#uncoffeed...

I was terrified of the hole, and did whatever I thought would keep it from manifesting. ...the empty feeling when a loved one is gone; when your relationship still feels empty; when you finally get the thing you always wanted but it doesn't feel like your dream. These losses are each very different, but there's a unifying thread. I've felt "the hole" when there was absolutely nothing wrong or different in my life. That tells me it's not always situational. And it's not always gnawing. Psychological or biological, it's real and part of the sum total of Me . Maybe I shouldn't think of it as something that needs fixing, a literal hole, but a space - and here's the thing: Nothing is really empty . An empty room has things in it: sunlight, air, dust, energy. The University of Konstanz is home to ground-breaking science on what's really in a vacuum - they call it a Traffic Jam in Empty Space. That empty space within us also contain...

Last night I was at Holiday Inn Central in Washington, DC , but this time as a guest. Big things happened to me in the 12 years I worked there: a life ended and a new one began, and then that life died, too. I’m three reincarnations past the point where I left that building and the people who remain; there was a bit of family reunion to the visit. I had to explain a few times how I was no longer married to that Pakistani guy. I was in town to see Henry Rollins (Henry Fucking Rollins!) present his vacation photos . It turns out he takes pictures like I do – of moments, not just people and things. Sometimes things, though, because sometimes things are funny, like Black Flag shirts on the other side of the world. Let him tell that story. He started with the last time he’d been at Lincoln Theater. The notoriously tough DC audience (because DC people are smart, he said, but I know they are dry as fuck – you’re nice, HFR) kept looking at their phones like they were bored.  So...