Shh...

It's the last day of the month, little sweetheart and I think I have basic tracks for the entire new album. There's spoken word with underscoring as well as the songs themselves so it's quite a few tracks, 23 in all. I'm doing my PT and working on this and as well as the book, just trying to make sure I do at least a little of everything every day.

I'm worried about so many things, little sweetheart. My heel is starting to hurt again and I really can't bear the thought of yet one more injury to have to work through on top of everything else. But I guess I just need to do the best I can and hope for the best too and try to quiet myself and listen for you.

I'm going to say some quiet prayers to that very point and go to bed now. I love you and need your help as I always do. Please be near me. My angel. The other half of my soul.

Trials, Memory, Gratitude.

The days are long here at the moment, little sweetheart, and also, somehow, not long enough.

Every morning I wake up and say prayers and before I've even made coffee, begin to feel a bit overwhelmed by how much there is to do. A lot of it has to do with my recovery from being run over by car three months ago, breaking bones, gouging my legs, collapsing days later after a pulmonary embolism, my heart stopping for ten minutes. I haven't really taken in all that I've been through, honestly, so maybe it's not surprising I get this feeling... that's it's all too much, that I don't have much time.

I'm trying, tho', little sweetheart. I'm doing physical therapy three times a week and doing all the exercises they give me like homework on the other days right here, three times a day. I'm working on our book and the next album and another with dear Sylvia, the earthly angel who has done so much to help and comfort me. Even on hard days, I try to get a little something done just to keep the flame going.

It feels like a lot and it sometimes brings me down.

At night, around 8 or 9pm, after dinner and before bed (I go to sleep much earlier these days, little sweetheart, often before midnight, usually a little after 11pm), I watch something - a baseball game or a show - like we used to. Remember? "Watching a story at the end of the day with your partner." That's what you used to say to me. And my heart swelled with pride to be called yours.

Lately, I've been watching The West Wing and it always makes me think of you because it was you who first lent me your own copy of the series on DVD. You told me that it made you so proud to have been able to give that to me, to show me that world yourself, and your mom told me that's exactly what you told her.

There's a lot of noise in the world just now, little sweetheart. And personally things are hard. Thank god for your parents and our dear Sylvia! But sometimes it feels very very hard indeed. These quiet moments before bed somehow help me. I need to know you're near. And when I most do, you still find ways to find me.

Thank you, my little sweetheart. However hard things get, you remind me - I've much to be grateful for. Please don't go too far away. Love you forever.

Places Both Temporal and Eternal

Little sweetheart, there was an article online this morning about the last Blockbuster closing in Alaska. They say sometimes things take 10 years to get there, so this may explain why they held out so long. People were very sad to see it go.

And it mostly reminded me of the one in Davis where you and I used to go.

Often it would take a long time to make a decision but I loved the tradition of going there with you and bringing a DVD or two back to the beautiful house, making dinner and later settling in on the big sofa, cuddling and watching together. Or as you used used to say "watching a story at night with your partner." My heart always swelled with pride to be called yours. As it swells with love now thinking of you and the Eden that were the long, delicious, leisurely days we'd spend together in that lovely place.

I know there's another one, a beautiful new place that my mortal eyes cannot yet see but that is there and where I will again be at your side where I belong, this time forever. I love you with all my heart and soul.

White Courtesy Telephone

Little sweetheart, I had a wonderful visit from you in a dream this morning just before I woke up. You were here with me in New York but it's also like we were in a different time, maybe 50 years ago. We were, I think, in the lobby of a hotel. It was big but comfy, almost like the living room of your parents house. We were very much at home, just lounging around, making plans for the day, when you were called to the telephone at the front desk - one of those things where they page you, ya know, "Miss Summer Serafin, call for you at the front desk, please."

I actually already knew what it was. Your parents were here too, in the same hotel, I think, and they had a surprise for you. Either your mom alone or maybe both your mom and your dad had met someone and told them about you and made a special appointment for you on your visit here. You were going to meet Oscar Hammerstein. I don't remember if Richard Rodgers was also going to be there but they wanted you to come by their studios and sing. There was a list of 30 of their songs and they wanted to work through each one with you. It was just with them. Old Oscar was going to play the piano himself. You just had to call the number and let them know you were coming by.

Your dad was on the phone with the news and the number for you to call. I knew about it already and was so excited for you.

Isn't that a wonderful and altogether unusual dream, little sweetheart? Being together in the 60's as we are in the early 2000's, everything around us a bit different but we as we are?

You were so very typically yourself taking the call too, excited but immediately focused, ready to go to work.

It's such a comfort and a blessing when you visit me like this, little sweetheart. I'm so grateful. I wonder what other messages are packed inside this vision. Lead me to them, won't you, my little sweetheart? As in all things. I love you with all my heart and soul.

To Hear The Angels Sing

Little sweetheart, I'm working on getting better, healing after the accident. I'm going to physical therapy three days a week and doing all my exercises at home on the off days.

It's still pretty hard and there are lots of things I can't do but I am trying as best I can to work on the new album. It's called Til Morning Is Nigh: A Dream Of Christmas and it has both spoken word (in English and French) underscored by ambient guitars and Christmas songs re-arranged and performed in our signature dreampop style.

You'll be on it, of course, and one song I was working on this week especially made me think of you and exactly where we should hear your voice swell and soar. It's during the repeated phrase "to hear the angels sing".

We're mostly still in the basic tracks phase of recording, laying down the initial guitar with a reference or guide vocal, but just singing that phrase as I played made my eyes well with tears and I could feel them coursing down my cheeks as I continued.

I was watching something last night before bed, little sweetheart, I can't remember what, and there was a scene where someone began to cry remembering a beloved and the person they were with said that it was a blessing because that keeps our angels close to us, it lets us know that they, that you, are near.

I love you with all my heat and soul, my gorgeous girl. Please don't go too far away. I'll quiet myself to listen for your celestial voice, your every whispered word. With all my love forever...

Visited!

Little sweetheart, I had my first dream last night where you came to me in the hospital. God knows (literally) that is the last place I want to be again let alone dream about but it was also in that kind of dreamlike way where a place is both like a place you know and completely different at the same time. It was, in a way, more like being home and more like you coming to take me home, too.

You were very concerned and concentrated on making sure i was taking the medication they'd prescribed me. And I ... was overjoyed at the sight of you.

Sometimes in dreams, you and I are as once we were, as we were before all that's befallen, and fine. Other times, in dreams that can sometimes be darker even in the light of your presence, the terrible thing has occurred but you're either still here or returned.

In this dream, somehow, you had never gone but were simply 'laying low', having wanted to get away from all the things that were confounding your life and just quietly regroup. You were here now both out of concern for me and also to let me in on your secret, sorry that you hadn't been able to before but knowing that wherever I was would be the first place they'd come looking. So, like a relocated witness under Federal protection, you'd had to keep up the fiction even with me.

But you were here now, in my arms and altogether real and whatever happened before was past, the future ours and forever.

I'm not sure exactly what the dream may foretell but it seems altogether hopeful, uncannily current and, as ever, comes as a relief and blessing - because whenever you alight in my sleep, my treasure, I am again and finally whole. How grateful I am!

With all my love forever.

Let It Be So

Little sweetheart, today is the 4th of July. I'm mostly busy trying to get back to some of the projects that have been on hold for the last two months since the incident.

Two big music things - the side project I told you about with dear Sylvia (we call the band Native Tongue and the album title is Interiors) and the new Bipolar Explorer record (which, of course, you will be on), which we hope to release in time for Christmas. My arm is still very limited in range of motion but I've found that I can play guitar if seated and not flying from one end of the fretboard to the other. I'm trying to make up for lost time, get back on something closer to schedule.

But mostly what I'm thinking of today, unsurprisingly, most wonderfully, is you. We certainly had a memorable 4th of July a few years ago, didn't we little sweetheart?

It had only been a little over a month since my mom had passed away. I got the news in the middle of the night in an email, of all things. I was in London, alone, and it woke me up. You were the first person I got on the phone after I woke up Kris and Joy in Wales to find out how to dial internationally from their landline (I was staying at their flat while they were gone for the weekend). You took care of me, took care of everything. Got me on a plane. Flew yourself across the country to meet me, waiting in the airport all night to meet my plane. Stayed with me that whole week - coaxing the cats out of hiding, still traumatized from my mom's fall, helped plan the service and select the flowers, found mom's music to play, listened as I read you the eulogy moments after I typed it on her computer. You stayed and helped me, comforted me, stood me up and supported me in the crush of grief that whole week when I buried my mother.

Soon, you were here in NYC with me. And after that you brought me to you and with your family on a vacation that 4th of July weekend on the Oregon Coast.

Your dad rented a lovely house for the weekend that your brother nearly burnt down (a pretty wild exaggeration but it seemed like it at the time!) when the fireworks show went awry, we had a lovely boat ride down the River Rouge, visited a crazy "Prehistoric Village" where there old timey sculptures of dinosaurs (I have a picture of you kissing one) and famously went dune buggy riding.

You were excited to take the wheel, even as the proprietors warmed us "no matter what you, do not drive near the coast on the wet sand". So, naturally, as everyone else tackled the huge mountains of sand, you sped the two of us away right to the edge of the crashing waves and along the wet sand because it was fun! I have the most wonderful video of you on my phone, I'll try to post it on here.

We're speeding away, the engine roaring, a seagull or two taking startled flight off your path, as the waves roll in around us, the sky brilliant and you, helmeted and face wrapped in a scarf like some daredevil bandita. At one point you finally pull it a little ways away, revealing your beautiful, smiling, angelic face and wave to camera. I linger on you as you return your gaze to the path you're blazing ahead, before you turn to me with that loving look of yours acknowledging my utter devotion, my longing for you even as you are only an arm's length away and smiling as if to say "I know, but we're busy right now, I'll hold and kiss you in just a minute, when we're done and forever." 

Let that be so, my little sweetheart, my love. Let it be so and forever.

Closer

Little sweetheart, in the weeks I've been home from the hospital I've only gradually begun to settle in and actually see and remember and lay hands on things as they are.

Part of that is due to some of the endless clutter of this place being shifted a little - by dear dear Sylvia, the earthly angel who has done so much to help me - to clear a path as I, very hobbled at first, in a sling with each leg connected by hoses to a small machine, tried to shuffle about in here.

And partly I think I'm just awakening a bit from the fog of trauma and struggle and can actually take things in, resume, however altered.

A little while ago within these pages, little sweetheart, I mentioned that there were some things I had been thinking and writing about before the incident that I meant both for posting here and for continuing work on our memoir.

Often, as you know, my beloved, I write little things down on scraps of paper. Some are reminders or the shorthand scribble of an idea to develop and expand upon and others are almost mantras - something instantly resonant, seemingly transmitted from the ether and eternity to me in a celestial whisper that I hurriedly scrawl into remembrance and tape to the wall.

It's one of the former kind, a sort of note-to-self for further expounding, that I found while looking for something else on my desk this morning, little sweetheart.

It says "'Where Does the Time Go" awakens me from my nap".

Reading it takes me instantly to the moment I wrote it, pre-incident.

In the late afternoon of an April day before all this, I had laid down to close my eyes for a few minutes, with WFMU on softly in the background. And as I stirred, I heard that song, that wistful lyric and haunting melody, first known to me when you sang it angelically in your room in Boston the weekend I came up while you were working there on your birthday.

In that moment, I caught you gratefully in my arms.

In this one, immortalized by the handwritten note to self, I instantly felt the closeness I did in that moment - knowing that there's more than we can imagine, more than mere coincidence, if only we quiet ourselves and let in the extra sensory, the feelings and thoughts and messages, the sounds and sights (and even the olfactory ones - I more than once have suddenly been aware of your scent filling the air when no one else is around, haven't I, little sweetheart?!) that are there to bolster our faith and let us know, let me know, my beloved is ever with me.

Please help me, my little sweetheart, to find my way again, to find my way anew, as I work to overcome all that's befallen. Please help me with gratitude and love to honor you and know the true way. You're closer than I could ever imagine. Please don't go too far away.

With all my love forever.