Cynthia Gralla tells me that she was utterly taken by Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"--- which is a shatteringly powerful novel. Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo read it a few weeks ago. I want to see the film--- though I'm not sure it can be filmed. I really do want to talk with Miss Ginny about "The Road". And I hope she'll read "Blood Meridian" and talk to me about it, too. She's very much someone I want to just talk books with.

Okay, yes. I have the hooded Yale sweatshirt. I like it, and I'll be wearing it once cold weather sets in. I know why I bought it, and I know it'll never be as good as the hooded sweatshirt Lissy at emigree has from her new university on Morningside Heights. But I'll still wear it--- I did take a couple of degrees there. Now if I could just find a way to get a McGill sweatshirt or a McGill t-shirt or two... McGill's student union sells them, but I'm not sure if they're set up to ship to the States. Maybe from Amazon.ca? I need to find someone in Montreal who could get one for me in return for something from here...

Exhausted at work. I have no sense of connection to anything I'm doing there, and no interest at all. I'd do human rights law or international law--- that excites me and holds my attention. But I just sit there on the sixth floor and look out at the downtown and the bridge and space out. I feel totally disconncted and indifferent. I know that Lissy at emigree can't even begin to think about law school 'til the Year Eleven or the Year Twelve, but I'm already envious of her chances to read more international law and just maybe do the NGO work I'd kill to be doing. (Ummm...can you say you'd kill to be doing human rights advocacy?) I really wish that right now I could be talking about international law and international events with Miss Lissy.

And I'd so love to talk politics and science-y things and international issues with Miss Ginny, too. I have a sense of the things she reads--- I just wish we could talk at length. I so desperately miss academia for the conversations, for the long afternoons of talking books and politics. I hate thinking that I'm losing my ability to do that. No one at my firm talks books or international events--- only sports, real estate, and gossip. And I'm not interested in any of that. If I can't talk about books and ideas, I'll lose anything like a sense of myself.

My architect friend in San Francisco noted me at Facebook to say she was having Japanese curry tonight. I do envy her.

Mandy Moore singing "Nothing That You Are". I really like the song. Miss Ginny and I share a crush on Mandy Moore, and we both think Mandy has serious potential for dark cabaret songs. She really should do "St. James Infirmary"--- black cocktail sheath, empty stage, piano behind her.

Peregrine Hodson, "Circle Round the Sun"... A book I'd to talk about with both Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo and Cynthia Gralla. I loved Hodson's "Under a Sickle Moon" about Afghanistan, and "Circle Round the Sun"--- his Japan memoir ---is cold and clear and powerful. I need interlocutors--- interlocutrixes, I suppose. I need long afternoons at a university pub with conversation and flirtations. I really do miss that.

I came home this afternoon and found my copy of E.R. Eddison's "The Worm Ouroboros". I've loved the book, loved the Thos. Malory language of the story, since I was twelve or thirteen. And I knew even then that I wanted to be Eddison's Lord Gro. There was never any question about that. I was always meant to be Lord Gro. Certainly Lacey agreed. And Caitlin at kissmecaitlin.

Laura-Ashlee at bladeoftheknife did promise to send me Schubert and Debussy mp3s. I'll never hear from her again. One more girl who's just Vanished. One more lost Voice.

I wish I could talk with Trish at kissingverlaine about "An Ottoman Mentality".

And I wish lovely clever girls would encourage me to rebuild my French. I really need encouragement.

I hope Miss Ginny will update soon. Reading her entries always means a lot. I just wish she and I could be at the bar of the Hotel Opus in Montreal tonight.

And I must find some way to acquire a McGill sweatshirt and/or t-shirt. That I really must do.