Dear love, no siesta for me today, not even a walk or a workout, somehow the day slipped by. I've embarked on a weeks-long cleaning and sprucing of the house, in anticipation of a weekend house swap with B'klyn friends in mid-October. Today I decided it was time to launder the curtains and roll-up shades in my bedroom - a project. D takes them down & puts them back up, I do the washing & ironing in between. Even after laundering the sheers looked shot, grayed & yellowed, hardly cleaner than when they'd gone in stiffened with dust. (Why so much dust? Is it air pollution from Ohio? The kerosene we used to heat the house last winter?) I ended up going to a store, one of the ones I dislike, as it comprises way more vast empty parking lot than it does desirable goods on a shelf - in contrast to memories I have from many years ago of, for example, a venerable department store in Manhattan, B. Altman's, that had no parking whatsoever, but was a magnificent rich, colorful, stylish, emporium of inspired treasures from all over, none of which had been merely machine-stamped in China.

I can't be so fussy anymore, the sheers I bought are polyester, made in China, but they're clean and serviceable. (I might prefer bare windows, except for dawn sun; or for aesthetic reasons bare windows again - but the glass is paint-splattered - the windows themselves need to be repainted & redone, & storm windows made - the windows stick so badly I cannot manage to open them - so my home decorating, at this point, is not an exercise in perfectionist aesthetics.)

At least I degrotted the room, dusting everything in sight. The equivalent of clean underwear, in case one's hit by a bus.

***
Sweetheart, how are you my love. I just looked at the few images I possess of you, placed fingers to my lips, touched your face on the screen; glanced at snapshots tucked in an old Christmas card that I keep nearby. Ah so that's what you look like, I remind myself, studying your face, remembering, imagining... your facial expression never changes as you absently peel that clementine - I wish that you'd look up at me & beam. I remember at one point I was playing piano, my back to the room, company in full voice singing, I turned my head and glanced back at you, and saw you beaming at me - I loved that, and hope I beamed back. I had to turn back to the piano very quickly at any rate, and also I don't see out of my left eye - but I was just quick enough and fortunate to register that most fleeting but delightful impression of you smiling happily at me. I'm smiling now, thinking of that image of you in my mind - better, really, those mental ones, than snapshots I have of you in other form.

My love, it is still summer here, it seems, the weather is downright tropical, what you might be used to much of the year - but for here it's unusual. I just hope that it will make the coming winter feel shorter. Though it doesn't work that way. I don't mind cold weather or winter months at all - that is, not through the Yuletide season. But I have a hard time the first couple of months of a year - those days (short as they are) seem endless.

I'm feeling decidedly unpoetical and unliterary at the moment, dearest, quite flatfooted. Yesterday evening's post just about wrote itself - what a gift to have had a passing conversation with someone. Without it, what would I have written? Of the buffet table, perhaps - What is that, queries a woman behind me, gesturing at a heaping bowl - cauliflower? No, replies the caterer, potato salad. There was chipotle lime butter (I heard him explain a couple of times) for steaming ears of bright yellow corn, and I myself queried him as to a bowl of mystery dip - remoulade for the cold poached salmon, he whispered, and I felt almost as though I'd committed a tiny gaffe - if one has to ask...

Is it in basketball that they're forever running out the clock? I feel as though that's what I'm doing here, keep dribbling this ball so that I can feel close & connected with you. A fervency courses through my veins as I type, darling, but perhaps it gets lost once the virtual ink dries on a typographically finished post.

Darling, I will let you go for the moment - figuratively speaking, as you know - and launch this missile - I mean missive. Perhaps those readings yesterday rubbed off on me a little more than I know.

Many kisses, dearest, wherever you are, I hope all is well with you. All my love - Belle