My dearest, how are you, where are you, I wonder. I sit here absently studying my hands, sipping from an icefilled glass, wondering what to write - if to write, perhaps tonight will be a night I skip posting. What do I have to report? I managed a trifecta today, over the course of the day. I took a walk this morning. It was very mild, more like March than late January, and there was green in the landscape, moss sprouting up on a northfacing slope. Which seems paradoxical - I mean usually slopes such as that are the last to see the snow & ice melt since they don't get sun. And yet moss prefers that orientation. At any rate there they were, bright green today.

Sweetheart, I wish we could just hang out together for a spell. I am feeling very off my game in the blogging department these days. Perhaps it's the time of year. I still feel compelled to try to post something every evening - to connect with you - but I don't know, I've just been feeling a splitting of self so much lately - not losing myself in the posts, just constantly being aware (I suppose it's a form of anxiety) that here I am trying to post. No wonder E.D. didn't wish to publish. You know, I used to think that if she were alive today that she'd have a blog. Now - at least the way I'm feeling these days - I'm less sure. She felt that not only "publication was the auction of the soul" -- not something that's ever troubled me, since I give it away -- but also that the idea of publishing made her feel that she was being seen without any clothes on. [I just read that the other day - now, where was that? Because here I'm paraphrasing.] And that's sort of how I'm feeling these days. Because in other posts when I've felt more freewheeling, I've been delighted to tap into letters, think of you in a kind of sharing, hitting 'publish post.' Because I felt it was worth 'something' - a note worth noting. These days I'm not feeling so blithe about it. More like, good God, here she is standing around in her underwear again for all to see, and it's not even great underwear.

Now, darling, I mean that utterly metaphorically, because I have some very nice underwear. But I do confess -- I'm not wearing it now. No, it's my 'around the house' -- yes, white cotton stuff (albeit with a pattern of very thin candystripes) that I had foresworn. Now you see why I didn't wish to undress yesterday - because with a nice outfit I also wear some really nice lacy pretty sexy low-cut stuff -- including (shhhhh!!!) to church.

Yes, I'm feeling airheady. And a bit guilty now too, because an email just came in containing the most heartwarming images of a polar bear encountering sled dogs in peaceful fashion, and, on the opposite end of the globe, koala bears, thirsty in a heat wave, requesting and accepting a drink of water from some surprised and kindly obliging mountain bikers. (I include here only a couple of the images, but in the email I got, there were more, that built, sparingly, very beautiful independent graphic narratives.)
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I really like the idea - or fact - of interspecies cooperation and communication. On my walks I'm always passing by a penned yard that usually contains three barking dogs -- a big black dog, a spotted dalmation, and some considerably smaller yapping terrier. The three of them see me coming and just start barking & yapping away, running around the yard. It's pretty funny. I'm awfully glad for that fence though -- two of those dogs look powerful, and could 'kill me with kindness' and affection, even if they do (as in Of Mice and Men) profess to come in peace. I always yell back at them... good morning, good morning, hey there, etc., etc. They seem happy & well cared for, I'm glad. I passed them this morning, and thought of a dog I'd once briefly met -- outside my brother and then sister-in-law's house in San Jose. They kept the dog penned up in a narrow sunless space at the side of the house. The dog might as well have been a box of crackers (I don't know why I choose those words to type). I mean the dog was so not a sentient, feeling, pathetic creature to its owners. The dog was desperately, pathetically lonely. The weekend I was there I think the mother was like, hey (to her older girl), go check on the dog. Or maybe -- more likely -- the girl took it upon herself. Anyway, I think of that poor dog with a sense of horror. There was absolutely nothing I could do. I was just the visiting "crazy aunt" -- there for the first and last time in my life, on my way back from a visit with my sister, who lives in Honolulu. I had just quit smoking right around then too -- the trip to Hawaii was my way of trying to cope -- change patterns & all that.

I do think about the bigger picture, such as can be glimpsed here. But also I wonder if I think maybe I saw her once, when I was a teenage page at the reference library - I know what she looks like, and she was pretty vivid then, and I'm pretty sure I'd fetched her a magazine or a bunch up the back stairs or in the dumbwaiter...

And that's it darling, for now, this evening. I think of you, and hope all is well with you. Many many kisses. Love you.
xoxo