The autumn of my discontent...

It's a week like any other week following two life-altering bombs dropped by close friends--one involving birth; the other, parental death--and some fairly innocuous digestive problem after an unfortunate late-night excursion to a dubious North Beach eatery. Fast-forward past my subsequent 36-hour colonic and a day languishing in front of bad daytime TV and a traumatic viewing of "Letters to Juliet," and witness me, weak-brained but at work, zombie-walking from meeting to meeting with rooms full of idealistic go-getters.

By the time the last meeting turned words to mush in my head, I was feeling the crash. It's that feeling one imagines is like in the movies, when a car flies off a bridge in slow-motion, brutally barreling into the dark, tumultuous waters, where it drifts poetically and with certainty into a never-ending abyss.

Yeah, like that. Full of cliches.

And so it was today that I mumbled my goodbyes, decided to forsake all plans to attend luminous Litquake events in the city, went straight home and crawled into bed, where I: a) pulled the blankets over my head and sighed gratefully, then b) wept for about 15 minutes for no reason, wondering if I was sad because I was sick or if I was sick because I was sad, then c) realized that my weeping and all of life's events in the past week was forcing me to address the same old problem I'd faced--to be honest, my whole life but more specifically, ever since I thought it would be a good idea to ditch my low-paying but full-time writing gig in what everybody was saying was a "dying industry" to launch myself into a "growing industry" in which I could help create history--oh, but I can't write about it. See, 'cause, there's an NDA we'd like you to sign...

OK, fine. There are lots of other things to write about. So what's my problem? Apparently, for me, the freedom to write about anything I want with no deadlines whatsoever is absolutely inhibiting. And so I find myself in this tragic spiral of feeling invisible at work, like I have no identity at all, so I live in a bubble of complacency, which kills my drive, and I feel lost and worthless--so I don't express myself at work. And I don't write.

Not birth, not death. Just the murky gray matter in between.

For the love of Dirty Words...

Before I head off to Mendocino for the weekend, I thought I'd leave you with these pics of my favorite book event this year so far...

"Dirty Words: An evening of Smut" on Aug. 3 at CellSpace in San Francisco, an erotic literary event (you know how I love those!) presented by Litquake and hosted by the fabulous, carefree and totally-adorable-in-a-vinyl-corset Kirk Read.

I'm gonna use severe brevity in this posting 'cuz I gotta dash but I will just sum it up this way for now: James Joyce wrote fantastically dirty love letters to his wife Nora that can really only be appreciated when read aloud with a thick Scottish brogue by the dramatic, naughty, manly Alan Black...Stormy Leather has amazing leather wear and thank gooness for SF burlesque!--especially when done by Twilight Vixen Revue, an all-queer showgirl and production company...I have a mad, mad crush on Stephen Elliott...yes, there really are swingers in Marin, as told by the lovely British Helena Echlin...and now I fully understand how important math truly is, thanks to Ellen Sussman's reading of her experience of "69" from her book, which I very much need to get immediately...

If you want, I'll fill you in on other details later. Gotta go now! XOXOXXX