Sweet darling, have a safe trip, I feel certain you're flying out tonight...

I'll be with you in spirit, sweetheart. Close your eyes and pretend we're together somewhere in a quiet house in the woods. Only it's not so wooded that we can't sit on the porch - an enclosed porch, warm even in winter, with a woodfire going in the grate. (Is that possible on an enclosed porch? Okay, maybe it's a tiled solarium. Yes, that's better. It's a grand old falling-down house in the country, with a stone-floored solarium that's so warm in winter that starting just this time of year oranges and lemons start to ripen on the trees that stand in ceramic pots. The room gets sun all day, and so the room feels like Florida with all the light and warm moist air and colorful fruit. At night it becomes chilly, but yes, there's a fireplace, and we lay a fire, put a match to it... And we have a glass of wine by firelight, and maybe there's music on, or maybe - as I have been just now - we're watching an old film noir, such as Laura, starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews. It's a clear night, at least where we are, and we've decided to camp out in this room, so there's an arrangement of comfortable sleeping bags and blankets and pillows and throws and that old romantic black faux-fur collared coat of mine, that I wrap myself in now because I'm chilly for obvious reasons. I'm not quite sure what you're wearing --- sorry darling! I'm trying to type fast so that you get this post before you have to check yourself and your luggage in for the night... But at any rate we can hang out together in each other's arms, darling, and stargaze right from this magical room, whose flames we can see all around - not only in the grate itself, but reflected in one of the tall black-paned French doors that give out to the terrace. And yet miraculously, we can see the stars as well too, because the room is dark enough, and they are spread above us and beyond us in great swathes of shimmer, like a distant fire wheel. You look like Pablo, darling, in the best way ever, just as good-looking as in that particular photo of the two of us together. You really do remind me of him (no - vica-versa). And my hair is a lot like Dora Maar's, and also not unlike Gene Tierney's, if I ever had a mind to take a curling iron to mine, which of course I don't, it falls just naturally to my shoulders. And we look wonderful in the firelight, and it feels wonderful to be in each other's arms, and neither of us can name a constellation, except for maybe Orion. And I tell you that this morning I had a wonderful time with you, and you hold me close again, and we think about that lovely moment, and how it only makes us want to do it again. And for dinner there's leftover Thanksgivingy stuff - only I've transformed it into a turkey pot pie [in my dreams] that I baked this morning, and that warms now in a cheerful ceramic casserole by the fire... and for dessert there's the most delicious apple pie ever, from a recipe that involved juice & zest from lemons and oranges -- which give such a spritely citrus note to the pie, as though it were springtime, still. It's a transformative note to that apple pie, which still includes some of the usual seasonal seasonings - cinnammon, nutmeg, allspice -- but with the tropical juices & colorful firewheels of shimmering zest all through, topped then with vanilla cream -- oh darling, sublime. As though it's springtime in November, not unlike the forsythia blooming - incredibly blooming - at the hedge fund guy's expensive garden house...

Dear love, oh this post is a mess, but it's just my way of trying to touch you & kiss you before you go off, and for you to know that I'm thinking of you. Think of me on your way, and I'll think of you, and we'll meet, and be together, on the same side of the pane...

xoxo
all my love