Orion beer--- from Okinawa. Picked up a few bottles and a bottle of Standart vodka on my way home this afternoon. I think I prefer Baltika to Orion, but...nonetheless: something I do want to recommend to Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo. Now if she and I can one day share a few Cobras over curry...or a few Belle Gueules at the Hotel Opus in Montreal--- that would be good, too. Though there is always time for a couple of Orions at our rented rooms in Sapporo.

"The Spanish Prisoner" is on DVD tonight. A David Mamet script--- a very David Mamet script. One character just described a trip from a branch office to the main corporate office in Midtown by saying, "My troika was beset by wolves." Campbell Scott is the lead. I actually hadn't realised he was Geo. C. Scott's son. I like the roles he plays--- he was great with Parker Posey in "The Daytrippers", and wickedly funny in "Crashing". He looks nothing like me, mind you--- but I wouldn't mind having him play me in a film. We might cast Selma Blair or Zooey Deschanel as Miss Ginny. Steve Martin is in "Spanish Prisoner", too. That makes me want to watch "Shopgirl" again. Well, that and my longstanding Claire Danes crush.

My wood floors creak. Older floors. I wonder if Miss Ginny's hardwood floors creak in Montreal...

I sat at the cafe in B&N this morning and read Pico Iyer's "Abandon". Very much a book I'd recommend to Miss Ginny--- it goes with her fondness for things Persian. I'd recommend it to Jill at pacificlolita and Laura-Ashlee at bladeoftheknife, too. I had a used hardcover of "Abandon" long ago--- I may have sent it to Lissy at emigree back at the end of the Year Six. But it is something I'd like to hear from Miss Ginny about. Being my Obsession en titre does require book discussions.

I did go upstairs at B&N and sit in their Comfy Chairs and read Nietzsche. I think I made notes in my Moleskine about that. There's always something suspect about undergraduates reading Nietzsche--- like high school kids reading Ayn Rand. Not "pretentious"--- I'm not saying that: suspect. Undergraduate boys reading Nietzsche... Nothing good can come of that. And I think Umi at ivich will agree with me.

Pistachio ice cream... I have to go find some tomorrow. It just seems important.

I do want to hear from lovely friends and correspondents about "Blood Meridian" and "Abandon". And maybe about "The Governess" as well. I must remind Trish at kissingverlaine to tell me about Ahmet Tapinar.

Back in the Year Six I told Lissy at emigree about Arthur Inman and his diaries. There was a one-volume selection from the diaries called "From a Darkened Room" that I do think Miss Lissy did look at--- she was intrigued and baffled and appalled by Inman. There's a film coming out about Inman, a film called "Hypergraphia". It is something I want to see one day. I know Miss Ginny has read Joan Didion's essay on keeping a notebook, and I need to ask her what she thinks of Arthur Inman. I'm sure that Lissy is still keeping a journal and a Moleskine in her backpack, and I expect that Miss Ginny still keeps a paper journal. I do wonder if they catalog and save their old notebooks and journals, though. I've been keeping paper journals since 1998--- I have them all with me, arranged and labelled. I can't imagine ever giving up an archive.

I do miss Tiffany at permeation . She always posted wonderful photos at her site. Fine poetry, too. She was in England the last I knew--- had just left her husband. I'd followed her entries and photos since she was in north Texas a few years ago. Again--- a Story whose end I'll never know.

I did have Lebanese at lunch--- kefta kebab. I'm in a Middle Eastern mood...or a Central Asian mood. I'm probably much more interested in the Maghreb and Central Asia than I'll be the Arab world. Berber, Turkic, Persian--- that all attracts me more than Arabia and the Levant. So maybe I'll watch "The Horsemen" again tonight. Or read "Light Garden of the Angel King". I'll certainly read a bit of Rumi before bed. I'm remembering Pico Iyer's essay from five or six years ago--- "Living on Muezzin Time". I do miss Turkey--- I wish I could see Istanbul and Izmir again, and I wish I could see Tehran and Isfahan...and Herat or Balkh'. Miss Ginny and I must see Persia together... That's an Adventure I do want to share with her.

Peregrine Hodson read a battered old copy of Basho's "Narrow Road to the Deep North" while trekking across Afghanistan in the 1980s. I do like that. Still...odd memory. Back when I was at New Haven, the Dramat did a play with Basho as a character--- as a rigid Tokugawa bureaucrat rather than the wandering poet. Caterina and I may have seen it--- I certainly remember the review in the YDN. I don't know anything about Basho's biography. Maybe I'll take a copy of "Narrow Road" to Nuristan or Ulan Bataar. Anyone could read it on the road to the Tohoku or at a Sapporo cafe. I think it only counts if you read it on the steppe or in the Wakhan Corridor.