Gasping for words

Or, rather, logorrhea being a more or less endemic function for the fingers a typin, the lack is, once more, on the level of thought. It's cold and dark, and all I do is work, where things are as grim as they can get at a "generalist" consultancy, where generalist means that we just sort of flail away and eventually something sticks.

I would be so much better off with a completely blind, anonymous blog where I could just rail on, or hold forth on, everything. I was once jealous of Andrew Solomon, for the courage he had to publish his goofy first book where he lived with alternative Russian artists in '89 and they fed him disinformation. "I should have been the one writing that book," I said. "We have friends in common. The jerk doesn't even speak Russian." Years pass. Solomon publishes more and more. Finally, out comes The Noonday Demon, the most mind-blowingly, heart-rendingly self-baring memoir of depression ever, where he talks about being so depressed that he runs out seeking anonymous gay sex in hopes of contracting AIDS. And fails to do so, even as he roars as a writer.

And it became clear to me that I couldn't have written the Russia book, let alone the depression one, because I don't have the boldness to take those kind of risks. Instead I took the slow-burning risks of a PhD in the humanities, which may yet prove to be the death of me, and the attendant risk of largely accomodative restraint. In the great state of New Jersey.