Friday afternoon, grey skies, no rain.

Demerara rum here at the writing desk in my window. Guyana dark rum in some lemon-lime mix. Cristina Monet and Francoise Hardy on my iTunes.

I have "Art of Travel" to watch tonight. I'll open a bottle of pinot gris and sit there on the hardwood floor and watch it. No incoming calls to worry about. I suppose that's something. A night without Voices or presences. Time to watch DVDs, time to read.

Richard Dawkins' "The Greatest Show on Earth" arrived today. I'm rather thrilled with that. I'll be reading Dawkins all weekend. I've loved Dawkins' work since ever I read "Blind Watchmaker" many a long year ago. Of course, now--- let's not forget Jacques Monod's "Chance and Necessity", another finely-crafted explanation of evolution, a fond memory from New Haven, a book I remember reading one long weekend Caterina and I spent at a Montauk B&B. So--- Dawkins for a bit tonight, Dawkins at the coffeeshop tomorrow morning.

Right when I got my PhD, I went through a whole phase of science books--- evolutionary biology, chaos and complexity theory, palaeontology. I still love reading those things. I know Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo reads science-y books--- e.g. "The World Without Us" and books on environmental issues. I've always read architecture and architectural-history books, and I still love science books. I miss my high-school and undergraduate days, reading through the old "Whole Earth Catalog" and the Co-Evolution Quarterly and furiously making notes about the books they featured.

I can listen to my iTunes and just...feel myself yield to a sense of failure. My iTunes tracks all show up at my LastFM tracklist but... it all feels useless unless Laura-Ashlee at bladeoftheknife / Lauraashlee and Miss Lissy at emigree / WaterColorFire are reading my tracklists and commenting.

I'm buying a hooded Yale sweatshirt. I suppose I have to. I saw a photo somewhere of Miss Lissy wearing a hooded Columbia sweatshirt. I suppose I have to have a Yale one just to feel semi-equal. I'm entitled to the Yale shirt, mind you. I do have a couple of degrees from there. I could wear a sweatshirt from the place where I got my PhD and JD, but...it's not the same. I'm not ashamed of where I got those degrees, mind you. But I dislike the colours and...well...it's just not the same. So I'll keep up with Lissy at emigree (though I'll never have her value) with a navy-blue Yale hooded sweatshirt. Of course I wonder... Would she have worn a Goucher sweatshirt? What are the semiotics of Goucher? Lissy I think wanted to do a Peace Studies degree there. All I know about Goucher is that it's a place in Wm. Spackman novels where Philadelphia debs went in the late 1950s.

I watched the David Cronenberg "Crash" late last night. I sat and lost myself in Cronenberg's erotica and realised that Deborah Kara Unger's starved cheekbones and hipbones and Rosanna Arquette in her prosthetics and braces were...brilliantly hot. Yes--- BRDYTW girls, Cronenberg/Ballard erotica: I am very much the Evil Older Predator so many people think I am. And even beyond that--- I am insane on multiple levels. Dance like Ian Curtis, recognise that Japanese Bulimia is at the end of the road.

Janet Browne's "Voyaging", the first volume of her biography of Chas. Darwin. I suppose that one thing I've always loved about reading Darwin biographies is reading about his preparations for the Beagle voyage. Shopping lists--- all the things he purchased for the sea voyage and for naturalist's pursuits. I love Lists. I'll always love Lists. And I love having a well-equipped sea chest.

I do want Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo to update this weekend. And I need her to send me her own Lists: books, music, films, travels.

Autumn and winter will be here--- and I do need a classic trenchcoat. Long ago, when she was at _iwenthome Miss Lissy told me that she always imagined me in a classic trench. I like the idea. Black, of course. Not tan. Black, always. I think Miss Lissy always saw herself in a classic trench, too. Part of her film-noir-heroine pose. Charlotte J. Nolan, Melia, Vera Taliessin--- they'd all wear elegant classic trenchcoats on late-night autumn streets in Chelsea or Faenza or London. I wonder if she has a classic trench now... Is it a Miu-Miu kind of look? And--- does Miss Ginny have a trenchcoat for visits to Russian bars in Montreal? I rather think it is her kind of look...

I should be learning French this semester--- re-building my French. Both Laura-Ashlee at bladeoftheknife and Lissy at emigree are doing French immersion. I should be doing something like that. (Is Miss Ginny already bilingual?) I needed Laura-Ashlee to chivvy me along reviewing French; it was something she promised she'd do. But I'll never hear from her again. The Schubert and Debussy mp3s she promised will never come.

Vitalic's "Trahison" is playing. A song I do love. Something Miss Ginny told me about long ago. Something she and her friend Evelyn used to play when driving through the Quebec countryside late at night in Evelyn's truck, jumping out to go skinny-dipping in local creeks. I so wish I'd known Miss Ginny when she was sixteen. And I do love the song.

I'll watch "Art of Travel" later. Pinot gris and...Ritz crackers? Pinot gris and...Fritos? Dear God. The transition from Demerara rum to pinot gris... I may have to think about that.

I do wish I could go to my LastFM site. I'm actually afraid to go. I wish I could go to LastFM and read through Laura-Ashlee's and Lissy's tracklists. And find their messages for me. And...I wish that Laura-Ashlee and Miss Lissy and Miss Ginny were going through my own tracklists and finding valuable things, finding things that made me seem valuable. I wish that they'd look at my LastFM and Netflix and GoodReads lists and want to read/view/hear things that I've found. I wish I could have some value. I want some lovely wicked girl to want access to my Stories and Lists the way I want access to theirs...

And I do want a lovely wicked clever panty-free girl there at my coffee table to read Tarot cards... I'd do that with Miss Ginny in the Marrakech night, too... And with Laura-Ashlee in a cafe in Milan...

Lars Danielson is doing "Asta"... I want to listen to that with Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo walking hand-in-hand down streets in Montreal or London or Strasbourg on late-September nights. I'd even play it for Laura-Ashlee while kissing on the Stockholm metro.

"Art of Travel"... Somehow I'm thinking of Tony Bourdain. And of the young Hugo Williams. And of Darwin aboard HMS Beagle. I will watch the film.

I need to know Miss Ginny's birthday. I really do.

More rum , I think. Then pinot gris and the film. I just wish I could have Voices and value. I never will, of course. But I need Voices. I hate being so utterly alone.