My dear love, the day began, and ended, with the most astonishingly beautiful light, for which the region is justifiably famous, and no wonder it has attracted, to this day, so many artists. I stepped out onto the juliet balcony this morning and managed to capture a fleeting moment, glow of fiery embers lit behind the black filigree of twin oaks (shedding their leaves) and other trees. What an effect.

Oh I could tinker in vain with that description for a while, but will move on. So just now, coming back home after a round loop of errands, which ended with picking up D in Hudson, the light at sunset was amazing - pellucid and platinum amid dramatically dark cloudbanked sky - piercing contrasts. Objects - street facades, houses, whole landscapes even - such as when I drove just now, at ten-to-six north up Route 9, view of the eastern horizon a marvel, a prospect of the sinuous line of Taconic Hills shimmering in the distance, gold as a ribbon of wheat field against gray sky - any features fortunate enough to be cast in this magical light for a moment were transformed to timeless perfection.

Oh darling, I am tired of attempts at landscape description - I've spent too much time to no improving avail trying to work on these lines.

I have a nice sense of wellbeing at the moment. I'm dressed in a nice skirt outfit, hair freshly washed & clipped up haphazardly now as I type (at a clip). I actually have a few plans for this weekend, so nice to anticipate because mostly I've been in the house & environs all week, without the car. So now I'm sprung - sort of. Oh it's okay. I was sprung this afternoon, hence my being slightly dressed up - for utterly the wrong crowd. I attended what I thought was going to be a lecture but turned out to be a concert/lecture... on a subject of spirituality & biodynamism & the like that I thought might be of interest... but in fact the iteration this afternoon was a bit too fervent for me - I bailed forthwith. Let's just say that I don't believe the instrument of the lyre needed to be reinvented under the auspices of a German control freak who'd observed that just such a thing needed to be done, and would have been done sooner, but all such Innovations in the Arts ground to a halt due to World War I, following which the topic of the re-invention of the lyre was taken up again in those stern circles, and in fact (as the small audience assembled in the hermetic downstairs gallery space was informed by a reverential devotee) the instrument was reinvented - "born" one night as she put it, naming the date. A group of five women each wielded pale blonde wood hacksaw-sized, metal-stringed instruments that they balanced on their organic-cotton clad laps. (No animal print tops or cashmere sweaters for them - I felt the renegade in the room, very much. Also I'd had an amazing orgasm not many hours before, and none of this bunch seemed terribly inclined in that direction, not in years - a rather repressed, starry-eyed lot.)  The music was nice, as lyre music generally is, the intertwining plucked harmonies intricate, and the women sang too, with angelic voices - it was all vaguely New Age, medieval, and Christmassy. 

I bailed. I needed to get to the little town library, a twenty-five minute drive north, a hit-and-run to pick up books I'd reserved, get them before the "hold" expired and they'd be sent back into the general system. Which I was getting close to that deadline. Which would be okay, in theory - yeah, send them back - except that I appreciate that privilege so much - reserving a book online - and I know that some dutiful assistant librarian in Mahopac or Adriance or Rhinebeck or Millerton - will receive a message that causes her (because it's usually a her, I surmise) to pluck the "checked in" volume off that little town library's shelf and send it to mine -- all because I had made that request. So I don't make those requests frivolously, and I try to honor them. Having said that, sometimes I make them on the fly, an impulse due to a reference I've read at that moment. And I have to tell you that right now - the two books I raced to pick up before the little library closed? I can't offhand recall what they are. Of course, I'm typing very fast to put down this thought - and am glad that my life doesn't depend on it.

And that's it for now, darling. Afterward I stopped, as usual on Friday afternoons, at the CSA farm. Their season and harvest were cut short and whole planted fields plowed under, due to climate chaos (in the named event of Hurricane Irene) - these catastrophic events can no longer seen as entirely unexpected - they are becoming the 'new normal.' I have a great deal of respect for this farmer, and he's affiliated sorta kinda with the groupies I lightly encountered this afternoon before bailing (and let me add too that it reinforces a visceral belief I have that I'm more enamored of healthful preparations of updated Waldorf salad - fresh greens, walnuts, beets, apples, gorgonzola, chicken - than I am of Waldorf schools).

Dearest, forgive me this unpolished post
but that's the nature of this blog
I'm not thrilled with the format, it's problematic incredibly so
but - I have a couple of literary connections & engagements to anticipate this very weekend
and so that's nice
and that's that
dearest love
I have such vivid vision of you
mostly you
just standing there so handsomely
in a doorway
or sitting at the top of the
steps leading down to the finished basement
you've cupped your hand to your ear
talking to some other relative
blood relation of yours I surmise
I saw you there
as I mixed in the kitchen
counseling that stuffing should be put in
the oven and baked for a bit so that the top becomes crunchy
(how could this be news to anybody?)
and I turned and saw you there, sitting
on the top stair of that in-between space
and these days when I think of that
I wish I could have
crossed that threshold
and brushed my hand against you

It wouldn't have happened
it didn't happen
but it's okay
I'm still really really glad
I have such visions in my head

xoxo