Scheherazade here, darling, with my 1001st published post...

Though not much of a story to tell this evening, dearest. I'm wondering where you are - is that what you meant by "hell gate & its approaches?" I hope everything's alright. I'll post even though, frankly, I'm not really in the mood. But I like the thought that if you manage to check in, you'll find me here. I'm feeling slightly out of sorts, in between things. I looked forward today to going out this evening, to a literary reading in town. I rested, napped, showered, washed my hair and dried it, spritzed on Miss Dior, put on my black skirt, sparkly evening top, and black cashmere sweater - my preparations reminiscent of Caillebotte's woman at the dressing table.

I had the car in plenty of time, drove into town, parked on a nearby side street, and climbed two flights of nineteenth century townhouse stairs to the softly lit brick-walled gallery loft on the top floor, where patrons milled about sipping wine poured from a selection of fine bottles that had been set out (the space is affiliated with a very good wine merchant downstairs), and helping themselves to a modest & enticing spread of nibbles - pristine log of goat cheese, enormous wedge of parmigiano reggiano that flaked & flecked upon carving, thin rounds of soppressata, artisanal baguette slices cut on the diagonal, bunches of red & green grapes, a scattering of dried apricots and figs. Of figs, I feel a small obsession developing... my favorite pizza is one we occasionally get in town, thin sourdough topped with prosciutto, ricotta, arugula, and figs - I love the combination of savory & sweet. This morning I tore out a page from a gourmet magazine, a recipe for hazelnut-fig biscotti. I will add to my exotic-provisions shopping list for Sahadi's in Brooklyn - dried Calimyrna figs.

As ever, I didn't know anyone in this mingling pre-reading wine & cheese. I poured myself a plastic glass of delicious sparkling rosé, and arranged a few delectable morsels on a paper napkin marked with an elegantly embossed "W" - intertwined, doubled letter coincidentally identical to the new logo of my alma mater, always a weird association to make (I've been at a gathering here before and encountered those napkins), as though the event has anything to do with the college, which it doesn't, and yet it's in the same kind of relaxed, elegant style, so why not, might as well be. And here I am, to boot, Class of '81. So there!

I devoured (discreetly as possible) those bites, and discovered that I was quite hungry - suddenly ravenous. I went back for another glass of wine, another dab of goat cheese on cracker, parmesan hunk on baguette, a single red grape, one of green...

This was indeed a gallery, except that other times I've been there it's just seemed like an upstairs party space - but yes, there was art hung on the walls, which I realized were collages of poems that were to be read from this evening. I strolled around the room, perusing the mountings. Which I can't say spoke to me, but I can be impatient at times with such things - so don't mind me.

More attendees by one's and two's climbed stairs and arrived in the door, room cheerfully abuzz, and most seemed either to know one another or somehow other able to spontaneously form congenial conversational groups, or had come with a S.O. or friend, and I was just standing there trying to figure out another geometric beeline to the drinks & refreshments, harder to navigate now that the room was getting more crowded with people standing around obliviously and inconveniently blocking those crucial tables. But I managed, and took one more small helping for myself, but found they'd run out of the rosé (is such a symptom of the lamentable state of our collapsing global economy? I've never known this well-capitalized outfit ever to either purposely or accidentally run out of wine).

And then I found that I just wasn't in the mood anymore. I had delighted in anticipating the little outing all day, enjoyed getting dressed up, arriving there, and smelling so so nice, darling! (One of my little fantasies - that someone near me, sniffing the air, asks - by God, what is that beautiful fragrance? And I reply, Miss Dior, it's very hard to find...). But I had lost interest in the literary aspects. And so, dear reader, I made up another small napkin of delectables, to bring home for D, carefully balanced the square in my hand and made my way clomping delicately as I could down the narrow steep flights, managing (because, left hand occupied, I couldn't clutch the banister) to neither drop the contents of the napkin, nor to trip, in slightly wobbly sandals, on the stairs.

And so I'm home.  D was happy for the souvenir treat, we'll have pesto for dinner with the remainder of cornish hen (which came out fine by the way, of course). I did so much cooking earlier today, sweetheart - after a long walk around here in the incandescent blaze of October foliage - a pot of red-wine infused chicken drumsticks stewed in a melange of CSA tomato, eggplant, onion - the entire dish, save the Italian plonk, organic!; preparations for yet another frangipane - poached pears, almond buttercream, tart shell; tomato & onion salsa, seasoned with fresh jalapeno, lime juice, EVOO, and cilantro...

So it was a day of cooking, & of dining, of looking forward to food & to savoring it. With such fortifying repasts throughout the day - was it any wonder I didn't quite have room, as it turned out, for a literary feast?

Many hugs, and all best wishes, dear love. I hope everything is going well, or not too terribly, or whatever is going on, that it's manageable, and that you're okay. Thinking of you, and sending my love your way. There - as you come just now to this line as you read - do you feel my soft kisses on your cheek? Have a good evening...  xoxo love, Belle

***
image:
Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), Woman at Dressing Table, 1873, oil on canvas

Dear love, full of sweet thoughts of you all day, unchangeable constant in a day of highly changeable weather. Overnight came torrential bursts of rain, each in its thrashed aftermath followed by stunned silence. At dawn the sky in the east, wind-tossed, teeming with turbulent shades of gray, dramatically parted to reveal a horizontal slit of gleaming platinum light - portal glimpse to another dimension, dark clouds massing all around. At times, later, the sun would come out, dazzling all the drops of spent rain, and then the skies would turn broody, glower, darken again. Later I drove north - trees red, orange, yellow, dramatically blazed against charcoal sky. There was a brief respite from rain, sufficient window for me to pick up the ritual weekly mix from the CSA farm. Now I sit up here in the aerie, lamps on in the house, and it's begun to rain again. The rains are accompanied by ominous thunder, though I haven't seen lightning. So summery. It's humid and mild, though not hot. At the farm I stepped along a muddy border & snipped cosmos of various pinks, which I've since divided between a mustard jar on the kitchen table, and a small vase on my desk. I clipped among the last of the zinnias - red, orange, yellow - spritely blooms tucked in a tiny old blue-glass bottle on the sill where I can enjoy them whenever I'm standing at the sink.

My dear, sometimes I think I read a little too much into those page hits - Hell Gate - as bad as that? We have our metaphysical exquisite union - never to be corporeally realized - yet I hope on another plane (in that sliver of light back behind the obscured dawn this morning) that you're happy. I don't know, that seems hollow, even to me as I type it. I don't want anyone to be miserable, myself included. It's strange to say, but you make me happy, or thoughts of you, and knowing that you think of me. I find it very buoying.

Well, anyway, it's raining again, I love the sound of it, that steady pattering, and it's still & quiet up here, like being in a cozy sheltered treehouse. The staircase is a mess, in transition. The runner had been coming away from the risers, so D took it all up and replaced the liner with proper felt (comme il faut) and I laundered the pieces - but they shrank infemitously (OMG! how do you spell that word? I have to look it up!) - infinemetousy - wait - infinitesimally - there. Anyway - just enough that D couldn't get the pieces to line up again. I had been about to go to the library, since D was reinstalling the runner, but we both scrapped our plans and went to the carpet store instead, picked out & ordered a new piece of carpeting for the stairs. Of course I instantly fell in love with a high-end wool carpet that would have cost $700 for our little staircase. It is amazing the exquisite taste I have - I go unerringly for the unaffordable. But I'm content with what we settled on - at under $200, a commercial grade, in similar ruby tones. And I have floated the idea that perhaps this is the time to repaint the stairwell, before the new carpeting goes in, and D doesn't seem averse.

Just trying to keep things spruced up. I vacuumed the house over the last couple of days, and cleaned the baths today. Fresh flowers. Laundered linens & drapes. My way of fighting entropy.

Oh sweetheart, I wonder where you are, I imagined today that you were somewhere on your "approaches" (or perhaps it's they who are approaching you). I had a wonderful time with you today - I do just about every day now, best in years, which I'm very happy about, that that part of me is recovered, I don't even need to watch Dr. Oz (though I appreciate his forthright, positive way of addressing sensitive issues such as that - truly a public service).

I woke before dawn to the sound of the rain, and couldn't fall asleep again, got up to check the computer, drank a glass of water in the glow of the screen, returned to bed in darkness, and couldn't get back to sleep. It was barely five. I held an extra, long firm pillow for a bit, very comforting, and thought of you. As a girl I never, and I mean never, had been into stuffed animals - but now I find a single pillow of sufficient heft very soothing. I turned over on my side, and the pillow fell softly against my back, and that was so exquisitely calming, especially coupled with my imagination, being able to think that it was you lying against me, that I was able to fall asleep almost immediately, for a couple of hours, it - you - were so comfortable.

I can only imagine what E.D., and John Donne, and Andrew Marvell, might have done with that simile - your love is like a pillow.

But I don't know that I'm so much about metaphors - metaphysical as I am, and as our love is - perhaps I'm more about voice...

Your love is like a bell tower
upside down in the middle of the night
as I kiss your lips
and feel the rising pressure
and I know that yours is useful
& wonderful
and has in all its glory just what I need
in exactly the right scale
unlike that odd structure in Ypsilanti
is that how Ann Arbor residents get their water?
I'm a water tax paying citizen of my small burg
whose blimp is blue
oh yeah, kind of like the color of my little blue
effective toy that's curved at the top
stand in for you
and also - I might add, darling,
with my eyes closed, the Washington Monument
(sex drive - so American - so nonpartisan!)
ah how will I ever close the cocks of this poem
when the rooster - cocks too - crow at dawn?
I'll make a lover out of you yet, my pillow
and - oh how wonderful, oh batfilled one -
you don't take batteries - telltale sign, all that recharging!
never a need to recharge a pillow
just launder the sheath every once in a while

The End.

Dear love, gray day, on & off dashes of rain, nothing major, just enough damp to send neighbor's chickens onto our porch, along with our cats, quite the peaceful menagerie. I don't really mind the chickens, I find them colorful, but they do leave a mess, so one has to watch one's step, which I do, because I don't feel like spending my time hosing off the steps. Posted this morning, photos that I'd taken a couple of mornings ago on my walk at the conservation area; took a walk around here, leaves turning gold and falling - some trees bare already, others still green. It's an in-between time, mild. The annuals on my desk are spent. I've got a mosquito bite under my chin, venom coalescing & hardening beneath thin tender skin. I've got a fleece draped over my shoulders (clothed - tee topped with cotton blouse) for a bit of cozy warmth. Dinner will be baked cornish hens, which will probably come out delicious because it's pretty hard to mess them up - but I may have, in misremembering a use for chutney. I was trying, from memory, to duplicate what I recalled of delectable seasoned skewered chicken tidbits I'd sampled last spring at the L.In'tl Arts Colony. I thought - ah, mango chutney (I had a bit left at a bottom of a jar), fresh ginger perhaps, mayo - yes, I'm sure there was mayo - and - weren't there sesame seeds for crunch? And so I madly made up this marinade... and later checked the recipe. Dear me, no - tenders dipped in a sauce of mayo, curry powder & turmeric, then rolled in dry roasted peanuts. The chutney? That had to do with a cilantro-parsley dip - that would have been as exciting as a wheat-grass drink save for the secret ingredient - mango chutney.

I'm not feeling very inspired at the moment, dearest, though I'd still like to write to you. I've been thinking about inspiration in writing - a woman I briefly met at one of the plein air writing workshops the other week, is trying to organize a way that those of us who like that format/setting can get together on a more regular, say monthly, basis. I can't help but think of E.D. in this regard, that she was very self-motivated in so much of her poetic inputs - a very complex person, to be sure, but still, could apply herself. Well, I once was able to apply myself, very much so. This isn't meant to beat myself up. Where I'm going is that this woman I met too finds the writing "prompts" (the little exercise assignments we're charged with before we're sent outdoors to write on the fly for a few minutes) do seem to force something - certainly, in me, another aspect of myself, that I don't normally readily have access to. It's as though those prompts almost give me permission, or a raison d'etre, to tap into a particular mode. It's okay, I don't feel a need to dwell on it very much, I don't know that that form of writing all the time is something I aspire to, that it's something that I "should" be doing. But it would be nice to be with simpatico others, and to access that...

That reminds me, here's something that sounds like fun - sort of! Except that it would completely interfere with my icefilled pink-wine routine. Oh dear, do you suppose I have a problem? I simply don't go there.

Still, it does sound like fun... I've been toying with the idea of contacting the local international arts colony - perhaps they might consider fostering a little writing workshop for interested literati of Columbia County, who might find inspiration, as at Olana, in their beautiful sculpture fields, and sustenance, and gathering space, in their airy relaxed cafe, and who knows, maybe we could be led by Kathe herself in en plein air exercises, and more daringly, some other time, in a poetic hypnotic transportive journey underneath the stars, where we'd go to sleep sated beautifully on properly marinaded tenders & expertly deployed chutney-infused nibbles, along with local camemberts... and, oh yes, of course, poetry & poetic prose... and in the morning there'd be hot-coffee & I can hardly imagine the amazing pastry that that inspired cafe might be capable of conjuring.... and we'd all wake up groggily from a night of dreaming and rouse ourselves, and be led through some writing exercise at dawn, and no one would be grumpy or grouchy because you know there's awesome strong delicious coffee that they brew, and we write our beautiful little pieces, scribbled in longhand, as we're sent out in parkas & scarves & hoods over pj's, into the snow-covered fields where animals overnight beneath the stars while we were sleeping (some of us unfortunately snoring) left their tracks, and mitten-handed I jot down a few thoughts, curiously clear since I had to utterly behave in the wine-consumption department, never mind Tea-Party - Tee-Totalers more of a threat to me, at cocktail hour...

Darling, throwing my arms around you, wishing you a very good night. Time to preheat the oven to 425 (I think?) and see to those hens. Cross your fingers for me.

xoxo

Darling,
come
take my hand
and stroll
with me
through
this gallery
of spider webs...
many kisses
hope your day
goes well

Hello darling, up in the aerie, at low ebb most of the day. My mind's in a jumble of thoughts. I've just finished vacuuming the upstairs. I'm sorry to learn - via a flurry of googled page hits to my blog in recent days, and an especially pointed one today that I followed up on - that the artist Robert Loughlin died, very tragically. I didn't know anything about him at all. I was astonished to learn about his unusual, creative, iconoclastic life - only now, upon reading his obituary. I had simply once posted an image of his creation that had spoken to me, still does. I don't know who it is who's been signaling to me about him recently, though I can take an educated guess, and if you knew him, cared about him personally, etc., and you are who I think you might be, of my brief acquaintance, then I'm very sorry for your loss, and thank you for letting me in your way know, and I take consolation only in the fact that by all this chance & kismet, it was through you that I even ever discovered that image, of the red & blue swimming Superman chomping on a cigarette while making his way through choppy waters (as I recall or imagine in my mind's eye, without consulting the actual image) - and at one point, freely borrowed the image for my own purposes.

***

***
Oh what an odd post, at the time - I just reread it - before, way before, a year or more, I knew --

so perhaps - ?

my darling

I've gone on longer - since

***
image:
Robert Loughlin (American, 1949-2011), Man in Water, acrylic on fabric, 16 x 20 in.

Dearest, don't let me forget that there's a full moon rising tonight
I'd like to see it come up behind the oak trees across the road
I was helping D hang curtains and windex windows downstairs
sipping an icefilled glass of wine
I changed the sheets of my bed today
they're spinning in the drier just now
there's a high-pitched peripheral squeaking sound
that goes along with the rolling of the drier
and occasional thwack of - what- zipper?
oh yeah, I threw in my offwhite clamdiggers too
against the centrifuge
D went out to get another box of wine
Claire likes to sleep on the carton of La Vielle Ferme
cardboard set a foot above the floor
by the trash cans in the kitchen

I had a wonderful time with you this afternoon
from quarter-to-three to three
so good that I tried to do it again and it's just no good
so then I pagehit-checked and washed toys and got back into bed
and fell asleep for a bit

then got up, stripped the bed
threw sheets in the washer, along with my clothes
and put a pear frangipane in the oven - 350

I thought I'd vacuum a bit more but the pressure's off
oh - by the way - the houseswap this weekend's off,
postponed for a couple of weeks or three

which actually is a relief to me
and very much to D

but we'll organize it for sometime in a few weeks

so the house is clean, and draperies, and windows
D on a ladder, wiping
me obsessive - how bad was that window?
they vary, those tall plain sheets with the stained glass surrounds

Pulver lost his supply of old glass, D tells me
as he lovingly wipes red - blue - ochre oblong panes

that's a loss, a very great one
it's glass his father before him collected too

they lost the whole inventory
(in a heavy snowstorm last winter that collapsed the flat roof)
But he doesn't dwell on it

Why would he? what are you going to do?
Exactly, says D, what Pulver says
there's nothing he can do, and so he goes on

I tried to lie down again with you, on the fly
and at that point I'd had a glass of pink wine
and it wasn't going to work
I need to be at my peak, as I had been at three

and it's probably all the harder for men, with their hydraulics

darling, whatever, this is just me typing, slapping up 'any old thing'
which usually I don't do

here's D's footfall again on the porch stair
and the loud slap of the screen door behind him
he's back
the drier's still squealing

I came, very silently, towards three, then fell asleep

and then rose
and did a bunch of stuff
and then for two seconds lay down again and gave up

It's 6:41
I'm going to launch this post

despite it all
there's a full moon to regard, that I'm sure
on this clear mild night
will rise with great vigor, convincingly
behind those twin oaks - whose leaves by the way, to date, remain

but on my walk today
seriously - audibly -
leaves were falling
one by one
rustling, startling, murmuring
sometimes it was a squirrel
sometimes a chipmunk
but most often
just a dry brittle leaf
one after another like rainfall
tumbling to earth

Writing exercise from En Plein Air Writing Workshop,
led by Kathe Izzo, at the education center
and grounds of Olana, Hudson, NY, October 8, 2011

"Perceive one being as knower and known. Start by concentrating on something..."

In light of this passage [six paragraphs starting in middle of linked page ("Start by concentrating on something" to "then that person or that thing becomes the whole world")], we've been beholding and writing about nature. For this exercise you may again start from there. But at the same time consider the point of view of nature. What does the beheld - that is, nature - see when it looks at you?

***
I heard Morgan Freeman on Charlie Rose the other day, say that dolphins (and some whales too maybe) are the only wild creatures that will come up out of curiosity or whatever other impulse, to encounter humans. That a bear might - but you wouldn't want that encounter. Which is curious, and most likely the wild, in such close perilous parallel to us, reticently keeps its distance since - though I don't know that any single creature knows this, but perhaps in its species collective unconscious intuits that we have a tendency to run in on our bipedal steam, survey, immediately find something wanting, disturb, and like a toddler tiring of toys, muck up, lose interest, and leave - leaving havoc small or large in our Goliathan aftermath. So it's just as well that though I keep the bird feeders filled - that the chickadees don't (& not that I wish them to) alight on my hand; the woodpecker at the suet startles easily and balefully flies off if it catches me spying on it from the kitchen window. Squirrels never run up to me - though, come to think of it - chipmunks beg. I never see a bat. Vultures & hawks stay well overhead. The trees stay in their place. And yet - all these creatures, in the wild of the wilds of my untended garden - where deer when they feel themselves to be alone, decapitate my zinnnias - they must all know who I am, that woman who keeps birdseed in the shed, keeps assassin cats that roll around on the driveway, never looks exactly the same way twice - wears the most curious garments, clothes, thinner in summer, so thick in winter we hardly see her face, and while we all live in nests, or in burrows, or winter in southern climes, or hunker down in the ravines - she lives in this curious construction, a gray square box, that sits in the landscape, at night beneath the moon & canopy of stars, where vines try to clamber in the windows & through the chinks of siding, and teeming wilds encircle the unmoving house, its exterior skin exposed to the elements.

image:
René Magritte (1898-1967), La Bonne Aventure (Good Fortune), 1939, Gouache on paper, 33.5 x 40.7 cm., Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam