Watching "Coraline"--- strange and cute and pettable. I haven't had anything cute or pettable in my life in far too long. I miss that. That may be why I'm looking forward to seeing "9" later this season. I really do miss cuteness.

I'm reading Willa Cather's "My Antonia" this evening. A lovely edition--- the cover is the painting of a girl in a white muslin dress. Antonia, I suppose--- mid-teens, honey-blonde hair, Slavic features. It's a lovely painting. Lovely story, too. I've always liked Cather. Caterina's doing, I think. She had an edition of "Death Comes for the Archbishop" there in her rooms at New Haven--- I read it there over York Street. Cather was wonderful at evoking place and character, and I love the multiple levels in "My Antonia" and "The Professor's House". Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo is a Cather fan; I'd like to talk with her about the novels.

Once upon a time I sent a pizza to a girl who'd moved into rooms at her new university and she called and said to me in the Small Pony Voice, You are the best-est boy-fwend ev-ah! It's been a long time since anyone has spoken to me in the Pony Voice or been Three with me. I miss that. I miss gentleness and playfulness and cuteness.

I miss voices. I miss voices and Voices both. More than ten days now: no phone calls, no texts. There's nothing out there on the aether for me. Despite all my hopes, I'll never hear from Tamara at drocera or the Other Melissa at kraftig_bewegt again...let alone the green-eyed girl who told me I had some value. I'll never hear from Ioana at winterbymorning again, and I'll never hear from Miss Ginny. I can stare at the house phone and at my keitai and know that neither of them will ring. No lovely wicked clever girl is ever going to call again. I did have a list yesterday--- none of the ten names on it will ever call again.

Pinot grigio tonight, pinot grigio and silence. Need I point out that six months after I bought it, my external hard drive is still there unused on my table? I have no idea how to use it to back up my iTunes. Despite all my efforts, no one has found it worth their while to call me and walk me through using the XHD. I know that I'm not as good as any of the girls I know who have Apple Lifestyles and MacBooks. I know that I'll never have any value compared to girls who live on Morningside Heights. But for all the people I know who do some kind of IT work or have serious computer skills, I can't get anyone to call me about the XHD. It's not about backing up the iTunes--- it's about markers for value, and I'm not worth the call and the tech advice. And I'm certainly not worth late night calls across the aether from lovely clever wicked girls. I'm no longer someone lovely clever wicked girls drunk-dial.

I did buy a book today that has some use. Matt Fargo, "Dirty Japanese" (Berkeley: Ulysses Press, 2009). It does have useful Japanese phrases in it. The key phrase may well be: Ore no yubi to baibu to, dotchi ga i?--- "Do you like my fingers or your vibrator better?" I mean, the answer is obvious. But the phrase is worth knowing. After all--- I'm a De Guzman of the Hokkaido De Guzmans. We know these things.

I do remember the Magic Formula: Think Tokyo, think Barcelona, or wherever you choose. I'll follow you anywhere. I'll never hear it. I'll never hear a girl sing Neko Case's "Hold On, Hold On" to me.

Newton Thornburg, "Beautiful Kate". A lost novel from the very start of the Eighties, by someone who's a writer's writer--- a finely-crafted book that's also the best Incestuous Siblings novel I've ever run across. Out of print, but worth finding. A book I wanted to recommend to Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo. One more book I'd love to talk with her about. There's a new-ish Australian film adapted from the novel--- I just don't see it working, though. Wrong landscape, wrong cultural/class background. "Beautiful Kate"--- Newton Thornburg did "Cutter & Bone", one of the better noir crime novels of the late 1970s. "Beautiful Kate" was melancholy and sexy and perfectly set. I do want Miss Ginny to read it.

Beth Orton is singing "Paris Train". I love her voice. I love the covers she did of Leonard Cohen songs. And I love the video for "Anywhere". In the last season before she Dismissed me and Vanished, Lissy at emigree told me how much she loved Orton's "Safety". Orton's "Anywhere" is a song that always makes me cry. It's a love song that I once recited (I have no singing voice) to Britt-Nicole. It's a song a lost girl with green eyes was going to sing at a jazz club in Tokyo while I sat there holding her hand.

Miss Ginny wrote once to say that she'd come down to Savannah to marry me. After all, she wrote, that was where Mandy Moore (a mutual crush) got married. And Miss Ginny likes the idea of wearing a mid-Sixties style white lace wedding minidress and dancing in Savannah dive bars after the ceremony. I'd take her up on that anytime. River Street on a autumn evening--- I do like that.

Chinese whispers, memories... No Voices on the aether tonight, though. I hate how claustrophobic this flat seems without voices, and how empty my world is.