Thank GOD I'm aged, over the hill, and WAY past my prime.

Hello? Hi. There’s something I’d like to share. During last night’s impressive and dramatic thunderstorm, with clarity, angst, and surprise, it dawned on me… 

Thank GOD I’m aged, over the hill, and WAY past my prime. 

I grew up in an idealistic bubble, not only foolishly believing hard work and persistence would ensure a modicum of security, but most naively, that there was an innate goodness in man, that it would certainly prevail, and bigotry, cruelty, and fear would shrink and slink back into its abyss. After all, didn’t the Beatles tell us that all we need is love? 

Witnessing an accelerated decay of decency and kindness and the politically sanctioned pillaging of our fragile planet is excruciating. Excrement of the demons of hate and intolerance, freed from Pandora’s upturned box, drops from the sky and soils our lives. 

Thank God I have, what? 15? maybe 20? years left to navigate this dystopian maze? (Unless, God forbid, I live as long as Auntie Antoinette… which would mean… holy crap… another 38 years???)

Thank God I grew up when, despite the ridiculous drill of diving under ones desk as protection from nuclear fallout, I never had to deal with the very real fear of being blown apart with an assault rifle while sitting at that desk, gazing out the window dreaming, and tuning out the nuns.

Thank God I lived through my childbearing years with reproductive rights as law.

Thank God Obamacare, with its coverage of preexisting conditions, Medicaid expansion, and all its other protections, was still intact when I needed it, and that I’m not young and therefore vulnerable to its cynical, systemic demolition.  

Thank God I live in New York, a bastion of democratic rights, which I am confident will go down fighting for social safety nets, our freedom, our rights. I plan to stay right here until my ashes are blowing in the wind. Although, I suppose, I could change my mind given a viable, enticing, alternative.

Thank God my accelerated physical deterioration forced me to let go, once and for all, of my decades long food service distraction, and my perceived dependency on it for survival. But its ultimate gift, was how it enabled me to rediscover my identity as an artist, my original passion, the ability to dedicate my time and energy immersed in the joy of creating; and for igniting an urgency to begin again to write.

This is not to say I don't have substantial apprehension regarding the inevitable slashing and burning of Medicare and Social Security. I’ll need to muster my best efforts to avoid ruminating how this could easily drive many of us into poverty, depriving us of adequate medical care, and leading to an inevitable deterioration of the quality of the remaining years of our lives.

My hope, my dream, is to create and nestle into a space of love, solace, and peace despite the whirling maelstrom that surrounds and devours us.

Okay. That’s it. Bye for now.

Good Bye, Anthony Bourdain.

I never met him, but felt I knew him. My first “taste” of the prickly, profane, entertaining, Anthony Bourdain was when I read “Kitchen Confidential” which had me on the floor laughing my ass off. In the book, Bourdain even mentioned the coked up co-owners of the restaurant where, years earlier, sweating, swearing, flinging sauté pans, shouting at the wait staff, I worked as their chef.

Working in NYC kitchens, I could relate to Bourdain on SO many levels. He entered the “biz” as a dishwasher; I, by “helping” friends of a friend in their newly mobbed Columbus Ave café in the late 1970’s.  Like Bourdain, I was attracted to the tightly functioning chaos and the brutal, relentless hours inherent in the business. Copious drugs and alcohol prevailed as the go-to antidote to the craziness. It takes a certain “unconventional” personality to survive such an environment. Burying myself in the business enabled me to avoid the pain, the shame, of a dissolving marriage, of a life defined by ignoring trauma with stiff upper lips and denial. Bourdain’s words were accurate, descriptive and humorously engaging. He opened my eyes, gave me a voice, and made me laugh.

I loved “No Reservations” and “Parts Unknown”. Bourdain whisked me away on whirlwind tours around the world, tasting, experiencing, feeling, places I never would have known. He was an active, vocal advocate, highlighting the essential role of immigrants the historically marginalized and now demonized backbone of restaurant kitchens. He was a leading male voice speaking in support of the “Me Too” movement, especially significant given the abusive, misogynistic nature of the restaurant business. 

My heart breaks for his daughter, his friends, his family, his crew, the hundreds of those whose lives he touched, worked with, and met during his international adventures, and especially, for his friend and frequent collaborator, the chef Eric Ripert, who found him “unresponsive” in his luxury hotel room in France.

To many of us, celebrities such as Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, Robin Williams, Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain, Diane Arbus, etc, had what we perceive as “great” lives. They had money and fame, parameters our society mistakenly holds as the gold standard of success, and therefore, supposedly, happiness. Yet, their suffering was profound enough for them to end their own lives. There’s the endless list of celebrities who killed themselves with drug overdoses, and last, but in NO way least, the multitude of “regular” people, the uncelebrated, the unknowns, whose unbearable pain drives them to end their lives. I still grieve the death of a poetess friend who shot herself a few months ago.

Here is the link to Bourdain’s compelling essay, published in 1999 in The New Yorker, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This”, the fuse that ultimately catapulted his uniquely compelling and exciting adventures into our comparatively mundane lives. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/04/19/dont-eat-before-reading-this

Mr. Bourdain, you will truly be missed. Good bye, my friend.

INVENTING THE TRUTH

Inventing the Truth

I wrote this essay around 20 years ago...

I'm posting it today in memory of my friend... my inspiration... Jackie Sheeler

My life had disintegrated into a muddy puddle left over from a defrosted winter snowfall.  With little work and no social life I would sit for hours with pen in hand staring at blank sheets of paper. Something had to give. 

After procrastinating for a week or two I finally called The Writer's Voice  and enrolled in a class titled “Inventing the Truth”and listed as a "level two" multi-genre workshop. I was terrified. I had never even taken a "level one" writing class, only a general workshop a year earlier and barely acknowledged myself as a writer. It was in that workshop I met Jackie. She was the only one in the class whose work I loved. Her writing was powerful, fascinating and hilarious. We tried to keep in touch and encourage each other to continue writing.

But instead of writing, I was sitting around with my half-baked ideas surrounding me like fallen loaves taken from the oven too soon while my creative muse nagged, begged and cajoled for a chance for expression. It occurred to me that what I needed to get going was the structure of time and place, assignments, and most significantly to go into debt for the opportunity. Paying for something always made them seem more important.

The first class began the Monday after the blizzard of '93. I decided I wouldn’t go. I’d been buried in my apartment all weekend and was loathe to brave the mountains of icy snow, freezing winds and slippery streets. Nope, wasn’t going anywhere, especially all the way to the upper west side from Park Slope. Besides, I'm no writer anyway, especially not "level two". 

By late afternoon I changed my mind. After all, I charged the class on my well-worn Visa card and, what the hell, I'll go this once then drop out if I don't like it, or if it’s obvious everyone else is much more talented or advanced than I am. Or, maybe, I’d coast by, and no one would notice I am a beginner with limited talent and perseverance.

I threw on some clothes and slid out of my apartment, onto the subway, and into the McBurney YMCA. I was alone, and 45 minutes early for the class. Obviously, I allowed enough time to get there. I sat waiting and ruminating about what a mistake it was to venture out in the bitter cold to a class I was going to drop out of anyway... when who walks in but Jackie... my writing buddy! And in that moment I knew I'd give the class a real try.  

It quickly became apparent the entire class was enormously talented, their stories compelling, moving, poignant, poetic, funny, real. I was surrounded by writers, "real" writers, even some who got paid to write: journalists, comics, writers of magazine articles and medical and dental literature; people working on books and memoirs.  

All these enormously talented people turned out to be as insecure as I was.  Everyone had that annoying voice inside nagging, sneering, whining "Who do you think you are? You have nothing to say!” and “No one wants to listen to that!” and “It's boring, why bother?” and last but not least “I really should be writing, but I’m too busy. Later.” 

I was hooked. And although I still hear that annoying little voice like right now: "This piece stinks!" and "I'm hungry! hmmm...what should I have for dinner?" I'm still writing… thanks to Jackie, the teacher and all the talented people in that class.

OUR "VERY STABLE GENIUS"

I have no doubt our “very stable genius” of a president is demented. Anyone who has dealt with someone with dementia can recognize the symptoms and knows this to be true. The rambling circular utterances, the confounding, incessantly repetitive conversations, the outraged outbursts, the paranoia, the unpredictable social skills. The utter lack of focus. 

Dementia symptoms are often an exaggerated manifestation of who you are and who you have always been. Familiar behavior endures as present reality fades. One grasps and holds tightly from the widening void those memories that define one’s identity. They are a salve, a soothing tonic easing the terror of being erased. 

My dad, a sweet gentle soul, who, as the big A insidiously devoured his neurons, became increasingly sweet and gentle, albeit peppered by “outraged outbursts” when we refused to allow him to drive. The creeping catastrophe of dementia, however, can be particularly alarming when manifested in those with unresolved, unpleasant personalities.

The president, an infamously bombastic, impressively self promoting, publicity seeking con artist, proudly litigious, an unapologetic liar, lecherous, manipulative, demanding, grandiose, intolerant of criticism, empathically deficient, is the quintessential narcissist, possibly of the malignant variety.

I almost (but don’t) feel sorry for the man. He’s surrounded by, propped up, and shamelessly used by an army of power hungry bootlicking brown-nosing obsequious sociopathic sycophants tapping into and manipulating his mental disabilities.

Most disgusting are the whores of the GOP congress who apparently will do “anything” to promote their self aggrandizing agenda. And then, there’s the equally repulsive enabling, greedy, profiteering circle of “friends and family” grabbing and sucking at the teat of wealth, publicity and power. 

It’s all one helluva clusterfuck.