Last night I had the most curious experience. I was writing yesterday in Epic and I met a guy making a movie. We chatted and I might end up crewing on it. Later I wandered around the closest thing Tucson has to a downtown, trying to spy something that might intrigue me, might engage me for a little while.

Nothing clicked, nothing happened. How does one make things happen? I remember a guy named Rob in San Jose who could make the world revolve around him. A minute in a room with people he didn’t know and he had life long friends who followed him through the city. It was an amazing thing to watch. Had he the inclination, he could have started the next religion he was that charismatic. He, wherever he these days, is my personal social hero.

[Heroes: Chuck Palahniuk, Charlie Kaufmann, and Charles Bukowski are my current writing heroes. Bill Hicks and Dave Chappelle are my comedy heroes. Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Quentin Tarantino are my current directing heroes. Chris Doyle is my cinematography hero. I don't have a cooking hero yet. I should though. A cooking hero would show me the culinary way!]

[Related: I have no one to cook for now. And goddamn I'm so good too, I'm an idiot savant when it comes to food.

Since I started cooking for Natalie to fill the meals in between going out to eat that act had become associated with her. When it all started to sour I couldn't bring myself to cook anymore. I lost the urge and that was just pathetic becaue I love cooking. A classic case of cutting off my nose with a rusty chef's knive to spite my idiot face.

The thing about cooking is that it's pointless to cook for yourself. You can save money and experiment but doing so is uninspiring, kind of like telling jokes to a mirror. You might get better, it just won't be any fun. Cooking is a giving act that demands an audience.

Actually, cooking is like sex. You can jerk off and it might be okay, might ease a little tension. You can cook for yourself and it solves a need. What you need though is someone else for it to be any good. Maybe lots of someone else's. A Thanksgiving Dinner orgy! WHOA! That's what I'm doing next year. I've got to get me some hot friends now. It's brilliant combining the best of both worlds.]

Instead of making the world amuse me, I will admit I lapsed into my pre-revelatory state and wandered aimlessly. I walked around Tucson for a bit thinking about…nothing really. Mostly, I guess, I was thinking about what a whiny little bitch I was.

I went home and had a glass of an Italian chardonnay. (Wine rules! Why didn’t anyone tell me when I was younger and impressionable?) I sat outside watching the tables and chairs, shadows of bugs playing across them in the dim light.

It was slow. The feeling of loss built and swelled in my and I started weeping. Not simple crying like when you’re a kid and you skin your knee. This was abysmal wrenching horrible unbearable loss. I wept for Natalie, I wept for all the pain I caused her, I wept for all the pain I caused myself.

I felt every single regret, every single mistake, missed opportunity, everything, ever.

Nothing had touched me before. Nothing mattered. Nothing could faze my implacable state.

It was like I imagine birth. It hurt so fucking much I’m amazed I kept any semblance of sanity.

I wept for my grandfather dead when I was 12, my greatgrandmother, my grandmother, the years I didn’t know my father, the years of trouble and strife with my mother, I wept for all the people who tried to touch me and who got pushed back violently, I thought I had felt emotion, turmoil and pain. I had not until last night.

In a rushing crushing torrent every moment in my life coursed through me. I felt grief. I felt, I wept, for the first time in my life last night.