Hello dearest. Beautiful sunny afternoon, dry and comfortable. I felt quite energetic today though now that I've sat down I feel tired. I could use a kiss. I check the stats right now (5:09) and there you are... darling, thank you, kisses back.

I slept a little late today, got up around 8:30 (I seem to sleep in a bit on weekends - why is that?). D had to meet someone in town at 10, and I was trying to get myself going so that I could get in a walk beforehand, before the sun got too high. I asked him to call and see if he could push the appointment back a bit, which he did, til 10:30. So I got "up and running correctly" as KZE's Morning Rick would say, showered, dressed, fried eggs, and got out the door. I pulled into the parking lot, noted that there were only a couple of cars there, unfamiliar ones. I gathered my handweights, tissues and car keys, and got out of the car. There were a few people near the information kiosk, a family, and as I approached to go through the gate and set down the path, they came into closer focus: a woman holding a toddler, another little boy, an older woman, and another guy besides. The faces were in shadow, or perhaps I need glasses, also I wasn't "on." The petite, slender, blonde woman stood in place, seemingly beaming at me. I smiled cordially and looked at her as I approached and thought wow she looks so familiar. I'm peering and sort of cocking my head (perhaps), trying to verify and the woman just continues to beam. Then I tell her something she already knows - oh you're Kirsten Gillibrand. If it hadn't been her I would have been embarrassed - why? mostly because I hardly ever talk to anyone ever at the conservation area, so to hit a perfect stranger with that and be wrong about it?

It did indeed to turn out to be her. She's very lovely in every respect, and introduced me to her baby/toddler son Henry she carried in her arms, a smiling little boy on the path, Theodore, her mother-in-law in a summer hat, and her husband. We stood and chatted a bit. Come here often? (Possibly she phrased that differently.) Yeah every day. Wow - do you go around the whole place? Usually. (I would have simply said yes but Cannot Tell a Lie - I needed to cut my walk short this morning so that D could meet Phil.) I do a figure-eight around the whole park (I drew an 8 in the air), and she said wow, how long does that take, and I said about 40 minutes. Then the mother in law said something about the scenery, and the husband was coming up the path, and I wondered, OMG, is KG aware of my blog what the hell did I write last night? And then I babbled something about how I've lost a lot of weight since I walk there every day and she just glowed and smiled and bounced her son in her arms and beamed at her mother-in-law (who looked very sweet) and I extended my hand to KG and for the second time in the space of a minute she shook it and I said it's an honor meeting you and I'm a fan and you have my vote - whenever (when is she up for re-election - is it this year? I'm so vague these days). (What I thought but didn't utter was that unfortunately I don't have any money to contribute to your campaign...) Then I set down the path and was like - did that just happen?

It was 10:20 when I got back home and I told D, listen if Phil gives you a hard time for being a few minutes late, put the blame on me - I was chatting with Senator Gillibrand. Were you talking policy? No, not at all. By now I recalled that I had once sent her a lengthy letter laying out my thoughts about her position at the time on immigration policy... quite a thorough letter, for me, and our respective views weren't exactly in perfect alignment. But no, that didn't come up this morning. It was all just very pleasant hi's and hello's.

Let me check on the banana bread. Because that's what the rest else I did today with my newfound boundless energy borne of mid-August days that already feel like September. I decided to, in a fashion, clean out the fridge & upper freezer, plus the stand-alone fullsize freezer in the laundry room. I cleared the kitchen freezer of months' worth of chicken carcasses (really - I was feeling creeped out as I chill a bottle of rose amid baggies upon baggies of bones - it got to me). Made an enormous lobster-pot's worth of chicken stock. Stewed plums left over in freezer from last summer. Defrosted old bananas and baked banana bread. Very little went to waste - a baggie of canteloupe from summer of 2008 (however unbelievably decadently delicious it is at a farmstand just this time of year it simply doesn't freeze well), and also a container of freezer-burned grated carrot that I felt little guilt simply dumping on the compost. I try not to be wasteful - but one needs to know when to cut one's losses. I was not about to hide them in a carrot cake.

***

Dearest - like KG - though in other respects entirely - you always had me at Hello.

Hello darling. Today has been an absolutely beautiful day, on the cool side and dry, and I have felt immeasurably better physically all day, very energetic and purposeful, having neglected chores the last few days due to the heat, impersonating Edward Gorey damsels reclining on settees with a hand pressed wanly against my forehead (sigh). Did several loads of wash - had to, all my shorts were in there, which are all too big for me now I've lost so much weight - I need new ones. So today I dressed up for my walk - wore my skirt outfit along with sneakers and peds. I was a perambulating Glamour Magazine "Don't," and burst out laughing when I viewed myself in the mirror clutching my handweights before leaving the house. A ridiculous outfit, or so I felt, though it was very comfortable to wear a skirt and to get sun on my upper arms.

Changed sheets on the beds, made a pot of Spicy Sicilian Chicken, chopping up eggplant, potato, carrot, zucchini, and peppers, and pitting olives while watching another thrilling episode of Mad Men. I was so riveted that I missed the first stanza of Stella the Artist playing in the next room but I came to and jumped up and cranked it and D who was upstairs on the phone with someone had to go into another room.

Had wonderful communications today with the Secret Life of E.D. people - lovely email exchanges. I had discovered a couple of links I thought they might be interested in, and they responded warmly and asked what I thought of his WashPo review of a recent E.D. book, and I responded including with my take on how I feel that it needs to be firmly, dispositively settled whether or not E.D. was afflicted with epilepsy or not. Maybe the matter isn't yet over - it seems that if the diagnosis (or Gordon's case for it) is to be rebutted - I guess it needs to be done systematically - certainly it seems like a very important thing to do, considering the importance and the impact on E.D.'s future legacy, which if the posthumously surmised diagnosis is wrong - a stake needs to be put through it, Buffy-style, once and for all!

(Break for kisses from Your Scholar, my dearest.)

Aretha Franklin's killing me, Going Down Slow. Oh my. Signed, Where Was I.

I told D about Brian May's Lost & Found English Village project this morning. D sat down and read the HuffPo article and we ended up ordering the book. I am just so taken with the idea of it, and so incredibly impressed. With all the bad news all over -- that labor of love just delights me, gives me hope that the way that theoretically - scarily actually - Anyone Can Become President - a Rock Star of all unexpected people can delve and explore and engage and unearth and present. I don't know if you had a chance to watch the video interviews of May and his scholarly collaborator describing their project - but I think the clips are very thoughtful and worthwhile. D saw that I was looking at the site last night and commented that May has a Ph.D. in Astrophysics, which I respect but didn't really interest me. I glanced at the HuffPo piece again and got a load of the title of his dissertation, entitled, Interplanetary Dust, A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud. Okay, no clue, but there's some concept of dust as the evil we have to guard against that I've read about - I'm very vague on this, sorry (a children's book, a movie, a voiceover by Kidman - someday I'll go down that particular rabbit hole). So as D and I were ordering the slipcased book this morning we chatted about May's dissertation. It's very technical and boring. How boring can it be - it has the word "zodiacal" in the title. It's not astrology, not that kind of zodiacal. There's some other kind?

This post is a complete mess but please take it as a late afternoon delicious cool drink that I hand to you but you say no I'm still working darlin you're four hours and light years and moonbeams and sunsets ahead of me and I'm the standard bearer and taskmaster and it's just not wine o'clock here not yet anyway every moment has it's time and I say oh really because I'm sitting here in my pink cotton bra pretty exhausted but not so much as not to be completely pretty and charming and I have some rose here and I've just taken a big icey sip and held it in my mouth and lean in to me darling it's cool and sweet and delicious and I'm going to give you a great big kiss and maybe pass you an illicit sip - lean in for a kiss my darling --

Hello dearest. Have done my best to slog through a very enervating day today, so humid that droplets materialized from thin - no, thick - air as I took my walk at the conservation area this morning. It was overcast so I was able to get in a good workout, which I'd missed yesterday, which I don't like to do, vigorous daily exercise vital to keeping my weight in check. Beautiful there, many wildflowers in bloom, including vast armies of purple loosestrife, not a good thing, so invasive. But also at the edges wild asters, goldenrod, a shrub with ink-dark berries, beautiful but lethal I suspect. Monarch butterflies here and there, and tiny bright yellow finches that flitted ahead of me on either side of the path as I walked. When I got home I watered the garden and let the hose run into the frog pond - it does have frogs, but it's just a tiny pool. Then I lay down for a bit and read and tried to close my eyes but couldn't sleep - perhaps due to delicious strong iced coffee this morning. Then I could hear that it had started to rain. I slipped on a long cotton nightdress (it's been that hot - normally I absolutely dress during the day - that is, unless I'm in the nude), and stood on the porch savoring the monsoon beating down on the roof, sheets of rain scrimming the garden. I glanced dreamily about, at the buddleia with its lilac blooms, barrels with petunias and marine bells, rose bushes and raised beds, a perennial border overrun with blackeyed Susans (which have all but obliterated the echinacea), frog pond brimming. Oh no - the hose was still on! I ran out barefoot in my nightgown in the pouring rain and became instantly drenched as though in Indonesia, my hair, freshly washed, damp all morning, wet again, which I hoped with this second rinse might dry "rainwater soft." The image conjured of me cavorting about for a few seconds in a wet, clinging gown may be more sylphlike than the reality -- but perhaps the reality wasn't so bad if (as I hope) you favor plush nudes such as those in French Impressionist paintings. They have a shape, as do I. Over time my daily workouts have paid off. I can wear sleeveless. My arms are quite toned. I turned off the spigot.

***
Dearest, I have so many images now in my mind of handsome Victorian men with beards - my type it seems - you, most especially you (bearded or not) - Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Edward Carpenter, and now T.R. Williams. I hope all is well with you. I imagine you must be starting to glimpse the idea of the return - it's way past the midpoint, past the Wednesday afternoon (the midpoint of the workweek that, years ago, if I could just get past I could manage til the weekend) of your expedition.

***
Read touching lines by E.D. which reminded me of you, how I feel about you. Backstory: Higginson's first wife died, he had become somewhat spent due to his involvement in a number of causes and the Civil War, he was desperate to simply have children and a family life, so he soon married again, a much younger, uncomplicated, pretty Newport woman, to the surprise of many a suffragist whom he famously championed, as well as of E.D. Soon afterward E.D., then almost 50, fell in love with a much older man, her deceased father's best friend in fact, Judge Otis Lord. "Calvary and May wrestled in his nature," wrote E.D. of him - which, reading that, reminded me of you, in the way that I'm sure you and I both understand.

From Wineapple, p. 223,

She played with poetry in her letters to Higginson, but with [Judge] Lord she juggled legal terms--bankruptcy, penalty, warrant--with erotic zing. "To lie so near your longing -- to touch it as I passed, for I am but a restive sleeper and often should journey from your Arms through the happy night, she wrote, "but you will lift me back, wont you, for only there I ask to be." Then again she would remind him, "Dont you know you are happiest while I withhold and not confer--dont you know that 'No' is the wildest word we consign to Language?" What had she refused him?

[Note to Darling: I for one am not happiest when not conferred upon. I can make an impassioned argument in support of the word "yes". Please note also E.D.'s willful misuse of apostrophe marks, as if to provoke and frustrate - to what end? I rest my case.]

His letters arrived Mondays. "Tuesday is a deeply depressed Day--," she scribbled on a scrap of paper, "it is not far enough from your dear note for the embryo of another to form... but when the Sun begins to turn the corner Thursday night -- everything refreshes -- the soft uplifting grows till by the time it is Sunday night, all my Life [cheek] is Fever with nearness to your blissful words..."

So E.D., like Queen Victoria herself can "gush." (An unfortunately sexist verb, in my mind, that has stayed with me since reading the unsatisfying little quote, via the NYRB, from "Our Own Dear Queen," about a young, ecstatic Princess Victoria's notes in her private journal.) I was always admonished (in one ear) that gushing was a bad thing, bad for art anyway. I have second thoughts about that and am going for it, as you well know.

Darling, have run aground here, my use of punctuation marks stretched to it's limits, so very much in wanting of a yes, yes, yes, hoping that in all respects with beautifully bearded you that the tide is high and the water is low and I am standing in the frigid Pacific - no, pacific - waters of that sea, which surely should be decently warm after all that midnight sun and I am kissing you full well on the lips and hoping very, very much - that that that

Giving out here, darling. Love you. Kisses.

Lost and Found

Darling, while sitting here in the blazing hot aerie in my near altogether, listening to radio, sipping rosé, wondering what to write and idly surfing the web, I came upon an intriguing, charming, magical bit of news - I think you'll be interested (the story's nicely written too). Time travel, message in a bottle, a blog of sorts from yesteryear - what a find! (As the 12534 would say - Amazon this.) I wish I had the ability to see in stereo - one thing that like Lyle Lovett's One-Eyed Fiona I can't - but I compensate in other ways.

Must be in the 90s and it's very humid. Am about to set the oven to 425 to roast a chicken and potatoes - crikey. Had the car for a bit and on a tip from the neighbor woman (conveyed by D) discovered for the first time a swimming hole a short drive away, a streamside beach at the bottom of a dam and waterfall - spectacular. Kids were splashing around and I inquired and a girl said the water's cold at first and then fine and it's not too deep. It was a little otherworldly, actually, to come on this heavenly scene of old-fashioned bathers and the noisy waterfall behind, a fusion of the idyllic calm of a Winslow Homer maybe, combined with the grandeur of a Fredric Church. I've seen the waterfall many times before - I drive past it on route to the library - but today I viewed it from the opposite bank. I'm reminded of when we first moved here and I marveled at the waterfalls and rushing creeks and dynamic nature all around, and I mentioned to D's nice but occasionally brusque, very practical sister (an E.R. nurse by training) that it reminded me of someplace else, somewhere out west, Montana maybe. And she said, no this place is just what it is, it doesn't have to be anything else, which stopped me completely in my tracks. I suppose she's right - and yet - why not have flights of fancy and imagined associations.

I look forward to taking a dip in that swimming hole, maybe tomorrow if it's still hot. And it will be what it is, me just plunging into cool water by a dramatic old waterfall as if it were the 1850s.

Sending all my love along the wireless.

Very dark skies this morning, so dark that I'd like to turn on the lamp but don't because I'm still waking up and wish to linger in a dream state. I've stepped to the window and looked out. It's puzzling why it's so dark - I expected a thick fog. But there isn't at all, just light, even overcast, pale at the horizons.

***
It's not like me to ever get excited about a machine but the new dishwasher is a marvel. It's so quiet that when I turned it on I had to lean in close to make sure it was running. It was like listening to a shell: from deep behind the smooth black surface emitted a soothing, oceanic sound, gentle swooshing and wooshing - chuk-chi, chuk-chi, chuk-chi. When I unloaded it later the dishes were very hot and dry to the touch, much hotter than with the old decrepit washer, much cleaner I imagine, much more so than I ever dared imagine... Earlier we had gone to the supermarket to pick up an unfamiliar product called "rinse agent" in advance of a properly executed inaugural run. "Don't just wash it - Bosch it," quipped resident Mad Man on the way back to the car. I thought that was very funny. You missed your calling I said, and he replied, no that's why they got rid of me in the end, I was too creative for them (he had input into catalogs and ad campaigns), I was always trying to suggest something new and original - bring in new customers maybe - and all they ever wanted was the boring same old and they'd stare at me like I was crazy.

***
Watched Mad Men, made cole slaw, trimmed basil, set up basmati, sliced cauliflower, carrot and onion for a curry with chicken, watered garden, read more Wineapple.

***
From White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson, by Brenda Wineapple, p. 181:

When he took his hat for the last time that day, he promised the poet he would come again sometime. "Say in a long time," she mischievously answered, "that will be nearer. Some time is nothing."

As usual she was right.

***
From letter from J to Belle, 29 September 2009

"I would like to see you again at some point, and perhaps more importantly, as you wrote in your letter, I wouldn't want not to see you again sometime..."

***

***
From letter from Belle to J, 15 September 2009

"... I go in circles thinking of you. Every day there’s a new angle, a fresh take, a different facet glints. I wonder how long this will last? I have a sense of (endlessly redounding) repetitions and recursions – my looping walks every day as the seasons unfold and change, the fractal patterns of nature I see everywhere now – in the intricately branched and berried junipers; the coastlines of clouds; perfect spiderwebs strung high in the trees; and carpeted fields of wild asters, goldenrod, and loosestrife, whose combination of vibrant shades reminds of the elegant plaid skirt I wore a long time ago, just this time of year, when I first met you.

I wanted to write to let you know this, and to say that I hope someday I’ll see you again. My feelings may not be a crystal brook, exactly, but they have settled, and one thing that remains is a belief that I will regard it as a deep disappointment in my life if it turns out that I never see you again...

***
Wineapple, p. 190

In the Spring of 1872, Higginson went to Europe, which he had long wanted to do. Depressed by [his wife] Mary's deteriorated condition, frightened by the sudden death of his brother Francis, disgusted by Newport's empty sparkle, flummoxed by Susan B. Anthony's arrest, and annoyed by the editorial change at The Atlantic, where a callow William Dean Howells had replaced Fields as editor, Higginson accepted an offer to sail with his brother Waldo to England for a two-month visit. His sister Anna stayed with Mary, Mrs. Hunt [Helen Hunt Jackson, close literary friend to whom Higginson was attracted] went to California: time, all around, for a change of air.

"I am happy you have the Travel you so long desire," Emily coolly noted on his return, "and chastened--that my Master met neither accident nor Death." Most of all, though, she wanted him to travel to her. "Could you come again that would be far better-," she observed, "though the finest wish is the futile one."

Resuming her role as Scholar, she again sent him poems. "To disappear enhances--The Man that runs away/Is tinctured for an instant with Immortality," one of them begins, her use of "runs away" rather than "goes away" suggesting that she knew how much she had drained his nerve power...

***
Wineapple, p. 192

Most of all she wished he would come back to Amherst.

And he did.

***
Chuk-chi, chuk-chi, chuk-chi...

Kisses, my darling.

Hello my darling.  The new dishwasher has been delivered and awaits D's hooking it up this evening.  To propitiate the gods and to show proper gratitude, which I certainly feel, I scrubbed the upstairs bath, and vacuumed and dusted the bedrooms and aerie.  Phew.  Then I watered hanging baskets outside, set up chicken to roast for dinner, washed baking potatoes, and read an article in the NYRB - "The Most Happy Couple" about an art exhibition in London centered on Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, which led me to google Princess Beatrice (Sarah Ferguson's daughter) who is said to resemble the young Queen Victoria, much more so than the thin actress Emily Blunt who played her in a very enjoyable biopic I saw in Rhinebeck one inclement afternoon last winter.  Princess Beatrice is surprisingly voluptuous by today's standards.   Many would, and I'm sure do, call her fat - but I don't know - that's quite an hourglass physique (images of her in a bikini), full-breasted, nipped at the waist, flattish tummy (she's young yet), blooming out again at the hips and lush - very lush - thighs.  She has her father's features (Prince Andrew).  Interesting images.  If Queen Victoria looked like that - and she had a very passionate heart - then there must have been quite a lot of fun - the couple produced nine children, of whom the author of the article, Martin Filler, tartly surmises,

but she was much less thrilled about the consequences than the means by which they were created.  Victoria hated being pregnant, which she was for nearly a third of her twenty-one-year marriage; yet she and her scientifically minded spouse seemed remarkably ill-informed about birth control.  But the lady couldn't help it.  As... Piers Brendon, writes in Our Own Dear Queen:

Victoria had fallen passionately in love with the Prince.  She filled her journals with glowing tributes to his beauty, commenting artlessly on his elegant white pantaloons with "nothing under them," and gushed incessantly of her adoration for him:  "My dearest Albert put on my stockings for me.  I went in and saw him shave; a great delight for me."

Now that I have a mental image of the beach tents I have a little fantasy of being in one with you, falling asleep - eventually - in your arms.  I noticed in the forecast for your parts that you're finally going to have night at night - that is, for the foreseeable future an end to 24:00:00 hours of daylight.  Tonight there is to be a civil twilight, as it should be, with the length of visible light at 22 hours 38 minutes; the moon - 53% illuminated, rising after 11 p.m., setting within moments of sunrise, and "waning gibbous" - incredulous perhaps that it will soon again assume a nocturnal starring role.  

I've been wondering about your tome and surmise that perhaps it's been delayed by a couple of weeks at least, til you can be on the scene to pass cigars all around in honor of its appearance.  That's as it should be too, so I hope that's the case (or similarly happy theory).  I'm all in suspense as to the cover.  

A wonderful song is on at just this moment, Don't Mind Me, by the group Red Horse, comprising John Gorka, Eliza Gilkyson and Lucy Kaplansky (I caught an interview with them on NPR yesterday morning).  I love this song, so charming.  "Don't blame me... just want to get you on the ground... play a little lost & found... and if you turn away I'll just turn you back around...  oh baby please play your song for me..." In your little tent I'll play you my favorite songs - not all at once, one each evening, and you can read to me aloud, with impersonations, from the newest Making of the President, or from one of your books. I won't watch you shave - since you've grown a beard, and you won't put my stockings on for me - since I don't wear them.  Oh really darling, lost for so long, my love - now found.

I know you're smart - I think I'm done.  Very many kisses.    
 

Hello darling. Up in the aerie with an icefilled glass of rosé, my heart full of love for you, so here right away is a hug and big kiss. A steady ringing of crickets outside, on the radio Jerrice is on with Women of Note. Back just now from the cinema in town, a German film called The Other Woman, about a former East German spy who has two wives and blackmails people right and left and is motivated mostly by greed rather than any loftier ideals (though he hides behind them). The story centers on his two wives who forge a friendship as they confront their truths. I didn't love it (file under post-Stasi steamletting), though the acting of the German actresses, both named (in real life) Barbara, was very much worth watching. One Barbara, with a Polish surname (so I thought) looked like Angie Harmon or Ali McGraw, strong dark-haired looks, the other, a blonde - maybe sort of like the actress Amy Madigan, only sexier - Madigan crossed with Dietrich. Is that even possible? In other words - and I like Madigan's acting a lot though I haven't seen her in a long while - but she doesn't exactly exude sensuality in most of her roles.

Oh anyway, I'm typing and rambling, as I lie figuratively in your arms Scheherezade trying to say something a little more interesting than any old thing!

Reading over yesterday's post - I never was the greatest storyteller. So a couple of minor addenda. The dishwasher we bought, the high-end one on clearance? Not only was the price slashed, Mark Ruffalo checked and though inventory indicated a box in back - it wasn't there. So we got the floor model, which meant even more off, so we were very happy. Also, with the couple that went into contract to buy our old apartment? They did renege on the contract and lost their down payment which went straight into our pockets tax-free (amazing, that) and they had used the dishwasher, of all things, as their excuse for cold feet. Or maybe it wasn't just an excuse. I have washed dishes by hand for most of my life, from age 5 or 10 to 45-1/2, and once you've had a dishwasher there's really no going back. How on earth did my mother do it, with all the cooking and dishes for 6? Good God. Well, I did do the dishes a lot there, standing at the sink looking out the window.

Darling love, how are you today? I hope Sunday brunch went well. Checking your weather - 61 and clear - it just gets lovelier. But - high surf advisory in effect til 10 pm tomorrow night! I wonder why? Storm out at sea someplace? Do you all have to drag your stuff upbeach some or are you okay where you are?

So what else with me today? Watched more Mad Men while lightly steaming then rapidly cooling biodynamic green beans courtesy of the neighbor whose toddlers eschew them which surprises me because I thought kids love green beans.

Listen you, I talk so much when I blog that you might imagine that I might be like this in person, blathering on and on mindlessly. Far from it - I am given to looking at things from the side of a room, listening, observing, offering a tart observation perhaps, and retreating once again into friendly bemused silence.

Ah but I'm utterly spendthrift and loquacious with kisses and hugs and laughs and smiles for you and tender touches and all and everything that I can possibly do - though I can no longer stand on my head - to coax a smile and whatever else and then some below the surf line from you, my beautiful loving beloved darling. I am going to launch this submarine of a love note to you and when it surfaces in the high surf of the beachhead where you are - well, well - I don't know what. Oh, just kiss me back, darling, metaphor run aground, or no metaphor. No nonsense kisses, darling. XOXOXO. Love you.