Bouillabaisse...

I've wanted bouillabaisse all day. Not to be had, mind you. I sat at a small cafe on the levee at lunch and had chicken-and-sausage gumbo. Dark and rich and thick, but nothing like bouillabaisse, of course.

Gigot... I'd like slices of gigot. Or something-de-veau. But it's bouillabaisse that's in my mind. Lots of garlic. Lots of conger and rascasse.

Not to be had. Would a Thai lemon-grass soup be an acceptable substitute? I must ask Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo if she likes Thai lemon-grass soup. I don't know if Miss Ginny is vegetarian--- that just struck me. Something I must ask her.

If Miss Ginny and I ever do rendezvous in Savannah, I suppose we could find a local cafe that did something like Gullah shrimp-and-yellow grits. There used to be Curious Jane's in New Haven--- excellent fish chowder. But that's not bouillabaisse. Gullah shrimp-and-yellow grits--- that might be worth trying. Savannah is hardly Marseille, but there is a waterfront world there, a late-night world where Miss Ginny and I could sit at a cafe and talk late at night.

Leonard Cohen is playing in the background--- the documentary "Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man" on DVD. Beth Orton and Nick Cave covering his songs--- wonderful. I have Cohen's "Strange Music" poetry collection there on my shelves: something I carry with me across cities and lives.

"A Thousand Kisses Deep"...one of my favourites.

Instant Cafe Vienna again tonight. It could be pinot noir, but it's only coffee. I hope that's something Miss Ginny understands.

From Sybille Bedford's "A Compass Error"----

Flavia read the New Statesman from editorial to weekend competition without haste or skipping, rationing herself to make it last several days, and she paid for the subscription out of her own allowance.... Flavia was privately hopeful of becoming (in the fullness of time) a contributor to The New Statesman and Nation. The book reviews, while she found the political leaders more interesting, fascinated her particularly; she had heard it said---she hoarded such tags of information ---that the fiction bin was the comparatively humble gate through which one entered the kingdom. Down from Oxford with a good degree (so the fullness of time had not so many years to go) one was given (if one wrote well enough?) a batch of novels to review. For that chance one was paid and it might come to as much as two pounds ten a week. (Some made an extra guinea by selling the books themselves in the Charing Cross Road, but Flavia was not convinced that anyone could really bear to part with their review books) With those savings added to the small income (one somehow managed to have) there was time and freedom for the next stage on the road to the literary life, the writing of one's first novel...

I always use Flavia as the name for girls whose real names I'm not supposed to write down. I'm not sure if I took that from "A Compass Error" or just chose it as a favourite Roman name.

That passage, that description--- it is something like the life I used to imagine at New Haven. I suspect that it's the life Miss Ginny imagines for herself. Alessandra at bel_ebat might have dreamt it for herself, too. A handful of years ago Lissy at emigree would have wanted Flavia's dreams. I don't suppose it would be enough for her now--- it lacks that Morningside Heights edginess and activist seriousness. Alessandra is starting law school in Austin this term. I wonder if she still has literary hopes. I still want a life like that--- plus teaching, of course; I'm only and ever happy when I'm teaching. And I really must get Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo to tell me if Flavia's life appeals to her, if it's the kind of life that she still envisions for herself.

Last week, when I still believed in love and futures and assurances--- last week I bought a girl a charcoal pashmina. Every nomad girl's accessory--- I bought it for her to wear on the trip to NYC we'd been planning. I'll never get to see her in it, just as I'll never get to hear her sing Neko Case to me on the beach. Airport bars--- no girl will ever sit with me over drinks between flights and toss her pashmina on the next chair and hold my hand.

I pre-ordered Nabokov's "The Original of Laura" today. It'll be out around my birthday. I think I first encountered Miss Ginny at a long-ago entry where she talked about whether Dmitri Nabokov would allow publication. (But whenever is Miss Ginny's birthday? She's always hidden the day and month...) I'm looking forward to a first edition, to something I can put there between "Pale Fire" and "Ada, or Ardor" on my shelves.

Beth Orton is singing Cohen's "Sisters of Mercy" right now. I once sang--- recited ---Orton's "Anywhere" to Britt-Nicole on a November night. I love the way Beth Orton's voice wraps itself round Cohen's words, love that hint of darkness, love the Classical reference, the way Sisters of Mercy calls up that the Furies had always to be spoken of as The Kindly Ones.

Leonard Cohen was born in 1934--- he was in New York early on, working on an MA at Columbia. And he'd have been thirty just as that whole Warhol-NYC scene opened up, the world of the Factory, that odd liminal world just between Beats and hippies. 1964--- London, New York, Joan Didion's California. The world "Mad Men" is just reaching. I wish I could've seen it.

The cafe where I had lunch today had little notices on the tables saying that they were now open 21.30 'til 03.00, doing late-night sandwiches and breakfasts for patrons of the riverside bars. Probably not something that'll last, but I will have to walk downtown and have a midnight beakfast while I can. I've missed that, missed after-the-bars-close breakfasts in little diners with a lovely girl who's been on the dancefloor with me. I miss talking music and books and politics there at three in the morning. I want a lovely wicked literary clever panty-free cachexical girl to sit with me at a cafe long after midnight and just hold hands and talk and chain-smoke and grin.

I want to ask Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo to meet me in NYC or Savannah--- or to show me Montreal for a long weekend this autumn. I just don't know how to ask. Even if I did, I'd be too afraid to read the answer. And I hate the gnawing fear that no one will ever meet me again, that I'll never get to the Skinny Island again. Let alone London or Marrakech or Tallinn. After five years, I very much want finally to meet Miss Ginny and sit over drinks and books, to go out on dancefloors and lakeside docks. I wish I knew how to ask.

No bouillabaisse tonight. No pinot noir, either.