Listening to old Garbage songs on the Small Psyduck iPod. Oddly soothing. I've loved Shirley Manson's voice since the early '90s.

I do need to talk with Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo about "Blood Meridian". Every time I re-read it I find more things worth considering. More things worth visualising for the film-in-my-head of the book.

Judge Holden, writing there in his great ledger-book deep in an Anasazi cave, tells the filibustero captain that whatever he puts down in his book is taken away out of the mind of man. So stunningly powerful and scary a thought... Very Gnostic, too--- which might explain why Harold Bloom so loves the novel.

At some point there in the desert night, the Judge says to the Kid, "Whatever exists in the world without my knowledge, exists without my consent." This is why I need to be sitting with Miss Ginny tonight over drinks. That's the kind of line Miss Ginny and I need to be explicating together. Suntory single-malt and cigarillos and books. We need nights like that.

Harold Bloom... Not just Bloom on Booknotes long ago, talking about the final scene of "Blood Meridian", the Judge laughing and dancing to a fiddle in the cantina, announcing that he will never die. Harold Bloom's "The Flight to Lucifer". The subtitle is a "Gnostic Fantasy". I read it one summer long ago, living in a sub-sub-let on E. 86th, down from New Haven for a summer short course at Columbia. It may have been Caterina's suggestion. She was reading all of Robertson Davies that spring and summer. I think "The Rebel Angels" came later, but I do remember her reading a library copy of "The Manticore" there in bed in her rooms over York St. She liked the idea of things Gnostic, Caterina did. And she had those green eyes--- there in Sunday morning light, reading stretched out in her narrow bed, before we'd go to West of Eleven for brunch.

Whatever exists in the world without my knowledge, exists without my consent... It's a menacing line--- all the more so set against the Judge's ledger-book.

I don't read Spanish, but one day I will find a lovely girl who'll read out the untranslated Spanish Tarot reading from "Blood Meridian". Just as one night I do want to sit at a cafe table with a lovely clever girl who'll lay out cards from David Palladini's "Aquarian" Tarot for me. Miss Ginny does many unexpected things. But does she read Tarot? Is it a skill the Other Melissa at kraftig_bewegt might have? Suntory single-malt for crit theory evenings, and for Tarot readings....what? Pinot noir, maybe? Or Demerara 30-year rum?

I do need to read Miss Ginny's poetry and short stories. And I need to get her critiques of my own. She is someone whose critiques I do trust. And when I do get a Big Cardboard Box next and make a Fort, Miss Ginny can certainly come climb inside and have Yummy Treats and be Quiet and Safe. She's always welcome there.