It is cool and windy outside tonight. Rainstorms came through earlier, shredding the surface of the swimming pool, whipping the trees back and forth outside the gates. I left her just before the rain began to fall--- off for pizza with a neighbour. A small thing, though not for me: actually leaving my apartment, actually making conversation. I'd been outside on the upstairs deck when the skies turned black, outside reading John Banville's "The Untouchable". The book was a recommendation from lost_ligeia; I must thank her for it.

I have "Teeth" from Netflix tonight. I've been looking forward to seeing it since ever I read about it. I want to pour out vodka-and-lime and laugh through it. I can't watch most horror films. Blood doesn't bother me in films, but I won't watch anything where the horror becomes eroticised. I won't watch beautiful co-eds or cheerleaders be killed. Gruesome deaths for the male characters I take as a given; I won't countenance films where beauty is destroyed. I can watch "Exorcist" and "Exorcist 3". I can watch "The Innocents" and the b/w version of "The Haunting". I can't watch "Hostel 2". I'm thinking that "Teeth" is just grotesque enough to be hilarious. And saying vagina dentata always makes me laugh. Vagina Dentata--- the name of a black drag performer...or the capital of a Roman province somewhere in the East.

Ginny at ginny_mccoo told me to rent Wong Kar Wai's "My Blueberry Nights". The DVD release date is 1. July. I'll be looking forward to it. Selena at AtWoWayDream (D-Land) bought a DVD of "Stratosphere Girl" this week. I do want to talk with her about it, just as I want to talk with ginny_mccoo about Wong Kar Wai's "2046". Ginny owes me letters about both "Lost Girls and Love Hotels" and "Failing Paris"...and now about Lea Jacobson's "Bar Flower" as well.

I find myself reading Scarletta's entries at wineandscarlet and waiting with bated breath for each new one. She's someone whose backstory I wish I knew. Scarletta writes: I cannot hear myself say "be reckless, be willing to lose everything, let yourself go." I am being held underwater. I know that sensation. I know that feeling of emptiness.

This afternoon I went to alice_ayers' journal: beautiful photos, Holgas and Polaroids... She has a wonderful eye for architectural images and urban shots. I can understand why I added her. I only wish I'd been viewing her work on a more regular basis.

An entry from D-Land, a diary called Secret-Motel:

The clouds fail to ring. I search the sky for pills. I search my life for holes, places where purpose and comprehension may have been lost. I search existence for maps indicating wrong turns taken--or right turns memorialized by neglected opportunities. These memorials are like those left on the corners of busy avenues--photographs, teddy bears, and wreaths of flowers lain for accident victims. I search for barbed wire I can ring around my bed to keep your ghost out of my dreams. The living avoid me all day. And the dead chase me all night.

I know nothing about the author, nothing about the author's past, nothing about gender or location. The entries are small, surreal, finely-crafted, dark. They're made for voices reading into the aether long after midnight in some grey industrial city. They're monologues for reading at some vaguely-sinister all-night diner between sips of heavy, dark coffee.

Selena writes: For so long, I've been disenchanted, waiting for sunlight, waiting for twilight, waiting for wings. And amidst of all the waiting, I always always forget, that I don't have to ever wait for those things. She's somewhere in Virginia tonight, watching the lights on the shadowed surface of the James River, drawing on her cigarette on a dark porch.

I like it that ginny_mccoo and wineandscarlet smoke. There is something both alluring and elegant when lovely literate girls smoke while writing, or while walking home late at night... That works for Alessandra at bel_ebat, too.

I will spend time reading tonight. I'll watch "Teeth"--- and differentiate Vagina Dentata from Caesarea Maritima. Though there is a proconsul's palace in each.

There's still a hard wind outside. I like that. I may take advice from Kelsey at clush and take the vodka from the freezer. That seems like a good choice for a Friday night.