What did we say about silent reflection?

I write from Providence, where I am spending the night on an air mattress belonging to greygirlbeast and humglum while Selwyn investigates my backpack. He is a lilac-pointed behemoth with a feather duster of a tail that curves over his back like a shiba inu's; it is the weirdest thing to see on a cat. Hubero has already shed possessively all over my computer bag, so I assume they are dividing my stuff between them. In the morning I will discover they have reached détente over my coat.

Barbara's Bestsellers has returned to South Station! I bought the recent reprint of Boyd McDonald's Cruising the Movies: A Sexual Guide to Oldies on TV (1985) and had a great conversation with one of the booksellers about the self-published paperback of Piers Anthony's The Magic Fart (2003) that has been sitting on the shelf for two and a half years; no one has ever bought it, to which we may credit the continued postponement of the apocalypse, but periodically school groups of thirteen-year-olds discover it, giggle over it, read dirty lines to one another in hushed, daring voices, and then get surprised mid-snicker by the bookseller and flee in panic. I was vaguely sad this did not occur while I was around to observe with popcorn.

I did manage to leave Boston this year, but I don't think I'd taken a train from South Station since 2014. I bought a round-trip ticket for the commuter rail and watched the sun set over the salt marshes, the low gold light of very late fall; I finished my first trip book, actually pulled my cap down over my eyes, and almost slept for the last fifteen minutes before Providence. I dreamed a man's face turning away from me, grey-eyed, sharp-profiled, but that was all.

I have been shown the first two episodes of the first season of True Detective (2014) and I plan to watch the rest as soon as the effort won't keep me up until dawn. It's beautifully written and photographed; its crime scenes would not be out of place on Hannibal; I did not realize that so much of it would be so funny, if occasionally in the same way I find Wittgenstein funny. I have never especially paid attention to Matthew McConaughey, but it should not surprise anyone that I think Rust Cohle circa 1995 is beautiful. And fucked up eight ways from Sunday, so let's just clock my favorite character on this show and move on. No wonder sales of Robert W. Chambers went through the roof.

It is very good to see people I haven't visited in three years. Not to mention their weird-ass cats. I am going to attempt sleep.