Listics

Next Blogger confab I attend I hope there are more writers present. Like this guy…

“…La Taverne de Ripaille at the Park Hotel in Grenoble, France. Must have been from 1994. Spring. I was having dinner alone that evening. The place was empty when two young, well dressed French men came in with a tall American who looked familiar, somehow. He was an older guy. Sixties or seventies. A politician. Democrat. Stuart Symington? Pretty sure Symington was dead. Somewhow the guy reminded me of Pat Brown, but I could visualize Brown, and this guy was too tall and skinny. Even a bit lanky, like Lyndon Johnson.”

…and this guy…

“If you only read one book on post traumatic stress this year, let this be the one. Judith Herman’s description (and advocacy) of “complex PTSD” is an important contribution to the literature, as there are many conditions not covered under the DSM-IV’s criteria for PTSD. These include especially psychological and emotional abuse. Herman looks at a range of traumatic experiences from Vietnam combat to spousal battery to child neglect.”

…and of course women with beautiful voices like this one…

I didn’t know anyone but the host, whom I’d met once. I knew several names on the ostentatiously accidentally open To: line of the email invitation, but would recognize only their words. Still, a woman alone can cuddle a drink until someone says hello. I reminded myself to hold the champagne flute in the paw not smeared with chain grease. This was SoHo, not Brooklyn, I thought, so I should make an effort. The room was a mixture of meeja and web types; friendly enough.

Various nice men stopped to chat. I kept a straight face as they ‘fessed up to founding or abetting the silly companies of five years ago. (Their between-year stories were fuzzier.) I said what I did in fifteen words or fewer, though I have no talent for elevator-pitching my life. A slick and toothy fellow—New York raised—told me he’d tried to resist the temptation to start another company, but couldn’t.
“The entrepreneur is a serial monogamist,” I said, as the bubbles came up my nose. His eyes widened at this profundity. Then he excused himself to go to another party.

BloggerCon was less than it might have been, more than it was. I’m depressed and lonely and sick. I blog to write and not much vice versa. I think there is no such thing as blogging. Blogging as a label trivializes a larger set of creative acts, diminishes them in the naming. Writers write, and in the media available today, a writer’s published efforts are polydimensional, interactive.

Joi Ito bought a rototiller, a sensible machine with rear tines. I live vicariously through his moblogged picture, eating limp lettuce on warm room service cheeseburgers while he prepares his vegetable garden.

BloggerCon 2 would have been better if I’d stayed home and walked behind the Troybilt. And I mean no offense to the fine people I shared time with here, but I am an insular person, talking, mingling, chatting, it’s all a real effort for me, even with those I love. And there’s not even anything on TV.