bells, iris, delphinium, larkspur, veronica

Hello my dearest, up in the aerie at my usual hour, glad I got in my walk a little while ago before the rains came yet again, pounding audibly outside, windows closed against damp chill today.

I didn't know what to do with myself today when I woke up (around 7), especially knowing that I'd have access to the car. So I did a bit of online research and discovered that there was to be a guided wildflower nature walk starting at ten, meeting at the kiosk in the parking lot of a state park on the eastern side of the county, a park I've never been to. It was a bit of a surprising leap to decide right then to go, but I did. It's about a half-hour drive from here, into the hills. I wanted to go because of longstanding frustration in the back of my mind, with my frequent inability to name what I observe in nature, something I come up against in my walks - so forever what a pretty flower - what is that? that I give up and just take in the general ambience - which is fine too - but not noticing let alone appreciating as well as I might fascinating particulars. (I think with envy of Emily Dickinson, how her detailed knowledge of botany, starting with her childhood herbarium, gave her an ability to name things as well as to savor their meanings, which immeasurably informed and enriched her poetry.)

It's a beautiful park, owned by the state but managed by volunteers, in a niftily cobbled together arrangement including grandfathered cultivation rights by local alfalfa farmers. I didn't quite understand the arrangement, but it's a creative piece of legal conservationist artistry that has saved a breathtaking 300-acre open space from development and led to the creation of a preserve and community park.

It was a very small group this morning: myself; the wildlife experts who have spent 30 years, husband & wife, getting to know, season by season, year after year, the flora of the region; the very enthusiastic and pleasant volunteer manager/coordinator of the park; a family, husband, wife and I'm guessing sister or sister-in-law or aunt, along with two little boys.

Can you tell I'm from the city? I had flown to this excursion at the last minute, slightly inadequately dressed in a light sweater, and sporting an umbrella. Everyone else was in mudgear, anoraks and floppy rain hats and boots and waterproof most everything. No matter. It was all cool. I was there for my own reasons, to try to take notes on whatever knowledge I might glean as to flora, and so I juggled my umbrella, along with a small notebook, pen, and camera, an (ir)regular Nancy Drew, (ill)equipped for outdoor inquiry. It didn't matter at all. It was a delightful group, and we all fell into an easy rhythm, very relaxing, just a bunch of adults and a couple of young boys foraging about in woods exclaiming "what's this" and "what's that." I noted how beautifully on this misty morning new foliage shone citrus against ebony mulch.

It hardly rained at all as we meandered through the woods, just a lot of mist and moisture. Which is amazing to me in retrospect. This acreage, abutting the Taghanics, or perhaps it's considered the foothills of the Berkshires there, seems to be a sweet spot of sorts. Because once I turned from the parking lot onto the main north/south highway, Route 22, that parallels the mountains - it poured rain - to the extent that there was no way I might accidentally exceed the speed limit - rather, I kept conservatively below so as to avoid hydroplaning or any road flooding, water beating down noisily and madly as I headed north. What a strange road (I have traveled it, at various disconnected points in time, from Vermont all the way down to Westchester where I cut off from it and traveled back roads to Greenwich), it seems to have a weather pattern all its own. At Austerlitz, about twenty miles north of the park, I turned west onto Route 203 - and as soon as I made the turn, the violent rain abruptly ceased. It was misty and overcast all the way back to the lower elevations of the west (California!) side of the county - but no pounding, seering rain.

Anyway darling, I will launch this without editing - am feeling a bit barometrically-low-pressured - mood just fine, but the weight of all this moisture-laden air...

Throwing my arms around you and kissing you -

XOXO

Kisses hello, my dearest, up in the aerie as dusk overtakes the chill gray day. Back from a reading at the local international arts colony. Those readings and various events are such a cultural lifeline for me. I'm such a regular that I'm recognized and greeted very warmly, this afternoon by the director of the literary program, as well as by their catering director (if that's her title, she may have a more expanded role than that, she's very warm). Anyway - that's very nice, I really appreciate that. It's funny, by contrast, I've gone to various events over the years in town here, and there's more or less the same cast of characters, cliquish as in middle school, not very friendly. I have said "pleased to meet you" to some of these individuals a half-dozen times over, a mutual charade of meeting them for the first time. Not that they seem all that appealing to me honestly - and, am I a "joiner", in that way? No, of course not. But it is nice - as I feel when I attend an event at the arts colony - to not feel so invisible - "hey nice to see you again, so glad you could come" - said with a smile - that's just a simple gracious thing.

I enjoyed the reading. I sat at the end of a row of chairs, by a plate glass window that overlooked vast fields, gently rounded and graded. The place is a sculpture park too, and it seems that perhaps even the land has been subtly molded, the vast lawn suggesting the curvature of the earth, a distant ring of mature deciduous trees black and green and fractal against the gray opalescent sky. Much nearer to me, on the other side of the glass, was a flagstone patio, on which droplets of rain fell and pooled - I loved the appearance of the wet flagstones, a material I love very much anyway. I love the organic and elemental materials of the place. Then I looked out across the fields again and it was coming down hard enough that I could see the rain falling to earth, and on occasion a pair of birds in the sky. All while listening to one of eight or ten writers read from their works, mostly in English, but sometimes in their native tongues, which even if I didn't understand, I was intrigued and drawn in to hear. There was a poet, a very expressive reader, from the Netherlands, and so I heard Dutch, which I don't know that I've ever heard before, and I was surprised at how very guttural and Germanic and full of throat-clearing "hhhh" sounds it was. Contrasted with a translator, who read aloud what she's been working on - translating a Philip Roth novel into Hungarian. She read an excerpt of the Roth - clearly, vividly, cinematically written, characters coming alive - and then read the same excerpt (which she had read very effectively and animatedly so it came alive in English) - in Hungarian. I couldn't understand the Hungarian of course, but was very intrigued to hear the sound of the language, which struck me as quite mellifluous, and full of "sh" sounds and also hard consonants, "b"s and "k"s, so that it was all quite musical and crisp, hard & soft at the same time - pianistic, perhaps. The language was foreign to me - but as she read aloud she employed the very same inflections she had used in using her own voice (her larynx) to delineate between the characters, to whom most if not all of us in the audience, we were just being introduced to for the first time. And so even in the foreign language, we could hear when it was the gentle, Solomonic Mr. Cantor speaking, or the hapless Horace, or one of the paranoid, accusatory hordes in a Newark playground in the 1940s.

A couple of the readings were especially powerful, I thought, one by a poet from the Republic of Georgia, whose piece told from the point of view of a patriot losing his life to a soldier's bullets reminded me of what I try to imagine relatives of my mother's (great-uncles, her father's cousins, if I'm not mistaken) might have experienced at Katyn Wood. (Have you seen the Wajda film about it? I really wanted to see it at the cinema, but it had a very limited run, and only in Manhattan so I couldn't get to it, and then a while afterward I netflixed it, but just couldn't bring myself to watch it, by myself, on the small screen in the kitchen. I feel that I would like to see it in a theatre, holding hands with someone who would really get it - you, as I now imagine.)

Along a similar theme a young man of Haitian heritage read from his novel, and it was a very powerful, resonant piece about how in 1941 his grandparents had very romantically fallen in love (she played piano, he loved her music), and how all hell broke loose in 1957, with troops & machine guns & the oppressors prevailing. Now, that could have been Poland, or Czechoslovakia, or Hungary - and here it was Haiti, whose historical particulars admittedly I don't know enough about - but the pattern sounded familiar to me. I was very moved by his reading.

And that's it, sweetheart, the day mostly floated by. I thought of you to extraordinary effect around 3:30, and then when I checked it seemed perhaps you had been thinking of me at that very instant - a concatenation - for me. And I bought myself a pair of sandals today, on sale. And dinner will be a plate of a beautiful buffet spread that was served after the reading. I have a paper plate waiting for me downstairs, with ovenfried chicken, short ribs, potato salad, dressed green salad, cornbread, and an iced peanut butter cupcake for dessert. No, I won't have it all at once - I couldn't possibly work out enough to make up for all those calories - the cornbread may be with breakfast tomorrow.

My darling, I hope you're having a wonderful weekend, and wherever you are that you are cozy & happy & warm & well-fed & enjoying yourself. Thinking of you, abidingly, yours - Belle

XOXO

when you say nothing at all

Darling, thank you so much for thinking of me even while I wasn't able to blog. I've been thinking a lot about presence and absence, and of the "bitter gulf" (in 1.0's eloquent phrase) between corporeal mortal me, forever in every respect apart from you - save through whatever I can type in the form of an ardent message. Which may or may not ever achieve immortality (darling, do I care?) and may be much more ephemeral than I had imagined, since google's blogger provider lost forever my last two posts, for which I have no back-up. They weren't my best, and Lord knows there's more where that came from, though I did like the bit about transporting you & me from a buggy, hard Adirondack starlit campground to straight under rose-colored covers at the S.B. Hotel. Also, in case you missed the news - my speeding ticket got dismissed. Also, my name got spelled entirely correctly in someone's preface & acknowledgements, as I discovered when I googled myself. Now why do I feel compelled to repeat that embarrassingly narcissistic detail? I'll hasten to repeat, as I had in the mislaid post, it's something I rarely do. Though that reminds me - do you comment on HuffPo? Someone with your name does - though I don't believe it's you.

***
“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?," wrote E. M. Forster. Which precisely encapsulates another reason - besides connecting with you ("only connect," in Forster's famous dictum) - that I like to blog: I am curious to see what my mind via fingers decorously occupied is up to.

***
My love, another quote I read this week is from E.D.: “To all except anguish, the mind soon adjusts,” from letter #311, early November 1865. ("November always seemed to me the Norway of the year," E.D. incisively puts it in her letter.)

***
It was a rough 21 hours, restless night, without the ability to blog - but you know, it wasn't so bad. I didn't feel anguished. Rather, I felt connected with you - telepathically. I had felt a touch of anguish in Brooklyn, missing you - but here I have no expectation. Blue skies. The southern Italy of intractable separations.

***
"A Letter always feels to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend." - E.D., letter #330

***
It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart
Without saying a word you can light up the dark
Try as I may I could never explain
What I hear when you don't say a thing
- Alison Krauss, "When You Say Nothing At All" (listen to this beautiful song, here)

***
"the bitter gulf that lies between the death of a person as a biological organism and [her] potential immortality..." - 1.0

***
from 24 March 2010 post...

I hit on [a] lovely silver gelatin print of [a] reclining damsel... I really like such images. What a beauty. She's so immediate, vivid, fresh, and yet without a doubt - the image is from the 1920s - she is now a fantôme. (What is your name, darling? You were lovely, and I hope you were loved.) Where can I find more such images? Though it's best to savor them one by one.

***

Very many kisses. XOXO

My dearest, I'm around, it's just that "blogger," my blog service provider, crashed and has been down since yesterday afternoon, and so I (along with countless other bloggers worldwide) was unable to post. Also blogger deleted or misplaced all posts that had been published since Wednesday morning, which for me meant that two have gone missing, possibly to be restored by them at some point, but who knows. I just returned from a walk, and found to my relief that service has been restored, so here for just a moment I am. I'll be back later with a proper post. Til then, I think of you too, darling, very much. All my love & many kisses, and hope your day has been going well. XOXO

My dearest, thank you for your sweet good-morning kiss, and here is one for you. I'm just back from having stepped across the road to photograph the lilac bush while it's still in bloom, and to clip a fresh spray for my desk. I returned via the garden, taking a walk around the house and stepping through tall wet grass, droplets clinging to the stalks, moisture bracingly cool against my feet - morning dew, or did it rain last night? But this morning it's all clear sun & blue skies.

I kept waking up overnight, feeling anxious in a freeform way, I couldn't settle down. I worry about our country, where it's going - the excesses of an "ism," this time, untrammeled capitalism - it's just too much with the top one percent getting it all, mining the planet (leading to its environmental destruction) rather than cultivating it, causing so much misery, making things - hard as they are - all the harder for everyone else, greed spawning slavery.

Anyway, my restless mind would touch on that, and I'd roll over and adjust the pillow, and flail sleepily about for other topics. I kept trying to settle down simply with thoughts of you, imagining lying next to you. I couldn't quite decide where though. In the space of a minute I had us camping beneath the stars in pristine woods somewhere (the Adirondacks? oh but acid rain! are such woods becoming scarcer? I fretted), at first outside, and then I thought, no we must be in a tent, against bears, and then - well that's a nice romantic thought but a bit of a pain in the morning, getting up from hard ground and try to scrounge for coffee & no hot water. A moment later we were ensconced in each other's arms beneath gossamer eiderdowns in the rosy lamplight of the Slaviansky Bazaar.

Actually, I think I can trace the causes of my sudden spike in anxiety, which included my computer acting up just as I was trying to blog. I was becoming agitated with the server connections timing out, even as I was trying to maintain a different mood, one of composure - to compose. I complained to D, and he was far from soothing - had he been I might have calmed right down - instead we had an argument.

Mingled with all that, I read a dispiriting article about the state of affairs in G.B. (linked to here, via a similarly themed article, here), where the culture is going, and it resonated all too well, with how things are going here. It's always hard for artistic types, and I don't have an entrepreneurial ounce in me. How could I sell what I write? Of course I have to give it away - freely, to you. Anyway, sometimes I toy with the idea of sewing aprons & marketing them online - but do I really want to sew aprons? Or outsource the sewing & become Queen of the High-End Apron? Oh my love, what would E.D. do in this economy? I think she'd have a very hard time. Edna St. Vincent Millay would do just fine though, I think, she was quite the natural self-promoter, and I say this with admiration - it's a very useful attribute, particularly these days and as the economy goes forward. D's acquainted with a young woman, a talented designer who was laid off quite a while ago now, she's in her early forties, trying to start anew from scratch, crashing on other people's couches, cobbling together freelance gigs that don't pay very well (much less than what she used to make), trying at the same time to start her own line & market her creations on a website. I can't imagine having that kind of stamina. I never had it. I always needed the security of salaried jobs, as much as I despised them. It was just easier to try to fit into a groove so that my mind - the "kernel of my life" - could be elsewhere.

But darling, actually I have a very good bit of news - the speeding ticket got thrown out, the attorney was able to persuade the court that I have had a spotless record, and the whole matter is dropped as long as there is no other incident for the next six months. So I'm very, very relieved in one sense - though there's a bit of vestigial anxiety associated with having dodged the bullet. But really, it's all good, I'm very happy that we won't have to shell out for a hefty fine. I've been incredibly mindful of my driving these days - so: lesson learned.

Darling, darling, I hope all is well where you are. Let me set to moving, get some housework done. I was thinking about how long it's been since I felt your arms around me, one Sunday. And now, figuratively speaking, it's maybe only the late Tuesday afternoon, aswim in midweek, before the following Sunday when I might reach the other shore & kiss your cheek again.

Is that a mixed metaphor? Probably. Many, many kisses darling - a whole mix of them all over, causing you shivers of delight, dewy spritzes against your soft smooth skin. XOXO

At low ebb a bit today, and now feeling a little stunned & reflective, having googled myself, something that, honestly, I rarely do. I'll google others, as a way to keep my mind moving sometimes when I'm sitting up here in the aerie with an icefilled glass wondering what to write. I'll visit favorite blogs, check headlines, follow a quixotic thought, refresh the KZE playlist. And just now nothing was coming, not really, googled my sister, earlier today at the library 1.0, and just now - myself, and came upon 1.0's new book now featured in googlebooks, and was very surprised to come across my name in his preface & acknowledgments, it came right up. So I'm in a bit of shock now, having seen it. I really like the way he writes - I mean, I haven't read his book, but I love the tone of his preface, an elegiac, personal, heartfelt quality. That, I think, is what is moving me at the moment, his references to his parents for example, and touching in circumspect fashion on his experience of loss. I'm very touched to have been mentioned in his acknowledgments, and I do know - well - in an example of projectualization of mind - I am reaching out my hand to touch yours, putting my arms around you, and kissing your cheek. Also extending my hand in congratulations, I'm very happy for you, for your very great accomplishment.

***
Honestly, I don't have much else tonight. Gwynnie, aging, hair thinning, is up here with me. I hear kids of various ages in neighboring yards playing & shouting. Birds are tweeting. The light is fading, there was light overcast most of the day. Dinner will be cornish hens, marinaded by D with a concoction of his, that he'll grill when he comes home.

seemingly limitless recombinations with no prior existence
how many different ways can I tell you that I love you?
endlessly, boundlessly, always