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Hi sweetheart, up in the aerie, aroma of roasting chicken wafting up the stairs. I managed finally to capture a shot of the woodpecker that visits the suet feeder - and, as at LaGuardia, a bluejay evidently awaiting its turn. I have an ivory cashmere, three-quarter sleeved, pearl-buttoned sweater that I've slept in, as an extra layer, for several winters, and it's finally given out, between machine-washings and my thrashings about at night. It's "too good" to throw out though, that lovely soft wool, so I've been tearing off thin strips & shreds of it, and experimentally draped a few such strands in the bare branches of a maple sapling in the front yard, thinking that perhaps birds might like it to 'feather their nests,' as they build them. It's a good thing that Darwinian evolution tends to occur on a lengthier time scale... because I'd hate to think of a generation or two of birds hatched & bred in the lap of plush luxury, only to find that the 'real world' isn't lined with cream cashmere. On a much lighter note, I imagine sightings, in Columbia County over the coming seasons, of beautiful bird nests, made of twigs, grasses, expertly, incredibly, beautifully, so compactly woven round & round... perfect cupped centers, interwoven with of all things... pale cashmere.

I am very used to cashmere myself... it takes only an instant to become accustomed to such fine, sensual luxuries, at least for me.

I'm feeling a nice sense of well-being. Although a bit topsy-turvy. I'm glad I've lost weight, I'm fairly fit, and trim. How potent are those multi-vitamins? I thought I was in menopause, but today... perhaps not, a bit of spotting anyway. The body is so mysterious, isn't it? Mine is, to me, certainly. I'm very glad I have the luxury of time & space to lead really a very nice life, with good foods, & exercise. When I worked full-time--- I couldn't get it together, I let myself go. It was like centrifugal force, or forces, spinning out. I could be good at my job. But then other things got let go. My body, mostly, as I hit middle age -- I had been ruinously abusive of it through most of my twenties, and into my thirties - especially with smoking. And also not having a clue whatsoever, as to proper nutrition.

I don't mean to rail at my mother (internally I often do, and she had a great many extenuating circumstances). I wasn't the 'chosen one' - the one deemed to have a long slim body, and accorded swim lessons. I definitely didn't learn proper nutrition from her. Actually the idea I had from her was that all calories were essentially fungible. She didn't know better, had come from a very hard place, growing up during WWII, bleak Catholic boarding school on her own after. Marriage to who turned out to be my father.

I didn't learn principles of good nutrition, exercise -- a comfortability and acceptance and nurturing of one's own body -- not from her. She died at age 58 of colon cancer, many years ago now, when I was around 30. I do believe she did the best she could by me -- and yet it simply wasn't adequate enough, the lessons, for the challenges that this rather relentless (unless one has exquisite supports, in some way - whether it's family, or capital, or an exploitative personality) culture demands.

Would I have made a good mother? I don't know. I wish -- on some level, but truthfully I have always had ambivalence around this question -- that I might have experienced motherhood. I never chose it for myself, because I could never seem to quite set up the right warunki -- conditions, circumstances, feathered nest - even if not lined in found cashmere. Working, as much at 'careers' as I could - I felt that I barely had the time & energy to take care of myself, let alone a little one. Perhaps circumstances, dynamics, would have shifted had I had a baby. I'm not so sure. I think I always felt in the back of my mind that my energies were limited - and that I definitely couldn't 'do it all.'

I was working outside the home, & cleaning the house, D & I shopped for & cooked most of our meals, didn't have a car, didn't go away on vacations (sometimes we did, but not usually), were in a one-bedroom.

How could I have fulfilled that other aspect of myself?
And so it didn't happen

And it turns out -- we'll have been here seven years in April --
I'm amazed by that number, seven years already here --

he & I were never on the same page in terms of dreams
'mountains of forgotten dreams' (was that you?)
as it turned out

but here we are - nonetheless
I have to run downstairs to put the roasting root vegetables
and the chicken no doubt now done
on warm

and that's it, my dearest Bacchus,
my Jonas Salk
are you my second? I don't know...
I keep trying to decipher those page hits
though not too too hard

good night my dear Steve McQueen
i can see the red tail lights
heading for Spain