#uncoffeed...

Comet 46P/Wirtanen - art by debora Ewing Humans are pattern extractors - it's what we do. We find familiar intervals everywhere, and we try to rearrange the medium where it doesn't fit a comfortable pattern. We rake the yard because we like wide, flat surfaces. We build fences with uniform pickets to enforce arbitrary boundaries. We strive to make perfect pancakes (don't laugh - it's an inherited gene and a term of endearment in my family.) And this is the point at which I branch off into unequal tangents. Does it help you at all to have advance warning? You hear once in a while about a person who's born with an extra set of teeth . I sometimes think I was born with two full sets of emotions, and I make use of them all. I see faces in trees, c olors in song, paintings in words . - Pareidolia may be a useful term here. I do my best to translate what I see into something you can recognize . The patterns I see are not necessarily useful to you, but mayb...

Life Coach Roxanne Jackson asked:  "Why don't women have healthy relationships with one another? Hmmmm." My before-coffee response was this: Yeah, I think we have unhealthy emotional relationships with women for the same reason we get into unhealthy emotional relationships with men, but in different ways. I am guessing it originates with a need to connect that turns into a demand to connect that ultimately will accept any connection it can get, which can turn into drama addiction among other things. Whoa. I need to go think about this. So I got myself a coffee and thought about this. As you may expect by now, what came out isn't obviously tangential to what went in, but it is. I struggle these days with lack of connection, choosing to rein in the beast rather than go out and try on new persons. Clothing is a pretty good metaphor. I know exactly what I want when it comes to clothes; it's useless to experiment because I'll end up shoving the new adv...

Once you build a world in your own mind, it's nearly impossible to deconstruct it. Reframing the components from which you built your world is much more feasible; it's easier to reassign pieces of an untruth than to make them go away. This is how books and movies, for example, stick with us. We map them into memories. Done effectively, we can call up a world to visit where we haven't been and which as far as we know does not exist. Applied to people, this can be useful, awkward or dangerous. Here's what I mean: Archetype Me is a set of traits, interests, experiences, and skills. Actual Me also has habits, bodily functions, needs, and history; me's made of cells, bones and gravy. Stressors, triggers, bills to pay. All of that, not just what you think you understand about me, comes to the party when I show up. I build an archetype of myself in my mind; I also have them for all the people I know. It's what humans do, how you think you know somebody and ...

I was up shiny at 6:00 AM today.  I'm going to try to make this a habit - wish me strength because luck's got nothing to do with it.  I need to change the state of play and garner more useful results for my efforts. I say all the time that I'm allergic to waiting: it makes me itchy.  The submission process for publication is very itchy.  I try to mitigate by submitting on a somewhat regular basis so that I get some return in a steady flow.  It doesn't always work well; besides that I have to actually send something, there are many factors that affect the response time from prospective publishers.  Scratch.  I do love my rejection letters, but they are so long in coming.  Scratch, scratch. I have Delayed Gratification Challenges.  I am learning to measure time week to week instead of minute to minute, but it isn't easy for me.  As it relates to human connection the concept becomes infinitely more complicated. Just like with publi...

Photo by Martin Jones Quantum entanglement is a thing - a physical phenomenon - occurring when a pair of particles (or a group of them) have a correlation such that the state of one cannot be described independently of the other, even when separated by a large distance. Their relationship must be addressed in terms of the collection as a whole. If you take a measure of one, you will find same in the other (and possibly annihilate both , but that's a different tangent.) What affects one affects the whole system.  This is the baby-food version - I'm still learning. Einstein called it " Spooky Action at a Distance. " He had doubts , and those doubts spawned debate which continues today. Recently, though, scientists at the University of Glasgow have captured evidence of Bell Entanglement on camera . I'm gonna stretch this skeleton a bit and apply it to human connection. We've all heard twin stories - people formed from a split egg who claim special c...

I just came back to my workstation and found this. I confirmed with my supervisor-friend that it does not mean #daydrinking is approved.  I can't find any documentation that it's expressly forbidden, either. That coffee mug, Newcastle Stan , was a gift from my pal Beardo at BoomChang Records . I had to confirm that I like Stan the band, and I do, and so will you if you listen to them. Click that link and get happy. Gifts are awesome, especially when they show somebody actually gets you. Even when the gift is knives , maybe especially then. It is nice to be understood. I may be working up some Artistic Fervor (read: meltdown) this weekend. I really can't stand myself this week - I can't stand how I can't figure out why I'm stagnating, still, again. It's a process; everything is.  I am a process. My process is moving very. extremely. slowly. at. this. time. I want to see results. I crave resolution. I am itchy in this alone-space which I love so much...

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...