Japan is playing in the background--- David Sylvian's first band. The "Gentlemen Take Polaroids" CD. I remember dancing to the title track once long ago in the Land of Lost Content. At Emporium, I suppose. I can remember looking up at the balcony above the dance floor, looking at silhouettes of club girls caught in the strobe lights.

I always liked David Sylvian's voice. His "Taking the Veil" has been a favourite of mine forever.

Japan sings about mannered distances, about empty spaces. I have Swing Out Sister's "Somewhere in the Night" set to play next: elegant, melancholy romance.

There are books there on the floor by my bed. Arthur Phillips' "Budapest", Murakami's "Hard-Boiled Wonderland", Ishiguro's "The Unconsoled". I seem to be re-reading books rather than finding new things to read. That says something. I've always gone back and re-read things, but these days I can't seem to find new fiction that engages me. I find it harder and harder to read fiction altogether. I find it harder and harder to imagine being part of any kind of world.

Jude Law says in "My Blueberry Nights" that the first trick when you're lost is just to stay in one place and wait to be found. He stays in a diner in NYC and waits for lost loves to come back to him. The tactic is sound enough--- stay in one place and try not to get more lost. But it's a tactic that does emphasise how alone you are.

Tonight I'm just overwhelmingly aware of being alone. I can hear the sounds of two separate parties from the garden apartments down below. I can go out on the upper patio with a Tanqueray-and-tonic and watch couples walking along the hillside street. I have many of my books in storage, but I still have a thousand or so here with me. I have my books, and I have the characters and the words inside them. But I haven't heard a human voice all weekend.

It's hard to just say that I'm lonely. I sat at the coffeeshop with my laptop and came home and slept. Tomorrow I'll get up early and go off to the Big Box store for sinus pills and twelve-packs of bottles of diet green tea with citrus. I'll probably go out to the coffeeshop and sit and read and write and go home and sleep more. What I won't hear are voices. I've lost the art of conversation. Or at least it's atrophied from lack of use.

"The art of love is the art of loneliness is the art of war..." That's a line from a Red Shoe Diaries episode that I always remember.

I always liked Kafka's "The Hunger Artist". Selena at AtWoWayDream and Rachel at sirena73 at Krystina at yes_please wrote me to say that it a favourite story, that hunger is always an art form for beautiful girls. The art of loneliness isn't that different. It's about learning to walk like a ghost through rooms and streets filled with other people.

I remember my first time in Budapest, when I was a much younger little small long-eared desert hedgehog. I remember walking through streets where I couldn't read the signs, where I couldn't speak the language. That was like being a ghost--- walking through a world where you had no point of contact, where none of the voices could reach you.

David Sylvian is doing "Taking Islands in Africa". Music for dreams of escape, for dreams of being Anywhere But Here.

I am just lonely. There aren't voices out there for me--- there's no set of conversations that I'm part of. Books talk to other books. I'm just not part of conversations. There's no way to reach out and be part of anything.

There's an episode of "Red Shoe Diaries" called "Swimming Naked"--- a girl spends her nights sneaking into a swimming pool complex and swimming naked. (Kristi Frank--- the swimmer girl ---went on to be a contestant on "The Apprentice") She's beautiful in the water--- lithe, agile, beautiful legs, starkly visible ribs and hipbones, haunted eyes. She swims alone there after midnight through the lighted pool. Lovely cinematography. I always hope that one of the bikini girls will sneak out there to the courtyard pool and swim naked at three in the morning--- not that it'll ever happen. I envy the girl in the episode... I envy her being able to glide alone underwater at night. She's alone--- but at least she has a kind of release.

I've been alone in apartments and houses. I've sat alone at bars and at films and coffeeshops. I've been alone on trains. But tonight I'm aware of how absolute that solitude is. There's no one to call, not even anyone to drunk-dial. There's no conversation that I'm part of. I do think that I could go out on the upper patio and look down at the party in one of the garden apartments and be...invisible to everyone there. I could walk down and walk into the apartment and just never be seen.

Lissy at emigree writes that she's leaving for Virginia in the morning. She may well be alone in a car or on a train, but she's going from one set of conversations to another, from one part of a social network to another. Someone will be a voice for her when she arrives. I don't travel any more. There's nowhere to go, and there's no set of connections that would link with me anywhere I might go.

There's something to be said for swimming alone after midnight. Not naked, mind you: that's for beautiful girls only. But just...swimming through dark water. Hearing the sound of water rush past you while you swim. Seeing shadows on the water. Being weightless. Swimming alone after midnight at least makes you aware that there's something dream-like about being alone. It makes you feel embraced inside the water. It's a ritual against feeling not just solitary but lonely. Loneliness is only when you realise that voices wash past you without touching.