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.