Dear love, I'm here, back from an afternoon trip to Rhinebeck. Sweetheart, your page hits comfort me no end, and coming home to find them, and another one just now, is just what I need to get my head on straight. I should be in the finest mood ever - I had a wonderful time - but discovered that I was inadvertently shorted a loaf of bread at a bakery, which has irritated me. I'm so frustrated with myself! And probably I shouldn't be projecting all this futile, trivial angst in this post - and yet - that's where I am, maybe I can work through it. I will try, darling, and then I promise, I will relax.

So I thought I had a literary rendez-vous of sorts this afternoon, it came up quite suddenly on Friday afternoon - except that it turned out that the invitation wasn't for this Sunday (meeting up with a woman acquaintance from a plein air session, who's trying to set up a perhaps more regular group) but rather for next. So I changed my plans, which was fine, and also our Brooklyn friends emailed me and we're going to house-swap two weekends from now - so it's all working out. Since I wasn't going to the Persian-inspired estate today after all, I cast about figuring out what else to do. I should say that this weekend is the annual Columbia Film Festival, in Chatham, an event that in previous years I've pounced on & greatly enjoyed, but somehow this year I couldn't get it together to coordinate with D on the car, figure out movies, get tickets, and all that. Oh well - another year.

And no regrets, because I discovered that a very intriguing film was playing in Rhinebeck - most likely for the briefest run - by a Polish film director, a conceptual film that imagines the making of the 16th century Flemish painter Peter Bruegel's masterpiece, Way to Calvary. I'm not familiar with that particular work, but I'm certainly familiar, since girlhood, with Bruegel & his signature look - golden tableaux vivants with numerous figures, colorful in many respects, entire village-fulls, in all manner of quotidian activity.

Darling, I think you would enjoy the film. I'm not saying that you should run out and see it. I would say that I 'appreciated' it, as one would a work of art. I wish that we could have been there together in the darkened theater, viewing it. There was a guy with his girlfriend or wife in the row in front of me, and I'm guessing maybe he was of our descent, because he sort of looked like you, reminiscent - younger, yet grayer, not a hipster exactly, but sort of scruffy - no I don't even mean that, just natural, himself. I kept stealing glances (not in a vampirish way - his S.O. had nothing to worry about from me) to, Persona-like, almost, compare a mental image of you with this guy's head, and really, just have fun with that. Anyway - you just being yourself, not having to play a part, project some image. (I'm not saying that that younger guy in front of me wasn't, but he looked relaxed & unpretentious & by all appearances was enjoying the film & adores, in a really comfortable way, his companion.)

Anyway. By the way, dearest love, my mood is improving as I type to you - you do have that effect on me. Ah so the minor irritation is that I'd purchased, a few weeks ago, for $12.50, a rarely offered 'half-price' certificate entitling me to $25 worth of whatever wonderful breads an artisanal bakery in Rhinebeck has to offer. So I availed myself of that this afternoon, and ordered up several loaves, fresh brown breads that were still there mid-Sunday afternoon, stacked up on wood shelves behind the counter. It came my turn on line, and a young lissome clerk began to help me - I'd like several loaves of bread, and I'd like them all sliced - just to give her a sense of what she was in for, I wasn't just buying, say, a single croissant. And she was fine, and looked at me expectantly. I'd like two loaves of the organic rye.

(Darling their rye bread is a wonder. I savored - devoured, inhaled, thoroughly grooved on - the heel end of a pillowy rye after the movie, as I started the engine and maneuvered onto the Main Street, turning the car around to head back north.)

And then a cashier clerk butted in, and insisted on keying in my order, before in a more naturally-rhythmed way I could simply deal with the first clerk, who was taking down beautiful loaves, threading them through the slicer, and placing each in plastic bags.

To make a long story short, and cause of my irritation - there should have been a second multigrain loaf, not just one... and so my savings weren't really 50 percent.

It's exasperating that this silly minor thing irritated me so, if only momentarily. (Think of way bigger, costlier mistakes I've made! Wow - weirdly, those ellide by... ?!)

Oh darling, let me kiss you once again, my sweet. Also, I should be just so grateful for beautiful, incredible bread from this bakery, even if the discount didn't quite work out as I'd hoped - because darling, too, I spread the saved-wealth around town, purchasing a couple of bars of lemongrass soap at another shop, as well as the ticket to The Mill and the Cross...

Within whose very profound, quietly Christian context, were a number of beautifully dwelled-upon instances of fresh round loaves being made - grain first milled, exactingly and lovingly, by the old miller high atop the crag - and then the ultimate partakers down below, before breaking or cutting into the vital sustenance, the entirety of a meal, lift and reverently kiss each loaf. Give us each day our daily bread. Those words were never uttered in the film, yet were eloquently expressed nonetheless.

And so I'm very grateful for - well all of it, even if the math, given the innocent error, turned out to be closer to 30 rather than 50 percent.

Oh, I'm incorrigible. Will I get past it?

Yes darling, I will. I give you my love, as you give me yours.

All my love. Oh darling. Will come back in the morning, with proper links to the film, etc. Til then - śpij z Bożą.