The most beautiful cloud bank past sunset - I was astonished -
it was as though the Catskills ridge, usually blue, low, and mellow, like a placid sea, had risen up in a peaceful way - keeping its placid distance - like a whole new mountain range, one that had eclipsed the ancient Catskills, or perhaps huge ocean breakers,
a whole line of them, a front - a weather front - perhaps that's what that was -

what meteorologists blandly standing before a board
refer to as "the front moving in"
only these clouds weren't that -- it was some extraordinary visual effect perhaps a result of Arctic air masses "stuck in Canada and Alaska" on a collision course with silly low-pressure systems from the South that created this huge banking ridge rising up

not like a tsunami
because with those devastating waves
the water recedes dramatically first
then comes up on land
but in a creepy way, not some huge tall
most awesome surfing wave ever as on the North Shore of Oahu
but rather in a way that runs its fingers all the way up
and further past most tides or washes of waves do
I think of those video images of the improbable tsunumi in Japan
last year
and the wave - a single one, as I recall, or one at a time
ran up the shoreline - okay so far so good - so what
then kept going, rightward & rightward on my little TV screen
without stopping, it just kept going
it came up the harbor, and swallowed a boat, and a bridge
and moved onto land
obliterating what mostly looked like parking lots
(but this was a mix of video images, cut together
because also it came, just as insidiously, and crept up the
gentle slope - of a densely populated town)
all those people - the ones who didn't manage to scramble themselves up
to the designated hillside "high-ground" top
where they observed in safety the monstrous wave swallow up their past
and it was a low small insidious wave
not dramatic at all
unlike the gorgeous and utterly safe effect
that I glimpsed from the aerie this evening, my love
and lowered the top half of the window
disturbing an asparagus-fern that's been reaching toward the light
through the slats
and snapped a couple of photos
first one, then, with just the slightest adjustment of my wrists
trying to decide what was most beautiful -
the clouds, or the sky, or the gorgeous black outlines of trees
(and Szymborska - ha! - had once observed a black outline of sun!
my childhood self feels vindicated! - aha! it does occur in nature, or in poetry after all!)
and I heard children calling
playing outside in the middle distance
hearing perhaps from where they were
the mysterious woman lowering her window
and snapping a picture without the flash
of safely distant dramatic sky

***
Hello darling, this is an unusual planisphere we're in, isn't it - I agree with you. All these lines paralleling, occasionally crossing, just for a moment, at a point, and then the lines rush off again. I don't know, perhaps that's not right, perhaps I don't have "planisphere" conceptually exactly right. But when I saw that page hit this morning, it did make me reflect on my blog, the strange narrative that I've been telling, that's been unfolding for so long. Bit by tiny bit every day, and it seems as though nothing is happening, and yet things are, sometimes behind the scenes, unbeknownst to me. Or there'll be a letter in Salon - for example - now what are the odds, honestly, that I might have had even the slightest tangential connection to it, for real, I mean? Because I'm sure many thousands if not more women all over the world could relate to it. Or what are the odds that you, for so so long a background figure to me (except that at Stair that night someone was there who reminded me of you - and I noted so - and then I veered off onto another subject! I wish I had dwelled on that observation a little longer in that post.) Or what are the odds that I lived for so many years in ego-chafing proximity to "the guy across the street" -- I describe the acute discomfort and psychic torturings I put myself through pretty much whenever I heard the creak of his garden gate around 6:30 weekday mornings when he'd set off for work -- our bedroom faced the street, which is why I could hear such distinctive street noises. I had always had literary aspirations, or longings... but had not ever really done anything about them... they were unrequited -- and here I was across the street from a pre-eminent figure. So that was an odd "parallel line never meeting" all those years, and now all these years later, that I'd be thinking of him again because suddenly he's in the news, and then I find a poem of his about peacocks that speaks to me exactly as to what's been troubling me...

All these convergences! "Full of sound and fury, signifying..." -- no, not nothing, I don't believe. Or maybe I'm not going to look for the "ultimate meaning" or significance -- and simply absolutely marvel at all the parallels and coincidences and convergences. Honestly, I could never ever have invented these myself - as the cliche goes, "truth is stranger than fiction." As a potential novelist, I might have been reticent to draw such overarching, improbable leaps & connections and reversals and obsessions. It simply isn't my talent. Though I suppose I have heaploads of raw material now, in the pages of this blog - but - oy - the work of trying to shape & whittle it down into some sort of fictional account. No, I don't think that project is for me. I'm simply here, the "strict recorder," to borrow from Nabokov - half-blind though, setting down notes accurately enough in the form of evening love letters to you, in the sense of knowing where I've been, what the day brought -- but having no sense at all, really, of where I'm going.

Darling, I didn't even know he had dabbled in ceramics -- thank you so much for that oblique hit, that I had to search a bit to uncover -- and it made me just laugh uproariously when I did, and then throughout the day, when I happened to think of it - on my walk, standing at the sink peeling sweet potatoes - but fortunately not at church - I laughed deliriously again.

Oh sweetheart, big hug & kiss for you. How are you doing? Where are you, I wonder? Wherever you are, I hope you are well & happy, and have time to yourself, because I know that there's a lot on your plate, a lot of demands put on you. Are you into the SuperBowl at all? I'm not. To the extent that I'm not sure if it's one word or two -- though the annoying red squiggly line alerting me to a possible grammatical or spelling error has just appeared. What time is it on? Is it over yet? Who's playing? We're not having falafels or buffalo wings. No, dinner is roasting in the oven now - the second half of a turkey, bought on sale after Thanksgiving. A whole turkey, however small, is too much for us, so D carves the raw birds in half, and into the freezer they go. It smells good - that, and a pan of roasting root vegetables. Do you know that dish at all? If you don't, I highly recommend it. Make it next time you, say, roast a chicken. It's a melange of root vegetable chunks: a nice mix is carrot, butternut squash, sweet potato, and red onion, seasoned with minced garlic, a little sea salt and lots of fresh ground pepper, all tossed with a bit of EVOO. Peel and chunk the vegetables, spread them on a baking sheet, and bake at 425 for about 40 minutes. Ideally the vegetables shouldn't be too crowded, otherwise they steam rather than roast & caramelize. But even if they end up a bit more steamed - it's all delicious. But if there's a large crowd for a meal - then you might want to have two baking sheets of all the veg, so they cook properly. Ours tonight, too, have a bit of green in them -- halved brussel sprouts.

Darling, I am in much better spirits than I have been in all the last week. I am so glad that week is over - and I can't even imagine how painful & difficult it must have been for those much more directly involved. But I was very glad to see a fresh new Sunday, that held the promise of hopefully much more lighthearted impressions, thoughts, observations, than last week's had ended up holding for me.

You know, I never in my entire life (except maybe in young girlhood) was a regular churchgoer, but these days I'm beginning to be, because of the chance encounter & resulting developments. I attended today, in such a different frame of mind from last week. I don't know -- I guess it's going to be a journey for me there, from week to week. I'm definitely not ever going to "get all religious on you." But I did ask for help & guidance. And I want to say too, that I really like the Reverend, and enjoy her sermons. I'm being too vague and sideways I know -- but she pitched her ball to the congregation and I caught it sideways -- let's say that I do my best to - to quote Rick at KZE - "help people - don't hurt people" - but well, I suppose my mode of expression isn't exactly orthodox. That's okay, I know it is.

Anyway, I'm so grateful for your clever loving hit (as ever!!), and hope you are doing well, and I can report that I'm doing well -- for a Sunday, got in a trifecta. Never on Sunday? Usually not a workout anyway... but there was a good haunting Nicole Kidman movie on TV, that I'd seen at the movies, and I was glad to be able to do leglifts and squats and this & that to something other than Charlie, Anderson, or Oz.

Sweetheart, oh darling. You mean the world to me. You are so very very very good. I really appreciate that about you, in very many ways.

I'm fading a bit now, darling - I should proof this before launching, but I'm just not up for it at the moment. So just take this as a heartfelt impromptu fly by conversation that you & I had in person... and I smell lovely, with the lingering spritz of this morning's Miss Dior

many kisses

My darling, best reason ever to be in the fittest shape one can be, toned, aware of one's physique, one's muscles? Ah, because it opens up the erotic side, to such an expressive degree. I have just picked myself up from the floor, the wool rug where I lay as dusk turned to darkness. D had announced from downstairs that he was leaving the house for an hour, and I was so in need. But I was chilly too, and I turned up the heat, and lay down on the floor still wearing my tops, layered sweaters. I sipped wine, and put in batteries, and applied myself, and it was amazing, not quite as much so as this morning, in bed, light filtering through drawn sheer curtains, ah but awfully swell nonetheless, in a strange act that's so physical and yet so cerebral, imaginative as well. I won't get graphic here but I admit that my fantasies, to be "effective" have gotten, in the reel of my mind's eye, gender-bending, omnivorous, insatiable ... it felt marvelous to lie back on an old towel, bed pillow behind my head, on the warm wool rug in darkness, my feet up on the bed, blue toy a stand-in, only it belonged to me, it was attached to me, I was the one pumping, while I regarded the form of a woman, my lover, savoring me. I lay back in darkness, purring & grinning as though I was getting a facial at a Vancouver spa, delicious as that, only in dark, the two of us, loving & dancing, so physical, amazing, it felt amazing to move my body, slim hipped only by comparison, and I had to throw off my sweaters because exuberant twins straining up top demanded release... and I didn't end up coming, not this time, and maybe it shouldn't always be about that though frankly usually it is for me... it wasn't tantric exactly but it was hugely sensuous and satisfying and luxurious and decadent and felt absolutely splendid and I was at it long enough though under an hour that night fell and I could see the moon very high up gleaming in the eastern sky. And then I called it quits and lay back peacefully joyfully on the rug, simply relaxing, stretching out my limbs... my arms that feel to me so -- well I feel them, I'm so aware of them, they're toned, all that walking with weights and the workouts -- has given me back the sensation of enjoying and being at one with my own body in the most beautiful amazing way -- oh Vitruvian! -- and I stretched my arms out, and my arms are quite lovely -- not that I'm so longlimbed, but my limbs are long enough and toned, and I think about graceful movements -- I am so glad I am in possession of my very own body, and all that it is capable of, including connecting me with my soul, and with angels...

Hello darling, I'm back, I think, from the abyss. Here is a huge hug for you and a big kiss hello. I've missed you, in more ways one than one - a little distant because so distracted. But I do feel that I'm back now, with you, and for you. I still feel a lot of anxiety, heart racing, shallow breathing, when my mind veers off the cliff into that subject area, but I made concerted efforts all day long to just keep moving. That's the only thing that made me feel better today, racing around madly, like as in that Picasso collage, keeping ahead of the pain. And it worked, it did. I took three walks, including one this morning at the conservation area, where I haven't been in a while. It was around eight o'clock, I had the huge expanse of field and views of mountain and brilliant clear blue sky, not a cloud in it, all to myself. And you will be amazed at this, or perhaps think - what took you so long? -- but for one of the few times in my life, I actually prayed, asked for help. I called up to the sky, and I burst into hot dry sobs for a few moments, but my "prayers flew up," I think. I just felt that out there on a limb with all this, nothing more in myself, that I could pull out to feel better. And, really, I can't stand it when (as far as I'm concerned) people take the Lord's name in vain, and credit him with some trivial absurdity. But I really did feel that I needed some extra support, some source of strength, insight, clarity, peace, whatever -- from some source that I couldn't quite summon from my own inner resources.

Oh sweetheart, it was a beautiful day, truly a gift. I'm glad I kept moving, and it was a good day to, sun brilliant, air cold but crisp and energizing. I walked around here too, including down (and later up) a beautiful needle-strewn path that leads down a steep ridge surrounded by ancient spiring woods, at the far back of the churchyard and cemetery. The path had been off-bounds for a while, but at some point in recent months, someone or a crew came with a chainsaw and cleared an enormous pine that had toppled waist-high across it in a storm last summer. I am so glad to have that peaceful, meditative path back - it is like being in an intimate cathedral to journey along the rise in the encircling hush of towering pines.

***
I don't plan to talk about the "revelation" too much longer, I think I've said just about everything I have to say about how I felt learning about it all, and examining different facets of it. But one thing I'll add is this -- as a young woman dating him, I couldn't have seen it coming, the type of adult life he ended up choosing for himself. When we were together, we had a really wonderful relationship. It was a very long courtship, months (okay, about two) before we went to bed. We loved each other - not just me, he loved me too - I'm certain of it. We had wonderful times with his family, as well as by ourselves. I never ever had the sense, while we were dating, that he was two-timing me on the side. Of course, we were both single. Also, we were each living in our respective parents' houses. Really - I have wonderful memories of the whole thing. There wasn't pain in it at all, except as his leavetaking approached, and then he left, and then I was - at that very moment - devastatingly alone, considering the utter bliss I'd experienced with him, and I don't mean just in bed, I mean we had a lot of fun together. But people break up, especially at that age, he went off to graduate school, and I, a year afterward, to college... We were young, just setting out. Just Kids -- to quote Patti Smith.

***
I think that's one reason - especially since I haven't seen him in 35 years now - that I find the - trajectory? - of how things are, or went for him -- so shocking, even if I knew that he wasn't exactly the 'faithful' type. I just didn't realize the nature & extent of it. And it doesn't compute with what I had experienced with him, back in 1975-76. Not at all, I couldn't have predicted it.

I couldn't have predicted that I was dating a budding - that he would turn into - a Darryl Van Horne. And not only because I was naive, or that the novel didn't even get written and get published til years after, in 1984.

I don't know -- time warp, so "Me Generation," seventies/eighties. Okay fine. Although another really odd thought I keep coming up against with him, is how reflective of our culture he is, it seems to me, in the patterns of his behavior; some of his theories too oddly reminiscent to me of a sort of America-ascendant imperialism that justifies all, wrack & ruin, in quest of conquest-

I'm getting far afield. But take it as a good sign that I'm feeling a little more dispassionate...

Sweetheart, I hope all is well & happy with you, I really do. Big hugs & kisses wherever you are. I think of you so much, and I have not told you enough what an incredible, abiding comfort you have been to me...

xoxo

I am sitting here bundled in that old black wool coat and a hat, I can't seem to get warm this morning. I was up most of the night. I woke up, heart pounding, feeling anxious, restless, couldn't get back to sleep. I got up, re-read my last post, and was dissatisfied. So I tweaked it a little bit, added images. I really do like that poem about the peacock... and the line in it "inner refugee" --

***

I have been thinking about that letter-writer so much. She has really crept into my thoughts. I identify with her situation - almost literally -- as though I am her, I can picture being her, how she feels. My thoughts still go to someone who I am really trying not to think about anymore -- very painful. In the night I thought (sort of like George Sanders in what was it - Village of the Damned) -- Don't Think of Peacocks!! Think of grosbeaks - or nuthatches - or towhees!

I re-read her letter this morning, CT's response, and all the comments. I thought of her in light of my background. I am trying to work out these thoughts, they're jumbled, and difficult. One thing that bothers me greatly is how letter-writer's married paramour is not only having an affair with her, but carrying on with other women as well - with whom for the most part (letter-writer guesses) he doesn't have sex, mostly because they seem strong enough to resist his advances because he is married, as perhaps so are they, some of them at least. So it makes me feel (in this way that I find myself, as in that Bergman film Persona, almost merging with her, being able to see through her eyes) that by contrast, she is lacking in such psychological fortifications, and thus vulnerable. And that he was attracted to the vulnerable in her, that part of her that isn't strong, which rendered her pervious, more easily penetrable, and ultimately compliant as to not only his carnal desires but as well, his set conditions.

He is charismatic and flirtatious (in her words) -- and I would add to that - powerfully seductive. He visits her three times a week for a year and then -- I know the feeling well -- it's as though he shuts the cocks -- for whatever reason (which he doesn't state) something has changed, he has changed his mind, he is about done. So now it's down to once a week. For an hour.

He does all this - from the flirting, to the seduction, to the arrangement, to the inexorable cutting of ties - with clandestine impunity, an echo of the impunity of her alcoholic father who many years earlier had sexually abused her, as a vulnerable little girl. The little girl is now a grown woman -- but not entirely. And this is something that gets intuited.

(Another echo -- my alcoholic father too abused me, though not sexually, as a vulnerable girl, now I'm a grown woman...)

***
It was many years ago, when my first boyfriend and I were involved. I didn't have letter-writer's experience, of having an illicit relationship with a married man. (Though arguably it was illicit because I wasn't of legal age, but only barely so, and times were different then, unlike the witch hunts now.) I was a junior in high-school; he had recently graduated from college. We saw each other openly, I spent a lot of time with his family - though obviously his & my erotic encounters were as secret & private as we could possibly arrange. We dated for about ten months, and he was planning his exit - graduate school - for months in advance, and then the time came in August, and he left, and there was correspondence after that, and phone calls, but I think he knew much better than I did that the relationship was over for good. I have no doubt that after he left, he lost no time finding a new interest.

I was sixteen, he was twenty-three. I was vulnerable, emotionally immature, and from a very chaotic, unhappy family. He and his family represented lifelines for me, that I gratefully seized & clung to. I could hardly believe that such happiness & bliss were possible. I was devastated when the relationship ended.

A stronger young woman -- from a stable family, with loving parents who were genuinely looking out for her -- might not have gotten as emotionally mired as I did. (I picture younger versions of the laughing, attractive women he socializes with - secure and strong – truly emotionally unavailable.) Here I am all these years later - still feeling the psychic pain. Which feels physical too, when I think about it, the dull ache, pounding heart - bodily expressions of my feelings.

Don't Think of Peacocks! Or think about why I shouldn't think of peacocks. I feel so bad for letter-writer that - while he has lunches & drinks out with other women -- she is buried, deep-sixed -- they never go out in public. What a psychologically damaging situation that must be to be in - perhaps for both of them - so secret that it smacks of shame - an echo, again, of her father's egregious behavior, the secrecy and shame concomitantly shared by both.

As I think about all this, I think -- yes people have extra-marital affairs. I can accept that (I don't believe it is ever an ideal situation, but on the other hand do not feel strictly and rigidly moralistic as to the issue). I do, however, see a distinction between having a passionate love-affair, a long-term mistress for example, with whom there's an emotional attachment of a kind -- versus having an elaborate lifestyle set up with an entrenched "official woman," the wife --- and a revolving door, over the years, of short- and long-term sexual liaisons, including brief flings. And maybe I can even accept that kind of bloodless philandering -- as long as it's carried on with similarly strong, emotionally-equipped players --

unlike Letter-Writer -- who is clearly not that, and must I am sure, however unconsciously, betray her vulnerability -- I would imagine (especially if one is looking for an opening) that it must be rather obvious, that it shows on her face.

I wonder if she reminds him of me, if we share that quality, if we're similar in just that way -- a source, however inchoate, of the attraction.

I cannot relate to all that compartmentalization. There's the wife. There's the three-times a week sex partner, now down to once a week -- so perhaps there's another lover now as well. There are other women friends whom he sees, platonically, because they are otherwise largely unavailable. There's a muse, at least one -- not even corporeal…

Each woman is sorted into strictly delineated categories, according to function. Is any one of them apprehended as a whole, integrated individual, in his relationships with them? No - I don't believe so. The array of women is like a kit of parts, each representing individual aspects of importance to him, in her circumscribed role.

Letter-writer says that he is "emotionally unavailable" to her, and that he was upfront about that with her. I wonder if he is, in fact, truly emotionally available with anyone. My guess is - no. (Oh but what a glorious semblance - those resplendent initial seductions!)

He searches for his soulmate, intuits Letter-Writer. I realize it is not me, she writes.

I try to decide if I too realize it is not me. I don't know if it is, or is not me. It is me. It is not me. My heart pounds. I tear at the conundrum.

I realize that... that... I am here.

Perhaps he does search for his soulmate. Do I believe that? Yes I do. It's a primal desire, after all, archetypal. So yes I believe he does, his inner refugee - unconsciously, and at the same time so strenuously.

But I wonder - what would he do if he ever found her?

Hello my dear love, so many kisses for you this evening. Thanks for bearing with me the last few days. I am feeling better. I felt a little fragile & shaky today emotionally, but as the sun came out in the afternoon and I kept busy cooking & walking & working out & generally moving and trying not to dwell on things... things got shaken loose in my mind and I genuinely do feel better now, out the other side. That letter was uncanny, and it walloped me, but I'm glad (divine providence? kismet? what?) that I encountered it, it forced something - no, it gave an opportunity, a rare glimpse of being able to see from a different point of view, one that I had no access to. And that truly was a gift - a godsend. So - thank you.

I want to say that - a bunch of things helped me think through this -- your abiding presence, dearest, I could tell you were thinking of me, and I cannot tell you how immeasurably important and precious that has been to me -- your great warmth & caring -- always shining through. And also -- well - yet again - that guy who used to live across the street from me -- I had googled him the other day in connection with his poetry, and found a poem of his that unexpectedly very very strongly resonated with me, in the current context. Here is the link.

Darling, this is the least poetic post ever - I'm just going to set it out -- I am not a peacock, and that's that. I have no business with peacocks. And if by any wild chance the "Letter Writer" is reading this -- that would be my simple advice to you too --- because perhaps you and I are not dissimilar birds of a feather. It's not that he's "above our league" -- it's that he's a peacock! And we're more like mourning doves, or female cardinals, or raspberry-dipped finches. Which is awesome! My dear woman, I'm so sorry about what happened to you in your youth - but I sense that you have a lot to give - you write beautifully - go find your mate -- who loves you, and wants to be with you - because you're a towhee or a waxwing!

And that is precisely the advice I'm giving myself, and I feel very buoyed by it.

And darling -- I am so so glad and delighted and everything else that you're not a peacock --

I wonder if the library system might consider this book -- because with you, my love, I might just want to, at the right moment, moan like a moorhen...

love you so much
xoxo

images:
top: Marsh Warblers
bottom: Moorhens
Hand-colored lithographs, from John Gould's The Birds of Great Britain, 1862-1873