Dear love, I'm not ready yet for September, in no mood for mums, though winter squashes - butternut, acorn - at the farmstand I'll accept because I love the flavor so much. It's still summer to my mind, officially so too, way past Labor Day, until the 21st. Do you have a long weekend now that you're looking forward to? I hope so. It's still summer here, truly, though the light is changing, become clearer, mellower, the color of honey, or of pellucid wine. What am I to do with four quarts of tomatoes, from the CSA farm? Two green cardboard baskets of beefsteaks, and one each of cherry tomatoes - "Juliet" and "Ping-Pong." The haul was anemic this week, perhaps due to the recent flooding. The tomatoes are a bit hard, picked early perhaps, last week in advance of the storm. There was still a row of cosmos and so I went about the uneven precarious ground, wobbling in my sandals, clutching a lethally sharp pair of scissors, taking very great care not to trip (!), and snipped a few blossoms that sit now in front of me in a small amethyst glass vase. I don't know that I actually looked so picturesque, but I certainly felt so, an idyllic task. Another woman was also examining the flowers, assembling a bouquet - she and I smiled at each other - perhaps she was thinking the same thing. It felt slightly ridiculous to mince about after my own blooms - so "playing shepherdess." No not really, the ability to get flowers is actually a draw for me for having joined the CSA. But I am never enticed to "pick your own" strawberries, apples, and the like.

My dearest, I am just sitting here tapping keys, trying to imagine you being with me, as I have at various times of day, though I confess, I wonder what we talk about. We don't do so much talking.

I've changed into my summer skirt outfit, the pink minotaur one with the filmy skirt. I won't wear it in public anymore, its season has passed, tee shrunk a bit from washing, skirt wearing out. But I like it for up here, extending the illusion that we're still in a month in which we can - or is that we cannot? - eat oysters. Ah, oysters, which only reminds me of saltiness, the sea, earthy, dusk, delicious, tuberous (no that's steamers), pulsating, deeply desired wonderfulness, inhaled, savored, clutched.

I have rubbed that bottle so hard and so often, I am able to make the genie appear, and he's my beloved one who touches my cheek, and I his, and he drifts about me in the darkness of the bedchamber at night like a ghost. When I think of him he is there. He was lost in Brooklyn a little bit I think - it wasn't his room.

Oh sweetheart, don't worry, I have a firm grip on reality, I'm just reporting on my evanescent daydreams - they're harder to get a handle on really, than ones I might happen to remember after a night's sleep that I simply get up and set down, my fingers flying, able to transcribe the nocturnal filmic proceedings without hesitation. I never feel a sense of needing to edit or censor or couch or qualify or color the dreams that unspool on their own overnight. With daydreams, however, and fantasies as I get them to work for me - that's harder and trickier. I am more reticent about them. I'm amazed myself at what gets me off, it's not necessarily what I would in a "romantic" way imagine it is. I'm glad it works for me - oh so glad that that aspect of myself is available to me - and here's another thought - there is no question, ever, of "faking it" for myself - why the hell would I? (Even if there is a ghost, if not in the machine (no not - made in China I bet) then in the room.) When it happens, it's unmistakable, a tipping right over the falls - I know it for what it is now, will never wonder again.

What a wonder it would be to do it with you. It would be so different. No buzzing, for starters, no matter how much more faint my more expensive bifacial hand tool. I sometimes imagine that you might like to see what I do, but I would have to warn you - it takes me a while, longer than I'd like, it is such a timesoaker. The better part of an hour, very frustrating to me. And most likely boring to watch. And if you watched - perhaps I'd only become self-conscious, which would prolong matters more. Though sometimes my fantasies involve you watching, though not for long.

Okay, here's a little thought, from my self-censoring goings on - I did come finally this morning and when I regained myself I got up and checked stats and you - because of course I imagine, or at least have decided that it's you - at that very instant, the minute before, had touched on my site via the minotaur collage image. I thought that was a bit uncanny, that amazingly coincidental timing - I took it as a signal. Are we, you and I, as telepathic as that? Am I being bugged? If so, then there's an awful lot of mundane life that goes on, here at the computer, at the kitchen sink, in the bathroom, as I lie sleeping.

There's a spider in the corner where two walls meet, right behind my computer. Parked always right there. I've been gone for a week, and I'm back. He's right where he was before I left. I'm not the most rigorous housekeeper, not a slob either. I tend to leave the spiders alone, though now & then I go after their dusty cobwebs - those I'll vacuum up but leave alone the instantly whirling dervishes trying to frighten me with their amazing boogie-man moves.

Let me see if this spider is a "bug" - or a spider - I'm taking bets with myself - it's a spider. I will pass my hand by it - see if it tries to assert itself.

Wow! I passed my hand briefly above - nothing, below - nothing, all in an instant, and then the thing suddenly started to revolve and spin - for a couple of seconds - and now it's fixed and still again.

So I make a lousy scientist. I have no idea what that means.

At least it doesn't buzz.

Darling, was this enough of a nocturne for you?

I'm so glad you drove across the desert to the sparse motel room where I was and picked me out and had it all saved up for me, entered deep inside and stayed and came out to survey surrounding geography and gather, enter again explore illuminate my red cavern walls with your torch blindly then more lucidly with focus when good and ready and me too let loose painting my hidden walls with the most extraordinary images, white-ochred dreams ejected, flung, inscribed with purpose, legible wildlife running fleeing mounting, progeny of your stiff maddeningly expressive expunging brush