Yesterday Moonstone and the gang over at the messageboard to which I contribute a little hillbilly political commentary and a lot of BS threw me a virtual Bday party. It got a little wild--the food was fantastic, the drinks were scrumptious, the flowers I could almost smell--we took a virtual tour of my home county, had a couple of virtual performances by Chippendales (oh, my!) and ended the day with fireworks.

The great thing about virtual parties is that you can party like it's 1999 (as Moon put it over at Much Ado About Nothing) or like the Soviets are gonna get us (as Miss A the Ornery, a connoisseur of eighties metal, would say) and not be hung over the next day. Nevertheless, after all the excitement, I felt like a fairly quiet day was in order today. So I finished a book (the results of which I have recorded at Gimme a Book--yes, I am indulging in a fury of shameless narcissism) and, while writing in my personal journal, ended up in a van Gogh painting.

Some background first: Last week Auntie was up to visit one day. She knew I was about to fill up my current journal and brought me a new one, a lovely hardback with what looked, to my untrained eye, like a post-Impressionist Paris. I happened to mention this at the party, and Moon, with a percipience that Madame Sadie would envy, found the very picture. (Thanks, Moon.) It turns out that this lovely place is a representation of a street scene in the Provencal city of Arles, where Vincent van Gogh lived from February 1888 to May 1889--the city where he had a violent argument with the painter Gauguin that ended with Vincent cutting off his own ear.

This lovely place was painted at a more placid time:



Looks like a good place to recuperate from one's virtual excesses. So I've shut my eyes and imagined myself sitting under that awning, alone at one of those sturdy little tables, sheltered from a gentle shower of rain--which van Gogh didn't paint in, but hey, we're in a drought here, so I daydream rain--, wearing a beret, sipping an Evian--originally it was a glass of vin ordinaire, but I'm being restrained after yesterday!--, nibbling on a delicate French pastry, alternately sketching and scribbling cryptic lines of poetry and prose in a sketchpad, and flirting with le garcon, who finds my fractured hillbilly French charming.

In short, I'm sitting in a van Gogh cafe, pretending I'm a member of what Gertrude Stein called "the lost generation."

Nice place to visit, for certain.

Moon, Pam, Nan, Laura, Krista, Chris, G, Rory, Auntie, Brenda (and all those who were virtual guests at the bash including lots of kitties), thank you, thank you, thank you. As the Rovers sang long ago, me oh me oh my, WASN'T that a party!