Hello my dear love, up in the aerie, just back from the library. On my way home I felt as though I was driving in the midst of one of James McNeil Whistler's Nocturnes. Night had fallen. (So quickly! I hadn't been at the library a half-hour, and had arrived in daylight.) I had my headlights on, wipers too, that swept away drizzle stippling the windshield, thus disclosing a newly revealed layer of obscurity: distant blue-gray sky against whose backdrop loomed black shapeless stands of trees. All was enveloped in a thick extinguishing mist, with (as I thought of it) single "Cremorne" points of light that emerged into view and as quickly vanished: a lit window in a house; high beams cruising past; twin lamps of a slowmoving tractor that was otherwise invisible; reflective markers & road signs, briefly illuminated then gone. I was immersed in the vast, atmospheric, mysterious painting, as I journeyed through the dark veiled landscape.

My darling, I'm sorry I didn't post yesterday evening. I sat down at my desk intending to, and nothing was coming, and actually my mood was mired in my usual useless obsessiveness, and so I was annoying myself. I had a couple dozen spammy page hits yesterday, I think it's some scam, not anyone even actually reading my blog. But it threw me off. That, coupled with wondering about 1.0's being abroad again, well okay. But he lit on my blog on Sunday (sweet), but not - so far as my stat counters registered anyway - at all yesterday. Which only gets my ridiculously jealous imagination going overboard. And whether my hunches (or fevered mind) are right or not, why should I even care at this point? Why should it make the slightest difference? It's like a scab I can't stop picking - and to be honest with you, I'm not great about leaving scabs alone. I have to cover them with bandaids. And I guess I was feeling a little slighted, I suppose, that he & I were in a brief email exchange a few days ago, and he didn't mention what to most anybody (except maybe peripatetic him) would be a big major upcoming trip. Perhaps he was trying to spare my feelings? From what? Do you see how pointlessly mired I get about someone I haven't seen in some 35 years - and yet he lights on my blog, usually once a day -- and it's painful & acute to me when he doesn't -- and so what, if anything, does that mean?

And there are parts of me that know very very well that I could never have been happy with him. He's wired the way he is, and I simply am not. And one can be as rationalistic as one likes about why he's wired the way he is (of which he is capable of waxing cerebrally), and I can intellectually understand it, but cannot feel it whatsoever. It drives me mad. I know that there are dispassionate wives who can quite serenely look the other way - I am not of that disposition. Although I suppose (back to my ridiculous obsession) I wish I could have been, that I were that way. And I'm just not.

And all in the midst of this knotty quagmire I think of you in such cherished terms and images, my dearest. You have your constraints, obviously, but - I don't know, I just picture something very sweet, and intimate, and heartfelt, and abiding there, with us.

So 1.0, from what seems a rather obscure location, lit on my blog today, which was a relief - ah, I could exhale - and it's even possible that my mind had gone mad with jealous passion yesterday for no reason - that perhaps he'd high-beamed hello but that the stat counter didn't pick it up.

What does it matter - yes, I can well ask that myself.

And your hits mean the world to me, darling, and speak volumes to me. Though I do wonder sometimes if I'm reading too much into things, they are so very eloquent. (And I'm not writing a novel here - I'm not trying to be postmodern. My contacts with most others - that is, meaningful contacts - excluding with store clerks and library staff - happens in the form of what I take to be highly coded page hits that resonate with me.)

I suppose other strands were affecting me as well... the short dark days. The looming holidays, it'll be D and me, by ourselves. Where is my family? Why do my neighbors not talk to me? Do I care anymore? Not really. And someone who I thought had taken umbrage to me months ago -- greeted me so warmly & exuberantly the other day that I was utterly taken aback. I thought he was mad at me! But it seems he wasn't at all. Though he did press upon me to read a book he said that he can't put down, called A Scandalous Life. And I looked at him, as I rolled down my car window to talk - he'd marched up to my car - is there some reason you're recommending that particular book to me? He didn't know what I was talking about, and just kept holding forth on what a great read this biography is. D smirked knowingly - but I have to say - considering - in a nice way!

My darling, my darling - where are you? Are you in the midst of some holiday preparations, or have you too conveniently absconded abroad where the 24th will be an ordinary Thursday?

It was very cold and dreary this morning, and I pulled out an old long red wool scarf, to wear on my walk around here. I had laundered the scarf last year, and it didn't wash very well, it curled at the edges, and looked a bit beaten for its ordeal. I took the time today to iron it flat, on its reverse, and it did flatten. It's a beautiful cozy scarf, knitted with a pair of braided cables.

I had been searching around for putting a name on the strangled, flailing feelings I'd been having. I felt wrapped in cables myself, helplessly bound within the coils, unable to move, feeling everything, but thoroughly trapped within relentless thick twisting braids.

My dearest, you mean so much to me, as much as I go on about you-know-who. I can't lie (my grandmother was known for her brutal honesty too), but that's the fact of my bifurcated self. And yet I have a wonderful sense of who would actually enjoy spending time with me - and I his - in a relaxed unprogrammed way, without him at some appointed moment (unrelated to me) becoming distant and consulting his watch...

I'm here sweetheart, you'd be amazed how much I think of you...

touching your cheek, kissing you tenderly
good night
xoxo