Back home in the 12534-3203 where it has turned quite autumnal in the week that I was gone. Chilly nights, I've tossed on an extra blanket, sleep now in a tee, Claire joining me in the middle of the night for warmth. Here and there maples are turning red, asters are in full ragged force at the conservation area, the apple tree is laden with ripe red fruit, and ornamental grasses in our garden are flowering in long silvered feathery fronds - I'd forgotten they do that, a nice September surprise, along with the autumn sedum which after a long nascence in which it resembled a row of blanched broccoli has finally turned rosy pink.

Before leaving the city on Saturday I did manage to get in one bit of "culture." I stopped by the New York Society Library, located in an elegant limestone manse on East 79th Street (between Madison and Park), to catch the exhibit on the authors Shirley Hazzard and Francis Steegmuller, who were married to each other (they wed in 1963; Steegmuller died in 1994). As exhibits go, it wasn't so much of one - four small flat cases, two in an upstairs hall, another pair in an adjoining salon. But I enjoyed it immensely, it was quite transporting, and I was delighted to discover this special library whose secrets I have not begun to plumb, but is one of those magical vestiges of old, genteel, literary New York that I had assumed had long since (in public form, at least) all but vanished.

I examined the cases and jotted a few notes, impressions that registered most strongly. One case displayed a selection of first editions of some of Hazzard's novels, along with well-written curatorial notes that offered interesting tidbits (I think of the Polish word, czekawostki - "interestings"). In The Transit of Venus, for example, Hazzard wrote, "the tragedy is not that love doesn't last. The tragedy is the love that lasts." Of course I wrote that down. So true, and my problem - precisely.

The tidbits I noted are so random! Francis Steegmuller was a translator and biographer of Flaubert, Guy deMaupassant too I think, and one of the curatorial notes read that deMaupassant (whose stories I haven't read since I was a child) was a disciple of Flaubert's and that he died of syphilis. (Which, knowing nothing of de Maupassant, suggests a profligate lifestyle - but what if it's like a clueless teen becoming pregnant - but we did it only once, standing up.) I think there was also a deMaupassant quote that I didn't jot down, something to the effect of, boy I sure wish I'd had a quarter of the talent of Flaubert. Poor guy, whatever his story is. The exorbitant prices one must pay for kisses. (I myself have been doing without - which exacts an intolerable price of its own.)

Steegmuller, along with his scholarly authorial ventures, also penned mystery novels, and his wife Shirley Hazzard observed, "Francis liked to amuse himself writing mysteries. It was as if he had a secret life." Love the "as if." Reminded me, of course, of you, with your secret life, you fan of Ian Fleming you, whose books, you felt, were more interesting than the recursive movies, and which, looking back, I think inspired you more than I will ever know.

After examining the cases in the dim, shadowed hall (lit as I recall with an ancient ornate fixture that dropped from the ceiling like an enormous spider) I faced the massive dark wood doors to the salon, turned a knob, pushed, and slipped inside, entering a large, light, high-ceilinged room that gave an instant impression of peaceful, opulent elegance. An entire wall was devoted to (unexpectedly I thought) shelves upon shelves of antique porcelain wares. Placed about the room were library tables arrayed with an inviting abundance of journals, magazines, and fresh newspapers, along with a number of comfortable upholstered chairs on a couple of which, in separate corners, napped in dustmoted silence middle-aged poetic sorts (or so I imagined), of pale, sensitive appearance, limbs in elegant fold and drape even in sleep, as if tubercular inmates in a Swiss sanatorium taking the rest cure on this brilliant September afternoon.

Here I marveled at a communication to Steegmuller from William Maxwell, the New Yorker editor - a Western Union message that read, in its entirety, "THE FLAUBERT INTRODUCTION IS A MASTERPIECE OF CRITICAL WRITING." Imagine getting such a telegram. What grand style! Oh what a vanished Atlantis of genteel and utterly fantastic expressive gestures!

What else? There was a letter, by either Hazzard or Steegmuller, elegant notepaper embossed with an East 66th Street address, whatever content beautifully and tangibly having been typed on a manual typewriter - the single filled sheet a lovely object in itself, with mixed indentations of the imprinted keys on the page - so direct, so personal. It instantly called to mind the wonderful correspondence I had with your mother - so literary herself, of course - for some years - how I looked forward to her haphazardly typed envelopes (with my first name too often misspelled - she had her blind spots) - anyway, her letters couldn't have been more charming and amusing (as she was in person - look - she wasn't my mother), and another thought that comes up (as I still have her letters) is - did my side of the correspondence survive? I wonder if she saved my letters (she strikes me as the sort of person, or at least of the era, that saved everything). So I wonder - is such a cache of letters in your possession, perhaps? It's just nice to think that there might be. Those letters were innocent enough, certainly. There were so many love letters from you that I burned, literally, in extreme attempts at wholesale riddance, purification. I burned a pile of them in the blacktopped asphalt lot behind my old elementary school (in broad daylight, on the very spot where in kindergarten I had sat in a circle and played "duck duck goose" hoping desperately not to be the "goose" and wondering what the game meant; a dozen or two feet away from where, a decade and change later, cops had once shined a flashlight into your car on us but blessedly (if pruriently) left us alone). There was a thick stack of them, and I think it was before I had taken up smoking so I was still afraid of matches, but not so afraid that I didn't spread the pages out and light the corners. I was by myself in this vast desolate bleak asphalt near the kindergarten windows (not many windows far from Mrs. Elliott's second-grade classroom either, to whom I had lamented, complaining of Dick & Jane primers, that I was capable of remembering a sentence that began on one page and that might carry over to a next) and as the flames lit and began to burn the papers written front and back in your fine even hand I sat bent on my knees meditating the proper ambivalent devotionals (goodbye once and for all you rotten adored...) and a good friend of my little brother's happened by. I've forgotten his name, but I think he and my brother were in no more than sixth grade or so. He looked at the blaze and at me, wide-eyed. What are you doing?, he queried his friend's older sister. Burning love letters, I replied. I'll never forget the expression on his face - he was very suitably impressed.

Kisses, my Chief Tormentor.

I will let this fly unedited at the moment - please try to imagine it as a letter typed on the exuberant, loving fly on an ancient Underwood...

Daytripper

I can see the Arnolfini cedars are dancing

December 27, 2009: Last night I stood in the kitchen and watched the two cedar deodoras we planted some 20 years ago dance in the high wind. These so-called "dwarf" cedars have now cleared the brownstone rooflines. They were so animated in the windy night. Their wide, sturdy lower branches intertwine all the way up, but at the top they're new and narrow. Individual longer branches are like arms, appearing to tirelessly, determinedly reach out for the other, a ceaseless dance, aided by the wind, to come together, to touch, to grab hold. I think that their desire to join must help to spur their lateral growth. The trees reminded me very much of the Arnolfini portrait, a mated pair, deeply in love and holding hands. I know they will succeed, take hold of one another as they have with lower branches, but I do wonder - how tall in the end will these trees, which are native to the Himalayas, get?

***

***
July 2, 2010: Now I really feel that I'm back. AA Bondy is on with his beautiful I Can See the Pines are Dancing. I haven't heard it in ages but here I am. In December, after nightfall, you were across the way looking at me as I looked at you and we looked at the cedars dancing.

***

September 5, 2010: Fall is coming and soon windows all over will be shut tight, cedars will dance and reach for one another in rough winds...

Melchisedec

Beautiful out this morning, the day just dawning, setting the lovely window panels alight, a triptych of woven screens embroidered in brown with abstracted mountains, flower petals, and a crisscross grid. The patterns are evocative, and I lose myself, become centered and soothed to gaze at them. Simple grace at the lower window, clear blue sky above. It's my last morning here.

Sipping iced coffee, trying to think what to say. Looking over my notes from the beach yesterday. But I won't set them down here because they're just random notes. They need a story or metaphor to coalesce.

The sanitation truck is outside, pickup day. A car whooshes past. I have circles under my eyes, since yesterday or maybe I've just noticed them. The soul written on the face. Intriguing concept. I read a great deal of vacuity, soullessness in too many people's faces. Demons read clearly on faces, such as those mean, twisted tea-party types. Psychotic America. Always has been, though it seems worse now. Media fans it.

***
I do not trust the Huffington Post. Wolf in sheep's clothing. It fans the flames. It does not try to change the message, the narrative. WKZE ("Radio Free Red Hook") on the other hand does. It is always - consistently and comprehensively - on a message of love, sustainability, and joie de vivre, e.g., remember - help people, don't hurt people; support local businesses, etc. It is actively helping to change the narrative, giving people an alternative, positive way to view themselves and the world, and - importantly - the very permission to do so. By contrast, Huffington Post thrives on ceaseless chaos and dissension, fanning the flames with its incessant uselessly blaring headlines that drop noiselessly to the bottom by the end of a day. It gives way way too much attention to the other side to be of any palpable good in changing the discourse. (If Sarah P. didn't get so much coverage - where would she be?) It gives the other side way too much credence. You got that Arianna? I do not trust you. You want it both ways (which is why I'm picking on you). You say one thing, and your online rag blares another, does not serve your purported message. Resolved: it's ultimately about you, isn't it? You with your disingenuous grin.

***
I am of very mixed mind as to whether or not to apologize for a rant.
So I will separate it out, at least, with asterisks.
Peace.

***
I wonder if Emily Dickinson ever glimpsed the ocean. I gather she didn't, but it seems like something she would have loved, been drawn to. I myself realized this week that of all the treasures the city has to offer what I wanted most to see was the sea. Where did I recently read that one doesn't have to have glimpsed the ocean to have a sense of it? Was it in Benfey's Emily Dickinson and the Problem of Others? I very much enjoyed reading it this week, including on the long rides to the beach. Wonderful, absorbing subway reading. Completely distracted me from Others on the train.

Gulls are bullies. Piping plovers are the cutest birds ever. They're tiny and run to and fro on quick little feet, racing to the water's receded edge and scampering frantically back as a wave rolls in to chase them up the sand. A plover managed to find a morsel of something - a clam or crab? - and flew off with a big bully gull chasing after it to try to snatch the morsel. It was just me and the birds on the vast, empty beach and I stood by the water shouting in vain for the gull to let the plover alone. The plover though many times smaller, with much smaller, fastbeating wings, managed to stay ahead of the powerful gull. So much energy expended by both just to hang on to the morsel, or to try to wrest it - the two flew madly up and down the shore, behind a jetty, out to sea and inland again for minutes on end. The gull finally gave up and the plover darted off to some rocks where I hope it was able to savor its hardwon scrap in peace.

There simply isn't enough food on that beach to sustain all those birds, some gulls big as dodos, like lumbering old men, and sweet antic plovers like sped-up characters in a silent film. Why are all the birds there, the gulls especially? They're so fat - what do they eat? Maybe the summer crowds fed them - but now, in September? They seem to live on hope. I ate a sandwich I'd brought (I'd packed a fine picnic lunch in style - turkey & avocado sandwich, sour pickle, chips, and fresh pineapple) and a gull (like the squirrel the other day) tried to endear itself to me, coming near and squawking plaintively. I had brought a piece of stale bread with me, which I scattered to an instant horde of gulls, and before I left they got some of my sea salt & vinegar chips too. Better the calories for them, than me.

Must run now, pack up, get ready to go. Kisses.

I'm sorry to be so scarce. I'm having a hard time emotionally, I don't know what's hitting me, a confluence of - reality check, most likely. I am the lamest or weirdest NY tourist ever. Well, I did live here for many years, so it's not as though I'm required to play tourist. I probably "should" have gotten myself out to museums, but didn't feel inspired to. The Charles Burchfield show at the Whitney was sort of calling me, but I couldn't justify $18, plus another $4.50 for the subway. I could have gone tonight (pay what you wish Fridays after 6) and most of the week thought that's what I'd do. But here it is 5:15 and I'm freshly showered after a day at the beach and sipping rose so, no, I won't be going.

What I have done the last couple of days is take the G train to Hoyt-Schermerhorn, the A to Far Rockaway, changed at Broad Channel for the Shuttle to Beach 116th Street, emerged from the station and walked up a honky-tonk street to the corner to catch the Q22 bus with the same hard-ass woman driver each of the 4 times I took the bus over the last two days, over to Riis Park, a magnificent Atlantic oceanfront beach, part of the National Parks Service "Gateway National Recreation Area."

Do you go to Riis Park?
You'll have to get off at 149.
Is that Riis Park?
Lady.
Look, I've forgotten - it's my first time in years.
The Q35 goes all through Riis.
Oh so I should wait for the Q35?
No, I go to Riis Park.

This morning:

Going to Riis Park again?
Yeah.

Ride, ride, ride, through Belle Harbor, reminiscent of certain San Francisco neighborhoods, visually, that is - demographically, not at all, Beach 122, 132, 139, 145.... I get up and stand at the front of the bus, by the driver.
She sails right past Beach 149 - Riis Park. Oh shit.

I'm sorry I guess I should have rung the bell.
WHAT???!!! You wanted to get off?
Yeah, sorry, I spaced off - my bad.
WHAT DID YOU SAY?
I SAID, SORRY, I SPACED OFF - MY BAD.

And the driver starts laughing. (Phew.) Maybe it was the Buffyesque "my bad."
She slams on the brakes and careers the bus to the side of the desolate highway.
I get off at Beach 150. Actually slightly more convenient.

That's all for now, whoever darlings are out there. Kisses. Hope all's well.

Hello darling. Beautiful late afternoon, missing you very much, wondering where you are, guessing that you're away catching up on field work. Kansas doesn't have broadband? Quite possibly not, though Quiver did, or was it Quammen? Quinter - that's it, way back late last March or early April when after a months-long absence (as far as I could tell, and it seemed to drive me mad, I was reading all sorts of meanings into song titles and page hits from odd places) suddenly you reappeared, and I'm so glad you did. One day we'll get together and you'll explain it all to me - won't you?

So I checked out Poets House yesterday. I had a half-hour to kill before it opened at 11, which was fantastic because it's located right on the river in NY Harbor - spectacular location. I strolled along the promenade, marveling at the urban design and landscaping, such as beautiful play areas packed with little children and their parents and/or hired caregivers, an abundant assortment of play areas, swings, pool tables, open grass fields, playground sets, fanciful structures - really, it was dreamlike how lovely and well used by absolutely delighted children it was. I strolled to the sheltered harbor cove by the World Financial Center and became intrigued by what appeared to be paparazzi photographing a very expensive yacht flying a British flag. A blonde in sunglasses was hanging out on the back of the moored craft, talking on her cell. Then she went inside and shut the black glass sliding doors. I sat on a bench at a distance casually observing the scene and jotting unrelated thoughts in my notebook. A few minutes later the doors slid open and a tall skinny guy got out and walked onto the wood dock alongside the boat and lit a cigarette. A very thin longlegged brunette joined him, and they smoked cigarettes and desultorily groomed or petted each other. The paparazzi had gotten bored and left - maybe the initial blonde was the payload. Or maybe they weren't paparazzi, just determined Japanese tourists. I was starting to feel CIA myself, observing this boat as in a spy thriller. At five to eleven I walked back along the beautiful river marveling at all the recreational "uses" and returned to Poets House.

I don't have that much to say about it really. It's a beautiful space and a nice idea, and I'm sure its heart really is in the programming. It's a Clean Well Lighted Space for poetry, and houses a collection of some 50,000 poetry-related volumes. I detected a note of messianic zeal about the enterprise, but I was there truly just to take a peek. I strolled up and down the bookcases, not having any poetic agenda in mind. And then I thought - of course, Dickinson. They had a very small collection of books related to Dickinson, and if I have a quibble it's a quibble that I have for many a library, including my little town library upstate.

The temptation to file books in strict alphabetical order is very strong, as is the desire to fill bookcases from top to bottom. But truly - the Dickinson books were located on the very bottom-most shelf! E.D. herself would have been amused, I think, and quipped how her books are convenient - for a Mouse. It is asking a lot for a creaky-jointed wise woman to have to bend down on her knees, crouch down, don readers, and tilt her head sideways to read the titles! I felt quite the middle-aged Alice folding myself into the space - did I mention that it was jammed at a corner too, by the sheer shelving coincidence? One might hope that many more poets and essayists from A to De will soon publish and send their books along so that Dickinson might have to be shelf-moved to the next case - blessedly at the top!

(Now I'm reminded of those shelf-reading and wholesale book-shifting projects under Jim Brown's direction at the library - remember those, darling? I think you may have supervised me on or two of those - I blush to think of it now. And the project of inserting magnetic strips into each volume, the very early days (mid-70s) of electronic library book theft protection? Oh darling. That was one hot library, with you in it.)

I did peruse a couple of volumes of critical essays on Dickinson, choosing a seat at a table by the window. It was like the scene from Men in Black when Will Smith pulls out a chair and it makes this huge, interminable scraping sound along the floor and everyone looks up. I sat down and made myself as small as possible again and skimmed a couple of essays. Now and then someone would walk by me, and one by one other tables and seating areas began to be occupied. Anytime someone walked past I'd look up over my readers and wonder - oh, is that a poet? One woman looked Fiercely Poetic, long wild hair, smear of lipstick, grim determination. Another guy, an elderly Whitmanesque gentleman, definitely looked like a Poet. Then there were a couple of really cute guys, way younger than me, poets like Javier Bardem or a young Antonio Banderas is a Poet. I wouldn't be surprised if anyone wondered about me - is she a poet? - here we all were, self-selected bugs on a petri dish - Poets!

I don't mean to be hard on the place. I think it would be a really cool place to hang out on a cold, rainy day, looking out from a safe, warm space onto the wild gray river. I wonder if many of the little children delighting in outdoor play in the beautiful park across from Poets House, will migrate indoors for winter, to try their hands at composing their own verse...

Very many kisses, my beautiful darling. Letting this fly. Love you.