Hi sweetheart, such a beautiful day, yet again, astonishing. Our privet hedge, which doesn't normally leaf out til nearly May, is tingeing green. The 'hedge-fund' guy's forsythia are in bloom - yellow-green - chartreuse. It's in the seventies. I'm in a thin striped pink cotton blouse and panties, having just vacuumed the downstairs, what I didn't get to yesterday. As I dragged the vacuum cleaner from the kitchen to the dining room (necessitating unplugging it from the solarium to the living room) a pair of dark fluttering whirrs shot past my head -- what? Not one, but two birds - sparrows - had gotten in the house, and suddenly I had to try to throw open sashes, to try to let them out. It was the stuff dream/nightmares are made of, the panicked birds, at the bay of stained-glass windows -- on the other side of which the storms are still in place. Which fortunately unlatch, as I discovered, grateful as I released the catches and sprang them open, letting in a rush of fresh air, that they didn't fall to the ground, or into an overgrown shrub - no they stayed propped open. That's nice to know. In any event, after some running around the downstairs, with me beseeching the birds like some rescue worker, one of them for sure flew out the back door - and the other seems to be gone too - although I didn't witness its escape. And now unscreened windows are shut back tight, against insects, and perhaps bats.

I could be in a better mood. No, I don't look like a Dallas C. cheerleader. I'm just me. I don't understand my own situation, especially looking back on my life. I'm having a hard time. My family -- poof, gone, I was expendable. I wonder how they are doing. Does everyone look at CL all the time? I imagine my younger brother is having an affair, just a quiet longterm FWB-type thing, and then he goes to work, and evenings with his wife retires to his study and plays his guitar. The 'coffee date' reverted back to a variation of his original 'vanilla' ad -- so much for my faulty analysis of that venus flytrap, who now wishes pix before responding. As I said - I'm no 'cheerleader'- type -- but man, I don't know -- don't you have to pay for those? I'm just bumming out a bit -- housecleaning plunges me into it, then usually I can get back out -- I mean, don't I look nice -- somewhere down the (vanishing) middle (class), nice, of my age, trying to keep myself up? I don't hear from anyone, ever. I assume wedding invitations went out -- I didn't receive one. Which makes me feel slightly - I don't know if paranoid is the word. My coffee date asked me -- does the wife know? And I said, I don't know, certainly not from me. But if she did catch wind, somehow, then of course I would be persona non grata - a role I should be used to by now. And I am used to it, it's written into the fibers of all my bodily aches & pains, just thinking about it. And then sometimes I wonder too - I mean, I do believe in intact, loving families - but that has eluded me my entire life, including the one I was born into - why is that? I feel that I would have made - well, I would have tried very hard to make a warm, happy home, happy family.

Anyway, you don't need any more of that. Maybe -- it's not cynicism exactly, more like birds, liminal creatures outdoors, hovering between the skies & earth & feeders, suddenly finding themselves trapped indoors. I think that most of us sentient, sensitive, caring ones - are living, at least mentally, some other life, in some other dimension. I hardly see how it could be otherwise, for a fit, intelligent person.

I just seriously don't quite see how I wound up so severely alone, I really don't. And that's what's troubling me right now. Even as I type, and the sun is shining, and it's beautiful out, and it'll be Dover sole for dinner, fried, and dressed with a quick sauce of dijon mustard, lemon & butter.

I wonder if I will ever see you again, if I'm now persona non grata. And if that's the case, then why should I address daily posts to you at all? I suppose that's why I've been trolling the CL ads, to no avail, sparrow beating against the panes.

And other times I'm just fine, and I will be again, I know my mood will improve, and I'll try again --

two birds, trapped
many kisses, sweet silent darling