Hello darling, ah what a difference a bit of certainty makes -- he & I are on for Friday, and not in some motel on Route 9 either, but in a pied-a-terre, presumably only temporarily available, that has fallen into his lap. Now such a Slaviansky-Bazaar furnished room I will make a gesture towards decorating (since he, this week, is laundering everything there is in there to be laundered). I will bring flowers, I replied, in the wee hours when I woke, seeing with elation & relief his message. Possibly the place doesn't need flowers, and what if we're only there for a few hours, though if things go well I imagine there might be a subsequent time, assuming the place is available. What is it about me & flowers? And I have a set program in mind too - the flowers must be fragrant -- I'm thinking freesia perhaps, or roses, if I can possibly find affordable ones that have any scent to them. I know I'm being silly. But I've pulled out a couple of vessels -- a pale-green beveled drinking glass that our B'klyn friends found for us at a tag sale on one of our weekend house swaps when they were up here (I never, I mean never, find anything at such sales -- true, I don't attend or seek them out, either, but I should, I know one really can get wonderful offbeat imaginative treasures that way), and a very pleasingly shaped rounded jar that once contained expensive oil-packed olives. I figure that these vessels are so neutral, and little-used, they have no special emotional connection for me, that if he & I in the little sunlit (I hope?) flat wish a conversational preamble and I wish to decorously & decoratingly keep my hands busy for a few moments -- then I might as well unwrap some flowers, arrange them in a couple of vases, and set them about, where if our glances should just happen to fall, later, on something other than each others' splendor, well then -- it will be the personal, fragrant, lovely, blooming touch that is all our own. Not that I mean to get the slightest bit 'twee' or coy on you - I hate that - it's just that -- well, one might as well personalize. Or make it romantic already (which I feel it is, actually). Or just make it extra special, a gesture towards the sublime --- since we're seeing the light, and not just the shadows...

In the meantime, today -- back on Planet Earth -- I had the car for a spell in the afternoon, so I took advantage and, after a trip to the library, rendez-vous'ed back down these parts for a walk at the conservation area, where I haven't been in several months -- oddly, really, considering that I used to go there Every Single Day, almost without fail. Something about that place got jinxed for me sometime last year, when the whole dog-walking-on-required-leash flap ensued, and the Conservancy director himself showed up one Saturday, and we chatted, and I said to him (as he was trying to gauge me, professionally) that I'm a regular, there almost every day -- and the moment I uttered such words to him, I found something in me shutting off -- that I had somehow - not jinxed it exactly - but suddenly now, I wasn't going to be there every day. And that weird twist of gut intuition proved true (mostly because D has, out of economic necessity, become much more serious about commandeering the one car -- I had no idea that my conservation area walks, all those months if not years, had had such a hidden price tag).

Anyway, darling, I'm tapping, babbling really, but happy to be happy, that -- well, that. That I have Friday to look forward to -- and flowers to dream about, and strokes, and kisses --