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It's been ages since I have talked to you, hasn't it? I am sorry. I would say that my silence does not mean I haven't been thinking of you, but it does, in part. I always had more honesty than tact, didn't I?

Thad came back and when my enthusiasm of being with him again had settled down to its usual level, we had a dramatic rain storm which washed out the lower half of our drive way and felled a rotten, elderly tree which we should have felled ourselves last fall. So we have been a bit distracted by manual labor and instead of spending our evenings thinking or reading or writing, we loll on the couch with our socks all slouchy and eat as much toasted cheese and garlic bread as we can fit inside before we pass out with complete disregard for the fact that we'd be more comfortable sleeping in pajamas in bed. So that's my excuse, in case you missed us. Nothing as dramatic as bear attacks or appendicitis or alien abductions. Although, if you would prefer that, I am sure we can manage staging such an event instead next time.

One thing I miss the most, I realize, is opportunities for people watching. Would Observations of Humanity be a more posh way of putting it? I can go into the village if I so choose, and do once a week for shopping excursions, but the population is small enough that my observations are now entering more the realm of watching neighbors or acquaintances at a party than of regular People Watching. There isn't the drama of the transients of seeing this one person and knowing you'll never see them again. That is what I miss. 

I have been thinking about vulnerability, and have found my definition is a shade different from the accepted one. A shade nicer. (Remind me to discuss the nicety of the word nice, too.) Observing my shade of vulnerability in others makes me feel very tender and motherly. I think it is a matter of a person being unaware of their own self, unconscious, preoccupied with something else. There's more to it than that, but I am much better with examples than definitions, so perhaps I should give them to you first and trust you to gather my meaning. It takes me a bit off guard when I watch a person writing and realize they are left handed. So you see, this left handed person isn't thinking about being left handed, yet it feels so vulnerable, because it is a surprise, and they, if self conscious at all at that moment, are thinking of something else, like their handwriting or being watched or the stupid cowlick. (My words are all gobbing up, gummed up on the point of my pen, in a sense. Thick and cloudy and clingy and persistently inelequent.) Or a person who is unbearably smart and good at everything doing something and being hopelessly inadequate. I can remember several examples. Remember the time the Bartholomew boy read the greeting cards at his birthday party? How you could hear the ends of every line. And he knew everything and could solve every scientific, mathematical, or mechanical problem you could pose. And then, when we were all in awe of him, he started reading out loud and the glass museum case shattered down to the ground and all of the sudden he was this huggable little teddy-bear.

I think it is moments of unconsciousness that I seek out by this. I call it vulnerability, but it isn't, because the object doesn't sense it at all. It's really the exact opposite, right? It's not emotional or mental or conscious. More physical, but not entirely. It is letting the guard down, but not in a way I can presently clearly define. It's forgetting to be aware. Thinking so much about this, here, and what others think of it, that you forget about that. If they were aware of it there wouldn't be that fragility, because there would be a guard even in the awareness and insecurity. So vague, I know, but it makes me feel so tenderly.

Thad read this all over my shoulder and I am now very self conscious and embarrassed and he says I need an editor, which I admit, and also maybe that I don't know what I'm talking about. But I do! I just don't know how to bridge this gigantic gap between what I know and feel and my vocabulary. How my vocabulary lets me down. There is no nicety in my vocabulary, so I throw all the words I possess out here in the hopes that you will understand what I mean. Listen to what I mean, not what I say, and love me in spite of my verbosity. And pretension. Many thanks.