I will go see "Dark Knight" soon. The most-pettable little K-dot at citydress saw it on an IMAX screen in Houston, and she made the Happy *Wuff!* Noise about the film. I'm not sure where an IMAX cinema is nearby, but I will go see "Dark Knight". It seems to be dark and grim and nihilistic. I just wish the producers had done a faithful version of "Arkham Asylum".

I will go see "Dark Knight". I will not go see the new film version of "Brideshead". I'd feel as if I were betraying little Aloysius.

The New Yorker with the notorious Mr. & Mrs. Obama cover showed up at my mailbox Saturday. Let's just say that I find the cover hilarious. And, truth to tell, I probably do believe what the cover implies about Mrs. Obama... The depiction of her seems about right to me. I've never much liked the senator, either. I could tell you that it's because of his politics, or because I dislike the messianic fervour around him, or because he has no real record to be judged on, or because invocations of "Hope" and "Change" don't actually qualify as programs. I could tell you that. But again... what I really dislike and distrust about Obama is that he looks exactly like Gollum from "Lord of the Rings". I won't vote for Gollum. And let's just leave it at that.

I did plug the little Psyduck iPod into its new wall charger last night. The wall plug has a blue light to indicate when it's on, and last night from my bedroom I could see a ghostly blue light along the countertop in my galley kitchen. I did like the idea of a ghost-light around the Psyduck iPod.

PondLife at D-Land reminded me of Bryan Ferry's "Your Painted Smile"--- a song I've always liked ---and posted a YouTube video of the song. Lovely video, by the way. Bryan Ferry was always a role model for me in my Lost Youth. I wanted to be able to dress like Bryan Ferry or Robt. Palmer. I wanted to be able to strike a Bryan Ferry pose--- elegant, world-weary, slightly decadent. The little K-dot always encouraged me to be a Dandy, and she's vur' good at helping me shape my persona.

On 31 August 2003 I wrote:

Alessandra wrote me that she loves the aftermath of sex, the gentleness she sees in a boy's eyes when he looks at her after sex. I can remember those sensations abstractly, as something I could write down. I can't recall what they felt like viscerally, emotionally.

I did try last night to remember what warm flesh felt like, or what the rush of desire was like, or how one felt looking into a girl's eyes. I couldn't. All the things I could bring up were passages from films or books. I could recall examples from books and films of how it all *should* feel, how it's been presented. But nothing with any sense of personal, emotional heat.

I'll note that Alessandra at bel_ebat has always been vur' good to me. She's been a vur' lovely on-line acquaintance these last six years. She's always had a wicked clever sense of style, and she was the first ever to quote to me from Genevieve Dariaux's classic "Guide to Elegance": It is better to go alone than to be ill-accompanied. Alessandra will doing law school in another year or so--- I have absolute faith in her ability to do well. And she is a clever and leggy and sometimes melancholy girl who does have a fun motto, again from Mme. Dariaux: One cannot afford to shop cheaply. I do wish Ms. bel_ebat well, and wish that she and her Alice will restore their affair...or at least be life-long intimate friends.

On that same day in August of the Year Three, I noted:

I drove down to my office at the firm yesterday morning and sat in the dark and looked out at the empty city. Heavy rain, no one on the streets, no cars downtown at all. Understandable-- thunderstorms, a Saturday morning on a holiday weekend. There's still something that's both attractive and disturbing about an empty city, though.

I thought about all those late-1950s sci-fi films where New York or Los Angeles is untouched but deserted after some unnamed catastrophe-- all those "last man on earth" films. I thought about stories, too-- George R. Stewart's "Earth Abides", Alfred Bester's "They Don't Make Life Like They Used To." Empty cities.

In the Bester story, the hero knows that Bad Things are happening when he passes by a small park in a deserted New York and finds that the heads have been knocked off a statuary group of characters from "Alice in Wonderland" and replaced by stainless-steel preying mantis heads.

I can remember being downtown in Houston when the central business district was empty on a holiday weekend. All those black-glass-and-steel towers, all those postmodernist high-rises where energy companies built headquarters towers to look like Aztec or Mayan temples. Being alone on a steet filled with those things is...scary. There's no sense of human scale, not just a lack of human presence. Wall Street itself is scary/empty on a holiday morning, but at least the older buildings have a sense that they were built for humans. Standing on a corner by the Tenneco Tower in Houston makes you feel crushed and invisible and makes you aware of how deserted the downtown is.

I sat and looked out at the rainstorms and the empty Bank One plaza and had thoughts about being the last living human in the city. Or the world.

All I could think of was how alone I was-- alone in the building, alone downtown. That's unsettling. Whatever puts stainless-steel mantis heads on statues could be out there somewhere.

And whatever makes me invisible-- or makes the entrances to the world of other people invisible to me --was very much there with me.

The empty city...made me all too aware of how distant and alien the world of other people feels. I haven't spoken to a human being since Friday afternoon. Voices on DVD, voices on cable, yes-- but no voices in the flesh.

I had to tell DRL that I've forgotten how one talks to others across a table. I've forgotten altogether what it's like to be with someone and feel passion, feel any emotional insistence, feel physical (as opposed to intellectual and abstract)desire. [Sera Fae at] Transcend tells me that she can assuage her own depressions with the knowledge that her live-in boyfriend is there, and a good lover. That's like listening to stories about Martians, or stories about religious belief-- places and things that are absolutely alien to me.

I don't have the energy to feel desire, to speak to others, to have sex...

...I did try last night to remember what warm flesh felt like, or what the rush of desire was like, or how one felt looking into a girl's eyes. I couldn't. All the things I could bring up were passages from films or books. I could recall examples from books and films of how it all *should* feel, how it's been presented. But nothing with any sense of personal, emotional heat.

The empty city makes me remember how long it's been since a girl has touched me.

I'd rather find the mantis heads.

Some things really don't change.

I'd been reading through the archives at Porzellan (D-Land). I do envy Ms. Porzellan--- both in her earlier incarnation and her latest diary. Her archives are about her time doing research in Germany. They make me realise how much I need to restore my German, to recover my skills and my Vienna accent. And her latest diary has brilliant entries about her life back in the States, back on the Atlantic coast of the South:

We took a cab to the dock. Leftover sushi was waiting for us and we went to bed immediately after we ate. In the morning, we snuck into the women’s bathroom to shower and make love, not knowing if we’d be alone together again over the next two weeks. The boat had only two rooms and ours was nothing more than an elevated space with a mattress on the bow...

...Another day of sailing and we motored into a slip on a private island. One restaurant and a pool. The yachts were quite enviable and there were night snorkelers. We made love silently, which turned out to be more difficult than I had imagined. We walked the entire island and went though customs the following day.

She writes about cracked conch and mojitos made with Bacardi Silver there in swinging chairs on Ft. Lauderdale patios. It's a world I miss--- memories of the Caymans, there in my Lost Youth, memories of St. Bart's. It's a world Ms. Chang knows, a world she's immersing herself in this summer before flying off to a year on the Neva, to the city of the Bronze Horseman. Alessandra's friend-and-lover a1icey will be doing much the same on sailboats from Long Island South to Nassau. Porzellan is a genetics researcher, and blonde and lovely. I do envy her sailboats and lovers. I envy Ms. Chang those things, too.

It was brutally hot and oppressive here today. A few sharp, short rain showers just after lunch, true--- but the heat didn't break until 1930 this evening. Ms. cataplexis writes in her secret diary of being in a hotel bed in Manila and caressing herself on tropical nights. She noted later that the room was climate-controlled. I almost felt disappointed. Air conditioning is necessary for any civilised life; let's take that as a given. But I had imagined her on the upper floor of some 1920s Gateway-To-The-Orient Tropic Deco hotel, sleeping naked under mosquito netting, caressing herself in a ghostly breeze in through the opened French windows. I like that image a lot. All the more so since Ms. cataplexis has a wonderful, intricate tattoo design of vines down and around her left shoulder.

Now, then--- let's ask a technical question. Should I buy a small external hard drive? I've always wanted an external hard drive that I could plug in behind one ear and expand my own memory. But for the Tare Panda Laptop: a small Toshiba portable hard drive? Something like 160gb or 250gb? Could I move any iTunes library songs onto the external HD? Could I upload films to it? Would anyone know? I do need tech advice... I really do envy both the K-dot at citydress and Lissy at emigree the things they can do with their laptops. They have everything in their lives loaded onto their laptops. I need to know how to do things like that. I need tech advice. Umi at ivich, Siobhan in Adelaide, Suzan at ivydevice, Lissy or the K-dot... I need someone to walk me through things, to offer me advice and hold my hand while I face down tech fear and anticipatory buyer's remorse. And I do think little portable hard drives are just...cool.

I miss ReciEveHer at Diaryland. I miss her poetry.

I do want to read more of Ms. cataplexis' poetry, too.

A haunted figure in Charleston writes:

Even if I insist I'm no longer driven to distraction by long-legged, mini-skirt suited, stiletto-heeled brunettes (it's understood I lie, perhaps to myself most of all) I cannot shake the lust for travel.

I don't want to be seduced by French-speaking coeds, discussing Simone de Beauvoir's 'Force of Circumstance' in all-night cafes. For the moment I am entirely bored with playing the part of the downtown romantic intellectual. I want the sun and salt on my skin. I want to sleep in an open-air room under rusted ceiling fans. The memory of a spice scented breeze haunts me these long, hot summer nights. I am restless, subdued, silent.

I admire that. I admire it a lot. And I think I may respond to the entry with a small gift: a recommendation--- Fernanda Eberstadt's "Low Tide".

Monday night here in the Deepest South. I have a glass of Tanqueray and tonic. Somewhere in the other room Anthony Bourdain is talking about food in the markets of Lima. I may pull down something by Borges or Listfield's "It Was Gonna Be Like Paris". Or maybe something more dream-haunted: White's "Nocturnes for the King of Naples" or Duras' "Blue Eyes, Black Hair".

I'll listen to Philip Glass later--- "The Photographer" or his "Solo Piano". Or perhaps I'll defer to Selena at Atwowaydream and listen to Loreena McKennitt or Azam Ali.

Outside on the patio I can see the lights on the pool and the shadows on the hill that runs down to the park. I need a lovely lithe long-legged girl barefoot in tiny shorts there in my arms on the balcony, letting summer night air touch her face and bare shoulders.

I need more sake. I need very dry sake--- over ice, with a lime wedge.

And I need to hear voices at night...voices over the sound of waves.

And I need to hear all about external hard drives and things one can do with one's laptop.