Hello my dear love. Today is Mabel Loomis Todd's birthday, and what more fitting tribute than determining absolutely to attend Emily's birthday soiree. I have made concrete steps to make it happen - booked a room already. The idea of the evening has seized me: so many threads coming together, and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of it. I even have a beautiful outfit to wear, black skirt, with sparkly midnight-blue top. Isn't that nice! It seemed like a lark when I purchased that top - I was attracted to it, but wondered when I'd ever wear it. Well, Christmas, I did think, at the time - and now this. I wish you could come. I know that you can't, but still I wish it. I think it would be amazing.

I've had a nice day, both leisurely & productive. I took a walk around here around noon. The sun was shining bright & it was warm. I am glad for the gift of a balmy clear day this time of year. But towards dusk it clouded over ominously, and there's a chance of snow tonight - hard to believe after what seemed like mid-spring. Okay, so I just go with the flow, dress in layers, throw on a fleece if I need to.

Oh sweetheart, where are you I wonder, I can't tell which side of the pond anymore, or what your hours remotely could be. 1.0's gone missing too, I imagine he's traveling but who knows. Do you suppose I'm crazy? I don't feel that way, but I can see where someone might think so.

I'm functional, very functional. I have a chicken roasting in the oven right now, stuffed with thyme, garlic, and slices of orange - because I was out of lemon. "How bad can that be?," as Ina might say. I should go down now and put in the pan of orange root vegetables - sweet potato, butternut squash, carrot.

I feel this creeping sense of anxiety all of a sudden, just feeling so very alone. I'll be attending the party by myself, which is fine, I guess, but maybe a bit strange. As D himself put it, him being there would be akin to me attending a science fiction convention - he'd be out of place. It's too bad, we used to be more on the same page, or so I had thought. But we've both changed, become ourselves I suppose, thus grown apart. But for whatever part I have left of my next half century, I really don't wish to be with someone with whom I'm not on roughly the same page. I'd like to be with a man - friend, lover, companion - where we enjoy the same things, and each other's company. I can feel myself bumming out. There's a couple around here - I forget their names, I don't know them, but we always wave & smile & exchange light pleasantries when I see them - I refer to them as "the walkers." And they seem to genuinely groove on each other's company, they're just obviously very happy together. I'd like that again. Ah, so does that make me a danger? I can just hear the chorus of disapproving whispers, who have it all figured out, neatly sliced & diced. All I can say is that, in my circumstances, it is not so easy for me to leave. I can't just snap my fingers and suddenly be divorced thus fair game, all nice neat categories like that. No, so there's messiness, and ambiguity --- process, in other words.

I suppose I'm a bit bothered because I had become lightly acquainted with a woman, who seemed nice, I liked her and she liked me, and we might have become friends on some level, and I tried - I suppose awkwardly, clumsily, to describe (in an email) my blog to her - and I haven't heard from her since. And so I imagine that she was disapproving of it. Which - she doesn't know me - so I suppose it would be very easy to feel that way. There have been times in my life, in the past, where I found myself to be quite harshly disapproving of someone - but that's when the lines in my life, in my marriage, were more "bright", there hadn't been anything in my blissful marriage to test it. And so - in my own lack of imagination - I felt disapproving of this one friend... we went on being friends, but I did feel that way...

Now that I find myself in an ambiguous, difficult situation without an easy solution - perhaps not coincidentally too, I'm much older now - I am far more understanding now of what perhaps my friend (a good 20 years ago now) was going through.

Lyle Lovett -- You can't resist it, when it happens to you. You can moralize all you want, but it's awfully hard - when it happens to you.

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Happy 155th Birthday, Mabel Loomis Todd. I don't think you're a witch at all. You made Austin happy - for thirteen years, until the end of his days - that is no light, gratuitous fling. Complicated, messy, perhaps - but accommodations were made - and great happiness achieved. And other achievements achieved, including, thanks to you (& with the befitting "Indian Pipes" cover artwork, by you - the original your gift to Emily once, which she enjoyed) - the very first published edition of Emily's poems.

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Good night dearest, wherever you are. All my love.