Hello darling, just a quick post for tonight, I try to imagine where you are, and imagine something having to do with a baptism for a new Catholic baby, perhaps there's a compelling family event, I can only imagine, with inlaws, new family members, you're only just starting to know. I'm here, frankly not in the best mood - my mood's gone south. Stopped by the supermarket for the umpteenth time this week (only once a day, I'm not *that* bad) - to of course, no avail. Plus, overnight in my wee-hour wakefulness, I'd concocted what seemed (in my groggy state) a semi-plausible scenario where I might ask the woman in produce if she remembers the encounter (when she was bagger, and set us straight as to why the market was so crowded), and perhaps even - now these are my imaginings! - her playing cupid - if I gave her my tiny envelope with the faux-E.D. stamp (I like that touch myself, I find it magical) - and if he comes into the market so often that she's like "yeah he's in here all the time" - I might ask her to give the tiny envelope to him.

Darling - one would suppose - after all this crazy imagineering in my daily life - that I might have a novel in me - but I don't - these machinations are it.

But I can easily picture - if I should ask her at all - her face darkening, glowering, becoming suspicious - and then where am I?

So completely ridiculous, don't I know it. In my imaginings I picture asking the produce lady - you won't give it to the wrong guy will you - by accident? Because even now, days later, what he looks like exactly, is fading from my memory.

I walked down & up Warren Street this afternoon and at one point across the street was a bearded gentleman, darkhaired --- but heavierset, not the guy.

Darling - why am I bothering you with all this?

I'm just feeling so frustrated on so many levels, I can hardly even say. Such as at lunch --- D & I sat down to plates of warmed drumsticks, alongside scoops of taboulleh salad & couscous salad. And on PBS was a breathless (but okay) documentary about some kind of "landscape of the mind" - I didn't quite catch the location, American Southwest someplace -- buildings & dwellings that had been sited, miles apart, according to the trajectories of the risings & settings of the sun... and other ones, along other distinct lines... of the moon. Except that these were prehistoric, before the advent of all sorts of things -- such as blueprints, planning, and recording mapped visions on paper... And yet here they were, these artifacts, astronomically precise, built in accordance to a shared otherwise unrecorded but fervently held shared vision of its creators. Because, at the time of its construction, the composition formed on the vast landscape could only be beheld in the mind - before the advent of airplanes, and of aerial views.

I think of all the incredible miraculous creations & wonderments that have been built - such as this one, which is miraculous, but not (as far as I know) so famous, not one of the "Seven Wonders of the World"

and here we are in supposedly the greatest nation on earth
(and I personally) in one of the most amazingly beautiful regions God could ever have imagined, painted and bestowed upon us
and the best we can do --- 20/early 21st century hominids - is to pave tens of thousands of acres over in the name of a bunch of, one bunker here, another there, big box stores?

When there is the Chartres Cathedral, for example? - exquisite, complex construction, achieved with far simpler technology, & no bulldozing machinery -
and other such structures built according to perceived & imagined connections & logics?

So I don't want to hear/read about 'singularity'
the machine-mind is here already - don't some of us who should know better - get it already?

but hey, I'm not of the left-brain world spreading dominating sort
I'm the other one - and not because I'm female
who notices - oh I don't know what I notice

that I should go downstairs and join
an evening already in progress

oh - I'll be okay darling -
you too - have a wonderful evening

Hi darling, I'm here, wondering how you are, where you are, I imagine - based on scant nothings - that you might be home, which I well understand, my best regards... truly - what's for dinner?

I'm beat at the moment. No workout or session; instead I gave the place a once-over, cleaned the baths, vacuumed upstairs & down - downstairs just now, the solarium, with KZE pleasantly (as always) playing -- and so I was vacuuming, dancing to songs, sipping pink wine, thinking of you. And I suppose the dancing was my workout. They played some song - I can't even name the style of it - it was all drums & bongoes & a sultry dance beat - and I imagined Catherine Zeta-Jones doing an awesome job of it, with her physique and moves-- at that point I was in the kitchen with the vacuum cleaner, and so I did my best - no witnesses! - grooved on the beat right there on the dance floor. Not the right outfit - no leotard or shoes - but I look alright in my jeans - & have a feeling that in 2012 I'll be buying a size smaller. I need a belt with my current ones. But my belt doesn't work very well. It's a cheapie that came with a pair. And the node slips out of the tiny notch around my waist - resulting in - once or twice in public already - a wardrobe malfunction. As though I'd forgotten to fasten my belt...

It is an amazingly mild sunny day - I'm so happy for it. Gwynnie & Claire are giddy happy BFF's again. I miss Miss P - I feel very bad for her short unhappy life - though I know that she found great, and many, moments of joy with us.

But Gwynnie & Claire are far happier without her. To them, Miss P was a source of stress.

And it is nice to be in a de-stressed house -- maybe that's why I did so much cleaning today - New Year's - turn a fresh page

And I had the car for a bit and went to the supermarket, as per usual for this week. Yes - it seems I have a nutty agenda.

My ShopR**e preparedness kit... shopping card? check. Cash? check. Shopping list? check. Tiny sealed envelope, just in case? check... (oh yeah, it was a bit of an art project this morning... the drawing isn't my own, it's a card I've saved for several years now, that came in the mail, and I don't remember the source... but there it was, and so I plucked it down... for this Epiphany Valentine...)

dearest, many kisses
without being all Nevada or Kansas about it
(or second grade - with thirty valentines, one for each person in the class!)
this one is for you
xoxo
sweet dreams - many kisses

open mic

Dearest love, wondering where you've been all day, are you having a bonne aventure - in the sense of adventure? I'm missing you, perusing the web in desultory fashion, checking out the site for a club in town, that sounds quite exciting - Steve Earle will be there Sunday night. I won't go, but I've had it in the back of my mind for a while that if John Gorka ever comes to town I'd go see him (I Think of You). I'm perusing their menu - really nice, local farm produce and meats, done up via the memories & imaginings of a chef who hails from down South. I would love to spend an evening at that club with you sometime. I see too that they offer classes in various forms of dance - swing, belly, tango. Tango sounds appealing to me, though I don't have the outfit or shoes. There's also an "Open Mic" night, every Tuesday night, "a chance for writers and performers to hone your skills, meet other artists, and try out new material on the big stage at Helsinki."

I can't picture myself there, not really, but readily imagine E.D. - though reclusive, a performance artist all the way - taking the stage. Wearing her trim long white dress, hair pulled back in a bun, she slips from behind the velvet curtain. She stands at the mic, taps it (it reassuringly screeches & reverberates), adjusts the height. She places her hands behind her, and regards the audience. They applauded when she came out on stage - self-possessedly brisk & diminutive as a sparrow - and now, done with clapping and last throat-clearing coughs, they look up at the stage expectantly at her.

(If anyone's expecting, from E.D., a Barbra Streisand-type presence to warmly & sultrily greet the audience and purr into the mic, wow, I don't get out much, intoning each syllable and then launching into a gorgeously sung rendition of - well, to be cute I want to type, 'Yellow Rose of Texas,' - but to be honest - as much as a cliche goes that E.D.'s verses can each be sung to that tune - I don't actually know offhand how it goes...

I'll have to google it, and listen to a clip - and I know that I'll be able to - and that was a frustrating thought I had today, in all of my perambulations - that I can access so very very much on the web, simply by typing, going into a search engine....

but I can never find you
or 1.0
or if I stop by the supermarket at a random hour I cannot meet
again a handsome stranger
or even easily gain a half-dozen cans of black beans, which weren't out yet for the 'can-can' sale

all these impossible connections - yet you connect with me
that is - you hear me tap the mic
actually - my mic - mostly I imagine it's off
I mean, I know it isn't - that it's on -
but I'm certainly not actively standing on a stage at a club asking -
'can you hear me now?')

and she starts... "I'm nobody - who are you - are you nobody too"
and behind her Barbra Streisand creeps up, not upstaging her, but more showing her the way -- crooning "I'm in the Mood for Love."



***
sweetheart, this post needs work - it's just a sketch -
but I need to go -
oh I wish you were at the door to the woods
xoxo

Hellish day, the facts of it, though it's over now - don't worry, things are okay - and D and I in our respective ways managed to do what needed to be done.

I was still fast asleep, but D started his day encountering in the kitchen evidence that a rat or rats had been marauding under the kitchen sink, trying unsuccessfully to eat through a thick plastic bin containing dry cat food, having better luck getting into a bag of organic potting soil. I hadn't blogged about this – it was just too revolting at the time - but one day last week I glanced out the kitchen window at the bird feeders - and was horrified to see two brown rats - no, not squirrels - rats, with their unmistakable skinny tails and rat faces - devouring sunflower seed from the hanging feeder. A truly surreal scene - me staring at them in disbelief, and they noticing me and at first insolently disregarding me until I rapped the window and they scurried down the skinny metal pole... at the time D said - scary that they could climb the pole in the first place - yes, it was, they seemed to have had no problem....

Our next door neighbor has off & on had a problem with rats, and enlisted D's help in setting baited traps, which resolved it. Another neighbor has recently been redoing an outbuilding on his property. I wonder if that may have disturbed a colony, and sent some over here. In any event, D has gone into the basement since with neighbor's leftover traps, to try to address our problem.

I'm horrified, but slightly less so since we’re in a semirural area. If I were still in Brooklyn - I'd be beside myself with disgust and panic. Although, come to think of it, I did once live in a studio apartment in Boerum Hill - that turned out to have a rat problem - to think that I had actually cohabited without my knowing - well, good thing I didn't know, I might have run out naked in the street had I confronted one - no wonder each of the neighbors in that building had cats.

***
Disaster of the Day #2 (there were three today) - D discovered, on so far the very coldest day of the season, something like 4 degrees in Albany at dawn - that the motor of the pellet stove in the solarium, that nominally heats most of the downstairs, had given out once & for all. (All my tropical plants!!) He's replaced the motor, quite expensively, a couple of times in the past several years, and it keeps burning out, and he can usually manage a bandaid fix (though timeconsuming for him) to give it more life - but today D had finally had it, it wasn't worth his time to futz with it, it was too frigid out - he ran out to the fireplace-supply store that blessedly was already open in the eight o'clock hour. D returned triumphantly with a new motor (but $250 lighter), noting that he had been convinced that the previous motors had an inherent design flaw - essentially burning themselves up - since this new one came with some sort of "heat protection shield."

***
The third of "bad things come in threes..."

We knew Penelope (the cat) has been ailing, something's been bothering her for a while now. We let it go - for too long as it turned out. At first it was just little things... she wasn't cleaning herself properly... she drooled... she was just about glued to being by the pellet stove for warmth... occasionally she'd squawk at her food and leap away from it. I figured she might have an abscessed tooth, perhaps -- no small thing, think how painful that is for us -- but she'd eat... and then the last couple of weeks too it was the holiday season, with its distractions - not that we were so distracted by the holidays, but I can't say that I was all that focused on Penelope. I figured - it's cold - let her hang out by the stove.

I don't know. I was neglectful, I think - I know - looking back on it. We should have brought her in way sooner.

She took a turn for the way worse the last couple of days, resting deep in a comfy corner of a bedroom closet. But D noticed that her breathing was labored, her discharge darker...

***
I took her across the river to the vet, sat for an hour in a waiting room filled with miscellaneous owners and their pets - chocolate labs, a golden lab, a Chihuahua, a German shepherd, and two or three cats, including Penelope, squawking plaintively the whole time.

Eventually Penelope's name was called and I took her into an examining room. The vet came in (it's such a nice practice by the way, I really like both vets there, and all their staff). I described Penelope's symptoms as best I could, how she's been deteriorating over the past several weeks. The vet took notes, palpated her, took her temperature. Not good.

Bottom line is - I ended up, after a few minutes of discussion and some gingerly back & forth as to possible options, saying to him very firmly, "Doctor - I've made my decision. If the prognosis is poor - I would prefer that she be put down." And so the vet and his assistant left the room to coordinate a bit of legal paperwork, and I remained in the examination room with poor mangy Penelope who's very trusting of me, and having to say goodbye to her. The vet & assistant came back in, I signed where I needed to sign, and the vet invited me to stay for the injection - "would we be so lucky to go out this way," as he put it - "indeed" was my response.

No, I left, and called D from the freezing hilltop parking drive and told him the news - that I had made the executive decision...

I feel bad for Penelope. I feel a little guilty that we/I didn't attend to her ailments, bring her to the vet sooner. Her condition was much more severe than I had realized - but perhaps I should have realized. For example -- she had virtually no teeth left. Now that seems like something shocking & radical that one might have noticed - that perhaps one of us might have noticed... but it's not as though Penelope ever let us examine her so closely, and we respected her space...

Terrible. Enlarged kidney? As the vet discovered, palpating. No, I can't blame myself for not having noticed that. Her weight loss - yes, I had noticed - but too late.

We don't even know what her ailment was -- clearly it was a systemic bodily failure - it would have taken costly tests to determine the cause or causes. The vet mentioned the word "cancer" as a possibility.

Anyway, so that's that. No more Miss P. I felt strange at the vets. I saw more than one tearful pet owner arrive with a beloved pet about to be put down. I mentioned to D later – that it seemed like an awful lot (compared to what I’ve seen other times before) were there to meet their end today - "Wednesday is their 'procedures' day," D said. Oh - so that explains it. But the demise of Miss P was a surprise to everyone - me, and vet clinic alike.

I feel sad, but in a frozen, philosophical kind of way. At the vets I felt that I was coming across almost as callous - I mean, I didn't feel callous, or maybe I did. The vet was trying to gauge me, make sure that I was okay with the decision I was making. I wasn't being flip, not in the slightest, when I said - "look, I found her in a parking lot a couple of years ago - easy come, easy go."

I didn't pay the extra $30 to get her ashes...

I figure that money, one day, can go towards a new kitten - or abandoned older cat - that needs a home, and finds quite a very happy cat-friendly one here with us.

So - poor Miss P. She had a hard life. The vet's assistant asked me - how old was she? And I said - I have no idea - I'd found her in a parking lot.

So she had a prehistory.
And a brief time with us, that wasn't so smooth - the dynamics with the other cats didn't work smoothly -

and so it's very quiet up here in the aerie right now
Gwynnie & Claire are hanging out by me
snoozing, one on a blanket by my desk
the other on the wide stair railing

It's going to be just us for the time being now
It's a good group - what we all can handle

Seventeen degrees in Hudson, feels like 11. Outside wind chimes clang ferociously, and on my walk by the creek and woods, trees audibly groaned, flat, atonal, arhythmic creaking, mysterious (though less sentient) as whale song, or music I've heard ice floes make, on the Hudson once, at Cold Spring, as the solid river heaved and massed, with majestic, orchestral, muffled, shuddering thuds and moans, against the edge.

Ah, but here in the aerie, darling, all is 'toastie-woastie,' thermostat turned up, baseboards reassuringly creaking & clicking as heat rises. There's an aroma of roasting chicken, and there's a pan of small beets in the oven too (beets from last fall's CSA), and a couple of hefty russets. In a few minutes I'll go down and put in the pan of root vegetables, chunked and orange - opposite of ice floes, these cozy bites of winter squash, sweet potato, and carrot - I won't be sticking around to listen but as they caramelize and soften in the oven, perhaps they'll softly sizzle.

The pellet stove in the solarium cranks away reliably, like Mike Mulligan's steam engine, keeping the zoo of tropical plants alive. I like the two massive plants I scored yesterday - variegated something or other - cast-iron plants with very dark green, and also bright magenta, leaves. Maybe not my favorite, such almost tawdry coloration in foliage, but the two healthy specimens look very striking in large handsome ceramic pots I already owned, that just needed filling...

Sweetheart, I am utterly projecting & imagining here - perhaps! - but I am so happy for you that wherever you are you are having a fine time, at moments to yourself - and thinking of me - as I, in just that way, think of you.

I took a break myself today, simply because it didn't go so well yesterday, despite all avail... so let my 'demand' build - also give my slightly sore, carpal-tunnel-threatened forearm a rest - never an issue if things go, as customary, readily enough, but if it doesn't, and I keep pursuing the elusive goal that at some point just doesn't happen - well then.

So I sublimated, and also it was just so cold out, that I spent a very enjoyable few hours in the kitchen this morning, putting together tonight's dinner, and also making - from scratch - a chocolate-hazelnut cake. Which came out great (not that I've tasted it yet), and smells divine. It looks like a big round brownie - actually that's its aroma too. Only it's made with bittersweet chocolate, and my stash of hazelnuts from Sahadi's that I toasted in the oven, before grinding them with a bit of 'all-purpose' to create a nutty flour. This will be dessert, with a spoon of vanilla whipped cream, and strawberries.

Sweetheart, those chimes are still clanging. The chicken smells awesome. Be right back - running down to put orange veg in oven. Okay, I'm back (not a minute later). I have to be quick because Gwynnie & Claire have suddenly taken a shining to parking themselves - taking over - my desk and chair.

And that's it sweetheart, for now, today's little snapshot. Of the good-looking guy I spied yesterday, and wrote up in my way, I decided to write a little note, jotting down my blog address & date of the post. In my imaginings I picture that perhaps if I see him in the not-too-distant future, perhaps I might be bold enough to simply say to him along the lines of, "hi, excuse me, you'll think me incredibly forward, but - here - if you get a chance, read this..."

Of course if I see him next time (if there is a next time) - say, next April or June -- well, that won't work will it. It would be just plain downright bizarre. It really only works if it's soon --- say, at the advent of that 'can-can' sale!

I did stop by the market briefly today - we were out of - oh let's see - maple syrup...

Many kisses, sweetheart
xoxo
love you

My dearest, up in the aerie, sipping icefilled pink wine; staunching drop of blood from side of my right thumb, the skin in that spot gets very dry in cold weather months, every year; the baseboard heaters are ticking, I've just turned down the thermostat; it's supposed to drop tonight, be in the teens & twenties the next couple of days, so D's been battening down the hatches, climbing a ladder to put up the storm windows, insulating my bedroom windows with weatherstripping. I stopped at a big box store today and came away with two enormous tropical plants, for three dollars apiece, added now to the jungly collection in the solarium.

I'm feeling a little - I don't know, frustrated on one level, sheepish on another, schoolgirlish on yet another. After the pit stop for potted plants, I went to the supermarket to do some food shopping. Mostly I go around the perimeter and look for bright yellow stickers which mean that an item has been marked down. I get quite a bit of my produce that way, plus chicken, fish -- I do great, and it takes a lot of thinking right out of it, going right for the bargains, that need nothing more than to be gotten to fairly quickly - no problem here, since I cook most of the meals.

Anyway, it was super-crowded at the market, unusually so. I like that supermarket, it's warmer, cozier somehow, than this sterile other one up the road (that's also pricier, and I don't believe it's any better). I don't know, this market has more of a tri-state feel to me, a little gritty, nice mix of products, and of people, both shop staff and clientele - and they aren't averse to marking things down - how nice is that?

So it was very crowded, and I found a place at the end of the least-long seeming line, and I noticed this really good looking guy, strolling around with his handheld basket, perusing the shelves. At the moment I spied him now he was considering a potato chip display, only one corner of what is pretty nearly an entire aisle of chips of various sorts.

Actually, I'd noticed him earlier in the market, at a couple of different split seconds, once in the produce area, another instant in some interior aisle, but I needed the next one over, to get golden raisins, and oatmeal...

I'm going on & on, I don't mean to. It's just that his appearance was unusually appealing to me, and you have to understand - the market was supercrowded --- with mostly a parade - I hate to say it - of grotesques - the poor of all ages, many obese, deformed from lifespans, if not generations, of poor nutrition. I feel for them on some level - I myself have battled weight gain, and had to teach myself how to eat in a proper nutritional way, and I don't know that I even have it entirely down yet.

The area where I live is very strange, with many very poor people. And also some very rich, who don't necessarily shop at this market, probably import most of their foodstuffs from the City, I imagine, or buy it (in season) from local farms & stands.

Anyway! This guy was seriously good-looking to me, and stood out to this Alice as a man of around my age, with a nice look about him - healthy, intelligent - rugged, casual, no attitude, nice expression on his bearded face, relaxed air. As I stood on line, the market was so crowded I just let myself stare after him, as he perused those chips, wandered a little more, and eventually found a line to stand in - an express line, he had only one small basket - and I turned away (as I did anyway from time to time, I mean I wasn't staring-staring) - and I ruefully hoped somehow that in the sorting out of who-comes-into-which-checkout-lane - much as at a toll plaza - he might come into mine

and there was a break in the clouds - or the lines - and he did - suddenly, amazingly, he was behind me, unloading his basket of - I could see now - largely organic products. Utz Organic chips of some sort (potato? corn? didn't register on me). A scruffy bunch of organic scallions. A paper-wrapped slender bundle of fish - oh my, I thought, he actually orders fish from the guy behind the counter (I just pick up the prewrapped yellow-stickered packages).

So if I have a resolution - New Years or not - it's to try to be a little more outgoing - and so he & I started chatting... I don't even recall really who first... just little exchanges... oh my - so crowded today! he exclaimed. Yes - why is that? We speculated - people acting on New Year’s resolutions perhaps? stocking up for the impending cold snap? And the bagger said -- people have gotten their Social Security checks today. Oh - so that's it -- ahhh. And in the midst of that - reminding me only now as I type of a childhood magic trick, when some adult male would reach over to somehow procure a quarter or nickel from behind my ear (ah! were making money so easy!) -- this super good-looking to me gentleman leans down and picks up a couple of coins that -

had I dropped them? It was the point in the transaction that I'd opened my wallet - had I dropped a couple of coins, loose in the billfold? If I had - I wasn't aware of it. And suddenly there I am like Jean Arthur to - oh what's his name? - Joel McCrea -- why, I dropped those - I had no idea - thank you - not just a penny?

because - too - he then put a dime in my hand.

The most imbued eleven cents ever!
At least now --- sweetheart

Ah, and there was - in all of that less than 60 seconds - banter about the upcoming "Can-Can" (canned goods) sale, that starts Thursday -- he's the one who mentioned that, as a possible theorem for why the market was so congested - to which I with less-than-Jean-Arthurly wit responded, in broken English, "my breath is baited." To which, not surprisingly, that verbal ping-pong sailed off the end, did not respond.

Damn! Why couldn't I have made some clever retort about the advent of the Can-Can sale, coinciding with the Epiphany - gifts of the Magi?

Anyway darling... you get my drift. The guy looked really good, really nice. Sort of like who I had in mind when I once started writing a novel that went nowhere, involving a fictionalized Hudson River estate turned botanic garden, featuring the main gardener (to protagonist Claudia) named Jake --

So sweetheart, I'm just going on & on... but so many of these impressions occurred within split seconds - and the moment that he & I were on line together. When my transaction was done, I said to him, California-style, "have a good one."

I left the market, singing under my breath, the Bob Schneider song, "Wicked Witch of Cincinnati, took out her old broomstick..."

I was so happy for that encounter.

I went to my car and on the drive back - was at once elated, and resigned - that I have never seen that guy before (in the market of grotesques) and am unlikely to again

Damn! Should I have asked him out for coffee? What if I had?

Instantly the bubble would have burst - of course

So how are these things done - ?

And where would we have gone - where would I have suggested - should I have had the nerve to ask him out in such a fashion? (And now looking back on it, I swear I just might have, except for the bagger, a smart, world-weary, exhausted-looking woman who usually works in produce -- if I was going to make a complete fool of myself - be rejected - I didn't wish a witness I might see again, by the lettuces & carrots.)

And that's it darling. Did you really need to hear this story? Perhaps not. But - oh, but. I haven't seen you in over a year, and have no real hope to. I haven't seen 1.0 in 35 years. What am I supposed to do?

I managed a workout towards the end of the day.

Maybe I should go to the supermarket a little more often. That guy - he didn't buy very much. It was a very bachelorly basket - I'd say what he bought is enough for one, for a day or two, tops. That single bag of Utz Organic chips -- for a guy like him?

***
So you've brought me to this Dunkin Donuts. Do they have organic coffee?
I have no idea. I haven't set foot in a Dunkin Donuts in decades. Maybe I should have taken you to the Muddy Cup.
The Muddy Cup is no more.
Oh.
Maybe I should have asked you to the fancy new Cafe Perch - but seems a bit fancy, after the supermarket
plus they have only two wobbly stools in that front-window bakery

Oh okay - so we go to Dunkin Donuts
so - what do you do [I write]
what kind of writing do you do [poetic... letters... love letters]

oh kiss me you fool - oh somebody vastly appealing to me - please do...

yours, Belle

My dearest afflicted one - I am puzzling over "paralytic," such a very strong word - I wonder what you mean by it - I mean I know perfectly well the incredible & completely understandable constraints & obligations & previous engagements and all the rest that you're under. And your heart is there, and here too - both - as I imagine. I hope this aromatherapy works, sweetheart. I don't know, it helps for me. Yes, I suppose I'm paralytic too. If I weren't I'd figure out some other way out of the situation I'm in - why am I so stuck? I used to be a go-getter. Well, of course getting older takes a lot out of one, if things haven't worked out. When I was young & had all that energy, I didn't know better, could take the knocks & setbacks, and adjust course. Now it's a lot harder. I don't know darling, for now anyway, I'm content if we can just be a comfort & source of surprise & joy for each other - that's all I could truly expect. I don't mean to sound like a martyr about it either - it's just this strange reality, strange circumstance we find ourselves in - and I'm so glad for that little, little bit. And the thought of you thinking of me, and me thinking of you -- what a gift.

Anyway, perhaps this is a newfangled form - possibly "a dangerous method" of newfangled psychotherapy - 21st century, nonpharmaceutical do-it-yourself version - what do you think? I like that idea. We've creatively found our way to at least some oasis, some space, however circumscribed - but it's ours - that gives us a moment of freedom.

Sorry darling, I don't mean to wax so heavy & theoretical. I suppose I'm thinking along these themes partly because I just came back from a jaunt to Rhinebeck, where I caught A Dangerous Method, a fictionalized account of a triangle (of sorts) formed between Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and a brilliant but psychically damaged woman who comes under Jung's care, and confronts the source of her wounded spirit with the new "talking cure."

Sweetheart, enough of talking cures, I just wish to kiss you. I had a nice afternoon, a glorious springlike day, 52 degrees read the bank clock on the Main Street in Rhinebeck. I didn't start out the New Year with healthful resolutions - no walk or workout today - but I did manage the third (oh dearest - paralysis there, but only of the most blissful sort, and alas for just a moment - oh but that moment will do - to remind me that I'm alive - so much better than "pinching" one's self).

I took myself out to lunch at a kind of roadside diner outside Rhinebeck, very nice place. I had a half-price certificate, and only when I arrived there I realized I'd eaten there once before, several years ago, perhaps it was under different ownership then. Anyway, sweet place, very simple, unpretentious dining room - a clean, open, well-lighted space - truly in about the middle of nowhere - but the room was full of diners (which is to say, maybe 6 or 8 tables, mostly families with children of various ages). I craved a burger & fries, but managed to resist, partly for math reasons - I wouldn't hit $20 with that. So I ordered a risotto, seasoned with pork belly, leeks, and pumpkin. Quite delicious - though I would have enjoyed it better with a glass of wine. But this place doesn't have a wine & beer license. Lovely place, but a bit of a disconnect, serving well-prepared food made with, when possible, seasonal local ingredients -- such fare - it's not a greasy spoon - demands a delicious alcoholic libation - seems to me! Ah, well. They serve dinner too, and sophisticated, multi-course menus for special holidays (New Years, St. Valentines Day) - I wonder if one can bring one's own wine or champagne on such evenings - I mean truly, they're quite gourmet.

After lunch I drove into Rhinebeck, with nearly an hour til the movie, so I drove a couple of miles further west to the river, parked the car at the Rhinecliff Amtrak station, and took in views of the river and the blue Shawangunks beyond, as best I could past an obscuring conspiracy of railroad trestles, rickety looking ancient station building, electrified wiring, raised trackbed -- ah but I did manage a peek at the beautiful water! I guess the place to be, to take in the scene fully, might have been at an inn that's situated right there. One can stay there - oh how romantic! - and Sundays they have a jazz brunch (as I arrived musicians lugging basses and other instruments were heading to their Subarus) - and on higher floors there are sweeping, unobstructed views.

I headed back into Rhinebeck, purchased my ticket at the cinema, and still had a half-hour to kill. And since it's New Years -- and I stress the holiday aspect of it - I decided to check out an inn in the heart of town, a few steps from the cinema, and had a glass of white wine, from a regional vineyard, at the bar. And thought of you, and missed you, as I watched the lady bartender pour drinks & replace clean glasses on a rack over her head, glimpsed the flickering TV screen, some NFL game, deciphered in the dim light a receipt for a couple, not much older than me, who couldn't read it in the darkness - ah, but I had my readers -

Oh sweetheart, and I was dressed nicely too, the same outfit I wore last holiday - that is, last Sunday - in T'town - any excuse to dress up. And I was wearing my new black lace lingerie underneath -- it feels nice to wear such a beautiful foundation (and then slip a pretty outfit over it) -- and spritzes of Miss Dior too, of course

And so dearest, that's how I liberated myself for an afternoon - I don't know

In the film, Carl Jung, conversing with the Keira Knightley character, with whom, years before, he had had a complex, passionate, ambiguous, liberating affair - refers to his need for the sacred stability of family ... and (with reference to his current, longtime mistress) as well, for perfume...

Tomorrow it will be back to workouts & walks for me
but for today it was nice to don sexy lingerie & a dressy outfit and have my cake (almond, with a coffee, for dessert) & eat it too - foundation & perfume -

my dearest love, I must run now
this post is incomplete, it's not saying all I feel, all I wish to say
ah - but it's a holiday -
I have 364 chances left to get it right
in the New Year

very many kisses, sweetheart - don't you feel them?