Lux Lotus

On Perception

I have just arrived home from work, and need to leave for the airport in five hours. I'm so tired that I could cry, but honestly, I just don't have the energy. I am happy to fly to sunny Los Angeles, and plan to sleep for four days straight at my hotel on the beach, more or less. A reporter from my favorite newspaper in the world writes tonight to ask, "What's your secret [with men]? Am dying to know!" While I get some beauty sleep between now and Tuesday, I'll let you put forward theories, here in the comments.

On Confluence

He asked me my idea of a holiday –– "five-star hotel anywhere, as long as there's room service and I don't have to look at my BlackBerry," which he admitted that he could have guessed. I asked him his, and he told me the story of his last one, which involved some kind of salt merchants trading by camel on an African trade route letting him tag along. We... could... go... to... Morocco, I announced, brightening considerably, "and you could go and do your thing, and I could..." "Yes," he smiled, "I would, and I'd come back to you getting fanned in the castle." Perfection.

On Timing

A diplomat, met in passing at a dinner party last week, looked me up a day or two later and explained that socializing outside of a war zone is new for him and he didn't realize that he wouldn't see me again. My initial impression would be that he may be the most down-to-earth person I've met in a while (he surfs on vacation), although he seems to have no expectation whatsoever that I should be ordinary at all. He's picking me up this evening on his way down from the Upper East Side. What to wear for oysters, caviar and champagne?

On Nostalgia

Going out with Ben tonight –– click here, for me as a girl.

On Success

My impressionable intern has just informed me that she has lined up an interview for her next internship with company executives tonight, at the Explorers Club. Truly? I'm so proud I could cry. 

How to Get It

After I began working at 9am and finished up at 3am, I started reading for a few minutes' relaxation and chanced upon the sentence that would advance my outlook on life completely:

“To do anything,” she told the duke, “I’m going to need a million pounds.” 

On Adoration

Of course, tonight was magical. When the Italian man with the bottle of wine in his overcoat pocket is with your party, it bodes well. Especially when he has, a) boar hunting, and b) dalmatian, stories. And how about when the hostess brings up her natural proficiency in archery? Swoon. As I gamely chatted, I was immensely grateful to the man who patiently explained to me, over dinner in London last spring, the difference between hunting (foxes), shooting (birds), and stalking (deer). Even better, I came home to a charming letter, postmarked Mayfair, mocking me mercilessly for the American lingo in my last dispatch. I can't wait 'til I get there, either; hopefully for a good long time, as we say.

Miss Cerand accepts with pleasure...

Invitations that I have accepted this week, through Wednesday:

I will speak at Adelphi University on February 10.

I will be visiting Los Angeles from February 16-20.

I will join the benefit committee for the 1st Annual Art Fag City Awards on February 23.

I will discuss Madame Bovary at McNally Jackson –– and especially my thoughts on the novel's rise to infamy following a highly publicized obscenity trial in Paris in 1857 –– as part of its series with Time Out New York, on February 28.

I will speak at Backspace Writers Conference in May.

On Queues and Coronets

I may not answer everything, or even try, but those that begin thus are duly bumped up: Hello Tsarina, Your loyal subject here... 

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The Quotable Samuel Beckett

"I wasn't returning empty-handed, not quite, I was taking back with me the virtual certainty that I was still of this world, of that world too, in a way." ––  The Calmative (on its mythic narrative)