On Boxing Day in the Year Six I wrote:

I decided not to go to the casino boat buffet yesterday. I needed something with silence and shadow. One of the renovated hotels downtown-- one they've turned into "extended-stay" suites --had a small Christmas dinner. So there was prime rib and rice dressing and shiraz-- "syrah", the little menu said. Prime rib with horseradish. I brought a copy of Kawabata's "House of Sleeping Beauties". I drank shiraz and sat and read Kawabata in a small, candlelit room at a little table against the wall. There were antique maps on the wall, maps of the French and Spanish settlements here. Quiet, efficient service. There were others there-- a few people just there for the dinner, a few solitary business travelers. I wanted to ask them-- what were the rooms like? What were their stories? Why were they here over Christmas Day? In a better world, there'd have been a girl like Siobhan who'd have asked me to join her for a drink. I did wear a tie for dinner-- Grey's Inn. I like the idea of regimental ties. And I do wish a lovely and haunted traveler girl had joined me for a drink and taken me back to her room. I'd have watched her smoke a cigarette while she stood naked or wrapped in just a sheet there at the window and watched the rain fall out across the river. There's always something to be said for sex with a beautiful and lonely traveler girl in a hotel room on Christmas Day. Even if she never asked for my name, I'd have kissed her eyelids and tried to make her feel less isolated.

It's summer of the Year Eight now. I live less than a mile from the little hotel where I had dinner that Christmas. I should go back there one day--- a drink at the tiny bar, dinner next Christmas. I haven't stayed in a hotel since I came back from Turkey and Croatia just before law school, but I love small old-school hotels. I love places that are insulated from the world outside, that call up a world of antique maps and quiet, efficient service. I like places where a Grey's Inn tie might be recognised.

It was cold and rainy that Christmas. I wish there summer rainstorms here tonight, and a wind in from over the river that would cool the evening down and clear out the air.

Noggin Channel is doing "Backyardigans", with small cute cartoon aminuls pretending to be musical Vikings. "Wonder Pets" will be up next. Yay, Noggin! Yay, Wonder Pets!

A rather lovely Dutch-Moroccan girl called soraya added me at LJ today. She seems charming and literary. She writes that she's spending her days in her rooms reading Proust and Geert Mak's "In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century". I've not read Geert Mak, despite all the press his book received a few years ago. I suppose I'll have to take a look at "In Europe". And hearing from soraya about Proust does remind me that I need to pull my own copy of "Swann in Love" out from my nightstand and finish it. And of course I will note that the heroine of Babitz's "Sex and Rage" baffles people by reading Proust while waiting with her surfboard there on a SoCal beach. I'm remembering the story, too, of the blonde fashionista girl in the VIP lounge at LAX using her iPhone as a bookmark in a volume of Proust. I really must ask Alessandra at bel_ebat about her own view of Proust...and ask her if she's seen "Time Regained".

Stella at stelladellasera is recommending a new film called "The Fall". Not on DVD yet, alas... But it does sound intriguing.

Rain out over the river... I can see black clouds out to the west. I wish I could still hear from Elodie at soft_melodies. I do regret not hearing her stories about rain in Paris and about her travels in Europe and Japan.

I was reading Lea Jacobson's Geisha-Interrupted blog this afternoon--- delightful, of course. And I did order a copy of "Bar Flower" based on the interview she linked to from her blog. It's a book I vur' much want Ginny at ginny_mccoo to talk with me about. Just as I want to her from Ginny and Ioana at winterbymorning about Cynthia Gralla's Salon articles. Ms. Geisha-Interrupted did note that even though she's given up drinking, she's still a karaoke enthusiast there in the Tokyo demimonde. I've never...never...been married or sung karaoke. I can't imagine singing karaoke--- "Lost in Translation" all to the side, karaoke just seems...scary. Worse--- I can imagine Klingon-theme wife swappers at Star Trek conventions singing karaoke.

The Wonder Pets are saving a baby platypus tonight! Yay! There will be congratulatory telegrams from little Kamo Kamonosuke at Sanrio Central. The eyes of Hello Kitty are everywhere, after all.

Summer is lonely. It always has been. Too much sunlight, too much heat. Too much of a sense of seeing the world where I'm excluded. I miss hotel rooms and small, dim hotel dining rooms. No stories from girls in Paris or Tokyo tonight. Not even stories from stelladellasera about Lisbon. (And when was she first in Lisbon?) I'll take my copy of Proust and read about Swann and Odette and drink single-malt and hope for rain all through the night.