It has rained all day--- lightning off to the west and north, wind in over the river. I sat outside with mid-morning cocktails and read. I need an iPod--- that's something I have to do. I need to be able to sit outside and watch storm clouds and listen to music.

Selena at Atwowaydream sent me to YouTube to watch two videos--- Craig Armstrong's "This Love" (w/ Liz Frazer of Cocteau Twins) and Armstrong's "Wake Up in New York". Selena also sent me to Beth Hart's "Hiding Under Water"... Powerful and lovely. I'm quite fond of the two Craig Armstrong videos--- Liz Frazer's voice is as haunting as ever.

I need to hear Beth Orton sing "Anywhere" right now. That's a song I never want to be without. I've had a major crush on Beth Orton since ever I heard "Central Reservation" long ago. And of course Ms. Orton is six foot tall--- and Wm. Gibson wrote that he imagined his heroine in "Pattern Recognition" as looking like Beth Orton. I love the video to "Anywhere", too. I love the colours and the sky and the faded neon of the little roadside bar.

Rachel at sirena73 told me she'd stopped her car in Victorville and looked out at the high desert night. I can't recall why I remember Victorville. Is it a town in an Edward Abbey memoir? Is it a town where UFOs crash? sirena73 did once get briefly married in Las Vegas. I told her about the "Red Shoe Diaries" episodes with the "Bride Needs Ride" hook. I love the episode, but I can't recall the name. It wasn't "Temple of Flesh"--- but what was it? Someone out there must be a Red Shoe Diaries fan--- Stella? Caitlin? Jen at jourdannex? I hope some lovely reader will clue me in...

Edward Abbey, "Black Sun"... I saw it there on one of my shelves this morning. It's a tragic romance--- and vur' sexy indeed. Something I do want to recommend to lovely readers and correspondents.

Ms. Chang called vur' early this morning to tell me that she'd just finished Donna Tartt's "Secret History" and fallen in love with it. I'm glad she did. I'm a major fan of Ms. Tartt--- who does need to be played by Parker Posey in a film. I sent Ms. Chang to track down Tartt's memoir "Sleepytown: A Southern Gothic Childhood, With Codeine". The article appeared in Harper's in July 1992; it's on line at a couple of Tartt fan sites. One writer described Ms. Tartt herself a few years ago:

Green-eyed, petite, smartly but androgynously dressed, Tartt read Nietzsche alone in the refectory and cultivated an air of erudite self-possession....

In person, sharing a sofa in The Heathman Hotel lobby, Tartt is a reticent slip of a woman, dressed in sleek black slacks and a sweater. Her white collar and cuffs peek out at her neck and wrists, the same way her sense of humor peeks out of her answers. A hint of her native Mississippi softens her voice.

Yet here she is, part Lazarus, part Lolita, all in black. Five feet tall and 38 years old: Donna Louise Tartt, the word made flesh.

I fell in love with the girl in the author's photo on "Secret History" when the book first came out. And of course I instantly wanted to be part of the doomed clique in the novel. However not? They wrote with dip pens and had beautiful, moneyed Incestuous Siblings in their number.

Tartt taps her Marlboro Gold on the ashtray. She is kind of girl-boy-woman in her lineaments, with lunar-pale skin, spooky light-green eyes, a good-size triangular nose, a high, pixieish voice. With her Norma Desmond sunglasses propped on her dark bobbed hair, her striped boy's shirt and shorts from Gap Kids (the only store whose ready-to-wear fits her), and her ever-present cigarette, she is, somehow, a character of her own fictive creation: precocious sprite from a Cunard Line cruise ship, circa 1920-something.

I need more cigarillos. I need to be able to have them as props for reading outside. I'm just not sure I want to go driving in the rain.

This month Ginny at ginny_mccoo has been posting on Saturdays. I hope she'll keep that up. I hope she'll write about "Audrey Hepburn's Neck" and about an early Juliette Binoche film called "Rendez-vous". And I hope she'll write a bit about her own loves and travels this summer.

I must ask both Tiffany at vanity_overkill and Liz V. at nightmareteeth about good mid-morning cocktails. I don't drink Bloody Marys--- make a note of that. I don't do anything with a tomato juice base. No tomato juice, no V-8. Two key things always to remember about me: no cheese, no tomato. Full stop. I need more Pimms No. 1--- that's just a given.

Ms. Chang goes off to St.-Petersburg at the end of August. I've been encouraging her to buy a few dozen postcards showing St. Petersburg in Florida and use those cards to send home from Russia. Getting a card showing Florida scenes with Russian stamps and a Cyrillic postmark: I think that's a wonderful thing. Now--- it was Ms. Chang who had me see "Russian Ark". I need to remind her to see the same director's "Elegy of a Voyage" before she goes to Petersburg.

I need to re-read "Death in Venice". I think I talked with Krystina at yes_please about that. I need to re-read both the title story and "Blood of the Walsungs".

I have the DVD of Amelie Nothomb's "Fear and Trembling" to watch tonight. I'd thought about taking the Tare Panda Laptop to the coffeeshop, but I may just stay here and watch the film... Rainy night on a Deepest South June: watch films, read, smoke the last of my cigarillos, sleep, talk across the aether. There's a lot to be said for that.