I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong hills...

I'v always loved that line. "Out of Africa" was on cable late last night. I have it on DVD somewhere, but I hadn't seen it in years. I wrote Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo about it, about how much I loved that line. I don't know if she's ever seen the film, or what she thought of it. I'd like to ask her if she's read the book. I of course do need a copy in hardcover-- Modern Library I think has a lovely little joint edition of "Out of Africa" and "Shadows on the Grass". I do need one.

I once saw Julie Harris do "Lucifer's Child", a one-woman show about Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen. Well, well done. And again--- something I'd like to see with Miss Ginny. And of course I wonder what Lissy at emigree thinks of Karen Blixen, how she applies the feminist theory she's learning to an earlier generation of women, to Karen Blixen or Georgia O'Keefe or Beryl Markham, to women who sought out raw spaces and new worlds.

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong hills...

I've always thought that was one of the most lovely elegiac opening lines I've ever heard. Very mono-no-aware, yes. Sunlight on the veldt, golden grasses stretching away north and west, the shadows of the highlands lengthening over the verandah. Lost time, lost world. A lovely line.

Oh, yes: International Blasphemy Day today. My own project should include eating small pork dim sum nyotaimori-style off the lithe, bare, cachexical body of a lovely Catholic high school girl stretched on a cathedral altar that's been draped in shredded pages of the Qur'an. That should cover all my bases, don't you think?

I recommended a film once to Miss Ginny--- "Journey to Kafiristan". About the 1939 motorcar journey Ella Maillart and Annemarie Schwarzenbach made overland from Geneva to Kabul. Krystina at yes_please has always had a crush on Annemarie, always liked dressing up like her: the coltish, doom-haunted girl who dressed as a beautiful boy. Ella Maillart had already been Peter Fleming's traveling companion across Chinese Turkestan in "News From Tartary"--- another book to recommend both to Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo and Trish at kissingverlaine. Ella Maillart is another of those traveling women of the 1920s and '30s I'd like to talk about with both Lissy and Miss Ginny.

I have "The Girlfriend Experience" to watch tonight. A film I'm rather looking forward to. I've liked Sasha Grey since ever I first ran across her via Debauchette's old blog. She's smart and savvy and funny and poised. A Sacramento girl--- Miss Ginny made a note of that in an entry once, talking about how cities and places in America were alien and alluring to her as a Quebecoise. Sasha Grey has modelled for Vice and American Apparel--- is that where Genevieve discovered her? [Query--- has Miss Ginny ever seen any of Sasha's porn work?] Anyway--- I'll be watching "The Girlfriend Experience" this evening. Something I will write about, something I'd like to discuss with lovely friends-and-correspondents.

Cool and dry here right now. The first touch of the all-too-brief Deepest South autumn. I wish I could be in NYC tonight. Or Montreal. Or Vienna. I wish I could reach across a table and slide my fingers through a lover's slender, gloved fingers and grin. I need city streets in autumn, just like I need David Sylvian's voice and Jane Birkin singing on the sound system in some tiny bistro. Just like I need good Suntory single-malt.

Last autumn I asked Miss Ginny what her own autumn playlist music was. I'll ask that again in the Year Nine, and open the question up to other lovely clever friends-and-correspondents, too: what are your autumn cities, and what songs make up your autumn playlist?