Hi darling, up in the aerie in sweet honeyed light, all golden & mellow, streaming in the westfacing windows -- ahh, it looks, even feels like spring, the lightening of the world, it's five and so bright out, I feel my spirits lifting. I am sitting here with a well-deserved glass of icefilled pink wine, having spent all afternoon cleaning the house top to bottom, baths included, so now there's a nice fresh neatened up house to show for it. Plus I did a bunch of cooking this morning, a pan of simple chicken legs roasted with tarragon, with a salad for lunch; and a chicken-sausage, lentil, tomato, & kale sauce for pasta tonight. Before that I took a long walk with weights this morning, and right after that had a wonderful session with you, and so I feel Vitruvianly exercised & energized and had a fairly full enjoyable day, even if it was laden with chores. But I much prefer to simply set to chores with energy & purpose and "get it all done," than to do dribs one day, drabs another -- in which case the chores weigh constantly. Yes darling, I was on all fours, cleaning the upstairs bath -- is that what you meant? Because surely that baby can't be crawling yet - can it? Or perhaps that's not what you meant at all, you delightful man you - I like it that way too.

It's good that I got a lot of chores out of the way too, because I'm going to have practice a lot of hymns this coming week... my Big Debut is next Sunday. I'm not really nervous, except that I wish it were a less important service that I would be starting out on - there will be a guest clergyman, quite a draw evidently, a big deal, and so many more parishioners are expected. I would have preferred to start, say, maybe tomorrow (though I don't feel psychically ready at the moment), when there would be no more than a handful of people, maybe around twenty, and all quite sweet, timid & retiring, it seems. (It really is a tiny very provincial parish.) But I will do my best, and I'm sure it will be fine, though I doubt it will be "perfect," there's too much of a learning curve, but the R is cool with that, she understands -- we give what we can give, what we have to give. She offered (of course) to postpone my start, but it would be very nice to have some live music at this special service, and I didn't see the point of delaying matters at all -- I won't improve through the delay. It's not really the offhours practicing that nails it, it will be my getting used to service after service after service, until the pacing & rhythm of it all becomes second-nature, and the hymns so familiar I'll hardly even have to, for some, consult the sheet music.

How are you darling? I wonder where you are. I think of you. I hope I get to see you sometime this year, I really do. That's something to hope for, even just a glimpse, a few moments in the same room as you. That's a nice thought, isn't it? I smile as I type and think of it, of you. Oh honey, at least we've found each other in this way -- because corporeally all too often it's all but impossible on this earth, as a CL poster, age 34, in the title of his personals-ad lamented today -- and boy could I relate, and wanted almost to say, older than him as I am, with boatloads of years behind me to have reflected ruefully on all this, but it really is astonishing how elusive, in the worldly realm, satisfying human connections & relations are, as it turns out (especially, I'm sure, in our harsh, fragmentizing culture) -- "why is this so difficult." There wasn't even a question mark --- it's a statement -- "why is this so difficult." Yes, it is.

Anyway, darling, I'm actually having a wonderful time, as wonderful as I can have... I don't know. "Bored & lonely?" I'm lonely -- but not really bored. There is always something to occupy me, somehow, however mundane it may seem... and the future holds some promise I think, at least I hope so. And if not, well then -- I think of you, and I'm very glad I've rediscovered myself, in key respects. I was so bookish as a girl, or I liked dressup dolls, that I never had much need for battery-operated toys, but now I am very grateful for them, and the immense relief, and sense of not being involuntarily cloistered, that they bring.

Enough babbling my love. I hope wherever you are you are having a wonderful time, sipping or nibbling something delicious, having long luxurious whiles to yourself where you can muse & dream and think of me, maybe even lie back on a settee in a cubiculum, shutters half-drawn, while Corinna slips in from the shadows in her light summer dress to visit you with a kiss...