Cold gray day today, drear & damp, but blessedly - from my point of view - no snow, disappointing local plowers who count on the white stuff to supplement their income. I heard such a private pickup zoom by, lights flashing, early this morning, as if looking for a pocket somewhere where snow might have fallen.

I'm sympathetic, to a degree, I mean this region is known for usually white winters - no cross-country skiing on the sprawling fields of the local international arts colony this season, for example, not so far - which puts a damper on skiers, and on the cafe there, I imagine...

A nice sense of well-being at the moment, up in the aerie, apricot lamp glowing, Claire slumbering near my feet. I blogged in the morning, and after lunch set off for a walk. It rained overnight - not that much, I hadn't thought, but perhaps I'm wrong - the creek seemed swollen, and was the color of military fatigues - a mass of sickly green water, brown-gray banks, shallow whitecaps racing over black rocks, all in a mottled drab creekscape I regarded from above, on my walk, in the middle of a weekday, along a deserted road, expression of self, a form of protest, on a public right-of-way, in lieu of shopping at the cynically-named -- local big-box store military-compound-style (utterly private, but whose security is underwritten largely, I'd wager, by local taxpayers) -- Commons.

Ah sweetheart -- so I gather you're back across the pond... I guess Europe isn't what it used to be either - but I wonder if you find it more congenial

I'm many, many, many generations - aeons - of Slavic descent
very first generation here
I have a nostalgia for a place (if only in my mind, or my genes)
where I've never even once set foot
it's funny - I sometimes think - I landed here, was born here
but didn't really choose to live here
I've got some other ethos that rubs, burns, remembers
which accounts for the ceaseless chafing

I feel so alienated sometimes here, in what this country has morphed into since I was a girl - it's almost unrecognizable to me, the severe transformations
I mean - as a girl the "Ridgeway Shopping Center" with a Gimbels was a novelty
but there was still a downtown - though it was being razed fast
there was a downtown, and then there was, within the larger city, an assemblage of modest villages
I haven't been back in many years - I don't even know where in town the big-box stores there are sited
but I know they're there
(in the name of "economic development")

so I didn't go shopping today
or do anything for money, not even a sweet session
though I had one, with you, for free - wonderful
without a jet at that very moment
distracting me, as yesterday
just taken off, roaring in tandem
with my exuberance
directly overhead
(I thought the Senator had moved?)
dinner will be roasted chicken
with grilled strips of zucchini, carrot
leftover from the other day
and a very hearty & delicious cooked whole-grain mix
my new favorite
that fills & warms me from the inside -
like a roaring fire blazing cozily in a hearth -
what an amazing feeling from a food!

sweet dreams, my love
holding you tight