I so hope that Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo does read this, and that she'll get her meme assignment--- Lists, of course: ten things each for the letters L and M, ten things that come up in her mind for each of the letters. I do love Lists, and Miss Ginny needs to do more of them.

And of course, Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo needs to tell Stories. She needs to tell all about her "serious offer" to go to Nairobi, to fill in all the backstory. And of course--- will she go? How would a flight to Kenya be funded? What would she do there? (I'd expect postcards, obviously) And she should very much expand on her mention of having friends in two reasonably-famous hipster bands. How did she meet them? Does she go see them in concert? And what's this whole invitation-to-Iceland thing?

I don't have SiteMeter here, so I never know who's been looking in at my entries. I really wish I knew if Miss Ginny ever drops by to read entries. And, yes: I wish she'd leave more notes. I need notes and comments--- I always worry that there's no one out there at all reading.

I sat at my desk today and made a few entries in my Moleskine: my green-eyed opera girl's university address, small images of being with her at Red Mountain or at a cafe table in an expat city. I keep a paper journal, of course, and the lovely Laura does figure in my entries there.

Back in late winter, Lissy at emigree left a note for the melancholy girl at steeping to say that sometimes Lissy would sit in the park or at coffeeshop tables and just write in her Moleskine--- free write ---to clear her head. Lissy is a fine writer; she always has been. I'd give a lot to be able to read her writing journal at anatomyoflovers, to see what she's been doing with her short story ideas and novel outlines. And, yes--- I do wish I could read her 'zine, "Revolver, Dauphin" #6 when it does appear. Lissy's Moleskine... I wish I could read all her Details and reflections on her Adulterous Affair in Stockholm in March of the Year Eight. And I wish I could read what she's been constructing in her head there on the Skinny Island over the last eight months. Though reading anything she's written about her new life in her new city would leave me empty and self-loathing. She's writing there on the Skinny Island, writing somewhere on W. 120th St. Whatever she writes or does in Manhattan is better, cooler, hipper than anything I could write here. She's metamorphosed into a hipster/activist girl on the Skinny Island, a girl who runs in the Park and jumps rope and does boxing lessons. A girl involved in galleries and activist work and writing and plans for overseas semesters. She's a Skinny Island girl. I'm only a provincial, someone who can never be as good as someone who lives on Morningside Heights, someone who'll die trapped here. I'll never be as good as Lissy at emigree. Nothing in my Moleskines can ever be as good as what's in hers.

It is all going to end in Japanese Bulimia. I can see how it all plays out.

I walked over to the library this evening and picked up a copy of "Lover of Unreason". Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo knows the book. It's a biography of Assia Wevill, the Other Woman in the Sylvia Plath-Ted Hughes story, the woman Hughes left Sylvia for. Assia is lovely in her photos--- Rachel Weisz or Zooey Deschanel could play her. She has that dark, intense, Slavic look. Men and women all fancied her, and she liked having writers and artists in here bed. She's a London at the end of the '50s scene-girl. And her story is tragic enough. It's just that the end of it, the tragedy at the end of it all, at not much older than Plath was, is marred by the horrible and unforgivable. When Plath killed herself, she took plastic sheeting and duct tape and blocked off the kitchen so that nothing would escape out to where her children were sleeping. Assia turned on the gas with her four-year-old daughter by Hughes asleep in her arms--- she took the child with her. Horrible and unforgivable.

Finishing "The Cruelest Journey". I do hope Miss Ginny tells me all about the Africa thing. And that she'll read Stuart Stevens' "Malaria Dreams". Miss Ginny is a major Lonely Planet fan. I wonder what she's learning about Kenya and Nairobi from Lonely Planet's on line site...

I discovered She Wants Revenge today--- why did I not know this band earlier? Post-punk darkwave? Very much a band I should've known about years ago. And I have to thank Miss Ginny, too--- she recommeded Adele, who does lovely vocals. I do always hope for music recommendations. I need new books and new music.

And I need to see my green-eyed opera girl in a black leather jacket and a keffiyeh. She'd be a delight in that look. Keffiyehs are a seriously hot fashion thing.

Laura did send me an mp3 of Bach's "Cello Suite Nr. 1". The music, she writes, always reminds her of orgasm--- it sounds like orgasm to her. She included a photo of herself in just a buttondown shirt, perched barefoot atop a baby grand. Dark photo--- shadows and allusion and those lovely legs. My opera girl... and she's just discovered Neko Case. Oh, yes--- I so wat her to love Neko the way I do, to have a major crush on Ms. Case. And more than anything, I do want her to sing "Hold On, Hold On" to me late at night. Her voice late at night does give me hope and delight and that courage to defy entropy and gravity both.

Miss Ginny tells me that she reads the Sunday New York Times and looks at the degrees attached to the names of yuppie couples announcing engagements and marriages. She'll have her PhD in English Lit soon, but it's other degrees--- even things like law and International Affairs ---that attract her. I understand that. For me it's Architecture or Critical Theory or Comp Lit. Miss Ginny and I both suffer from Anywhere But Here Syndrome. I have an International Relations MA--- one more useless accessory I picked up at New Haven. I need to sit with many, many vodkas--- the Russian ritual, garlic dill spears and black bread, too ---and drink with Miss Ginny and talk about Escapes and degrees and exiles' cities.

I'm listening to Salif Keita right now... Very lovely. Powerful voice, killer rhythms. I want my architect friend in SF to listen to Salif Keita--- and Miss Ginny, too. Just as I so need to have the leggy and green-eyed Laura listen to Rachid Taha's "Barra Barra"... My opera girl shares Miss Ginny's taste for Moroccan and Tuareg men--- I think "Barra Barra" would make her want to dance in dark clubs in Tangier...and make her wet and breathless.

Ten items each, Lists for the letters L and M... I do want Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo to offer up the Lists. And, as always--- Details Matter. And I want her to fill in all the backstory about Kenya. I'll never go to Kenya. I'll never go off like Lissy at emigree to study languages in London or Fez. I'll never be able to jump rope, either. I don't know if anyone reads this; I especially don't know if Miss Ginny reads this. Lissy at emigree once wrote about listening to Beirut do "Nantes" on her iPod whilst dashing across a Stockholm street to take the Slussen bus. All I can do is listen to Beirut's "Cherbourg" and "Un Dernier Verre (Pour la Route)" and hope that I can read Lists and backstories...