Hello darling, beautiful hour, on this beautiful day, late day sun, full and bright, streaming in. I hope everything is well with you, and with all your family. I haven't heard anything from anyone, at all, not all year, and usually I get a little Easter message from my aunt, and maybe I should be sending her one, except that I sense that somehow I've been found out, that I'm on the outs over there -- well, you know what I mean. Or maybe I just take things way too personally -- because obviously there are major difficulties and problems going on, life in its pain & complexity. But still -- that's my intuition, and vibe -- and I've never been an 'inner circle' member of the tribe anyway. Still and all, I am so very glad for boundary-busting (in your way) you, and your love, and I love you, and I get it, and it's okay.

Splendid service at church today, and the white Easter lilies at the altar were in bloom, exquisite against a backdrop of black lettered triptych. It's no small thing to say that the lilies were in bloom -- because yesterday afternoon, when I stopped in to run through one last time the hymns -- one of the 'church ladies' was there too, trying to force the lilies to bloom, training her blow drier, for warmth, on their tightly, stubbornly furled green buds. Ah -- miracles! For they were splendid today.

I had the opportunity of the car today, but pretty much passed on it, except to go to the supermarket, where I scored on several nice marked-down packages of fish - catfish, perch, pollock -- I suppose from Good Friday. I'm glad the fish - and some nice reduced vegetables on a rack too - cauliflower, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes - were there, along with chicken, dropped in price -- so I bought packages of good-quality thighs at $1.41/pound -- oh yes darling -- did you guess -- the makings, later in the week, for Sicilian Spiced Chicken, it's been a while...

Oh right, so I'm glad I bought all these beautiful foodstuffs for a song, because I stopped at a French boulangerie in town, where my dollars had suddenly become devalued, and I bought two loaves of bread -- a thin crusty sourdough baguette -- delicious with a wedge of sheep's milk camembert, the pairing of which I devoured the instant I got home -- and a multigrain loaf that I haven't sampled yet -- the two loaves totaling $9.45.

Oh, so the church service was beautiful this morning, and there was a great crowd in attendance, people I've never seen before (in all of my two, if that, months of attending church there), including a rather patrician woman in an elegant Easter chapeau, who looked as though she would have been right at home at last year's Royal Wedding at Windsor. I wore blue jeans -- I would have preferred a skirt, but have only black ones, and no befitting tops. So I decided -- well I have these very Easter-colored pink striped blouse & cream sweater (the very outfit from the other day, repurposed) -- and, seated at the organ, I'm mostly seen from waist up anyway, so those are the colors that should count - and so they did.

I did the best I could with the hymns. Mostly great, actually -- this lapsed Catholic in training in young girlhood had always loved 'Jesus Christ Has Risen Today' and as quite spirited & fast-paced & not uncomplicated as it is -- I sailed through it beautifully. And actually -- because there's strength in numbers -- for the first time could actually hear the congregation sing. Unfortunately I made a few mistakes once or twice on other hymns, really sort of slid ice-hockey style and crashed on one phrase on one in particular, but in true ice-hockey style simply muttered (in church - on this day) oh s**t, spun around fiercely, recovered, and rededicated myself to pushing that puck of hymn better my second-third-fourth-fifth go-around with, as it were, my -- hockey stick.

Ah it all worked out, the joyful - noise - indeed -- which sometimes was music, other times a jarring wreck -- why oh why, on even subsequent passes did I insist on playing a D-sharp, again and again, even though I knew (right-brain) - that it was actually D-natural.

Anyway, I'm belaboring this post - there isn't poetry in me really tonight - I'm a little too spent, I think, my energies having been thrown into getting credibly, & joyously, & spiritedly, & vigorously, through the morning -- and gladly so.

And that's it, really, for now dearest -- I hope, again, that all is well with you, and everyone around you. Isn't life strange? Well, we meet up this way -- and who knows -- maybe we'll see each other again. Won't that be something?

Many kisses -- yours, Belle