It's late afternoon here. The skies outside are darkening--- the afternoon's Iso T-Storms are arriving. I spent the afternoon outside at a patio table, drinking Pimms No.1 and lemon-lime and smoking cigarillos and reading "The Great Gatsby". It was Haina at corposant who persuaded me to do that--- read Fitzgerald outside and smoke and be part of a summer's afternoon. I have Banville's "The Untouchable" for this evening. Somewhere in southern Canuckia Ginny at ginny_mccoo is reading Alan Brown's "Audrey Hepburn's Neck"--- an expats-in-Japan novel DRL recommended to me long ago. I want to hear from Ginny about the book. That's one of the things I always hope for from lovely correspondents: discussions of books. I've always lived through books. It matters to me--- it means a great deal to me ---to hear what books mean to friends.

IFC is showing "Waking Life" this afternoon. It's on their weekend rotation. I liked the film, but of course I liked "Slacker" a lot, too. I like films with wandering conversations, films with Overeducated Ne'er-Do-Well characters talking about books and films.

I can't decide what to do with my evening. Go to the Zeppelin Pilots' Club for steak-and-martinis? Go get Chinese takee-outee and stay here and read? I do have books waiting on queue: the Banville novel, "After Dark", maybe "Bar Flower". I always say that I hope for Voices On The Aether, but I like reading in silence. Well, I always do want to have my cake and eat it. I want Voices; I want to feel like I have social value. But I do love reading in silence.

My little shortwave receiver is at my office. I need to get it set up there, if only for things like the BBC Overseas Service and Deutsche Welle. But I remember when the most-pettable little K-dot at citydress told me about Numbers Stations on the shortwave bands. I do want to hear some of those. I want to hear voices late at night on the shortwave bands telling stories and invoking all the surreal things that late-night broadcasts are for...

Ms. Chang tells me that I was wrong. Not a Mercedes--- she had sex at Rochester in the front seat of an Audi A-4. Fortyish doctor, married, handsome. It's important, Libet says, to get the car right. She insisted on the front seat--- straddling him rather than being on her back. That mattered, too.

Standing there in my storage cube this morning, I looked at the size of it and imagined it as a Pod Hotel room in NYC or Osaka. I always dream of capsule hotels or pension rooms in exiles' cities. I remember my room at the Pension Falstaff in Vienna. A girl called UrbanBones at D-Land writes of living alone with a red futon in a solitary room somewhere in a film noir city. I like the image. But I can't live without books. I can't live without room to pace and give lectures late at night to imaginary classes.

It's raining outside. I can see the sheets of rain strike the swimming pool; I can hear the sound of rain across the roof. If I do go for steak and martinis I'll wait for the rain to stop. Though I do love standing outside and listening to thunder in the distance.

I may go to Epitonic.com more at work. It's a good site for listening to ambient music. Something DRL recommended long ago. I haven't heard from her in more than a year. I'll never know if she really is married--- if Debra really did get married in Houston, or if it was all a game. Debra RL is a loss... I remember her all the way back to her ChinaNoir site in 1999.

I have the Red Shoe Diaries DVD with "The Art of Loneliness" on it. I will watch it tonight late.

Voices on the aether, voices on the shortwave... What are any of my lovely readers and correspondents listening to tonight? And where else is it raining tonight?