Hi sweetheart, up here in the aerie, thinking about you, wondering about details, since I don't have any, but imagine will be filled in next weekend. It's funny how the barest fact of the information is stirring up feelings in me, a complex of them. Oh but never mind about me - I wonder how you're doing. I wish I could be there for you in some way, and I suppose I am, simply by tapping these keys to you. Sometimes it really does feel inadequate though. I'm feeling truly self-centeredly narcissistic right now - because all I have to go on is my own feelings - and I don't think I actually am quite as self-involved as that. But I have nothing else to go on. And it's not any of my business either. I don't know. It's just complicated, and complex, and you're far away, and I'm here, and the whole thing's impossible. And we wouldn't even be having this conversation if it weren't for the internet! It simply couldn't have happened in a previous time. I can't imagine that I would have been mailing you letters every day. Or - I don't know - perhaps I might have. There was a time, in Victorian England I believe it was, and maybe for a time before that, that one could post a letter in the morning, feel quite certain that it would reach its recipient by early afternoon, who could post back, reply received by dinnertime. So that was a sort of hard-copy internet, quick pingpongs that could sustain a relationship, keep it afloat.

I didn't end up going to Rhinebeck today - I plan to go tomorrow, the movie shows an hour earlier. Instead, D came home for lunch - and we had a fabulous lunch - I made a kind of Thai red-curry-paste shrimp & vegetable melange served over basmati rice -- so good, colorful, delicious, healthful. Then I took the car into town for a bit - so as to look for boxed Christmas cards. I could buy them in Rhinebeck tomorrow - but in terms of endeavoring to "shop local" - Rhinebeck doesn't need my dollars - Hudson does. So I was determined to try to find a set on the beautiful main street of shops. I walked into one, that I vaguely thought might be a candidate (but it was more of an antique curio shop than I had remembered) - and the proprietor told me she doesn't sell holiday cards, and I asked her - do you know who might? And first thing she suggested was - the CVS! Say what - ?! No - I mean better than that - and it was just such a shock to me that a Warren Street shopkeeper would ever suggest CVS for anything other than maybe aspirin. Anyway, she got my vibe and in thinking about it for a moment then suggested a very lovely, stylish purveyor of Swedish-imported home & garden objects - which I hadn't thought of. So I walked down there, but he didn't sell holiday cards either. I ended up getting a box at a combination pub-bookstore. I'm not crazy about them - they're not really me - but they'll do.

Oh sweetheart, here you are, Pablo... I would have said "dear Pablo" but I am trying to put a moratorium on the dears and darlings, I think I exceeded my quota with this morning's post.

I got in a vigorous walk this morning, which is a good thing, because I've been indulging a bit in rich food these days, with the holidays creeping upon us. After I bought the cards, and walked back up Warren Street looking in shop windows, I developed such a craving for very good chocolate. This was after I actually entered one shop. It was a few steps up from the street, and up I stepped, and looked in the entrancing oval antique door glass into the emporium within... and was entranced with the beautiful mosaic tile floor. You've seen such floors before, classic black & white hexagonal patterns worked out in tiny hexagonal tiles, but this flooring - back from the original nineteenth century day, tiles mellowed with time -- also involved color - orange, green, and yellow hexagons. It was just ravishing, this vast, airy shop-width expanse of tiled carpet. I entered the shop - it wasn't entirely clear to me what it specialized in - on the walls hung leather jackets, and also there were elaborately colorful silken textiles, and handpainted mirrors on the wall with delicately painted pastel borders ($485, an aesthetically inked figure read on one ragpaper tag)...

No boxed cards, but I did help myself, from a bonbon dish set on a table, to a single tiny silver-packaged chocolate, hardly bigger than a Chiclet, that I unwrapped, back out on the sidewalk, and popped in my mouth. Delicious... not absolutely the best chocolate I'd ever had... but it made me desire more. And I remembered about a chocolate bar that I'd received at the hairdressers the other week, when I got my hair trimmed, their holiday gift to clientele. Which struck me as a little unappetizing at the time, frankly, a chocolate bar in a wrapper labeled with the name of the salon - which involves the word "Hair." And I know I am sounding like the worst snob in this post (what - get my holiday cards at the CVS? well I never!) - but I didn't hold out high hopes for this sweet of dubious provenance. But it turned out - as D discovered later, upon reading the fine print on the wrapper - that it hailed from a very fine confectionary in town. Ah - and so its imprimatur passed my muster - and though I'd bequeathed the unopened bar to D - when I saw the last remaining three tiny squares on the kitchen table the other day - I devoured them. And they were delicious.

And so today - at the same confectioners. No paper-wrapped bar. But a cheerful cellophane packet, tied with raffia, of milk chocolate pieces. Oh heaven!

But really, d**r**t, I should have gotten in a workout.

All my love, many kisses - thinking of you - hope all is well & happy -
(oh someday we'll meet again, won't we? maybe next year? along those lines - though less passionately - I've written out a card...)