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Dear love, I hope you've had a tolerable flight, landed safely, your luggage on the carrel right away.   Now that you're back, in your alternate comfortable reality, settling in for the night perhaps, let me kiss you - there, that's what I'm doing right now, putting my arms around you, giving you a great big kiss...

Here, snow is falling in earnest. I spent much of the day upstairs, and when the snow started coming down, I felt as though I was inside a snowglobe - except that the snow was outside. There are three windows in the aerie, with slatted offwhite wood blinds, tilted open. It was like a work of art, kinetic films of thick, fat, white flakes tumbling hurriedly down nonstop, in a frenzy of silent excited motion - while all within the room was utterly motionless, still, timeless. And colorful too, I might add. Outside, the world (as I stood at the back of the room, regarding the whole scene, in & out) streamed in greytoned black & white; while within all was as colorful as Matisse's red studio. Only my studio isn't red, it's whatever that pale-ash color is on the walls (that eventually will be "frothy cappuccino" - D's about to start painting the staircase) - but the furnishings are cheerful & bright.

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Now I'm regretting that I didn't take a photograph of the peaceful aerie scene, walls punctuated with its trio of exclamation marks - oblong panels festooned with furiously falling snow. It crossed my mind to, and didn't only because I knew that the camera wouldn't capture the sense of vivid motion - what had excited me so. And so I thought - I'll have to try to describe it instead.

My dearest, I'm a little nervous that we may lose power tonight. The snow is very thick & heavy, gobs of it, and it's supposed to freeze overnight - so it seems that it may be an ice storm, wreaking havoc. In my way of emergency preparedness, I'm typing as fast as I can to you (dearest, more kisses), and I've got a chicken (stuffed with lemon, garlic, & CSA thyme) roasting in the oven, along with a few of those earthy russets, and a pan of mostly orange root vegetables. I considered putting in some of the CSA broccoli, but was reluctant to sever florets from the side, tamper with the gorgeous head. D brilliantly suggested that I chop up the stem (that from supermarket broccoli I usually discard), and put that into the mix. The stem itself - so fresh - truly I have never encountered broccoli like this. Pale green & pristine white; pungent - even raw, so fragrant; hard but crisp, not woody: I am sure that it will be very flavorful.

Beyond that, my day was pleasantly full - I felt very content. I took a long walk with weights, before the snow. I even got in a pilates workout, to that Antiques show on PBS (the one where a yard-sale find might turn out to be a Tiffany lamp worth $50,000 - as happened on today's episode). All this was before noon - amazing alacrity, for me, and in between that, even, I managed a sweet session with you & me (had to, had for a time the house - that is, the lavishly appointed Victorian parlor with the lush rug, fur coat, and upholstered settee back in the shadows so that the help, that might bust in at any moment... and anyway, the wife must absolutely not ever learn of this - to myself) and I have to say, I can't say that I was ever always all that loud (well sometimes) but my word those supercharged batteries and a battery of pretty good fantasies I have streaming in my head as I lie back in the still silent room, heat cranking blessedly through the pipes (so that just the simplest cashmere cardigan for warmth suffices) and - well, darling, it's as though I'm proud of myself, I can hardly believe - it's total 'liftoff.' And that's just the sensation of it, too. Not rockets - but after a bunch of (perfectly delightful) preamble & discussion, you coming & going, doing this & that, me too, sometimes prone, sometimes not, then there's that countdown moment - time fuses - combustion, transformation - unmistakable. And I yelp. For rolling moments on end, I'm surprised at my own voice, newborn baby crying out for the first time, a woman giving birth. Similar forms of cries, that's how it seems to me, visceral and involuntary as that, from somewhere deep within...

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image:
Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954), The Red Studio, Issy-les-Moulineaux, fall 1911. Oil on canvas, 71 1/4" x 7' 2 1/4" (181 x 219.1 cm), The Museum of Modern Art, NY.