Hello dearest love - many happy returns - manana? I thought it was tomorrow. But if not, then -- oh well you know, all the usual kisses & fireworks (could I top them? - for your birthday? I don't know -- I pull out all the stops 364 - what's left? -- oh - right - corporeal presence!!) -- but this time with a Karp's Golden Glo cake. What's your favorite? Mine was maple walnut, or strawberry shortcake, or coffee buttercream...

Pouring rain out, and it's supposed to turn to snow...

I have had the oddest day. I am still in my pink minotaur sleep outfit, darling, if you can believe it, and it's past six. I never got dressed today, nor showered. I woke up feeling seized with this great urge to express myself, especially in visual terms. I think this may have stemmed from feeling mightily frustrated from my little art exercise at the Persian-inspired estate the other day. The splendor I viewed, and my very lame attempts to render the splendor - just didn't work. It didn't help that there were very few colors to choose from among the 'watercolor pencils.' I was always a 64-crayon box girl myself, at least. The other day I couldn't find a pencil marked "yellow" or "brown" -- let alone, ochre or pumpkin or lemon...

I felt like Richard Dreyfuss with the mashed potatoes in that wonderful scene in Close Encounters. I felt that I simply must make something. But what? What?

I have this fantasy of being able to create a beautiful little house, made of cardboard perhaps, three-dimensional, very simple & spare design... perhaps reminiscent of that Magritte La Bonne Fortune painting. I picture somehow poems, or fragments of poems, of my own creation, possibly adorning the origami construction.

The other day in the car, D was in the passenger seat and I handed him my big blank-page journal and asked him to please draw our house as it might be seen from the heavens -- that is, from overhead. (Gawd - what a lame planner I was - what's the precise term? In plan? Not 'elevation.' Not my calling - as it turned out.)

So he did, very ably, skillfully, and roughly to scale, on the fly, as we drove down Route 9. I haven't done anything with it yet... it's the idea of it that intrigues me. But I didn't do anything this morning towards trying to act on it, because I sensed that whatever I might come up with - I'd never be satisfied with the results.

But still that overpowering feeling of wishing to create something, to express my vision (whatever it was) in a visual way. I'm very, very glad that I write... I am capable of far-finer tuning than those rudimentary colors offered by the watercolor pencils -- I think one reason I quit painting & coloring as a child, was my great frustration in the lack of shadings & colorings & specific hues.

So I turned to piano. And reading, and writing.

But I've always loved art... the visual... there was a time (in my girlhood) I I wanted to be an art historian...

As usual, my darling, I'm going on. I didn't even have lunch today, I became so engaged and fevered and occupied with the little project that I did come up with for myself.

And it's almost done! But this is going to be a bit of tease darling (no - don't get too excited - not in that way anyway). I need to put a few finishing touches on it, and consider it, and photograph it in full light...

My idea is that since I'll be in Amherst over the weekend, and won't be able to post at all Saturday -- I'll plan ahead (for once) and schedule a post comprising an image of what I created today... all related to E.D., and, as well, to total lunar eclipses - with a twist - quite an odd coincidence, as I learned today, and which fueled my creative drive...

So - a la Lenore -- you will have a SURPRISE post Saturday around this time, even if I'm not around to launch it personally. Let's hope it all goes off well, like that fireworks show being set up right by Winifred - due to which my Writerly Friend and I were chased away from the riverfront park -- ah, but poor black-clad Saint Winifred, forever facing north - she had to endure the fireworks - right there

Dearest, now at this point I will hop in the shower & spritz on Miss Dior and art or no art freshen myself up entirely... for tonight's a special night... the night, after the stroke of 12, of 53 kisses, and when those are done, just one more...

xoxo