Black Cherry

Thinking of you and one of your favorite songs, today, little sweetheart. It's "Black Cherry" by Goldfrapp. I always thought I knew all the words but I had one verse slightly wrong when I looked it up today. Here's the lyrics. Love you forever.

How can it be?
I can taste you now
How can I see
When you're everything

All my world in one grain of sand
And I've blown it
All my world in one grain of sand
And you own it

Black cherry
Black cherry
Stone

Black cherry
Black cherry
Stone

Hearing you say it
I could die
Trembling star
Just reminds me

All my world in one grain of sand
And I've blown it
All my world in one grain of sand
And you own it

Black cherry
Black cherry
Stone

Black cherry
Black cherry
Stone

Excite me, ignite me
Oh and you know,
I miss you, I kiss you
Oh and you know

Black cherry
Black cherry
Stone

Black cherry
Black cherry
Stone

Excite me, ignite me
Oh and you know,
I miss you, I kiss you
Oh and you know

Sounds...

Little sweetheart, tonight I was looking at a picture of you and I. You'd taken it with the PhotoBooth app on your Macbook Air and then emailed it to me later with a lyric from the Goldfrapp song, one of your favorites, "Black Cherry". 

I played that song tonight and from the very first notes was taken instantly to you, could feel and remember what it was to be near you, and I cried and cried and cried. 

I love you so very much, my True One. Love you forever. Forever. 

Boston

I’m on the afternoon train to Boston, little sweetheart. I can never go there without thinking of you and the wonderful times we had there when you were in residence.

It’s suddenly freezing again in New York and is meant to be even colder today in Boston - the high is supposed to 19f! - so, I’m dressed warmly and in particularly because I’m wrapped up in the beautiful blue and grey scarf that you knitted for me in your downtime there and gave to me as a gift at our very Christmas together. I’m wearing the beautiful scarf you made in Boston on my way to Boston and will be wrapped in it and same way that I long to be wrapped within your arms and love.

I’m going up to see a friend’s play. She runs a small theatre in Cambridge that’s mostly dedicated to female playwrights. I’m coming back on Monday. It’s really cold, as I say, little sweetheart, so I don’t know if I’ll do much more than go to the theatre and stay inside.

But I’ll be thinking of you, I know, and all the wonderful times we had there together in the few days that I visited you around your birthday that year you were there working at The Huntington.

I remember it was quite cold and snowy then, too, even though it was early November. I remember walking a lot. Walking you to and from the theatre. Walking for what seemed like hours on your day off looking for a nice place to eat. I remember that by the time we finally found something - a cozy old pub - we were so hungry we got big bowls of clam chowder and burgers! And then had dessert! We were so hungry and needed to warm up. I remember the sweet little apartment they put you up in. I loved being there with you. I went to nearly every performance but on your birthday, I went out during the show and got groceries so that I could make you a nice dinner and a birthday cake for when you got done.

We had the most lovely time. It was that trip where we really started listening to DCfC quite a lot. And you burned CDs for me of some of their stuff and especially a Goldfrapp one. I love how you changed the order of songs around to ay you like them! Who thinks to do that?! And it’s one of the things I love so much about the CD-R of Goldfrapp’s “Felt Mountain” that you burned for me. The title track, which is basically an instrumental, comes up at the beginning and then twice more in the sequence. I wasn’t until later when I was looking up the titles online that I discovered in the original sequence it’s midway through the order and only appears once. Your way is better! It’s like a theme coming back and permeating the album.

Just the way that you are the theme of my life - all that’s important, all that matters, all that makes sense of everything. May you flow through me to the end of my life, my little sweetheart, in the same way that you came into it, saving me. And may the end of my life come soon, so that I may flow into you, joined together again and finally forever, flowing as one. As it should be and was meant to. With all my love…

Lanterns On The Lake - Beings [Full album stream]

Little sweetheart, I heard a really beautiful song on Irene Trudel's show on Tuesday. It's from a band called Lanterns On The Lake. It sorta sounds like Beach House or maybe Goldfrapp fronting The National. I know you would love it. And if that's not enough, I discovered that the latest record, the album from which Irene played the title track, was released last year on your birthday. Of course. Of course... Love you forever.

Our Oneness Can Never Be Erased

Little sweetheart, some time ago I had a dream - I was with you, we were together and happy and fine and hand in hand and I had a tattoo that said "our oneness can never be erased." I'm not so good at remembering my dreams but this one was still with me when I woke. A few hours later, all suited up and about to go for a run, it suddenly hit me again. "The dream!", I exclaimed to myself. I grabbed a pen and the closest piece of paper I could find (I still have it, it's tacked up over my desk) and wrote down those words, those ethereal, not at all ordinary or conversational words. It felt so much like a direct message from you from The Forever. And I've been writing those words on the inside of my left forearm with a Sharpie every day since then.

Well, today, my little sweetheart, I had them tattooed in your own handwriting on my arm. The nice girl, Michelle, who was my tattoo artist, traced some of your writing from the beautiful Christmas card you gave me our first year together and today she did the work. When she finished it was beautiful and she said so. She said that very thing and "now, it's forever".

Indeed. You are forever, my little sweetheart. And I want so to join you there. Until that day! Today, tho', I have your writing - the message that you sent to comfort and give me faith - etched into my flesh to keep you with me.

And as I headed out back into the bright, cold day this afternoon, I listened to some of our music, just as you told me to. I haven't been able to before, it's just hurt too much. But today I listened to DCFC's "Transatlanticism", with its repeated, insistence chorus - I need you so much closer and I cried and cried but knew you were near. Nearer than I can imagine.

And right now I'm listening to your beloved Goldfrapp from the CDR of "Felt Mountain" you made for and gave me when we were in Boston exactly this time just after your birthday in 2008. It's just the kind of CDR that you would make - the tracks in the order you best like them, not necessarily in the album's original sequence and on this one the title track appears three different times over the course of it and it ends with four songs from another Goldfrapp album, most notable for "Black Cherry", which just about breaks me in two, it is so very much the personification of you, my little sweetheart.

I love you, Summer. And I feel so grateful and close to you tonight....