My beautiful green-eyed girl called me last night late and looked up hotel rooms for next weekend there on her MacBook. There was something very romantic in the moment when she clicked to confirm our room. We'll be there on the beach next Friday evening, and we'll be able to walk along the Gulf at night and open Sofia Coppola faux-champagne and wake up together in sheets with some absurdly-high thread count. We'll sit at a coffeeshop and plan out a trip to NYC later in the fall. I'm giddy and happy. And I'm looking forward to that first moment in the hotel doorway, to that first kiss.

Yes--- she did promise to sing Neko Case to me there on the beach.

Saw "500 Days of Summer" this afternoon. I liked it. Lovely to look at, gentle and bittersweet. Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo asked me to report on it. After all--- she told me that she's looking forward to an afternoon in air-conditioned dark sighing over Zooey's bangs. Well, Ms. Deschanel is lovely--- those bangs, those eyes, that quiet sexiness. (And, yes: I do imagine Miss Ginny as looking rather like Ms. Deschanel) Great soundtrack, of course. And if there's not a lot of deep probing into character, it's a film about romance and illusion that is worth seeing.

I liked Jos. Gordon-Levitt in "Brick" (2005)--- very good film noir. I'll second the recommendation Lissy at emigree made to Miss Ginny. "Brick" is worth renting. Odd, though--- "Brick" is four years old. Jos. Gordon-Levitt's character in "Brick" was seventeen or eighteen; his character in "500 Days" is probably twenty-four or twenty-five. But he looks substantially younger in "500 Days" than he did in "Brick". I have no idea what that means.

I have "Charlie Bartlett" and "Meet Bill" on DVD--- two films I Netflixed on Laura's recommendation. I am rather fond of "Charlie Bartlett" so far. Again, something for Miss Ginny to take a look at.

Looking at Joan Didion's "The White Album" essays tonight--- her essays on the end of the Sixties. In the title essay Didion quotes from doctor's notes--- a psych evaluation Didion had done in the summer of 1968 after suffering attacks of vertigo and nausea:

Emotionally, the patient has alienated herself almost entirely from the world of other human beings... [She presents] a variety of defense mechanisms including intellectualization, obsessive-compulsive devices, projection, reaction-formation, and somatization, all of which now seem inadequate to their task...

Commenting on that diagnosis ten years later, Didion notes that her condition "does not now seem to me an inappropriate response to the summer of 1968."

Didion famously wrote that "we tell ourselves stories in order to live". The years of "The White Album" were a time when it became harder and harder to impose narrative lines on events. Worth discussing with Miss Ginny and with Umi at ivich and Alessandra at bel_ebat: what narrative lines are possible in the Year Nine?

Miss Ginny writes about trying to escape the heat of late summer in southern Quebec. I have to sympathise. I've lived in the Deepest South far too long. I can retreat to my apartment on an August afternoon--- dark, air-conditioned, crisp Asian beer in the fridge. I just hate the soul-killing heat outside, hate the thought that even at night the air is like wet cotton. Next weekend, driving to the beach to meet Laura--- even with a/c in the car, it's still an enervating drive, and I'll be in the shower five minutes after checking in.

Miss Ginny notes that she's always wanted to go to India, but that the heat alone would keep her away. Well, she notes, there's always Dharamsala, high in the Kangra Valley in the far north of India. That's were the Dalai Lama lives in exile (another reason to visit), and in spring or autumn the weather is cool and crisp. So--- Dharamsala. I can imagine Simla, too--- the old summer capital of the Raj. 2900 metres up, pine forests, houseboats on lakes. Simla I would see. Northern India--- the far north of the Punjab, then into Bhutan or Ladakh ---has always appealed to me. As intriguing as Bombay (must I say Mumbai?) would be, or even Goa, I want mountains and space, not crowds and heat and humidity.

Desert is different. I'd go off to Morocco tomorrow. Desert is different. After all, I grew up in subtropical heat and damp. I'll take desert anytime.

Joan Didion writes that she used to have a packing list tacked up in her closet. The list enabled her to pack "without thinking" for any reporting trip she might have to leave on immediately:

TO PACK AND WEAR

2 skirts
2 jerseys or leotards
1 pullover sweater
2 pair shoes
stockings
bra
nightgown, robe, slippers
cigarettes
bourbon
bag with---
-shampoo
-toothbrush and paste
-Basis soap
-razor, deodorant
-aspirin, Rx, Tampax
-face cream, powder, baby oil

TO CARRY

mohair throw
typewriter
2 legal pads and pens
files
house key

Not a bad list, I think. Forty years old, but still a basis for any nomad girl's carry-on. Replace the typewriter with a MacBook, replace the mohair throw with a pashmina. Girls no longer wear stockings, but a pair of VS leggings might replace them and get paired with the pullover sweater. Replace the generic make-up with a few brand names. Tout voila--- a carry-on for Laura or Miss Ginny. I think I must get both of them to tell me what their current carry-on lists would be.

A question I did have about "500 Days"... It's supposed to be set in Los Angeles, though I had to puzzle over that. I've never been to Los Angeles, but the city as seen in "500 Days" wasn't the Los Angeles of any other film I've seen. I kept thinking it was Los Angeles...or at least the part of it that magically existed inside Portland or Vancouver. A Los Angeles that was always cool enough for sweaters and cords, where cars were rare, and there were small tree-lined downtown hipster streets. Am I wrong about this?

My green-eyed opera girl went to a place in Birmingham called Renaissance Records and picked up a re-pressing of The Get Up Kids on vinyl. I do like the band. And I'd like to see both Miss Laura's vinyl collection and Renaissance Records. I'm told I'm going to be run ragged all over Birmingham once I visit Laura there. I'm ready for that. A long weekend--- arrive Thursday evening, leave Sunday evening. Just as I hope we can arrange an NYC trip that's Thursday through Sunday, and fly back on Monday morning.

I'd like to be nomadic this autumn. Let's call October of the Year Eight a practice run for an autumn with my green-eyed opera girl.

Tomorrow's plans: coffeeshop in the morning, then "District 9" at the 12.25 showing. An afternoon at the Zeppelin Pilots' Club.

Tonight--- a very cold gin-and-tonic or two, and maybe PJ Harvey's "Pocket Knife" and some Longwave on the iPod. "Pocket Knife" is a recommendation from Miss Ginny; Longwave is a recommendation from my Birmingham co-ed. Alessandra at bel_ebat was always a big gin-and-tonic girl. And they are drinks for standing out on the deck with a cigarillo and watching the skies.

Next weekend--- a lover in my arms, salt on the breeze, ship lights out on the horizon. And kisses in the morning. Always that.