Dearest love, it is pouring down rain just now, most of the day in fact, though I managed a good vigorous walk with weights at the conservation area this morning before the heavens opened up. I've been enjoying it, actually. I love the sound of rain, the constancy of it, falling on the other side of open windows, pounding the metal roof of the solarium. I won't feel this way six months from now, but in August it's a cozy treat to put on lamps here & there in late afternoon for warm soothing light against damp gray chill. It was a great day too for cooking & baking, and so I did, and here is an admittedly staged recreation of some of the summer bounty that I've prepared (credit to D for grilling the organic drumsticks). Yesterday I made taboulleh salad and a bowl of jalapeno pepper-heated salsa. Today I baked a peach pie and whipped a bowl of cream. As well I made a pot of corn-cheddar chowder, on a ham bone & chicken stock base, with sauteed onions, diced potatoes, red & green peppers too. We had bowls of it for lunch - delicious, and cozy on such a wet day - and I've frozen the rest in containers, to have on some snow & icebound winter's day when a reminder of summer corn & CSA produce will be especially welcome.

I tried to send you a message today, and was taken aback to see that the drawbridge had been drawn up. I was upset for a little while - no, that's too strong a word, just - I don't know, it seemed extreme, given that it's fake & pseudonymous. But I'm over it now, you have your reasons, I have resolved not to take it personally. This way I guess we get to have our cake and eat it too. Beyond that, who needs drama? Especially with all the less than comfortable ambiguities of which I'm only too well aware. But here I type anyway. And think about you. Besides, dearest, no one is having better fun - so I gather - and I hope that means you, thinking of me!

What else today? Read a few more pages of the E.D. biography. I relate to her very strongly, I think we're very similar personality types - given to passionate attachments (and I don't mean in a trivial sense, I mean to family members, deeply loved loves - E.D. is no flit, nor am I) and when they are sundered, acutely suffering the separation. No wonder she walled herself off? It was too much, letters she wrote to her brother Austin for example, when she was in her late teens and he, a bit older, was in college. She missed him desperately. I related to that. There was a time I felt that way (perhaps not quite as extremely) about my own brother. I loved him very very much, and there was a time that he & I had a bond. But it was at his disposition, occasionally for lengths of time warmly expressed when he needed his sister, but as quickly withdrawn entirely when he needed to go elsewhere. You know, there really is a lot to be said for compartmentalizing, so that one doesn't have to do this All or Nothing game when in the natural course of events new people come into a picture, and there's a bit of shifting, relationships adjust, to accommodate - I don't know. I don't know what happened. He was wounded in his own way by our very strange damaged, and damaging, upbringing. Perhaps - and I say this soberly, for real - it is really just as well that we have all gone our irrevocably separate ways - ours was never ever going to be a cheerful, funloving, sporty, sporting family.

Ah, again I keep sinking into these quagmires here... I don't mean to, I'm in a nice mood actually, freshly showered & dabbed with a delicious spritz of Miss Dior, which I so enjoy wearing once again. I look forward to dinner - none of what's pictured above on my kitchen table - rather, bowtie pasta with a sauteed brown-mushroom sauce and a mixed green salad.

And that's it for now, darling. Maybe the rain has stopped, I don't hear it at any rate. A dog is barking. The drier is squeaking. The light is fading. I sip from my icefilled glass. My hair is pinned up in an impromptu bun. I hope you are okay. I'm sure you are, actually. Well, I shouldn't be so sure, I have no idea. But I expect you are. What am I trying to say? I don't think things were handed to us. We didn't come by things very easily I don't think, you and me. Some people are accorded the luxury of going through life with all their illusions buoyed, forever intact. I'm not here to debunk anyone's illusions, though from time to time I have to examine my own motivations (I feel that creepy dodgy feeling just now).

Oh dearest, I'm falling into the quicksand - what I should do is lie flat on my back to save myself. No - really!

Anyway, when illusions and "the way things are supposed to be" have to be constantly buoyed, sometimes the buoyers need to hold hands. Am I a buoyer? I'm not buoying much of anyone - though perhaps, well I don't know - I offer something, don't I?

yours, in high fidelity,
Belle

My dear, gray skies out reflective of my blank still mood, slightly aquiver like the incessant high-pitched background ringing of locusts hidden all over the place where? in the trees? the grass? the eaves? They're everywhere and constant, but not annoying, this organic sound - a similar sound made by a machine would set my teeth on edge I'm sure. So that certainly is not my frame of mind. I'm dressed in a 'Sunday Best' skirt outfit, back from a lovely, meditative portrait of a pre-eminent translator of Russian novels into German, specifically Dostoevsky's five hefty masterworks (from which the title of the documentary is derived - The Woman with the Five Elephants). The woman is well into her eighties if not nineties, and has had an epic life journey, growing up prewar in Kiev with summers with her parents at their idyllic dacha in the countryside, and of course with the advent and aftermath of war, and odd and terrible and sometimes lifesaving twists of fate, we see her now as she has an opportunity to revisit her native homeland. It's very well done & thoughtful. The woman, gifted and trained in languages, hence her vocation, is also - necessarily, to be an acutely sensitive, nuanced and precise translator - given to easily and beautifully delivered poetic metaphors herself, and philosophical musings dispensed, from the wisdom of her advanced age, with the lightest touch and wry sweet smile, without a trace of gratuitous, tiresomely postmodern cynicism or irony. I hate to overuse the E.D. comparisons, but this stooped over tiny elderly woman with her shock of dove-white hair in a bun, reminded me of E.D. in her simplicity and directness of thought, ability to tackle difficult subjects head-on, see clearly to the pith, and with spare expression and intelligent, and expressive countenance, so alive, tell us something vital that we need to know. Paraphrasing her (as I recollect the film typing here now), spiritual experiences are important because they make you less likely to hurt another.

Or I liked the analogy she drew, seated at her kitchen table, simply fingering a yellow onion, which she pointed out has no center, that there's the totality, the sum of the onion itself, and then this invisible story that it is about producing another onion. (I am conscious of paraphrasing here very poorly indeed, given her eloquence - but I'm only typing here, not writing a formal review.)

Or in another scene, she concludes that the "point" is that it's about the sum of things, not any one thing, not a single detail to be analyzed. She says this while standing in a dim cavernous Kiev cathedral decorated with a dizzying myriad of iconic images. She says to her granddaughter that it's impossible to ever absorb each of the images, they're not meant to be, it's about the totality.

I get those senses in my own life, aspects of it refracting and redounding. There's the fact of me, I'm 51, for a couple of more days. There was my birth, my growing up, etc., etc. And then there's this whole other aspect of significance to my life, which I don't even mostly usually get, certainly don't look at straight-on, it's not meant to be - somehow I matter anyway, even if I don't know how. Patterns help, and repetitions, looking back to recognize structures --

I don't know, I'm not being clear, but I understood what she meant.

My blog too. Maybe it's not about each individual post, each one of itself usually feels quite flawed & imperfect to me, and I don't see the structure - let's say that I don't intend a structure, other than endeavoring to write every day, in precisely this form. But perhaps all these accretions over time, unbeknownst to me even, take on a significance that ...

and here I stumble yet again, because I'm not writing a novel as Dostoyevsky did (sorry, I'm sure I'm botching the spelling of his name, but am too tired - so much effort to try to write, let alone be my own copy-editor instantly on top of it)

but Dostoyevsky, and others did write whole, wholly imagined novels, independent stand-alone universes

I take comfort in E.D. personally yet again - no one has ever sniffingly disparaged her as 'not having a novel in her' - that's not what she was about

And this octogenarian translator, who like an Elephant has seen much and remembers everything, has her own gift, her little piece in the embroidery, the crochet, the weaving (again, I paraphrase her own metaphors)

dearest love, I wonder about the Ghent Altarpiece I posted about a long while back - did you ever get to see that?

Or Reims Cathedral? I've read wonderful accounts of that, the amazing concatenation of precise detail, a rendered reflection of the teeming structured mystery of the universe.

Darling, I am so rambling here, but I think of how on my walk this morning at the conservation area, I thought about how there's the 'religious right', and then I thought, well, I guess I'm on the 'religious left,' but that's not quite true either, because I'm not religious, not at all. But I'm very spiritual. That's something I'm discovering, becoming more & more attuned to, every day in myself. So I'm on the spiritual left.

Well, I'd be made mincemeat of in some circles. I don't know, to me, it's not about dogma. It's about ---

I don't have a big finish. Crickets are still chirping, though perhaps their rhythm has slowed.

I think of you, hope all is well with you

P.S. this was a love letter, by its spontaneous, extemporaneous nature messy, not some finished piece

Love,
Belle

Hello darling, pleasantly ensconced at my desk in Gull Cottage, feeling quite exhausted but pleasantly so after a day of errands, cooking, flower arranging, laundry, and the like. There are flowers all over the house now, from all over the place: on my desk from the garden; on the kitchen table from the cutting border at the CSA farm; in jugs on the pellet stove and on the hearth (oh, shiver - winter!) from an enormous bouquet that I divided, a $6.99 bunch from the supermarket of all places, but showcased as having been grown on a local farm.

***
D's been around all day so no ground control to Major Tom, tomorrow I hope. So I kept busy and active in all kinds of other ways. Went to the conservation area for a walk in the morning, and ended up having a very nice, interesting conversation about the dog-leashing brouhaha with the conservancy director, a very nice gentleman who's between a rock & a hard spot on this issue. I chatted with a couple of other people later on my walk too - the controversy has caused people to stop in their tracks and converse with one another, really quite a nice collateral development - particularly for me, who rarely has occasion to talk to anyone beyond transactional pleasantries at a shop or library. Anyway, it was great, I enjoyed it. One of my conversations was with a very nice woman who walks a huge dark gray shaggy dog, I don't know what breed. The poor dog was whimpering, wishing to be let off its leash. I felt bad for this gentle loving creature. The woman was puzzled as to why suddenly there's this kerfuffle, and I told her that I'd just had a chat with the conservancy head who filled me in - basically it's one individual who's doing all the complaining. I mentioned that IMHO there was (conscious or not) a political subtext to this controversy - I smelled Tea P'y, or such views. And her eyes widened and she told me that she was blown away that I'd come up with that, that it made complete sense to her - it's like she made the connection that what goes on in Washington is really just a reflection of what's going on right here (anywhere, U.S.A.). She asked me if I write and I said that I do though typically not on political issues. I also told her that I have a lot of time on my hands to think. It was interesting to see a lightbulb seem to go on for someone - because of something I said. Talk about an exceedingly rare occurrence! You see too darling, while I was talking to the conservancy head I found myself getting a little excited and impassioned. I'm much better writing down my thoughts than speaking them. But he was cool with my thoughts, even as I became a bit flustered, and encouraged me to attend meetings on the issue. I don't know if I will. I mean, I don't get rabid, but - I have to say that I really wish I had my U.S. Senator Kirsten's equipoise and smiling demeanor, and just waltz smilingly through everything while lowering the boom with killer arguments and observations.

And so here I type to you, darling Captain, and not even a 'Letter to the Editor.'

Ah, what else today? There was beautiful fresh basil to be had at the CSA yesterday, so I made pesto which we'll have with fresh cheese ravioli. I made salsa with sweet yellow tomatoes and red ones too, plus a CSA jalapeno & white onion. I whirred together dough for a pie I plan to bake tomorrow with the CSA peaches. I topped off the bird feeders - one of neighbor's free-ranging (unleashed!) chickens hangs out there, fox to the feeders' grapes, plaintively honking (yes, this chicken expresses itself with Model-T hornlike bleats) querying as to how to get to the sunflower kernels. And I watered the garden, which was especially pleasant because across the way a very handsome house (we know only the house, not its weekending residents) is having a party this afternoon, and so there are many cars parked along the road, and there's a live band too, playing fun party music, a mix, R & B, and some piece - bossa nova? - I don't know - but musically one number ended with a cha cha cha.

And that's about it, darling, a day of mundanities really, but it was fine, I packed it in. On summer clearance I found a wonderful pair of high wedge-heeled sandals, originally $40, for which I paid $15. I'm putting them away for next summer.

Darling, I wonder how you are doing, I think about you all the time, abidingly. I've been dreaming, weirdly, of 1.0 the last several nights - he's always running away, leaving, cordially interested in me yet detached - and I'm a little agitated in my dreams because I sense just that about him, that he's always on to the next thing. And nothing calms me down quicker than thoughts of you, I greet the dawn with you, and you're there, you just stay there, you don't keep running. And so I hold you close, in my heart, and sometimes I'll hold my pillow too.

Oh yikes, let me go, I really am quite tired now after this day. I wonder if I will ever see you again. I would like to, but I am resigned that it may never happen. Well, it's okay, my dear Captain, we'll make it work somehow between us - we already are. Many kisses from Gull Cottage, my love, as I figuratively throw windows open wide at refreshing breezes coming in off the sea, settle in my seat to type, hoping when I raise my eyes again, to see you standing at the window peering through the telescope and swearing in tarnation about - I don't know, having to leash a dog in a depopulated park particularly in winter is like trying to harness Poseidon. Bah!!!

Kisses, my dearest dearest Captain. We'll both calm down, and you can put your arms around me and kiss me behind my ears, and I'll say hold off a few more seconds dearest dearest love until I can finish this senten...

My dearest, if you could be anywhere you wished to be on earth tonight, where would you be, what would you be doing? Perhaps you're in just such a place now, though I'm not there, ah but I always am, like an angel (so I was called today!) invisibly hovering, well-wishing. Kisses, my love. Let me put on my psychic garb for a moment... I picture you, not at this precise moment perhaps since it's not yet dark, not here anyway, perhaps by a small campfire, flames flickering, lighting up your face, sober and thoughtful when you're thinking, instantly radiant when something has tickled your fancy and you smile - you just light up. And so the flames illuminate your delighted, delightful radiant face as you've laughed at someone's joke, perhaps you're poking a stick into the fire, a kebab perhaps, or marshmallow at the end of a twig.

Am I close? Not even? Okay, I'll try again. You're at a McDonalds in Antwerp.  I don't even know where Antwerp is exactly. Belgium?

Sweetheart, where would I be? Let's see. Hmmmm. I'm not terrifically well-traveled, so it's hard for me to imagine an exotic locale, European or otherwise. I've never been to Poland. I'd like to go someday. I wonder if I would feel at home there? Probably not, except behind closed doors, in our hotel room.

Ah, where else? Can you tell, sweetheart, that I'm beating around the bush? I have so little to report for myself this evening. Felt vaguely dyspeptic all day, nothing went terribly wrong, then again not terrifically right either. Took a walk at the conservation area this morning and someone on the path looked awfully familiar, it's been haunting me a bit all day, but I could very well be - probably am - wrong. But such is the life of the overactive mind. Had a frustrating time with old toy, and then restless got up, threw on robe, went downstairs, and at that very moment UPS pulled up with - unbeknownst to driver who innocently dropped off small brown carton - new toy. Psyched! Ah, but the thing needed to charge. It looks like a pink oval egg, quite odd. I feel like a character in a futuristic Woody Allen movie - you know, the one with the "orgasmitron," only this thing, made of silicon and fitting in the palm of my hand, has silver + and - portals and a red light that flashes on and off while it charges and glows seductively red like an amorous tiny pink spaceship when it's good & ready for two hours. Wow. But I don't know, it was one of those days, it just wasn't happening. Ah - but I am an optimist - there is always tomorrow, when perhaps I'll feel better rested, and my imagination has examined this odd object from all angles and settles on the one that does the trick. It does have several speeds and "pulse patterns" uncannily like lingual action, which I have to confess I have always had a bit of a problem with just - well lying back and letting go of anxiety and just going with it. It has always felt - empath me - so strenuous on the part of the giver, but here's a possibility - this little mindless pink egg will keep giving & giving and never tire of it so long as I charge it up - so here's my chance to lie back, as if bound, I don't have to - can't possibly - reciprocate, give anything back to it. So - in the spirit of ascending staircases - perhaps I will finally learn to relax, and learn to love the bomb.

Oh right, so for me... I'm thinking a campfire on a small private beach, perhaps in Maine, just you & me, and some beautiful wine, and the flickering flames, the fire's just for fun, no serious cooking that's too much work, I've brought a delicious picnic of the wine, crisp baguette whose crumb we tear at with our fingers, lovely cheeses, small assortment in paper-wrapped packets, and peaches (yet again!) from the CSA share today, and no one there but you & me and the steady rhythmic pounding of the surf, tide coming in, so we're high up on the beach, and the fingers of water run tantalizingly up towards us, then recede, run up like crab fingers all as the sun has set somewhere else not where we are because here the sea faces east, and it's darkening, and the moon is rising, and the sky is going from blue to slate to black, but right now it's still slate and there's the moon shining down (oh so like your radiant face and, I suppose, like mine) over us, and we've got this little ridiculous fire going on the sand, how on earth or why, but no matter, it's my fantasy, and it becomes progressively darker & darker, and we have the beach to ourselves, and so we lie down on the cavalcade of cotton blankets & towels that keep us afloat from the unpleasant sensation of sand at our skin, none of that, and we lie back and look up at the stars that have now emerged, Pleaides and - too - meteor showers, the Perseids - we watch them both, in tandem, and laugh, and giggle, and you've taken off your glasses, because you don't need them for stargazing, or for kissing, and you take me into your arms, and I you into mine, and we merge and meld, and all the while the pink egg buried somewhere in my handbag flashes on and off, on and off, needing electrical charge...

Many kisses oh my love, wherever you are
xoxo darling

Musing about victims in Eliot's hedgerows -
is that who we are, you & me?

a paleolithic minotaur dreams of a figurine

sparrows flutter about a Mass Moca room
you're right - it's upside down, not cut in half

I am Annabel Lee

Whistler's nocturne with falling rocket
suggests that you've had pleasant thoughts of me

***
Message from Belle to My Friend in Finland, 11 August 2011

... It is very beautiful here today, one of the finest days of the year - days such as today are quite rare, particularly in summer - cool, dry, sunny, the light warm and golden, cicadas whirring & rattling, crickets in the background chirping. I'm doing laundry, which I will hang out on the line to dry, and will also shortly roll out dough to make pizza, topped with farmstand vegetables - tomatoes, onions, broccoli rabe (a leafy green), as well as cheese (mozzarella & parmesan). I'm back from a walk at the nearby nature preserve, where it felt especially good on such a comfortable day to march around, with all the wildflowers in bloom in the meadow, dragonflies and butterflies darting at my feet in the grass path as I stepped, and a glorious view of the nearby horizon, dark slate-blue mountains silhouetted against bright pale sky.

... Not much else is going on with me, except for romantic problems of my own - it is extraordinary to me how much of my life takes place in my own head. I mean, it's not entirely only in my head - but it's a terribly cerebral life, much more so than I could ever have imagined my life would ever be.

Well, at least I have some imagination - or else then where would I be? Simply doing laundry, making pizza, simply going through the motions - heavens how dull that would be! So I'm very grateful for my lively - not to mention torrid - life of the mind.

You take care, I hope all's well & happy with you, and that you're enjoying some fine days too in the Land of the Midnight Sun - or is it starting to set these nights?

Yours truly & warmly, Belle

***
Glass houses in New Canaan, and at Mass Moca, and today, for the first time ever (via) I read the most amazing, riveting poem, by Anne Carson (a poet I've peripherally heard of but never read), entitled The Glass Essay. It's rather lengthy, but reads like a film, a narrative, a dream, a story - it moves, and is very moving. I related to aspects of it very much. It is very hard to have one's heart broken like that. Watering the flowers afterward, and feeling tired, I wept a little, the cadences and strickenness of her poem fresh with me, as I thought of my own life, my life now of the mind, and battery powered cerebral sex in minotaured motel rooms.

***
I've decided I'm not so interested in the Pissarro exhibition in Williamstown after all. There was a slide show in the Times, which from my seat in the computer alcove at the peaceful little town library, quite sufficed. Perhaps I will think about finally making a pilgrimage to E.D.'s Homestead in Amherst - but am I up for such a long drive, and then the visit? Will ponder. Perhaps autumn might be better.

***
Are you back across the pond, my love? That's where I imagine you now. I suppose things have been lost, that I've been crosstabulated forevermore on the enemies list, roped & bound, witch on a stake. I try to imagine conversations on the matter, tribunals. I keep silent. There is no fair response, no way to explain it, or to explain it away.

***
My dearest, I refilled the bird feeders a little while ago, in the garden that fills in the northwest ell of the house. One of the neighbor's chickens, a handsome russet bird with a 'Ministry of Funny Walks' (Monty Python) exaggerated scamper fled from its sub-feeder foraging. I noted that the ivory blooms of the oak-leaf hydrangea are turning a papery rich-rose hue, perhaps like yours truly, and before I forget I agree with Jane Fonda (so chipper the other morning on R. & Kelly - flipping channels while scrambling eggs I stayed when I saw her) that I'm not sinking into decrepitude - nor are you my dearest nonretired darling - but rather that our lives are more like ascending staircases. Jane swept her graceful arm with an expansive flourish as she bestowed that generous paradigm.

***
Darling, do you suppose I'll ever end this post? Aren't you glad that I hate the phone?

***
Wishing you twenty percent returns and then some on all your investments
and when, in your private moments, you climb the steps of your staircase,
you'll find loving me, full of lush rosy fragrant blossomed lustiness
ordering drapes for the crazy glass house
so that we sparrows in the hedgerows
winter or summer that dawn light is awfully harsh
can blot out the sun or gaze out at the moon
or if it's that kind of holiday
or perhaps as now the Perseids
stand together naked in darkness
your beautiful slim hips against mine, less slim
surveying falling rockets
streaming golden down night sky

My dearest, kissing your cheek and touching your hand, hope all is well with you. I'm okay, it's been a beautiful day, missing you very much. I hear crickets chirping and maybe there will be storms, maybe not. It doesn't feel muggy. Went for a walk this morning, at the conservation area. Big to-do all of a sudden about requiring dogs to be on leashes. I don't have a dog. But somehow the issue and sudden hoopla over it really bothered me, inordinately so, in a little bit of an obsessive-compulsive way. It dominated my thoughts during my walk. Here's a comment I posted on their site later in the day, as to the issue.

... I have been taking walks at the conservation area on a near-daily basis for the past three years. I do not own a dog. My overall experience has been of encountering responsible dog owners with their well-supervised dogs, whether their pets are or aren’t on a leash. I enjoy seeing a happy unleashed dog in fact, and I enjoy seeing the relaxed freedom the dog walker out for a companionable stroll also derives from likewise not being tethered. I believe that to instill/endeavor to enforce/police a leash law is too draconian. I do not believe the system was “broke,” and I do not believe that requiring leashing would necessarily prevent some of the everyday commonsense risks cited above. Rather, I believe, that a vocal minority’s insistence now on leashing may be a small but reflective example in our culture, of a profound difference in world views. Some people believe there should be more “rules” and heavy enforcement of them, particularly, it seems, in the area of regulating simple human freedoms & pleasures. I believe that there may be a kind of puritanical subtext – those unleashed dog owners & their dogs are having too much fun! There is in our culture a kind of War Against Nature, and against natural impulses. The conservation area represents to me an oasis from the “War Against Nature,” in every respect. It soothes my soul after the soulkilled feeling I get after making my way past the paved-over ruination of Route 9... I enjoy the freedom of walking around in open air. I enjoy seeing people and their pets enjoying their small, simple, clean, healthy pleasures of walking freely outside. I believe that rather than imposing more “rules” to be “enforced” it would be more useful... to clearly state expectations of what it is to be a responsible dog owner visiting the site – encouraging stewardship in that sense, and personal responsibility. A dog there MUST be closely supervised at all times – but I believe it should be up to the discretion of each responsible dog owner (and I have not met, in three years there, an irresponsible one yet) whether in his or her judgment, a leash at all times is necessary.

I believe that a far more important park management issue, than whether or not a dog happens to be on a leash, is that of too many dog owners not picking up after their dogs. I appreciated a past cheerful, witty initiative on the part of a park user to try to address the issue a couple of years ago, via the introduction of the orange tin spades, hung at the entrance gates, dubbed – as amusing & informative signage revealed – “poopflingers.” I believe those poopflingers were well-used by many dog walkers in the park, and need simply now to be replaced, along with fresh signage. I greatly appreciated the goodnatured humor that went into trying to solve that problem. I offer this as a contrast, again. There wasn’t the imposition of a “law” to be “enforced,” rather it was a commonsense solution to an annoying problem. So again, by all means encourage – spell out – expectations as to what it means to responsibly supervise your dog at the park, but not in a “gotcha” way as to, quite arbitrarily really, requiring a leash. Thank you.

***
I don't think my comment is the most articulate, and even now I'm feeling a little frustrated. Feeling a little on the leash. A feeling I'm sure you're no stranger to. Darling, I'm rambling, sorry, I'm tired, and a little disgusted with states of affairs, mostly on a way more macro level, only I tend to see things, events, in scalar terms, these days all related.

It's 'til death do us part'. One day we'll walk hand in hand towards the mountains, together at last, unleashed.

All my love.

Twenty-five miles west of Tanglewood, savoring a concert of orchestral rain, fresh atonal water music, I can't see the conductor from where I sit, my person dry but sonically awash, steady pattering on the drive, trees instruments of shimmering glissandos, each of countless leaves numbering in lush symphonic undertaking, punctuated in my sensurround world, openings at four exposures, with wet whooshing solos from the east when a car hightails by.

Ah, that's it my darling, my attempt to be poetic at the moment, and I hereby abandon the effort, though wonder what E.D. if she were sitting in my very spot would make of such a rain. Her metaphors would be different, she was east of Lenox, Tanglewood hadn't been invented yet, did her house have gutters?, and certainly there were no rubber tires fluming water in an acutely melancholic way against black asphalt - not the cars, nor the petroleum-based tar...

Thinking of E.D. since I'm still immersed in the Sewall biography...

The rain has just now intensified, dramatic moment mid-symphony (I assume) - the work began with prefatory rolls of thunder against a dry but darkening sky...

Where are you, I wonder, somewhere by a vast cold gray sea?

I looked up the town where you live, I didn't realize it was right on the water, it's a wonder I hadn't looked it up before, I had assumed you were near Megalopolis center, but no - quite in the exurbs, at water's edge - the geography, from maps, looks lovely, there's a wine bar, and racquet club, and yacht club - beautiful, by the bay like that...

Darling, downstairs on the stove of Gull Cottage kitchen sits a fragrant pot of Indian-spiced chicken, seasoned with spices that you yourself, dear Captain, absconded with from exotic oriental shores (duty free, in an era before Customs) in your blood & swashing all over the water world. And because I reside on terra firma (sorta) I happily dream up recipes to incorporate your exotic powders - cinnamon, cumin, cardamom - along with herbaceous ones I keep fresh in drinking glasses - cilantro, parsley - and gratings of fresh ginger of uncertain provenance from the supermarket...

Oh darling, timeless concert from the skies continues here, erupting, when the rain trails off & lulls, with sudden birdsong, like applause a trifle too soon (rude mirroring in a way of the conductor's ever-anticipatory gesture a beat ahead - I never did understand how conductors could perform that mental feat, as they're awash in the music around them) when it's thought that the composition is over...

the rain has stopped - birds are busily, volubly chattering -
the critics

wait - there's an encore

here she comes again
xoxo darling

P.S. Wish so much I could include a link to the ravishing Willie Nile song, Her Love Falls Like Rain, I simply can't find a video of it. But oh - sweetheart - such are my sentiments, rain pounding now against my windowpane -