My dearest, wherever you are, my impression is that you took flight again this morning, and landed many hours later, this afternoon...

I'm sitting up here in the aerie, sipping pink wine, trying to ignore pointedly mild-melding cats that want me to do something, listening to the heating coils up here burble (for a spell I could imagine I was descending in a bathyscape, so loud were the watery gurgles all around). Dinner is on the stove, chicken paprikash stew that we'll have over noodles, only I'd just as soon eschew the starch, and have mine over baby spinach - maybe so, that's what I'll do. I stood at the sink before five, as the light was fading, and deboned the drumsticks, making the dish much easier to eat, especially with a fork later on, at my desk in the aerie. D and I don't eat together anymore, except for sometimes lunches when he comes home. I put the bones in the freezer, in a baggie I have started towards the next batch of stock. I had a trifecta today. The sun was out. It was freezing, on my walk I was bundled in my bright-red wool coat, black hat, black wool scarf wound around my neck. Actually I was cozy. And it didn't seem bleak at all, the air was so crisp and the day so bright, and lawns are still green -- it isn't all desiccated, desaturated, colorless greige.

Sweetheart, I'm just tapping keys here, musing. It's the very tippy-top of the year, there's a temptation to look back behind (but I'm afraid of heights!!) and look back at the year I've just come from. Oh a few random snapshots flicker, truly in no order except for as they come to me now...

I lived to see you again, and this year, didn't
I lost hope of seeing 1.0, and (sure enough) didn't
I turned 52, in August
my periods stopped early in the year & I've since read that the typical time for women to hit menopause is at age 51-1/2, which seems uncannily biologically precise - and that's just how it happened for me
I ventured from the Hudson Valley, across the Berkshires, to the Pioneer Valley
I saw the back of a "faux Emily"
I met Lenore & Jerome, and felt that I'd met friends, a really nice connection, at long last
I saw Anderson Cooper crossing Sixth Avenue at around 38th St. one Sunday (when I'd just gotten off an Amtrak train at Penn)
and now I quite often do my workouts to his talkshow
he has a nice charm, easy to take
I had wonderful stays in Brooklyn, I've lost count, I think three of them scattered over the year - thanks to old friends, neighbors there
I discovered my way out of sexual misery, via blue birds of happiness
keeping batteries charged all the time is a way of life for me now
I made a friend this year, my "writerly" friend, a truly lovely, lovely woman in every respect
I haven't been to the conservation area in months
I don't often have the car
D has a lot of work, and has gotten serious
things I think were dire, on the brink, I've been kept out of the loop but he's been taking care of it and I think it's all working out and that's all I know, as far as finances
A asks chirpily, "so how's the house coming?" I shake my head - no
but still - small gains
a redone aerie staircase, freshly painted & recarpeted
I read books - let's see: 1.0's, memorably (whose copy sits, albeit at this point buried, archaeological style, under layers of intervening papers & books - but is nevertheless always 'near to hand' - and even now I can see, peeking through the shadows, part of the title on its spine... scape of the Mind)
I read a fine biography of E.D., by Richard B. Sewall
With very few exceptions, each day I took a walk, wrote a post;
most days (or on average five times a week) I did an exercise workout on a mat
I have a nice figure, but far from perfect, I need "flattering," formskimming tops
that's okay

Sweetheart, dearest - have I put you to sleep yet? Oh that might be a nice thing, depending which time zone you're in darling, I'm guessing Europe, but who knows - but if I'm right then high time you cozily fall asleep...

Which by the way those O'Keeffe/Steiglitz letters - I'm sure they have their moments - and I guess you had to be there - as with this blog
but I'm having trouble wading through the massive tome

that's the nature of writing - it's excreted a bit at a time
and then those bits -- not like raindrops at all -
accrete, accumulate

I have a hard time confronting "The Complete Poems of E.D.", or even a volume of "Selected Letters"

So -- and I can't offhand think of a tie-in to the waning year -
but darling, I'm very glad that - lucky you!
you get to read these nightly installments
one completely digestible bite at a time

and you know how the narrative goes... no need for me to recap it...

throwing my arms around you, dearest you
sleep tight
all best wishes
see you tomorrow