More photographs

11:30
Dr. Bombay's Magic Secret Hideaway

Now Playing (in earphones): Greek Song by Rufus Wainwright. All the pearls of China fade astride a Volta...

That music here is again, the same as yesterday, from that same withering mix. As much as I love Billie and Louis, they sometimes seem like they're from a past life, anachronistically knocking on the door of the present. Well, Rufus can hear them knocking too. He's sitting on the couch, and he's telling me not to answer the fucking door. Okay, Rufus. You got it, bro.

Here's a picture I took of a little poison frog at the Dorothy Chapman Fuqua Conservatory at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens.



(S)he was tiny. The size, maybe, of the first knuckle of your thumb. And behind glass because, again, poison.


And since I'm on about photographs of poisonous animals, here's two more I took of Vlindinhauer's (ex-)cat, Aleister.




Okay, so Aleister wasn't poisonous, not in the strict sense of the word. But that doesn't matter, because he's gone, replaced (I know, not possible) by Willow, cat-wonder.

Aleister was very much his own cat. He was tolerant, but you knew not to push your luck. He'll be missed.

In other news, I've been in Fight Club mode again recently. I saw the Fight Club DVD commentary the other day with Fincher, Ed Norton, Brad Pitt, and HBC. HBC gets left out, in the boys' club atmosphere created by the other three.

I need to be careful because the last time I was in Fight Club mode, maybe two years ago, after I finished the book, I almost got myself into trouble. I was in my office, advising a student into the school of music, someone I'd never met before, when I decided to follow a sudden impulse and said to him 'I want you to hit me. As hard as you can.' Young kid. He looked at me like I was an insane person, then left.


~~~~~~~

4:47 PM

Did I mention about my flight back to Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson from Logan? It was rough. I thought the pilots were going to lose control of the plane and that we were going to plummet to our fiery doom, unidentifiable and charred, bones burned to cinders.

Of course, that's what I always think. But this time the captain came over the in-cabin speakers and told us we were going through 'heavy turbulence'. I actually swore to myself that I'd never fly again.

You want to know what's weird? Nobody else on the plane reacted while it was happening. The guy next to me was reading a book called 'Assassin'. Didn't take his eyes off the page. The kid diagonally up from me was playing solitaire on his iPod. While I'm in a blind white panic, trying to remember that it's stupid to make bargains with fate.