Hi sweetheart, a beautiful hour on this spectacularly gorgeous day. The sun is shining, temperatures have been in the 70s, I've been in a slinky top & skirt all day, bare legs & heels, enjoying the sun on my bare arms. I had the car for the afternoon, so I hit the library, picked up a book on reserve, then drove with the moon roof open along winding country roads, glimpses of fields, and hills, and airfields, and old houses, over to Chatham, mostly because we're out of bread - good bread, that is, the only kind we bother with if we're going to have those carbs, so I scored a sunflower-millet and a rye at the bakery. And then headed back along a different set of rambling scenic byways, and stopped at the local international arts colony - the visitors center there, that reminds me of the Saarinen terminal at JFK, modernist spaceship plopped down in vast rolling cow pasture. They have a cafe there, offering gourmet lunches and light snacks, open weekends only. I'd had lunch already, leftover Chinese, and thought I'd have dessert. It is such an unseasonably warm day that the cafe was populated, tables set outside on an elegant stone terrace occupied, county denizens sunning themselves and dining merrily in the delightful light & air. I noticed that a few of the parties had bottles of wine. So I asked the server, who brought my coffee & cake -- you can bring your own wine here? Oh yes! I'm so glad to know that, I said, because I stopped here for lunch some weeks ago, and would have stayed but was really in the mood for a glass of wine with my lunch -- and so I left. The young woman frowned - oh no! Another woman, seated in the sun at a table next to mine, overhearing our conversation, offered -- I'd give you some of ours, except that we just finished the bottle! That's okay, I replied, I'm just glad to know, for the future.

Which I am, darling -- I would love to while away a post-church service sensuous hour with you in heavenly, restorative sunshine, sharing a delicious bottle of wine, and perhaps pressed panini. We might order their weekend specials -- but the couple of times I've stopped there - they're always "out." There's such a small attendance that they don't prepare a lot of food in advance, not the gourmet specials anyway -- a wild-mushroom lasagna I'd gone out of my way for weeks ago (what with no wine - plus they'd run out of the 'special' - I left), some corned-beef concoction today -- also "out." At another table, a gentleman came late, joining a party, in full merriment -- oh aren't you going to order anything, caroled a woman -- or are they out of food?

Anyway, it was just very cheery & delightful, and I'm glad to discover, or rediscover, this place as a really great destination for an hour of a weekend. So I sat there in the sun, in my pretty outfit & sunglasses, enjoying the hot strong coffee and wedge of dark chocolate-orange-Guiness-stout cake (the very first slice of it, cut from a white-iced wheel set beneath a clear glass dome - and another server, perhaps the pastry-chef herself, popped outdoors to ask me - how is it? delicious! oh good!, she beamed, running back inside). In the midst of savoring it all, I read the opening pages of my library book, a biography of Joseph Cornell, of whom I know next to nothing about, but who I appreciate, on some level, as just an extraordinary person who came to his way of expression sideways, and by vicissitudes of life, and - well, by just what he had to offer, & so modestly - and at the same time, eloquently, powerfully. I am having an easier time already getting into the thick of this biography -- I don't know why that Maid as Muse one of E.D. isn't grabbing me. I think I have a mental block against it, given issues within my own house, this whole horrible marital class warfare going on between D & me. Maybe the subject on some level just hits a nerve too much - I don't know how to explain it, but I keep renewing the book, and there it sits, within a short stack of books to the side of me, atop a filing cabinet -- and I can never seem to bring myself to read further in it. Strange.

Anyway, darling, I Think of You too, sixteen times in a day, and more times over. We would have enjoyed a lunch at the cafe, and - oh by the way - I think you would have appreciated the sermon at the church service today - but I'm getting away from myself - perhaps, as I glance on that topic, it would be a good subject for a separate post.

I hope all is well with you, my dearest, and that you are having a wonderful, enjoyable time, wherever you are. I think of you - as always. All my love.

(launching without proofing - while the sunlight, past six, is still golden)