Dearest love, it's been a beautiful day but it's very warm and humid, and I'm sitting here topless in my filmy skirt reminding myself of a Gaughin, albeit a literary-minded middle-aged one sporting readers. I inhale my fingertips - they smell pleasantly of lime juice. I just made a fresh salsa, inspired to do so by cilantro from the CSA the other day. I missed on jalapeno pepper (brakni mnie - darn!) but the salsa is delightful - made with a quart of varied teeny tomatoes from a farmstand - some the size of jelly beans, others larger and pear-shaped, not quite ripe, others luscious plump grapes. I chopped up the mini-tomatoes, along with a clove of garlic, a sweet white onion, cilantro, EVOO, sea salt & pepper. I bought a fresh bag of tortilla chips today - but this salsa will also be a side to what promises to be a delightful dinner tonight: grilled lamb, farmstand corn, grilled zucchini and carrot - grilling caramelizes carrots & brings out the sweetness.

Darling - how are you? and where are you?, I wonder. My imagination tends to over-interpret (ya think?) but I feel concerned and think, oh darling, when I receive a page hit via that Francis Bacon stylized painting of the paralytic child. I'm not quite sure what to make of the image - to me it signals psychic distress. And I can't help it - I suppose it's here that I'm 'crazy' - I imagine that it's you, signaling to me your state of mind - only what state of mind is that, exactly? well, distress, not feeling comfortable in one's body, deformed, not whole...

Maybe it wasn't you at all, perhaps it was an entirely random page hit. I do give myself reality checks such as that.

The light is fading, and so am I. I hear cicadas. D just came home. I prepped the vegetables for him to grill and he just yelled up the stairs to say that one of the carrots - which I left untrimmed, two roots spirally intertwined & fused along their length - "looks like an erotic sculpture."

***

I attended an artists' open studio afternoon at the local international arts gallery, and snapped a couple of photos, and am studying the program guide now in order to try to give proper credit to the artist whose work I snapped - but I can't figure out who it was.

Holding my hands to my face - still lime on my fingertips. The Miss Dior at my wrists is gone, after a lot of running water, rinsing vegetables, watering plants. There's fragrance in the crease of my elbow, still - I just checked. And M. Gaughin might not find my form objectionable, or perhaps he would, I don't know enough about his biography to know. I think my shape is not unlike those of the lush dark beauties he painted. Though my coloring is distinctly northern. Spread of humans about the globe -- huh -- .

My dearest - I hope this post finds you happy, and having a wonderful time wherever you are

XOXO

***

***
P.S. A bit of light housekeeping, to follow up on links I promised in recent posts. The new novel I'm currently reading and greatly enjoying is The Beginners, by Rebecca Wolff. The author lives almost directly across the river from where I live, and I heard her read from her book in then-galley form at a delightful literary reading & wine-tasting in town a couple of months ago (as mentioned in my blog post, here).

The very insightful & illuminating analysis, of E.D.'s poem "I heard a fly buzz - when I died," that I mentioned the other day, can be found here.

image:
Winslow Homer (1836-1910), The New Novel, 1877, watercolor, Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA

Darling, just the quickest post tonight. I have a sense of where you might be tonight, that you were in flight during the day, that you're at an abode I know well, or once did, and have fond memories of. Up in the aerie and D has just turned on the stereo from downstairs, a live Tanglewood concert, reminding me of My Friend in Finland. I don't have much of a sense of Sibelius (coming into tonight's concert, that is) except that as it strikes me moment to moment now I'm put in mind somehow of Hitchock's movie Rebecca - it's all very overwrought, and Gothic, and Manderley, full of yearning, and mystery, and portent --- in short, many qualities I quite love, though at the same time I find programmatic (that is, not sufficient somehow in and of itself, but) -- what the hell - when did I become Ms. music critic?

I'm in a strange - yet again liminal - state, or stage. In my leotard & my underwire bra is busted, a wire was poking underneath my armpit so I had to take it off. (At the moment the Sibelius portentously swells.) I ended up cleaning the house today, had it to myself much of the day - and did all the housecleaning in the nude - which was incredibly freeing & liberating. I like aprons, if one wishes to be decorous & protect nice clothing. But if one, like me, needs to go at the baths & dusting blinds & vacuuming -- so much better to do so unclothed on this sublimely perfect day, sunny, warm, & dry. I had a wonderful momentary half-hour that went boundary-busting well for myself, and then I righted myself in spritely fashion (though I tend a bit to a slightly arthritic right hip, under which I've trained myself to place a cushion) and said to myself - let's get cooking! And I slipped into my slippers and went downstairs and - I'm not sure I have the sequence of events exact, please don't depose me for the record - but I rolled out a tart crust for an apricot 'crostata', and sliced apricots, halved, quartered, sliced, & halved again...

Flash forward to later, just whipped some cream, and sent D over to neighbors with a pissalediere, and some of the apricot tart on a plate along with dabs of organic cream whipped with vanilla & superfine sugar.

Ah, more Sibelius to come! The announcer's intoning now... I do like those live radio concerts on a beautiful darkening summer night...

My darling. Very many kisses, up in that aerie of which I have very many happy memories, none of which unfortunately, involving making love with anyone, let alone with you. But I will be there with you in some fashion, darling, thinking of you, hovering like a benevolent spirit with sweet-breathed kisses, loving you.

Be so glad that I don't smoke anymore. Not for well over ten years. But that wasn't always the case when I visited that house, and tried to sneak a smoke from the aerie -

I thrust opened the exquisite woodworked prairie-style (?) window with the cross-hatched painted lattice, lit a cigarette, and tried to blow smoke out over the Spanish tile roof (oh what of a piece that magnificent house, the design of it, is).

I had fled some vast party from downstairs and was trying to steal a cigarette on my own as if in my own garret, which it certainly wasn't, it was my beloved grandmother's, the garret with a writing table, and Persian rug hung on the wall, the coziest space ever with its low eaves and mysterious closets,

ahhh anyway - Sibelius isn't cooperating - he's getting all Hail, Finlandia on me - no good for reverie

punchline - sitting on the windowsill smoking, having thrust open artisanal woodworked window - it unlatched from its casing --- no hinges!!!!! -- detached, dropped down onto (in the frigid night) cold red roof tile, and threatened to slide right off the eave ledge.... to go crashing down below.

My life flashed before my eyes, in the darkness, cigarette clenched. I clambered out onto the Spanish tile in this freaking freezing night (seriously, it was frigid winter) and managed to retrieve the priceless handcrafted original Prairie-style window as it sat teetering at the edge of the bottom row of rare ceramic roof tiles, where had I not managed to retrieve it, rescued it from crashing down onto - what? - shrubbery? asphalt driveway? the outside cement entrance to the basement? - it would have shattered without a doubt, been ruined - completely

I managed to clamber out onto that tile roof in the darkness and retrieve the thing
though I couldn't - because I am so hopelessly unmechanical - figure out how to reattach it to the window frame

which by the way it was such a freezing winter night - yeah, the warm cozy air of my grandmother's space was doing this massive exchange with the cold hostile frigid unwelcome air of the outside

and it wasn't even my house
I had no right to be there, not really
I was trying to sneak a cigarette while a party raged downstairs

(where was Pan Staś - he & I should have gone out into the driveway & he would have told me what's what & we would have satisfied our nic fits

I guess Pan Staś wasn't there)

Punchline ultimately (and, oh now, Sibelius flows on in very lovely waltz-like romantic dance)

my grandmother complained quite vociferously the following morning that her bedchamber, where she'd retreat at night, after a day downstairs, smelt inexplicably & to her great annoyance of ..... cigarette smoke.

Despite all my efforts to smoke out the window, and to rescue the window...

My darling darling love.... how can I end this at this moment, except, on this beauteous summer night, you not so far away from me I don't think, neither of us smoking...

oh my love
kisses

Hello darling, another spectacular day, warm and dry, back from a run to the CSA farm, with a nice haul including gnarly carrots, 'arrowhead' cabbage (it's elongated), a head of romaine (arrowhead-shaped), white onions, mesclun salad mix, squash & zucchini (of course), broccoli, cucumbers, a quart of peaches, and handfuls of cilantro and Italian parsley. No corn this week - apparently "the birds ate it." How does that work? Do birds husk corn? That CSA reminds me of the Book of Job - there's always an affliction or catastrophe to contend with - flooding, drought, hail, birds, bugs. Of course that must be the case for any farm, but I am made aware of it now as a shareholder this season - truly an education. I'm very impressed with the enterprise, and grateful that we've joined. They certainly don't practice monoculture - there are all sorts of crops, all biodynamically grown. I keep meaning to attach a link to a recent newsletter of the farmer's that I found particularly interesting (actually two, links here and here), that give a very interesting, intelligently-written glimpses into this farmer's perspective - his very local experience giving rise to larger, more 'macro' observations.

***
This morning I took a walk at the conservation area and paused at the scenic overlook of the river and the mountains beyond. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me at that particular moment (camera or weights? I can only carry one or the other - exercise wins out). I stood at the edge of a high, vegetated, scrabbly bluff which has a steep drop, steep enough that there's a protective wood rail fence, at which I stood. I looked out over the expansive view - skirt of salt marsh edging the river, elongated island ('Middle Ground Flats') that bifurcates the river for a mile or two at this point. A glorious day, and I was just so content to stand at the guard rail and take in the scenery, and a bird caught my eye. It circled in the distance over the river, a very large bird, a hawk I surmised at first. It would hover in minimalist stasis flapping its wings in a standstill over the water - I wondered, is it contemplating diving for a fish? But it never did, it would hover like that in mid-air and then flap its massive wings and glide up the river a bit, along the salt marsh, and back down, and then stop in mid-air again. I was viewing it from a distance - binoculars would have been handy - it had a dark body, brown I think, and a white (or very pale anyway) head. I'm paging through my Sibley's now - was that perhaps a bald eagle? I was -- I don't know how far away from it I was, I've always been very bad at gauging distances - several hundred feet, I guess. The bird was over the river, going through its motions and circumlocutions, soaring up, then down, then stopping in midair -- and at one point a silent white motoryacht appeared from the left, going upriver - whoever was on that craft must have seen an incredibly close-up view of the magnificent bird, which ignored the boat and continued its magisterial airborne perambulations - and finally had enough, or was summoned, and with purpose after all that gliding & meandering & peering took off northward over the salt marsh & disappeared from view. And I stepped away from the fence railing and thought, wow, I have to remember to try to write this up, that was a remarkable sight. And I thought, in rather cliched fashion, wouldn't it be wonderful to fly like that - as I stepped along the narrow wooded side tributary path, to rejoin the loop that encircles the park, and where moments later as I resumed my salubrious walk began my arm exercises where the woods began, little circles first arms outstretched, one two three four five six seven eight...

***

***
I intended to clean the house today but it didn't happen, somehow the day got away from me, or so it felt until I let go the idea of even attempting to clean the house - at which suddenly the day felt more expansive. I did some reading, James & Dora, and also of a novel I've just begun reading by a writer whose reading I attended some weeks ago (links later, I'm fading), which I'm greatly enjoying - wonderful writer. And it's saying a lot for me to pick up a novel - I used to be a voracious bookworm, devoured novel after novel, and now - less so, I suppose I'm absorbed in other things that are going on with me. So I'm very selective about committing myself to long imaginative works. Not in a snooty fashion, I don't mean that, it's just that I suppose - well, I don't know what I mean - as though I'm guarding something - I have to be careful of my inputs in some fashion - so that my own voice remains clear to me, and so I'm not in some conscious or unconscious comparing or competition.

Darling, how are you my sweetest? Grabbing a "small handful" (as chalkboard-instructed)  of freshly clipped cilantro from a large plastic bin in the old wood barn - the cilantro reminded me of you (well, really, when it comes to it, what doesn't remind me of you?), I thought I'd like to make salsa, I'll have to find cherry tomatoes at a farmstand, and I need limes I think, I just love that spritely little chopped salad with garlic, an excuse to break out corn chips - organic, of course.

Dearest, I am being so Mabel Loomis Todd here with her encrypted diary that faithfully recorded her - I'll paraphrase Emily Dickinson - "paralytic blisses"; I had two such separate ones today, what a blessing. It is just true transport. I was lying against pillows, my eyes open sometimes, other times shut, thinking of you, thinking of body parts in convulsive action, opening my eyes at moments to have my gaze fall surprisingly, cinematically, on a pair of framed images on the yellow-painted wall - they had nothing to do with what was going on with my mind and my body, yet there they were. And I closed my eyes again and - I don't know what I saw - red, carnal, rich, velvety, wet red, and also images of you -- the room disappeared. I did think of E.D., a poem of hers in particular, "I heard a fly buzz" - because some weeks ago I read an amazing analysis of that poem, and it is truly a masterpiece of cinematic compression, an absolute miraculous pharmaceutical capsule of one...

I will include the poem here, and link to the analysis another time.

But there was something about my encountering, floundering about with, struggling for -- transcendence, of sorts - of course, and then opening my eyes at times to take in very familiar glimpses of the bedchamber, the still ceiling fan overhead for example, thin pale curtains...

And all the apertures opened and there at the brink you spending I went -

***

#465
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -
Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset - when the King
Be witnessed - in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was
There interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -

Hello darling, I'm going to take a flying leap - into conjecture and into your arms - and welcome you stateside, I hope you had a good flight. You must be very eager to stretch your legs at this moment, breathe some fresh air. Soon darling, soon, first there's that matter of getting the luggage off the carrel. I haven't flown in years but there is something about that experience of getting off a plane and waiting for one's luggage to appear, while watching that steel belt start up (yay!) and go round and round - I don't know, just very lonesome to me. And most of the luggage looks the same, I could barely recognize my own generic black bags.

Ah, but sweetheart! What am I going on about! Let's leave that horrible old airport, put the top down in the convertible, and zip around to wherever you're going, and I'll tell you about my day. Because I for one am very glad to be seated at this moment, up in the aerie, I've been on my feet for the last several hours. I've lost the battle of weeding the garden, but today I did battle with getting to all the fresh CSA and farmstand produce in the fridge.... before I pick up another "share" tomorrow. So I did a lot of cooking. It was a little intensive, a lot of multitasking, not exactly zen 'slow food' style, but I felt very - maybe unusually - energetic, and full of vigor, and enjoying moving around the kitchen, enjoying the sensation of my quite fit (or fittest it's been in years) body. What all did I do? I made yet another summer squash quiche-like eggy breakfast pie - I had to get to a bag of a half dozen beautiful squashes & zucchinis === before I pick up another batch just like it tomorrow. I sliced and sauteed white onions for pissalediere, and pitted olives. I incorporated an organic head of swiss chard into a pasta sauce involving (non-organic, I'm afraid) turkey sausage, lentils, canned diced tomatoes and homemade stock. I made iced tea. I detached tiny beets from their lusty greens, roasted the former & rinsed the latter, which will be the side to a chicken that I stuffed with lemon & garlic & fresh thyme.... You get the idea - I could actually go on - assembled beautiful nicoise salads for lunch, had made a scallion & cheddar omelet for breakfast. Phew!

So yes, I am quite exhausted, but in a nice way... on top of that I did some weeding, and fed the birds, and watered the garden, and changed bed linens in the two bedrooms, and washed them, hung them to dry, and threw them in the drier to finish them up, and folded and put them away.

So I didn't have time to settle down into the memoir of the charming but prickly (is irascible too strong a word for her?) Dora, but I did have a bit of quality time with myself (& you) that went off splendidly, unlike yesterday, when it didn't - and I have to wonder, from day to day, what on earth is the difference? Is it the batteries? Ah mysteries of life...

It is just a really splendid hour just now. Really, it's been a splendid day. It's been absolutely glorious - sunny and dry, very comfortable. I took a walk with weights at the conservation area, and later even did a workout to Charlie Rose. No wonder I'm feeling fit & trim, plus much more 'up' on the looming debt-ceiling deadline & the issues.

Sweetheart, so this is a bit of a laundry list of a post, but how can I top yesterday's? I blew myself away, I'll admit. I had sat down, as usual, without a clue as to what I was going to write, just trying to settle into the groove, see what might come. I don't understand my own processes myself (and honestly, I suppose I don't look too closely either). But I had felt miserable much of the day, because I had spent quite a bit of time - too much - in another pursuit, to no relief or effect, which threw off my day and left me feeling upset. And then I was very tired, and read about James Lord & Dora, and then fell asleep for a long while. So at least I was rested, I guess, when I sat down to write.

Today there was quick success, followed up with an "'well all right - let's get cookin'" mode - and all that activity isn't so great for dreamed writing. But that's okay, darling isn't it --- as long as there are kisses, whatever I write, as long as I'm writing, connecting with you dearest -

because it's not as though there's some novel or screenplay or epic poem that's not getting written because I did some work around the kitchen & the garden
that simply isn't the case
what you see here - is what I write
and I am beyond thrilled to write it - whatever it is
(like that charming song from Mamma Mia - "Thank You for the Music" - what a gift, what a joy...)

And that's it darling. Today was all about cooking; tomorrow I aim to clean the house. In case you've landed, or will, nearer to me than usual and there might be a reconnaissance mission on the part of some to the wilds 30 miles south of Albany. Well, whether any of that transpires or not in the near future, the house is 'due', and best tomorrow, before the weekend, and before the return of summer heat...

And so that's that darling, love you. Welcome home. I've changed the linens for you, come visit tonight. I'll put my arms around you, you'll put yours around me, and we'll have fun. Or maybe we're both so exhausted - you after your long flight, me after all that thrashing about in the kitchen...

ah, but there's always three a.m., when we wake up in each other's arms, in the still, in darkness, groggy but amorous, reinvigorated, with bad breath, but rested

Sweet dreams my love -
'later
XOXO

logging

Darling, I feel like Annabel Lee a bit this evening, in my kingdom by the sea, as a strong breeze blows through the house, all around this sailing ship, flapping the sails - or curtains in the other room - and sounding through the shimmering leaves on the trees, all wh cz sz sounds, as in the Polish language, full of such sounds, as if reflective of the country's sylvan geography, someone - my uncle perhaps - once told me.

If you were here, my love, I would place my hands around your face and kiss your beautiful soft lips just so. And you might remark that I smell really nice, which I do, a single droplet of Miss Dior gently spritzed on my left wrist spread via rubbing & dabbing about various Vitruvian points about my body (back of ears, crease of elbow, back of knee) lingers, mellowed as the day's gone by, and combining with my inherent scent (full of ł ś ć and ż sounds, shhh kochanie) and with the air softly gently moving through the aerie about me now even as I type I catch just the barest hint of rich evocative mysterious fragrance.

Dearest, at one point this afternoon I was lying back in a rowboat, we had the still vast waters to ourselves, gray, cool, and rippling. No one else was about, just the hot sun overhead, tempered by cool sea breezes about us, and we were in the middle of whatever sea it was we were in the middle of - or perhaps a lake - safely sheltered, enclosed by a rim of tall encircling woods, and so we felt safe, and secure, and by ourselves, and still, and unhurried, because it was in the middle sometime, who knows when, of a long vast timeless afternoon, no one needing anything from us, no one looking for us, and so there we were. You had rowed us out to the middle of this lapping central nowhere and I sat behind you, perhaps fixing us lunch, camembert and cherry tomato pressed with my fingers between a wedge of baguette, and I hand it around to you, my dearest oarsman with the jaunty hat, and as I hand it to you my torso moves forward, in synch with the steady motion of the rowboat, no rocking, and I gently press against your back and kiss the back of your neck and nibble your ear and hand you the little sandwich, a cheese melt of loving fingers and hot sun and sea air that always makes everything taste - kisses, cheese, rustic bread - sublime on earth - and here divine.

And so we row out to the middle of the river, sea, or lake, the kingdom far far away, and we're entirely on our own with no one looking down - no air traffic, it's a timeless place & time that way - and no other boats, it's just - I don't know - it's a funny thing about that kingdom by the sea - it is ours alone, the riparian rights seem to include the entire lake, my darling -

and so - well I was getting hot and you weren't looking anyway because you were smoothly steering us to the middle of those gently sounding lapping cool waters into which I trail my fingers and watch the motion of the oar you wield dipping in and out, in and out, and so I popped my top and then my bottoms too (pretty pink leotard and filmy skirt) and your rowing is so expert that there isn't a trace of dampness in the boat, and so I lie back in the woodenness of the small handbuilt vessel, and look up at the sky, the clouds meandering through the heavens, a bird streaking by, the sight of your beautiful back... And you've had enough of rowing, besides we're not headed to any destination except for right here and here we are and so you secure the oars, and you leave on your hat because you don't want a sunburn like you had that time, and you take off your crisp shirt and all I see is your beautiful golden unbelievable smooth wonderful torso approaching my greedy eyes, and remember those raspberries that grow wild in my garden that I mentioned the other day, our mutual nibbles and delectations are as incredible and rare and natural and sweet as that and precisely in that "simile" of form (here as I steal a berry, a kiss, a wanton nibble, here too I steal a word)... oh but darling I am back in the boat with you sweetheart, the two of us in the bottom of this ingeniously comfortable wood rowboat, miraculously dry along its length, and miraculously cushioned so that it's not like being at the bottom of an old hard boat, but rather floating on top of a cloud overhead - which perhaps we are, because after all there is all that vast depth of ocean beneath us, supporting us from below and holding us aloft, offered up to the clean air and sweet sky

but it's not the sky I see
though it's part of it
it's quite something to be lying back at the bottom
of a little wood boat
savoring flickering sensations of the vision of your beautiful face descending down on mine
the lapping of the waters
my raspberries hardening in your mouth
I take the helm and guide you in
your amazing perfect torso slim hips
the sword I once saw you wear
the little boat embraces us
rocks on the waters
tips back and forth gently
no one would ever see
it's just an empty boat, seemingly, rocking on the waves
the couple has retreated beneath
to devour, embrace, connect, unite
if that little boat bursts into flames
which it won't
I wouldn't be surprised
but no - the boat's the grate
the two of us rowing out, clothed, fledgling kindling
logs ablaze now
stripped bare

image:
Winslow Homer (1836-1910), Hudson River, Logging, 1892, watercolor and pencil, 14 x 20 5/8 in., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Hello darling, I'm feeling such a strange welter of emotions just these last few minutes. One minute I was feeling elated, and now I'm wiping away tears - don't worry, I'm okay, just - I don't know, just a complicated mix of stuff. It's been a very sunny, very hot & humid day, so I've been lying low, really didn't accomplish much of anything today beyond taking a morning walk at the conservation area and later watering the garden. I've been sitting up in the aerie much of the afternoon, reading with pleasure James Lord's beautifully written, vivid and incisive memoir of his friendship with Dora Maar, who comes alive in his pages. And at the same time, from time to time, I check the blogs I subscribe to (mostly literary feeds) and in circuitous fashion, by reading a feed that linked to a NYT interview with a book reviewer, and following up on a book she mentioned, I discovered a book that I would like to read - title here. I was really happy to learn of this book, and immediately checked to see if the regional library system has a copy - perhaps unsurprisingly, but really it's too bad, it doesn't - emblematic of our culture. It's a memoir of a woman in her 40s (now 50s) who rediscovered her own sexuality, and how it has re-energized and transformed her life and sense of self - has been a catalyst and raison d'etre for re-centering herself. And I immediately responded to that notion - because that's what's been happening with me the last three years, this journey I've been on. And I have felt very alone in it in many ways (with the exception of the feeling of strong close connection addressing my thoughts to you, and finding in you a loving, sympathetic listener). Sometimes I feel like this overgrown wayward child - and so to come across a memoir of someone my age who has been going through a thematically similar experience, is really a validating lifeline. I'm not so alone - in fact I may be quite typical, perhaps the atypical part of it simply being that I tend to express my thoughts in writing - because how else, for me? (It would otherwise be silence.)

I've only read a little bit about the book at this point, but have discovered that the author has a related blog (link here), which I will go back through her posts and read from the beginning...

I'm so glad to sense from her that rediscovering central erotic aspects of herself, from which she had felt severed for a long time (something I relate to very strongly, I so shut off those aspects - suddenly the Poe line "dissever my soul" springs to mind - indeed I did) that she links her reconnecting, reintegrating (in Vitruvian fashion) with lost aspects of herself, that she found it just so healing, rejuvenating, joyful, energizing, bringing out the creative in her - something I've found in myself. It is amazing to me how central sexuality is to that feeling of being fully alive & vital.

It's funny too, because on Netflix these days I've been breezing through an HBO series on a legal Nevada brothel, for a mix of reasons. In part because I've wondered about brothels, what one might be like (any one at all - I don't know how realistic or not this series is, maybe it is - probably better to be a legal sex worker in such an establishment than an (illegal) one anywhere else).

But watching it was depressing to me, a little bit, just all body parts & techniques, and while all giggles & balloons & trampolines & smiles, pretty hollow & loveless. Though there have been a few little scenes that endeared me... one prostitute with her john, the two of them lying on top of the double bed naked, playing - quite seriously - a game of chess; in another episode, a really good looking, and sweet looking too, gentleman who comes in regularly to see one particular prostitute, whom he adores, who he wishes he could ride off into the sunset with if he can ever make it as a musician - there was just something so sweet & old-fashioned about him... I don't know - I appreciated those touches of heart.

What am I going on about? Ah I felt so cut off from myself for so many years - so many I lost count. I think I started the "dissevering" - or no, severing - soon after I got married. Maybe that's why I married D too - he didn't "drive me crazy" - he was always there, not hot & heavy one minute, eyes glazing over with the prospect of some other project the next... Which there is a very great deal to be said for that.

I wonder if you've been through something like this - because the author of this book I've just discovered, while she's describing her own experience as a middle-aged woman, emphasizes that it's not just women - that men too find themselves cut off from central aspects of themselves (and now Eliot's "Hollow Men" comes to mind).

So I felt elated to discover that I'm not alone in this. I didn't think I was, not really, but it seems someone has written the book about it already, much more systematically than me stumbling about in my fashion on my personal daily journey. The author discovered what turns herself on (she admonishes briskly, if you can't do it for yourself, don't know how to do it for yourself, how can you expect a partner, someone else to do it for you - how can you let him know even what it is you like? and that's a voyage of discovery I've been on, and it's blown me away. But another part she discovered (I gather) is that to feel whole she needed therapeutic touch, to be touched - by someone else -

I don't know the details. But that's where that little rainstorm of tears ensued. Because it's true, I can give myself pleasure now - and there's a lot more to it than that - over the last three years too, I've lost weight, dropped several sizes, can wear formfitting clothes that look wonderful on me

but I do miss touch, therapeutic touch, a sex worker's, a lover's, yours

that's a quandary

anyway, here I am up in the aerie in my leotard of a pink top, a cardinal or some bird is tweeting outside, the air is cooling a bit I hope, it's leftover Sicilian Spiced Chicken for dinner

my dearest, placing my hands in yours, holding them fast for a moment, and squeezing
so when I do that on an occasion months from now you'll know what I mean
reaching up to kiss you on the cheek, sweet beautiful you

Part of a dream overnight, that I noted this morning:

President Obama is giving a presentation, chalking a graph line on a blackboard, showing two extremes at either end, and a large middle area. I say something to him about how a lot of problemsolving can happen in the middle, between the two extremes, a solution to dealing with climate change, for example. (In my dream I seem to be brilliant, and the President is impressed – but now as I’m typing my comment seems banal, maybe not even true – very hard to get two extremes to agree on anything – the world views are so divergent – there is no “middle ground.”)

Then I seem to be looking at a page from an interactive newspaper, that highlights the differences between the two world views. There’s some sort of an issue or trial about something. In one point of view dry “scientific” factual information about the chemistry of the product is intoned mindlessly by a simulacrum sounding disembodied, unhuman – that singsongy mindless voice one hears from local news anchors with the strange coded inflections – like automatons. This is the point of view that I reject – it has no human content, it’s just a blanket of blahblahblahblah “expert” spewing. And on the other side of the issue, is simple intelligible prose, that describes the product in terms of how it’s experienced, its effect on people or the environment (or whatever) – this I can relate to.

***
Email message from 'Democracy for America' in my inbox just now:

Belle - John Boehner is forcing the country into bankruptcy as part of his right-wing war on middle class families.

Here are the facts -- Republicans don't have the votes to increase the debt limit without Democrats, but Boehner has rejected every Democratic proposal to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the rich, end subsidies for big oil, or close tax loopholes for companies that ship jobs overseas. Instead, Boehner wants to gut Social Security and Medicare.

Cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid is insane. It will be a punch in the gut to middle class families and will send the country deeper into recession.

Thankfully, Nancy Pelosi and progressives in Congress are standing up against John Boehner and his right-wing Tea Party colleagues. We need to let them know that we have their backs.

Call your Congressperson right now at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to take Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid off the table.

This is crunch time. Congress has less than two weeks to find a compromise and raise the debt limit. We need to make clear everyone understands that we can't cut the deficit on the backs of middle class families...

***
I don't know what to say exactly about all this. I'm just here, trying to cope. I happened to catch the tail end of President Obama's press conference this morning - there'd be a compromise but as Boehner tries to steer a course to successful compromise, Tea Party types stubbornly drag that one oar in the mud

and so the Nation can't sail

***
Essentially, this comes down to a Clash between Corporatist/Wall Street interests (a/k/a capital), versus All the Rest of Us (a/k/a humans). Efficiency vs. Equity.

To me that is a severe Civil War-type clash. I really hate to put things in binary terms, especially in binary terms of Good vs. Evil.

But I do believe that there is a profound moral dimension in this zero-sum war

Corporate interests - they as a whole, don't have a vote - just gazillions of unlimited dollars

Some of this agenda is being funded by the billionaire brothers who fund the Tea Party

I guess what I'm trying to say is - we all need jobs - and many of us take jobs even with corporations whose overarching agenda we may have some personal moral issue with

And so I'm thinking - try to look beyond Party labels and, as a voter, into your own heart, and to your own self-interest, and that of your children, and your children's children

(I think now of one of my brothers, who is now some sort of billionaire himself - and if he thinks of his children, and his second set of children - it would be very much, I imagine, towards their furtherance and domination, at the expense of all others. He cut off - years ago - his own sister, for example. But it's okay with me, I so completely disagree with his world view - it is so anathema to me - I do not wish anything to do with him. He and I truly - are opposites. Representations of either hemisphere of the brain, metaphorically speaking, perhaps.)

But for the rest of us, in the 99 percent of the population supporting the top 1 percent in income (or whatever the precise statistics are, but I'm not far off I don't believe) --- then even if you have to work for a corporation headed by someone like my brother --- then at least in the voting booth - vote your conscience, vote what you believe --- as a moral being

because how is it remotely moral to put Social Security - that UNIVERSAL entitlement, its very universality (as opposed to "welfare") being why it's so crucial and popular - on the table?

Who are we as an American people? What good is a country at all if it doesn't support & maintain conditions for the furtherance and wellbeing of its population and its commonwealth resources

***

So that's it. A googled "a place in the west" landed on an Emily Dickinson Civil War poem that I'd posted previously along with a Frederic Church painting.

We are in a Civil War, I truly believe. It's not being played out the same way as 150 years ago, in geographical terms - it's not "North" versus "South." But it's a war all the same, a very dire conflict with momentous ramifications for the future

it's the very same war, I think, that's played out again and again over the millenia... and this is our time... and our place

it's a time to put away slogans, for the thinking among us
just think about it
which side are you on?
and then give whatever you can to the candidates whose side (however imperfect) you believe in
and in the voting booth, away from prying eyes, vote
what you in your heart of hearts
believe