the queer art of failure

Am in bed in my Williamsburg hotel, which I just booked this afternoon because the lovely apartment I was staying in, however lovely, didn't have air-conditioning, and it was 100 degrees today in New York. I am still in full make-up from the photo shoot today, the results I'm imagining will be online fairly soon. I am thinking intensely about what I want to write, how I want to write, what kind of projects I really want to work on. Also, because I'm in New York, and I inevitably ponder this here, whether I can really make a go of it as a writer, and what that means, or whether I should ignore these other definitions of success entirely, or realize they have ignored me, and feel okay with that.

Lately I have realized, kind of swimmily, that most people want other people to be positive, or at least appear to be positive, and those people, who seem generally well-adjusted, are usually the people who are the most successful. I don't know if it's true, but I think it might be true. I think it might extend to writing, not writing, I mean, but the *world* of writing, which is sometimes literature and sometimes something else. People want a happy ending. The girl brushing various Dior palettes on my cheeks and eyes today asked me what kind of books I write. "Depressing ones, people sometimes say," I answered, not knowing, as ever, how to answer that, how to even answer that to myself, who feels in a way I have never written any books, and I'm only now thinking of writing books. She laughed, in disbelief. Then I realized probably successful writers a) wouldn't answer that question that way? and b)maybe wouldn't write depressing books?

I have been feeling a bit aimless blogging - no, that's not right. I've enjoyed what I've been thinking about lately, and I've been doing it fairly publicly, but I don't feel right now as much of a sense of community that I originally felt when I began blogging. Wondering whether I should blog anymore. Or whether I should go back to note-taking entirely in private. A different system, I guess.  I'm not going to do anything drastic - but I will put my finger here, on this page, for a while. Maybe a day, in which case this post is appropriately ridiculous, but maybe longer. Will still update News on my website once I watch the video the designer sent me to figure out how to update things. So, you know. Six months from now. Maybe I will update News here. I don't know. Right now I have an open Word document on my laptop and I'm trying to figure out what the fuck I should work on, I mean, *really* work on.

When I think of taking down the blog I feel empty, and blank, and then kind of free. I also am not sure who reads my blog. I don't mean that for any reassurances, but when I first started, I felt more like I was in conversation. Lately I feel I have been monologing.

Today I sat naked in the little hot guest room, waiting to put clothes on until only minutes before the car hired for me was going to come, and felt the humidity underneath my breasts.Today I sat in the back of a car, and ate a slice of the richest chocolate cake on a plastic plate while I was driven from Queens back to Brooklyn.  I loved New York today, maybe because I was in Brooklyn. I have not loved New York for a while.