light. The litigator's thundering rejoinder was - your idea of public service is teaching golf to the privileged youth of Aspen?

Gasp!

And this was before the whole Law & Order franchise even got started.

Anyway, those were fun assignments, but these people play hardball, my covering the case was not for my own amusement, as amused as I was. No, at the law firm, I believe there were nervous clients on the other end of senior partners' lines -- how's it going to go down, what do we do...

I realize that now. Empire will always protect itself, has canyons and avenues of skyscrapers built, filled and staffed with personnel that will help defend itself. And Empire will play dirty when it can get away with it, on- and off-hours.

So I wish Dominique S-K's accuser peace and good luck and inner strength, and most especially, extremely good legal counsel. She deserves her day in court, and recompense, and retribution. I assure you that there will be note-takers in court, sent from high-powered law firms representing S-K, covering the angle from his point of view.