Dearest Dmitri, I'm so happy to be with you, clasping your hands and kissing you tenderly -- ah, you look and feel and smell amazing, I'm just inhaling you in every way. I hope you've been having a good weekend, and a pleasant afternoon. I have, it's been quite mellow. Up in the aerie now, with a glass of white rioja, special treat for a Sunday. Actually - is it a rioja? I'm not sure. Let me squint at the label -- here's what it says, on the back... Finally, a wine to match your bold lifestyle [ha!!], a wine for those always looking for the best, the brightest and the unexpected. Viura, Salud! Color: Pale yellow, flashes of green; Aroma: Tropical fruit, hints of pear and quince; Taste: Well-bodied, ripened fruit... Oh heavenly, and combined with your kisses --- oh I wish... I'll have to content myself with the hint of... quince -- so that's it -- wow, I don't think I've ever had quince, wouldn't know a hint of it at all. But perhaps if I ever taste quince, I might think... oh it reminds me of this wonderful white rioja that I so enjoy, that makes me feel so thoroughly amorous thinking of my beloved as I type and sip and think of him and of his kisses...

Going backward through my day, with little hops skips and jumps... I'm feeling quite content and pleased. I drove to the Persian-inspired estate earlier this afternoon, as it began to drizzle, thinking that I'd join a guided nature walk of the 'picturesque' landscape (I use quotes around the word, because it's a formal term, F. Church designed the parklike landscape -- carriage roads, plantings, water features, framings & turns of road to capture exquisite, inspiring distant vistas of river and mountains). But when I arrived, just a few minutes late, joining the assembled group and listening to the introductory spiels... I realized that I was feeling much too restless for this group, with many very small children, and a rather pedantic (it instantly struck me) guide --- in short, Dear Reader, I bailed. And absconded back down the paved roads, a breathtaking panorama of platinum river and charcoal mountains and graytoned sky -- like a silent movie, my dearest John Gilbert, your Greta flinging herself in her car and for a moment we see not her, or him, but the beautiful black & white silent landscape that is the backdrop to all her --- I was going to write "shenanigans" -- but in the spirit of white rioja overflowing with juicy hints of bursting sumptuous quince -- and pear (oh - darling - I'm pearshaped I believe) -- ah! a picturesque landscape to match her Bold Lifestyle!

Ah, right, so I bailed, and with $45 in my wallet, where was I to go? The supermarket, of course. (I still carry a tiny envelope in my wallet for the Adonis of the Utz chips... so it's always worth, certainly a weekend stop there.) And scored, sublimely, on beautiful flowers for the house, for a song, including a dozen red-roses, marked down 75% -- they cost $1.75. Yes, they had just a few brown outer petals, which I've picked off -- and now they sit handsomely, splendidly arranged in an earthenware jug on the side of the hearth - painterly-ly beautiful. Similarly, there was a discounted bunch of purple tulips, also $1.75 -- now arranged in a crystal vase on a bedroom dresser. Plus, I bought pots of yet-to-bloom hyacinth, in their unpopped-popcorn state, and I look forward to their flowering, and their heavenly scent...

Which reminds me too, of the beautiful service this morning, for Palm Sunday. I am very glad that attending, participating in, contributing to these services, has become a part of my life. I find the experience extremely rich, and rewarding, each and every Sunday, something new and different, profound, worthy of thought and wonder and contemplation -- I'm very grateful. So the Reverend -- the Rector, actually, who'd been away for a couple of weeks -- mentioned this morning how, in this coming Holy Week, she would be participating in a diocese-wide service, presided over by the Bishop, in which the Reverends renew their vows, and receive fresh supplies of blessed oils, two different kinds, one that I gathered has no fragrance (I suppose this is the one with which she marks my forehead when I kneel at the altar, arms folded across my chest, and she offers me the most beautiful, whispered, heartfelt, prayerful blessing) -- and another, a 'baptismal' oil, that the Reverend this morning explained is the fragrance of heaven -- and for just a moment, I felt a 'quince' or 'quiver' of happy-for-her envy for the delightful white-dressed infanta whose baptism the congregation had attended a few weeks before --- oh, that precious child -- had gotten a drift of the most elusive, rare fragrance ever, in her sweet innocent anointing -- Heaven!

Sweetheart, darling, my love -- I am just running on & on here -- and of course I've run out of the Spanish white...

I wanted to mention too, how moving I found today's service, the liturgy (I don't have my formal religious terminology down yet, really). There was a reading, in different voices, by a small group of individual parishioners (it reminded me, perhaps, of sung works, as in Handel's Messiah, though spoken, and encompassing vast acreages of ages... there was an alto, a soprano, a young man's quavering, uncertain voice - baritone perhaps, culminating in the Reverend's - contralto? And the readings were from the Gospel of Saint Mark, of the Passion of Christ, which story, in its horrible inevitability, is so powerful, so moving... and the cock crowed a second time...

Anyway, I was profoundly moved, and rapt on every word, as though hearing it for the first time, which in a sense I was. Especially since the whole service was so heartfelt...... there was such eloquence, and simplicity, this tiny little provincial congregation, where the Reverend Mother, a very warm caring maternal minister, knows everyone by name, and some in her congregation, seated back in the pews, are hearing it all for the first time, such as a delightful tiny young boy, who'd participated in the procession with the donkey... to wizened old me, seated at the organ, observing it all, and hearing it all too, in my own way for the first time, with far greater appreciation, and understanding.

Love you, my sweetheart. This coming week... oh, be well, be happy, I will be thinking of you, you know I will...