My dearest, I'm staving off Christmas by prolonging Thanksgiving, in the form of an apple pie made from scratch, baking in the oven now, buttery aroma wafting up the stairs. I went food shopping today, with a long list, and thought I might make a chocolate-hazelnut torte, bought bars of good bittersweet chocolate towards that end. But I think I'll make that closer to Christmas Day.

It's pouring rain, wet and miserable out, though still mild. My books for this weekend - paperback editions, by Messrs. Charyn and Benfey - arrived in the mail this morning, the postman tossed the package (in a sturdy cardboard mailer that I'm keeping for reuse) onto the back porch, and I ran down in my pink minotaur outfit to open it.

So all my little plans & preparations for the upcoming weekend are falling into place. I'm mapping a driving route for myself. I plan to leave early Saturday morning, so that I can arrive in good time, get the lay of the land (motel/Amherst campus/Homestead), maybe get in a vigorous walk, and most definitely check in to the motel early so as to have time for a nap, so that I feel rested for the evening. (Though I may be too excited to sleep - but let's not project in such detail.) I have an appointment Thursday afternoon to get my lovely locks trimmed. They are lovely! Which reminds me that I had a bit of a nightmare the other day...

***
Noted morning of 4 December 2011

Glad to be awake – had a dream that felt realistic, more of a nightmare, glad it wasn’t true. I dreamt that I was living at home, Mama and I were at war. She wanted me to leave the house, but I had nowhere to go. Evidently I had gotten very drunk the night before – but I didn’t remember. Mama started in on me about that – and I told her that I knew she didn’t love me, and for her to get out of my sight. I started getting dressed to go meet 1.0, who was going to be speaking (I think) at the Appellate Division. I dressed in front of a mirror, putting on an ugly green silk top and loud plaid black, white & green jacket. I’d just gotten my hair cut and it was very short, I couldn't stand it. I’d gone for a trim, but the hairdresser had cut off all the length I’d been working on for so long. I was so dejected – feeling desexed & unattractive – that I started to cry. 1.0 would never find me attractive with a haircut like that…

Fortunately I woke up. My hair’s still long.

***
I think I've been thinking about the actress Michele Williams - she's so bright & intelligent, but she's been wearing this "pixie" haircut - so improbable since she's currently in the cinema portraying Marilyn Monroe. And plus I don't like the word "pixie" or the look it describes -- I think of a boyish Sandy Duncan (sorry Sandy). But Michele looks nice in that expertly cut, highlighted, bangs on the diagonal pixie cut -- with her freshfaced charm, and gorgeous cut-lace blouse with a Mandarin collar, so sheer that through it an elegant brassiere (white as I recall) showed through...

***
Pause for reality check -- to take pie, chicken too probably, out of oven. Be right back.

***
Yes, so maybe that was an anxiety dream. I enjoy having long hair - I think of the old-fashioned phrase - of hair as a woman's "crowning glory" -- and I think there is something to that. I felt very desperate in my dream to be regarding my short hair, trying to fluff the top...

Ah, so I will be super-vigilant at the hairdressers on Thursday -- but L's good - she doesn't go crazy chopping off length, not at all. But that did actually happen to me once, when I first moved up here, with a different hairdresser - who had ideas of her own wholly apart of what I was trying to go for - and so I suppose the nightmare - the prospect of its becoming real - lingers.

***
Sweetheart - sorry I'm going on about my neuroses. Oh guess what - D's been giving me lessons on pumping gas. So far I've watched him do it.

He said to me this morning, when I mentioned to him that the books I'd ordered had arrived and that all the myriad pieces are falling in place -- ah you sound like Cinderella - going to the ball in her own pumpkin

And this Cinderella will be pumping her own gas!

***
I know that Lenore is on her way now, and hope she's having a safe & enjoyable trip.

***
Oh sweetheart, this post is a mess, but it's a fairly accurate snapshot of moments from today... which included a moment (more like twenty minutes, I needed time to get going) with you... it was mild enough that I didn't need a coat...

I should get back to that Shakespeare book I've been reading... I haven't cracked a book in days - no, that's not true, I started reading Pale Fire, when I lay down for a nap, and (though very intrigued) I fell asleep, and when I woke I set about to bake pie...

Dearest love, oh my dearest, I hope wherever you are you are having a cozy, delightful, warm, charming evening. Here it's cold and wet out, I can hear the rain. But - as in my heart - all is warm and loving and cheerful and exciting and anticipatory within --

goodness, I certainly don't wish to overdo things -- darker aspects of myself are cringing and emoting in the form of giant silent sarcastic eyerolls...

sweetheart -- how can I kiss you in letters? typing, typing, typing

oh aarrghhh
xoxo

oh my darling

My dearest, it's so mild today it feels like springtime. I took two walks today, the second in late afternoon with gold sun casting mellow light over the flat ridge road. It was around half-past three, but with the sun low and blazing in my eyes, I could sustain the illusion that it was late spring, around seven in the evening, sun about to set, and I imagined purloining branches of lilacs just now in bloom, or would be if it were May. It was nice to think of fragrant lilacs on the roadside blooming, their heady fragrance, reward for an overlong winter that hasn't so far (Halloween ice storm excepted) set in.

It's just as well, I like it here, but when it's mild. And yet I wouldn't wish to live in a permanently balmy clime. Although really - at this point I feel that I could live absolutely anywhere, as long as I had certain of the creature comforts I need. I'd live anywhere, with my true love, it wouldn't matter to me where anymore. It used to have mattered to me. I never could picture myself living in Alaska. And I suppose I still couldn't - but fortunately, I don't need to contemplate any such extreme place, as once I did.

Perhaps what's more important to me now is the luxury of time -- that I need in spades, in a day, to go about my days in the house for the most part at my leisure. As long as I could do that - have the (domestic) space & time to freely move around in, think in, then truly I don't think it would matter to me where I am.

And as far as the holiday season goes, I'm personally grateful for the mild weather, that distracts me from notions of the holidays, not my favorite time of year. In thinking about it I tend to almost hold my breath, as if under water, for it to pass. At this point there's only one thing I wish for from this holiday season, and that is to spend a few moments with you sometime during it, even if 'in a crowded room.' How little seems to sustain me - us - in that way - I'll be thrilled just to see you smiling at me... Actually I have all sorts of fantasies, but they hit hard obstacles right away, in each of the rooms. I wonder if it will even happen this year, at all, my coming down.

If I were to see young lovers - old or young, any true lovers at all - my thoughts towards them are - you are so very lucky to be together, in each other's presence, physically together. I have found it a very elusive phenomenon in my life... I picture you beaming at me because I burst out laughing at something amusing someone at the table said -- and I was so thrilled to see you look at me that way. And perhaps you cherish your own memories (I hope) of glances I'd steal towards you - did you see them? Yes, I'm sure you did.

And so dearest, it will be the Fourth of July in December if I get to see you... such is the topsy-turvy nature of my heart, and of the weather. On my walk today I thought about encountering you, perhaps pressing a token something into your hand (since I wouldn't be blogging that evening) as I put my arms around you and kiss you hello. Perhaps a tiny refrigerator magnet...

***
image:
Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), Study for Kiss II, 1963, graphite, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio

Hello darling, just a quick post for this evening, I'm exhausted and can't seem to get myself re-energized. I was "on the go" all day, no nap - and so I'm feeling it now.

I spent the afternoon at Olana, in a variation of an 'en plein air' writerly encounter. Olana was sponsoring a relaxed little art session, providing basic materials -- clipboard with blank paper, plastic case stocked with drawing pencils, erasers, and a sharpener... The suggestion was to go out into the landscape and, as Frederic Church himself did, select a scene or detail for study, sketch it in pencil, and to write notes as to details to be filled in back at the studio, for example, specific colors.

I had a nice time. It was a beautiful afternoon, sunny and though windy, milder than I thought. I picked up my clipboard at the education center (at this point I'm very friendly with their charming coordinator, I've attended many programs there over the years - so it's a cozy place for me to stop by). It was an opportunity for me, so stocked, to explore a hiking trail, an original carriage road to the estate, that climbs, in leisurely graded uphill switchbacks, up the steep hillside to Church's magnificent citadel at the top.

I have no natural ability or training in drawing or painting, but felt that it might be interesting to give it a try, exercise a different (though not unrelated) creative muscle. I marveled as I walked along the beautiful brown-leaf littered wooded trail, this intimate carriage drive with glimpses through the bare trees of vast distant panoramas, sky and mountains beyond, that Church (and all artists before his time) didn't have benefit of a camera to record images of for reference, but rather, had to rely upon sketches and careful notes.

I eschewed attempting to draw anything from nature in the landscape, given my lack of adeptness in drawing. I thought the geometric forms of the house might be easier.

The house loomed before me, shrouded in mystery and romantic, bleached of color through the winter trees as DuMaurier's Manderley...

But once I reached the house itself - close enough to touch it, which I could have (why didn't I?!) - the colors blazed in their full multicolored precise yet phantasmagorical splendor.

I perched on a low stone wall that afforded a view of the entire house, and thought -- okay, I'll sketch the whole thing. Shouldn't be hard! I turned my clipboard with its blank sheets of paper this way and that, tried to sharpen a pencil (the sharpener was dull), then removed a sheet of paper and creased it in half to make a straight-edge so as to trace even lines...

I quickly realized that there was no way I could sit there and on the fly endeavor to sketch even the broad outlines of the house. But I relished the opportunity to simply sit and observe its marvelous pleasing geometries, and all the myriad details of its construction and decoration.

The best I could do, I determined, was to try to focus on a single small detail, try at least to draw that as best I could. And so I stood on the small lawn at the back of the house and regarded a row of carved porch pillars, colorfully painted in Persian-inspired exciting, contrasting glazed tones.

I focused on the decorative finials (if that's the word) at the top of a single column. I penciled freehand its forms, and described the hues -- "blue dot at center surrounded by pumpkin orange," "gold background, dark green figure with light green center," "maize", etc. -- a do-it-myself paint-by-numbers chart.

Mostly I was by myself, as I stood sketching, but occasionally little cloudbursts of tourists or other visitors would come by... and I'd move out of the way both so that they could have their photo ops with the porch pillars as their backdrop. Also I didn't wish anyone - not even a random stranger - to imagine that I was a practiced artist expertly sketching a flawless rendering...

It felt more "plannerly" to me, perhaps, than artistic (at least that's how I could feel more comfortable out "in the field" in a small crowd - no I'm not an artist, just noting observations) -- trying to do a rough schematic...

I returned by the same carriage trail down the lovely hill, enjoying the feel of muscles in my legs - different ones encountered going downhill than up. I felt pleasantly aware of my physique, and quite fit, though it wasn't much of a vigorous workout, and I really must get back to my pilates routine tomorrow...

I got back to the education center, a modestly scaled, classroom-size building set at the edge of a field. Tables had been set together as in a dining room - place settings for a dozen potential participants -- places set with drawing paper, colored pencils, thin long brushes, pastels, and tiny pots of water, for dunking watercolor brushes.

I had the pencil sketch I'd made -- and though its broad outlines registered, and I could read my writing, somehow the complexity of the patterns of color -- I couldn't recall them now, in trying to render them - and my notes seemed wholly inadequate. How could I have forgotten to note the color of the field of that segment?, I puzzled. The answer is, the design is complex, and - was there a "field" -- or was it that I hadn't quite captured the complexity?  Perhaps due to my vantage point -- the finials had been at a distance of several feet, plus considerably overhead...

I thought - okay, I'll redraw my original, and color it in...

And soon realized that that was the wrong tack. I was drawing lines, as in a coloring book, and was about to fill them in. But that's not what Church's Persian colors look like at all! They aren't each delineated with black lines.

So that was an interesting drawerly (well 'writerly' is a word, isn't it?) insight to make... so I abandoned that iteration. But also recalled - as I sat there in the 'Wagon House' of the education center, in the charming company of the young woman who's the education coordinator, and another young woman, and we were listening, as each of us worked and chatted, to a CD of what I think of as "Ken Burns Civil War Music" -- [fill in blanks later... what disc? hornpipe? what instruments?...? all that was missing was the David McCullough voiceover]...

Where was I? Oh right -- my mother. I have a memory - and I recalled it now, as I sat there with my abandoned black-outlined preliminaries (and my mother absolutely disdained cheap mass-market coloring books)... that once in a pre-K "art" session, out in the back garden somewhere on Park Lane in Darien - I had painted (perhaps with 'finger paints,' another medium my mother abhorred) some childish landscape, involving a sun, and perhaps a house or tree.

I remember my mother showing up in that back garden, a neighbor's house I suppose, I don't know the exact circumstances. I was happy to see her, and to show her my painting. Of which she was dismissive. "Since when have you seen a black line around the sun?," she demanded. "Or look at leaves, or a tree -- do you see black lines around them?" Auugh. My memory... though goodness knows, of course, all these years later, I may be - however inadvertently - misremembering, elaborating, or ascribing some frustration on my mother's part (which seemed huge to me at the time) that perhaps she wasn't quite evincing at that moment.

Anyway, after that I abandoned
coloring books
drawing black outlines around objects I was trying to sketch
finger paints

Awww Mom... God knows I have my issues with my mother -- but I can't say that this is one of them.

Still I remembered it this afternoon, with my black-outlined sketch.  I crumpled the draft, embarked on another, and tried - as best I could - to render it more carefully, vivid colors abutting one another.

End of story, sweetheart. My dearest darling Minotaur, good night, sweet dreams - what would I do without you?
xoxo

postcard from the water's edge

***
Message from Belle to her Writerly Friend, 29 November 2011

... I looked up the poems you referred to... I am amazed that you picked out that David had recited the Hopkins - that had gone completely over my head at the performance - I thought he was quoting solely Emerson the whole time, other than invented business with the waitress. I haven't read a lot of Hopkins, but of the little that I have, I have always felt deeply drawn into his rocking, mesmerizing rhythms and sonorities.

***
Good morning darling - and thank you for your eloquent page hit overnight. Yes, you're exactly right - the poem my friend recited, as we stood together on the windswept riverfront, was indeed Pied Beauty.

Very many kisses, I'll catch up with you later, have a wonderful day -

***

Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89)

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

***

'En plein air' writing exercise,
3 December 2011

On the Hudson waterfront. An Amtrak train is stopped at the station, engine car thrumming. It's 2:30 here now - it'll be at Penn in a couple of hours. The horn blows, and the gate clangs. Off it goes, horn blasting, engine chugging. The Romance of the Rails. Bye. Not a minute out the air becomes quiet again, except for somewhere in the near distance, the sound of a helicopter, invisibly hovering, the noise persistent and annoying as a fly and, I daresay, perhaps as unnecessary. I mean, why should a helicopter linger overhead, over the silent river.

For silence, I have to look at the river, and draw calm from its smoothly dappled surface. In the middle of the river, across from where I sit (at a wood picnic table on the rubbled waterfront point - stones and rocks and gravel underfoot, a few twigs, not the colors of nature, but of a postindustrial landscape, the only green at the moment sporadic tufts of very tough weeds, though there is a stand of four trees, right on the water, reminiscent of the columns of a memorial, perhaps on the Potomac.

Still that helicopter annoyingly thrums. (But why should I bother you with it?)

Let me tell you instead about the platinum blazing through cloudy gray, about an old industrial tower, oddly charming to me - like a Tin Man on the waterfront - presiding over its spot on the bank, where he gazes over, perhaps with longing, at the charming, dainty, red-bricked house in the middle of the river, the lighthouse forever out of reach, but forever in his sight, that looks to him like home.

Dearest love, let me pick up my guitar and start plucking strings in a soft strong unbroken line of interwoven pattern and melody and see what I come up with as I just sit here and strum the wood instrument sitting on my lap that serves as accompaniment to whatever I might choose to imagine as I sit here trying not to stop moving my fingers...

Up in the aerie at the end of the day, six o'clock, pitch black outside - or maybe not so much - there's a full moon rising I believe, and D was just out stringing lights on Thumbelina, who - or that, she's a Colorado Spruce - isn't so tiny anymore.

I just stepped out onto the juliet balcony to fact-check. The lights are up. It's a half-moon, high up in the sky.

Darling, how are you? I hope all is well with you, that you've been having an enjoyable time. I had a very nice day myself. I had a wonderful session with you this morning, though it took a while to quiet my overactive mind, focus, get there, be present... which finally I did, much to my relief on more than one level, just quieting that part of myself that chatters away incessantly - is anywhere but where I need her to be, present with you at that instant. But then - it takes a bit, I'm used to it - something grabs hold, gets my attention, and I'm there and focused, and I feel it, and it works. So not instant though, that when I'm in that distracted scattered preliminary state I wonder if or how it ever worked for me, but I give it a bit of time, and eventually it does, as it ever did.

I had a wonderful afternoon. Meeting at Omi didn't happen - it turned out the place had been booked for a private afternoon event. But my writerly acquaintance and I winged it, arranged to meet elsewhere, at the foot of the city's main street, which is right on the waterfront, though you'd never know it, because views of the river are cut off at this crucial spot by both natural (a promontory) and manmade (stairs, a long-ago decision to site a park here) obstacles. Our thought had been to check out the statue of Saint Winifred there...

We met at the appointed hour, and were immediately thwarted from our Plan B -- shooed away by a parks crew setting up fireworks for the grand finale of this evening's Winter Walk. But I was able to point out the statue of Winifred to my friend, and we'll commune with her another day...

Anyway -- dearest, I'm fading fast, very tired -- to make a long story short, I had a lovely time with my writerly friend. She told me of her great affection for Gerard Manley Hopkins (she'd brought along a worn Penguin paperback of his poetry) and without consulting the volume even once, recited to me, his poem --- oh dearest, I am fading, the title escapes me. But I said - oh yes, I've read that poem, and I think I mentioned it in my blog once.

Then she and I strolled to another part of the waterfront, also parkland, this area at grade (as opposed to up on a rise), with scattered benches and picnic tables. Since we couldn't write about Winifred, we decided maybe we'd write about, perhaps, the lighthouse in the middle of the river here - or - so as not to be so strict about it - whatever else might catch our fancy. And so we did. It's a slightly jagged waterfront at this spot, which worked nicely for us. She sat at a bench or table on one little fractal point, I skirted upland around and back down and parked myself at a picnic table at another.

Afterward, we walked, we talked, we visited a lovely French cafe, where I had one of the most delicious lattes - flavorful, strong, not overly milky - and we split an almond croissant, and we talked some more, and I told her about you, and about 1.0, and this blog, and how I came to Winifred, or to Emily Dickinson for that matter (which I'm not quite sure the origins). And I felt very very happy to have a very very - well it was just 'very'

the cafe was warm & cozy
the coffee delicious
it was really great
and you know what? - there was an added advantage
that it was in person
a very, very nice refreshing change for me
with rich, beautiful textures

many kisses my love
sweet dreams you, this Saturday night

Hello darling, nothing writerly tonight dearest, just very many kisses, and a glass of delicious ice-filled pink wine. Won't you join me? Oh please do. I'm tired this evening, but in a nice way. Where did the day go? The days seem to go by so much quicker now that it gets dark before five. Not that my days were so action-packed in warm-weather months, but I seem to get less done these days. Ah, but anyway. So I didn't manage a session with you - but I have the impression that you did (so glad one of us did, sweetheart, happy for you!). Managed a walk with weights, along the empty roads around here, but didn't get in a workout. Ah, this impromptu confessional keeps me honest anyway, darling...

It turned out to be a day of sensory and visually delightful treats. This morning I opened the back door to let the cats in or out (it hardly matters which) and found a box on the porch. My new undergarments had arrived. Can I tell you that I am 52 years old -- and I am beholding, on the desk beside me, my very first black lace bra and black silky panties? These are by far the sexiest items of underwear I've ever owned. And not that I ever viewed myself as such an ascetic. But I guess eroticism didn't have high billing in my life for the longest while -- til - well, these days. As erotic as these items are, to me anyway - the black lace bra is threaded with a gold design, reminding me of expensive chocolate pleated papers in which come nestled exquisite confections, the ones with coded swirls on top

(oh darling that deserves a coded swirl of my own to give -- come here you)

I tried the undergarments on -- straps adjusted, the bra fits beautifully, as do the panties. I think I look alright! I would love to know what you think. Put it this way -- I think they would look wonderful under my black wool coat, the one with the faux-fur collar...

Actually, darling, as much fun as it is to have unusually gorgeous underwear, I bought it simply because I wish to look & feel as attractive as possible next Saturday evening. I have a beautiful outfit, and new bag & shoes, not to mention black opaque pantyhose... of course I wished just the right undergarments, to complete the effect - at least in my own mind.

Darling, there was a bit more consumerism this afternoon, this in the tabletop department...

Ah, but before I get to that - it's six - let me run downstairs and put the amazingly fragrant garam masala-seasoned chicken drumsticks on 'warm', and turn off the flame under the basmati rice. I can't tell you how heavenly it smells up here - those wondrously warm exotic spices wafting up. I feel like a cat smiling, with cream. Or I think of a beautiful photograph I saw the other day, of Wisława Szymborska, seated with an elegant teacup, and a lit cigarette, her eyes closed, beatifically beaming... [Oh let me see if I can find that photo, it's really great - I think it's in the current NYRB that arrived in the mail the other day... yes I'm sure it is, it's an article by Charles Simic, and there's another one in there, an appreciation of a Vermeer exhibit, by Julian Bell - he writes exquisitely - they both do]

Ah, so here you have it my love - all in one take - my new lingerie, Wisława inhaling amazing perfume (perhaps - if she were here - the basmati & cinnamon-cardamom-coriander aroma floating upstairs), the pink roses I bought the other day... and a glimpse of a dinner plate... one of eight I purchased today, at two dollars apiece, at an incredible sample sale in town. Isn't the pattern divine? Perhaps you can't see it. Well it is divine, this elaborate gilt embossed lovely lavendery fractally complex stylized floral design... I would love to give a dinner party, buffet style, just now, and serve up wonderful portions of - oh whatever are the wonderful things I know how to make - on these dishes.

Dearest love, I love you truly, madly, deeply. Not at the moment so much, with other fragrances competing, but in the wee hours, when I wake late at night in darkness, and the house is all silent... I think of you, wrap my arms around a pillow, and kiss you, inhale you, very very very mocno...

xoxo

Hello darling, welcome to my little writing lab. It's nothing like a cold, steel-tabled lab at all, where my musings, experimentations, jottings, observations, conjurings take place. No, here it's not, from my point of view, bleached antiseptic portals and rectangles - it's a lozenge of light cast by the silk apricot-shade of my desk lamp; the rosy hues of my icefilled glass; the mysterious beet-colored hearts of my patterned desk blotter; my fingers tapping on keys, roses blooming, as I sit here huddled (not unlike a Vermeer of a man intently contemplating a map), contemplating - leaning into it - the screen where I see letters appear as my fingers take steno from my halting mind giving dictation. Full stop.

***
I've had a bit of a mental challenge today, that I found myself thinking about as I sat down to write to you. A writerly acquaintance of mine, a friend of hers perhaps, and I plan to meet this weekend on the grounds and cafe of the local international arts colony (Occupy Omi! - no, not really, but that's funny - I don't believe there are any artists in residence there this time of year, so we will visit instead).

I've greatly enjoyed the all-too-occasional Olana-sponsored en plein air writing sessions, led with great warmth, intelligence, and creative inspiration by Kathe Izzo.

So my friend and I are trying to recreate something of that experience for ourselves. I myself dread showing up and us possibly a tad awkwardly greeting one another and saying - as though it's a front-lawn game of touch-football (I imagine a grainy film of the Kennedys in Hyannis tossing a ball around, Jackie, on the porch, observing from the sidelines) - okay let's go out into the Fields and toss some words around!

Oh, ugh! Of course, neither my writerly friend nor I have any such desire.

Still, we have no "leader" - in the form of a Kathe - to take charge and simply issue us a theme to write about, send us outdoors, and come collect us if need be, if we're not back after twenty or thirty minutes.

I have a "creative writing" library book on my desk that Kathe had recommended, but I'm not finding it useful for this coming weekend...

Oh - because the problem is: let's try to come up with a writerly directive for ourselves, so that when we send ourselves out into the Fields (that's how the local international arts colony refers to its vast, sculpture-scattered property, with a Dickinsonianly capitalized "F") we'll have some 'hook' that we can start in on. So that it's not just me (picturing me) standing in a vast field going - oh God, I'm so tired, what am I going to write about, it's so uncomfortable standing, it's chilly, good thing I wore that extra cashmere layer beneath my sweater, blah blah blah)

So I started thinking & musing, & searching for ideas online

Stand at a tree and write, then stand back two feet and write again, and another two feet,  etc., etc.
[not a bad idea, though I picture Alexander Hamilton taking backward paces with a pistol at dawn]

or, model your writing on Wallace Stevens' Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird;

or, be like Thoreau

but I'm nothing like Thoreau!, not dispassionate as him - yes, I do find him dispassionate - quite analytically almost - am I being unfair? - linking his personal facticity with naturalistic observations of Nature - be positive!, admonishes one of the writing exercises - such "plus" plus "plus" to equal "PLUS."

Oh - that's not me at all! I'm not a 'nature writer' in that sense. Although I like what I just wrote -- and 1.0 found it curious that I had evinced some sort of sensitivity towards numbers - which ordinarily I don't -

but yeah, maybe that's why I don't find Thoreau so personally inspirational
I like mixed formulas, that include pluses & minuses -- the minuses being Dickinson's "truth - told slant" -

that "slant" is almost algebraic, or mathematical in nature -- I can see that
and I was terrible at algebra, back in middle school
but now I feel sort of, in coded metaphoric fashion, drawn to it
(ever so lightly, darling -- )

maybe that's what bothered me about a poem I'd read
posted by a local poet the other day
it was way too + + +
(that is, plus plus plus) for my taste
way too direct

if she'd presented it in a writing circle -
would I have voiced my objection? I doubt it.
Which is always a problem with such a circle.

***
Anyway -- dearest love, I hope you are well & happy, wherever you are, and I have reason in my mind to triangulate, that is, to think of a third who I still think of

Full stop.

***
And so it came to me, in trying to come up with a writerly charge for ourselves, Wild Women set loose in the beautifully sculpted, landscaped fields...

I haven't come up with the actual directive yet, but just note (it came to me as I was sitting here) the resonances between these two artists, mirrored (or negative) correspondences between their lyrics...

***
But before that -- many kisses my love, whatever time, time-zone or place you're in -- xoxo

***

#441, by Emily Dickinson, c. 1862

This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me -
The simple News that Nature told -
With tender Majesty

Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see --
For love of Her - Sweet - countrymen -
Judge tenderly of Me

***

"If I Wrote You," by Dar Williams

I never thought you were the letter writing type
so now I see the words you chose the way you write
so I started to write back about the trees in the snow
and I saw a bird, couldn't say what it was but I thought you'd know
you always surprised me

And if I wrote You
If I wrote You
You would know me
and you would not write me again...

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P.S. Editing this post a bit this morning, and was delighted to find your eloquent page hit, dearest, that summed things up exactly -- "alice in wonderland perspectives" -- I'm not consciously aware, but yes, that's it -- and the image too, in connection with that, that speaks to mirrored (or negative) correspondences...

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From a previous post...

Another instance of Alice-in-Wonderland-like perspective shifting occurred for me upon entering the crystal-palace conservatory. There, in its large central space lies an enormous still pool. The surface of the water is smooth and black and it's gorgeously interplanted from below the mirror surface of water up to domed sky with a jungle of foliage and flowers. I stood and regarded it, and it reminded me of my own houseplants arranged on a tiered stand and on the floor in a corner beneath a small fountain hung on the wall, in what we grandly refer to as the solarium. Standing in the truly grand-scaled conservatory I simultaneously imagined that I was standing at greatly reduced size on the ledge of my wall fountain amidst my collection of tropical plants.