The little 80gb iPod Classic is connected to the Tare Panda Laptop. It seems to be charging. I downloaded iTunes this afternoon, so that seems to be taken care of. I'll admit to not understanding exactly what an auto-sync option is, but I'll just stay with default settings until I know more. My new little iPod has been named the Small Psyduck iPod. It seems to be rather like a small Psyduck Nazgul--- brave and loyal, but charmingly confused.

I must talk to the pettable little K-dot at citydress about what to do--- about how to upload CDs with iTunes and then transfer the music to the Small Psyduck iPod. I'd like to have at least a couple of hundred tracks loaded by Monday. I'll ask Lissy at emigree and Umi at ivich about iPod Tricks as well.

Azam Ali is singing there behind me--- her Vaz side project, the "Feast of Silence". I'm a major fan of Azam Ali--- exotic, haunting, ethereal.

Tomorrow I do have to go up to my old suburb. I have a month's worth of mail to collect from my postbox. I'll collect mail, buy stamps, deposit a check, then go by the little suburban library. The post office doesn't open 'til 0900, so I may walk across to the Big Box store or Radio Shack and buy a wall charger and a case for the Small Psyduck iPod.

And I must find time to watch "Persepolis". I do need to see it, and I need to discuss both the film and the graphic novel with Lissy at emigree.

I spent much of the afternoon at a CLE seminar. It is odd--- where are the people I went to law school with? I never see any of them, and it's anyone's guess whether we simply all have different tastes in seminars or whether they're all in other cities. Summer CLE seminars do have one good thing--- lovely young associate girls with new Bar numbers. I can sit and try to decide which girls have the shortest skirt suits on, have the highest stiletto heels and longest dark-tanned bare legs.

I'd taught for a few years when I went back to law school. Looking at lithe co-eds in tiny skirts or tiny shorts was always one of the perks of teaching, as was flirting with them. When I went to law school, I did notice that my class had a substantial number of rather lovely twentysomethings. I never asked any of them out. I really never spoke to any of them. Law school did that--- it took away my voice and took away any ability I had to speak to girls. Even when I was teaching again part-time after law school, when I was being Bruce Wayne and Batman, running back and forth between the firm and the college, there was something I never recovered. I never found the energy or the confidence to flirt with girls again. Law school taught me that I had no social value, and that my voice and thoughts had nothing behind them. All those years in grad school I felt...competent and valuable. I never felt any of that after law school. I lost any sense of myself as a body first. The voice lasted longer, I think. But it's gone now, too.

There was no one I knew at CLE. Two girls worth admiring--- one platinum-blonde in a very short navy blue miniskirt suit, one lovely cachexical aquiline girl with dark hair in a very short silk minidress. I could look at their legs and cheekbones, but there was no way to speak to the, or to anyone. I sat in a corner and took notes and tried to imagine myself far and away from the seminar and the building and the sunlight and the city.

I know that there will be no voices around me tomorrow. At most, there'll be a few basic questions if I check books out or order Mongolian chicken. Maybe not even that, if I don't bother eating. I'll sit in the cool and shadow and read, then drive back here.

Ms. Chang walked me through loading a Delerium CD onto my iPod by IM. So it does have some music on it. I have questions, of course. Isn't there some fear that re-connecting my iPod to iTunes will erase everything on the iPod? Once it is loaded, of course--- won't I have to delete the CD from the hard drive? I really do need to have someone like Lissy at emigree on the phone.

It's just hard for me to imagine that voices will ever be around me again. I'd thought that living in an actual neighbourhood would offer up voices. I can stand on the upper patio and look down at parties in the garden apartments or watch the blonde sugarbaby girl across the street slide gracefully out of elderly men's Jaguar sedans.

I suppose I can begin listening to music on my iPod. What I can't do is be part of any exchanges or networks... I'm a ghost, and it's not likely that I'll have presence again, that I'll be able to touch or speak or share voices.