I will now pull a rabbit out of my hat. I was thinking that I would reach this moment a long time ago, the moment where I sit in front of this fucking screen and the white page and find the black marks that usually account for words, and the verbose vomit that can fill my head and eek at the corners of my mind barren. Womb-like, empty, there’s no egg to be fertilized.

Most of this accounts for the fact that it’s quarter to 1, I just walked in my apartment, and an acute exhaustion has settled over me. I’m brain tired. I’m bone tired. I’m just plain tuckered out. I don’t want to talk about politics, I don’t want to think about work, or wonder if Kerry has what it takes, or get the temperature of my blood boiling over Bush’s latest asinine idea. I just want my pillow.

For now, I will sit here with a cigarette and some tea, Denali on the iPod in my tiny, clean Brooklyn apartment. I won’t think about Mel or the two pieces I have due tomorrow, or the huge interview I have to edit down by first thing tomorrow morning. I won’t let the fact that we are cranking away at what is probably the biggest single issue of any magazine any of us will ever work on. The fact that we are understaffed and that more and more things seem to be falling on my plate cross my head.

Have you ever dreamt about your work? It’s a sickening feeling, isn’t it? As though we don’t spend enough of our hours and energies preoccupied with the minutia of whatever thing it is that pays your rent. It has to creep into our beds, like we’re some drunk sorority girl whose mistakenly collapsed in the wrong frat boys bed. I hope I don’t dream about work tonight.

I have a friend staying with me for the next 2 days, so I’m going to head off and catch up. I hope you don’t mind the lack of anything substantial here. It has less to do with the fact that I have things to say (believe me, I have plenty still stored, running rough shod over my synapses) than the fact that the next few weeks at work are going to be miserable. There’s just too much to do. This issue is too big. We have too few people. And yet it will get done. Hopefully it will be brilliant. Wish me luck, and I’ll try to do better next time, not wave my hands around in misdirection as I magically try and pull a post out of my hat.

Peace.