It leaves me empty and bitter to think that no lovely, clever, wicked girl will ever name herself as being in a relationship with me at her Facebook profile. It leaves me empty and bitter to think that no lovely, clever, wicked girl will ever post a Facebook status saying that she misses me or loves me.

I've been listening to Amethystium's "Into the Twilight". Pretty song--- nicely done. Not a band I know much about. I found a reference to them in a very old entry--- the Year Four, maybe ---of Lissy's at her old _iwenthome journal. She always had good music noted in her entries. I saw Amethystium at her journal and then found them at iTunes. I have no idea what music she's listing at emigree now. I wish I could see how her tastes have evolved since the early days at _iwenthome.

That's one thing I wish for Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo, too: that she'd write more about the music in her life and that she'd list more songs at her entries.

Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"--- a novel that is very much worth reading. Almost exactly three hundred pages, and easy enough to devour in a morning there at the coffeeshop. It's not his masterpiece--- that'll always be "Blood Meridian", which is the late-20th-c. successor to "Moby-Dick" and "As I Lay Dying". But it is sad and powerful and finely-crafted. The film will be out--- when? November of the Year Nine? Something I do want to see.

"The Road" is one of the best post-apocalyptic novels I've ever found. The setting owes something to Malcolm Bosse's "Mister Touch" (1990), but it's far more sombre. There's no social commentary here; that's not what the novel is about. There's no explanation of the apocalypse, no political or ennvironmental explanation to get in the way of the purity of the story. I really hesitated to read "The Road"--- nothing has ever been more bleak and grim. You know from the first page or two that there isn't going to be a happy ending. This isn't "The Postman"; it isn't even "Earth Abides". The world isn't going to be rebuilt. But it is about determination and love, and the ending does have a quiet belief in individual hope. McCarthy's books--- "Blood Meridian", "The Crossing", "All the Pretty Horses" ---always leave me exhausted and breathless. "The Road" is different: a quiet, melancholy, yet just-maybe-hopeful ending. I hope Miss Ginny does devour it. And I hope she'll write about it, that she'll talk with me about it.

And I hope that she'll read "Blood Meridian" and "Suttree" as well.

Grey outside today. Maybe sunlight breaking through to the south. I may re-read Joan Didion's "Democracy" and drink crisp Asian beer. Or I may just sleep.

I keep thinking of a girl in skinny jeans and a charcoal pashmina. I bought her the pashmina to wear while we traveled. I'll never get to travel with her or see her in it. I'll never get to travel. And no girl will ever find me worth listing as her inamorata at Facebook.