Hello darling, my heart is full, my mind is full, but with far less religious feeling than I ought properly, given the day, be feeling. Up in the aerie, longing for another kiss in a car, wondering, wondering... how very difficult, entangled, complex, ambiguous, messy life is -- I don't know -- I mean, now one can google folks and I was an English major, and whether I'm accurate or not, I have a facility at researching and analyzing things. Not that I draw any conclusions, well maybe a few, or impressions -- do many narcissistic, controlling women have a look? -- a steely, iron-willed broad smile, teeth showing, eyebrows just done -- an image that reminds me of photos I've seen of ancestors, my mother's mother perhaps, or perhaps even my father's mother (I mean - why was my father as f**k'd up as he was? I think my grandmother, who'd had him at age 16, was (a) immature, and (b) a steely, self-centered queen --

I've been feeling a bit achey today, had a marvelous session this morning, given new, actual mental inputs. Just finished vacuuming the downstairs, which for all my working out and vigorous walking -- I find the arduous labor of a lot of housework, and gardening especially, to be extremely physically painful -- so I try to avoid it, or minimize it. But I'm not an invalid, far from it. It's just that certain movements my body really likes -- my home exercise routine, for example, feels so good to execute, there is no awkward straining -- and I can even, almost balletically (okay in my mind) balance on one foot, body perpendicular, other leg in the air -- that feels like quite an achievement to me -- or not so much that, as a capacity I developed over time, and would like to maintain.

Can you tell I'm just typing, & babbling? I could be going to the church this evening, to view, in commemoration of the day, a screening of Mel Gibson's film of The Passion of Christ, but - as much as part of me would really really like to be there, in the company of the Reverend, and others, I know it would be an incredible experience to mindfully watch the film with them -- I simply didn't feel up to it, given the late hour (the prayerful screening commences at 7) and intensity. And who am I kidding -- I like my icefilled glass of pink wine, at just this hour (6:23 now), and communing with you. Plus I have a hair-trim appointment in the morning at nine, before which I plan to color my hair -- which would be impossible if I were to come back late, and upset, from the somber film screening, wishing at that point - when, ten? - to have some wine, write to you...... well, how do you suppose my hair appointment would go in the morning then, if I woke up all tired & anxious & bleary-eyed?

Yeah, exactly, so - while I'm very very mindful -- well, one of the guest clergy sermon-deliverers, a jolly fellow, quipped, and maybe I'll conveniently borrow this for myself for my own purposes --- that Jesus died on the cross -- so that we don't have to. And the clergyman meant it - and I get it. I don't have to imitate, go into mourning over it, Jesus's horrible death, and what it meant.

So that we don't have to. Now -- that could be an apologia for religious institutions serving as cover for self-serving narcissists to run rampant. And that reading - is permitted -- and maybe that's how it's often interpreted, which gives license to --- well, a whole lot of people, and policies, with whom/which I disagree.

But I'll take the so that we don't have to in a simpler way, and simply acknowledge my gratitude for this beautiful day, and my health, and for the love I have for those I love, and for those who love me, and my fingers tapping, and birds tweeting outside, and a feeling - even as I get older, felt dead in fact, that there's a promise, in my corporeality, of resurrection, of sorts, and of bringing loving comfort, or bringing myself in loving comfort, and he to me, whatever the messiness --

He died on the Cross
so that I don't have to

and can, mindfully, joyfully, spiritually, enjoy the world, and my life, for God so loved the world...